$720K in Q1, Zero Cold Calls — Nick Poloni's AI-Powered Recruiting Desk

I've spent years talking to big billers, and the thing that usually sets them apart is judgment. The gut feeling they bring to a moment of truth in a deal. The question that surfaces the real objection, the reframe that regains control of a stalling process. The move they make when a candidate goes quiet. Normally, that kind of instinct comes from years on the desk, and when you're running 15 live processes at once, you don't have time to engineer that level of thinking into every moment. So too much is left to chance. Until now, Milly analyzes every detail of your live deals and builds the exact strategy you need, powered by a curated knowledge base from elite recruiters. It's encoded intuition. The judgment and gut feel of big billers translated into real-time guidance you can use for every single process. Before every call, you get sharp contextual preparation, so you can lead from the first minute. In your inbox, high caliber emails are already drafted. Testing commitment, checking fit, keeping momentum. Users save an hour a day on email alone and the way they control calls changes completely. If you've been looking for that AI edge that every top biller is using, try Milly for free today. Coming up on this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast. Offers people in your space so much value that regardless if they like you or not, it is a no-brainer that they need to use you. Because you offer too much value, and that value is not just sending a candidate, but it's advising clients, how should you hire, what's the market looking like, what are your competitors doing? You've qualified for the Pinnacle Society by March of this year. Zero code calls. I got access to the FRU doing. Welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with your host Benjamin Menna, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership, and placements. You know, the resume never tells the full story. Candidates share what really matters during conversations on calls and interviews over email. Their motivations, salary expectations, plans to relocate. Most of that detail ends up buried in notes and forgotten. Atlas changes that. It's the AI First Recruitment Platform built to eliminate admin. It captures every conversation automatically and turns it into something you can use. With Magic Search, you can ask Atlas questions like, who talked about wanting a four day week? Or who mentioned they're open to relocating next year? It searches across your entire database and pulls the answers instantly. No keyword guessing and no digging through old notes. You get insight from real conversations, not limited resume fields. Atlas also makes BD easier. With opportunities, you can track and grow client relationships powered by generative AI and built into your existing workflow. If you want visibility, where you smart dashboards give you a clear view of the pipeline across your business. And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported over 40% EBITDA growth and over 80% increase in monthly buildings after adopting the platform. It's built for agencies that want to grow without adding more manual work. Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive listener offer at RecruitWithAtlas.com. Before we get started with this episode, if you have not tried Penn before and want to try it, I have a discount code for you. Either check the show notes for a special link and a discount code or hit me up on LinkedIn and I can get you that code in legal so. And don't forget to register for the AI Recruiting Summit kicking off in July. You do not want to miss this. I'm excited about this episode today because I have a special guest with me. We're talking about not just a million dollar a year. We're talking about 720K already for this quarter and the quarter is not done yet. This is what the year is looking like and here's the crazy thing. He's only using three tools. Penn, an ATS, and a notetaker. And on top of that, he hasn't done a single thing of cold call, no outbound cold calls, no outbound LinkedIn DMs, and the thing that I'm excited about digging into, he's actually been in the business since he was a baby. So we're going to talk about what he's doing and how he's mirrored this, the old school, everything that worked for the greatest recruiters out there. And mirroring it with what we've been talking about the potential of what is possible by an AI power grater to be hitting 720K already at the time of this recording with a quarter and not being done yet with three tools and an insane work ethic. So Nick, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. Real quick, quick 30 second self-introduction. Okay, 30 second introduction. Nick Polone, I was, have been in the business since a baby, not literally working. My parents started an agency many years ago. I jumped in when I was pretty miserable in corporate America about seven or eight or nine years ago. I don't know, time's length. It's just blur, but about nine years ago. And the way I like to frame myself to people is I have the old school foundation of really good recruitment. And then you infuse that with what's happening now in the modern world AI. Combine the two together and that's where I am. I work all in the pharmaceutical biotech space, mostly on the commercial side. I do a little bit of clinical. I learn a lot, and it's a lot of fun. Okay, so I got to ask three tools, pin, a note taker, an ATS. Yes, you're like literally looking at 720k, which is like, you've qualified for the pinnacle of society by March of this year. Yeah, zero cold calls. I got to ask, what the F are you doing? Man, so loaded question, right? I think it's and I hate talking about myself, but for me, it's about number one, it's about the reputation within the industry. And from a networking standpoint, like my LinkedIn is my jam, and I utilize the hell out of that as much as it frustrates me. That is the ability where I can network on my couch 24 seven. And traditionally, it was like go to a networking event. And although those are great, your reach is relatively limited. And specific to that, the thought process I have with that in recruiting as a whole is offers people in your space so much value that regardless if they like you or not, it is an O-brainer that they need to use you because you offer too much value. And that value is not just sending a candidate, but it's advising clients, how should you hire? What's the market looking like? What are your competitors doing? And I don't say it, oh, here's what your competitors are doing, but I offer that value unsolicited that they ask more questions and those questions lead to you answering and adding more value. And I think that's number one, number two, I'm just real and straight up with people. And 99% of the people, it's what they're thinking, and they may not say it, and they appreciate it. And then there's sure 1% that don't like it. And if that's the case, I'd rather make 99% of the people happy and 1% not. And so that's kind of my little, I guess, initial secret for success. But it's also, I have a pretty hard work ethic, I don't stop working. My Kobe Bryant is my idol growing up, that guy didn't stop working. I call it the mom of mentality. I don't know, nobody will work harder than I do. All right, we're gonna, we're gonna dig in it at. But let's take a step back before we're like really talking about how you've developed this machine. Like your mom was a pinnacle of society member for a long time. Yeah, she was one of the best recruiters in the space. What was it like growing up in that house? I was always complaining, she was on the phone. And it was always weird. I remember we were in the car and it was like, oh, call us coming through. And it was like, all right, shut up. And I'm here in the back seat, you're in this sucks. I hate this. And like normally I'm not talking in the car, but now we have to be quiet. And that sucks. And she was, I mean, she worked a lot. And that's part of our job too, is like even though you're not in front of your desk, you get a call from somebody. And that's the other thing too. I'm always early available. People can text me, people can call me the longest, so half the weight is maybe an hour. And she had the same thought process in mindset. And I think that's where I adopted that from is that growing up as a kid, there was not a moment in time where either she's taking a call and walking off somewhere or we're in the car and it's time to be quiet. And she had a lot of really good old school recruitment principles such as the availability aspect, such as the, and I would just hear conversations over and over and over and over and over again in the car. Because it was on Bluetooth. I've like, talking to candidates. And the reality is, like there's so many different scenarios of recruitment that it's like, I always find it's like talking it through with another recruiter. And that's how we're all able to relate is like, here's what I would do in that situation. And there's never like a guaranteed, this is the right answer because there's never a right answer with personalism people. But it was like, I would hear so many conversations over and over. And then she had her desk on the back of the house. And it was just like when the door shut and she was locked in, do not go in there. And it was like that when I was a kid. And then my dad had shared with me who's since past when I was a baby in a bassinet, like I was apparently in the office on the floor in a bassinet, rocking back and forth. Don't remember those times, but it was, I guess I could say like, yeah, grew up in the work literally in recruiting. So you actually also worked for the company while you were in high school doing data management. And sucked. You told me you needed it. And you're like, because of that, like you did not want to ever touch recruiting a beer recruiter like deal with anything you recruit it. And what happened to like when you went from like, I'd rather die than do this. Yeah. To coming back to the firm in 2017. Oh man. So background context, I was doing data input into PCR at the time. That's where servers were located on the premise of the office. And you had to be there to do it and it sucked. I mean, it was the worst. And I'm like this now with our database, but it's like everything had to be proper. Capitalize first name, spacing, numbers all looking the same. So I was just like just focused on making sure all of that was done, but it was just never ending. It was like 95,000 records. You do one. You feel like you're making progress, but then an entire office is putting data into it. And it's like you can't keep up. And I was honestly like 0% chance to do it. This sucks. I hate this. I think it was my parents trying to be like, all right, we need to get a good work ethic in. And so it was