IAM2865 – Founder Helps HR Professionals Find and Buy The Right Software

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Transcription:

Phil Strazzulla 00:00
I think one of the most important things is to cultivate a healthy life and realize that the time that you are spending exercising, eating right, meditating, spending time with friends, that is not wasted time. I think many times I wake up and I'm like, all right, let's start doing emails, you know, and, like, your brain is gone. Your ability to think creatively is gone. You've already looked at your phone. You're already thinking about the nine things you gotta do before breakfast. We always have this, like, exit. You're.

Phil Strazzulla 00:30
You're probably execution focused, right? Like, that's how you have gotten to where you are. But you have to realize that, like, your execution focus is a strength and a weakness, and you need to kind of step. Take a step back and say, you know What? Like, spending 10 minutes meditating at the beginning of the day will actually make me more effective.

Gresham Harkness 01:15
Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I Am CEO Podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today at Phil Shazula of Select Software Reviews. Phyllis, awesome to have me on the show.

Phil Strazzulla 01:24
Thanks for having me, Gresh.

Phil Strazzulla 01:26

No problem. It's super excited to have you on. And what I wanted to do is just read a little bit more about Phil so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Phil is the founder of Select Software Reviews, a website dedicated to helping HR professionals find and buy the right software for their business. Phil started his career working in venture capital at Gessimer Venture Partners before getting his MBA at Harvard Business School. Phil, are you ready to speak to the I Am CEO community?

Phil Strazzulla 01:49
Let's do it.

Gresham Harkness 01:49
Let's make it happen. So I wanted to kick everything off and hear a little bit more about your background, what I call your CEO story, and what led you to get started with your business.

Phil Strazzulla 01:57
Yeah, sure. So I guess my sort of professional story started when I was a lot younger. I was probably about 12 or 13 years old when I first started getting interested in all this stuff. I actually grew up sort of in the 90s. Boom in the stock market and dot com. Everybody was kind of talking about it, and I was like, oh, there's this, like, easy way to make money, but that's exciting. Better than mowing lawns and all the other stuff I was doing. So my brother and I convinced my mom to take us to Fidelity and we opened up brokerage accounts and still have that account live and active. I started trading stocks, was smart enough or lucky enough to get out before it all collapsed. I've always been like a Buffett disciple. And of course he very aligned with Alan Brutespan's comments about irrational exuberance. So, you know, did that whole thing, love investing, been doing that for, since I was a kid. But then when I was in college I interned at a two person startup and I just loved the impact that I could have. This sort of ability to think creatively and solve problems in different ways. I was doing a lot of cold calling and sales and realized like, oh, I can 10x my efforts by doing some marketing and I can actually get free marketing if I do it in the right way and blah blah blah. And so kind of from that experience I was like, I would love to start a company one day. Took a couple of jobs after college to help me build that skillset. Most notably working at Bessemer doing early stage investing. Went to business school and then finally had the guts to start my own thing. Taught myself how to program, kind of thought that was like a necessary skill set for starting a technology business and started working on different projects. One thing led to another. I started this business called Next Weight Hire, which is recruiting software for SMBs specifically seven or eight months ago, hired a guy to run that business as sort of like a general manager and had a lot of free time, wanted to start another business, have the startup bug. Like most people probably listening, I love to learn, I love to teach. And the gap in the market I saw is that there's just a million B2B software vendors, especially in HR space. It's hard to pick which one to go forward with and so wanted to kind of shed some light. Unbiased reviews in that EcoSystem helped basically HR teams to buy the right software, be successful as individuals as well as from a business perspective.

Gresham Harkness 04:22
Nice. So that's super exciting to hear. You know, like you said, you kind of had that entrepreneurial DNA in your veins and you pursued it in a lot of different ways. And, and, and great to hear that you, in most entrepreneurial form, if you don't know how to do something, sometimes you just kind of just self learn and teach yourself how to do it as you were able to do with coding. So a lot of times, you know, you have to do that to make sure that you are, you know, able to be successful or at the very least, knowledgeable about certain aspects of your business.

Phil Strazzulla 04:47
Yeah, I think that's totally right. Like, that's, to me, the most valuable skillset is to learn, right? To learn SEO and like, go deep on that, to learn how to code, to learn how to do sales when you need to do that. And the amazing thing is there's so many great resources out there to learn how to do this stuff. And so if you don't know, you don't have to go to graduate school, you don't have to have a fancy advisor. Like, you can just start pretty basic, like, googling stuff and take an online course and like, kind of use the resources that are out there for you.

Gresham Harkness 05:19
Yeah, absolutely. And especially in this day and age, there's like so many resources that are available to us just at a click of the button, just, you know, for you to be able to research, to learn how to do anything. But, you know, there's just so much available to us. And I know obviously you created something that is a resource that we can also Google as well and find out more. So could you take us a little bit more through select software reviews, tell us what we would find there and how it's. How it helps out us as business owners.

