Joe Walsh is the Chairman and CEO of Thryv, where he leads a global company serving hundreds of thousands of small businesses. Before Thryv, Joe spent over 20 years as President and CEO of Yellowbook, scaling U.S. revenue from $38M to $2B, and later served as Executive Chairman of Cambium Learning Group, where he took the stock from $0.70 to $14.50 per share. Across his career he has completed 77 acquisitions, launched into 250+ new markets, and expanded companies into 46 countries. In this episode he reveals his frameworks for finding hidden talent inside acquisitions, restructuring executive teams, and building a global culture that survives transformation.

What You'll Learn:

- Why Joe elevates internal talent instead of hiring external CEOs during turnarounds

- The "honeypot of talent" rule for spotting upper-middle managers inside acquired companies

- How to build a "perfect cocktail" of legacy employees and new hires without creating a Tower of Babel

- Why closed-minded employees "self-select" out of transformations (and why that's a feature, not a bug)

- The back-to-back Zoom method: how a CEO stays close to customers with five 25-minute calls in one afternoon

- Why nearshore hiring in the Dominican Republic beats offshore contractors in India or the Philippines

- The President's Achievement Award: how Thryv uses quarterly cash rewards to drive 300% productivity gains

- The "Done 3" core value that shapes every customer interaction at Thryv

Chapters:

00:00 Trailer: Who We Hire Episode 22

01:00 Restructuring Talent in the AI Era

03:00 Building an AI-Native Platform for Small Business

04:29 What Joe Looks For When Investing in Teams

06:16 The Back-to-Back Zoom Customer Method

08:53 Studying at the Feet of the Master: Yellowbook Origins

11:10 The $0.70 to $14.50 Cambium Turnaround

14:26 Restructuring Executive Teams: Elevate From Within

16:07 The "Honeypot of Talent" Acquisition Rule

20:05 How to Get Legacy Employees Bought Into Change

23:03 President's Achievement Award: Rewarding AI Adoption

25:03 Core Values That Live on Your Mouse Pad

27:03 Why 88 Hires in the Dominican Republic Became 788

30:00 Advice for CEOs Hiring Internationally for the First Time

Where to find Joe Walsh:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-walsh-8551a83a/

Website: https://www.thryv.com/

Where to find Luiz Cent:

Website: https://latamcent.com/

Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

Alex Torrenegra is the founder and CEO of Torre.ai, a global job network automating recruitment with real-time, super-intelligent AI. Previously, he bootstrapped Voice123 and Bunny Studio to $100M+ in revenue, holds multiple patents in job marketplace dynamics, and served as an investor on Shark Tank Colombia and Shark Tank Mexico. MIT named him an Innovator Under 35, and the World Economic Forum tapped him as a Young Global Leader. In this episode, he breaks down the 112 hiring factors his team identified, why personality tests barely predict fit, and the flat team structure he's betting his unicorn on.

- Why LinkedIn was never built to solve recruiting, according to a direct conversation Alex had with former CEO Jeff Weiner

- The 112 hiring factors Torre identified by studying thousands of recruiters, and why only 80 are deployed so far

- Why personality traits like Big Five and HEXACO failed as predictors, and what candidates were already doing to make them redundant

- The professional genome concept, where the platform learns from what you apply to and what you ignore

- Why Alex plans to cap his company at roughly 20 people even at unicorn scale, all reporting directly to him

- How Torre replaced traditional squads (designer, QA, tech lead, engineers) with technical product managers who each manage AI

- The data-backed reason mission-driven companies pay lower salaries and still recruit better talent

- Why two AIs negotiating a candidate match takes 2-3 minutes, while Torre's centralized system does it in under 100 nanoseconds

00:00 From Voice123 to the global job network

03:30 Why Torre isn't Latin America focused, despite the arbitrage

05:45 Preventing North Korean impersonation and the reputation solution

09:30 Why LinkedIn was never built for recruiting

14:20 Systematically eliminating interviews with AI screening

18:45 5,000 AI interviews per day and radical transparency in rankings

22:00 The Nasdaq of jobs vision and why AI-to-AI matching fails

26:30 The 112 factors and why personality tests barely predict fit

31:00 Professional culture vs personality: what actually predicts fit

34:00 The 20-person unicorn: flat structure and no board

38:30 Mission-driven hiring and why impact companies attract talent cheaper

Alex Torrenegra:

Website: https://torre.ai/

Website: https://me.torrenegra.com

Twitter: @torrenegra

Email: [email protected]

Where to find Luiz Cent:

Website: https://latamcent.com/

Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

Tyler Vinson is the Co-Founder and CEO of REtokens USA Inc. and REtokens Capital LLC, a FINRA-member broker-dealer and SEC-registered Alternative Trading System building the first real estate–exclusive digital asset marketplace in the United States. He's personally closed over $100M in investment real estate transactions and driven roughly a quarter billion in tokenized real estate volume, all while holding Series 24, 7, and 63 licenses as a #1 best-selling author. In this episode, Tyler breaks down how he went from traditional real estate operator to essentially an investment banker, why he fired and rehired every one of his first licensed hires, and the exact partner-vetting questionnaire that saved him from a near-disaster co-founder deal.

What You'll Learn:

- Why Tyler parted ways with every one of his first licensed hires (Series 24s, compliance officers, FinOps) and what he replaced them with

- The near-miss co-founder story that taught him partnerships are "like a marriage" and the questionnaire he now uses before signing anything

- Why the front-end/back-end complementary split with his 30-year friend became the foundation of REtokens

- The hard rule for hiring in 2026: "You can fill a seat and know AI — we're still not going to hire you"

- Why REtokens is not refilling roles when people turn over, and how AI proficiency became a full tool belt in the last 6 months

- How scaling in tokenization looks less like traditional hiring and more like M&A across ecosystem segments

- The regulatory hiring stack you're forced to build for a FINRA/SEC-licensed company (Series 24s, CCO, FinOp, cybersecurity, SOC 2)

- Why Tyler says "go with your gut" is cliché but non-negotiable and the real cost of a wrong hire beyond salary

Chapters:

00:00 The AI hiring shift that started in early 2026

01:05 From $100M in real estate to $250M tokenized

02:14 Why real estate hiring profiles completely changed

04:32 Do you need a technical co-founder?

06:36 The near-miss partnership Tyler walked away from

08:07 Partnerships are marriages the questionnaire that vets them

10:29 How to actually leverage coaches (and when not to)

12:19 Staying current on roles that didn't exist 3 years ago

14:36 AI proficiency: fewer people, more output

20:14 The regulatory hiring stack nobody prepared him for

24:24 Why he fired and rehired every licensed role

29:31 Scaling through M&A instead of org-chart hiring

32:17 The one hiring lesson for founders in a new category

Where to find Tyler Vinson:

Website: https://retokens.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/realestateinvestment/

Where to find Luiz Cent:

Website: https://latamcent.com/

Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

Douglas Braun is the CEO of eProductivity Software (ePS), a global software company serving thousands of packaging manufacturers across more than 100 countries. A five-time CEO with a 40-year career in enterprise software, Doug has led teams from Stockholm to São Paulo, promoted internal talent into executive seats, and grown the ePS India office from 60 to 170 people in 18 months. In this episode, he shares the exact frameworks he uses when inheriting a team, promoting from within, running acquisitions as mergers of equals, and deploying AI without cutting headcount.

What you'll learn:

- The 90-day rule Doug uses every time he inherits a company (and why "what you did yesterday is what I want you to do tomorrow" buys him time)

- How to tell the difference between an executive who needs coaching versus one who has hit the ceiling

- Why Doug spends 60-70% of his time on the road and three-quarters of that with employees, not customers

- The 24-hour response promise he makes to all 400 employees (and why he's 98% good at it)

- Why every one of his nine executives personally owns customer accounts, including the CFO and Chief Legal Officer

- The "human in the loop" AI hiring philosophy and why AI is not about cutting 20% of staff

- The M&A rule Doug learned from a Fortune 500 CIO: acquisitions are "slow and painful or fast and painful, pick fast"

- Why he took 17 people from an acquired 28-person company and 11 from his own team (and what that signals)

- The 85/15 to 70/30 tactical-to-strategic shift every founder must make at the $10M mark

Chapters:

00:00 Cold open: coaching vs. hitting the ceiling

01:04 Intro and Doug's 5x CEO journey

02:16 Inheriting a team and managing fear and uncertainty

03:53 When a shared vision is impossible

06:22 The 90-day rule for retaining top talent

07:47 Promoting from within: the UK chief product officer story

10:02 Doug's superpower: getting people on board

11:20 The 24-hour employee response promise

15:49 Leading across Sweden, France, India, and Brazil

17:11 "You won't last": the 5th CEO in 10 years

20:19 Sitting in cubes with the India team

23:09 Hiring in the age of AI

26:51 Why every executive owns customer accounts

33:27 The merger-of-equals M&A hiring framework

40:18 Advice for founders scaling 50 to 150

46:32 Where to find Doug

Where to find Douglas A Braun:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/douglasabraun

ePS (eProductivity Software): https://epssw.com/

Where to find Luiz Cent:

Website: https://latamcent.com/

Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

Brian Esposito is the founder of Esposito Intellectual Enterprises and CEO of Diamond Lake Minerals, a public company he grew from a $1 million market cap to nearly half a billion dollars in just three years. With over 25 years of entrepreneurial experience across more than 25 industries, Brian has never worked in the corporate world or had a boss. In this episode, he reveals his framework for identifying the wrong people before they damage your business, why he has an "allergic response" to AI replacing human capital, and how he helps founders avoid losing control of their own companies on the fundraising hamster wheel.

What You'll Learn:

- Why watching how someone treats a waiter instantly reveals if they're an opportunist you should avoid

- The "golden rule" filter Brian uses to identify people who will put your business at risk for materialistic gain

- How to reclaim equity from advisors who aren't performing their duties within 30 days

- Why surrounding yourself with drama-filled people drains your ability to run 25+ companies simultaneously

- The mindset shift from "raising money" to "earning money" that prevents founders from losing control

- Why Brian never tries to replicate himself anymore after wasting years attempting it

- How negativity in your inner circle runs your energy at "ten RPMs" and destroys what you can accomplish

- The specific question Brian asks to identify if someone's god is money: do they brag about materialistic things?

Chapters:

00:00 Episode 18 - Who We Hire: The Framework This 25-Year Entrepreneur Uses to Deploy AI Without Killing Jobs

02:30 Why Watching People Thrive Is More Rewarding Than Building Companies

03:54 Brian's Allergic Response to AI and Human Capital

06:28 Using AI to Enhance Jobs, Not Eliminate Them

08:25 Why Live Entertainment Will Explode as Human Connection Becomes Rare

11:06 Journey: The Platform Fighting Back Against Spotify's Data Hoarding

16:52 Finding the Right People by First Identifying the Wrong Ones

19:59 The Golden Rule Test for Spotting Opportunists

21:42 Why Negativity Is the Fastest Way to Drain Your Tank

24:29 From Nail Polish to Space: Building an Industry-Agnostic Career

29:26 Diamond Lake Minerals: $1M to $500M Market Cap in 3 Years

37:37 Rewiring Founders Away from the Raise Money Hamster Wheel

43:48 Being the Bad Guy Who Makes Advisors Accountable

45:08 Why Brian Stopped Trying to Replicate Himself

Where to find the guest (Brian J Esposito):

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brianj.esposito

Social Media: @BrianJEsposito

Where to find Luiz Cent:

Website: https://latamcent.com/

Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

Pedro Góes is the CEO of Snapdat & Ziplit and founder of InEvent, a Y Combinator-backed (S19) event technology company that has generated over $20M in enterprise sales and serves Fortune 500 clients including Amazon, Coca-Cola, KPMG, and Santander. A 3x "Most Influential in Events" honoree and BizBash 40 Under 40, Pedro has scaled InEvent to 150 full-time staffers with 200-300 people working daily across the globe, and even produced live broadcasts from the International Space Station. In this episode, he breaks down the exact hiring ratios, internship playbook, and role shifts reshaping team composition in the age of AI.

What You'll Learn:

- Why every full-stack developer now requires 3 quality analysts on the InEvent team

- The exact reason project manager roles are being killed and what's replacing them

- How Pedro built an internship pipeline that gets 2,000 applicants in the first week

- Why paying interns $25K to grow into $150K roles beats hiring senior talent cold

- The counterintuitive interview tactic Pedro uses to filter out "hype" candidates

- Why event industry roles are AI-resistant while radiologists and PMs are not

- The 5% RSVP conversion rule for founders throwing their first in-person events

- How to run a dinner strategy using your CRM heatmap instead of hiring an event manager

Chapters:

00:00 The shifting roles in event technology

01:15 Pedro Gois background and building InEvent

02:00 The post-2020 boom and the shift back to in-person events

03:27 Launching Snap Data to solve post-event sales follow-up

05:08 Running massive scale events for the UN and US Presidents

07:35 Global remote hiring and the value of human connection

12:27 Reallocating dev budget: Why AI requires three QA engineers per full-stack dev

13:43 Removing project managers to connect CS directly with engineering

16:15 Achieving 100% pipeline coverage post-tradeshow with instant AI follow-up

28:00 Interviewing for high-responsibility roles and rejecting hype

29:20 Building a global remote internship program that yields company managers

33:20 The founder playbook for running high-ROI customer and prospect dinners

Where to find Pedro:

Pedro Góes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedrogoes

InEvent: https://inevent.com

Snapdat: https://snapdat.ai

Where to find Luiz Cent:

Website: https://latamcent.com/

Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

Sam Mallikarjunan is VP at Pearl, where he's building out an entirely new business unit connecting experts with people who need real help not just AI answers. He previously served as GM at Agent.ai (Dharmesh Shah's AI marketplace that hit 1.5M users), CEO and co-founder of OneScreen.ai, CRO at Flock.com where he helped quintuple revenue, and Head of Growth at HubSpot Labs where he grew monthly recurring revenue 200x and built a community of 160k+ members. He also taught Advanced Digital Marketing at Harvard and served as Faculty Chair for Digital Marketing at USF. In this episode, Sam breaks down his frameworks for org design in the AI era, why laying people off for AI will backfire within 18 months, and how "shared custody agreements" are reshaping career development inside modern teams.

What you'll learn:

- Why standing out in the AI job market is like "applying for a chef's job by making them a meal"

- The exact HubSpot LATAM playbook validate with a generalist first, then hire the specialist

- Why laying off people because of AI will hurt companies in the next 18 months

- The "shared custody agreements" framework for developing careers when org design breaks down

- Why hiring people you've worked with before quietly creates a culture of insiders and outsiders

- How to sell mission over brand when you have zero employer name recognition

- The difference between translation and localization when building international teams

- Why psychological safety matters more right now than hiring "AI-native" talent

- How the only recruiter to crack Sam's AI screener actually did it

Chapters:

00:00 Trailer: Pearl VP: Why Companies Laying People Off For AI Will Regret It In 18 Months

00:39 Meet Sam Mallikarjunan

01:26 The HireMe HubSpot story

02:43 Why every AI-powered applicant looks identical

04:11 Why Sam left AI agents to join Pearl

06:20 Will we have more entrepreneurs than employees?

10:23 Building HubSpot's LATAM team from zero

14:14 Translation vs localization when hiring globally

16:36 The roles Sam refuses to give to AI

19:04 Shared custody agreements: the new org design

26:08 Hiring for adaptability vs deep specialization

30:24 Recruiting without brand recognition

36:11 How one recruiter cracked Sam's AI screener

40:58 Where to find Sam

Where to find the guest:

Sam Mallikarjunan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mallikarjunan/

Sam's website: http://mallikarjunan.com/

Pearl: https://www.pearl.com/

Where to find Luiz Cent:

Website: https://latamcent.com/

Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

Kris Lawson is the co-founder and CEO of Ruby AI, the world's first always-on autonomous sales agent with full context, memory, and multi-agent intelligence built to give every rep an AI edge across the entire sales cycle. Over 20+ years, Kris scaled go-to-market organizations at Oracle, Salesforce, Microsoft, Snowflake, and Vidyard, famously becoming the first Oracle rep ever to lose a deal to Salesforce before being recruited to help build Salesforce Canada from a 4-person Regus office to over 800 people. He later built Snowflake Canada from zero to $35M+ ARR, has personally closed over 1,800 new logos, and is co-founder of Snow Angels, a Snowflake alumni investor syndicate backing data and AI startups. In this episode, he breaks down the hiring profile that wins in the AI era, why founder magic doesn't translate to sales teams, and the "cognitive surrender" trap that's quietly reshaping how buyers evaluate every deal.
What You'll Learn:

- Why coachability is the single most important trait when hiring reps at scale

- The exact reason 9 out of 10 sales academy hires fail when they join startups

- The "PG Savage" hiring profile Kris used to build Snowflake Canada from zero

- Why first-line sales managers should have 12-14 reps, not 6, in the AI era

- The full-stack AE model that compresses SDR, AE, and CSM into one role

- Why quotas should double while base comp stays the same (with more upside)

- How to test candidates for being "AI-pilled" during the interview process

- The founder mistake that quietly kills story fidelity as sales teams grow

Chapters:
00:00 Trailer: The Enterprise Sales Legend on Why LLMs Will Never Stop Hallucinating
02:10 Losing to Salesforce at Oracle and getting recruited
04:09 The hiring profile that built Salesforce Canada
05:37 Why coachability beats pedigree
07:28 Building Snowflake Canada from zero
14:50 The PG Savage profile and why sales academy hires fail 9/10 times
17:41 The three founder mistakes that kill story fidelity
21:38 First call decks and story adherence in deal reviews
26:24 The full-stack AE and the AI-pilled interview test
31:31 Manager span of control: 12-14 reps, not 6
35:20 Doubling quotas while keeping comp flat
38:32 Hallucinations as a feature, not a bug
43:38 The founding team hiring sequence: SDR, then 2 AEs, then player-coach
46:07 Why hyper-personalized content is the new minimum

