how to go from agency recruiter to Lone wolf (Advice from a $2.4 Million biller)

Hey guys, welcome back to yet another episode of Top Billers Toolkit where me and my twin brother interview top billers from all around the globe to unlock the secrets to their success. Today's guest is Mike Anderson. Now we've had Mike on the podcast two times, this is his third time being on. Every single time he gets an insane response because he is a master at his craft. For anyone that doesn't know Mike, he's a 2.4 million dollar biller. He's one of the most talented recruiters I have ever spoken to. He's absolutely obsessed with his craft. On today's episode, Mike is going to be talking about the type of mindset that's required to go off on your own and be successful. And whether or not staying at an agency is actually the better option. Mike's going to be talking about client disqualification and the difference between a billable role and a fillable role. And Mike's going to be giving us a masterclass in candidate disqualification, giving us a clear distinction on a candidate that can take the job and a candidate that can do the job. Guys, this is an extremely valuable episode. There are absolute moments of golden here. This isn't just for recruiters who are at an agency and looking to go off on their own. This is valuable advice for any recruiter who wants to bill more. And this is a little plug for Mike because I love him so much. He's got a new course available called the Recruiter Bill Print Loan Wolf. And that is hours of footage and training specifically designed for recruiters who are at agency and want to figure out if going off on your own is the right step. And if you're interested in accessing the course, I've put a link in the YouTube description below. Hope you enjoy the episode. As usual guys, grab a cuppa or glass of wine depending on when you're listening to this. Let's get into it shall we? Wait a second guys, quick question for you. If you could land a new client on LinkedIn in the next couple of weeks, how much would that be worth to you? 20, 30, maybe 40k? Well, we have a pretty crazy offer on right now. If you are a recruitment business owner, then we will work with you for free and write you two posts at absolutely no cost. And here's the cuppa, other recruiters that have come through this free trial have managed to win new clients. They've racked up hundreds of thousands of impressions and started conversations with top tier candidates. It's completely risk free, so you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. If you're interested, the links in the description below. If not, no worries. We hope you enjoy the podcast. See you later. Hello, Mr. Anderson. How are you, my friend? The Miller twins. Round three. Let's go. Mr. Anderson, this is your, the only guest to come on. I think twice, but three times is insane, man. You just, we just keep on getting you back on because you keep on coming with the value and the, and the nuggets, the golden nuggets. So really happy to see you again, man. When you're 38, you're single and you like, you just go to bed thinking about recruiting, you just want, you got to share it with somebody. So I'm like, dude, where are the twins at? Let's talk. Well, we always love speaking to you, man. And without a doubt, every time we speak to you, the knowledge you drop is insane. So this podcast is, I have high hopes for it. And I'm sure it's going to be just as good as the others. We've asked you the original question twice. I'm just going to skip that, which isn't what's the number one tuning toolkit. I don't think that's applicable right now. We're just going to jump straight into the lone wolf reality check. And just to give the audience some context, the kind of main topic we're covering today, because Mike is Mike's created a course on it is, if you're an agency recruiter and you want to go off on your own, do what's the best way to do this? Essentially, we're going to be covering that whole topic with Mike. So Mike, the first question I want to ask you is, what do you see people underestimate about going out on their own once the initial excitement has worn off? Well, I think, I mean, it is a pretty low question, but like in general, and by the way, the lone wolf, we've also had lone wolves could be successful and that were just in regular B of E sales or B to C sales that weren't even in recruiting that wanted to go try something on their own. They just didn't want to do whatever commute they were doing or outside sales or whatever and try this too. So we've seen success there as well. But in general, when you have agents or recruiters that are sort of like, they underestimate what it could be like going on your own. I think that everyone thinks like they just, you build $800,000 in an agency, you get, I don't, you know, and I'm making 50% on that. So I made 400 grand last year. I want to go and make, I'll just build 800 grand on my own and then just put it all my own big count. And it's not apples to apples. You definitely have to, you have to assess your strengths versus what where you're at might provide you. Like if you I mean, I could go, I could talk about this for hours. But like if you are somebody like me, right? Like I eat, sleep, breathe, business development. Like somebody like just, I want to break down doors all day long. Like I just love it, love it, love it, love it. And so when I was at an agency, like my most valuable to them is just breaking down doors, getting new agreements, talking to clients, etc, etc. But at the same time, that's one part of it. You got it. Now we're going to deliver. And so I had to understand like for me, I can't say, you know, I built, you know, a million and a half to two and a half million dollars when I was building seven figures, all of that. That's great. But like, I'm not going to go translate that to myself by doing it on my own because there's no way I can get the efficiency without having the candidate flow. So I under, you know, I wouldn't say I underestimated it. I knew it, but I knew where my strength was and I knew to keep the engine running. I'd have to have the other side of that taken care of all be it whether that's a system that you have or a tool for me. It's a partner. But like that stuff's really, really important. So knowing where you're strong versus knowing where you're weak. And then something else people underestimate. And I've seen a lot is they think they're way more disciplined than they are. It's like they think like, I don't know. People think that they have a gym membership. It just makes you be in shape. Like, no, you got to go to the gym once you get the membership. Like going off on your own, you have to like wake up and you got to like do business development. You