March 6, 2024 • 39 mins
Aaron Youngren joins Mike to discuss his career changes from Amazon to Red Balloon.
Aaron talks about his shift from the corporate world to the freedom economy at Red Balloon. He moved from the structured environment of GE Healthcare to starting afresh with Red Balloon where they are working to revolutionize the job market.
Aaron is the Head of Product for Red Balloon.
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Episode Transcript
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Mike Church (00:13):
This is the Kestrel Country Podcast, where we
discuss the people, places andevents all around Kestrel
Country.
Aaron Youngren, thanks forcoming in.
Aaron Youngren (00:42):
You are welcome.
Great to be here.
Mike Church (00:44):
Yeah, I always like to start off, you know.
So our podcast is about thepeople, places and events around
the area, and so I just like tostart out by finding out more
about who I'm talking to.
So can you give us just a briefbackground of where did you
grow up?
Where are you from?
Aaron Youngren (01:05):
Yeah, start there.
So grew up just north ofSeattle.
Okay, I grew up in theneighborhood between Everett and
Snohomish.
Lived in a small ideal Americanhouse, walked to school every
day, came home to chocolate chipcookies, ran out to play in the
forest in the back, grew upthere until I was eight in the
(01:26):
Pacific Northwest, and then wemoved down to I don't want to
call it the armpit of America,but the Coachella Valley, palm
Springs area.
Mike Church (01:35):
Okay, I was thinking Ohio when I heard that,
but that's because I'm fromMichigan.
Aaron Youngren (01:41):
Well, when I heard there was a festival,
actually like an indie rockfestival, down in the Coachella
Valley, I just could not believeit because I spent my teenage
years there blistering hot, justa housing developments as far
as the eye can see kind of aweird place.
But then I moved back toSeattle, met my wife in Seattle,
(02:03):
started my career there.
I worked for Amazoncom forabout seven years Okay, wild
adventure early years, led aglobal innovation team there.
Then we moved out to Chicagoand I actually started a church
there and we did that for about12 years out in Chicago.
(02:27):
We're out in Chicago for about12 years.
You know, about nine years in.
It was time for that to be done.
Went back to the corporateworld and worked for GE
Healthcare and then, you know,at some point we're living in
Chicago.
We had a two flat nice two flatand we were living in that.
Mike Church (02:50):
So you were living in this, like in Chicago, oh
yeah.
Aaron Youngren (02:52):
Chicago proper.
Yeah, people say Chicago, yeah,I know I was picturing, yeah,
like Wheaton or yeah.
I think it's all the way up toMilwaukee.
Mike Church (03:00):
you can say you live in Chicago, yeah, but you
were like, for that whole 12years you were in Chicago, yeah
yeah, chicago proper, wow yeah,and.
Aaron Youngren (03:10):
But a couple of things.
One, my kids were getting olderand I was just, you know, kind
of doing the math on our twoflat property taxes are going up
all the time.
It started to look like, hey,in three or four years this is
just not going to pencil anymore.
And also, you know, chicago atthat point was becoming the kind
(03:31):
of city where you couldn'treally imagine people wanting.
It's fun to come in and go tomuseums and all of the big city
perks, but when you get intograndkids, you know the
grandkids era, it was difficultto see, you know, our kids
families coming in to stay inChicago.
So we started looking around.
(03:52):
For, you know, it would be theideal place if we could just
pick where we wanted to live andwe knew about New St Andrews
College, came out here to visitand I, you know my daughter
Madeline, did kind of like thevisitor's day here in Moscow and
New St.
Andrews.
I took my other daughter,alaska, and we drove up Highway
(04:18):
six, hit St Mary's, drove aroundCortilane and came back.
Mike Church (04:25):
And.
Aaron Youngren (04:26):
I just, I was just blown away.
Like what is this place?
Like what if I never heard ofthis place?
Mike Church (04:31):
So you'd never been here.
Aaron Youngren (04:33):
Never.
Mike Church (04:34):
Even growing up in the Northwest.
Aaron Youngren (04:35):
No, never been over this no.
Mike Church (04:39):
Had you ever been like Pullman or just stayed on
the I-5 kind of corridor?
Aaron Youngren (04:42):
Yeah, stayed over there and so, just totally
unaware of this, you know trulyhidden gem.
And then you know we came backand hung around in town and the
town is great.
So town is great, beauty isgreat, is very quiet when you
get just outside of the city,which you can be outside of the
(05:04):
city in seven minutes.
You can walk to the outside ofthe city where you know, if you
walk to, probably take a week orso to get outside of the
Chicago suburbs.
Mike Church (05:15):
Yeah, you know that's funny.
You mentioned that becausethat's one of the things that
I've that struck me about reallythe whole Northwest, though
honestly Even Seattle, as big acity as it is, growing up in
Detroit area in the Midwest,similar to Chicago, where it's
like you can just drive anddrive and you're still in
suburbs Like you just nothing'schanged.
(05:37):
It's still flat, it's stillhouses.
Aaron Youngren (05:39):
Exactly.
Mike Church (05:40):
And you come out here and even like so my sister
and brother-in-law live actuallyit's Nahomish over there, nice,
and you know, even in the city,though they used to live in
Bothell it's like you get up ontop of a hill and you can see
wilderness Right.
It's like you can at least belike okay, if I just get a
little ways out, like it'scontained, and I feel like
Moscow is a great example ofthat, even Skokan, it's like.
(06:02):
It's a cool thing about thearea is that you go a little
ways out and you can be in themountains or in that beauty yeah
.
Yeah.
Aaron Youngren (06:10):
Yeah, and you can drive Literally came back to
our Airbnb and then I scoopedboth girls up in the car and we
did the same exact thing thenext day, only we hit Montana
that time and to this day westill make those loops and just
loved it, absolutely loved it.
(06:31):
So I called my wife and said Ithink we're going to move here.
Wow, yeah.
Mike Church (06:37):
So you said you knew about Newson Anders.
That was your main connectionto Moscow.
And how did you find out aboutNSV?
Well, it was one mainconnection.
Aaron Youngren (06:48):
Actually.
My father-in-law has familyhere going pretty far back, oh,
wow, and so that's been prettyfun, is we will go to the VFW
and see, oh, there's a pictureof great Uncle So-and-so, so
that is pretty fun as well.
So my wife actually had beenout kind of around this area.
(07:12):
They have family over inMontana but it was just kind of
a hidden connection we didn'treally even think much about.
Mike Church (07:21):
Yeah that's interesting.
So your father-in-law fromMoscow specifically.
Aaron Youngren (07:26):
No, he's not from here, but his parents yeah.
Mike Church (07:29):
Are from Moscow, we're from around here yeah, Wow
, that's interesting.
Yeah, on my side my family isall Michigan from way way back.
Like Catherine's side, she is,I believe, fifth generation
Moscow.
So, yeah, like long-term, andI'm sure some of your wife's
ancestors and my wife's probablyknew each other, given how
(07:51):
small it was at the time.
Aaron Youngren (07:52):
Yeah.
Mike Church (07:53):
Yeah, that's kind of a cool connection, yeah, yeah
.
So how has that transition beenfrom living in a flat in
downtown Chicago to small townMoscow, idaho?
Was it a fairly majoradjustment at first?
Aaron Youngren (08:09):
I mean, if something being wonderful is an
adjustment, then yes, I mean.
Mike Church (08:16):
Now like for your kids.
So they were.
How old were they when youmoved here?
Aaron Youngren (08:21):
Yeah, my oldest was 18, I believe.