Where to find Kris:
Kris Lawson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krislawsonland/
Ruby AI: https://heyruby.ai

Where to find Luiz Cent:
Website: https://latamcent.com/
Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

Michael Grinberg is the founder and CEO of the RevOps Shop, a specialized revenue operations firm helping B2B companies optimize their data and CRM infrastructure. Prior to building his own company, he worked his way up through HubSpot for over six years, gaining deep insights into fast-scaling organizations and global talent density. In this episode, he shares why traditional employee templating fails, how to structure dual organizational charts for business outcomes and culture, and his controversial take on why AI agents should never be treated as teammates.

- Why trying to template human behavior in business rarely works and how to adjust expectations to match individual journeys instead

- The highest leverage method for turning employees into high-agency owners by managing outcomes and completely stepping away

- How to design a secondary culture organizational chart using social pods to build a fabric of remote connectivity

- Why you should mandate that entry-level remote hires become the squeaky wheel to extract necessary context from busy executives

- The financial framework for evaluating AI integration by keeping agents strictly in systems budgets rather than people costs

- Why the traditional hiring process is breaking due to fake profiles and how a live screen share test exposes real capability

- Using life adversity and immigration as a core behavioral heuristic to identify unbreakable grit during interviews

Chapters:
00:00 The role of AI agents in the modern workforce
01:10 Introducing Michael Greenberg and the RevOps Shop
03:00 Why grit and overcoming adversity predict candidate success
07:34 Giving your team ownership of outcomes instead of dictating the process
10:20 Lessons from HubSpot on sourcing talent globally
18:25 Creating a two layer org chart for business operations and team culture
20:43 How to onboard entry level talent into a chaotic executive schedule
26:09 Why AI tools belong in your systems budget and not your headcount
34:00 How the immigrant perspective shapes entrepreneurial resilience
40:35 The ultimate live screen share test for vetting remote hires

Where to find Michael Grinberg:
Website: https://www.revops.shop/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sales-and-marketing/

Where to find Luiz Cent:
Website: https://latamcent.com/
Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

Mark Schopmeyer is the co-founder and co-CEO of CaptivateIQ, a modern commission-management platform that scales incentives for revenue teams. Prior to building his own company, he led finance and strategy operations at BrightRoll and worked extensively in growth-equity technology investing. Under his executive leadership, the company has scaled to serve nearly 1,000 customers globally, including enterprise giants like Netflix and Stripe. In this episode, he breaks down the psychological flaws of spreadsheet-driven management and outlines his core framework for spotting elite leadership talent.

- Copied comp plans from larger firms lack authenticity and can easily drive your team in the opposite direction of your actual business objectives.

- Spreadsheet math often misleads finance teams into keeping quotas artificially high due to a false belief that sales reps stop working once they hit their targets.

- Top performing sales representatives are driven by a desire to maximize their paychecks rather than hitting a bare minimum quota.

- When introducing short-term spiffs, leaders must define a clear narrative and exit strategy to avoid the incentive implicitly becoming permanent.

- Cultural screening must be an explicit, dedicated stage in the recruiting funnel rather than a casual addition to tactical manager interviews.

- Skill barriers have collapsed with the rise of artificial intelligence, making a candidate's intrinsic will the primary determinant of hiring success.

- Elite executive hires can be effectively filtered by evaluating just two core qualities during the interview process, clarity and energy.

Timestamps:
00:00 The origin story of CaptivateIQ and broken compensation
4:35 Finding a co-founder and the Y Combinator experience
09:12 Why venture capital will not magically build your company
13:03 The fundamental flaw in copying other companies' compensation plans
17:16 Why finance leaders misunderstand sales rep motivation at quota
23:27 How to design effective short term spiffs without breaking culture
28:07 Designing a strict interview process to protect your core values
32:38 Strategies for maintaining company culture across international borders
36:55 Why AI agents cannot replace the accountability of a human sales rep
41:53 The clarity and energy framework for hiring legendary executives

Where to find Mark Schopmeyer:
Website: https://www.captivateiq.com/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mschop/
Email: [email protected]

Where to find Luiz Cent:
Website: https://latamcent.com/
Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/