Powills: Why No Limit Agency Recruited Franchising Exec Sean Fitzgerald

In order to stand out in this crowded world, you have to be willing to try creative things. For me, this comes very easy. As you have read in the past, change does not scare me — it fuels me. At the mid-point of 2014, I started to take a good look at our businesses, No Limit Agency* and 1851, hoping to find more holes to plug. I am a business plumber. I am also a business builder. I am a business dreamer. Each of those roles in our company requires both thoughtful and risky moves. However, my philosophy is that if a risky move is thoughtful, it is no longer risky. I started jotting down concepts to create the right value-added support to our clients. As I thought of new concepts, I returned to an old one — one I was confident would be powerful to the agency and to the publication — by recruiting one of the smartest people I know in franchising to help drive our business strategy to a new level. No one else had done this from a PR/social/advertising/marketing component as it related back to franchising. Sean Fitzgerald was our solution, and now he has joined No Limit Agency and 1851 as Chief Development Strategist. For those of you who don’t know Sean or the meaning of Sean’s role, I will explain throughout this column. Throughout the process of recruiting in Sean, I learned a few important things about the way I approach our business as the leader. Perhaps, these are tips that can help your business as well: 1. You can hire whoever you want; you just have to be willing to tell a good story. No Limit Agency now has a C-suite strategist who has consistently helped brands grow, not just with new franchisees, but in operations, marketing and support. This helps us in our growth model as an agency, but it also gives us the advantage of being the only agency (to my knowledge) who has hired someone who has sold a franchise — not to sell franchises, but to advise and help our clients. I have heard speakers talk about the difference between Apple and, well, everyone else. Apple doesn’t own the people it recruits; it simply out-recruits everyone else for the best people. If No Limit Agency is going to be great, recruitment is going to have to shine. We will have to continue to recruit in the best talent possible for the staff budget we have. 2. Business development, for any business, is tricky and not getting easier. It used to be that a direct-mail piece would generate predictable results. Now with Yelp, Facebook, digital technology and so much more, development is tough. I am creative, but I am only one person. I know that it will take more than just my brand to constantly challenge and solve development issues. Last week, Sean, No Limit vice president Lauren Boukas and I visited several clients. What I witnessed was that each of us brought a different puzzle piece to the table. All of us are concerned with how challenging it is to help businesses grow. All of us had different ideas on how to solve it. And then, all of us are aligned in the strategy and measurements to get it done. In the past, it was primarily me who came up with the big ideas to help brands spike growth. Very clearly three heads are better than one. 3. Leadership can lead when ego is thrown away and you don’t need just one person at the top to find success. I have made some mistakes in hiring in the past. I hired great people who were just not great for what we are trying to accomplish. Given the hiring of a new person is never a guarantee to perfection, I believe that this hire will ultimately be very beneficial, as Sean will be able to help many brands (not just one, like when he previously was a franchise sales director) find their momentum and velocity, which in turn would be a tremendous value-add to our existing and future clients. Recruiting a leader like Sean should be first seen as a value-add, rather than an instant revenue generator for a company. 4. Hire the smartest people you know, and don’t cut corners. You can’t. If you do, your growth will be stunted. I am a big believer that I will be awesome at running a 25-person agency, but we will need more awesome people if we are to become the greatest mid-size agency that ever existed. The only difference between good and great companies is the strength of its people. Believe in this. 5. There is certainly value in hiring within your one or two degrees of separation. Sean and I have a long-tenured friendship. It is so strong that business has never gotten in the way of us being friends first. We couldn’t work with him at his last company, as we already had a loyal relationship with a competitor. While he may have wanted to kill me for this, he remained my friend throughout. When hiring, listen to those around you to help influence your growth. If someone is connected to the hire, it will add a few more loyalty points at the beginning. I will be the first to tell you that I am not a genius when it comes to hiring. I have failed many times, not in hiring the right people, but hiring the right fit. When someone has left our company, I have often evaluated what I could have done better in the hiring process to prevent that turnover. I am not sure there is one clear-cut solution. All people come to a business with different DNA, therefore finding an absolute guarantee somebody would work out is nearly impossible (even though we are testing personality testing). The best hiring advice that I can give at this point in my experience is to go with your gut, look to your friends for advice, and be open and honest with your feelings as it relates back to your staff’s successes and failures. And it’s OK to fail. Just don’t quit. With Sean, I am very excited to see where this journey goes. At the end of the first week, I know the three clients he met felt that it was already up and up.