Peer Effect
Best way to scale? Your peers have the answers.
This is the podcast for scaleup founders looking for insightful, actionable wisdom from some of the best operators around. Each week we’ll explore one secret that other founders and experts are using right now and how to implement it.
It’s practical wisdom to build the company AND life you want. Hosted by renowned founder coach and advisor James Johnson.
You’ve survived to £1m, now let’s scale to £10m+.
Peer Effect
Harnessing Peer Influence for Entrepreneurial Growth and Team Success, with Logan Naidu
Does character and trust matter more than high performance?
In this episode, of Peer Effect, we’re joined by Logan Naidu, Founder and Group CEO of Kernel Global. He’s successfully scaled his company to $50 million in revenue and today, he’s sharing his #1 tip on how other founders can do the same by focusing on who they surround themselves with.
Together we, uncover key insights for founders, like:
- How character and trust can outweigh even the highest performers.
- Why surrounding yourself with the right people can be the key to scaling your success!
- The art of relationship building relationships, both in professional and personal environments..
Connect with Logan Naidu on LinkedIn to learn more about his work at Kernel Global.
More from James:
Connect with James on LinkedIn or at peer-effect.com
Is high performance enough to guarantee success. We've all heard the saying you're the sum of the 5 or 10 people you spend the most time with, but how does this play out for founders? In today's episode, we dive into the balance between character, trust and performance in teams. We're joined by Logan Nadeau, founder and CEO of Kernel Global. He's scaled multiple ventures to millions in revenue. With years of experience in leadership and business strategy, Logan breaks down his number one tip for founders looking to do the same. I'm your host, James Johnson, and you're listening to Peer Effect, the podcast that fuels you with new ideas and inspiration through interviews with founders and experts who've made it happen.
Speaker 2:I'm Logan Naidoo. I'm the founder and CEO of what is now Colonel Global, but previously one of our brands is Dartmouth Partners, which I started in 2012. We're a multi-brand, multi-need recruitment group operating out of six offices in five countries. We are circa 50 million revenue headcount of about 200 people.
Speaker 1:So pretty decently sized and always growing. Every time I speak to you I sort of lose track of the numbers. What's the one thing that's really struck you as an insight or something that's powerful for you?
Speaker 2:Well, I guess the podcast is called the Peer Effect, right? So as I was thinking about this, I was trying to think of something related to having peers. And look, we quite often say, whether it's in work or in life, you're the, you're the sum total of the. You know people that you hang out with, usually the sort of close, closest 10 people, that that you hang out with, and I think that's very true in the workplace and I, obviously we're a confluence, but within that workplace ecosystem, I think it's not just the sum total of the kind of five people. I think that the two most important bits within that are the, the person that raises the bar highest for you, the person that really, as you aspire to be, and then the, probably the person that's right at the bottom of of that and the person you definitely don't want to be. You know, as I was thinking about this, about this, one of the key things is narrowing the gap between those two and where you sit on that line.
Speaker 1:If you were to go about doing that practically, so you've got you kind of look at people around you would you go as far as to rank them? How would you go about doing this?
Speaker 2:I think that look, we've all got people within work that we aspire to be like or aspire to their success. You know, whenever you see it, you know that sunday times interview on how I made it. You know who's your, who's your, your hero, um, and people often pick the obvious, like a richard branson type type character. Now, clearly, within you know, most workplaces, you can't have a richard branson type character exerting influence on you day in, day, in doubt, day out. But one of the things that I think we've done as a business and a group and I've done personally, I've always tried to seek out someone that's just a little bit further on the journey than than us. And you know, people quite often ask who's my mentor?
Speaker 2:My mentors have always been my Neds or my Ches and one year into the journey here we brought in a Ned Gavin was his name and he'd just exited his recruitment business but he built a business for about 50-ish people, right, and that for us at the time, being sub 10 in a shoebox, felt really aspirationalational and been on that journey over 10 years, built a premium business, premium quality, but he helped raise the bar for me and the wider business in terms of what was expected.
