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Episode #271
Brian McComak

Employee Hiring Strategies For Consulting Business Owners

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Summary

Choosing the right person to work with you is critical in business. It can be the factor that will drive your business into success or chaos. In this episode, Brian McComak, the CEO and Founder of Hummingbird Humanity, dives deep into employee hiring strategies for consulting business owners. He discusses the repositioning of Hummingbird to focus on organizational culture because that’s what you should do through the lens of DEI. Brian also gives insights on how to treat the structure in communication with a client and shares their thought leadership paper you can leverage. Tune in to this conversation to find out!

Welcome back to another episode of Consulting Success. I’m very excited to have Brian McComak join us. Brian, welcome.

Thank you so much, Michael. I’m delighted to be here.

You are the CEO and Founder of Hummingbird Humanity, a diversity and inclusion-focused consulting firm. You work with some very well-known clients like Toyota, Moody’s, Tremor International, and a whole bunch of others. You built your business up to about twenty team members or so if I’m correct.

That is correct. I still don’t know how that all happened, but maybe we’ll find out while we’re in this conversation.

Let’s get into it. We’ll see what we can uncover and maybe we can put the pieces together. I have to tell you before we dive too deep, the name of your company resonates with me instantly because hummingbirds are my favorite birds. My daughters, my wife, and I have a hummingbird feeder right outside of our house in one of the main windows. We have hummingbirds coming throughout the whole year. It’s fun to watch them and they’re amazing birds. When I saw the name of your company, I was instantly attracted to find out more.

Thank you. It’s been fun. Sometimes, in this journey of building a new business, you happen upon something that works like that name. I get these compliments. It’s one of the most common things that I get to hear, which is cool. It’s a name that people can remember. There are a couple of things I’ll share about the name of the business.

One is I have some colleagues whom I admire, respect, and love. They’ve helped me in the journey. They named their firms after them. I didn’t want the firm to be named after me because I wanted it to be bigger than me in many ways. Also, our primary mission is to amplify the voices of the unheard, so I didn’t want to lead with my name.

That was one piece of the puzzle. Another piece of the puzzle is I knew that I wanted the word human or humanity to be in the title. My work is all about creating workplace cultures where humans thrive. One of my favorite compliments is from colleagues at Tapestry. For those who don’t know, Tapestry is the home of Coach Kate Spade and Stuart Weitzman. Margaret Cody is the Head of Corporate Social Responsibilities. She said, “Brian, I love that you always remind us that the decisions we’re making are about humans.” I’m like, “Yes, that has to be in the name of the company.”

Hummingbirds are creatures that are surprising and unexpected. There’s certainly much more to them than what you might first expect if you happened upon one in nature. That is a beautiful analogy for the work that we do. If you see any human, the initial perceptions, judgments, biases, and all the things that come up in your mind might be accurate, but more likely, there’s so much more to the story. The hummingbird is a great icon to remind us that let’s not judge a book by its cover. Let’s get to know the rest of the story. Who doesn’t love a little alliteration?

There you go. It’s an important message because when we start talking about marketing, business development, and sales, people tend to default to transactions and not think about people as people, yet the relationships and connections can be such an advantage if you choose to leverage that by focusing on a deeper connection or a deeper level of interaction or relationship. You’ve brought up a good reminder for all of us here. I want to go back in time a little bit. It’s not that far back because I want to focus on May 2020.

The headcount growth also aligned to a degree with revenue growth. Click To Tweet

Can you time travel, Michael? If you can time travel, let’s do that.

I’ve been known to pull out some very surprising activities or behaviors, so maybe that’s one of them. I don’t know if you spent a decade, but it was a decade ago that you were at Christie’s and then at Disney before you decided to start your consulting business, which I believe was in May of 2020. I’m wondering if you can take us back to the earlier career and then to that decision, why May of 2020? What was going on? Why go out and start this consulting business after working at some of the top most respected brands and organizations out there? Why not continue climbing the corporate ladder?

Thank you for asking. That’s such a good question. One of the things you won’t find online anymore is I’m in my third or fourth career. My very first career was in movie theater operations. I worked for AMC Theaters for years. I opened AMC’s Flagship Megaplex at Walt Disney World, which is AMC Pleasure Island 24 Theaters, which at that time was the busiest movie theater in the world.

I had a great career in movie theater operations. I went back to school to get my Master’s in Human Resources. That degree was specifically in human resources and change management. It was a consulting degree. It’s the work that we did. We consulted with real-life companies. I think that set this foundation for me for how I showed up in workplaces as an HR person.

