Software Spotlight

Brandon Gano Unlocking Human Potential at HumanOp

Episode Summary

In this episode of Software Spotlight, host Michael Bernzweig interviews Brandon Gano, COO of HumanOp Technologies. They discuss Brandon's entrepreneurial journey, the formation of HumanOp, and its unique technology that objectively assesses individuals to improve workplace dynamics. The conversation explores the importance of partnerships, the transition to a software-driven model, and the practical applications of HumanOp's technology in hiring, team compatibility, and conflict mitigation. Brandon shares insights on client demographics, employee retention, and the significance of investing in people for long-term success. The episode concludes with Brandon discussing his podcasts and the mission of HumanOp.

Episode Notes

In this episode of Software Spotlight, host Michael Bernzweig interviews Brandon Gano, COO of HumanOp Technologies. They discuss Brandon's entrepreneurial journey, the formation of HumanOp, and its unique technology that objectively assesses individuals to improve workplace dynamics. The conversation explores the importance of partnerships, the transition to a software-driven model, and the practical applications of HumanOp's technology in hiring, team compatibility, and conflict mitigation. Brandon shares insights on client demographics, employee retention, and the significance of investing in people for long-term success. The episode concludes with Brandon discussing his podcasts and the mission of HumanOp.

Takeaways

Sound Bites

Chapters

Episode Transcription

Michael Bernzweig (00:02.726)

Are you ready to unlock the secrets of B2B SaaS success? Tired of sifting through endless noise to find actionable insights that actually move the needle?

 

Welcome to Software Spotlight, your weekly deep dive into the transformative world of Software-as-a-Service. Your host is Michael Bernzweig, who in 1998 launched Software Oasis as one of the first platforms enabling businesses to download, license, and deploy software instantly across their networks with a single click. Today, Software Oasis has evolved into one of the leading communities where businesses find top tech consultants across the USA and Canada.

 

Each week, Michael sits down with industry titans, innovative leaders, and game-changing executives to bring you exclusive insights you won't find anywhere else. From emerging technologies to market trends, Software Spotlight delivers the strategic intelligence you need to accelerate your SaaS career and stay ahead of the curve.

 

Join our growing community of tech professionals and decision-makers. Subscribe now on your favorite podcast platform and visit softwareoasis.com/subscribe to get our bi-weekly newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.

 

Get ready for weekly data, trends, analysis, interviews, and insights that will propel your B2B SaaS career forward.

 

Subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter https://softwareoasis.com/subscribe/ to stay updated with more insights from technology leaders and transformation experts.

 

I'd like to welcome everyone to this week's edition of the Software Spotlight. I'm your host, Michael Bernzweig, the founder of Software Oasis. And this week, we're actually being joined live by Brandon Gano. He's the COO of HumanOp Technologies. And with that, Brandon, welcome to the podcast.

 

Brandon Gano (00:26.466)

Michael, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

 

Michael Bernzweig (00:28.658)

Yeah, no, same here and I can see from some of the questions that came in from the audience, lot of people are pretty excited about this episode as well. I guess just for anybody that's listening that may not be familiar with either yourself or HumanOp, can you give us a little bit of your personal journey in terms of your background getting to where you are and

 

share a little bit about what's going on out there at HumanOp.

 

Brandon Gano (01:00.918)

Yeah, I'm not aware of having any fans, so I assume nobody is familiar with me. So I'm happy to share my journey of how I got here. But basically, was out of college, managed a family business relatively young still. So this was about 10 or so years ago. Did that for a few years and decided I wanted to pursue my own entrepreneurial journey. So I took I took what I was doing there, a piece of that business.

 

Michael Bernzweig (01:05.81)

You

 

Brandon Gano (01:28.76)

created my own standalone business, different industry, different product stream related. So no bad blood with family by any means, but a little bit different direction. was able to grow that relatively quickly. And for that industry and that market really sort of unexpected growth. So from that, I said, okay, well, there's some things I'm doing right here. I want to see if I could turn this into a franchise. I pursued that path and I

 

thought it was what I wanted, got a little bit further down that road, got in bed with a company that maybe we didn't share core values all that much. And then when I kind of understood who they were as human beings, I decided it wasn't going to be the best path for me and my family to pursue the franchise route. I basically just said, you know what, taking this as a loss, I'm going to write this off. were...