Mike Church (08:26):
Okay, so they pretty much grew up most of
their known life was in the cityof Chicago, mm-hmm.
Well, I imagine for them it wasa pretty big adjustment.
Aaron Youngren (08:37):
It was a big change.
There are little things that wemiss about the city and being
in a big city, and there's partof that that's really fun.
At the end of the day, it's theplace that you live matters,
and the place that you're doingthe daily grind matters, and
some of the luster of living ina big city Well, you also have
(09:02):
to deal with it every day.
So my kids grew up jumping overpuke puddles after the Cubs
games and that kind of thing.
There's a reality to city lifethat is not always pleasant, and
so we just have never lookedback, Not once it's just been
(09:22):
wonderful from day one and,honestly, some of the things
that people talk a lot aboutwith living in a city yeah, you
have museums and things likethat, but you can take a
vacation and go to museums, butthe food and restaurants and
(09:43):
things like that I think that'sone of the unique things about
Moscow 100% Is it's rare to havea small town that is also
offering excellent smallbusiness things, restaurants and
things like that.
I think that's pretty rare.
(10:03):
A lot of times you have smalltowns that are trying, but so
it's been great for us.
Mike Church (10:10):
Yeah, well, the university obviously helps with
that, being able to supportthose restaurants and things,
but also just that kind ofactivity and culture.
To have a small town and youstill have jazz festival every
year.
You have all these things thatcome in because of the
universities, which makes it apretty unique place.
Yeah, absolutely so.
(10:31):
You worked at Amazon and thenGE Health.
What were you doing in both ofthose?
You know similar thing in bothof those places.
Aaron Youngren (10:42):
Yeah, so I had a really great experience being
at amazoncom when, I was.
It was about five years into thecompany as well.
I started.
It was growing at an incrediblyrapid pace.
I was in this back officefinance ops team and we were
(11:06):
selling books, and it waschaotic and disorganized enough
that we weren't paying our billson time, and it kind of
bothered me, coming into thisnew job, and we're not doing our
job well, and so I took thathome and cobbled together some
tools for our team.
(11:27):
That turned into a long seriesof roles in which my job was to
form teams to make money for thecompany by building things, and
that's how I got into product,which is what I do right now,
and so most of my roles havebeen building products, building
(11:48):
teams, building services thatare high yield, let's say so.
Finding what the opportunitiesare within a particular
organization, capitalizing onthe top opportunities and then
helping everyone get their headsaround what those opportunities
(12:09):
are and why we should jump onthem.
And that's the role I'm intoday with Red Balloon.
I'm head of product over thereand I spend all day, every day,
thinking about that.
Mike Church (12:20):
So you said when you started Amazon, it was
you're selling books and it'schaotic, it's early.
So when you say creatingproducts that then are
profitable for the company, arethere, like what are, some
examples of those?
Was that branching out frombooks, or was it creating the
(12:42):
right type of platform to makeit better, or what?
Aaron Youngren (12:44):
Yeah.
So I was focused on internalproducts to help make our teams
more intelligent and take actionquicker.
When I first arrived, we wereit was early on, but we were
doing a lot of business startingto get into businesses with big
players like electronics.
(13:05):
Right, we went into electronicsand we had Sony and all these
players coming on looking at uslike we were the redheaded
stepchild, because we kind ofwere looking at us like we
didn't really know what we weredoing, because we kind of didn't
, and treating us accordingly.
And so in the midst of that,somehow, when you're growing 35,
(13:29):
40% a year, you have to figureout how to keep pace
operationally right.
And so the products that I andmy team ended up building were
mostly around businessintelligence how do we ensure
that the right people are seeingthe right information at the
(13:50):
right time, making the rightdecisions?
So, just to give you an example,one of the little products that
I and my team created thatstarted as a Saturday take it
home.
I probably wasn't even supposedto.
I'm gonna build this littlething and excel and use these
macros and things like that thatended up yielding $6 million
(14:14):
for the company over a period ofa couple of years, just because
we were able to do things alittle bit more efficiently.
And so at some point myleadership team just kind of
said, hey, why don't you do thatfull time?
Hey, why don't you go recruit aSWAT team?
It did very well.
We got to receive an award fromJeff Bezos himself in front of
(14:39):
like 6,000 people.
It was really fun, but it wasmostly internal there.
When I was at GE Healthcare, Iwas in charge of the digital
analytics for about 1,400marketing sites, including the
main flagship site, kind ofmonitoring who was doing what
(15:02):
when they were coming in workingwith marketing teams to try to
optimize their efforts.
Mike Church (15:07):
So, as you're, would you say, maybe I'm
butchering it, but your rolewould be kind of looking for
inefficiencies in the operationsof the business and figuring
out how can we fix thoseproblems.
Aaron Youngren (15:23):
That's been part of it.
I definitely have done a lot ofoutward facing work too.
The work that I'm doing rightnow, red Balloon, is mostly
outward facing.
So in the last year we spun upa professional services team
that basically is trying tobridge the gap between job
(15:45):
postings, which is what RedBalloon does.
We allow employers to post jobsbut bridge the gap between job
postings and recruiters, whichnow, given a tight labor market,
are charging somewhere between15 and 40% of first year salary
Hefty chunk for a small business.
So we've created a professionalservice product that costs
(16:08):
about a fifth of that and we goout and do all kinds of
recruiting work, give thembusiness intelligence, and
that's been wildly successful.
So that's a very externallyfacing product.
Now it's a human product, it'sa service, but that's we're very
(16:29):
active on that.
We'll be releasing an applicanttracking system later on this
year and working on that everyday.
Mike Church (16:36):
That's awesome.
So how did you?
What was the transition from GEHealth to Red Balloon and I
guess behind that question too,when you first moved here was it
a remote work type situation,and a lot of people have.
We've seen a lot of growth herebecause of that, right, right.
Aaron Youngren (16:55):
Yeah.
So my first days in Moscow Iwas getting up at four o'clock,
which I'm a morning personanyway.
I love the mornings, but up atfour o'clock but then in front
of teams at five am becausewe're in an international
business, I'm remote, I'mworking with people over in
(17:18):
India, so bright and shiny bythen, and just kind of having a
conversation with a laptop allday long and so working at GE
after some time, some of theirpolicies, as we got further and
(17:38):
further into COVID here I amlocked in my office, not seeing
anyone but my family during theweek because they are related to
the government Was that whileyou were in Chicago.
Mike Church (17:51):
No, no, no.
While I was here.
Yeah, while I was here.
Aaron Youngren (17:53):
So fully remote.
I mean I hadn't seen a personfrom GE in a year and a half,
wow.
And then they rolled out avaccine mandate which I had
already decided I was not goingto do.
And there were some otherthings.
You know, in the early years,just learning business, I was a
(18:13):
great admirer of some of thethings that Jack Welch put into
place at GE, read a couple ofhis books when I got to modern
GE, the reality of what that andI think that's true of a lot of
big organizations now whatthey've kind of turned into kind
of the caricature of a slowmoving, bloated organization A
(18:39):
lot of great people you knowthat I worked with, but just
very difficult to for a companylike that to think clearly.
So I started having aconversation with Andrew
Krapischetz, our CEO in town,about his this new business, red
Balloon, that he was starting.
Ge accepted my religiousexemption request.
(19:00):
So I did continue to work thereand did some consulting work
for Red Balloon for a while.
But then after a while I justwe came together and said hey,
let's build this thing.
Mike Church (19:12):
So you I've back up a little bit.
They were gonna require thevaccine even though you were
100% remote.