I did lots of different HR roles in different types and sizes of organizations. I was a generalist and an HR business partner. I’ve been in some specialist roles, but I intentionally chose to work in a variety of different types of roles and companies because I had this feeling that at some point, I was going to be a consultant. Let’s be honest though, I didn’t know what that meant. I just said, “I need to draw from a variety of experiences.” That was intentional for me

You’re right, I’ve been fortunate to work at Christie’s Auction House, the Walt Disney Company, Tapestry, and L’Oreal. I’ve worked for some phenomenal organizations and have had the chance to learn from each of them. Looking back a few years ago now, the fall of 2019 is when I left in-house corporate life.

What was happening for me then was I had this internal desire to spread my wings and step out of the four walls of corporate. I loved being an ambassador, representing Tapestry and the phenomenal brands of Tapestry, the Walt Disney Company, and everything that Disney brings to the world. There are many wonderful stories to share, and I wanted the opportunity to share my story.

That was why I took the leap to try the world of consulting. The May 2020 launch is the intersection of the realities of time. In March 2020, I wasn’t sure that my career was going to be a career anymore because the DEI or Diversity, Equity and Inclusion budgets got cut across corporate America very quickly. I launched Hummingbird initially as a branding play. I’m like, “I need to stay relevant in the conversation, so I have this idea. I might as well launch it.” I started with a live weekly conversation series called Hope, Heart, and The Human Spirit with people that I admire who are trying to make the world a better place.

What was the platform for that, Brian?

It was a live Zoom book event. We invited people to join a live Zoom conversation, which happened a lot back in the Spring of 2020. We had a community of 50 to 75 people that would join us each week and ask questions and engage in the dialogue. That was a beautiful start to this journey. It’s a whole part of the human spirit or something that we all needed then, but it’s something we all need in the workplace as well.

CSP Brian McComak | Employee Hiring Strategies

 

It was very authentic to who I am and what I believe in. Through the tragedy of George Floyd, because I had just hung my shingle as we say, I got started getting calls from organizations that asked if I could help them on their journey. All of a sudden, Hummingbird went from being a website and a weekly live Zoom conversation to having clients.

Back to the whole Hummingbird, you flapped your wings very quickly and went from you to twenty people in two years or so, which is quite a rapid growth. I would imagine the headcount growth also aligned to a degree with revenue growth, and that you weren’t taking on outside investment or putting all of your savings into it. You can correct me if I’m wrong here and we can talk more about that as much as you’re open to sharing.

The one thing that I am wondering is it sounds like you created this online Zoom series where you were talking about stuff that was relevant that was on your mind. You said people started calling you. Organizations started reaching out given what was going on in the world and the US, especially at that time. Were these people already having a relationship with you, these people that had attended the Zoom meetings? How did those first clients find out about you and know to reach out?

The business for the first eighteen months was all built through my network. That played out in a few different ways. There are some people that were already in my network that said they wanted me or Hummingbird to come and help them. Someone needed someone to help them and someone in my network said, “You should reach out to Brian.”

There were introductions and warm handoffs from people that were trusted to say, “You can trust Brian and you can trust the Hummingbird team for the work they do.” Jennifer Brown is one of those colleagues that I mentioned earlier. Jennifer Brown has Jennifer Brown Speaks, which is her speaking business. She has Jennifer Brown Consulting, which is her consulting business.

She’s been on this on the show before as well.

She’s amazing. She’s one of my mentors and advisors. During that first Summer of 2020, Jennifer gave me the opportunity to play the role of Jennifer. Twice a week, she’d brought together the JBC community. If she couldn’t make the call to host, then I hosted for her. There are some people who found me through that community that have reached out. People whom I didn’t necessarily know personally but they had experienced the conversation with me or been in rooms with me and said, “This is someone I can trust and believe in.” It was all through my community that the business was built.

The first client that we identified came through a web search. We signed them this past spring. That was the biggest client that we signed to date. It was a big deal for us not only to get that lead but also to win the business. We try to think of winning the business is what many of us would say in the consulting space from a business side. Anytime we have a chance to do additional work, we’re making an impact.

