#awinewith Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld
MEET Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld, Founder of RetainHR
You can find them here:
Transcript
Danielle Lewis (00:04):
So good. Lisa Maree, welcome to Spark tv.
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (00:09):
Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. It's so nice to meet you.
Danielle Lewis (00:12):
I am so excited and I'm so grateful that you are giving up your evening to spend some time with the Spark community and that you brought wine. You're my favorite person already.
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (00:22):
I Love it. As soon as you said if you want a glass, I'm like, oh yeah, no, of course I do.
Danielle Lewis (00:27):
Absolutely. And you are on the right time zone for a wine as well, so this is,
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (00:31):
Yeah, it's eight 30 here. It's great.
Danielle Lewis (00:33):
I love it. Well, let's kick it off by telling everyone who you are and what you do.
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (00:39):
Yeah, so my name is Lisa Marie Blumenfeld. I am the founder and CEO of a company called Ver Retaine. So we do outsourced hr, so we act as mainly for startups, but we act as their in-house hr. Usually, we're the first HR people to ever work in there. Usually it's like the founder or whatever handling all of the things, and we try to take it off their plate so they can focus on their product and we can help them scale as they are getting funding or what have you. So
Danielle Lewis (01:10):
I
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (01:10):
Love it. Yeah, we've been doing this since 2016, so it's been really fun.
Danielle Lewis (01:15):
Cool. Wow. Oh my gosh. So, oh my gosh, you're going to have so many good stories then. Amazing. Let's start out though. Yeah. Why is HR important? So it's really interesting. I know. So someone who, before Spark, I founded a tech company and I did the same thing. It was me, my co-founder, starting to bring on those early employees. You're Googling employment
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (01:40):
Contracts.
Danielle Lewis (01:42):
Why is it important to actually enlist the help of an outsourced HR function?
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (01:48):
Yeah, that's a great question. I think there's a lot of pressure for founders to figure out how to do HR on their own because there's no way they're going to be able to use a headcount early for hr. They want to spend it on engineers and all of the things that create the product. And HR can seem like a cost center. However, it can be really, really costly if you make some of those mistakes really early. So from the compliance standpoint, or like you said, getting the contracts, all of those things we just have templates for, and we've done a million times, so we can do it much faster, but we also know that they're in line with local laws, and that's all the boring, not sexy stuff to talk about with hr. But if you're hiring people, that's your biggest cost and you want to make sure it's done and that people are feeling included and are tied into the goals and really can make an impact really quickly. And so if you have an onboarding process and communication channels and all of these other things within the company, you can make it so that their pathway to success is much faster and the company can just move faster.
Danielle Lewis (02:59):
Yeah, I think it's really interesting. I think as founders, we usually start solo and it's usually something that is within our skillset and we think we've got this brilliant idea, we're going to grow the empire, and then we realize we need help. But typically managing those people and hiring staff, onboarding staff is not our skillset. So we are kind of trying to figure it out as we go. And it's often said that employees first experiences with the brand is so telling to their longevity. And I think, look, don't get me wrong, some founders are amazing at this, but I know even personally I was not amazing at this. But even just that, having to manage people, I came from a sales background where I'd done a great decade long career in sales, but I'd never managed people. And so I was really fumbling through it and not really certain about how to communicate where we were going and the vision and what their actual roles and responsibilities were. And in the early days, that turned into me still doing half of the job, the people that I hired. So being able to shortcut this and not make those mistakes, I think it's just brilliant.
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (04:16):
Thank you. Yeah, we've seen it work really well for a lot of companies. We've also seen companies get into a lot of trouble early on, so if we can just eliminate that early, that's the goal. Plus even the people who are amazing managers, when you're a solo founder, it can be really, really lonely and it can be hard to know if you're making the right decisions or if you've incorporated people in the right way. So just to have a thought partner and that can be really helpful.
Danielle Lewis (04:45):
That's
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (04:45):
The hope
Danielle Lewis (04:46):
That is. No, I love it. So how did you even get into this? How did you start this business?