like my internship over the summer. And we live like 45 minutes away from the office at that, too. So I was like in the car, morning, go to the office, not coming home until I don't know, whatever it was, five or six. And I was miserable. It was the worst thing, worst job I've ever had in my life. And so I did that. And I was like, all right, this is what these people do all day. This sucks. But the fun part, I didn't get to do, which was like talking to people on the phone, learning about their lives, their careers, or whatever, like however people open up to you. And so, yeah, it's like I was, I'm never going to do this again. So then fast forward early career, I was selling copy machines, which is probably equally as bad in its own ways, as soon as buying a copy machine. And slowly that company started to release like a new suite of services, which was like cloud storage, scan your documents. You don't need, you don't need copy machines. So it was like, all right, we're selling something against what we were already selling. So I left and I was like, this is not going to be good. I leave and go to Nike. In Nike was, was kind of what most people would imagine. It was great on the outside. And then it was like, all right, making $35,000 a year. I don't know if this is for me. And then at the time, parents were like, okay, we have an open, like, we need your help, basically. And I'm like, oh man, flashbacks, so I want to do this. But I'm also like not happy where I'm at now. Sure. But I had two, like, two requests. I was like, church and state family business, keep it separate. And then I didn't want handouts. I hate handouts. I can't stand it. And I was like, I want to start from the bottom. I want to work my way up. I do not want to hand out the zero. And so they were like, all right, cool. That's that. And so I joined on a build out sales build out, which was just craziness. It was like 110 physicians. Everybody moving a million miles, a million miles an hour, all these different ways. I didn't have training. It wasn't like, all right, come in and do corporate training for two weeks, three weeks or whatever. It was just like, all right, start job. And I started to like it. I was like, this is cool. It's not what I remember. And then I don't know if the rest is kind of history from there. So you actually part of your requirements to come back was you actually didn't want to hand out. No, zero. Because it was people would assume family business. You got the business in your hands, and you just got handed to you. And I was like, I don't want any of that. Coming back in, you also, when I find this fascinating, like you came back and you knew nothing about the business, no training, you knew less of your mom. But then down the road, you started to be coming the one teaching her. And by the way, she's listening, I love you. You're amazing. Yeah. Like what like, what did that start to feel like? What was the conversation? Where do you had to tell your mom, who's a pinnacle, was a pinnacle member? Yeah, we need to start doing things differently. Yeah, that was a tough one because like the dynamic of for anybody in the world watching, listening as your mom, your parents, your dad, grandma, whoever you grew up with, it's like the dynamic is they are always telling you what to do and how to do it. Because in that at some point, you get into your adult life and then that changes and you do up more of a friendship or who knows? But typically that's how it happens for a lot of people. And so I go from like growing up, being told what to do and how to do it, like a typical parent to all right, like a lot of what she had taught and I had learned was still there. But I was like in my eyes and mindset and after kind of learning the business for a couple of years, like we need to adapt to where I see things going, which was technology and recruiting infused. And at the time, we had email, we had email and we had a database that nobody used. And I was like, okay, this is a problem because something's going to pass us and I don't know what. And so the first thing I did was after they kind of developed a little bit of trust. And this was the other wild part is like they were used to pay on what was it? $50 for a database. They used to use very small and we had LinkedIn recruiter, I suppose, but no automation, no email contact finders, nothing. It was just like whatever's in your database in LinkedIn recruiter. And so I was like, we need to do, and this is one of my dad's around at the time, we need to do something different and it's an ATS that is more robust that utilize this technology. So we don't work harder. We just work more efficiently. That was like my big thing and always has been it's like yes, A.I is going to take over the world. But I don't think it's going to, I think it's just going to everybody's going to have access to it. And it's going to make that person a hundred times more efficient. And so we adopted locks. So and the front runner, it was like I evaluated all these different ATSs and then I got their buy-in, which was tough because again, son saying hey, this is how to do it. Mind you, A, they had been recruiting for like 25 years. Be the dynamic of a family and a parent. And so it was like, it was not what people think it was of like, oh, here's the business, but like pushing back on a norm that's been our entire life of them telling me what to do. And then and I had some credibility, but I don't think I think my first year I did like three or four hundred. It was solid, but it wasn't like astronomical holy cow, these are life-changing numbers. And so they bought into it. And luckily they did because shortly after you just started to see all of this automation and all these tools and all these different ATSs pop up. I don't know where it. It's only gotten more extreme. So we adopted Luxo. And the one thing I had never succeeded on, I will say with Jennifer my mom, I call her Jennifer in business is she just doesn't know an ATSs is still she's still right stuff down on paper. And I'm like, you got to use the the database like if you talk to the same candidate, I should be able to pick up a year later and say, all right, this is what we talked about. This is the job because it's the experience of the candidate. And over time, as you can imagine, you have all these candidates or people in context that she knew just being in the business for 20 years. And then all of a sudden I come in and they're like, uh, who do we go to? You know candidates are. So yeah, that was that's like the very long-winded answer to whatever the question was that I forgot. Like go back to the I want to go back to those early days like you build it. You said like between three and four hundred year first year. Yeah. And like they didn't give you any training. They kind of toss you to the wolves. Like yeah, what were like those early days of like getting into this? Like how was that? Was it a struggle? Figging everything out and just try to keep up? Like what was happening? A lot hot. It was drinking from a fire hose for sure. Now granite like in the early days, I didn't do any business development. I had zero contact. So it's three, four hundred thousand. Take it with a grand assault because I was that was where I was handed stuff. I was handed business to fill the rolls. But it was it was a lot. It was fun. I remember there was this really and this is where it was tough because we had a trainer in the franchise that we're in. We had a trainer and she was like dissecting the way that I leave voicemails and she was like great lady, but she was antiquated. And so I'm like, okay, why am I focusing on how to leave voicemails? Because in my head, I'm thinking, all right, what would people want? What would people do? What just makes sense to me? And it wasn't voicemails because like, I don't know, people just at the time, it was like still kind of a thing, but it wasn't like, when I got in, it was like, I feel like it was kind of leave it. And it was like, all right, now we're getting into like text messaging and other forms of communication. And so it was even harder because I'm thinking to myself, am I wrong? Or like it's somebody being brainy to the business and all these people telling me, mostly trainer telling me, this is how you recruit, leave voicemails. And it just to me, it just didn't add up. And it wasn't that I wasn't going to listen. I wanted to absorb and learn, but it was just like, okay, but it was it was drinking from a fire hose. It was a lot. The nice thing is it was sales people, sales reps. And I feel like we're all kind of wired in the similar fashion, but the double edged sword to that is a lot of sales reps will sell themselves on something they are not. So how do I sort through the BS? And ultimately, I just noticed like, in the same thing I do now is I notice patterns and trends with people. And when most of it is very similar, and then you have one out of 100 that's not, you're like, okay, let me look into this a little bit more like what, like, observe a little bit more. And so I would say my success early on was was noticing a lot of patterns and trends of things going on and just observing and asking people questions. I was honest with them. I'm always been real. And if I don't know, I'm not going to say, oh, yeah, I know, because people at the end of the day, they appreciate the authenticity and transparency. And if I don't know, I'll tell them, I don't know, but I will get back to you. So it was a lot the first really the first year or two, especially. When did you actually start doing business development and bracer bringing in your clients? Oh, man. I'd say probably, I mean, I was always doing, quote unquote, doing it, but I never really knew proper ways. And I don't think to this day, people really know 100% what is it as we transition from a society that's that's distracted and social media and attention spans to now and how much things to evolve. I would say I realistically started doing BD like asking the questions to the hiring teams and the hiring managers probably within like two or three years into it, but I didn't really go full bore aggressive. I don't know. I still don't think I'm full bore. Like I don't do BD. Is that weird to think? I don't do it in the traditional sense that, hey, you see, you have an opening. Can I help you like type of thing? It's like my thing is just offering so much value to people. [BLANK_AUDIO] whether it's a candidate and I talked to him, and then at some point did he come a hiring manager? Like I want people to walk away from a conversation of like, that was so, like, holy cow. Let me have this, that was so valuable. And, yeah, go for it. - Let me just pause right there, 'cause all the time people say like, oh yeah, offer value, offer value. What are you actually giving to your candidates? What are you telling them on the phone that