got to like stick to the stuff that you were supposed to do. You have to have KPIs. You have to have top of the funnel metrics. Otherwise, you just kind of willy-nilly just waking up, flipping a coin and hoping it lands on heads. And that's a good day for you. Like you have to have structure. And if you're not self-disciplined, like I see people fall apart in that sense all the time. And so a lot of the people that little wolves that have gotten my course or people that I coach or etc. Like one of the big things that they're one is they just want to help me create a system for them. And then keep them accountable in that. Which which a lot of people at agencies get from their bosses, their managers, there etc. And then when you go up on your own, you're like, wait, who's my boss? And it's like, is it your cat? Is it your dog? Is it your spouse? Is it your kid? I mean, something's got to be your whatever. If you don't have that intrinsic motivation. So I always say this, like you're on the ultimate draw when you go off on your own, the ultimate draw, right? Like it's totally worth it. But like if you don't have the discipline, if you're a person that when you walk by an ice cream store, you got to walk in every single time because you need ice cream and you can't say no, maybe like you got to apply this to your self-discipline in doing agency recruiting by yourself. You know what I mean? It's kind of a bad analogy, but you guys get my point, right? Yeah, interesting. Now I completely get that man. That's really. And you kind of already answered it might, but and you must have spoken to a few recruiters in the last couple months who are like, hey, Mike, I want to go out on my own and I've been working for agency. What are some of the things they say that you're like, hey, dude, I'm not sure this is going to be right for you. Like you should probably stay in agency. I'm curious what word they say. So here's what I'd say, I'm going to make I'm going to say it in like two one sentence and then I'm going to elaborate on it. So in general, if I the way I would ask somebody is if I took away every client, every candidate, every tool that you have right now, if I took it all the way for me, and I dropped you in the desert and I said, build a desk from scratch with an internet and a foam. Would you would that be exciting to you or would that be scary to you? And like if that is, I would say this a good lone wolf looks at the unknown and says attack, but not good lone wolf looks at the unknown and says wrong. So like I stare into the unknown for me, I love like every day I wake up and I have a free calendar on like, oh, maybe what's today going to bring? Let's go ready to go to town. But then there are days when it's like, but if that if you wake up and you're like, I have an empty calendar, I don't even know where to start. I don't know what to do. Like that's not, you should not be that if you need that structure, you need that, you know, et cetera. So I always say that if you have the joy of the unknown, go off on your own. If you have the fear of the unknown, stay where you're at. Now, if you want to extrapolate that down or like we can go granular on that, if you look at this and you say to yourself, okay, yeah, some classic examples. You're a recruiter and you had a half-million dollar a year in the last last 12 months, you did a half million most. Not bad. Like that's good. You're good recruiter. You're top, I don't know, 5% probably. Like you're doing well. Okay, cool. So you've moved 500 grand. Now you did it across the reclients and those clients are a big part of your agency. You're probably not going to be able to get that client to go with you, especially if it's a heavy delivery client where it's like you, you know, you do lots of deals and multiple people want to do splits with you on those companies and they want to send you cannes to do that. So if you're if you're not spread out, where like, you know, you can you can just pick up a new client, you can do a deal with new client, you can go to a relationship with them. If you if that stuff is not good and you're just a rinse and repeat steady, steady issue goes, etc. Like you might want to just stay on your own. Like there's something to be said for having a client that's repeat business consistent. Like that's a really nice thing to have. And like if if you if if if every client you get in general, my focus is this is every three clients I pick up, I want one of them to be a client I do at least five years with. That's like really important to me. That's like what I focus on. If that sort of like math doesn't jive with your history, like it doesn't mean you can't go off on your own. It means you should really assess like, are you ready to deal with the grind of like building that business up? Because if you like, I'll tell you what right now, if you have been grinding at an agency, you ain't going to start grinding on your own. Like it's not going to, you know what I mean? But the value of it going off on your own is when you're grinding so hard and you're like, dude, I could do, I could grind just as hard but keep more money. And there's nothing proprietary about what the agency gives me that I couldn't do on my own. So like, I always say this, like if you, like, if it's just enough clients, if you look at your last 12 months and you picked up two new agreements and you've done deals with the same four companies that you've done the last three years, probably not go off on your own. But if you have been like, yeah, I lost, I did $600,000 and it was all with 14 new accounts and they picked up in the last year and every client, you know, only get 42 deals and only four of them or 10 of them are splits and 32 are on your own. Like Matt says, maybe you should go do this by yourself because you know how to do this. You know what I mean, so if the agency isn't providing you the value that you need to make sure that you're maximizing your efficiency on what your take home is, go off on your own. So, but those are some general things too. Other issues that I see when you're good in an agency oftentimes, they'll talk me on the shoulder and they'll like want to raise you up and then you become a manager, a director and on and on and on and you start collecting money on the people underneath to accept it like that's very common. That's cool. And there's nothing wrong with them. Like I was a part of that that's totally there's nothing wrong with it. But I'll say this like when you do that, oftentimes your own desk can take a hit because you become much more managerial and you're jumping in and you're hoping and you know whatever. So all of a sudden now your own efforts, your sort of individual contributor products, producer mentality