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/