We always try to lead with what’s the value and the impact we’re making. Why they chose us was they said, “We talked with a bunch of different firms. Some firms, we didn’t understand what they were saying so they weren’t the right fit.” Most firms they spoke with said, “Here’s how we do it and we’ll come in and do it this way.” They said that Hummingbird was the only firm that they felt was going to stand by them step by step, teach them, guide them, answer their questions, and be engaged partners. Our work is how we set people up for success to be able to do it on their own because we can’t always be there.

Brian, let me drive a little bit deeper into that for a moment and explore that a little bit. How intentional are you and your team in that early conversation stage with buyers to set the positioning that that’s how you approach things? Is that natural and not planned? Were you all very focused on the client? Do you instruct or talk with your team members? It’s like, “When we’re speaking to a buyer, here’s how we’re going to do it and we’re going to be very consultative. We’re going to get a lot of information from them.” Walk through the best practice or the approach that you all take at your company to get that feedback from a new client.

Set people up for success for them to learn to do it independently. Click To Tweet

I would love to say I had this very intentional strategic plan that I put on paper and we’re like, “This is how we’re going to do it.” I felt my way through it with the advice and counsel from people like Jennifer Brown and Eduardo Placer, who owns Fearless Communicators, and Andy Rice, who is another friend of mine who runs a firm called Black Box Consulting.

I had these people who had come before me and given their time, energy, wisdom, and experience. Of course, they went in my head. I listened to what they had to say. One of the things I learned from Andy was that he has this belief in intellectual generosity. He said, “I don’t want everything to be like, ‘I’m going to give you a sentence and you’re going to give me $5.’” I’m like, “It’s overly transactional.” He’s like, “No, I’ll share the sentence or the answer with you. If that leads to something bigger, great. If it doesn’t, then I’m glad to be of help and service.”

What happened for Hummingbird though is my training is predominantly an HR business partner. For those who aren’t familiar with that role in Corporate America, in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, Corporate America went through significant reorganizations. They cut out layers of management and organizational structures and paid hundreds of millions and billions of dollars to consulting firms to do that.

What was realized is that companies could bring in consulting experience to do much of that work internally rather than outsourcing it to big consulting firms. An HR business partner is a person who is an internal consultant, coach, advisor, and influencer. That’s what my training was and all of that is bespoke. It’s all custom to whatever function I’m working with. If I was working with the CIO or the chief HR officer or chief financial officer, then the plans that what we needed to do for those groups of humans were different.

When we started to do client engagements with Hummingbird, I leaned on what I knew, which is each client and each group of humans is going to need a different solution. What has evolved over time though, we are now intentional about it. The way that we say it now is that we absolutely have methodologies, tools, frameworks, and materials that we borrow from.

We always adjust the approach or the content to meet the needs of the specific group of humans in your organization or your function or your department. This work, if we’re talking specifically around DEI, this one group of humans is going to start from a different place from another group. We want to meet you where you are.

We’re in the process of repositioning Hummingbird. The other thing that has happened is diversity, equity and inclusion is a perspective on organizational culture. My background is largely in organizational culture, employee experience, and change management. We’re repositioning Hummingbird to focus on organizational culture because that also naturally is what we do through the lens of DEI.

It allows us to play in more ways and to make a broader impact on our clients. Our clients are telling us, “You’re doing culture work with us so let’s call it what it is.” That’s something that has also been evolving organically. What has been part of our magic is we didn’t say, “These are the boxes we’re going to fit into.” We said, “Let’s find out how we can add value. Let’s see where it takes us.”

One of the challenges that many consultants face, especially as they’re building their teams and looking to scale and grow, is that the more moving parts you have, the more custom work that you’re doing. In many cases, it is harder to build systems, processes, and SOPs around that because there’s more movement. It’s more complex.

It sounds like you have a great deal of customization that goes into meeting your clients where they are, but you’re also leveraging a playbook or processes or systems that you’ve developed because you know that they work and you don’t need to reinvent them. I’m wondering, what percent of what you bring to a typical engagement is something that you’ve used with a previous client or a previous engagement? What percent is very customized?

CSP Brian McComak | Employee Hiring Strategies

 

I would say, by and large at this point, it’s 10% to 20% customized. It’s more about how we adjust modules in a training program or how we ask a different handful of questions in our employee experience survey. There are things like if we are building their strategic roadmap for infusing diversity, equity and inclusion in their organization, we have plans we’ve built before so they can serve as ideas for this, but it’s all based on what we learned during the assessment to build that plan. Each of those can look a little different.