Phil Strazzulla 05:44
Yeah. So basically what we're doing is we're pretty analogous to like word or not WordPress, sorry, wire cutter or nerd wallet, except for this HR tech vertical. So if you're looking at a new payroll solution, we'll tell you who are the top 10 payroll vendors out of the three or 400 that exist out there. What are the sort of keys to selecting the right one? How do you think about budgeting, roi, implementation pitfalls? Like, basically everything you need to know and very digestible, very actionable content so that you can make the right decision. Because I think for a lot of these things, if you make the wrong decision, it can be very, very costly. Like, a lot of the software is expensive, but it also just takes a really long time to implement. And so we're trying to aggregate like all the advice that you would need if you had like a friend who is just like an expert in buying XYZ type of software, what would they tell you? So, so that you can do the right thing, you can get your promotion, you can help your business accelerate. And we're doing that for all the different categories within HR technology with the aspiration of one day kind of doing it for other B2B software categories as well.

Gresham Harkness 06:51
Nice.

Phil Strazzulla 06:52
Yeah.

Gresham Harkness 06:52
And that makes so much sense. And I think that you know, to be able to kind of aggregate and consolidate and provide, you know, all the information that's available to, you know, to us because there's so much again that's available to us if we just Google, but actually have that in those different formats that you talked about and be able to kind of filter through and read and get it in digestible form instead of having to like go through different reviews and different pages of Google. It gets you all that in one stop shop. It kind of sounds like.

Phil Strazzulla 07:18
Yeah, exactly. And we, I think the key is in depth, unbiased research. I think most of the content on the Internet has some sort of bias to it. There's a lot of review websites out there that have, you know, user reviews. Most of that is pay for play content. Even a business as reputable as Gartner is almost entirely pay to play. And my philosophy on this stuff is like, look, I'm not trying to build like a multi billion dollar company. The market is so huge that if I act in a moral way like it might be slightly detrimental to my economic outcome, but I can feel good about that. And in fact potentially it's actually good over time because having high quality content means that you're going to rank higher in Google. People are going to talk about you at conferences, they're going to send it to their friends and that of course is going to help your business. And so in the short term, you know, there are companies every week that email us that say, hey, how can we get on your website? How much does it cost? And the majority of those companies are terrible. They just have awful solutions. And I basically say, hey, you know, like it's not a good fit for XYZ reasons. And of course I'm losing, you know, thousands of dollars a month, which at the earlier stages of business is like kind of a lot of money. But I can sort of like stick to my North Star, which helps me, I think in the long term build a more valuable product for the users and therefore myself as well.

Gresham Harkness 08:40
Yeah, that makes so much sense. It's kind of like the answer, you know, if they don't have really good products, you know, they want to get on your platform. The real answer is actually to go and work and actually get a better product and that'll help you to be able to get on the, on the platform.

Phil Strazzulla 08:53
Yeah, that's, that would be good advice. I don't, I try not to be, yeah, confrontational, especially over email. Like a lot can be lost in conversation, in translation. And I, you know, I don't want to make anybody like outright angry at me. They'd be like, here are the objective criteria. Sorry, this rubric says you can't be on there. I'd love for you to be on there, but. So that's kind of the way I handle it. But I think you're right. Like the, the, the real advice would be like, here's, you know, and, and that's probably another business. Right. Is like consulting. Like, here's why you don't have one of the best products that I feel comfortable putting on the website. Here's how you can make it better. Go execute on that. And, and let's revisit this in six or nine months.

Gresham Harkness 09:36
Yeah, that makes so much sense. And you know, the reason I just pointed that out is because it's, it's the, it's the, it's the philosophy that you have for your business. It sounds like where you, you're making sure that you're putting out quality content, you're making sure that you're being unbiased and those kind of quality principles not necessary. Not taking, you know, shortcuts and just advertising or doing things to, to be found, but you're actually putting out really high quality and understanding that that's going to be the thing that's going to keep you long term to, to be relevant. So I, I definitely appreciate that. And, and I wanted to ask you, and this could be for you personally or for, for your business, but I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this is what you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique. I don't know if you already touched on that or you can expound on that a little bit more.

