with Bob Baer, Chief Growth Officer at TalentLaunch.
What if a single partnership could open new revenue streams, accelerate your growth, and make your client relationships stronger? That’s exactly what happens when staffing leaders embrace SimpleVMS – the most vendor-friendly VMS on the market. Built to partner with agencies, SimpleVMS helps you scale faster and differentiate your value with clients.
In this milestone 10th episode of Staffing Made Simple, Rob Geist and Casey Wagonfield sit down with Bob Baer, Chief Growth Officer at TalentLaunch. With over 30 years in staffing, Bob has been leveraging the SimpleVMS model for more than a decade across multiple companies – proving it’s not just software, it’s a growth engine.
If you’re ready to move beyond transactional staffing and build something sustainable, scalable, and truly different, this conversation will change how you look at VMS partnerships.
Casey Wagonfield: What if one partnership could unlock new revenue streams, help you scale faster, differentiate yourself with prospects, and make your client relationships stronger? That’s exactly what happens when staffing leaders embrace the power of channel partnerships with SimpleVMS. In this episode, we’re talking with a leader who has leveraged this model for more than a decade across multiple companies, proving it’s not just a tool, it’s a growth engine.
We’re going to dive into how partnerships drive results, why they create a competitive edge, and how the right leadership and culture make them thrive.
If you’ve ever wondered how to move beyond transactional staffing and build something that drives growth and long-term relationships, this conversation’s going to open your eyes.
Rob Geist: Welcome back to Staffing Made Simple. We’re excited. We’ve reached our 10th episode. I want to give a special thanks to all our listeners, and I can’t think of a better guest for number 10 than the one we have today. This is the podcast where we dive into staffing insights you want to hear and lead with actionable takeaways.
I’m Rob Geist, Senior Vice President of Growth at SimpleVMS. As always, Staffing Made Simple is provided by SimpleVMS, the preferred VMS by staffing agencies. Now I know we say that simple is the preferred VMS by agencies every episode in our intro, but today we’re going to have someone on who’s going to give us some validation for that.
While we don’t use this podcast as a commercial for SimpleVMS, our guest today specifically asked to talk about this topic as he’s embraced a partnership with Simple before it was cool. Today, we’re talking about the power of partnering with Simple to differentiate your agency, give you a tool in your back pocket, and add additional revenue streams that strengthen client relationships.
I’m excited for our guest today because it’s someone whom I’ve known for a long time. I consider him a friend, and he was an early adopter of Simple. And, of course, my co-host, Senior Sales Executive at Simple, a slightly better golfer, but not quite as handsome, Casey Wagonfield.
Casey Wagonfield: Just slightly. But you’re creeping up, and it’s kind of annoying how quickly you’ve crept up in your golf game. Thanks, Rob.
Yeah, this episode is special to me. Our guest today has been a mentor and a brother to me for the past 16 years. I wanted to bring him on to talk about leadership and culture – two things I’ve seen him build over the last 15 years, and he’s really mastered that in this industry.
But he himself said: Hey, let’s also talk about how he’s partnered with SimpleVMS to drive growth for his organizations. So, obviously, we were happy to oblige that. With that said, today we have Bob Baer, the Chief Growth Officer at TalentLaunch.
Bob has over 30 years of staffing experience as a sales and executive leader. He was a recent recipient of the Staffing 100 award, which recognizes the 100 most influential leaders in the North American staffing industry.
Bob leads with empathy and humility and is one of the most inspirational and motivational leaders you’ll ever meet. He always puts his people in the best positions to win, but what also stood out was how he used partnerships to grow business in ways a lot of people overlook. We’re diving into how he leveraged this partnership model for more than a decade across multiple agencies and multiple companies.
He’s proof that when you combine strong leadership with the right tools, you don’t just survive in staffing, you thrive. So, with that said, Bob, we’ve come full circle, and welcome to the podcast
Bob Baer: Thanks for having me. Seems like just yesterday I was meeting Rob for the first time and meeting Casey as a young man when he didn’t have a wife or kids. It’s crazy where life’s taken us all.
Casey Wagonfield: Yeah. And truly, I wouldn’t know Rob without knowing you first, right? You’re the one who introduced me to Rob and Jason at Simple, probably a decade ago.