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (04:52):
That's a great question. This was not the intended career path for me. I went pre-med to school and ended up religious studies, so random and wasn't quite sure what I was going to do. And then I was recruited by a recruiter to go into sales, but at the time, the recruiter saw something in me and said, maybe you should just be a recruiter. So that's actually what I did. I was recruited to be a recruiter, did that in agency life for a while. Then I went in-house and the thing that I loved was building the relationships with the candidates, and then I found it to be kind of challenging because they would get this job and it would be great, but then they would move on. And so I loved the full life cycle of an employee by being on the HR side. So being able to take them for their first day and take them through their entire career at that company was really interesting and fun for me.
(05:48):
And so I was able to do it in some really big companies, like I dunno, pg e is a big energy company here. I did it there and Blue Blue Shield of California, which is a healthcare company. So I've seen how it's supposed to go in big companies, but I love the startups. So worked in a few startups, Jaar, then I worked at Lyft, RES systems, and then I had the opportunity to work in an accelerator. So at the time we were working on 20 to 30 companies at a time. And that's where I really found that this is what I love. I love doing the fractional piece of it. Getting in really early with founders to be able to help build that foundation was just so fun. So I knew that there was a market for it and just figured, let's go find the market. So that's what we did in 2016.
Danielle Lewis (06:39):
Cool. So you used the word fractional, which I feel like we are just getting our heads around now, but the idea that you don't actually have to pay a full-time employee to come into your business and do this function, that there is someone like you that can come in as required and scale with the business.
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (07:02):
Yeah, we do that. That's the goal is that we can scale with the business and then at a certain point we'll go to the founder and say, look, it's time. It's time for you to get a full-time person and here's why, and here's what they can bring. And so at that point, oftentimes we either move into an advisor role or we'll move into something of a support role for that new leader, and we'll just make sure that the handoffs really clean, but we don't always go all the way away. We can stay and help out. Like I said, HR can be a really lonely place too. And there's so many things changing with laws and stuff. It's good to have a support system if nothing else. So we try to stay close with our clients, even if they're former ones.
Danielle Lewis (07:45):
That's so good. I love it. So how did you find going from employee and so actually working inside the startups or the big corporates to starting your own business, was the leap easy or challenging, or how did you find that process?
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (08:02):
Yeah, you know what? I wish I could say it was super well thought out and I had a baked in business plan. None of that happened at all. It was at the time the company I was working for was changing their models, so they weren't providing the services we were used to. And so I had a few people that had asked me to be an advisor or a VC that asked if I could spend some time with them. And so when I was freeing up, it was very quickly my time was taken by them. And so I just pretty quickly had some contracts and that was great. And then we just started getting more and more contracts. We meaning me, the royal we, I love it, I love it. We do that as contracts. And so realized that I needed some help and had some really good friends that were in the industry that decided to do this with me at first. And so then it's just kind of grown as needed. So it's just been really organic. And again, a lot of people have a really baked in thoughtful plan, and mine was just more of a, this is opportunistic and it happened to work out really well.
Danielle Lewis (09:20):
I love it. I mean, I could not agree more. I've been in business for 12 years and three, if not four businesses, never had a plan. I never had a plan. So if you have
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (09:32):
A good idea and you're like, let's see how this goes, let's try this, let's try this. That didn't work. We'll try something else. That's right. That's exactly right. And those are the best founders to work with sometimes too, because they just know that they're passionate about their idea and they're not quite sure how to do it, but they're game to try.
Danielle Lewis (09:51):
Oh, I love it. I love it. So 2016, that means what, eight years already in business? Nine. Yeah, nine. Oh my gosh, that's incredible. How has the landscape changed over that time? I mean, we had the big pandemic in the middle there. How have you seen things change?