What has been exciting though for us is there are projects that are 100% bespoke now that we are engaged with clients to deliver because they have worked with us for two years. They know we can now build this or whatever it is. For example, one of our clients wanted to create a multi-part series for inclusive leadership. We’re developing a multi-part inclusive leadership workshop series that includes some coaching elements in it. It includes some toolkits that they can take back to their team. That is something that we’re developing soup to nuts bespoke for that organization.

As a leader of your company, how do you say no to potential work? Citing up the scenario for a moment, let’s say you’ve worked with a client. You’ve created a fantastic outcome for them. They’re excited to engage with you and your company in more work, but what if the work that they want is not the core? It still connects to what you’re doing but it does require you to build a whole bunch of new material.

That work may or may not be as profitable as the work that you would typically do because you’re leveraging the playbooks or the systems or processes that you already have. What does the thought process look like? What has your experience been with taking on new work that may not be at the core of what you’ve been doing? What do you think about that?

It’s an ongoing conversation that I have with the leadership team at Hummingbird. For the leadership team for Hummingbird, there are four of us. There’s Nick Reich, who’s the President and COO of Hummingbird. There’s Bianca Chow, who’s our Head of Consulting, and then there’s Toni Booker, who is an Executive Coach. She works with each of us individually, and the group of us collectively. That’s her primary role, but we consider her part of the leadership team because she helps us make good decisions. She’s phenomenal. I’ve learned so much from her.

We started this conversation back in the spring about what the center circle is, what is in our set of core capabilities, where we want to position ourselves, and what the adjacent set of capabilities we could do but maybe not be the best use of our time or that we might not do as well as someone else? There’s this third ring, which is connected conversations that emerge but don’t fit in what we would do.

An example of that is we do deliver training in diversity, equity and inclusion. That would fall in our core wheelhouse as well as building strategic roadmaps, doing assessments, and standing up some of those programs. That’s where we sit. One place that is adjacent to us but we don’t do is we’re not an outsourced replacement for your head of HR.

Could I be ahead of HR? Sure. Could I do that on a part-time basis, twenty hours a week, to be ahead of HR for a company that needed on an interim basis? Probably. I could make money doing that, but that takes me away from our core business. We partner with Jaime Klein, who runs a firm called Inspire Human Resources. We have a referral relationship with them. They don’t do DEI work so they send that business to us, and we send them leads if someone is looking for interim coverage for a head of HR role.

I know both of us have a variety of firms that we’re strategic partners with. That third rung is I mentioned Eduardo in Fearless Communicators earlier. In our work, we’re committed to amplifying the voices of the unheard. We tend to end up working with organizations that are then thinking, “How do I develop the capabilities of our communities of color that are part of our company?”

We have some leaders in that community who we want to develop their speaking capabilities. That’s not what we do, but Fearless Communicators develops speaking skills for anyone but their focus is on women of color. We can send them to the Fearless Communicators to say, “This is a great firm that you can trust.” We try to have those partnerships. We continue to try to get clear on where we sit and where we don’t sit, and who our partners are. That’s still a work in progress.

If our system got something wrong and then we didn't figure that out when it got to the client, we're going to make it right. Click To Tweet

How do you handle communication when you have a referral or strategic partnership? Is that something that you share with your client right away and say, “We have this partnership with this other organization? We’re going to send you over to them.” How is the conversation if you decide to engage with them? Do they receive some kind of compensation? How do you treat that kind of structure and the communication with the client around that?

One of our commitments in the work that we do is transparency is important. We try to be as upfront and transparent when we’re making those introductions as possible. I’ll use the example I shared. We do have a formal relationship with Inspire. With Fearless, we don’t have that type of referral agreement because we are not typically sending a lot of people to each other because our work is so different. We would just be honest about that. We believe in transparency because it’s part of the way you create diverse, equitable and inclusive environments. We also believe that transparency builds trust and we want to build long-term trusted collaborative partnerships.

That plays out in a variety of ways. This is not a question you asked but as we’ve been building our systems, we’ve had a couple of hiccups with how our calculations from our time management system then lead to an invoice that gets to a client. At the end of the day, I have to make a living. We have to pay our bills, but if our system got something wrong and we didn’t figure that out when it got to the client, we’re going to make it right.

If I lost $500 on this because we could have done it better, then I lost $500. I don’t want to lose the client over $500. There’s a much longer and bigger picture to look at. In those couple of moments that I can think of, there are two specifically that come to mind, which feel pretty good for a new business. Both of those clients are like, “We already love everything that you do and now we love you more because you’re owning your stuff and you’re fixing it. That’s who we want to work with.”