Bob Baer: Yeah, I’m honored to be here. I really believe in the product, and I’m honored to be joining you guys today and consider you both people that I respect and enjoy doing business with.
Casey Wagonfield: And before we dive into partnerships, I did want to touch on leadership and culture, because I feel like that’s something that you’ve always excelled at. You’ve built awesome cultures at every company you’ve been in. So, I want to set the stage with culture.
I’m a big believer, as you know, that culture drives growth. And if you don’t build that culture, you have a revolving door of internal openings and training of new employees all the time. And while compensation does have something to do with it, I think the environment you create for people every day just matters as much.
And working for you for over 16 years, what stood out was the culture you built. What do you think it is about your leadership style that drives that?
Bob Baer: Well, first of all, you didn’t work for me. We worked together. But I think for me it goes back to Cleve Campbell, who was the COO of Belcan Corporation.
And when I first met him in 2008, he said to me, “If you can win their heart, the rest is easy.” And I think I’ve always followed that. We’ve all worked for great bosses. We’ve all had horrible bosses. I don’t like the word boss at all. I think, again, we’re business partners on a journey to hopefully accomplish the same thing.
For some people, that journey isn’t what excites them anymore, and so they may leave your organization. I don’t think there’s any reason that you can’t still have good friendships with people who aren’t part of your organization. And I think along the way, you have people you’ve worked with that show you great ways and things that you want to add to your toolkit.
And I’ve just always been somebody who believed if you really live by a relationship being a giver first and then a taker, things will work out, and I’ll be the first to say that hasn’t always been the way that I thought. As you get older, you get wiser, and you get a lot of experiences along the way.
Rob Geist: Yeah, maturity definitely has a lot to do with it. It’s funny. You say: I don’t like to be called someone’s boss. We’ll hire someone new, and they’ll come in like, “Hey, boss, what can I do for you? And I’m like, “Don’t call me boss.”
Bob Baer: Exactly. I’m with you on that, Rob. I hate that word because, again, at the end of the day, we all report to somebody.
And so, again, we’re just partners along the way, and Cleve Campbell set the stage for me, and I think that was probably the first person who really showed me what true, genuine leadership was all about.
Rob Geist: So, an ASA report a couple of years ago said the average tenure for internal staff at staffing agencies is 18 months. What do you think leaders in staffing have to do better to create longer tenure and to build champions within their organizations? And what does company culture mean to you, and what kind of culture gets people to save up?
Bob Baer: I think you’ve got to meet them where they’re at. First, you’ve got to show up for them. I think some people used to say the adage, “Don’t ask anybody anything to do that you won’t do or you haven’t done twice.”
But, I think, as you get to be my age, you now have multiple generations inside your organization, and that somebody that’s 22 years old in their first job may be different than somebody that’s my age at the back end of their career.
But I think at the end of the day, it all starts with understanding what’s important to them. Casey, you mentioned compensation earlier. There will be some people who think that is the only thing that matters. They may not be the best fit for organizations that I’m in because I may want people or do want people that care about the communities that they’re working in, care about the people that sit beside them. You’ll want to show them a career path.
You know, something I was super proud of in my last organization was that we had about seven and a half years of average tenure in our key roles. And even some of those people have now followed me to TalentLaunch. So, you know, those are the things that I think you can’t put in a textbook.
It really shows that you did something right if they want to come join you on your next journey, and it’s something I’m super proud of.
Casey Wagonfield: I think, when you talk about leadership, the culture starts with leadership. You always hear that people don’t leave companies; they leave bad bosses.
Bob Baer: Yeah, and there may be some people who wanted a more metric-driven organization. And that probably wasn’t who I was at points in my career.
And again, I say that’s okay. They may find that somewhere else, but we can still leave and shake hands. I think about Casey, yours and my partnership, as we were acquired, and wanting you to stay with me and figure out what it was. And you wanted to go on this journey to SimpleVMS, so we embraced that, and I was super excited for you. And you believe so much in the product that you wanted to go take the next part of your career at SimpleVMS.
And then, when you were able to bring SimpleVMS into my new organization, our partnership is back in line, and I’m working with you and Rob again. So, it’s all come full circle, which is super exciting.