And like in your house in Idaho.
Aaron Youngren (19:23):
People don't understand this.
That's the case for untoldnumber of Americans, right, who
are working in largemultinational corporations.
It was a really weird time andI talked to people who had no
(19:44):
real political affiliation,hadn't thought about that twice,
but when it came down to it,there was a moment where the
leaders were gonna gathertogether again for GE and one of
my colleagues was saying justthe enormous pressure that was
put on her well, you haven'tgotten the vaccine yet, you need
(20:04):
to go get it.
And she's saying this justdoesn't feel right.
I don't know why, but why areyou telling me?
Mike Church (20:10):
to do this when I'm locked in my house right?
Aaron Youngren (20:14):
Anyway, so bit of a mess.
Mike Church (20:17):
Yeah, but that's not unrelated.
Than to Red Bull Right.
Aaron Youngren (20:22):
I mean a lot of what it is not A lot of what Red
Bull is doing is the freedomeconomy.
Mike Church (20:30):
Yeah, I guess it tells a little about we had
Andrew on a while back, but Iguess, especially now, what was
that like getting into Red Bulland a startup and yeah, how's
that been going?
Aaron Youngren (20:45):
Yeah, so core premise of Red Bull is that
there are still businesses thatwant to value hard work right,
that want employees that aregonna think critically and work
hard.
If you're an employee that isworking hard, wants to be
rewarded for your work, wants tothink critically, and your
(21:09):
leaders are not doing that, likeevery day they're showing you
that they're not really thinkingcritically about things that
are happening.
That happened a lot in COVIDand making a decision not to
respect the medical privacy oftheir employees, increasingly
clamping down on particularideologies, not giving any
(21:33):
breathing space at all forpeople to have other ideas.
I mean, I would routinely getemails, company-wide emails,
when certain events would go onin the United States police
shootings, things like thattelling us exactly how to think
about those.
Really, oh yeah, oh yeah yeah,yeah, you know the senior
(21:57):
leaders of those corporations,and I said this in my.
I wrote an open letter to theCEO and about 200 of my
colleagues when I left.
They have to understand thatyou're losing credibility by the
day.
Your business is becomingweaker because that's not
happening in a black box.
You're doing it in public, andeveryone who is supposed to be
looking up to you as areasonable, data-driven leader
(22:23):
is seeing behavior that they donot want to follow.
And so, red Balloon, we'retrying to make a space that more
people can find businesses likethat.
People can find businesses thatreward hard work and that are
not going to punish theiremployees for their political
beliefs, and that has really hita chord with job seekers and
(22:48):
employers all over America whowant that, and our view is, in
the long run, those are the onlybusinesses that are gonna
survive.
You can't just go forever, andwe've had recent examples of
businesses making blunders,where you have to assume that
the people at the top are justzombies not to see it coming
(23:12):
making blunders.
You can't be thoughtlessforever.
You can't just adopt certaintalking points forever without
having a real philosophy behindthem, and so we want to build
the kind of America, where hardwork is rewarded and people have
the right to have theirthoughts and beliefs in the
(23:32):
workplace.
Mike Church (23:33):
Yeah, now going back to the GE company.
I mean it, was there an attemptto relate those types of things
to the business, or was it justkind of like hey?
Aaron Youngren (23:45):
this is happening here.
So it wasn't even as, yeah, itwas not business minded it was
purely political, no nothing todo with what we were doing, and
it was the very definition ofvirtue signaling, and oftentimes
, virtue signaling on issuesthat were not at all clear right
(24:13):
, like some of these policeshootings that would happen.
What you want people to do isto take a deep breath, step back
, wait for the facts right.
And I'm talking about one emailwas sent by the president of the
operation president ofoperations in the United States,
like one of the top 10 leadersat GE describing in detail how
(24:39):
this was another example ofsystemic racism.
We all need to be aware thatthis is happening.
All of this, it was 48 hoursafter the event.
No one knew what had happened,and then, of course, the facts
come out and, oh guess what?
It's not actually as simple asyou think it was, and the
(25:02):
particular event I'm thinking ofthe police were acquitted.
The facts were actually reallyclear when they all came out.
It wasn't, as it was not a caseof racism at all.
And the point of that is justit's not to say that there can't
be racial incidents.
Of course there can.
Mike Church (25:20):
Yeah, it's not that the take was necessarily right
or wrong, but the fact that it'sone jumping the gun.
Two, how is this relating toour work?
Aaron Youngren (25:31):
at GE, exactly right.
And so when you're relying on aleader to be the most clear
headed person in theorganization and they are
demonstrating to you regularlythat they are not, and then not
only that, but everyone underthem and under them is
demonstrating to you regularlythat they are not, because
they're just smiling and nodding.
(25:51):
And yes, I've been thinking alot about the way that I think
about these issues as well,giving that speech all over the
place.
So I mentioned that.
I wrote an open letter to theCEO and a couple hundred of my
colleagues.
The response I gave my backchannel email, my personal email
(26:12):
on that, and the responsethrough private channels from
people that I would have neverguessed in my life were losing
faith in those leaders, wasreally overwhelming.
Mm-hmm.
Mike Church (26:28):
Yeah, and that was after you had already made the
decision to go to Redbloom.
Yeah, so you're alreadythinking along those lines.
Yeah, my thought was.
Aaron Youngren (26:37):
I'm out of here anyway.
I had talked to enough peoplewho said I don't like what's
going on, but I don't know whatto do, that I wanted to be loud
a little bit, while I couldn'tthrow a stick of dynamite on
Well, and that's one of thethings that has come through, at
least watching on social media.
Mike Church (26:52):
What Redbloom's doing that kind of thing is that
kind of helping give a voice,or maybe not even give a voice,
but give some confidence to twopeople who maybe feel like am I
the only one in this bigorganization that thinks this
way?
Exactly, right, like it'severybody you know, and the fact
(27:13):
that our media and everythingelse kind of makes is calculated
in a way to make those of uswho are conservative feel alone,
right, feel like, oh man, Iguess maybe nobody actually
thinks this way.
Yeah, so that's a big part ofwhat Redbloom's doing.
Aaron Youngren (27:30):
Yeah, and I think that got way worse in the
middle of COVID, where noweverything that I'm saying and
doing is on a company-sponsoredchannel.
That's my only communicationwith other people in this
company.
We don't go out for beers afterwork anymore Interesting.
Yeah and yeah.
(27:51):
I think there are a lot ofpeople that felt really isolated
during that time.
Mike Church (27:55):
So you jumped into Redbloom.
How long have you been therenow?
Two years, two years, yeah.
And how similar.
I mean I know you weren't likein the garage with Jeff Bezos
early days right no totally not.
Would you have characterizedyour was Amazon?
Did it have kind of thatstartup feel when you were there
?
Absolutely yeah, and you'regetting some of the same feeling
(28:19):
here.
Aaron Youngren (28:19):
Absolutely.
And one of the amazing thingsabout Amazoncom Early years are
not you know, I'm told because Idon't work there anymore but
I'm told this really has onlyfaded in the last decade.
But the feeling of a highlyempowered, merit-based culture
(28:41):
in which the best ideas aregoing to win, the hard work is
going to win.
You will get rewarded for it.
It's highly encouraged.
That was a real pleasure.
That was a real pleasure andI've been a part of a lot of
different initiatives and smallorganizational startups and
(29:02):
things like that in theintervening time.
But it really has been specialto come back to a do or die.
You know we're in this togetherand we're gonna make it go.