You’ve had a pretty rapid development or growth in terms of your team inside of the business over the last couple of years or so. Take me back to the early days of 2020 when you started. Who were the first few hires? How do you think about growing the business and who do you bring into the company first? If we lay that out as a bit of a progression or chapters in a book, take me from the start to where you are now. You don’t have to go over every single one but roughly, how did you think through strategically about who to hire and when to hire?

I’m happy to share. One thing I want to make sure that I am transparent about in the spirit of what we were talking about a few minutes ago is the community of workers at Hummingbird. We’re approaching 25 altogether. Some are full-time, part-time W-2, part-time 1099, and some are project 1099. It’s a very wide range of how often people work and certainly, they’re based all over the country. We have two people internationally now, which is very exciting.

For those that are outside of the US and wondering what 1099 is, it’s essentially contractors that you’re referring to.

Yes, contractors. Thank you. It’s always good to remember who our audience is. Those are contractors versus employees. One thing that I’ve figured out was I’m going to lean into and I did lean into the things that I enjoy the most and get me the most excited. That’s pretending that I’m a brand person and a marketer. I worked with Taylor Bevin, who runs a firm called Robot Bubble, to develop the brand aesthetic, and the website and get launched. That was necessary in the beginning.

Taylor stuck with us for two and a half years. He’s still with us on an occasional basis, but we’ve outgrown Taylor’s services. He was a phenomenal start to that journey. When the firm launched, the first person I hired as an employee was about to be a college graduate. His name is Ben Green, an openly transgender man and an amazing human. The two of us did it on our own for the most part with an occasional contractor to help with a project here and there for much of the first year.

We grew during that year until Ben and I and the business was busting at the seams. That was the Summer of 2021 when that happened. The catalyst for that moment that is interesting is I chose to invest in what felt like a substantial amount of money at that time in developing our first thought leadership paper. I hired a recent Goldman Sachs professional to come and help us build this thought leadership paper. That paper and that investment was the key catalyst for Hummingbird. Maybe it was also that we hit a year, so those intersected. All of a sudden, we had so much more business than what we could respond to.

CSP Brian McComak | Employee Hiring Strategies

 

Brian, to pause you for a moment because I want to dig into this and not gloss it over. It’s interesting, you’re talking about you’re developing this thought leadership paper and investing a significant amount into it. First of all, when you say the significant amount, can you give us a sense of roughly how much was it?

Altogether, I probably spent close to twenty on the design, development, editing, marketing, and all of the pieces of that. Going back to your question earlier, I have not taken investors. I borrowed a little bit from my mom, dad, and my sister. I’ve paid them all back now. I’m fortunate that I had family that could help me with that. I borrowed a little bit from my savings and my financial capital but it has been a self-funded business. That’s the other thing there. That money feels like a lot when it’s coming out of my pocket.

A year in, you decide to invest a nice chunk of money into developing this paper. What’s going to be very interesting that I’d love to hear is you have this paper and it could be the most beautiful paper. It can have great information in it. How do you get that in front? Walk us from you now have this product to get it in the hands of the right people, and having the right people reach out, as a result, saying, “We want to engage with you.” How did you leverage that thought leadership paper into conversations and paying clients?

A few things intersected. The firm that helped us develop the paper is called Prideful Hearts. Prideful Hearts is a sister agency of ABE Studios, which is their marketing or creative agency. They predominantly work with construction industries. They wanted to have their purpose-driven version of their brand, which is Prideful Hearts.

They have the ability to do social media strategy and place articles in publications. They can certainly do all the creative design. They did all of those pieces for us. Some of that was paid marketing dollars that got that message out more broadly. We also did a launch campaign. We were also doing the second iteration of that live conversation series via Zoom. It’s now called Hummingbird Hour. We did a special edition of Hummingbird Hour.

We did a part of that, which I alluded to earlier. There was a specific social media campaign that pulled quotes from the paper that then went on our social media channels. What then happened though, going back to connect a few of these dots here, is that started to drive more business development activity. All of a sudden, we were on more radars. We also launched a children’s book at the same time or a month later.

We did a lot in the summer of 2021, then I had to decide, “I have to sleep at some point and what am I better at?” As I said earlier, I’m a consultant. I love to add value and do this work. I love marketing and branding. I skipped all of the, “Let’s build internal systems that are going to help this business scale.” The first full-time position I hired was a COO, and that’s when Nick joined.