will take a back seat. And so now you're managerial stuff. Then all of a sudden the head haunches of the company come along and say, Hey, we got to have meetings and talk about our rules of engagement and the tools we're going to use in this, that and the other. And now all of a sudden you look at a 40 hour work week and you're spending 26 of the hours on stuff. It doesn't necessarily make you and your bottom line money. I mean, it does because Ron Bay salary, but I tell people all the time if or based salary or big draw or something like that. But if you are being paid by a company, that's quite literally that company's subscription model for your service. So you better be available to what they want. Yeah, so interesting. But if you if you are doing stuff that you look at, you're like, how is this making me money? And you bet and you know that your time is worth X when you're on desk, like if you take away your end, you get your individual contributor hours and you say, every hour work with an individual contributor, I made 250 bucks an hour and every hour worked as a manager, I made a hundred bucks an hour. I mean, it's a math equation. So it's like, okay, you want to be the ultimate individual contributor, leave that thing and go off on your own. But again, the harm checking balances, which I talk about on the course, but like that should give you a good idea. So it's not for everybody. But the main factors I would say is, does the unknown scare you? If it scares you, stay where you're at, if it doesn't scare you, go for it. And then number two, do you have in trans Excel discipline, like you don't need somebody sitting next to you to say, do your work. So I jump in with the question. And of course, yeah. Thank you. I just want to go to, I've been looking at why why most recruiters waste time. I've got the heading in front of me. And I really want to know, like if there's a recruiter that has decided to jump out and go in their own, maybe just as a fly in the wall, if we were to look at them, what are the things that they typically waste time on, things they shouldn't be doing or things they should be doing more of like the top one or two things you think Mike that they that are wasting their time when they're on their own. Yeah. So I mean, it's it's classic recruiting in this. I mean, you can make that you can make the argument that this is this is in general, whether you're on your own or at an agency. But the number one reason and this was when I, you know, when I was a boss at an agency and I had to, you know, you've got to let people go. I mean, the attrition rate in agency recruiting is very high. We all know that. Like that very few make it long careers, etc. But like if you do, you can have a great career. But the biggest reason that you see people come into this business is in general. It's like, it's kind of funny. They come in alcoholism and they're like, oh my gosh, I just want to help people get jobs. This is so great. Like, ah, I'm not in your life. This is not bad. But that's okay. So they, and then they kind of, you know, we all kind of started in that mindset and then we realized this is not what that is. And then so you sort of graduate into, okay, I can do this. Now, the discipline to have the self-assessment on should I be working with this? The quickest way, like, I'm so big on the moment that you realize and the veteran recruiters or the ones that do this for a long time can see this coming a mile away. That it's all about time. The number one commodity that you can never get back is more time, right? You get in our client, get in our candidate, get in another deal, get in another interview, get another blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you can get all that stuff. You can do that a million times, which you can't get back at any time. And so the protection of your time is the most valuable thing you will ever do in this business, whether you're on your own, especially if you're on your own or in an agency to protect your time. Now, if you have a base salary in an agency, you might not look at it as that important. But when you're on your own, the protection of your time is nastively important. That's why we're doing this thing on Friday because Monday to Thursday, I will hammer them. So anyway, but the quicker that you can vet out the two things, right, is a client? Is it billable and is it fillable? Is the client billable and is the role fillable? Okay, those two things. Okay, billable and fillable. The quickest you can, the quicker you can vet that out, right? And then here's the thing. When you vet it out, when you understand that it isn't or it's not what it is, swallow it out. Like, do billers, we talk about this all the time, but billers tell it like it is not billers tell it how it might be. Like, oh, perhaps maybe we can move a little quicker. No, like if we don't move quicker, we're not going to close this. Like it's that simple. So billable and fillable. Okay, so is the client billable? Are they ready to pay a fee and is the role fillable? Can you actually get that fee? Right? That's there's that. Why do you go to the candidate's son? Candidate, placeable. Candidate, do the jobs. Closeable. Will the candidate take the jobs? Massive difference. Massive difference. Okay, there's a lot of people like a new jobs. There's a lot of not everybody's going to take the jobs. And so the quicker on whatever side of the business that you're on, again, if you're a loanable, if you're doing both sides of it, you've got to figure out billable, fillable, and you've got to figure out placeable, closeable on candidate clients. Those are your two things. And the quicker you got that out, like I always say the mark of a great recruiter is a lot of stuff scheduled, but you're like lots of interview scheduled. What a free calendar for you. In other words, you can go do what you need to do. Like that's when your business is at its finest. And the way that you get that done is by constantly betting out. And here's the thing, okay? We're in the people business. So a big mistake I often see is a client, is a sumptuous say, oh, I've done a deal with them. They're a good client. No, they're not. That doesn't mean that they're a client. They paid you, but like you have to have a criteria. And I've talked about the five criteria. We can go through that again if you want to. But like there's a five criteria of what a good client is. And like you need to constantly be assessing that. And so this is the people business. People are fickle. Like come on, we're in the recruiting business. Like they're mad at their boss on Monday. And they want to quit the next day. They're boss days in the lunch on Tuesday. And now they're going to be promoted. Like it's and so now they're never going to talk to you again. Like you have to understand that they are fickle. You have to make sure storylines check out. You have to look for patterns of behavior. You have to look for changes. And then when those things happen, the good recruiters will call that out. The average recruiters will. And so here's the thing. There's massive freedom in this business. When you understand that you are not good enough, and I'm not good enough, and none of us are good enough to change someone's mind. All you are trying to do is get the result faster than it would have otherwise come without you pushing it. That's all you're trying to do. Like you're not going to change the outcome. The answer is going to be the answer. But if the answer is going to be no in four weeks, I want to know the answer is no in three days. Because I want that three and a half weeks back. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, that's a fantastic thing. But I'm always looked like you're not going to change it. And so too often times we think that we will influence by what we say or do that we're going to change the way somebody works with us. The reality of it is, is that two things are true. As long as not illegal, as long as not immoral, you're probably not going to be changing anybody's mind. And so just say what it is that needs to be said and then see what the outcome is and then deal with it again. The only commodity you can never get more of is your time. And this will help you achieve that. So I think I think in the low and wolf life, I think when you're at an agency, man, this is the bit my juice flowing. Okay, I think when you're at an agency, stay with me here. Now obviously a lot of world remote, but like if you go like in the conventional recruiting world when I where I grew up in like you're in an office, you go whatever, right? Like you are surrounded by 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 people around you that are all sort of doing the same thing. And so when you call up a client and they're like, my kickbox, we hate you. And you're like, and that was never this Larry. Like, and then you hang up and then you like laugh with your buddy about it. Like you can just let's go to lunch, dude. Let's go to some Chipotle or whatever. Like you can hang in the pocket because your buddies right there kind of like in the trenches with you, you know what I mean? But when you're off on your own, you might not say something that you know you should say because you're like. Well, who's going to support me? Like you're kind of like, I don't have any family. My cat's going to open up my leg, but that's about it. You've got to make sure that you have somebody like, you've got to understand that you need to be able to say what it is. And if your total support system comes from having other people around you, then you're probably not going to say what needs to be said when you're on your own, which therefore means you might get ran around circles chasing your tail, which means you won't have to eat nearly successful as you would be at an agency. And you have to even double down even more. And so the more aggressive thing when you're on your own, because you hate to protect your time because you got nobody else that can you, your blind spots, you're the only one that can see how you're recruiting. And that's why I say every, I think every agency recruiters, they have a network of people or a coach or something with them so that they can see, hey, in your game, this is the blind spot. This is an area of your game you got to improve on. You can't see it, but I can see it. And I like my business partner. He keeps me in check in in various things that I need to be whatever, because sometimes I can go too much. And he's like, whoa, whoa, let him breathe. And so it's good to have a blind spot. You know, sometimes I need to slow down my aggression or whatever. Like, do it for yourself like that, but like that's really, really important. But I guess my point, what I'm really trying to say is that, protecting your time comes with you saying the thing that needs to be said. And oftentimes, the thing that you don't want to say is exactly what you should say. >> Love that, love that, dude. fillable on the client side and then do the job, take the job, want to go deeper into those Mike. So I'm a lone wolf. I've gone out. I have the right personality traits, the right discipline. How do I figure out the how do I go deeper into billable, fillable and actually tick them off and be like, cool, clients billable, this role is fillable. What am I asking? What am I looking for? Yep. Got it. So first of all, I'm going to answer that, but I'm going to start a little bit higher than that. Cool. When you go up on your own, you have to have a system. You have to have this development system. You have to have something that you can stick to that is like, this is how I operate. These are the hours. This is my process. This is what I do. The reason why you have to do that is because when you have your equilibrium, so you sort of have like, this is baseline, right? This is from the moment I initially outreach on a cold outreach to a client all the way to me doing a deal and placing a candidate, right? Like, this is, it's never going to be a perfectly straight line. We all know that. But like in a perfect world that goes from here to here, two weeks, three weeks, four days, whatever it is like, like, that's what you want, right? If that is your baseline, then every single thing that happens that goes outside of that baseline, the way that you figure out the billable and fillable is how quickly you can get somebody and when they start going outside of the line, back to the line. So your job is the recruiter to funnel them to as close to that line as you possibly can. Now, it's never going to be perfect because people are people, but as quickly as you can. Now, once you start to see that now you're, they're even your funnel, like you're sort of, you have the perfect line, then you have like your actual barriers, your bumpers and bowling. And if they're starting to bowl in the other lanes, like, you've got to move on. And so for me, when I look at outreach, right, I have a three step process when I do my business development, okay? Technically, four steps. If somebody gets back to me, the time frame by which they get back to me on my email, which number of email, which are one of the emails they got back to. And what they said in those emails is all part available fillable. Then it becomes how many responses do I have to send them to get them on the phone? In general, the ones that I have the greatest success with is it takes one response because they have a sense of urgency on their side and they're happy to talk because