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (10:10):
Yeah, obviously. I mean, look, COVID hit every company in different ways. I think we were going from this high growth, not necessarily us, but helping founders in these high growth stages. There was a lot of VC funding that was happening. It was really exciting at the time. And then obviously Covid hit a period of crazy uncertainty. No one had any idea. It was really interesting how many founders were turning to us and saying, well, what do we do in this case? We're like, oh, no, you haven't seen it, but neither have we. It's not like we've gone through pandemics. It hasn't happened before. No, we don't know school. I love that. No. So we were just making things up and we spent a lot of time researching and just trying to absorb any bit of information, the amount of time we spent just following the CDC and understanding guidelines and putting communication plans together.
(11:03):
And it was just a total shift from what we were doing. Luckily, I had a great team who they were obviously personally impacted by covid, but they were really excited to help our companies get through it. And then it just kept going. Covid just kept going. So it changed a lot of things. We had to focus on people working from home and now how do we bring on them back? And so there's been a lot of just change through that time and here at least not to take it on some sort of weird political turn, but election years are always a strange time. And so we're kind of in that right now, and that will cause some anxiety and uncertainty with employees and founders. And so that whole funding cycle has been really strange recently. So we're spending a lot of time supporting founders just through another crazy time, but we're super optimistic for next year. I just think hopefully things will settle. Don't want to jinx it, but things will settle and we'll just kind of be on the right track to have all these companies just continue to grow and scale.
Danielle Lewis (12:20):
Yeah, I love that. I mean, it's really interesting. I think there's always something. Yes, the pandemic was huge. Obviously when you go through an election year, that's huge. But I mean, I just feel like there is always something. There's new changes in guidelines, social media, wreaks, havoc, people don't want to come back to the office. There is always something, I feel like as business owners, it just makes so much sense to have. We can't do everything. We can't know everything. We can't research everything. Having someone on your team whose role is to actually understand the landscape, how things have changed, what the implications for your team are, it just makes so much sense to have someone like you in the business being that support and that it's really interesting as a business owner, it is lonely. You do feel like you're in it alone. So having that kind of person who's invested in your growth and your team's success, I think is really exciting.
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (13:25):
I think the other thing too that we found to be helpful is just being able to tell a founder, Hey, you're not even the only client we have right now that's going through this. The way you're feeling, the things that you're struggling with, the imposter syndrome, the just stress of everything. Everything we just talked about.
Danielle Lewis (13:44):
I've
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (13:44):
Talked to three other people about this week. So it's common, it's normal. And so I think just hearing that they're not alone, just even just talking to me, I think sometimes makes people feel like, oh, okay, maybe I'm not doing everything wrong or different. It's just stressful. It's stressful being a founder for sure.
Danielle Lewis (14:05):
Yeah, it's so stressful is the best. I mean, it's funny. Even when it's good times, it's stressful. Yes,
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (14:14):
That's absolutely right. I mean, even in the best of times there are so many things keeping you up at night always.
Danielle Lewis (14:22):
Yeah, it's really interesting. So how have you personally grown your business? You mentioned things were getting busier, you are bringing on new team members. Have you actively gone out into market to grow the business and if you have what's worked for you?
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (14:37):
Yeah, more recently we've had to do that or maybe gotten to do that prior. It was mainly word of mouth. So I just had, thankfully, luckily I had a pretty good network of founders and advisors and VCs that would just bring us in when either they needed support personally or someone that they knew in their network or one of their portfolio companies. Obviously the market's changed, and I think a lot of the network that I have is outside of some of the new emerging techs. So ai, there's not a lot of people in my network that has a deep wealth either of knowledge or network. And so having to build that in interesting ways has been fun and it's been helpful that it's been after people are now getting back in person and doing things. So the muscle memory that I had from before is coming back of going to networking events. I mean, everything's shut down for so long. So getting the opportunity to do those things. Obviously podcasts are huge, and so being able to meet people like you and just talk about not only my experience, but other founder experiences has been helpful. And we're just learning. We're learning how to do it all the time because so many things just keep changing. It's just a matter of how many things you want to try to keep up with.