 

Michael Bernzweig (02:24.295)

Smart.

 

Brandon Gano (02:25.026)

We had success. mean, we had location sold. had contracts signed, but I said, it's, it's not going to be good long-term because of who these people are at their core. So close that business. would be my first failure if you would in business, but we have to have those. got to learn from those and grow from those. So all good things. then I. Absolutely. Yeah. And those, those things happen. You can't, you can't let them get you down or, or stay dwelling on the past, but just decided, you know, at that point.

 

Michael Bernzweig (02:41.426)

Sure. It's all part of your journey.

 

Brandon Gano (02:53.006)

I wasn't so in love with that industry anymore because of how that played out. So I went back to my, my original location, um, went through the process of selling that eventually did sell it in 2023. So been moved on for a couple of years, but jumped into fractional COO consulting. Met, um, my business partner at an event. We hit it off. said, Hey, let's do this thing together. This is the super short version, by the way. Um, a lot more things take place in order to have a successful partnership, but.

 

Michael Bernzweig (03:18.523)

Sure.

 

Brandon Gano (03:21.998)

As of late last year, late 2024, we were actually approached to be acquired and, and merge with now human ops. So he is the CEO of HumanOp. am the COO of HumanOp. Um, I always like to say, you can't spell cool without COO. So that's, that's my jam. That's what we're doing. But HumanOp is a really, really cool opportunity that I would changed the trajectory of my previous business. I met HumanOp before I met Sean, my, my former business partner.

 

Michael Bernzweig (03:40.849)

There you go.

 

Brandon Gano (03:52.126)

And it's a technology that allows you to understand yourself at an objective level. So think personality assessment, but now think personality assessment on steroids. It's nothing like all those other ones where they're all subjective, which how you see the world, how you think you show up in the world. what's your favorite color, all these different things. Human op has a patented algorithm that objectively understands who and what a human being is based on how you physically look in the world. So.

 

Very unique technology. I'm happy to unpack that further. the sort of core to what we do is helping businesses understand their people so that we can reduce all costs associated with people in companies.

 

Michael Bernzweig (04:35.324)

So let me ask you a question. when you started, what if you started that as a partnership between the two of you or?

 

Brandon Gano (04:43.446)

Yes, my business partner, his name was Sean, he had been doing fractional COO consulting for 25 years. We came together as a partnership to really bring it down to smaller businesses, small, medium businesses. He'd been working almost exclusively with the Fortune 50.

 

Michael Bernzweig (04:55.42)

Sure.

 

Michael Bernzweig (04:59.492)

And did you have complementary skills or what made that partnership work that obviously after you were acquired, you decided to stay together in this new reincarnation of your world? Like what were your skill sets that meshed together?

 

Brandon Gano (05:18.54)

Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that because we didn't. I mean, we knew we liked each other, but we didn't know the extent that we complimented each other, so to speak, until we we encountered HumanOp. So like I said, I had met way one of the co-founders of HumanOp, and he's our CVO now chief visionary officer. I had met him about three years ago. I had done the assessment. Like I said, it totally changed my my world. Fast forward to me and Sean working together.

 

Michael Bernzweig (05:30.738)

Sure.

 

Brandon Gano (05:48.19)

We were working on a couple of client projects and they were having people issues. You you can kind of poke your way through there and, and intuit certain things and trial and error. But I, I remembered working with HumanOp and what it did for me in my business. And I said, Hey, let's, let me see if we can approach them. And maybe they have a solution for this problem because they work almost exclusively with people. So reached out to way. And I said,

 

think I want to refer you to a client we're working on right now, but also I want to understand how me and Sean work together. And he, so Sean took the assessment. retook the assessment and his words that he said to us about us working together were, and I quote, we are like Lego pieces. I fill in Sean's gap. Sean fills in my gaps. we are almost a perfect match for each other. If it was a, if it was

 

Michael Bernzweig (06:34.534)

Yeah.

 

Brandon Gano (06:40.814)

a dating scenario, which it's not, believe me, but I'm just saying if it was, it would be it would be the absolute perfect match for for two people to be together because there's there's not one area that we're necessarily weak in as a unit. So really cool from a business partnership perspective, because

 

Michael Bernzweig (06:43.91)

Yeah.