they're so interested that when they do need stuff and they're gonna come back to you? Like everything, they'll ask me for insight on companies and I just happen to be so locked into talking to everybody at every company and I ask questions that I can relay that insight and I won't tell 'em who said what, but it's the insight, I mean, they see the network of LinkedIn and they're like, holy cow, we have 350 mutual connections and I should talk to this guy. So it generates curiosity, I think, and that standpoint. - So pause real quick. So like, are these people just having like curiosity calls with you or is this like, candidate calls that you're doing? We're, we're, we're getting into the conversation. I'd say both, it's wild because I do a lot of like, candidate conversations and recruitment, I do that and that allows me to broaden the network, right? Of like different people all kind of within the same general sector, but I will have my outbound outreach and I am just like, that's where pin comes in, 10 minutes, source the entire market and then all of them are getting, and I can tell you guys how I do the emails, but all of them are getting emails and that generates like, okay, that part of, those demographic of people to candidates, I talk to those people, but I don't say no to any, well, for the most part, I don't say no to anybody that wants to have a conversation. That's in form of biotech. If they're in like, some other sector, I'll be honest with them and just say, "Hey, I don't work in your sector, I don't have value for you." But if it's form of biotech and they want a resource, is what I say, I will offer that. And I'd say probably every day, like today, what is it? It's one o'clock. I've probably had like three or four conversations with senior leaders that I don't have something for them now, but I may. And I do that because when I do have something for them, rather than putting them in an email campaign and waiting five days or six days or seven days for them to respond, I text them and they respond within 10 minutes. And then I can get that in front of the client much faster. So it's just, you said that they're having like, a lot of your conversations from pin? It's pin, it's sourcing candidates for jobs that I'm working on. And then whether or not they're a fit, I always want to leave them with the, you know, hey, keep the open dialogue. I'm here if you need me. And then oftentimes people will open up and they'll be like, hey, I'm interviewing with company XYZ. And then I started noticing patterns and trends and go, a lot of people are. A lot of people have been ghosted. A lot of people this, a lot of people that. And I can just tell people very straight up, like, I mean, there's companies I work in my industry won't put out names that don't get sued, but it's like, they're bad companies. They're culture sucks. The people, like, people don't like it, but they pay really well. And so I'll be honest and say, hey, here's your upside, your upside is money, but your downside is micro management and a culture that not many people like. So rather than here from the recruiter who has some credibility in their books, go talk to somebody at the company, go reach out to a rep on LinkedIn, another rapper, reach out to somebody, because that inside of them in your shoes is gonna be much more valuable because they work there. And if it's a great cultural tell people, like, hey, the culture here is excellent. Here's your upside, here in informants, like I noticed those trends, what do people gravitate towards? The pipeline and the products, it's the therapeutic areas. It's smaller companies with equity. You know, your big pharma is quote unquote secure, although not anymore. And I feel like I basically repeat what everybody says all day. And then it's a lot of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, totally. And so it develops that credibility, like right off the bat. And I don't sell people. I just tell people how it is. I say this is because I say no opportunities ever perfect. And so here's your upside, here's your downside. And for everybody, those variables are going to be different. Downside for somebody might be a huge downside, like a large territory. Because they've got a big family or a large territory for somebody single might be like, whatever, sure, I like to travel. So I think it's just being honest and real with people. And then people open up to me. I don't know, it's kind of weird sometimes, but it's also like, all right, this kind of helps. So I can get to know more. So we'll talk a little more about the machine that you've been building in a bit. But I want to go back to like, you know, a little bit of your origin story. So like, you have a few years in, you're now hitting like sales is starting to happen. You said you didn't want any handouts. When did you feel like, I don't want to say like you felt like you arrived, but you felt like like, okay, cool. Like I got this finally. I understand this. Like I am now part of this. I would say like pre pandemic era, or well, hold on, I would say there's two like check boxes and my intuition going, all right, I think I'm doing the right is the first was like three, like the worst year I've ever had is 400. So I was like, I had consistent years of, and we had an MRI network was who we were a part of. So my benchmark of what's good was their president's club, their president's club, I think was like 350. And so I was like, all right, like I've had consistent years back to back to back of 400, 600 back to back years. That was number one. And then number two was just the reputation that I hear from people. And that part to me, like people being candidates, I do know networking with other recruiters, not because of that, like just because we don't, we're not in the same space. I want to be a value to the people I serve, which is the form of biotech professionals. And so when I would get those conversations going all the time, or it was like, hey, I got your number from so and so, I've heard this, I've heard that, or your name came by three people this week. I just had to call you and talk to you like that to me. It was like, that was like on another level of like, greatness. It wasn't the buildings, it wasn't the placements or any of that stuff. It was just like, all right, my name is being passed on word of mouth by so many people in the same exact week. And it wasn't because of a LinkedIn post, it was just at random. And so when I kept hearing those pieces over and over and over again, I was like, okay, A, there's value by the people and see they're talking about me without me being there, without me being around, without me like putting something out there on the internet for them to do that. And so that to me was like my moment of like, okay, this is, and I always seek that validation, even though it's comes through in the numbers because the numbers are great, but that's sales. And sales is, I don't want to be a salesperson. I want to be somebody where people are like, holy shit, I walk away from conversations with this guy and I'm in a better place because I have more info, more tools than I was 30 minutes ago. And ideally from our standpoint, it's like we want to place the person and get them the job so we get paid. But like I had a client the other day talking to me about money and we were renegotiating our contract. And I told him I don't like having these conversations. And I said, pay me what you think is fair based on what value I've provided. And I walked away and I have a $20,000 a month retainer and I have all their sales business. I have all their, like every role that comes through that organization we have now. And I was like, totally, that's fair, 100%. And I operate on a way that's like, people are expecting me to negotiate because at the end of the day if they can't buy it and they're like, yeah, we'll pay you 15% and they're retainer and it's retained. I can walk away, I can say good luck. But my thing is showing people so much value whether it's a client or a candidate that they're just like, there's no other option out there. And the nice thing we have at least in my space farmer biotech recruitment, our benchmark of like, what good is is so low. It's like if I call somebody and don't ghost them, they're like, oh my God, this is amazing. Or if I'm like calling people giving them updates or not expecting it, I'm like, that's my job. Like I have to keep you updated. Like it's a no brainer to be. And at the end of the day, I don't know, we have like probably five-ish people in an interview process for each job. So it's not like, it's not like I have to call like a boatload of people. And if we have 50 people in the interview process, we're doing some wrong on sourcing so we shouldn't have that many. And that's where Pinn comes in. - Let me take a step back. Like, you know, family business, you want to earn it. You talked about when you finally felt, I don't wanna say accepted, but like, if they started clicking, when did the conversations happen of them looking at passing the business on or giving ownership to you? Like, when did that, the torch? - Again, it was one of those things, or it was in talks, but like not, hey, we've sat down and talked about it. And I wanted them to feel comfortable and it was my mom, my dad passed in, and what was it, 2021. And so it was like my mom and I, and it was like, he would always run the operations of the business. She was just a hustler and the recruiter, bringing in clients candidates. And so her, I just, I said, when you were comfortable retiring, which if you haven't done retired before, it's apparently pretty hard. She's always like messing me, and I'm like, you need to go chill out, go golf, go have fun. But it was like, I don't know, she, I think she had a moment where she was like, all right, I'm wanting to go enjoy outside of work, find new hobbies. But it was funny because the conversation was more just like, I felt like I was in a good spot the whole time. And I felt like I could bring in business, not just whenever, but I felt like I could bring in business. And I was sustaining a reasonable business with, I don't want to have all my eggs in one basket with one client, but I have a diversified clientele. And I was like, I'm good. And I'm not the kind of person where I'm like, hey, what do you think? Come up with this on the spot. I'm just like, I'm telling you where I'm at, I'm good. I'm content. When you feel that timing is right, if it's like end of a quarter, end of a year, whatever that chapter pages and in time, like, I'm ready. And so realistically, it was like, I mean, officially it was this year, January 1st, 2026. But I think from the operations and everything else standpoint, it was, it was, was before that because our job is full time. You can't be doing half golf, half recruiting. It's hard. I mean, you can't. Maybe you