Danielle Lewis (16:07):
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you say that. We just touched on how so much changes from a HR point of view, but if so much changes from a how do I grow my business point of view, you just have to be great at change. I think you have to really embrace change as a business owner
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (16:23):
And just be game to try things and just say, but this may generate nothing, but we'll learn a bunch and it'll be fun testing it out. And it does work for some people, a variety of things. So we've had people say, you should be on TikTok. And I'm like, that's not going to happen. That is not for me. So there's things like that that may not be where I spend my time or I feel like I'm authentic or myself doing, but there's a lot of other things that if I get the opportunity, like I said, to talk to people like you, it's just fun in general. So love doing those kinds of things.
Danielle Lewis (17:02):
Yeah, I mean, such a good point. There are so many different ways to grow your business, so many different channels, strategies, avenues, but you do also have to choose the ones that firstly where your customers are, but also that you are going to have the energy to show up for. I feel like especially when TikTok first started and it really was just everyone dancing. I mean, no, thank you so much of
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (17:29):
That. No, no, thank you. No, nor, I mean a lot of people were saying, you should start doing that with your team. And I'm like, I'm just not sure how that ties in with HR at all.
Danielle Lewis (17:44):
And it's, I feel like if somebody is scrolling TikTok and they're wanting to be entertained, do they care about a HR service or do they care about a services based business or do they care? It's kind of pick your audience, pick where your audience
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (18:01):
Is. That's right. That's right. I think we're, and it's not the fun, sexy place to be, but a lot of people I interact with are on LinkedIn. It is founders that are trying to figure out, here's my struggle. Does anyone have any advice or help? And that's where we fit in more so than the dancing. But you know what, the TikTok stuff has really worked for a lot of people and a lot of founders. But you're right, I think it's a little bit industry specific in hr. It's just maybe not that industry.
Danielle Lewis (18:31):
I
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (18:31):
Know, or maybe I'm just not that founder.
Danielle Lewis (18:33):
I know, but I'm like, I'm not mad about it. Not mad about it. I know I can't even, I gave up, I think it was whatever came after Instagram, I think it might've been Snapchat or something. I just went, you know what? I've maxed out on my social platforms.
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (18:49):
Yes. I think too, having kids and seeing them on those platforms primarily, it's like, okay, you're not my target the market. No. Yeah, I never did the Snapchat thing either. Have you done, is that where you stopped Instagram?
Danielle Lewis (19:07):
Yeah. I mean, I have a TikTok account for Spark, and I repost our reels just to kind of have the digital real estate, but it's never going to go viral and be a really big source. It's more just I use it for search. So if someone searches for us, we kind of come up everywhere, but I don't make any content just for the TikTok as a platform, so it's all Instagram focused, and then I just repost what I can to keep it active. Yeah, I think that's a good strategy for sure. Yeah. What do you think is one of the big mistakes people make when it comes to hr? Especially for, so a lot of people that listen to the Spark Podcast are solopreneurs hiring their first employees, taking that leap, very anxious about it. What do you think some of the big mistakes people make? How can we avoid making HR mistakes?
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (20:02):
Yeah, that's a good question. I think one of the first things that we see is founders feeling the need to do it themselves. Not asking for help, whether that be from their investors or their network because for whatever reason seems like something that should be intuitive, like creating an onboarding plan. That shouldn't be hard,
(20:24):
And maybe it's not, but there's a lot of things that maybe haven't been thought out or seen before that we can fairly quickly come in and say, Hey, I've noticed that you haven't included this piece and here's what can happen if we don't, but it's your call, or we can add it next quarter. Let's kind of figure out when to add some of these things. So I think just recognizing that it's not your skillset is really important, and there's nothing wrong with that. There's no ego, or at least there shouldn't be with saying, I don't also do hr. It's okay. I also think a lot of people just don't understand what it is. There's a little bit of a perception that it's kind of old school like personnel. They just kind of make sure people get paid. And while that's an element of it, there's a lot of employee relations work that goes into it. Just having a source of truth for employees or a resource for them to go to if they have questions that might be confidential. But a lot of what we do is just trying to reduce as much risk as possible for founders, and I think if there wasn't that fear of just asking for help, we could get there and help them so much faster and just take that kind of stress away. I would say that that's the biggest thing is just even integrating it all
Danielle Lewis (21:47):
And asking
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (21:47):
For that help.