they have to hire. Again, I'm just like, and it doesn't mean, okay? It doesn't mean anything. It's just giving me a cadence of what I'm typically used to, right? Because I've done so many deals and worked with so many clients of my career. I know what a billable client looks like and I know what a fillable client and a fillable role looks like. I also know when it's not billable. Again, it's easy to chase down money if it's there. The hard thing to do is when it's not there to actually say I'm going to walk away because you oftentimes we look at our time as the investment. It's kind of like the gambler's fallacy of like, you go to your toilet table and it's like red, red, red, red, red, red, and then you're like, I'm going to bet on black. That last black bed has nothing to do with a prior tame. And so you can't look at it as I put in this much time. That's not going to change whether they're going to hire you know what I mean? Yeah. So that often that is often a mistake to feel made. You have to look at the client itself as are they billable and is the role fillable? Okay. But the time I was thinking back, how quickly you get on that call, how that call goes? Okay. For me, I find that clients generally speaking, if I set up a video chat with them, usually that goes stronger and I have a very sigh, sigh, sigh, sigh, maybe it could be just me, but I'm a very high, high rate of getting a contract signed if I want that business because most of people aren't going to just get on a video chat with you if they don't like actually need something that they think that you could provide value in. Okay. So my billable and then on that, we, I talk about this in the job order, but the three things I talk about in a job order call with billable is billable and then is the role fillable and then agreement BFA. Those are the three areas of a job order call. Okay. And a client that serious, client that serious will give me like that will good, that will flow just fine. But if you get on a job order call and it turns into an interview, they're like, so why are you different than everybody else? I'm like, you have no interest in hiring me. There's not an answer I could give you. But you're going to be like, oh, it's good answer. We'll hire him. Like no, dude, you either need to hire and you think I can hustle because you can get dangled in care in front of me that says, hey, we're going to pay you 30% of this person's salary if you can find them. Most of the character that I need and I'll show you how I can hire him. Like, but I'm not going to be able to tell you the only way that the best value in recruiting is showing somebody that that's a fact. And so anyway, where you go through billable, we talk and there's five main questions but in general, the big things that I look for when I find that if they're billable, okay, is I ask basically three or four main things. But in the last 12 months, how many hires you made as a company? Then I'll extrapolate on that and I'll say, how do those 20 hires? How many of those were from recruiters and they'll say, like yesterday, if you had one, we made 20 hires. Great. They'll actually literally said 20. It's like, cool. How many of the recruiters? One, some like 5% of the people that you hired last year were from agency. Like my fee could be 80%. I'm not going to get that money. It doesn't, doesn't that? Like, so again, that was me figuring out what I would probably figure out in five weeks if I took that business on. Are you tracking with me? Yeah. Again, all I'm trying to do is just get them into a funnel where I have the information. We took up this all the time. Information is gold, whoever has the gold makes the rules. That is why when you ask questions, great questions produced better results because it even gives you money or it gives you time. Both of those are wins. Yeah. Like you never understood the phrase time is money until you go off on your own. I'm just telling you what we talked about this. So last 20, so last year, how many people you have? 20. How many of those, let's just get those down. How many of those were through an agency? Then what I'm looking for is I'd love to hear them say more than 50% of the hires. So I've loved to hear total double digit hires, so at least 10 or more total hires and at least five of those being through an agency. When I hear those, now you've got my interest. Okay. Now now I'm like, okay, all right. Cool. So we have to say this. I'll be like, cool. So I got to say some makes the money with you. I can say you guys been boys. They're like, great. And then I'll say this. I'll be like, okay, cool. What is the target projection for the next 12 months? How many hires? And I'll say 17 cool. So in the last year, you hired six people from an agency out of 10 total hires, 60%. So if you have a goal of 17 on six and you stick it at 60% mark, I potentially have a chance to do 10 plate or nine or to what event in math is nine or 10 places with you guys. That accurate? Yes. Cool. And I'll say this. I'm going to want your business as long as what you're looking for as actual fillable. So let's talk about that. What are you looking for? And then I go into the three main, I talk about three main topics of this. Now we're in the fillable part. There's one question that I interweave into the conversation. Either available or fillable, it all depends on where the conversation is, but I don't let the job order. If I want the business, if I want the business, I don't let the job order this ball that I'm having with the client has without me asking this question. I got a question. What's your biggest pet peeve with recruiters? And then I'll just show them. And they're just like, Oh my God. Well, you know, they were crude out of us and they lie to us and they don't have candidates and they inflate salaries. And oh my God. Oh, you hear it. I hear it. It's like, okay, cool. So invariably, whatever they're annoyed at, whatever they're annoyed at, always comes down to something. Just don't lie to them, tell them the truth and be a man like that's pretty much answers every whatever. And so I always joke with them and I'll be like, great, I'm on top. You have to be a good recruiter when I was seven. Just don't lie and show up. So I'll joke with that. And then you know, usually get a little bit of a smirk out of them, which is good. And so they're not, but then I go into fillable. You might have the greatest billable client. And this is, this is classic. You hear the bill billable billable, you hear that. And then what they're actually looking for is not filled because I mean, for a period of reasons, it could be that they want somebody to boost job on talent. It's got to be local. There's only moose in boost job on talent. There's not people. Or