Rob Geist: So, to the topic at hand, Bob, the partnership that you’ve had with us here at Simple – and I know Casey has a ton to do with that – but I’ve known you for about a decade, and you were an early adopter in partnering with SimpleVMS as a channel partner across several companies.
If you go back, what first made you lean into the model of partnering with a VMS?
Bob Baer: It was really two things. I think one: we were starting to see it more in the marketplace. If you remember, Rob, our first introduction was actually on a Friday afternoon at a prospective customer. And when we arrived, we had no idea that you and Jason were going to be there.
And I remember my colleague saying to the customer, “Well, do you want to have people, or do you want to have this tool? And I looked at him funny and said, “Well, why can’t we have both?”
And so, after we got through that first initial shock of what we thought it was going to be, we got back to the office, and I will say that it was probably another six to nine months after that when I was moving into more of a take control of the ship type of role that I thought, “You know what? We can really lean into this and turn this into an economic driver for us.” And that’s because we were hearing more and more companies of scale going that route.
But I think where it really got deep was about two years in, not just working with Simple, but also with some of the other tools in the marketplace. We were really struggling, not only on the front-office side but also on the back-office – everything from getting the person placed to making sure the invoice was correct and all of that.
And we had a whole bunch of write-offs, over six figures. And I called you and said, “Can you come help us?” And I’ll never forget it. You and your entire back-office team came over to my headquarters on a Friday and met with all of my back-office team to help us understand not only how to use your product and get it right, but also any products in the marketplace, which again showed the true partnership that you had.
And the following year, we had no write-offs and continued on that path. And then, we moved a person into VMS reconciliation and had a person who ran that from the field level. And again, we really invested in and embraced it and found that it was a way to drive economic growth for our organization.
Casey Wagonfield: And Bob, I always tell stories about my experiences being a channel partner before I came to SimpleVMS. And I always referred to the light bulb moment where we pulled all of our employees out, and then two weeks later, a competitor introduced them to SimpleVMS.
Maybe you can elaborate on that a little bit?
Bob Baer: Yeah, there are different ways that you can partner with SimpleVMS, and I think initially we were only thinking of the direct business we wanted to do with SimpleVMS.
But there were other situations where we thought, “Hey, while we have 25 or 30 offices, we’re only in 11 states. And some of our customers have 400 locations. If we could figure out a way to make money off those deals in markets we didn’t want to go into, this could be a win for everybody.”
This is really where the SimpleVMS channel partnership arrangement, or what we like to call mailbox money, came into play. And I think the other thing that we did well early on was we just weren’t an organization that told our people to try to go sell that.
We split that money with our field operations. So, if we got a dollar, 50% of that went to corporate, 50% went to the field office or people who were involved in bringing that deal to the table. And our relationship got so good, if you remember, Casey, with Rob and Jason, we would let them go to meetings with our customers where we didn’t even go to the meeting.
That’s how much we trusted these guys, because we knew they weren’t going to do anything, because if they did, it was upsetting their Apple card as much as going to do ours. There were a couple of prospects, I think one up in Michigan, Rob, that you guys went up to and met without us even there.
And I think that doesn’t happen without the true relationship that all of us built together on this journey.
Casey Wagonfield: Maybe you could talk about that too—just how easy it was to hand it over to them. Another scenario I always like to bring up, because it’s such a good example for anyone on the fence about becoming a channel partner, is when we were working with a very large company, but only supporting them with a small headcount. Obviously, their needs were much bigger than what we could fill, so we made that introduction to Rob. Maybe you can talk about that scenario.
Bob Baer: It was you and I, and a young lady; we flew in from Alabama, sitting over in Indianapolis. And he was showing us this map on the wall, and he left the room. And Casey and I looked at each other like, “This is perfect for SimpleVMS!” And we’re starting to count the mailbox money in our seats there.
But it was a perfect example of where I don’t think we filled more than 10 job orders after we left that day, but it became one of our biggest revenue streams because of all the business they were doing there.
And then I think of another situation – it wasn’t you or me driving it, but our leader in Louisville. They had a customer, like a lot of the big spenders, who was evaluating their options. They had actually tried another VMS that failed awfully, because they wanted to go the VMS/MSP route. And we said we have one that’ll allow your agencies to keep their direct partnerships with you.