can't. Maybe some people can. But I didn't with you. Yeah, that's true. I was just like, I'm ready whenever you are. And I'm excited. I was excited for that next step as well. Just because it's like, I don't know, it's like a new chapter, a new page. And there's been something like, I have a team now. There's been some things that I've added in and some things that I've taken out in terms of what I think makes sense for many efficiency and a process standpoint. Well, let's talk about that in a second, but I, you know, just started officially this year. Like that transition would officially happen when it was completed. How did that feel? It felt really good. But I also was like, I need to bust my ass. Like I need to even know I'm doing fine in my head, whatever that variable was in my head, that's like, all right, now you're on your own. Something clicked. And I was like, there is no, like I, I am going to be working like I am building nothing, whether I'm building a 500,000 or, you know, whatever that number is, like I'm going to be working my ass off. And so I think part of that, honestly, if like what's happened fast forward to today, like why the numbers or where they're at is honestly because I'm like, in my head, I'm like, all right, I can do better. I can do better. I go to better. And so it's been, I don't know, it's been interesting. I wouldn't say there's been positives. There's been negative. They think from the positive aspect, it's like new school forward thinking, infusing a little bit more technology into into the entire group where everybody has the buy-in. The downside is I talked to my mom less in it. I mean, I mean, I call her after work or whatever, but it's like she'll always call me in the middle of the day. And I'm like, I'm stacked back to back calls all day. Like I keep trying to tell her like, hey, I'm still working. But I think overall it's just been, it's been like evens out where I wouldn't say it's like substantially worse or substantially better. It just is. What did you with this transition? Like what did you add in and what did you take it away? Microsoft teams took away. I hate that platform. It's terrible for a tech company to shout out Microsoft teams. You got to get new engineers. No, but all jokes aside, I put in Slack because we hired a virtual assistant. And so he does all of our interviews scheduling. And I offer that now. I don't really say it. It's just something I do with clients from like we will send the invite. Not you have the option to, because I know we're going to get a done in 10 minutes. Whereas if I forward it to somebody else within a different organization, there's too many gaps in inefficiencies. And so I we buy Slack. Slack's great for remote teams. Love the platform. It's awesome. And then that allows us to have channels for each client. So when we need the schedule interviews, we have a whole product like a third to second process of like, Hey, John, here's the person, the time that it is like everything. And then he sends it out and notes everything in our CRM. So that way we know exactly when did they talk and who and so I think from an operationally efficiency standpoint, that's what I really sat there and thought about when I was actually in Japan, end of December and a January. And I was like, all right, what can I do? And I was just brainstorming when I have all this free time sitting there on an airplane. Like, what can I do to make us super human in terms of efficiency? But we still keep the human touch that everybody wants recruiters for. And everything is on the back end. Like how can we be so so and I hired the virtual assistant. Now it's like best decision or life. He's unreal. And he does all the back end things. He looks at wreck like just double checks to make sure everything is done. Like we have this whole system down where he like doesn't I emoji when that when I when he sees the the invite come in and then he does the green check emoji when it's done. So he can go back at the end of every day and make sure all the green checks are there. So it's just like little things like that to make sure that nothing slips to the cracks. And then we have an email that goes out with the hiring managers LinkedIn profile and the email for thank you follow up. And like, Hey, just making sure that you've got the invite because people will claim they didn't get it and they got it. And so it please respond to this to make sure you got it. And then if we don't get a response, then he goes back and he comes to me and then I go, Hey, did you get the invite? Like just want to make sure it's there. So nothing slips to the cracks because we saw way too much of that without tech. I think that's probably one of the biggest pieces we added is goodbye teams. Hello Slack. Clawed that's game changer. I built a clot agent that is basically our third recruiting partner that writes job descriptions. So if a client wants it and they're like, I'm thinking about using the recruiter. I'm like, great. 20 minutes. There's a JD and they're like, All right, can we use you? So that's another one. And then it's like, I'll built within like a recruiter mindset. So like, if we ever get this like, Ooh, what should we respond email wise, throw it in there builds pro like I could throw in a resume and create five bullet points based on the job description, focus on X Y Z. I'd say that's another big one. What else? Yeah, it's like, those are, I'd say those are like the two biggest ones that I've put in just in the last three months. So one of the kind of this like old school and real school mindset, because like, I got the chance to interview your mom. If for this listening, go back to that episode. Like she really talked about family and everything at home, part on the family is and it's kind of cool. Like surreal. Yeah. A few years later, we're sitting down. But one of the things your mom has said multiple times is phones above everything else. Yeah. Make five more calls when you think you're done. Yeah. That built her to be becoming one of the best recruiters in the country, a Pinnacle Society for a how long was she in Pinnacle many, many, many years? Yeah. She was in shoes in there for a hot second. Yeah. Yeah. Your business development is entirely inbound from LinkedIn, which is completely not the same as philosophy. Which one's right? Who pressure? I would say that they're both right in their own eras. And similar to sports, I like to make sports analogies is like, you could argue about what's the best basketball player. And then you start to factor in the eras of those basketball players in which they played in. And the conversation can to a degree change, maybe not when you're talking Michael Jordan and that type of thing. But I think from an era standpoint and recruiting, like it has changed so much because I have been around all the old school OGE recruiters from going to all the MRI networks. And so knowing the office owners, how they run the offices, how the recruiters roll, like every little nook and cranny, I have, and I've asked them, like I know there's a recruiter guy we were going back and forth have drinks over a year or two ago about the need for in person. And I was like, that is not true. And we had this agree to disagree, like not like it was friendly, but like an agree to disagree like moment where I was like, if I'm only looking in Washington, like I'm in the Vancouver Portland market, my limit for talent is much less a there's no forma recruitment b, like I'm at a tremendous disadvantage. But I think that is part of the era that they grew up in in the recruitment realm. That is just different. And I think from the phone to LinkedIn standpoint, like I believe in the phone, the phone is your biggest tool and your biggest asset. You don't have a phone, your screw. Now what I don't believe in is Cole, Cole, Cole calling somebody without any sort of background context, people don't like it. And the chances you start that conversation off where they're caught off guard, which is most times in all the spam callers that now exist in society, right? And the spam text that exists in society, like that has changed the mindset of who's on the other end. And he used to be like, oh, if you're getting a call, it's definitely not a spam call, because it didn't exist. And now it's like, there's just a lot of changes in society that have made, I think us have to adapt. And so long story short, is I don't think that it's wrong. I think in that era, it was, that was what you do. And this era, I think you teed up with a email. And then I teed that up with a LinkedIn message. So then they go, all right, I have some context on the email. Now I have LinkedIn. Now I see he's connected with a bunch of people. And I see his voice on LinkedIn is quite large. Now I'm curious. So when he calls, it's like, oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry. Whatever they want to say, I'm so sorry and answer the call. Instead of like, who? Yeah, no, I don't have time for this right now. But I think that's what you know, that, and I think it's just a matter of adapting to a industry or I'm sure all industries changing with this like with society that's changed so dramatically. Like attention spans are way shorter. Things to tick-tock an Instagram and just all that. And so I think it's just how do we adapt to the era that we're in? So with the old school mindset that you grew up in, the new school, what is something that your mom drilled into you every single day that you still run with that you see a lot of other recruiters skipping to their own detriment? Persistence. Persistence. I think a lot of people will make assumptions. Oh, if it didn't answer my call, they're not interested. Persistence and what I will say that I have done slightly different. But again, it's an era thing. We have more channels to reach out to people on. And the big one is text like text 20 years ago, you talked to a friend podcast 20 years ago, talking about text messages, they'd say you're like, don't ever do that. It's crazy. And what I've done, like I get really, really into the weeds with stuff. I was texting on rings, like we had ring central. So it was a separate number. And green text bubble, most of my clients and most of the people I texted from have iPhones. Then I did the same exact message, everything the same except I changed to an iPhone blue text bubble. The response rate went up like 40%. Now I can't track it because it's not hooked to my ATS. But it was an automatic. I see the blue text bubble. I feel a little bit more comfortable. And if you text out of an ATS for your mass texting, then you have the text to unsubscribe at the bottom. That's like terrible if you're candidate reading it. And so yeah, it's more work on my end. But instead of reaching out to 500 candidates because nobody is responding now I can reach out to 50 and get a response rate of like half. And