I asked Nick to say, “I need you to run all the core of the business so I can be in business development calls. I can be delivering on these consulting engagements.” That was a significant accelerator for the business. The business and the team you see now have been built over the course of the last 13 to 14 months. It was because I said, “I have to focus on the growth of the business, not the operation of the business.”

That’s a brave step for you to take because many entrepreneurs would look at that and go, “To invest in a COO is not insignificant.” I would imagine. I don’t know what the compensation was, but I’m sure it was an investment. That’s money out of your pocket. That doesn’t necessarily translate into new dollars right away. A lot of people view that potentially as an expense as opposed to an investment.

It sounds like the experience has been a very positive one. It’s been the accelerator for growth, but did you have any concerns and how were you thinking from a mindset perspective around that decision to make another significant investment into the business, and delegate or shift a lot of day-to-day key parts of the business to somebody away from yourself?

We're trying to create a workplace indicative of what we're trying to get you to create in other workplaces. Click To Tweet

The concern would be the most subtle way you could possibly put it. I spent money on this thought leadership paper. I spent more than I should have on the launch of the children’s book, which was a great learning for me. Now I’m hiring a full-time person. Not only am I hiring a full-time person. I’m hiring a full-time person who is not to discount as a college graduate who needs a real job and stability, but he’s a dad. He has kids and a mortgage.

I’m like, “You’re going to come and you’re going to trust that I’m going to make sure I can pay you.” I haven’t missed payroll and that’s not how I roll, but that was terrifying for me. It led to this series of conversations where I was like, “How did I become a CEO? Who told me I could do this?” My coach and Nick were both like, “You got to be a CEO now. You got to do this job. Part of the reason I hired Nick though, and this has been both rewarding for us and also challenging for the two of us, is Nick’s previous two roles were as CEO.

I hired him because I knew I could learn from him. I wanted someone who knew more than I did to help me, which is awesome. He also wasn’t used to playing the role that he plays now. I’m more comfortable in that job. We had to figure out how to translate and share. Now, it’s fantastic but it took some very intentional communication for us. It has been an accelerator, but it was a difficult journey.

Once we got through that journey though, hiring the second and third full-time people, which were in January of 2022, wasn’t scary anymore because we now had enough of a pipeline and a revenue stream. The business has continued to grow from there. We’re in the process of hiring a couple more full-time people for another investment for the next acceleration of our business in advance of my book launch next spring.

It still feels risky but I now have more information. We have better systems. We have reports. I have information. I have people who can say, “How do we make sure we’re building our pipeline for business development? How are we managing costs in the organization in a responsible way?” I won’t pretend it’s all perfect, but there are people in it with me.

You mentioned that Nick is a father, has a mortgage, and needs to essentially make sure there’s some stability in his income and salary. It almost sounded like he probably could have gotten more money somewhere else. Maybe I’m wrong on that, so correct me if I’m wrong, Brian.

I’m wondering, why do you think he came to you? What was the hiring or the conversation? Was it around values? Everyone out there, especially in today’s environment, is looking for great people. If you’re looking to build your team, it’s not necessarily the easiest thing for a lot of people. What did you learn through that process? What do you think you are able to share with others when it comes to attracting great talent?

I know I can say this on Nick’s behalf. I use the CEO role as the title for his previous roles because it’s more translatable for most people, but the title he probably had was executive director. He ran not-for-profit organizations. Part of this for Nick was he realizes there was greater potential in earnings for him if he moved to the for-profit space.

That was a piece of it. Now that I know Nick very well, he’s not driven or motivated at all by money. What I’ve learned is that Nick believes in the vision for Hummingbird and the message that I’m trying to bring to workplaces. The reality is Nick could probably make more money someplace else. I know Bianca could make more money someplace else. I know I could make more money someplace else. It’s true for all of us.

That’s also part of the risk with this journey that I’m taking. I might make that money at Hummingbird. It’s possible and we all might be able to get there. It’s exciting that I have found people that believe in the vision and the purpose of what we stand for. I think that’s been the why behind why everyone works at Hummingbird. People will reach out to us and say, “I’d love to be part of what you’re doing,” or those compliments and say, “You’re doing great work. If you ever need help, I would love to be considered for that.”