Kind of organization and just awonderful team.
You know just incredible peoplethat I'm working with.
It's a delight to go to workevery day.
Mike Church (29:23):
I don't think I've ever really heard startup, the
startup culture, start up,define quite that way.
That's really interesting.
Is that?
That's your kind of your takeon it?
Is that, hey, it's merit-basedhard work.
It's because I, you kind offeel like this is there's that
energy to it, there's that like,hey, we're all in this together
(29:45):
, we're pulling, we're.
You know what we do mattersbecause it's not this huge
organization, but that kind ofmerit-based, the best ideas are
gonna win, do or die.
That's interesting.
Aaron Youngren (29:56):
Absolutely.
I like to think of it as aMacGyver situation.
Right, you know, the clock isticking.
You've got your chocolate barand your paperclip.
What are we gonna do?
And obviously, the you know,the delightful thing is we're
trying to find value for ourneighbors that we can bring to
(30:18):
them.
We're trying to striking.
Gold for us is findingsomething that's useful to
people, and so every day you'refocused.
You should be focused outwardly.
Now, if you're in a startupthat is way overfunded, that can
afford to, hey, let's get a,you know, penthouse suite for
(30:41):
everyone.
Let's get the ping pong tablesand the arcade machines and nap
rooms and all that crap.
That's different, you know.
That's different because moneyis not real in that kind of an
environment.
But when money is real as itwas at Amazon, as it is at Red
Balloon and you are truly tryingto solve the problem of someone
(31:04):
else's business process, ofsomeone else's obstacle, you're
trying to solve it for them in away that they will pay you
money for it's just a wonderfulwork environment that's awesome.
Mike Church (31:17):
So Red Balloon's obviously grown a ton in those
two years.
Were you one of the firstemployees?
Aaron Youngren (31:23):
Yeah, we had.
When I came in it was Andrewand his brother and some other
folks on contract.
And so there were like three ofus full time, and then now we
have about 35 employees.
Mike Church (31:39):
Wow, yeah, that's exciting Is that?
You mentioned, certainly atAmazon, having a big part of
what you're doing was buildingproduct, but also building teams
.
So is that a lot of what you'redoing now, too, is helping
build that team.
And, yeah, is hiring.
Hiring's obviously a huge partof what Red Balloon does Right.
(32:02):
Is that something that youenjoy and that you've kind of
found as something that you'regood at?
Aaron Youngren (32:08):
Yeah, absolutely so.
In the high growth years atamazoncom, I did hundreds of
interviews.
I definitely had the momentswhere I couldn't wait for any of
our recruiting teams and so Ihad the four inch stack of
resumes that I'm trying to gothrough, and Amazon had a great
(32:32):
hiring culture and I havecarried that throughout my
career.
It is a, I believe, and this iskind of our philosophy at Red
Balloon there's a part of hiringthat's irreducibly human.
The industry really wants to goin the direction of algorithms
and AI.
(32:53):
Some of those things can augmentthe tools that we use, but if
you are consistently saying noto someone based on what is
probably a pretty imprecisealgorithm, everyone gets
frustrated by this system, andso when you recognize the parts
(33:14):
of it that are irreducibly human, you honor those parts.
Because if I was to come to youand say here's why I think you
should spend 50, 60, $125,000per year of the money that you
have worked so hard to create inthis business, here's why I
(33:37):
think you should do that andit's going to be a good
investment and that's anintensely here's why I think you
should take that money and putit into me, that's a pretty
intensely human activity.
It's pretty vulnerable.
Mike Church (33:54):
And Well, you were saying earlier for a small
business, Right, that's a huge.
I mean, that's a huge decision,exactly, and one that I know
personally.
It's one of the, honestlyprobably one of the least
favorite parts of my job ishiring, the hiring process, and
it's one of the biggeststressors in terms of like, am I
(34:17):
making the right decision?
Because when you don't, it'snot only very expensive, it can
be difficult and stressful andthat kind of thing as well.
Aaron Youngren (34:25):
Yeah, that's absolutely right, and we hiring
has gotten actually a lot worsein recent years because the
number of employment lawsuitsthat has risen dramatically.
The number of discriminationlawsuits and hiring has risen
(34:47):
dramatically and now it's gottento the point where when
someone's bringing adiscrimination lawsuit, they not
only will go after the personhiring but any adjacent tools or
organizations that they used.
So if you're a staffing companyand you're looking to hire,
(35:08):
someone brings a discriminationsuit, the staffing company can
get pulled into that as well.
And so that's part of why wecreated this professional
services team is we asked whatwould it look like for us to
just take this over for some ofthese small businesses?
Take all of the first stepsover, do it in a human way, do
(35:31):
it in a legally vetted way,because we can be experts where
they probably can't, and justhelp them.
Just help them get that greatcandidate.
They're gonna do the final step.
but yeah, and that's relativelynew for Red Bullen yeah, past
year, but going well.
Mike Church (35:48):
It's going really well.
That's awesome.
Thank you, yeah.
So what do you see?
What's next Are you?
You're running.
I have what's your title?
I?
Aaron Youngren (35:59):
had a product and delivery, which means you're
doing a lot running ahead ofour our software efforts and
then running ahead of ourmanaging the professional
services team.
I know I'm in some of the daytoday, but then also I have
managers working for me.
Mike Church (36:17):
So continuing to kind of look for what are the
things that we can be doing toget ahead of the problems I
heard is interesting Heard aquote from a guy I was talking
to yesterday.
He said but I think it was asan accountant who know how
precise it was Essentially, ifyou want to protect your money,
find a problem or in his case itwas about investing.
He was like buy a problem andfix it Nice, and I think it was
(36:41):
kind of related to real estateand I kind of think too, but
yeah, that really hit home withme and what you were just saying
about like hey, if we can, if Ican, spend my time figuring out
what are the problems for theseend users, what are the
problems for them?
We can fix them.
Then they'll pay us for it andwe can have a viable business.
And you have to connect whatyou're doing directly to that,
(37:02):
especially when you're in it inthat growth phase yeah.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Aaron Youngren (37:08):
Yeah, good.
So on the software side, we'regoing to release what's called
the applicant tracking systemand we are going to take the
step of making it culture first.
So essentially, when you'rerunning a hiring process, if
your organization is a littlebit larger and you want to do
(37:30):
that in a controlled way, youwant applicants to come in and
kind of be routed through thatprocess.
You want the people in thatprocess to understand what they
need to talk about in theirinterview, what they need to
check off their list.
So an applicant tracking systemkind of does all of that
automatically and we puttogether a pretty.
(37:50):
I'm really excited with the waythat we have sketched this out.
We're building it right now,but it's going to be culture
first.
Businesses are kind of afraid totalk about their culture
anymore.
They don't know what words theycan use and not use in an age
when math is racist and all ofthese things, and they want to
(38:13):
focus on merit.
What can I actually say?
Well, we know, because we workwith employment lawyers, what
they can say and not say, andwe're going to help them to be
able to funnel their candidatesthrough the lens of their
culture, the culture that theyprobably spent 10 or 20 years
(38:35):
carefully building.
Now we're in this new era.
How do I ensure that the peoplethat are coming in share my
values?
And so we're building softwarearound that, and I'm really
excited about it.
Mike Church (38:48):
That's awesome.
Yeah, yeah, well, that'sexciting.
And red balloon dot work forpeople.
Red balloon dot work.
Aaron Youngren (38:56):
Find out about it.
Mike Church (38:57):
Awesome, good Well, thanks Aaron.