I can add my contact card with that. So then they can open up the contact card. They can get more more like relevance to my reach out without me having to get it and take up all of these blocks of like a whole three paragraphs. And then I lost them because their attention spans super short. So I think from the long long story short, I think most of the answer is just a difference in error and adapting to the new era. So I want to jump for a little forward and walk through the machine that you built because you're talking about LinkedIn and all these things that you've done. I want you to walk me through your content strategy. What type of posts are you doing? What does your conversation paths actually look like? For somebody like seeing your content and your search engagement. Yeah. I'm still like figuring out the LinkedIn algorithm. I think it changes so much. It's hard to like figure it out and nail it down. And I had a marketing agency doing it for a little bit. And it was just like. It wasn't good. It was expensive and they weren't producing anything. They're actually less than what I would get in terms of engagement. And the last like three years, I have over 2.1 million impressions on LinkedIn. And some ones are better than others despite having the exact same type of content. But at least for the focus that I have, which is farm a biotech corporate professionals most of them seasoned. I'd say a good chunk of what I post is like something motivational just to make people feel good. Because right now it's a lot of like layoffs and downsizing and at least the last two or three years have been. People looking for jobs, not ideal. I actually only do like, I try to keep it a rule of like 10% of what I put is jobs. A, I spend too much time going through LinkedIn messages of like people from the pizza shop saying, "Hey, I'm interested in the very present in the sales." And they're like way too ambitious. It's just too much. B, it's not very like it doesn't get as much engagement. People don't like it. The only reason I do that is so clients that are scrolling and not engaging can see, "Oh, he works on compliance. He works on sales. He works on marketing. He works on all of these roles." It just kind of validates I think people in their head that like if I use this guy or this agency, they've done it before. But most of it is like motivational slash feel good slash. And it's not text. It's the pictures that you will see like on Instagram like the good quote, like one of those Instagram pages. And it's just like a bunch of like photos of like motivational texts. People love that. Pulse. Pulse get really high engagement. I do, I do polls on the occasion. But I like to do good polls that people are like, I would vote in that. Not some like generic stuff. The biggest piece I keep is I always set my wife is like pretty social media, she's sales reps. So she's like, "Why are the same way?" And I always like, "Hey, do you like this? Like, this is sound good." And she's, she'll be like, "No, that sucks. Do a different one." And I'm like, "All right, what about this one?" So like she's kind of my second pair of eyes for like a lot of the things. But polls do pretty well. And then I'll do like the occasional story. Like I did a story or like a long block of text about like candidate experience and like kind of event session on the behalf of the candidate because the candidates can't do it. They'll come across as a pan in the ass. But I do it. And they're like, "Oh my God, totally I experience the same thing." So stuff that's going to make people say something like that when they're reading it in their mind. So you have what? 65,000 Kinear followers or 65 or 70 something like that. Yeah. And I hate this word with a passion. Yeah. Which influencer. But yeah, you have hit the influencer level persona. And it's like, I hate it. I could call that too. I'm like, no, no, no, no, I'm just a recruiter. I hate that. I'm not doing TikTok dances. Yeah. 100%. But what's the difference in content that builds a real business versus one that just makes noise? A combination of things, not just only motivational quotes. Like post things that will add value. And if you're always doing motivational quotes, you'll get burnt out. If you're only doing polls like it's variety. People don't, I don't even know what I have no, it's funny. A lot of these marketing agencies and people like think, "Oh, he has a roll and ex of post lined up over the next two weeks of what's coming out. I could not tell you what my next post is going to be." When it comes in my head and I'm like, "Oh, that's a good idea." It goes out. I have no time period. I have no, I can see a youshield.ai or AP or whatever it's called shield for my insta or my insta, oh god, influencer for my, I use shield for my like managing metrics to see, all right, what times work best and stuff like that. But to be, I am an influencer at the end of the day. I hate using the word too. But like I do influence people's decision-making in certain instances. And it's mostly on the front end of like, should we do business with this guy, is he legit or not. And the way I tried to describe this to my mom, because that's one era that she doesn't understand is like, that was not a thing for old school recruiters. Influencers were never a thing for any generation prior to. It's like, if they can sit there and feel comfortable because of 15,000 connections or whatever it is or 60,000 connections or whatever, that doesn't exist in recruiting right now. Well, I shouldn't say that it exists a lot less in recruiting now. You go to Instagram and like everybody's trying to be an influencer, dancing videos or whatever. And it's just overcrowded. Yeah, they're like, oh, look at me. I'm dancing to some random hype song. And it's like, what are you doing? But at the end of the day, that's what society gravitates towards. And that's why it's super successful when selling products. Like that is all TikTok is. That is what Instagram has become. And I'm like, we don't really have this on LinkedIn. We don't have it on LinkedIn specifically for form a biotech. I haven't seen I mean, I've seen a few out there who like put stuff out there, but like we don't really have that. And so when it comes across to people, they know that my personality is matching LinkedIn. And that's just more laid back. Professional, but not corporate over the top rigid. You can have a conversation with me. It's a vault. We could be cool and have a good conversation. And you're not going to feel like, oh, am I opening up to the right person. And it's just kind of built in snowball that's it's effect off of that. And I wish I would have started earlier. I will say I'm trying to get to 100 this year. So let me just say this. Like I use word influencer. We talk about the inner is a fluid influencer. I hate the word influencer. And one of my buddies Brent or Syracuse said that that's you need one. We want to become an influencer, but most importantly, you doing what you're doing and how you're doing it, you become a person of influence. Yeah, exactly. That's so well put. And the person of influence is the one that gets the job orders. Yeah. Yeah. That's a thousand percent. Yeah. That's a very good way to put it in a very short way to put it. I would thousand percent agree with that. So I want to flip gears just for time. Okay. How are you using AI throughout your day? Like you've mentioned you's quad, use pen, coolie for anything like how like what does your day look like when it comes to artificial intelligence? So I'm going to give out some secret sauce. This is one thing I learned from somebody about AI is tell AI what you want it to do and have it write your prompt. Open up a new window. Use that prompt as like whatever output you want to do. So tying that into what I do. So if I have like my tech stack is pin for sourcing an outbound candidate out, candidate outreach. Cluelie is like just I get on the phone with the hiring team like what do you want? They tell me Cluelie organizes all of that. And and then my ATS and so what I end up doing is when I have that intake like I'm we're taking on searches dude where we have never done them in a million years but we're like oh yeah we're experts in compliance. We have a chief compliance officer right now. And clearly and pin if allowed me to do this is what I'll do is that the clearly which listens to the conversation and nobody can see it on the other side. Basically notes down what they want. I throw that with my notes and the job description and hey this is a compliance role in farmer biotech. Find me the best profiles and create the best search string for pin. Then I take that like output. I throw that into pin and pin is genius. And then and it knows that pin is it'll be like yes pin is this you can see like cloud like thinking it'll be like yeah Cluelie pin is an outbound recruitment platform. So like knows it's the right pin. And then I throw all of that output into pin and it pulls money candidates in like money and we're like I don't know we got in like three days my partner and I we had like four or five candidates you're five or five on and we've never touched a compliance role. Now you know what happens if the candidates ask us questions what yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean we get as much down as we possibly can but I am I am honest with people and I'm like yeah this is our first time touching a compliance role. Let me get back to you. Get back to them ask them you know but oftentimes we know enough to get by and have conversations and like if somebody asks us some super specific question like you know who's the third person in line reporting to this role like something crazy like that well nobody's gonna know that even if you're a compliance expert. So uh That's really it. And then on the pin side of things, we have an outbound email, then we have second step as a day later, LinkedIn message saying, "Hey, set you a message about whatever the role is yesterday, via email, not sure if it reached you." And then the thing about pin is it has a custom AI sentence. So it's like, I'll say in that custom AI sentence, you can give it directions. I'll say, "Hip the candidate up, pull out something really specific on their profile, why they're a fit, make it non-generic." And then it's like, "Hip it up." Like your expertise in the diabetes space, the last five years, and three P clubs would make you a great asset. And then it finds everybody. You don't have to worry about the people where the contact information isn't found. 