you look up what they want and you find out that the four people, they want to hire four people and you search, you literally are on LinkedIn while you're on the, while you're on video with them. And you search and you find out that four people that they want in that city are you worth there. So I'll literally share my screen and I'll be like, dude, these are all four people and they're already worth for you. So where are you? Where are you? It's kind of the fine people. Remember, I'm a recruiter, not a magician. Okay. I can find talent I can't create it. Okay, big difference, big difference. And so again, good recruiters tell it like it is, not bad recruiters tell it how it might be. Billers, not Billers, that's the idea. So you gotta say this stuff. And again, this goes back to, you're not, it's not a customer service job. This is goes back to me protecting my own tongue. Like I need to call out and it needs to be called out. If it's a really billable and fillable account, they're gonna be able to rebuttal what I'm saying with great data. >> Yes. >> The problem is if I don't say it, I'm just gonna wonder about it. And then that's when the time start adding, adding, then you start, then you send candidates, then you start to see patterns. And it's like all of that would have not happened if you would have asked these sort of questions. You could have saved yourself, tell them. One of the reasons that my business partner Connor and I, we don't have to send, I don't know what the average agency rate is, but I'm guessing eight to 10 resumes for a higher, maybe even more than that, maybe 15 to 20, I don't know. But like we're at like three or four, because we're just not gonna let it get to a place where that's even possible. Like it just wouldn't happen because again, we do such a good job of heavy vetting up front on both the candidate side and the client side, and make sure candidates are here, but also the fillable part. And so my part of the business, the part that I do, where Connor does a lot of the candidate stuff, is being on these job protocols with these clients and vetting them out, okay? I had one yesterday, I had one yesterday. Billable is all getting on. She was awesome, she was great. We were laughing with her cracking jokes. She thought we were funny. You know, that I was doing the dance. They were doing half hour call schedule, they gave me like an hour and seven minutes. It was mom, we were just jogging, right? It was sweet. She had a bad case of the Mikey's. Let's go. And so you're all fired up. So we got this thing going. So I'm like, billable, yeah, we pay fees. We got a hire, let's go. I'm responsive, then all this stuff, right? She was great. She's been there like 30 years. She was awesome, fun lady, super cool. I was sort of like, probably had like maybe 10 years left before she retired, but she was just like, she just wanted to deal with like, you know, fun cool guys. So we're like, great. And then we got to the fillable part. It was like, what do you got to put in for? And then what they were looking for is what everybody else was looking, what every client is looking for. But they wanted it in a market that did not have that at all. And we knew that. And we knew that and we knew that. So again, at that point, she was ready to sign our fee with whatever I could have literally said any percentage possible. I also could have done, and this is a common mistake in my opinion, this is just a painting where I could have said, hey, it's a tough role. So for us to work on it, for us to work on it, you need to pay us upfront on the retainers. I do not do that. I do not want that. I don't want retain search. I don't want any of that because I do not want to be under anybody sort of like, they paid me. So now I owe them. No, I love the contingent model. And again, there's different schools of thought on this. But for me, I have zero interest in being on retainer, especially on a role that's impossible to fill. And if it's, and then the other side of it is if it's an easy role to fill, and they want me on retainer, why? Why would you want that? Like, this is not that hard, you know what I mean? So again, there's questions, but like, it did not make sense. What they wanted did not make sense. But fillable, I talk about what they specifically want, remote or on site, then I figure out the interview process. Then I figure out compensation. So basically, roles and responsibilities, interview process. And then I figure out compensation under roles and responsibilities, and under interview process and under compensation. What you're going to hear me do every time is I'm going to do what we call stretching the jump. Because I want to see how a client reacts. So they'll say we want A, B, C, D, E, and F into candidates. And I'll be like, what if I only find them candidate with A, B, and C, can D and F be negotiable? And they'll say, yeah, we can work with that. Cool. Sounds like you need that. And now I'm seeing that I've got some wiggle with them. There's some elasticity to this client. So that piece of work. Then I go to interview process. And now it's like, yeah, we have a four-step interview process before we even bring them in. And then we're going to fly them out. And they've got to go be my ex-wife. And then they've got to meet my dog. And then they've got to go fly out to Cancun. And we've got to take them on a trip to make sure they can buy a bit happy hour. It's like, dude, this is a three-year interview process. It's not going to happen. But in general, whatever the interview process is, you hear anywhere from two steps, three steps, four steps. And whenever it's one step, I'm suspected that because I'm like, now I don't know if there's enough there to get a candidate excited after one interview. So that's-- I usually like to have at least two. But two or three is our three-to-one. Well, what you're going to hear me do every time is I'm always going to say whether it's two interviews or three interviews or four interviews, I'm always going to say, hey, is there any way that we can combine those to get it down to one or get it down to two or get it down to three from four to three? Can we combine anything? And then oftentimes you hear, oh, yay, yay, yay, that we can do that. And then I'll say great. And if you're out of town or Bob is out of town, whoever's doing the first interview, we have somebody that can step in on me. What's the plan for that? And oftentimes you'll see them say, oh, no, we have a contingent plan in place for that. We know what we're doing. OK, cool. So it tells me that they've dealt with it before and they know what they're doing. If not, they're like, oh, you don't really haven't really thought about that. Or it doesn't mean, again, I don't want it. It