Aaron Youngren (39:00):
Yeah, you bet.
Appreciate the time.
Mike Church (39:01):
Yeah, really fun.
Exciting to see what happensnext with red balloon.
Aaron Youngren (39:06):
I'm excited too.
This is the Kestrel Country Podcast, where we
discuss the people, places andevents all around Kestrel
Country.
Aaron Youngren, thanks forcoming in.
Aaron Youngren (00:42):
You are welcome.
Great to be here.
Mike Church (00:44):
Yeah, I always like to start off, you know.
So our podcast is about thepeople, places and events around
the area, and so I just like tostart out by finding out more
about who I'm talking to.
So can you give us just a briefbackground of where did you
grow up?
Where are you from?
Aaron Youngren (01:05):
Yeah, start there.
So grew up just north ofSeattle.
Okay, I grew up in theneighborhood between Everett and
Snohomish.
Lived in a small ideal Americanhouse, walked to school every
day, came home to chocolate chipcookies, ran out to play in the
forest in the back, grew upthere until I was eight in the
(01:26):
Pacific Northwest, and then wemoved down to I don't want to
call it the armpit of America,but the Coachella Valley, palm
Springs area.
Mike Church (01:35):
Okay, I was thinking Ohio when I heard that,
but that's because I'm fromMichigan.
Aaron Youngren (01:41):
Well, when I heard there was a festival,
actually like an indie rockfestival, down in the Coachella
Valley, I just could not believeit because I spent my teenage
years there blistering hot, justa housing developments as far
as the eye can see kind of aweird place.
But then I moved back toSeattle, met my wife in Seattle,
(02:03):
started my career there.
I worked for Amazoncom forabout seven years Okay, wild
adventure early years, led aglobal innovation team there.
Then we moved out to Chicagoand I actually started a church
there and we did that for about12 years out in Chicago.
(02:27):
We're out in Chicago for about12 years.
You know, about nine years in.
It was time for that to be done.
Went back to the corporateworld and worked for GE
Healthcare and then, you know,at some point we're living in
Chicago.
We had a two flat nice two flatand we were living in that.
Mike Church (02:50):
So you were living in this, like in Chicago, oh
yeah.
Aaron Youngren (02:52):
Chicago proper.
Yeah, people say Chicago, yeah,I know I was picturing, yeah,
like Wheaton or yeah.
I think it's all the way up toMilwaukee.
Mike Church (03:00):
you can say you live in Chicago, yeah, but you
were like, for that whole 12years you were in Chicago, yeah
yeah, chicago proper, wow yeah,and.
Aaron Youngren (03:10):
But a couple of things.
One, my kids were getting olderand I was just, you know, kind
of doing the math on our twoflat property taxes are going up
all the time.
It started to look like, hey,in three or four years this is
just not going to pencil anymore.
And also, you know, chicago atthat point was becoming the kind
(03:31):
of city where you couldn'treally imagine people wanting.
It's fun to come in and go tomuseums and all of the big city
perks, but when you get intograndkids, you know the
grandkids era, it was difficultto see, you know, our kids
families coming in to stay inChicago.
So we started looking around.
(03:52):
For, you know, it would be theideal place if we could just
pick where we wanted to live andwe knew about New St Andrews
College, came out here to visitand I, you know my daughter
Madeline, did kind of like thevisitor's day here in Moscow and
New St.
Andrews.
I took my other daughter,alaska, and we drove up Highway
(04:18):
six, hit St Mary's, drove aroundCortilane and came back.
Mike Church (04:25):
And.
Aaron Youngren (04:26):
I just, I was just blown away.
Like what is this place?
Like what if I never heard ofthis place?
Mike Church (04:31):
So you'd never been here.
Aaron Youngren (04:33):
Never.
Mike Church (04:34):
Even growing up in the Northwest.
Aaron Youngren (04:35):
No, never been over this no.
Mike Church (04:39):
Had you ever been like Pullman or just stayed on
the I-5 kind of corridor?
Aaron Youngren (04:42):
Yeah, stayed over there and so, just totally
unaware of this, you know trulyhidden gem.
And then you know we came backand hung around in town and the
town is great.
So town is great, beauty isgreat, is very quiet when you
get just outside of the city,which you can be outside of the
(05:04):
city in seven minutes.
You can walk to the outside ofthe city where you know, if you
walk to, probably take a week orso to get outside of the
Chicago suburbs.
Mike Church (05:15):
Yeah, you know that's funny.
You mentioned that becausethat's one of the things that
I've that struck me about reallythe whole Northwest, though
honestly Even Seattle, as big acity as it is, growing up in
Detroit area in the Midwest,similar to Chicago, where it's
like you can just drive anddrive and you're still in
suburbs Like you just nothing'schanged.
(05:37):
It's still flat, it's stillhouses.
Aaron Youngren (05:39):
Exactly.
Mike Church (05:40):
And you come out here and even like so my sister
and brother-in-law live actuallyit's Nahomish over there, nice,
and you know, even in the city,though they used to live in
Bothell it's like you get up ontop of a hill and you can see
wilderness Right.
It's like you can at least belike okay, if I just get a
little ways out, like it'scontained, and I feel like
Moscow is a great example ofthat, even Skokan, it's like.
(06:02):
It's a cool thing about thearea is that you go a little
ways out and you can be in themountains or in that beauty yeah
.
Yeah.
Aaron Youngren (06:10):
Yeah, and you can drive Literally came back to
our Airbnb and then I scoopedboth girls up in the car and we
did the same exact thing thenext day, only we hit Montana
that time and to this day westill make those loops and just
loved it, absolutely loved it.
(06:31):
So I called my wife and said Ithink we're going to move here.
Wow, yeah.
Mike Church (06:37):
So you said you knew about Newson Anders.
That was your main connectionto Moscow.
And how did you find out aboutNSV?
Well, it was one mainconnection.
Aaron Youngren (06:48):
Actually.
My father-in-law has familyhere going pretty far back, oh,
wow, and so that's been prettyfun, is we will go to the VFW
and see, oh, there's a pictureof great Uncle So-and-so, so
that is pretty fun as well.
So my wife actually had beenout kind of around this area.
(07:12):
They have family over inMontana but it was just kind of
a hidden connection we didn'treally even think much about.
Mike Church (07:21):
Yeah that's interesting.
So your father-in-law fromMoscow specifically.
Aaron Youngren (07:26):
No, he's not from here, but his parents yeah.
Mike Church (07:29):
Are from Moscow, we're from around here yeah, Wow
, that's interesting.
Yeah, on my side my family isall Michigan from way way back.
Like Catherine's side, she is,I believe, fifth generation
Moscow.
So, yeah, like long-term, andI'm sure some of your wife's
ancestors and my wife's probablyknew each other, given how
(07:51):
small it was at the time.
Aaron Youngren (07:52):
Yeah.
Mike Church (07:53):
Yeah, that's kind of a cool connection, yeah, yeah
.
So how has that transition beenfrom living in a flat in
downtown Chicago to small townMoscow, idaho?
Was it a fairly majoradjustment at first?
Aaron Youngren (08:09):
I mean, if something being wonderful is an
adjustment, then yes, I mean.
Mike Church (08:16):
Now like for your kids.
So they were.
How old were they when youmoved here?
Aaron Youngren (08:21):
Yeah, my oldest was 18, I believe.
Mike Church (08:26):
Okay, so they pretty much grew up most of
their known life was in the cityof Chicago, mm-hmm.
Well, I imagine for them it wasa pretty big adjustment.
Aaron Youngren (08:37):
It was a big change.
