Black Swan
Happy Sunday!
This week, we dodged a “black swan” event. I’ve known since my bank management course in college that rising rates can cause pain for banks, but I didn’t anticipate that this might cause the 8th largest bank in the US to collapse in under 48 hours.
Fortunately, Bullpen has no financial exposure to the collapse of SVB. However, we use Rippling for payroll and Bubble for our web app, and both products have (or had?) exposure to the bank (Rippling more so than Bubble). As it stands, I don’t anticipate the shockwaves will impact our business, but I’m keeping a pulse on it.
Despite dodging the bullet, this is a massive wake-up call to business owners (including me). Treasury bills and money market accounts earn interest and insulate from bank-related black swan events. I never thought I needed to think about “treasury” at a business of our size, but I do.
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This week at Bullpen …
We launched our 2022 CRE contract talent pricing report! Last year, this generated several hundred leads, but we received feedback that the data we presented wasn’t granular enough. This year, we’ve created box and whisker charts that show the hourly rate range that folks in real estate earn when they work as a contractor. You can download it here.
We completed our first webinar of 2022. The turnout was stellar - more than 200 sign-ups and ~70 folks who stayed for the whole discussion.
I had several conversations with people in our talent network which gave me a TON of ideas as to how we can make Bullpen better. Everything from the language we use to describe engagements to how we can better curate our network.
Lastly, I contacted a few companies that exclusively do W2 recruiting in CRE to discuss partnerships. As you can see from my list this week - we’re spending a lot of time talking to customers and exploring different growth channels.
So many books …
My wife knows that I love a good business book. While she reads about psychology and raising kids, I nerd out on founder stories and business-building advice.
Over the past couple of weeks, four new books have landed on my desk that I’m really excited about:
Breaking Through: Leadership Disciplines from Top Performing Staffing Firms by Mike Cleland and Bary Asin. Max from my team brought this book to my attention a few weeks ago. I never set out to build a small business, and I’m looking forward to reading about how staffing businesses get big.
Shoe Dog by Phil Knight. As I shared last week, a buddy sent me this book and said I’d really enjoy it. So far, he’s right.
Hangry: A Startup Journey by Mike Evans. Joe from my team keeps referencing chapter 6 of this book and threatened to buy it for me if I didn’t buy it myself. I need to keep Joe happy, so I bought it.
Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson. There is a non-zero probability that I will start an artisan bread operation at some point in my lifetime. Until then, breadmaking is a good way to exert some creative energy.
That’s all for this week!
✌️📤
Tyler
Founder @ Bullpen