 

Michael Bernzweig (06:57.922)

That's amazing and you need to have that and and I'll share with you something I haven't shared on the podcast before the company that I ran with a partner for many years up until about three years ago before we sold it We had a very similar experience where we complimented one another You know, I was more the big picture. He was more the finer detail and I think you need to have that

 

running any organization. But to juxtapose things a little bit different than your experience, even though we complimented one another very well, worked together very well for many years, at the point where we had our exit and sold the business, each of us actually as the next step, decided to run our own companies without partners. And that's why I was just kind of curious how you decided to

 

after an exit, you know, transition into something in a similar space. So interesting.

 

Brandon Gano (08:01.91)

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's it comes down to where you add in that in that partnership in that relationship. I think any any relationship outside of business, there is an evolution. I mean, the people as people we evolve, we grow. Sometimes you grow together. Sometimes you grow apart. If you look at divorce rates in this country, it's mostly growing apart. But if you if you know who that person is, how they operate, you know what their

 

Michael Bernzweig (08:23.826)

Exactly. I'm right there with you.

 

Brandon Gano (08:30.466)

their strong states would look like, you know what their weak states look like. Again, you understand them objectively. have more tolerance for that, but also a better just understanding of who you are, who they are and how to work together. It's not all roses and rainbows. I mean, you know that you had a partnership.

 

Michael Bernzweig (08:44.43)

No, no, no, no, obviously. Yeah, having having a little bit of tension in any relationship is healthy. But at the end of the day, I we ran a company together for over 20 years. And, sometimes it's anything in life. It's it's fun to explore new opportunities when they present themselves. So as you're, you know, focusing on the next chapter in your journey, how how long just just so the audience has a little bit of perspective, how long did

 

Brandon Gano (08:50.424)

course.

 

Michael Bernzweig (09:14.204)

Did you run what if and when was the actual acquisition? How long have you been with, in HumanOp?

 

Brandon Gano (09:23.276)

Yeah, so Sean's been doing it, like I said, for 25 years. I came in about it was about two years we were together. And then since since October, so at the point of this recording about seven or eight months with with human.

 

Michael Bernzweig (09:31.003)

Okay.

 

Michael Bernzweig (09:38.386)

Okay, all right, so it's an interesting, and HumanOp has been around for a while, if I saw.

 

Brandon Gano (09:43.712)

Yeah, they've been around for the technology has been around for 20 over 20 years. It's been patented for the last 10 been operating as HumanOp for the last 10 plus years. And it's it's a very well established brand and company.

 

Michael Bernzweig (09:58.195)

Sure, and you know, if I understand correctly, it's delivered through your app, through your website, through how does it reach clients and maybe you could get into a little bit more of the nuts and bolts of exactly what the technology enables.

 

Brandon Gano (10:17.77)

Absolutely. Yeah, then that's the pivot. That's why me and Sean are here and why we were brought in because for the last 20 years, it's been a consultative approach. So I think, you know, very big companies or companies who can afford expensive things, spending six, seven figures on these engagements to bring people in to consult about the people in those companies, mostly leadership teams or on the private level, the elites of the elite.

 

in the world. When you bring that model into small and medium businesses, it's a little bit too expensive to be justified. The technology is so powerful. And they've seen we've seen incredible results with it, that it would be it would be doing a disservice if we didn't find a way to make it more affordable and scale it scale to small businesses. That's where the impact is in the economy. That's where

 

Michael Bernzweig (10:56.786)

Sure.

 

Brandon Gano (11:16.482)

the most employees are, that's where the biggest, portion of, of our GDP comes from. So we wanted to make a difference, especially in this country, but also worldwide because people conflicts are probably the most expensive cost of, of running a business. I mean, you just said it yourself, right? Like friction is it's healthy. Too much friction becomes not so healthy. Think about a marriage, right? If you have friction in a marriage, you are evolving. You are growing. If you have too much friction, you're

 

Michael Bernzweig (11:39.003)

Right.