There are little things that wemiss about the city and being
in a big city, and there's partof that that's really fun.
At the end of the day, it's theplace that you live matters,
and the place that you're doingthe daily grind matters, and
some of the luster of living ina big city Well, you also have
(09:02):
to deal with it every day.
So my kids grew up jumping overpuke puddles after the Cubs
games and that kind of thing.
There's a reality to city lifethat is not always pleasant, and
so we just have never lookedback, Not once it's just been
(09:22):
wonderful from day one and,honestly, some of the things
that people talk a lot aboutwith living in a city yeah, you
have museums and things likethat, but you can take a
vacation and go to museums, butthe food and restaurants and
(09:43):
things like that I think that'sone of the unique things about
Moscow 100% Is it's rare to havea small town that is also
offering excellent smallbusiness things, restaurants and
things like that.
I think that's pretty rare.
(10:03):
A lot of times you have smalltowns that are trying, but so
it's been great for us.
Mike Church (10:10):
Yeah, well, the university obviously helps with
that, being able to supportthose restaurants and things,
but also just that kind ofactivity and culture.
To have a small town and youstill have jazz festival every
year.
You have all these things thatcome in because of the
universities, which makes it apretty unique place.
Yeah, absolutely so.
(10:31):
You worked at Amazon and thenGE Health.
What were you doing in both ofthose?
You know similar thing in bothof those places.
Aaron Youngren (10:42):
Yeah, so I had a really great experience being
at amazoncom when, I was.
It was about five years into thecompany as well.
I started.
It was growing at an incrediblyrapid pace.
I was in this back officefinance ops team and we were
(11:06):
selling books, and it waschaotic and disorganized enough
that we weren't paying our billson time, and it kind of
bothered me, coming into thisnew job, and we're not doing our
job well, and so I took thathome and cobbled together some
tools for our team.
(11:27):
That turned into a long seriesof roles in which my job was to
form teams to make money for thecompany by building things, and
that's how I got into product,which is what I do right now,
and so most of my roles havebeen building products, building
(11:48):
teams, building services thatare high yield, let's say so.
Finding what the opportunitiesare within a particular
organization, capitalizing onthe top opportunities and then
helping everyone get their headsaround what those opportunities
(12:09):
are and why we should jump onthem.
And that's the role I'm intoday with Red Balloon.
I'm head of product over thereand I spend all day, every day,
thinking about that.
Mike Church (12:20):
So you said when you started Amazon, it was
you're selling books and it'schaotic, it's early.
So when you say creatingproducts that then are
profitable for the company, arethere, like what are, some
examples of those?
Was that branching out frombooks, or was it creating the
(12:42):
right type of platform to makeit better, or what?
Aaron Youngren (12:44):
Yeah.
So I was focused on internalproducts to help make our teams
more intelligent and take actionquicker.
When I first arrived, we wereit was early on, but we were
doing a lot of business startingto get into businesses with big
players like electronics.
(13:05):
Right, we went into electronicsand we had Sony and all these
players coming on looking at uslike we were the redheaded
stepchild, because we kind ofwere looking at us like we
didn't really know what we weredoing, because we kind of didn't
, and treating us accordingly.
And so in the midst of that,somehow, when you're growing 35,
(13:29):
40% a year, you have to figureout how to keep pace
operationally right.
And so the products that I andmy team ended up building were
mostly around businessintelligence how do we ensure
that the right people are seeingthe right information at the
(13:50):
right time, making the rightdecisions?
So, just to give you an example,one of the little products that
I and my team created thatstarted as a Saturday take it
home.
I probably wasn't even supposedto.
I'm gonna build this littlething and excel and use these
macros and things like that thatended up yielding $6 million
(14:14):
for the company over a period ofa couple of years, just because
we were able to do things alittle bit more efficiently.
And so at some point myleadership team just kind of
said, hey, why don't you do thatfull time?
Hey, why don't you go recruit aSWAT team?
It did very well.
We got to receive an award fromJeff Bezos himself in front of
(14:39):
like 6,000 people.
It was really fun, but it wasmostly internal there.
When I was at GE Healthcare, Iwas in charge of the digital
analytics for about 1,400marketing sites, including the
main flagship site, kind ofmonitoring who was doing what
(15:02):
when they were coming in workingwith marketing teams to try to
optimize their efforts.
Mike Church (15:07):
So, as you're, would you say, maybe I'm
butchering it, but your rolewould be kind of looking for
inefficiencies in the operationsof the business and figuring
out how can we fix thoseproblems.
Aaron Youngren (15:23):
That's been part of it.
I definitely have done a lot ofoutward facing work too.
The work that I'm doing rightnow, red Balloon, is mostly
outward facing.
So in the last year we spun upa professional services team
that basically is trying tobridge the gap between job
(15:45):
postings, which is what RedBalloon does.
We allow employers to post jobsbut bridge the gap between job
postings and recruiters, whichnow, given a tight labor market,
are charging somewhere between15 and 40% of first year salary
Hefty chunk for a small business.
So we've created a professionalservice product that costs
(16:08):
about a fifth of that and we goout and do all kinds of
recruiting work, give thembusiness intelligence, and
that's been wildly successful.
So that's a very externallyfacing product.
Now it's a human product, it'sa service, but that's we're very
(16:29):
active on that.
We'll be releasing an applicanttracking system later on this
year and working on that everyday.
Mike Church (16:36):
That's awesome.
So how did you?
What was the transition from GEHealth to Red Balloon and I
guess behind that question too,when you first moved here was it
a remote work type situation,and a lot of people have.
We've seen a lot of growth herebecause of that, right, right.
Aaron Youngren (16:55):
Yeah.
So my first days in Moscow Iwas getting up at four o'clock,
which I'm a morning personanyway.
I love the mornings, but up atfour o'clock but then in front
of teams at five am becausewe're in an international
business, I'm remote, I'mworking with people over in
(17:18):
India, so bright and shiny bythen, and just kind of having a
conversation with a laptop allday long and so working at GE
after some time, some of theirpolicies, as we got further and
(17:38):
further into COVID here I amlocked in my office, not seeing
anyone but my family during theweek because they are related to
the government Was that whileyou were in Chicago.
Mike Church (17:51):
No, no, no.
While I was here.
Yeah, while I was here.
Aaron Youngren (17:53):
So fully remote.
I mean I hadn't seen a personfrom GE in a year and a half,
wow.
And then they rolled out avaccine mandate which I had
already decided I was not goingto do.
And there were some otherthings.
You know, in the early years,just learning business, I was a
(18:13):
great admirer of some of thethings that Jack Welch put into
place at GE, read a couple ofhis books when I got to modern
GE, the reality of what that andI think that's true of a lot of
big organizations now whatthey've kind of turned into kind
of the caricature of a slowmoving, bloated organization A
(18:39):
lot of great people you knowthat I worked with, but just
very difficult to for a companylike that to think clearly.
So I started having aconversation with Andrew
Krapischetz, our CEO in town,about his this new business, red
Balloon, that he was starting.
Ge accepted my religiousexemption request.
(19:00):
So I did continue to work thereand did some consulting work
for Red Balloon for a while.
But then after a while I justwe came together and said hey,
let's build this thing.
Mike Church (19:12):
So you I've back up a little bit.
They were gonna require thevaccine even though you were
100% remote.
And like in your house in Idaho.
Aaron Youngren (19:23):
People don't understand this.
That's the case for untoldnumber of Americans, right, who
are working in largemultinational corporations.