just is something to think about. These are all touch points, giving me information because what am I ultimately trying to do? Protect my time. So based on when you extract and take all that information that I get, how much stretching I could do, how much elasticity, how many agency recruiters they've worked with, how many times they've hired the agencies, what their budget is to pay agency fees this year, whatever it is, all of the stuff. When I take away all that, then in my head, if it all adds up-- and by the way, I would have my business partner on this call too-- if it all adds up, if no message me on teams, go around and hit me like, yeah, we want this one. And we're like, and it'll be a sleepy face if this one's boring, right? So like, it's whatever. So depending on what I see from him, because when they're talking, he's literally looking on LinkedIn, listening to what they're saying, seeing what's out there, what makes sense. So we can in real time say, cool. And that is why when I quote my fee, like, I'm quite literally going to quote based on what it is. And in general, if they want local, it's 30% and if they're willing to hire a motor, 25%. That's generally where we sit at. Because-- and it makes sense. And I mean, I have one yesterday or last week where I quote him 30%. He's like, that seems reasonable. So I was like, cool. And then now he's coming back saying that he can-- he's willing to sign me at 25%, but he only wants local talent. And I said, no, not the one. Like, I've been out walked one. And so that's it. I don't need that business more than I need to stick to what I know is worth it. Because again, it's I'm protecting my time, because I understand at the end of the year, I have an hourly on my time that I want to be able to maintain. And so my goal is to sit at about $400 an hour in total work and to say at the end, is it working? So when I'm talking to a client, I'm thinking to myself, is me spending an hour looking for candidates going to yield me $400 an hour with this client? If I think the answer is yes, let's go. And if it's not, the answer is no. So there's that. The other part is, you don't want-- this is another thing where we think that just because a client needs to hire, we have to get an agreement with them. Like, you're not doing enough investigation. If you think that every client that you get on a call if you need to get an agreement with, you're not asking the right questions. I mean, understanding what potentially a good client could be, like that will save you a lot of hearted. So for instance, right? This year, we've had, I think we've had, well, one of this January 30th. So we've had, yeah, we've had, we've had, we've had, we've had for about three weeks. So three new client calls a week. So I bring them in all the time, get a schedule and this week, we had four, I think. But we're not, I think we only signed up two of them this week. We're not trying to sign up everybody because we're trying to bet out what makes sense and what doesn't. And so oftentimes, when I get a response on BD, and they'll say, what's your fear, whatever, I'll be like, dude, that's adorable. But the good news is you're talking to the CEO. I can make a call in the spot. I just don't have enough information to coach you. And I always say this. I'll be like, it's the Cardinal's send a cool fee on email. So don't make me do it. And most people respect that. They're like, yeah, let's follow. And if they don't want-- and here's the thing. If they're like, no, I'm not in the last week of your time at your fee, I'm not talking to you. I know you with this. Oh, God. You're going to hate me in the rest of the process, too. Like, no question. And so I understand just basically my equal living and it allows me to protect my time. Because I'm comparing all the information I'm getting to how I operate. And if it makes sense, I want it. If it doesn't, I don't. And trust me. If it does make sense, I will go after it's all like hard. But I know when it's got to make sense. And that all comes from right probing, right questions, not afraid to say what needs to be said, et cetera. Yeah, I just went super long-winded. But did that help? That was super useful, dude. So he loved that. I'm curious. With the client that you spoke to the woman that was really cool and had a great time with, and then you said, hey, you're not going to find anyone. What happened with them? I'm just curious what happened. I told you exactly what I told you guys. I said, I said, it was great. I'm not going to say a real name. I don't know if it would look or else. Let's just say her name is Karen. I'll be like, hey, I was just like, hey, Karen. And not like the weird Karen. Nice Karen. So I was like, and I was like, hey, Karen. I was like, hey, Karen, I loved our conversation. Honestly, if I was ever in your town, I'd want to hang out with you. But I got to level with you. This is money that no matter how much you want to dangle a car, we're never going to be able to get this. Because what you guys are looking for, it's not going to happen. So if I charge you 45% or 50% or 60% or even double to every other recruiter for you to ever pay, it doesn't matter because the 30% of a great-- or sorry, 60% of a great, they still not as good as 20% of a watermelon. It's not going to be worth it. And so she's honestly, I have a good respect to her. And so, and I asked her, I said, how many agencies are you guys signing up? And she's like, oh, we've got quite a few. And I'm like, and they're not producing. I was like, that should tell you something about the role that you have. Most agencies want to sign up companies. And so the fact that I'm walking away from it should tell you that this is not business that you should have. And so, and I said, if you. If you get to, and I list out, if you go remote, if you go remote, your salary is this, and you change your interview process to two steps, it's business I want. But until that happens, it doesn't matter how good I am. I'm not going to be able to place anybody, and it's not going to work my time. So I walked away. I loved it. I loved it. I was just like, you know, take care and get real a little heart right here. It's literally what I did to you. I was like, "I'm so great." And I was like, "But." I was like, "That's what I did." I don't. I don't. I don't. When we talk to candidates, right? Like, they're very big. I'm like, "This is what I'm worth. This is what I make. This is whatever." I don't know why we use what cooters don't do it the same way. This is what I make. This is what I'm worth. You know, like, this is what it costs to work with me. We two oftentimes, we come across as the desperate ones, and it's like, we shouldn't be desperate. And if you are desperate in this