 

Brandon Gano (11:45.358)

probably going to be divorced. We don't want that in companies. So what we said was, how do we get this into a software platform that can be as little as free for the consumer, but also how do we keep the cost down for companies and big enterprises as well? So what we did was create two different software platforms. We have one that's a B2C model. It's got a free tier and it will always have a free tier. That's our commitment to

 

humanity, so to speak. And then we have two paid tiers. So it is monetized that way. We also have a B2B platform called Maestro, which has you pay per seat basically for, for the company. You, have the option to come in and do the manual consultative approach, but our whole goal was to get the human being out of the consultative role and have the software do the work. we can, again, like I said earlier, resolve or eliminate those

 

Michael Bernzweig (12:15.846)

Yeah.

 

Brandon Gano (12:43.403)

all of the people related costs and issues in a company.

 

Michael Bernzweig (12:47.492)

Makes a lot of sense. for an organization that might be listening to this podcast saying, you know, how would this solution benefit our small business? What can you give some examples of maybe customers or clients that are using the solution and what they're achieving?

 

Brandon Gano (13:08.524)

Yeah, so I'll give you the three, three sort of key areas that are easy to think about because all all businesses, no matter the industry or the size is going to have something going on in these three areas. I'll start with hiring. So on on the platform again, it's called Maestro. There is a hiring section. Most companies, I won't say most, but a lot of companies do some sort of an assessment, whether it's behavioral, cognitive.

 

subjective with some sort of a disc or an Enneagram or Myers-Briggs. That's commonplace in hiring in a lot of companies. So what we can do is replace all of those because we give you our assessment. get a custom link for your organization. You give the applicant or the candidate a link to go ahead and take our assessment. takes 10 minutes. And what the software will do is evaluate based on the role you're hiring for and the tasks associated with that role, how compatible that human being is.

 

Michael Bernzweig (13:36.626)

and

 

Michael Bernzweig (13:43.964)

Sure.

 

Michael Bernzweig (13:53.074)

Hmm.

 

Brandon Gano (14:05.784)

to that role. So kind of kind of two phases here. One is compatibility to the role to make sure when we hire that person, even though their resume says they can do that job, and in the interview, they say they can do that job, we want to know not only if they can do it, but is it something that's going to burn them out in like three weeks? Or is it actually going to light them up and they're going to be sustainable in this role long term? We don't want to hire people just because they say they can do something. We want to make sure that we're building sustainable, scalable organizations.

 

So eliminating that the people costs of turnover from, don't even want to say bad hires, but hires who are not designed to do a certain role, there's absolutely no way currently to evaluate if someone is capable of doing a role longterm. It's impossible. That's where our software comes in and we can, we can hire with precision. The second piece of that is team compatibility. So again, very hard to see how someone interacts in a team role.

 

without them actually being in that role. So in, and again, the hiring component of this, have role compatibility and team compatibility. You can drag that person, assuming they're, they're compatible with the role, drag them over to the team or group of individuals they'll be working most closely with. And if it's a small enough company, let's say you have 10 to 25 people, you probably want to assess if they're compatible as a whole. But we have one client who she's got 50 some odd employees.

 

and they work in different teams, the teams really don't interact with each other. The team leaders do. So we only have to see if that person is compatible with eight or nine other individuals, not the whole company. It'll give you a score, though, the team compatibility score. And what this will do is let's say you have a team compatibility score of 86. You drag this person in and they bring the score down to 56. Well, red flag.

 

Michael Bernzweig (15:52.774)

Mm-hmm.

 

Brandon Gano (15:59.564)

You bring the same person or a different person in and they keep the score at about 86, maybe increases to 89. Well, that person's going to be a better fit for that team. And the people on the team are going to get along much better, which results in more productivity, more output, whatever the key metrics are. The third key thing is conflict mitigation. Every business has conflict. Every human relationship has conflict. Every relationship in the world, animals have conflict. It's natural. It's it.

 

Michael Bernzweig (16:27.218)

Sure.

 

Brandon Gano (16:28.704)

is going to happen. It's how we manage and mitigate that conflict moving forward, which is where most of the expense comes in the workplace. What we have built in is a conflict mitigation strategy. So you drag two people on the screen or as many people who are in conflict at any one time, drag them onto the screen and our AI, which we've custom built in own, we'll figure out where that conflict is happening and give you strategies to work through it and talk through it. So we can eliminate

 

all of the costs of separating people, moving them to different roles, giving them new hiring or new managers, anything that you can think of and have the two people or three or four people actually work that out in an effective manner. That's really quick. as far as an example, I gave you the one with a client who's using that from the hiring perspective, but conflict mitigation is huge. So we have another client who is...

