Hey, everyone. It's Dave. Before we get into today's episode, I just want to let everybody know that not only do I give my books away for free, but I pay for shipping. I'll sign it, send it to you. Just go to ship me your book dot com.

Ship me your book dot com. Enjoy my book. Thanks so much on this episode of the playbook. I have Rob McLean founder CEO and director of points international.

And we're going to talk about all the great points that you can have during the pandemic before the pandemic and with loyalty travel programs. Join me for all this and more on the playbook.

This is Entrepreneurs the Playbook. For each week, I bring you some of the greatest athletes, celebrities and entrepreneurs to talk about their personal and professional playbook to success and what made them champions on the field and in the boardroom.

I'm your host, David Meltzer. I have Rob McLean founder CEO and director of points international. And he's going to talk about today what it takes and how much it takes in order to be successful with a public company in today's ever changing environment. Rob, welcome to the playbook.

Great. Thanks, David. Appreciate you having me join with no problem. You know, I think it's so interesting that you have such a big successful company, but, you know, doing research on you, I found out you believe in one thing to create a successful company and that's people.

And understanding how important the people are to your business, regardless of how big it gets, how public it gets, where it goes, you still seem to come back to your greatest resource and asset or your people.

What have you learned through the years of building companies that makes the people so important, especially in these accelerated times of change?

Yeah, it's a great question. You know, I think we think a lot about building a business, which, you know, as a public company, most people expect us to.

But I think we also spend a lot of time thinking about building a company and, you know, when you start up and branch for Norris and live this every day, you know, you start a company from scratch.

You know, there's a lot of good ideas out there, but a lot of it kind of falls flat on its face. If you don't have great people that either share that passion or that kind of attitude and approach.

I just don't think there's any way, you know, to get these great ideas off the ground. So, you know, we spend a lot of time trying to find ways to get great people and keep them, which is not, you know, not an easy task these days as well.

And we're kind of still that, that size where you can almost get your arms around the business. We're 250 to 300 people.

So you still have that luxury of being able to kind of bring in just great people as opposed to, you know, trying to go out and iron and bring, you know, large numbers of people in, you know, and often say we're still at that size where it's hard to hide a bad apple.

Like you just, you know, you can't hide a bad choice. And we make mistakes as well. We try to avoid that as much as possible.

And when, you know, the expense of having a bad apple is exponential to a business no matter how big or small it is.

But understanding and fostering your culture within the context of growing, because you are going quickly and whether you have 100 or 250 goes to 500 and then do a thousand.

You know, what are you looking for in those people when you're recruiting them, when you're interviewing them and when you're onboarding them?

Yeah, you know, I think, but I was trying to keep things simple, you know, in the early days, you're looking for honest smart and hard working. Like I think you can get some combinations of those as corny as that sounds.

It usually works out, you know, you know, for us with business all over the world. So one of the things it's, I always find interesting and it just shines anytime you're looking for individuals are doing interviews.

You know, if there's a passion there and a curiosity there for the business wherein, you know, it's never likely to be a job at that point.

It will, it'll always be a bit of a bit more fun. So, you know, we are always looking for somebody who is a points junkie.

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