Speaker 2:There were quite a lot of fairly tough love conversations in that, in terms of how he thought I should carry myself into rats, what I should be doing with my time, etc. But that, that, you know, that served its purpose. For the first five years we got to place where we actually surpassed, you know, his experience in mouse. And then, as we did our first private to do, we brought a new chair who built a business that he just saw for north of 250 million pounds, so, you know, and again largely a people-based business doing quite a lot of M&A. But that was the next step in terms of us having our eyes open as to the art of the possible.
Speaker 1:Seems like more than a casual relationship. It's someone like quite fixed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it is quite fixed. I think it could be a casual relationship, someone you can grab coffee with every now and then. I have mentored someone from the Prince's Trust. We met through the Prince's Trust 20 years ago when he was 16. I think he's just turned 36, so it's 20 years, and so I've almost acted like a father figure. He's been building his business. He's been through some incredible ups and downs, but it's a pretty casual relationship.
Speaker 2:I'll catch up with him three, four times a year, have coffee or lunch. It's relatively informal and light touch, but also some some business and work advice and he can choose to to heed that or not. But I've got no real skin in the game, as it were, apart from having known him for a long time now pretty good friends, um, you know. But uh, you know, I guess a more formal ned or chair, whether they've got equity or just being paid a salary, they've got some active interest in making sure that they're you know, they're your success is a reflection of their success, uh, as well. And so there's, uh, there's a bit more of a direct interest from their side and from your side if you're paying for it.
Speaker 2:And to your question, I think it's more than being disciplined, I think it's being pretty thought through and thoughtful as to what's going to bring the best out of you and where it's relevant for the journey. Today, there was no point in us let's take a silly example picking he's one of my heroes, but picking Martin Sorrell as an active member for our business when we were a startup. It would have been not a great use of his time. I don't think, and probably he's too far removed from running a business that's 10 people big to probably run what it's like.
Speaker 1:That's quite an important factor as well, isn't it? If you're getting stretched towards that person who's ahead of you, then just pick someone who's like way ahead of you. But it sounds like to give that practical experience, to be an actual role model, a useful role model, they need to be close enough to you that you can follow their path and they can sort of remember this last stage yeah, yeah, and I think that you know it's um.
Speaker 2:I guess we're then down the slightly tricky route of, you know, does someone have to have uh done what you're you're doing and I don't think you know sector expertise.
Speaker 2:It's helpful, but I think it's a, it's a prerequisite, but I think it's always been on a similar journey of building a, a similar ish business.
Speaker 2:I don't think it has to be um, uh, a like for, like richard harpin, who writes in the times. He wrote an article yesterday about uh finding ceos with relevant, directly relevant experience to what you're trying to hire, which is quite an interesting take, because I think I think the counter arguments that people say that actually skills and experience can be transferable, certainly across sectors. If you've got that in your toolkit, it's a kind of opposite view. So if I'm hiring for a B2B services business or marketing business, I want to have direct B2Bb sales experience, which is quite interesting. I think that there are within, you know, your growth phase, there are parallels that people would have been in regardless of industry. But you know, as an example, our second chair he built insurance breaking business right, which is people based business, and actually I think that there are a lot of parallels around people and the challenges that they bring this was like quite a work example.
Speaker 1:So we talked about some of the inside and outside of work elements. Do you think that holds outside of work as well? So it's kind of a very clear sort of internal work structure. Do you think there's an outside of work structure as well?
Speaker 2:Yeah, completely. Yeah, maybe slightly different in terms of the effects, but I mean, look, if you're married or you've got a partner, your other half or spouse, is probably one of the biggest influences you'll have outside of work on you, probably one of the biggest influences you'll have outside of work on you, and they'll be there as a support confident or not support right. You know plenty of people are not in favor of someone starting a business, right, and that can lead to lots of different tensions as well, because we all know that starting businesses is you're all in right, you're generally chipped, so it's not something you dabble with. Is a is you're all in right, you're generally chips, all in, it's not something you dabble with. Yeah, there's that thing, isn't there. You know, the kind of instagram phrase of comparison is the thief of joy, but you're also when you're. You know, one of the reasons why you know how we make comparisons is that friendship group.