And then we introduced them, and they implemented it in California, Texas, and Wisconsin. And although we didn’t want to do business in those states, at the time, we were collecting that mailbox money for all the other business that was being done by our competitors.
So again, we viewed SimpleVMS the same way as a top 10 customer we were doing business with, so let’s keep building that relationship.
Rob Geist: Bob, you’ve always been a forward thinker, and this kind of goes into that same thing.
A lot of staffing agencies hear VMS, and they think, “Oh man, it’s going to create more work. It’s going to put distance between us and our client.” And you’ve proven the opposite. How do you explain that to leaders who are skeptical?
Bob Baer: Well, I think there may be VMSs out there that do that.
I know that our relationship with you and your organization allowed us to keep our direct relationship with the customer. As I said earlier, when we were having issues, I wasn’t calling some 800 number where people were nowhere to be found. It was you guys. I may have even shut your office down that day when you brought your team over to my office to make sure we could figure out how to be great.
And I think about what we do as an organization; we serve our customers. It was the same thing being done here. So, again, I’ll view it as no different than if it’s a top 10 customer that you’re trying to keep happy. That’s how we looked at SimpleVMS. And Rob, you guys both know, soon after I started this job here at TalentLaunch, one of the first things I did was invite you and Casey to a meeting with not only all our field leaders, but our executive leadership team as well, to start our partnership.
And we’ve now closed one deal so far. And it was a deal that TalentLaunch had lost to a big national competitor two years ago on a straight pricing deal, but they weren’t getting the service or the solution. And Casey and our leader pitched that to them, and I think we started probably six or eight weeks ago going live.
So, again, it’s not something I just talked about in my past. We’re already live and rock and roll with SimpleVMS here at TalentLaunch as well.
Casey Wagonfield: Yeah, you make a good point about how people have just had bad experiences. And I think I can say that personally, going back from when I first started with you, there were a lot of VMSs used where, if you had an issue, you had to read a 10-page manual on how to fix it, or you didn’t get that support.
And it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. So, when you do work with a company like Simple and they have a support line and people there to help you, and a marketing team to help with co-branding, it’s just a different experience.
Bob Baer: Yeah. Again, there could be other VMSs out there that are phenomenal and do similar things.
I just haven’t found them yet. With some of them, you’re just using the system for processing people through it, processing payroll. Also, talk about forward thinking. I haven’t found many people in your seats who are using people like me to help sell your product.
You guys have found a way for people to monetize that and for it to really be a win-win for everybody. And it’s in everybody’s best interest to make sure that the customer is serviced, whether that’s you putting the people there or finding somebody like you that can do that, because ultimately you want to keep that business in the portfolio.
Casey Wagonfield: Do you have any real examples where SimpleVMS helped you win, whether it was keeping a client, scaling a program, or making operations easier?
Bob Baer: I think I’ve talked about that from the situation of having Rob and the group go up to Michigan and pitch a deal, as well as Rob and the team coming over and helping us solve those back-office issues.
But the most recent one is a deal in Kansas City, where again, TalentLaunch had lost that business a couple of years before I was here, and we thought, “Boom, boom, we’ve got an idea that’s going to work.” We pitched the idea (Simple), and now they’re in our portfolio.
So, the partnership works if people lean into it for sure.
Rob Geist: It can just be a door opener. They might not pick Simple at the end of the day, and we’re okay with that. We want to help you open doors for you guys just as much as we want doors to be open for us. So, I think that’s just part of a good partnership.
Bob Baer: There were also a couple of times when maybe customers weren’t the right fit for us anymore. I think of one that we went and met with in North Carolina that was moving their operation to Georgia, and at the time, we didn’t have an interest in going to Georgia, but we wanted to keep something from that business.
And that was a way to introduce SimpleVMS into that portfolio and still make some mailbox money from it without completely going away. So, you were able to not just say no to the customer, but, instead, introduce a different solution to them. And again, it worked, and you know, in our minds we thought, “Well, if we ever end up in Georgia, now we can go service that customer again.”
So, again, the other one I think about was the big one in Louisville with operations in Wisconsin and California. Now, today I’m in California, so I could service that business, but back then I couldn’t do that. So, I think that’s no different than when you’re servicing some global 50 company.