CSP Brian McComak | Employee Hiring Strategies

 

What we’re offering and what we’re proposing for how workplaces can do better at creating environments where humans thrive resonates with people. That’s rewarding and we have some collateral that we’ve developed that we share. There’s a two-page PDF that’s titled Who We Are. Part of that, the message on there is we’re trying to create a workplace that is indicative of what we’re trying to get you to create in other workplaces. By the way, it gets hard living by our own values. Practicing what you preach is not always easy, but I also want to be able to sit across from the CEO and say, “Everything I’m suggesting that you do, I’m doing it myself.” I’m finding that it’s worth it because people want to work here and they stay when they join.

Can you talk us through briefly a couple of key takeaways? When you talk about that two-page PDF and living the values, what do you think is key, even for a smaller boutique firm to keep in mind if you want to be able to attract and also retain great people, have that culture and values where people want to stick around and contribute? What are a couple of things that stand out to you that a leader should be focusing on to cultivate the right environment?

The first thing I’ll say is every environment is different and every organization is different. You have to figure out what you stand for, what you believe in, what’s important to you, and what your values are. We also help organizations define their organizational values. It’s one of the things that we can help them with. Those values, when they’re defined, are most powerful when they’re indicative of the culture that already exists and they’re not aspirational.

For us, what we’ve tried to do is be clear on our mission, vision and values. Everyone at Hummingbird could say that we are committed to amplifying the voices of the unheard. It’s a sentence that they can get their heads around, believe in, and buy into. It also resonates because all of them are members of those communities that we’re amplifying.

That has been helpful. It’s the clarity on the mission, vision and values. The part that has been interesting for us in the DEI space is we’re clear on how we do the work. There’s a broad range of ways that organizations and DEI consulting firms have come in and done this work. I believe one of the challenges with this work is that it’s often focused on shame, blame and guilt like, “You should feel bad because this happens to other people, and you’re in power and privilege.”

I’m not going to pretend that systems of oppression don’t exist. If I come in and say, “Michael, you’re doing a terrible job. You’re a horrible human.” You’re like, “Why do I want to work with you?” We have a very specific point of view, which is we ignite our shared humanity by building bridges of trust. Through those building bridges of trust between different people that work together, we can open the door to understanding how systemic oppression impacts each of us differently so we can then create workplaces where humans thrive.

We have a different approach to that. We’ve had a couple of people that were part of our contract team that said, “I want to be more of an activist in how I show up,” and they don’t fit. That’s okay. We need them. I love them. I will continue to support them and amplify their voices as well. That’s not only what we’re doing and what we believe in but how we do it. That I think has been important. The last thing I would offer here is being able to practice what you preach.

Something that I was able to do that I loved was every employee of Hummingbird got $200 to give away to a charity of their choice. We believe that part of DEI work is also the social impact of how you’re giving back to the communities that allow your organization to exist. That was a small way for us to give back. There are lots of other examples that I can share and hopefully, the team could share as well that says, “Not only do we say these things but we show up and do these things.”

I appreciate you sharing those with us. Before we wrap up, I want to make sure that people can learn more about you and everything going on at Hummingbird and your work over there. A couple of quick questions. First is, as a leader of your company, you have a growing team. I’m wondering, what are maybe a couple of habits that you’re bringing into your life or are part of your life on a regular basis that you feel contribute to your performance, your focus, and your overall success?

I’ll share two sides of this. One of the things that have happened to me at least a couple of times or maybe a handful of times is I have gotten myself to burnout. I’ve said, “I have to tap out for a minute.” That feels unstructured and doesn’t feel like it’s how I want to show up. Something that I am working on is my self-care plan and self-care journey. Putting my oxygen mask on first is a very real thing. Not only am I doing that but I’m also talking openly about it with the team. I say, “This is what happened. I wish they would’ve handled it differently or better. Here’s what my plan is.”

When defined, those organizational values are most powerful when they're indicative of the already existing culture. Click To Tweet

I also try to own my stuff. Something that I’ve done that I didn’t do with intentionality, I just did it because I need to block time on my calendar, is I go to therapy once a week. It’s on my calendar and it says, “Therapy.” I also sometimes have a neighbor that I go for a walk with during the day, and I put a walk on my calendar. The team has said, “Put those moments on the calendar,” because everyone can see my calendar. They know that it gives them permission to also practice self-care. That’s been important.

That broader self-care conversation and the journey is the biggest thing for me. I’m fortunate to have a lot of skills at my disposal that I was blessed with, but if I overdo it then I’ve no use to anyone. The other one I would highly highlight is to realize I don’t have all the answers. I have a coach who is much more experienced than I do. I still lean on my trusted advisors and mentors.