 

who when, when they're hiring people, they want to get ahead of the conflict. So again, this is more of a team compatibility example rather than anything else, but they can drag people into their team because they have multiple locations. So again, you have physical businesses, multiple locations, hiring people, great people, perfect fit for the role, but they're not compatible with location. Number one, let's see if they're compatible with number two or number three.

 

So we're building the whole business around the people that are being hired rather than just saying, well, they're a good fit and we don't have an opening at another practice or another location. So we'll just put them where we can. No, it actually is worth the effort to to take them, put them or build a custom business essentially around the individuals there and then move people accordingly. I'm not saying that's right for every situation, but that's just a real time example of how that works.

 

Michael Bernzweig (18:22.066)

So let me ask you a question. mean, obviously businesses and strategies and things like that change over time, but as you know, it sounds like there were some pretty substantial existing client relationships before the two of you came aboard and before your company was acquired. Was there a concern about, you know, making a pivot like this and

 

and you know, we impacting some existing relationships or how did you decide what the right strategy was?

 

Brandon Gano (18:59.224)

We had a couple existing relationships on on both sides on on the what if side for me and Sean on the human upside. And they've actually they've come together quite nicely and adapted to this change pretty well. A lot of what we were doing. We kind of just tossed aside to be honest with you. I mean, the the the consultative approach is what each of us individually were focused on because we didn't have this technology for

 

Michael Bernzweig (19:19.634)

Sure.

 

Michael Bernzweig (19:24.902)

Mm-hmm.

 

Brandon Gano (19:27.256)

for what if we didn't have a software platform that we actually are building it into Maestro. That's a later evolution. But we said, what's the best thing for our individual missions, which happened to be combined combining together because we were serving the same client. We were on the same mission. We wanted to help people grow their businesses more efficiently. And we said, what's best for the end user, for the customer? Well,

 

Michael Bernzweig (19:45.551)

you

 

Brandon Gano (19:55.406)

focusing on building a software platform and essentially starting over from scratch. mean, we have a software startup mentality. We, we don't want to say, you know, we've been in business for 10, 20, 25 years. We're saying if we were to start from scratch, what would we do? How would we build this? And, that's really the approach we've taken. So we've maintained a couple of relationships, but for the most part, it's a fresh start. It's a new slate and it's.

 

Michael Bernzweig (20:14.674)

Thank

 

Brandon Gano (20:25.258)

It's questioning absolutely everything that's been done for the last 20 years on both sides to say, what do we have to have in order to move forward for the best result for the client and for ourselves and for the mission? And what can we do without? What can we replace? What can we start fresh with? So I think it's actually a really good approach and it's a unique approach. But I think a lot of businesses could do this. If you, if you had the opportunity to just take a pause and say,

 

you know, where am I at right now versus where, where do I want to go? That might be step one. You may have gotten off track and that happens in business, but taking that pause to say, where am I ultimately going and what's the best path to get there is a really good practice to get into to see where, where the bloat is, so to speak, and what needs to be redesigned.

 

Michael Bernzweig (21:16.254)

Now, are you finding as you've made this pivot that the kinds of clients that you were expecting are the kinds of clients that are signing up for the new app and coming aboard or is it different than what you expected? Because I know sometimes you have this idea of who may be the ideal user for your solution and then reality happens and it's completely different than what you expected.

 

Brandon Gano (21:44.374)

Yes, is the short answer. I'm also reminded of the quote, no plan survives first contact with the enemy, which I mean, you have to expect it going into that, right? So we have our first our beta group, so to speak. And out of these people, a couple of them are existing relationships. A couple of them are new relationships. I would say the the size of companies who are interested. Kind of shocked me.

 

Michael Bernzweig (21:46.514)

you

 

Michael Bernzweig (21:51.643)

Yeah.

 

Brandon Gano (22:14.67)

And also the type of, not the type of companies, but the pay scale of the companies surprised me as well. So kind of the two different findings was the size of company. I really thought this was going to be a technology similar to, at least at the outset, similar to the big companies that both of us have been working with, right? Like the Fortune 500 companies, teams within larger organizations.