'Cause if it happens, they'll go, "Oh, I didn't get your email." Oh great, what's your email? Boom. And then the third step is an email reply to the original email. So it's like staying in the thread, like three days later, so it pulls off the gas a little bit. Like I just did a sale in this crazy. In November 1st, we could December, by myself, I did an entire sales build. In two weeks. Now I was working 16 hours a day, and it sucked in weekends. But I did it just to see like, all right, process wise, and I hire people, and they try to come back to me and say, "Oh, I don't have the tools to get the job done, you have the tools to get the job done." And I'm not expecting some of the work 16 hours a day for two weeks straight. But yeah, it worked very well. - So you used the pin just for that entire buildout? - Yeah, commission wise, or building wise, how much was that? - It was ballpark, like 450. - In two weeks. - Yeah, it was unbelievable. By before the holidays, it was great. It was wild, though. It was like, I was moving a million miles an hour. The only downside was I had LinkedIn recruiter, like hooked up to it. So if I wasn't connected with the candidate, which is like probably at least more than half, then it sends them a LinkedIn recruiter message. Now my LinkedIn recruiter was like, over a 40% response rate, but I ran out of credits. And so then I went to LinkedIn, I'm like, "Hey, can I buy credits?" And they're like, "21 dollars a credit, if you want to buy a ballpark." And I'm like, "What are you on?" 21 dollars a credit. So then they created this whole proposal recently, $57,000 for four seats. And I'm just like, hate it, but it's like it works because I just sales build with it. And so you get about, - So wait, you got about LinkedIn was how much? - $57,000 for seats. Yeah, 'cause I need more credits. And the only way to buy credits that's non-allocart is to buy a license that you don't use, but it comes with the 100 credits a month. - So wait, is cheaper to buy a whole new license than buy the credit to allocart? - I hate LinkedIn for that. Yes, so I went to the VP who had been there for like 20 something years. And I typed an email out that was very nice and it referenced her kids, which was on LinkedIn, so it was public. I got a message from my account holder right away. And I was like, "Look, I'm not like, this is nothing against you." But like, this is ridiculous. Like I'm using the platform as it should be. I'm an influencer on the platform, getting more people to come onto it. Can you at least help a brother out? And they were like, no, you can buy another license. - Wow. Yeah. (laughing) - Yes. - So there's a lot of sourcing tools out there. - Screaming AI, you know, I gotta ask you, 'cause I know I've seen a lot, I get hit up by a lot. - Yeah. - Specifically Pimp. - Yeah. What are they doing that others aren't, give it to me real. - So the deal with a lot of these platforms, I feel like a lot of it starts with the contact information. And what I found in doing like deep dive is like, when these companies buy data, oftentimes they're buying it structured based on industry. So like, farm a biotech when they buy that data, like what, I use Lucia for contact writer. It works insanely well for farm a biotech. But then at the time, we had a banking division in our office, different industry, it sucked. And so I think that's kind of step number one is like, is that data accurate? Now, what I think makes Pimp really, really good, a couple of things, A, the sourcing for me is unreal. Like it is unbelievable. And then number two, I think the UI is pretty solid. Like it's easy to read. They're adding things into it left and right. And that's the one thing I think with a lot of these SaaS companies is like, they grow, they grow, they grow, they are really fast. And software is gonna have bugs. And if it has bugs, some of them are like, you can't even work on the platforms, there's so many of them. And what I like about PIN is that they squash those bugs like 24 hours after I'm like, hey, here's an issue. And that I appreciate because it's like, instead of releasing a bunch of new features, they're like, let's fix what we have. So we have a very solid foundation to add features on top of it. So I like that part. I think the team is awesome. The team is just awesome. Like Lean team, the KickSass. But most importantly, like the outreach is unreal. And I mean, I read some of the mess. Like I brought in my partner Tony on this one 'cause like, to get him in, I had recruited the guy for like five or six years. I was like, dude, come join. Never did. And then finally, PIN came around and I showed him PIN. And I was like, look at me, like go through my SAP messages. And he was just like, what? And he doesn't like technology is not his, he's not bad at it, but it's not like his forte. And he was just like mind blown. And then he comes, gets into compliance, never touched it. And now he's an expert at compliance because all these people are responding. And so I think the hard part about AI and any company out there trying to sell software, all their competitors are gonna have AI in front of it to try to get the consumer in. Because the consumer doesn't know enough about AI to know it's great and bad. And their AI, like PIN's AI is legit. At least for what I do. I take it for how you want to take it. But they're, their results from here are great. And I'm not gonna switch. I don't find it's gonna be possible to continue to do what we're doing. But I think, I just think they're awesome. And then they have like a little thing at the top where it like summarizes like whatever bullet points you want if you want sales, if you want diabetes experience, if you want whatever marketing experience, it'll, it'll show you like, yes, it has or no, it doesn't. And then the other really cool part is the company that you're sourcing for in the candidate profile that says like Pfizer like five years ago, they'll be like a couple little circles. And it'll show like these current employees that the company you're sourcing for are at Pfizer at the same time as this guy that you're looking at, they may know each other. So they're, they're, they thought of some pretty, pretty in my opinion, revolutionary, really cool ways where they don't add too much unuseful information and the information the features they add for me are all like, love it. So I'm just gonna add a curiosity, looking at building numbers. Like, what do you think, how much building do you think you would have lost if Penn magically disappeared tomorrow? - Well, I wouldn't have been able to do the sales build. That's for sure. I think, I don't, it's really good question. Uh, I don't wanna think about that. Huh. I don't, I don't think I would, I mean, I wouldn't be able to, the thing is as I would have to tell clients, I can't bring talent to them in like five days or less. And that would, - That's your pitch. - That's my pitch, five days or less. And they, and I have not, I'm so competitive, I have not hit that number. And because I have, the thing is, because I have Penn, I don't work less. I work on more job orders. So like most people are gonna say, oh, instead of spending three hours sourcing today, now I do Penn, so I can go golfing for two hours and what is it, 50 minutes. I'm like, okay, what in that, what can I do in that two hour and 50 minute window where I can be more productive and make more money? And that's how it roll. Like I'm, I am working in my desk. I am not taking time off because I have an easier tool to use. And I think that will make or break really good recruiters. I do. I think the really, really good ones are gonna say nope. Now I can work on 30 job orders instead of 15 or five. And I think the bad ones are gonna say, I'm gonna cut out early today. And that's okay, they cut out early. But if you're doing that every single day and that's your mindset, you're not a top pillar. - We're gonna talk about the future in a second, but like, you know, just for speed and where we're at, 'cause I looked up in my Kolei Crap, like we've been talking for a while, like I feel like we have talking with you Nick. - Yep, I'm upset. - In the pregame, you said something about you score your network relationships. Why do you do that? How do you measure it? And what is the impact of scoring your network? - So I think this is super important as I build out the agency and have other people within the organization, all calling the same people and being hyper focused in the same niche. Is relationships are like myself, my partner, somebody else in the firm and candidate. There's that like trio of like relationships are really interesting. Like I may be really good at what I do and some random hiring manager doesn't want to talk to me. I don't care if we can bring the business in because my partner or different recruiter has a better relationship with them for whatever reason they both have golden retriever dogs or who knows what? People are just funky in there. And that's why I said, like recruiting is so interesting 'cause it's like, it's a lot of talk through this scenario, kind of type of things. But I say to everybody, be honest with yourself and rate that relationship that you have with that person on a scale of one to 10. 10 is like your best friends you met up for drinks and you've been to conferences with them and like your real tight with them, one is nothing. And where it really matters is like the seven and a half to like five window 'cause that's where it's like, people wanna act like they have relationships with people but do they really? And so we have this little thing going with our team where it's like, like candidates will send me a job to say, hey, can you give me into this company? And then I'm like, all right, let's see who the iron manager is and I'm like, I'll message the whole team. Hey, who knows this person? And if nobody knows him that well, then I'll just, just taking because the candidate reached out to me. But if my partner is like, Hey, we got like a nine out of 10, like, I don't need an explanation. I don't need like, just it's added fluff. Like what number? Give me number. It's super easy. And if there's a 10, then he will go reach out and we'll figure out a way to bring the business in. And for me, it's like, you can't be overly like I'm money focused in this conversation. Because I'm competitive. I don't talk about money at all to clients to candidates to anybody. Like if you find the value there without me having to say numbers and me acting all like, Oh my God, talk about myself. If you can't find the value there, then that's okay. Not everybody's going to like me. And that's understandable. But I try to make it a mission where they do so that way every every profile that every higher manager that I could potentially reach out to, it's that's a nine or a 10. And my thought process, like somebody sent me a VP level starts this morning. I sent it to the iron manager. It's okay. This candidate's interested in you. I'm not going to go try to business develop it. And that that that's shit. They don't need to. So they're they're like, and then they're going to and I explicit and I'm not expecting a fee. I would love