I have phenomenal humans that work for me. I not only have to ask for their guidance and counsel but I also encourage them to challenge me. Particularly with the work that we do. I don’t live in the shoes of a woman or a person of color or a Millennial or Gen Z. If I’m missing something, say, “Brian, you’re missing something. You got to hear the rest of the story.” I invite those conversations and if I get something wrong, I apologize for it. That engendering trust allows us to work together more effectively as a team. All of that comes together.

That’s great. The final question for you is in the last six months or so, what is one book, it could be fiction or non-fiction, that you have read or listened to that you enjoyed that you would recommend to someone?

I have started to challenge myself like, “You got to read books again, Brian.” I have lots of books on my shelf, so I’m going to own that wholeheartedly. I started reading the latest Nicholas Sparks novel just for pleasure. I can’t remember the name of it but if you look it up it’ll be out there. The book that I’ll offer is a different twist on this question. It is the book that I have pulled out that I want to read because I used to read it every year. There are two of them, The Last Lecture and Tuesdays with Morrie, which are both perspectives on how to live a wholesome life and how to be a good human. I’m going to revisit those over the course of the next few weeks.

I’ve heard about the Morrie book but I’ve never read it. You’re reminding me. I need to probably check that out. I appreciate the reminder.

In his book, Morrie is diagnosed with a terminal illness. He already has a life philosophy but he shares his life philosophy, which is beautiful. Similarly, in The Last Lecture, Randy Pausch has also diagnosed with a terminal illness. The third of his book are some of his words of wisdom. I should mention at this point that part of the reason I haven’t read a lot is that I’ve been avoiding finishing the edits on my manuscript. Any engagement with a book is like sparking, “Someone else is going to read my book and some people aren’t going to like it.” That’s a little bit nerve-wracking but it’s exciting. I’m looking forward to sharing it.

I’m glad that you brought up the point around self-care because so often, as entrepreneurs and business owners, we’re all heads down and focused on building and growing. It’s easy to see that future destination. We’re working hard toward it, but we don’t often make enough time to appreciate and enjoy the journey and the time that we have now. It’s a good reminder for everyone to think about why you’re doing what you’re doing, and how can you make sure that you can be in it for the long-term, not just a short sprint. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, as people often say. To finish off, where can people go and where should they go to learn more about Hummingbird and about your work and to see everything you have going on?

I want to say something about what you mentioned. I had the chance to spend the afternoon with Jacque Romano, who is a videographer and a documentarian. Someone I’ve had a chance to work with and a phenomenal human. We were talking about all this stuff with Hummingbird and she said, “Brian, do you ever pause and say, ‘It’s cool that all of this stuff is happening?’ You have a business and a team and you have a book coming out. You have a children’s book you’ve published and so on.”

I do spend a lot of time focusing on gratitude but not necessarily on gratitude for my success. It’s gratitude for the opportunities that have been opened for me and the people that have shown up for me. I think it’s a good reminder for us as entrepreneurs that it’s okay to have those moments to say, “This is pretty awesome that I got to do this and that I get to do this.” I wanted to mention that just in the spirit of Jacque for nudging me along because it’s important.

Part of DEI work is the social impact of how you're giving back to the communities that allow your organization to exist. Click To Tweet

It’s a great comment. You’re right. As entrepreneurs, we often tend to look forward and not look back and think about what we have accomplished. We’re so focused on the future that we don’t feel like we’ve accomplished that much. As you mentioned, pause for a moment and look at where you came from and how much you have accomplished. In most cases, it’s quite a bit that we should be grateful for and take stock of, and help us to move to that next place.

In that spirit, there are ways you can find me because I’ve had a chance to grow in these ways. The best way to connect with me if you’re looking for my professional perspectives on the world is my LinkedIn channel, find Brian McComak on LinkedIn. If you were looking for the personal side of Brian, I’m also on Instagram, @BrianMcComak.

For Hummingbird, the best thing to do is to go to our website, HummingbirdHumanity.com and sign up for our newsletter. We send a weekly newsletter that has stories and tools and is committed to amplifying the voices of the unheard. You’ll learn a lot about others. Hummingbird is also on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. On Instagram in particular, you can follow @BoscosBiscuits. Bosco is my dog. He’s a rescue beagle. Bosco shares tips on how to be an inclusive human. Check that out.

Brian, thank you again so much for coming on and spending some time with us.

Thank you for having me, Michael. It’s been a pleasure.

 

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