 

Michael Bernzweig (22:25.554)

Mm-hmm.

 

Brandon Gano (22:43.668)

I was really surprised to see that it's the smaller businesses. It's the entrepreneurs, even teams as little as five people who are like, I, I have to invest in my people because I don't have a lot of them. I need to make sure that they're doing the right things. They're in sustainable roles. They're not burning out. And that kind of seems like a no brainer looking back like, well, duh. But I didn't foresee that at the beginning. And then

 

The other thing is the the pay scale, so to speak. It's really tough to get someone who doesn't pay their people well to understand the value of good people and a strong workforce, which I thought the opposite. thought, well, it would be a no brainer for someone who's maybe paying at or just above minimum wage to invest a little bit more into understanding and optimizing their people. No.

 

Not at all. They're they're 0 % interested in optimizing their people. They almost treat their employees as like disposable employees, which is a really, really bad term. But it's just it's kind of the first thing that comes to mind. So I found that there's this sweet spot of on average, if you're paying your employees 50 to 75,000 and up, it's a great tool. And those people are really willing to invest more into their people and to optimizing them and

 

Michael Bernzweig (23:45.105)

Yeah.

 

Michael Bernzweig (23:51.324)

Yeah.

 

Brandon Gano (24:11.488)

optimizing the culture below that. They just don't value that human resource, which is again, another bad way to talk about it, but that there is no investment there. It's strictly an expense, which kind of blows my mind.

 

Michael Bernzweig (24:23.62)

Yeah, and it is amazing. mean, obviously it starts at the foundational level of bringing aboard the right people that are in whose vision and values are aligned with the organization. And, but then, you know, once you bring aboard the right people into your organization, figuring out how to keep them there, you know, because at the end of the day, it's a very different, different world, you know,

 

years ago, people would take a job and they were there for 30 years and then they retired, they got a pension and that was that. Now, you you see a lot of people going from position to position or transitioning pretty quickly or rapidly. So I think, you know, obviously getting the right people aboard, then...

 

keeping them happy and motivated and all of that is huge. you know, a big portion of all of that is getting the right people aboard. So to that end, what do you find in terms of getting the right people aboard?

 

Brandon Gano (25:27.22)

say, and I first realized this in my company, where if you have people who they don't feel valued, or they feel like they're just there as a cog in a machine, and they're they're really just ticking off a box, you're not really investing in them, you're not building the relationship, you're not caring for the human being, it's really hard to retain those people. So

 

Just like you just said there, where there's there's people job hopping or even industry hopping. I was able to reduce that before the software again, but I was able to reduce that just by showing people how they would themselves improve, how they would gain more skills, gain more knowledge, become more marketable, so to speak. If they did leave my company and go somewhere else, I wanted to show them their own path to evolution.

 

Michael Bernzweig (25:59.059)

you

 

Brandon Gano (26:27.244)

The way we can do that now is that is what's built in to the app. It's how do you optimize yourself? How do you stay in a state where you will actually be excited to come to work because you know you're doing the things that light you up. You don't have to do any of the garbage, so to speak, that comes with a traditional role. We want companies to say, you're being hired to be Michael. This is not a role. This is not a template.

 

We're hiring you to be you to do the things that you naturally excel at and nothing else. Imagine working for.

 

Michael Bernzweig (27:01.202)

Yeah, and it's, it's, it's so interesting. mean, I think a lot of the foundational things, you know, like benefits and, and, know, insurance and, you know, matching on a 401k and all of these, you know, tangible things kind of go without saying. I mean, I think a lot of these things are expected at a certain point in organizations, but it's all of these intangibles like you're talking about that.

 

Brandon Gano (27:20.396)

Yeah, you have to have them.

 

Michael Bernzweig (27:29.114)

really separate and make the difference between one organization versus another versus, you know, one role versus another versus wanting to be in an organization. I mean, I think, you know, one of the things we've been very fortunate with here is the long tenure of individuals over the years, you know, and I think that adds to the continuity of the deliverable that you have for your clients because

 

Let's face it, know, can't, you know, the one thing that I would always say is, you know, you can't be everywhere in your organization. And, you know, if you don't have the right people that are absolutely invested in your organization and taking care of your clients and your customers the way you would want to, you know, it's not going to come together. I very much.