Speaker 2:You know there is a natural inclination to to benchmark. Right, probably comes from when we were six years old in the playground all jostling for you know who's tallest in the line? That was never me. Who's going to get picked first for lunchtime football? Also never me.
Speaker 2:You know, it's all those little things that make you slightly competitive with your, with your, your peer group and hopefully we all kind of grow out of it. Right, but there's a residual desire in telling to always be benchmarking you know who, you know how are you doing compared to, to others, which can lead to incredibly unhealthy competition and natural dissatisfaction. Right, because there's always going to be someone bigger. Right, there's always going to be someone faster, richer, better looking, married to someone that ticks all those other boxes as well, and so it's a. It's um, it's pretty, pretty unhealthy, but the positive effect is, if you find people who are of good influence and you can try to park um or gently parks. In that competitive tension, there are people that will will raise the bar you mentioned um out of work. You know, my, my church friends, uh, are incredibly important, important to me, incredibly important to how I want to be as a husband, father and also business person and CEO.
Speaker 1:It feels like that to me. If you get someone ahead of you, let's say if you're married, if you have someone ahead of you five years ahead of you on that journey, five years ahead of you as a parent, there's a lot that you can take from that Five years ahead in faith. We are more than just a work side, although we sort of forget that as founders, it sounds like having that one key person that can sort of guide the way a little bit helps massively, massively.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's partly why I know you and I've had plenty of conversations about our respective fathers, right. But I think it's why, you know, men in particular are hardwired to crave a close relationship with their fathers, right. It's not just a biology thing we want to look up to someone. There's a desperation there to both prove ourselves to our, our fathers, but also for their approval and nurturing and and you know, we do need that, you know. And, um, you know, I think that I don't know if that's. I think it feels like it's hardwired in our biology, isn't it to?
Speaker 1:to want to meet that I don't know how you feel, but it feels like having a lot of conversations around this. Our generation is probably missing that in terms of there's a whole new paradigm to how you can be a dad and choice between work and home and a whole range of things that probably our generation is hitting for the first time, and there aren't necessarily role models for that, because we're the first people trying to build a new way. Yeah, I mean it's?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean there's definitely an expectation that has um been brought to life in the last, I guess, 10-ish years. Isn't there that, um, because of usually, both parents will still continue to have careers post-kids partly necessity, partly just cultural changes. So you expect to be more involved in parenting and co-parenting. I think we, as men, are expected to be more involved with our kids and we also want to be more involved with the raising of our children, so that's not just left to mothers. Yeah, I think we're on the journey of discovering how to make it work, and there are, I think, where there is, wisdom.
Speaker 2:I've got my father-in-law, who I'm really close to, quite often talk about these are the mistakes I made. This is how I tried to, the rhythm of how I tried to be at home and home life, whilst also having a very busy, successful career, you know. But these are the sort of things that I definitely tried to try to live by. And where I didn't live by, these are my failings, which is also pretty open about, and this is what I would like to have changed. So try to avoid the. These are my failings, which is also pretty open about, and this is what I would like to have changed, so try to avoid the same, the same failings along the way what about the flip side?
Speaker 1:so you've got these people who are kind of. You said there are two sides. There's people that sort of you raise yourself, you can pay yourself to raise yourself up against. And then you said there's this sort of the people you spend a lot of time with, who may be at the bottom benchmark.
Speaker 2:Perhaps we could dive into that a bit yeah, so it's the it's the kind of less attractive flip side of the coin is that you've got those who raise the bar and those who lower the bar. Um, and we all want to actually, we don't all, but lots of us want to hang out with people that help us raise the bar um, but I think there's a natural inclination for a lot of people not everyone where we want to give ourselves a pass, and that's usually the kind of lower common denominator not necessarily the lowest, but the lower common denominator that we look at and think, well, at least I'm not as bad as that person, or I'm not doing it that way, or it could be worse and I think that they give us a little bit of a, an opt-out or a free pass. Uh, if, if we want to, um, it's a, you know, I think it's one of those things again, naturally, when we think about ourselves, um, we, you know, we can't think like it could be worse, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not doing that right. So I don't know. Just take a very silly example.