Danielle Lewis (21:49):
It's interesting too, we talk about HR a lot when we're in the hiring stage. So contracts, finding people onboarding, all of that kind of happy stuff.
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (21:59):
But
Danielle Lewis (21:59):
I guess all of that is, it doesn't always work out. I've had many hire that didn't work out and having those initial things in place to make it easier to move somebody on or to even have support to make sure we move people on in the right way, I think we all want everything to just work perfectly all the time, and that's just not life and that's not business. So also having that support for the bad times is really important as well.
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (22:35):
Yeah, I think there's so many ways that you can set yourself up for future stress if you don't do it correctly at the beginning. So an example of that would be oftentimes the first couple of hires you want to give them the world your first hires, and there's ways to do that that are meaningful but doesn't cause issues later on down the line.
(22:56):
So we see people with very inflated titles comparative to their background or their experience, and at some point you have to adjust for that, and that can cause a lot of stress when you have to tell someone yes. Although on your paperwork it says vp, you only have two years of experience, and so we have to hire someone more senior. So that's just an example of things that we see fairly often with very, very new companies that if we could get in early and just say, okay, let's take a second. Let's try to figure out who you want to hire this year. That's great, but let's figure out what those rules actually are and what those titles should be. We get creative, but let's try to make it so that you're not really upset about some of these titles a year from now, or your investors aren't questioning some of these titles later.
Danielle Lewis (23:48):
Yeah, I love that so much. What do you think has been one of the biggest challenges in your business over the last nine years? I always love to ask this question because I think that, again, we love to talk about the fun, shiny growth stuff, but running a business is really hard.
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (24:10):
Running a business is really hard. So are you asking for me as a founder, or are you asking for me as an industry of hr?
Danielle Lewis (24:17):
You know what? A little bit of both. So has there been a particular challenge in your business as a founder, or has there been a recurring challenge that you see in all of the businesses that you support?
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (24:28):
Yeah, I think based off of some of the things that we talked about a few minutes ago, just how we've had the pandemic and all of these other things, it's been challenging because it's prohibited us from doing a lot of the fun HR work that we really love to do, the headcount planning and the growth and the succession planning and all of those things that get people to the next level and grow a business. A lot of businesses have been in reduction mode or just like, let's hold steady where we are. And so a lot of that work when you're supporting those companies can be really hard laying off lots and lots and lots of people and learning how to furlough people because that wasn't really something that we had seen in tech. We were doing a lot of those things. So I think the hard thing from an industry standpoint and also as a founder was just going through these times where you were reducing, and that can just be just hard, just hard from an emotional place, a stress place, all of those things. And so we were seeing founders across the board. It was just heavy for a while, and I'm starting to see us come out of that a little bit, which I'm thankful for. But yeah, I would say that the last, I don't even know how long, but last chunk of time has just been kind of heavy for founders.
Danielle Lewis (25:56):
Yeah, I would absolutely agree with that. I mean, I was talking to someone this morning, even just about the amount of closures that I've seen
(26:04):
This year has been really, it's just felt like so much more than any other year, whether it's just because it's public knowledge or not, but the exhaustion, the burnout, the heaviness. It's really been a wild adventure and it's nice to know. I think sometimes, I mean, this doesn't help you when you are in it, but sometimes it is nice to know that you're not alone. You are not the only person that this is happening to. There are many people reducing, holding, closing, trying something new, pivoting their business model. I think that the learning always to kind of have the hard conversations and do what you need to do, even though it sucks,
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (26:49):
It sucks. It can really suck. You're right, that's like the best word for it, but it's how can you support the people going through it? I think from a selfish standpoint, some of the heaviness was supporting other people going through it and then hanging up the call and still having that as a founder myself. So making sure that you had enough to give back on all of those calls without feeling totally depleted. So I think that's just anybody's job is trying to make sure that they have that balance. And I learned a lot about balance in the last few years as a founder. It's something I'm trying to focus more on and also advise my other founders on figuring that out as well. But I don't think that's ever perfect. At least I hope it's not perfect for everyone and not just me.