It was a really weird time andI talked to people who had no
(19:44):
real political affiliation,hadn't thought about that twice,
but when it came down to it,there was a moment where the
leaders were gonna gathertogether again for GE and one of
my colleagues was saying justthe enormous pressure that was
put on her well, you haven'tgotten the vaccine yet, you need
(20:04):
to go get it.
And she's saying this justdoesn't feel right.
I don't know why, but why areyou telling me?
Mike Church (20:10):
to do this when I'm locked in my house right?
Aaron Youngren (20:14):
Anyway, so bit of a mess.
Mike Church (20:17):
Yeah, but that's not unrelated.
Than to Red Bull Right.
Aaron Youngren (20:22):
I mean a lot of what it is not A lot of what Red
Bull is doing is the freedomeconomy.
Mike Church (20:30):
Yeah, I guess it tells a little about we had
Andrew on a while back, but Iguess, especially now, what was
that like getting into Red Bulland a startup and yeah, how's
that been going?
Aaron Youngren (20:45):
Yeah, so core premise of Red Bull is that
there are still businesses thatwant to value hard work right,
that want employees that aregonna think critically and work
hard.
If you're an employee that isworking hard, wants to be
rewarded for your work, wants tothink critically, and your
(21:09):
leaders are not doing that, likeevery day they're showing you
that they're not really thinkingcritically about things that
are happening.
That happened a lot in COVIDand making a decision not to
respect the medical privacy oftheir employees, increasingly
clamping down on particularideologies, not giving any
(21:33):
breathing space at all forpeople to have other ideas.
I mean, I would routinely getemails, company-wide emails,
when certain events would go onin the United States police
shootings, things like thattelling us exactly how to think
about those.
Really, oh yeah, oh yeah yeah,yeah, you know the senior
(21:57):
leaders of those corporations,and I said this in my.
I wrote an open letter to theCEO and about 200 of my
colleagues when I left.
They have to understand thatyou're losing credibility by the
day.
Your business is becomingweaker because that's not
happening in a black box.
You're doing it in public, andeveryone who is supposed to be
looking up to you as areasonable, data-driven leader
(22:23):
is seeing behavior that they donot want to follow.
And so, red Balloon, we'retrying to make a space that more
people can find businesses likethat.
People can find businesses thatreward hard work and that are
not going to punish theiremployees for their political
beliefs, and that has really hita chord with job seekers and
(22:48):
employers all over America whowant that, and our view is, in
the long run, those are the onlybusinesses that are gonna
survive.
You can't just go forever, andwe've had recent examples of
businesses making blunders,where you have to assume that
the people at the top are justzombies not to see it coming
(23:12):
making blunders.
You can't be thoughtlessforever.
You can't just adopt certaintalking points forever without
having a real philosophy behindthem, and so we want to build
the kind of America, where hardwork is rewarded and people have
the right to have theirthoughts and beliefs in the
(23:32):
workplace.
Mike Church (23:33):
Yeah, now going back to the GE company.
I mean it, was there an attemptto relate those types of things
to the business, or was it justkind of like hey?
Aaron Youngren (23:45):
this is happening here.
So it wasn't even as, yeah, itwas not business minded it was
purely political, no nothing todo with what we were doing, and
it was the very definition ofvirtue signaling, and oftentimes
, virtue signaling on issuesthat were not at all clear right
(24:13):
, like some of these policeshootings that would happen.
What you want people to do isto take a deep breath, step back
, wait for the facts right.
And I'm talking about one emailwas sent by the president of the
operation president ofoperations in the United States,
like one of the top 10 leadersat GE describing in detail how
(24:39):
this was another example ofsystemic racism.
We all need to be aware thatthis is happening.
All of this, it was 48 hoursafter the event.
No one knew what had happened,and then, of course, the facts
come out and, oh guess what?
It's not actually as simple asyou think it was, and the
(25:02):
particular event I'm thinking ofthe police were acquitted.
The facts were actually reallyclear when they all came out.
It wasn't, as it was not a caseof racism at all.
And the point of that is justit's not to say that there can't
be racial incidents.
Of course there can.
Mike Church (25:20):
Yeah, it's not that the take was necessarily right
or wrong, but the fact that it'sone jumping the gun.
Two, how is this relating toour work?
Aaron Youngren (25:31):
at GE, exactly right.
And so when you're relying on aleader to be the most clear
headed person in theorganization and they are
demonstrating to you regularlythat they are not, and then not
only that, but everyone underthem and under them is
demonstrating to you regularlythat they are not, because
they're just smiling and nodding.
(25:51):
And yes, I've been thinking alot about the way that I think
about these issues as well,giving that speech all over the
place.
So I mentioned that.
I wrote an open letter to theCEO and a couple hundred of my
colleagues.
The response I gave my backchannel email, my personal email
(26:12):
on that, and the responsethrough private channels from
people that I would have neverguessed in my life were losing
faith in those leaders, wasreally overwhelming.
Mm-hmm.
Mike Church (26:28):
Yeah, and that was after you had already made the
decision to go to Redbloom.
Yeah, so you're alreadythinking along those lines.
Yeah, my thought was.
Aaron Youngren (26:37):
I'm out of here anyway.
I had talked to enough peoplewho said I don't like what's
going on, but I don't know whatto do, that I wanted to be loud
a little bit, while I couldn'tthrow a stick of dynamite on
Well, and that's one of thethings that has come through, at
least watching on social media.
Mike Church (26:52):
What Redbloom's doing that kind of thing is that
kind of helping give a voice,or maybe not even give a voice,
but give some confidence to twopeople who maybe feel like am I
the only one in this bigorganization that thinks this
way?
Exactly, right, like it'severybody you know, and the fact
(27:13):
that our media and everythingelse kind of makes is calculated
in a way to make those of uswho are conservative feel alone,
right, feel like, oh man, Iguess maybe nobody actually
thinks this way.
Yeah, so that's a big part ofwhat Redbloom's doing.
Aaron Youngren (27:30):
Yeah, and I think that got way worse in the
middle of COVID, where noweverything that I'm saying and
doing is on a company-sponsoredchannel.
That's my only communicationwith other people in this
company.
We don't go out for beers afterwork anymore Interesting.
Yeah and yeah.
(27:51):
I think there are a lot ofpeople that felt really isolated
during that time.
Mike Church (27:55):
So you jumped into Redbloom.
How long have you been therenow?
Two years, two years, yeah.
And how similar.
I mean I know you weren't likein the garage with Jeff Bezos
early days right no totally not.
Would you have characterizedyour was Amazon?
Did it have kind of thatstartup feel when you were there
?
Absolutely yeah, and you'regetting some of the same feeling
(28:19):
here.
Aaron Youngren (28:19):
Absolutely.
And one of the amazing thingsabout Amazoncom Early years are
not you know, I'm told because Idon't work there anymore but
I'm told this really has onlyfaded in the last decade.
But the feeling of a highlyempowered, merit-based culture
(28:41):
in which the best ideas aregoing to win, the hard work is
going to win.
You will get rewarded for it.
It's highly encouraged.
That was a real pleasure.
That was a real pleasure andI've been a part of a lot of
different initiatives and smallorganizational startups and
(29:02):
things like that in theintervening time.
But it really has been specialto come back to a do or die.
You know we're in this togetherand we're gonna make it go.
Kind of organization and just awonderful team.
You know just incredible peoplethat I'm working with.
It's a delight to go to workevery day.
Mike Church (29:23):
I don't think I've ever really heard startup, the
startup culture, start up,define quite that way.