 

Appreciate what you're saying and that's a very, very big differentiator for, and can be, can be a very big differentiator for organizations in a very tight job market.

 

Brandon Gano (28:34.19)

Absolutely. And I just want to hit on that too, because you're you're spot on the biggest way to get people invested. There's two key factors to get people who are really, really invested in your company, no matter what the company is. It's one who has got a mission and a vision that's very clearly identified. also throw core values in that. you heard my story about core value misalignment. But if you have those three things, they're very well identified and you live by them as an organization.

 

Michael Bernzweig (28:48.562)

Thank

 

Brandon Gano (29:04.11)

and the employee finds or sees themselves in that mission, vision and values. That's a huge component of it. If they don't, they will always treat it like a job. Doesn't matter what kind of benefits you have, how well you pay them, how much time off you have. If they don't see those three things in alignment with their personal life, you will never connect with them on a level that has them truly invested. The second thing is they see their own personal path to growth.

 

What we get wrong as business owners is that does not mean promotions. It does not mean new titles. It doesn't even mean more more in their paycheck, so to speak. It could just be like I said before, how are you evolving as a human being? How are you becoming a better person? And should the time come where you need to leave this company and go take another role? How do you make sure you are competitive in that marketplace? If you could do those two things, you will have people that are invested for the long term.

 

Sounds like just like you do at your company and a lot of other companies have that. And I'll say this, you don't need any software to do that. You could do both of those things independent of our software or any other software. Arsh just happens to make it really easy. And those, if you focus on those two things, you'll have a company that's built to last.

 

Michael Bernzweig (30:03.526)

Yeah.

 

Michael Bernzweig (30:21.572)

I love it. And just to give you a little shameless plug, heard you at the either earlier in the podcast or just before we hopped on the air, mentioned that you have your own podcast. So would you like to let the audience know a little bit about your podcast?

 

Brandon Gano (30:37.248)

I do actually. Yeah, we have we have two. So I have one that's a little bit older, about a year and a half old now. It's called Harmonious at Lunch. I do exclusively guest interviews. That has been probably the most fun part of this journey is just meeting incredible people like yourself. We've interviewed over 360 guests at this point, which crazy blows my mind every day.

 

Michael Bernzweig (30:59.444)

I love that.

 

Brandon Gano (31:02.238)

And the other one we're launching, which is a HumanOp themed podcast, really understanding the technology, what we do, how to use it, how to implement it and how to grow your both your personal life and your business. That one's called running with scissors, really cool project and a fun, fun way to sort of talk about what we do. Thank you.

 

Michael Bernzweig (31:20.946)

Like the visual on that one, but you know for any anyone that's interested We're gonna leave a link in the show notes for HumanOp and if you want to get the couple of podcast links to me I'll leave those in the show notes as well for anybody that would like to connect Really have enjoyed this deep dive. I mean, there's so many different

 

things that organizations need to consider, you know, as they're growing, bringing aboard new talent, expanding the R operations and all of that. And this is a very important area and I love to hear everything that's going on out there in terms of the new journey that you take in the organization, even 20 some odd years into the...

 

into the business so that that's pretty exciting as well.

 

Brandon Gano (32:13.698)

Yeah, it's a lot of fun. appreciate you having me. And yeah, if anyone wants to check it out or learn more humanop.com or specifically the software is humanop.com slash maestro A E S T R O. I'd love to have a conversation and see how it can help you grow your business and facilitate those people challenges.

 

Michael Bernzweig (32:31.74)

Fantastic, joining us on the podcast today, we've had Brandon Gano. He's the COO of HumanOp and I appreciate your time on the podcast today. For anybody that is just joining us on Software Spotlight for the first time, we also have two sister podcasts, the Consulting Spotlight and Career Spotlight.

 

both on Apple and Spotify. And if you'd like to keep up to date on the latest going on over here at Software Oasis, you can go to softwareoasis.com / subscribe and join our weekly newsletter, which has all kinds of great details, stats, research studies and the like on consulting careers and everything related to B2B tech. So once again, thank you for joining us on the podcast today.