Danielle Lewis (27:42):
No, it's definitely not just you. Don't worry. Has anything worked for you to find a little bit more apart from the wine, which is Una really helps. Yeah, totally. Have there been any strategies that have helped you bring balance to your business?
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (28:01):
Yeah, I think on a personal level, what's brought me balance I think is being really, really open and honest with my core network of people. I think when you're going through this, it's really hard to be the first person to say, I'm struggling with this and this is really hard and I've had a really crappy day. You don't want to be the first, you want to be the first to be second on that. So just getting to a place where I'm like, okay, I'll be the first one. Today was really hard and this whole thing kind of sucks. I do need my girlfriends to come over and we need to have wine and we need to vent about it and figure out how we can help each other. I think once we got to that place with everyone that I was core group of people, then it was really helpful. Then we were holding each other accountable and things that you all knew was going to be helpful, but it's just hard to get there when you're just holding it together. So I think that's been really helpful and I think encouraging my other founders to do the same thing. Sometimes it's teasing out that information, just getting them to say it to me the first time and just recognizing like, see, the world didn't end. You can say it. It was hard today.
Danielle Lewis (29:23):
Totally. There is this wild, and I dunno, I feel like more so today, there's a lot more vulnerability happening on the internet, but I feel like my vintage of founder, so a decade ago, everything had to be perfect. You had to represent is going well to shareholders, board members, team. It's so isolating not saying the words. Yeah, today sucked.
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (29:50):
Yeah, I know. Because I think there's a question, and this is a whole different path we can go down, but I think there's an added pressure to not do that when you're a female founder because we're trying so hard to even show up and have a seat at the table. So then to be the first person to say that can be really hard, and that's why I think you find your female founder friends and have that conversation
Danielle Lewis (30:18):
First. My god. Oh, totally. If you're a female founder, you need to find your female founder community. That's
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (30:24):
Exactly right. That's exactly right. Because they're going through it too.
Danielle Lewis (30:27):
Oh yeah. It's wild that when you do show up and say something first, however it goes, oh yeah, that's happening to me too. Absolutely wild. We are all going
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (30:37):
Through. It's such a freeing feeling though too, to hear them anyone say like, oh yeah, no, me too. And not even just to say like, oh, I did that and here's how I got through it. But just to hear someone's dealing with it at the same time, it's just kind of freeing to know you're not totally crazy
Danielle Lewis (30:56):
Sometimes
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (30:56):
It feels that way.
Danielle Lewis (30:58):
Oh my God, yeah. Being a founder. Absolutely. I love it. I love it so much. We could talk all day, but I always love to wrap up these podcasts with one last piece of advice, reflecting on your time in business, what would be one piece of advice that you would give to another woman on her business journey?
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (31:25):
Gosh, that's a really good question.
Danielle Lewis (31:28):
If you can even narrow it down to one.
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (31:30):
Yeah, that's the question. Can you narrow it down to one? I think just going for it. I think there's so many people, especially female founders that feel like they have to have it so dialed in before they take that first step. And not every step is safe, but a lot of them are. They may just not feel that way. And so I think just do it. Just test it out and have your network to help you to support you. Be authentic and be real and ask people for support and advice and feedback. Feedback can be hard, but feedback and help, and I think if you're able to build that network and just say, you know what? Screw it. I'm going to try it. There's been so much success in just taking that step that a lot of people are just so afraid to do. I guess that would be my advice.
Danielle Lewis (32:22):
I love it. I love it so much. Lisa Marie, you are absolutely incredible. Thank you so much for sharing a wine with me today.
Lisa-Maree Blumenfeld (32:31):
Yes, this is so fun. Danielle, it was so nice meeting you. Thanks for having me on.
✨ Thank you to IP Australia for supporting the SPARK podcast and women in business ✨