That's really interesting.
Is that?
That's your kind of your takeon it?
Is that, hey, it's merit-basedhard work.
It's because I, you kind offeel like this is there's that
energy to it, there's that like,hey, we're all in this together
(29:45):
, we're pulling, we're.
You know what we do mattersbecause it's not this huge
organization, but that kind ofmerit-based, the best ideas are
gonna win, do or die.
That's interesting.
Aaron Youngren (29:56):
Absolutely.
I like to think of it as aMacGyver situation.
Right, you know, the clock isticking.
You've got your chocolate barand your paperclip.
What are we gonna do?
And obviously, the you know,the delightful thing is we're
trying to find value for ourneighbors that we can bring to
(30:18):
them.
We're trying to striking.
Gold for us is findingsomething that's useful to
people, and so every day you'refocused.
You should be focused outwardly.
Now, if you're in a startupthat is way overfunded, that can
afford to, hey, let's get a,you know, penthouse suite for
(30:41):
everyone.
Let's get the ping pong tablesand the arcade machines and nap
rooms and all that crap.
That's different, you know.
That's different because moneyis not real in that kind of an
environment.
But when money is real as itwas at Amazon, as it is at Red
Balloon and you are truly tryingto solve the problem of someone
(31:04):
else's business process, ofsomeone else's obstacle, you're
trying to solve it for them in away that they will pay you
money for it's just a wonderfulwork environment that's awesome.
Mike Church (31:17):
So Red Balloon's obviously grown a ton in those
two years.
Were you one of the firstemployees?
Aaron Youngren (31:23):
Yeah, we had.
When I came in it was Andrewand his brother and some other
folks on contract.
And so there were like three ofus full time, and then now we
have about 35 employees.
Mike Church (31:39):
Wow, yeah, that's exciting Is that?
You mentioned, certainly atAmazon, having a big part of
what you're doing was buildingproduct, but also building teams
.
So is that a lot of what you'redoing now, too, is helping
build that team.
And, yeah, is hiring.
Hiring's obviously a huge partof what Red Balloon does Right.
(32:02):
Is that something that youenjoy and that you've kind of
found as something that you'regood at?
Aaron Youngren (32:08):
Yeah, absolutely so.
In the high growth years atamazoncom, I did hundreds of
interviews.
I definitely had the momentswhere I couldn't wait for any of
our recruiting teams and so Ihad the four inch stack of
resumes that I'm trying to gothrough, and Amazon had a great
(32:32):
hiring culture and I havecarried that throughout my
career.
It is a, I believe, and this iskind of our philosophy at Red
Balloon there's a part of hiringthat's irreducibly human.
The industry really wants to goin the direction of algorithms
and AI.
(32:53):
Some of those things can augmentthe tools that we use, but if
you are consistently saying noto someone based on what is
probably a pretty imprecisealgorithm, everyone gets
frustrated by this system, andso when you recognize the parts
(33:14):
of it that are irreducibly human, you honor those parts.
Because if I was to come to youand say here's why I think you
should spend 50, 60, $125,000per year of the money that you
have worked so hard to create inthis business, here's why I
(33:37):
think you should do that andit's going to be a good
investment and that's anintensely here's why I think you
should take that money and putit into me, that's a pretty
intensely human activity.
It's pretty vulnerable.
Mike Church (33:54):
And Well, you were saying earlier for a small
business, Right, that's a huge.
I mean, that's a huge decision,exactly, and one that I know
personally.
It's one of the, honestlyprobably one of the least
favorite parts of my job ishiring, the hiring process, and
it's one of the biggeststressors in terms of like, am I
(34:17):
making the right decision?
Because when you don't, it'snot only very expensive, it can
be difficult and stressful andthat kind of thing as well.
Aaron Youngren (34:25):
Yeah, that's absolutely right, and we hiring
has gotten actually a lot worsein recent years because the
number of employment lawsuitsthat has risen dramatically.
The number of discriminationlawsuits and hiring has risen
(34:47):
dramatically and now it's gottento the point where when
someone's bringing adiscrimination lawsuit, they not
only will go after the personhiring but any adjacent tools or
organizations that they used.
So if you're a staffing companyand you're looking to hire,
(35:08):
someone brings a discriminationsuit, the staffing company can
get pulled into that as well.
And so that's part of why wecreated this professional
services team is we asked whatwould it look like for us to
just take this over for some ofthese small businesses?
Take all of the first stepsover, do it in a human way, do
(35:31):
it in a legally vetted way,because we can be experts where
they probably can't, and justhelp them.
Just help them get that greatcandidate.
They're gonna do the final step.
but yeah, and that's relativelynew for Red Bullen yeah, past
year, but going well.
Mike Church (35:48):
It's going really well.
That's awesome.
Thank you, yeah.
So what do you see?
What's next Are you?
You're running.
I have what's your title?
I?
Aaron Youngren (35:59):
had a product and delivery, which means you're
doing a lot running ahead ofour our software efforts and
then running ahead of ourmanaging the professional
services team.
I know I'm in some of the daytoday, but then also I have
managers working for me.
Mike Church (36:17):
So continuing to kind of look for what are the
things that we can be doing toget ahead of the problems I
heard is interesting Heard aquote from a guy I was talking
to yesterday.
He said but I think it was asan accountant who know how
precise it was Essentially, ifyou want to protect your money,
find a problem or in his case itwas about investing.
He was like buy a problem andfix it Nice, and I think it was
(36:41):
kind of related to real estateand I kind of think too, but
yeah, that really hit home withme and what you were just saying
about like hey, if we can, if Ican, spend my time figuring out
what are the problems for theseend users, what are the
problems for them?
We can fix them.
Then they'll pay us for it andwe can have a viable business.
And you have to connect whatyou're doing directly to that,
(37:02):
especially when you're in it inthat growth phase yeah.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Aaron Youngren (37:08):
Yeah, good.
So on the software side, we'regoing to release what's called
the applicant tracking systemand we are going to take the
step of making it culture first.
So essentially, when you'rerunning a hiring process, if
your organization is a littlebit larger and you want to do
(37:30):
that in a controlled way, youwant applicants to come in and
kind of be routed through thatprocess.
You want the people in thatprocess to understand what they
need to talk about in theirinterview, what they need to
check off their list.
So an applicant tracking systemkind of does all of that
automatically and we puttogether a pretty.
(37:50):
I'm really excited with the waythat we have sketched this out.
We're building it right now,but it's going to be culture
first.
Businesses are kind of afraid totalk about their culture
anymore.
They don't know what words theycan use and not use in an age
when math is racist and all ofthese things, and they want to
(38:13):
focus on merit.
What can I actually say?
Well, we know, because we workwith employment lawyers, what
they can say and not say, andwe're going to help them to be
able to funnel their candidatesthrough the lens of their
culture, the culture that theyprobably spent 10 or 20 years
(38:35):
carefully building.
Now we're in this new era.
How do I ensure that the peoplethat are coming in share my
values?
And so we're building softwarearound that, and I'm really
excited about it.
Mike Church (38:48):
That's awesome.
Yeah, yeah, well, that'sexciting.
And red balloon dot work forpeople.
Red balloon dot work.
Aaron Youngren (38:56):
Find out about it.
Mike Church (38:57):
Awesome, good Well, thanks Aaron.
Aaron Youngren (39:00):
Yeah, you bet.
Appreciate the time.
Mike Church (39:01):
Yeah, really fun.
Exciting to see what happensnext with red balloon.
Aaron Youngren (39:06):
I'm excited too.
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