You want to find every answer? What’s any different here? You’re just doing it with a partnership at SimpleVMS. And Casey, you’ll remember we had SimpleVMS’s information in our sales literature and on our website. We’ve now added Simple to our sales literature here at TalentLaunch, but not to our website yet. But that may be coming soon.
Casey Wagonfield: Yeah, and I think we would use it, when we were working together, as a prospecting tool to help us get our foot in the door. I can recall a client who, before they became a client, we were meeting with them in Franklin, Ohio, and we mentioned SimpleVMS, and they decided they wanted an introduction.
I introduced them to Rob. They’re still a SimpleVMS client today, but we made the introduction to SimpleVMS before we even got 10 signed for a contract to work with them. And that might’ve been the reason they decided to work with us, because we provided a solution that solved a lot of their problems with multiple agencies.
Bob Baer: You can either sell on price, or you can find solutions. It’s as simple as that. This business has gotten so monetized, and margins are shrinking every day. It’s better to find different revenue streams. And now at TalentLaunch, SimpleVMS is just another revenue stream for us, and that’s how we viewed it, and we got strategic about it.
Rob Geist: And Bob, what do you see as the biggest competitive advantage for a staffing agency like the ones you’ve worked for to embrace a channel partnership model with us?
Bob Baer: I think a year or so ago, SIA came out and said that companies that spend 5 million or more on temp labor, about 70% of them are using either A VMS, an MSP, or a combination of both. It isn’t going away. Technology is just continuing to come into our lives. For old guys like me, you know, I’m trying to figure that all out, and I think it’s something that if you embrace it, you’ll continue to embrace everything that’s coming behind it.
And it’s like anything else. You can whine about this or think things are a little bit harder. We just never viewed it that way. Some integrations came along and continue to make it easier for recruiters. Sometimes you have to perform an extra click or two, but even if you have to do that, it’s better than not having the business or not making the introduction.
So, I just can’t say enough that you guys are some of the easiest people to do business with, some of the best human beings I know in my life. I don’t want all my competitors to come to you guys because we’d still like it to be a nice advantage for us.
But, at the end of the day, there’s probably nobody easier to do business with than you guys. And so much so that, in my past life, we tried to invest in your organization. That’s how much we believed in it.
Casey Wagonfield: And Bob, you’ve worked with a lot of VMS tools. What do you think it is that drives people to SimpleVMS – other than us being really cool? Why do you personally think we’re seen as the best VMS tool for clients, and the best tool for agencies to partner with?
Bob Baer: In a lot of cases, you feel like you lose the relationship, or there may be something in the contract that talks about how you can’t contact your customer directly.
I think the other thing that was always nice was the way you had different options for payment. It can either go through Simple, or it can go directly to the customer. There were just so many customizable solutions.
The biggest part was keeping the relationship and the trust. And trust is so hard to get and so easy to lose. And it’s also consistency. Rob, you, and Jason have been there since day one. A lot of the same people are there. We talked early on in this conversation about leadership. It shows something about you guys, too, that you’re still doing this and growing your business in a space that’s gotten more competitive.
But you’re still doing it and doing it well. So, you’ve got to be really proud of what you guys are doing here.
Casey Wagonfield: And for staffing leaders – you’ve been a leader in staffing for awhile now – if they’re on the fence about partnering with SimpleVMS, what would your advice be to them? How should they be thinking about this?
Bob Baer: In any relationship, nothing ever goes perfectly. I’m a big believer in being a giver, not a taker, but I think that, in this situation, you can be a giver and a taker.
It just depends on what your customer wants. If they want your people, you can help them with people. If you want to be a giver and you don’t want to do that business, help somebody else get some of those job orders, but you can still make some money on the backend.
And I think, if people just view it as a true revenue stream, they’ll find a lot of success. I know you guys have continued to add to your vendor pool and people who are your channel partners. I just don’t see any reason why somebody wouldn’t do it, especially if they’re looking for a good solution that’s got time clocks built in, great reporting, and ways for people to see something in real time. And, again, it’s just an incredible organization to work with, filled with people who are really ethical.
Rob Geist: And, tying this back to leadership, Bob, how does the culture you build inside your team impact the way you approach partnerships like this?