to work with you. And I've probably passed up on like this year alone, probably $300,000 of business. If I were to go traditional old school NPC that maybe I could have got it. Maybe realistically, no, not 100%. So I'm like, all right, let me show value to people so much value that they're going to eventually say, Hey, he got this person in here. And then there's people that will never talk to me again when they get the job. It's happened maybe once or twice. And I'm like, all right, no, taking you call me for anything. I'm not helping you out at all. And then there's people that are like incredibly appreciative of it. And they're like, oh, my, oh my God, like biggest client I had, the guy got a job for different, or less than a minute and four. Technically, they owe me the full fee. And I told the guy, pay what you think you owe, like what you think is fair. It's like at $80,000 fee. But I use so much business with them. I don't want any sort of like friction. I don't want any sort of, like I'm already making enough money with them. There's no need to be tripping about $30,000. If I was building 50 grand, then that's where I would probably be like, Oh my God, why don't I have the extra $30,000? But because my mindset is not like that, I think that's part of what makes me stand out and makes people want to work with me as they know that I'm not, I'm going to get them the damn candidate into the company first and foremost. And then you give me more business down the road. And that's the company that they came back with a $20,000 retainer a month, no end date. So it's in that retainer, like you still get like a placement fee on top of that. Or it is subtracted. Like, how does that actually look? So it's 20,000 a month and not like just forever until they want to stop. I mean, again, if there's so much value that we're giving them, they won't want to stop. It would be crazy. And then it's, I dropped the fee from 22 and a half percent to 20 in the exchange for the retainer, but that I get every sales position, I get every position within the organization. And they're 450 person organization and realistically by the end of the year, they'll probably be, I don't know, 2000 or so. So I'm like long term, they'll be, there's a probably 70% chance I would do over a million with them in a year. I've already done probably two. So like the way I do it is I make everybody's job so easy there. Like their HR has gotten so lazy. They wouldn't send out, they wouldn't send out calendar invites. So I make their job so easy that all they have to do is sign because I'm doing everything else for them. And for recruiter listening to this, like you were, like you were handling pretty much the entire process for everything to make to make their lives easier. To make their lives easier. The only thing the guy has to do is I say, Hey, you're in line for the interview because you have HR interview the candidate. Here's the candidate's availability. And then they want to make an offer CC the hiring manager on it. They want to make an offer. Here's the numbers. Here's where we need to be put the offer together. I'm sure HL loves you because they're like handling so many other fires because the company's growing that fast. Yes. It's 1000%. And that's the thought process I have for working with everybody is you call me the janitor, you go me the schedule, you can call me the admin. I don't care if you were paying me to do all into these things. And then we're getting more and more and more job orders after that. I could care less. And it was funny because I started in marketing. And then I was the guy's like, can you do HR? And I'm like, of course, at the time, I've never filled an HR role. But I'm like, I'm going to figure out a fill it. Boom, fill that one. Oh, can you do operations? Boom. So I've placed every single role reporting into the CCO. All of their teams underneath. I did not have sales my biggest competitor did. And they're kicking my ass because they're cheap, but they're not good. The benchmarks so low. And I was like, give me half your expansion. Half because all the sales team was like annoyed with them. They're bent on 25 year old recruiters. They don't know what they're doing. And all they're doing is checking portals of Fresnays. They're not even doing anything. Two weeks, every role filled. Every hiring manager had my contact in from sales leader had my phone number. And anytime they needed something was done, whether it was an interview, please set them up with the next person. I knew who that next person was. I didn't have to like all they have to do is just and that's how people like to work is just like, they don't want to log into a portal. They don't want to log into their portal. It's just like send me a text and get it done. And that's that's how I roll. It's like if I can make their job so easy. And then they also know on the back end, they have such a resource. And I knew every other company, there's three other dermatology companies as a dermatology company. There are three other dermatology companies all hiring at the same time. And I was like, we need to get these jobs posted because they had to put posts for clients. We're going to get posted right away because you got three other competitors all posting the same week. You guys are better. You're offering more money. But if we post two weeks later, we have to move two weeks faster at some point in the interview process. And you guys have a national sales meeting. So what week are we going to move faster on? And that's where the value that I come in with is not pen is the sourcing of the candidates. I don't even do I mean in my eyes. I'm not they think that's the value. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, my value is every single thing in an interview process will be handled every candidate experience that comes in contact with you guys will be flawless regardless of the outcome because more are going to get bad news than good news. Only one gets good news and four or five or six get get bad news. How they're handled is huge because they're in the same they only want to dermatologist sales reps. So I only consort in dermatology. And so they're going to come in contact with you guys again at some point in the future, whether it's a year, five years, whatever. So let's make sure that we have a good experience with them. And so I find that it just if their jobs are made easier, regardless if it's a marketing leader a sales leader, an operations HR like that's my goal. I got one more question before we jump over to the quick fire questions. Yep. And like you mentioned something earlier with way technology is moving, how AI is moving. Some people are going to be using AI to go take work like two, three hours a day. What do you actually see like two, three years out in our industry because you're probably one of the most forward thinking actually activated using AI to increase revenue. A lot of people are using AI, but you've actually scaled with AI. Yeah. Like it's a future look like real quick. Future with AI, I would say is going to be you're going to still have I think sorcerers will be probably gone, you know, but I don't think many agencies run the source, you know, the sorcerer, the recruiter, the account manager, maybe the old school ones do I don't I'm three, I'm like everybody's got to be 360, but I think sources will be gone. I think it's going to be harder to sort through fluff because AI will get good and people will start to get really good messages about how they're seven years at Pfizer selling on the diabetes space. Is it great asset to the team and yada yada yada. So I think the relationship piece becomes more important. And I think the influencer route becomes more important because if you are not connected with them and do not have a relationship, which is impossible for me to do to the entire farm and biotech market, you're going to have to fall on your social media linked inability, assuming that industry that you're recruiting in is utilizing LinkedIn. Mine is a lot. So it's I have that to fall on. But I think ultimately it will make people insanely efficient. And if you hire the right team of people who also are on board with that same thing, you can scale an agency to be a $10 million agency with 10 recruiters or 10 people. I think that'll be very possible with the right people. And so I think those who sit there and try to only rely on the gap of old school recruiters who don't change and new school recruiters who adapt that gap will become very, very, very, very wide. I think jumping over to quick, far questions don't need to be quick answers. What's a book that's had a huge impact on your career? So there's one called getting a squirrel to focus in a virtual world. That would be my it's interesting. It's very short. And that one was really kind of all about we're distracted. Kind of what we were talking about the whole time is like all these things are going on outside. How do we focus? And then that's what we ultimately do is we have a very a world that's incredibly distracting for everybody. And we're trying to get people to respond. That one was great. It was short. It was relatable. And it was an easy read. There's other ones that aren't related to recruiting that I would say are in there. But that one would be a really, really good one for people who just want to read something quick and get a lot out of it. What is one of the biggest challenges that you've had to walk through? And you were creating a career. My mom getting her to be like, hey, I know what I'm talking about. 