Phil Strazzulla 10:12
Yeah, I think from the business perspective it's just like keeping that North Star of doing right by the people that read the content and having that as like the true purpose, like impacts the design of the website, the content, like business model, everything I think in the right ways. And having a visit, having a North Star like making money means that you're going to be 80% similar, but that 20% is probably going to be a very big difference. For me personally, I think the, you know, the secret sauce is just like constantly trying to get better. That's like, you know, how do I try to do that? It's journaling, it's reading, it's meditating, it's paying attention to how I'm spending my time, what I'M putting into my body, what I'm doing with my body. Like, I think all of those things sort of make like the, the person better that allow you to take advantage of the opportunities that come your way and also allow you to jump over those hurdles that are just inherent in entrepreneurship. No matter who you are, no matter what you're doing. You know, if you're running Facebook or you're running a one person startup, like you're just going to have like all these like really, really challenging things that happen to you. And they're not as challenging as like living in a place where you don't have potable water. But I think they're, they're still like very challenging mentally. And if you're doing the right things, if you're, if you're trying to get better every day, like you're going to be able to take advantage and jump over those hurdles. And so that's when I think about like the thing that drives me to hopefully find continued success. I think that sort of attitude is sort of my secret sauce, as you put it.

Gresham Harkness 11:57
I definitely appreciate that and I wanted to switch gears and I know you gave us a CEO hack already. I don't know if there's anything else that you feel like is like an Apple book or a habit that makes you more effective and efficient. In addition to the snowball.

Phil Strazzulla 12:09
I think one of the most important things is to cultivate a healthy life and realize that the time that you are spending exercising, eating right, meditating, spending time with friends, that is not wasted time. I think many times I wake up and I'm like, all right, let's start doing emails, you know, and like your brain is gone. Your ability to think creatively is gone. You've already looked at your phone, you're already thinking about the nine things you gotta do before breakfast. We always have this like ex. You're, you're probably execution focused, right? Like that's how you have gotten to where you are. But you have to realize that like your execution focus is a strength and a weakness and you need to kind of step, take a step back and say, you know what, like spending 10 minutes meditating at the beginning of the day will actually make me more effective.

Gresham Harkness 12:57
You're absolutely right. So I know you already also gave us some what I call CEO nuggets. So this is like a word of wisdom or piece of advice. It could be, you know, specifically related to, you know, HR and HR professionals. But what's something that would be like a word of wisdom or piece of advice you would give.

Phil Strazzulla 13:11
Probably. I've mentioned this a couple of times throughout your review already, but like, this idea of bias and understanding your own personal bias and the things that you like to do or don't like to do or the mental models that you've adopted due to your past experience and how that's influencing your decision making. But I think most importantly, understanding the bias of thought leaders, right? And that could be like a mentor. It could be somebody that you get coffee with and you're like, oh, my God, I get to sit down with, you know, this person who did this amazing thing and they're going to give me advice and they're going to. They're almost certainly going to give you advice with almost no context. And it's going to be highly colored by the things that they've done or haven't done or the thing that, you know, happened to them this morning or whatever. And it's so hard to parse through all of these things. And again, this is why sort of like having a clear mind and being able to think when you're brushing your teeth or, you know, whatever is so important.

Gresham Harkness 14:10
Yeah, absolutely. So now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote, unquote, CEOs on this show. So, Phil, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Phil Strazzulla 14:21
Being a CEO to me is sort of this, like, privilege that you should be grateful for each day.

Gresham Harkness 14:29
I definitely appreciate that and I appreciate your time even more. Phil. What I wanted to do is pass you to the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and listeners know. And then, of course, how best they can get a review and find out about all the awesome things you guys have on your platform.

Phil Strazzulla 14:42
Yeah, sure. So I guess as we we head into the winter in Boston, I'm always reminded of, like, there's always, like, these stretches of tough times. I feel like they always happen in the winter for some reason here, probably because of lack of sun. And I think it's just nice to, like, be able to connect with the folks in your community or in online communities to understand that the things you're going through are, like, quite common. Like, it's not a function of, like, you as a bad leader or you making bad decisions or whatever. Like, you're probably doing a pretty good job. And so whatever kind of challenges you're working through, just, like, know that there are a lot of other people out there who have kind of gone through similar things and you'll probably get through it as long as you're gritty and smart and sort of level headed enough in terms of where people can find me. I think LinkedIn is probably the best. Phil Strazoula, you can check out Select Software Reviews. I also have a personal blog that I post every once in a while. Phil strazoula.com and yeah, I'd love to, love to connect with people.

Gresham Harkness 15:44
Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, we'll definitely have those links in the show notes so that everybody can follow up with you and check out the blog. And of course go to Select Software Reviews as well too. And just as you said, you know, I think sometimes in entrepreneurship and business it can seem extremely lonely and a lot of times when we go through hard times, we feel like we're by ourselves. So as you said, you know, making time to actually talk with people and talk about sometimes the difficulties, trials and tribulations we go through, we realize that we're not the only ones and we can also get support, support, community and help. And I appreciate you for reminding us of that and of course for all the awesome things you're doing. So thank you so much and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.