Young and Profiting with Hala Taha (Entrepreneurship, Sales, Marketing) · Hala Taha | Entrepreneurship, Sales, Marketing | YAP Media Network

Mike Seckler: How to Build a Business That Thrives When Others Fail | Entrepreneurship | E384

·1 hr 4 min·4 clips

Mike says his company felt weakest when there was only upside in front of them and strongest after surviving the dot-com crash.

1. Young and Profiting with Hala Taha features JustWorks CEO Mike Seckler on entrepreneurship, resilience, and building a business that lasts. 2. Hala Taha hosts the episode, and Mike Seckler is the guest because he leads JustWorks and has lived through the dot-com crash, pivots, and hypergrowth. 3. The episode asks how an entrepreneur can build a company that survives downturns, keeps customers close, and adapts without drama. 4. Mike says he studied geology and history, got disenchanted with the sciences, and used Excel and quantitative analysis to land his first job after college. 5. He says a liberal arts education helped him communicate, write, and work through complex problems, even though it did not teach software-company operations. 6. Mike and his co-founder graduated from college in 1994, when they were using the internet but many workplaces still were not using email. 7. He says that contrast made them feel like they were operating in the future and pushed them to rethink employee experience through the internet. 8. The first company, Employees, was built for 10 years and was acquired by ADP in 2006 after a partnership outperformed expectations. 9. Mike says he stayed on to help run the business, manage the migration of legacy customers, and protect the people who were nervous about the acquisition. 10. He says that legacy later lived on in ADP's Workforce Now platform, which he describes as the largest part of ADP. 11. Mike describes the dot-com boom as a period when the company was rewarded for evangelism, fast movement, capital raises, and hiring. 12. He says the world changed almost overnight, capital disappeared, and the company had to reduce headcount by about a third and accept dilutive financing to survive. 13. He says the hardest lesson was that 1999 felt like the top of the world while 2003 felt like walking through mud, even though the surviving company was eventually the last one standing. 14. Mike compares today's AI cycle to earlier technology cycles and says some companies will raise too much money and disappear. 15. He says the advice is to lean into change and not hold too tightly to old ways, because jobs will disappear and new ones will be created. 16. He recalls Anne Winblad explaining that successful entrepreneurs must take a clear vision, discover it is partly wrong, and repeat that process 10 to 15 times. 17. Mike says he and John Alberg labeled that lesson intellectual stamina, and he applies it to pivoting quickly without a lot of drama. 18. He describes a four-box framework for decisions, where the right move is often the one that preserves the company if the world gets worse. 19. The interview is conversational and reflective, with Hala pressing on leadership, boards, customer loyalty, and founder support systems while Mike answers with specific examples from Employees, ADP, and JustWorks. 20. People who build companies through uncertainty and customer-facing leadership will get the most from this episode, while listeners wanting a light, entertainment-first chat may skip it.

As heard by us

A clear boardroom discussion about governance, oversight, and the tough calls that shape a company.

Mike Seckler and Hala Taha spend the episode on boards, governance, and why outside voices can matter when a company is making hard calls. The discussion stays practical.

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Why you'd press play

When you want the board conversation that makes big-company decisions feel less vague, less fragile, and more survivable today.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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