100% 150% and love my mom. But two different areas of recruitment. I've always been a tech head. She's been like not tech at all. So combination of like teaching her how to implement that into recruiting. But also how to like utilize it. where you can be incredibly efficient and I still to this day think she could have been even more efficient should she have adapted and used it more. But I also understand doing it for 25 years the same way and changing it for the last three years probably wouldn't be my jam either but I would say that would be it. If you can go back in time. Actually, it was just back in time to early in your recruiting career with everything that you know everything you've learned what would you tell yourself. I would say be more confident number one and I would say number two utilize LinkedIn more build a better network and a stronger network on LinkedIn. I think I did a decent job but I wasn't like 150% until I was probably three or four years in and I wish I went 200% from day one. Yeah, it's helped me out a lot that has it has changed to sell it. Yeah, that's true to that's true to it has it has changed but I think seeing the last three years especially with the market the way it is. More and more and more people are like in my world are trying to network and trying to get in front of people and I'm running into so many people who are like really good profiles but they had never taken the time to network is always got a job the same way. And then now they're like oh shit I can't find a job and you can't just like start networking and it just like works in three days and I don't think I did a bad job by any means but I think I could have done better the first like three or four years. So I know we've talked about this in pregame we're both in a bunch of like start like recruiting circles together. Yeah, but you really don't talk with other recruiters that often. Which is probably has saved you time and is increased your abilities a little bit. Yeah, yeah, but in saying that like you did grow up around a lot of recruiters you've seen a lot of. I said true to what's like. You might not get these questions that often but with the success you've had but based on what you've seen like what's the question that you wish a recruiter would ask you but they probably would never would probably never have had the chance. Man, I would say like if I'm a recruiter and I'm just getting into recruiting whatever industry that is. I would say what like if I was a recruiter asking Nick like what that question would be the question would probably be what do you think are the top three traits that have allowed you to be successful and the one that you asked earlier what did you wish you had done early on in your career. And I think those there's so many questions that people ask in all these groups and Facebook and all these different recruiter groups that I see. And they're great questions but they're always asked some like a suit and you know imagine like people always ask those questions but there's ones that I see that are so simple. And it's not asked at all and it's like what are the top three things I could do getting started in recruiting that would basically project them ahead much faster than everybody else like what are those traits. Yeah, that's a really good question now. I'd say that that it would be something around like what traits should I have or what things should I work on right out of the gate to be the goat. Yeah, I would say oddly enough organization is like it's huge because so many things slip the cracks so like I'm working on I don't know like 29 job orders right now and I'm like okay they're all over the like just all over the place I would say it's number one. I would say follow up is number two because that will define your reputation amongst an industry and that is just it's so simple to do. And then I would say number three like lock in to your industry and learn every not bolt no can cranny like I am not a science guy at all I was communications major I hate in school I was not good in school. And people would maybe make the assumption always in farmers we must be really high science and like no science I understand the industry very very very well but I. Somebody starts talking about a molecule of a compound I'm like whoo see later but I think what I have done is I have locked in on my industry based on conversations yes like some podcasts and email newsletters and things of that degree but I know everything about why things happen in my industry in the general path that people take because then I can go back and advise people and say here's the why because most people ask questions because I want to know why like why would this be a good next step in my career why do people do this what do you see most often and I can't be sick is this the good human part of me is not going to say oh I'm going to be a sit to act like I know what I'm talking about and then you get in your screw over later on life because I told you to do some stupid but like if you were to survey a random group of 50 pharmaceutical professionals in the industry. In the industry in farmer biotech I am so locked into that industry I would be surprised if not 75% knew who I was either through name working with me or some sort of value and resource and that's why I take those conversations because I can learn more about the industry what's going on be I can help somebody and then they walk away going holy cow that was so helpful so all of my BD I look at it as like the conversations I had with somebody a year ago and they walked away with a really good experience they walk away with the ton of knowledge and they walked away with transparency and straight you're like I like that approach because most people are going in with this cookie cutter BS approach what makes it tough is most people I talk to have not had a good experience of the recruiter so I'm like okay so I'm already starting like if levels here I'm already starting off here and I'm trying to go here and like mind blow them but I'm already under I'm already like below ground level and so it makes it a fun challenge yet but it also is it's more work. So I think if I could say the biggest out of all of those three has since I've been talking about it like the longest it's like know your industry know your ins and the outs know the key players what drives people and what motivates people and notice those patterns because I'm sure every industry and I've worked another one's but I'm sure every industry like is patterns and trends and when you notice people are running away from this company okay why and when you notice people are going into this company what's attractive is that the end of the day we're all humans and everybody's like very similar and their thought process and you know generally speaking yeah long wanted answer this is going to be my last my true last question. Yeah I like your mom a lot she's amazing yes I would agree what do you think your mom is most proud of with you the reason why I say this question is because there's a lot of people that have family in their business there's a lot of recruiters out there that looked at what the opportunity a family in the business and it sometimes doesn't work out or people want to go that direction but this is the story where you can go back into the center my interview with Nick's mom and now I'm sitting with Nick the new CEO what do you think your mom would be most proud of wow deep in a good way I would say probably and I would say it's kind of myself as well as like the like I've been so true to myself and it's taken so much more time to build a foundation of good recruitment build a good foundation of an industry reputations we all know there's ways to be shady and rise to the top faster and make a bunch of money right away then it's faster but there's downfalls and I think at the end of the day I think what she has been most proud of is the fact that I've been true to myself and if now the success is now starting to come through and I think that in this industry especially it's tough because I'm 33 I'm young in comparison to all of the people that I'm working with and so I already have that against me I mean most people are going to look like they really get on a Zoom call and they're going to be like all right not what we're used to saying some younger dude and then they're skeptical it's a recruiter and then you have all these pieces against you and I use that as fuel and leverage but at the end of the day I think she's probably I mean she's most likely very proud about the number the 700,000 that we've done on our own this year alone but I think what ultimately is I can feel proud about what she felt proud about is I've been true to myself and doing that and I haven't been like some person that people are like oh stay away from that guy because I know them in our space and so and I think what's also really neat if I'm in her shoes is she's having conversations with people she's placed before and knows well for 20 years they're coming over and having conversations and reporting back to her not that she needs it or they need it but it's just I think they see that full 360 moment and they're like okay we're in good hands. This guy's noticed what he's doing needs helping us out and his style is different but it's it's a complimenting different to yours and it's a good different I know you're not looking for more connections because you save it for your space but if I recruit a listening wants to follow you please go go about doing that. I'm sad to say click the follow button now I can't have any I'm capped at 30,000 connections on LinkedIn so click the follow button I do like my content that I put out there for people is not only farm a biotech actually most of it's not and so I like people to be scrolling on their news feed see something that's relatable and that most likely makes them smile. If you're a recruiter out there and you want to see a different industry. learn about something different. Follow. I hate to say comment subscribe like I'm an influencer but I hear I am. I can't do like I can only do follow now because I'm capped at 30,000 but please do follow. And if you ever have any questions or you're in a different space and you just want to shoot the shit and chat, I'm always happy to. I try to prioritize those for like five or six PM my time Pacific time but I will not say no to conversations. So just because you're not farmed biotech professional does not mean I'm too cool or too good or too whatever to talk to you would always love conversations. I always like different perspectives too from different industries. So this is this has been an awesome conversation and like this has been phenomenal. I normally say like hey one more thing but looking at the time like this week. We can be sitting down for like a couple of hours. I like through a bunch of things like no, no, my little check. But so funny. This has been just such a real conversation. One, you know, I loved like walking in like you built over a million dollars in the last four months just in like under three months or you're over 720K. You're an AI power to cruder. But I think the most important thing for the listeners is like this has been a conversation of how you actually marry the old school. The stuff that has made thousands of recruiters big builders. Yes. To the new school and how the future is going to be happening in the recruiting world. So yeah, 26th of your year. Nick believes in you. I believe in you. Make it happen. Make it happen. Kick some ass. Let's go out there knock it out. Appreciate you. I've spent years talking to big builders and the thing that usually sets them apart is judgment. Normally that kind of instinct comes from years on the desk. And when you're running 15 live processes at once, you don't have time to engineer that level of thinking into every moment. So too much is left to chance until now. Millie analyzes every detail of your live deals and builds the exact strategy you need powered by a curated knowledge base from elite recruiters. The judgment and gut feel of big builders translated into real time guidance. 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