Bob Baer: If you want to do business with people you trust, you want to hire people you trust.
When I brought up the idea of bringing in you guys, TalentLaunch didn’t have a partnership with you guys prior. They did some work with you in a few of their brands, but there was never a channel partner agreement. And now I think Casey is meeting with all my field leaders on a very regular basis, and they’re bringing ideas to him.
I see emails flying back and forth that I’m not even part of anymore. So, I think very quickly, SimpleVMS has earned the trust of this organization, and it’s really cool to see how fast that’s happened.
Casey Wagonfield: Yeah, I think the cultures you’ve built play a big role too—people buy into it. They see real examples of where you’ve had success before. Even if it’s something they haven’t considered, once they meet with your team, they’re bought in on the tool. In fact, we’ve already closed a TalentLaunch client.
So, it all starts from the top. And people like you have to show that buy-in to your leaders, and it just trickles down from there. But you’ve always been a great person to do that.
Bob Baer: Well, I think to that point is, I showed them an opportunity, and then they had to decide whether they believed in it or not.
I wasn’t going to all those meetings. And it’s neat for me when I see that you set up a meeting with one of our customers, and I’m getting feedback after the fact. I don’t need to know about all that stuff because now those people are taking the reins.
And that’s how we continue to build multiple ways to have customers. I can’t be involved with every customer. But if you have multiple people believing in the opportunity here, they see the opportunity, and they now see that it’s helping us get some deals across the finish line.
And I still say, to this day, I’d rather present SimpleVMS than to get VMS’d by a competitor and pay a lot more in fees and not get that support from the company.
Rob Geist: How important do you think it is for agencies to have a partner like Simple in their back pocket, because those conversations are inevitably going to come up with clients?
Bob Baer: I think it’s about who the agency is and who they are targeting as customers. If they’re targeting all retail, 1, 2, 3-person operations, maybe it doesn’t make so much sense for them.
But for anybody who wants to scale and chase deals of any size, I think it’s imperative that you have a good partner, because, you said it perfectly, it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when somebody is going to bring in some sort of tool. And it might as well be your tool that not only are you filling jobs, but you’re making money on the back end.
To me, that’s a win-win, and that’s how you make more money.
Rob Geist: Casey and I always say that too. This isn’t a fit for every one of your clients. You just use it for the ones that it’s right for. And, as I always say, have a tool in your Swiss Army knife that you need as a salesperson. I’m a firm believer in that in any sales role.
Casey Wagonfield: And we try to make it easy on our agency partners, too. We don’t expect anybody to go out and sell SimpleVMS. It’s just what kind of clients have those pain points that they could use a VMS, and then we come in and do the selling.
Bob Baer: You know, I may know a little bit more than the average person. Again, I probably couldn’t use the tool, but I know a lot about the tool. But I think it is, again, trust in the partnership. If I were sitting in somebody else’s shoes, I would make sure that I had a relationship with you or somebody like you that you can trust and want to do business with for the next 10 or 15 years.
Rob Geist: Bob, we appreciate your partnership. And thank you for coming in today. To close things up, if you had to boil it all down to one thing for staffing leaders and what they should take away from this conversation, what would it be?
Bob Baer: You get what you give. And for us, it started as something that we weren’t sure about. But we leaned into it, and here we sit 10-plus years later with a better relationship than we had yesterday. And, hopefully, one that’s going to be much stronger tomorrow.
And if somebody really wants to know how they can take VMS and turn it into an advantage for them, and have a lot of fun doing it, I would tell a leader to look at the product, look at the program, and get to know you guys. I think they’re going to enjoy the ride.
Casey Wagonfield: That wraps up another episode of Staffing Made Simple. We hope this conversation gave you some real insight into how partnering with us can get you to the table with more prospects, strengthen and grow relationships with your current clients, and add additional revenue streams through our revenue share programs.
VMS is only becoming more prevalent. So, partner with a tool that has your best interest at heart, as well as support and a model for growth.
Rob Geist: And to learn more about our channel partner program, reach out to us on LinkedIn or at simplevms.com. And if you enjoyed the episode, please like, subscribe, share, tell a friend, and join Staffing Made Simple on LinkedIn.
Until next time, keep it simple.
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