Speaker 2:But you know, if you steal office pens or stationery which a lot of people do, most people do or take the office pen home, whatever, you kind of think well, at least I'm not stealing from the shops, so I'm not that person, right? You know, if your work you cut a corner, you know in terms of not giving your best quality work, you know well, at least it's not as bad as as that it could. It could be worse, and I think you want to kind of not give yourselves too many opt-outs along the way so that you're constantly narrowing that gap between what a plus looks like and maybe what a c or a d looks like here. So you don't, you don't have the options of anything apart from, eventually, b plus and A plus, right, that's your promise, because that being products of your environment, right, and the environment that we get to create for ourselves, if we're choosing the people we can't always choose, but we are choosing and selecting the people that influence us it's narrowing those two parameters.
Speaker 1:I think what's kind of mind when you were talking about that was oh, that's why Logan plays tennis with me. You're there to make me feel good.
Speaker 2:But that could be why you play tennis with me right On the flip side.
Speaker 1:To raise the bar. As the founder, you have quite a you can have quite a lot of control around this. This idea of who's your top point and who's your bottom point Is that something that you would we'll go into that like what it looks like for the company as a whole? But is this something that you would we'll go into that like what it looks like for the company as a whole? But is this something that you would explicitly look at in terms of again, like you're not necessarily rating people but is this something you check in against to go? Who is that person? That I maybe sounds like a slight comfort blanket.
Speaker 2:I think, look, we've talked about performance and results so far. I think the thing we haven't really talked about is character, and it's a relatively old-fashioned and out-of-fashioned term, isn't it? We talk about values a lot nowadays and behaviours, but it's fundamentally your character and when people are looking, what are you doing and how are you performing fundamentally your character you know. And when people are looking, what are you doing and how are you performing and how are you acting. And character you know, and good character and virtues, those are the ones that will kind of dictate whether that's someone that raises the bar for you or or not.
Speaker 2:It's slightly different to talk about just a players, right, plays about performance, um, but there are people that will perform um and do it at all costs, right? You think of, maybe, drug cheats and in the uh, in the olympics, right. That those are kind of people that you don't wouldn't. Aspiration you want to want to be like, so I think it's when you look at aspiration you want to want to be like, so I think it's when you look at character probably relates to moral fiber that you know you can pick right. So I'd pick around those people or the right characters and then work out. You know what they've done in their track record adjacent to them and how would you go about testing that?
Speaker 1:because, because it feels like historic performance that's easy enough to check in on and maybe they can do some competency-based assessments, but character feels like a harder pick.
Speaker 2:That's a really good question. Look, I think it is hard, isn't it? It is hard because you know people can wear masks and they can pretend, but if you spend, if you don't leap into bed with someone and you get, you spend some time getting to know them and getting a feel for how they operate, what are they like, etc. I think you can get a feel for who are they as a person, and so I don't think there's a shortcut away from spending time with that person, having lots of conversations and getting a feel for it. I think some people take longer to reveal other sides of themselves, other facets, but over time people do. It's quite interesting.
Speaker 2:I talked about my first Ned. It took me a long time to get beneath some of the very business-like veneer that he had, and actually he's quite interesting as a character Because initially and I think he's really changed over the last 12 years but you've got this quite alpha presentation of an individual and he's now a therapist and a coach and so he's softened as a person a lot, mellowed out a lot over the last 10 years, and he'll quite often talk about his failings and frailties and what he would have changed in terms of being so hard driving and building his first business, but it took me a good year, year and a half, to get to get to know him properly as a as a person and as a man, right, and you know, and I think that it yeah, you've got to invest in the relationship, haven't you? It takes, it takes time, so there's probably no shortcut from just making sure you spend enough time to get get to know one another so let's I mean let's take the drug cheat analogy.
Speaker 1:Let's say you did have someone in your circle who, super high, performing, from the outside looked like one of the people that's sort of really raising the bar, and then you discover they're a drug cheat, not necessarily like coke in the office and things, but like just just that kind. Discover they're a drug cheat, not necessarily like coke in the office and things, but just that kind of. They're not who they're presenting themselves to be. There is a character issue. What do you do then?
Speaker 2:This is easy to say and very hard to enact, and I've experienced this a couple of times. But if you can't fix them or the situation, you've got to move, to exit, because they go from being a high performer that is suddenly a bad character, let's say, and therefore gone from that end of the spectrum to the lower end of the spectrum that we were talking about. And that is a problem not just for you as an individual, but it's a problem for your team, isn't it? And because, look, quite often, depending on the size of the business, you're one of the last people to find out about these things, so everyone else knows about it and it's just a general assumption that you know about it, so you're living with it and you've accepted it. And that becomes, I think, a stain on the character of the business, because it looks like you've stamped it. And again, everyone talks about values nowadays. I prefer the word character. But it's a problem in terms of the character of the business, because people think that's what's acceptable and okay and they're therefore playing to that lowest common denominator, so it slowly atrophies the backbone and fiber of the business, so that that's just what's seen as acceptable. I think there's a reason why Goldman's fairly rigorously and ruthlessly cut that bottom 5% every year. It's so that it's constantly pruning and weeding so that those two parameters between for them I guess good and great keep getting narrowed year after year and they'll keep growing along the way and adding new people, but it's just narrowing the gap. And I think in that example, regardless of the size of your business, you probably should be thinking about pruning and exiting.
Speaker 2:I guess Simon Sinek puts it really well, doesn't he? He talks about high performance, high trust, in that top right-hand corner, everyone wants those people. Low performance, high trust, in that top right hand corner, everyone wants those people. Low performance, low trust nobody wants those people. But then medium performance, high trust actually are better off, you're better off having those people than high performance, low trust. Because that is what leads to I think he actually said these are toxic team members and it leads to a toxic working environment. Um, because you just can't, you don't know what's going on, you can't trust, trust, trust them, or and eventually the kind of wider, wider firm, because it spreads it feels like you've got these almost like two sets of gravity.
Speaker 1:you've got your sort of personal people that sort of pull you up, and then you've got the person or people who pull you and your whole organization down and it sounds like you're like, even if they're high performance, like that character thing is something that should be really looked at in that gravity. So maybe something, even with high character, lower performance can still drag you up. So would you say character maybe beats performance for you.
Speaker 2:I think having the right characters and people you can trust will create an environment that's far higher performing overall than having a group of people that you're afraid to trust because you don't know what they might do with any information. That's the definition I mean of leading to a completely dysfunctional working environment, isn't it? Where everyone's out getting one another? When Satya Nadella came into Microsoft, he talks about inheriting that kind of environment where teams were pitching against one another within the business. It was an incredibly low-trust environment and he had to spend a couple years unpicking it, saying we're all on the same team here. Right, and this is not about one team winning over another. This is about microsoft winning, and that's what we're here to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's trust. Trust is critical, isn't it? You end up in a situation I don't had a conversation with a few coaching clients where you have that person oh, I don't want to exit them because I'm afraid of what they'll do. You know, that is when you've got someone who's got low character in a senior position. It's like, oh, I don't do it now because it'll cause damage. It's like, well, it's only going to cause more damage. And what's your alternative? You, and what's your alternative? You're going to give them a job for life.
Speaker 2:It's like you know, there is pain coming. What damage are they doing in the interim?
Speaker 1:And again, does that just maybe to wrap this up, so it feels like you've got. Do you have people that pull you down personally as well? So it's kind of like the professional lifter and personal lifter, so there's definitely someone who can pull your company down. Do you think there are people that could? Pull you personally down as well, not many.
Speaker 2:No, I mean, there are right. Clearly we can have, uh, we can have those those people in our, in our lives, but, um, but to a large extent, you get to choose how you hang out with, don't you? Well, you don't get to choose your family, but you largely get to choose your friends. Um, and yeah, so you don't, you don't have to hang out with some of those, some of those people, but also you can have, you know, you can be the, you can be the positive influence as well, can't you?
Speaker 1:a big thank you to logan for sharing his insights into the balance of character and trust in building successful teams. I think his perspective on finding mentors and learning from those ahead really just mirrors what we're doing here on Peer Effect perfectly. Remember to add the Peer Effect podcast to your favourites so that you'll never miss an episode again. Cheers.