business, you've got to ask yourself, why did you get to this point? Yeah. Like, that's another, that's a whole nutterdam. But like, if you run your business a certain way, you can kind of, you just say, "Hey, this is what I like to work with me. This is what you'll get. This is why we're good, why we're not good, whatever." If it makes sense to work, if you guys want to work with us, we'd like to work with you. And if you don't, no problem. Yeah. 100% man. So much stuff there to unpack, dude. My initial gutters to get the most value possible is now to go to the hand that it's side. Do the job. Take the job. Can we dissect those two things and how to figure out those two things? So yeah. So here's the deal, right? So, and I don't know how much screw need this will get, but you hear a lot of people that are like, super niche recruiters. Like, this is like, what I focus on, dude, I want people in Bloomington, Indiana that know how to do plumbing on toilets that are three feet high. That's my market. Like, I know how to do that. Like, or whatever. Okay. Hold it. Yeah. I'm sure you own that market. That's cool. For me, like, I don't, people say, what do I specialize in? And the reason why I say this is, let's just say, hire. Like, I don't really care. If you're looking for a 11th grade, you know, Russian, some of the teachers have Russian as a language at a high school, like, I don't need to speak Russian. We'll just need to be able to find somebody that does it. Like, again, I'm not worried about what it is you want. The minimums I focus on are my fee agreement is my fee going to yield me at least $25,000. Okay. That's what we want. We want to do. We want to do $25,000. So much. We $100,000 or more at 25% or more. You guys with me? Okay. Simple math. Then I want to make sure that there's three steps or less interview process, you know, whatever. And then I want to make sure that I have 24-hour communication with Clan. Like, that's a good place for us to stone. So if that all checks out, then I'll go find Candace. And so from that perspective, it doesn't matter what I'm recruiting for. Now, you're going to find, you're going to find that, like, that those barriers that I want are going to be in markets that are actually moving. The problem is that if you stick to one market always, and that market slows down for whatever reason, let's just say it was like 2020, whatever crypto die 2022 and 2023 and you roll it and you're like, I only do crypto. It's like, okay, well, I guess we're not going to eat this here. So I don't know. So again, it doesn't really matter what it is I'm working. So from that perspective, I really don't care what I'm recruiting on, okay? Because I'm focused on the relationship beast. Now, once I get that, whoever the SME is on the other side of the table, the client on the client side, they're the ones whether it would be, whether it's a freaking CEO of a manufacturing company or the CEO of a tech company or the CEO of a healthcare company, the CEO or whoever it is, whoever it is, high up there on the other side. They are one billion times percent smarter than I am on whatever they do, okay? Like, I don't, whatever. What I'm really smart at is figuring out how to not waste their time with Candace and aren't serious about their job search. So my pitch to them every time is this is not dude, a really good person. I'm not a match of job description to resume and part's not hard. What you're going to get the value with me and is all the stuff that's not on the resume to make sure that they're not just in your inbox, clogging your funnel because they're not serious about their job search, they're overpriced. I'm going to get all the stuff that you're not getting and you look at a resume. We all can see that so and so is a good match for a job. I'm going to figure out if they're actually going to take your job. So placeability, can they do the job? That's as simple as just matching a resume to a job description or matching a LinkedIn to a title or whatever. That's just what's match game. That's junior stuff. That's not hard. The closed ability starts then starts on the first call. We talk about RFL. Does that reason for leaving make sense? Then we talk about and by the way, this is big on the agency side. But let me give you a little difference in the low level agency. When you're at an agency and you might have a database of making this 599, 1099, 2099 that's right. You can get away with not being so honed in on every candidate you deal with. You can get away with that because you have a database where you throw in a Boolean search and stitch out 100 resumes. You call seven or eight of them and you get the above SD, the out one, the above, above, about sense, sense, sense, sense, sense. You play the volume game. Maybe they like one or two of them to interview you, do a deal, blah, blah, blah. Check, check, check, check, check. That's cool. Again, and that's part of what your margin is, right? Because you have that database. So you might get 50% of your deal. That 50% goes to the house. That's what your paying for. That makes sense. When you're on your own and you don't have that and you quite literally are only getting out the effort that you put in that order. I'll talk to a candidate. I have to get that candidate, which means I don't have, I'm not going to send them 10 resumes because we don't have 10 resumes. They've got to go get 10 people to say yes to me. So what I'm assessing for is just closed ability, which is, again, it goes back to like my VD and the client. It's kind of like business development for a candidate. Candidate development. How quick they got back to me. What they said when they got back to me. How quick they converted that into a phone call and what's on that? Again, if it's like, yeah, let's talk. I can talk today like, okay, I'm starting to see some buying language from this candidate. Versus, hey, I'm free after Thanksgiving. You know, calming nine months. It's like, okay, I'm like, that means it happens. I can't protect in time. Well, once I get them on the phone, first of all, I'm never submitting a candidate that I'll talk to on the phone. Ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, which is why, which is why I will never say the name of my client or the salary ranges over an email or over a message. In case, it's not what I want to do. The argument is that you should just be prepared with the stuff. And I totally understand that. What I'm saying is I need to figure out close ability. And by the mere fact of them willing to let me tell them over the phone, tells me that they do are interested in an actual job. Makes sense? Yeah. Just by them getting on the phone. It's kind of the reason that I ask for, it's the same thing I, like when I do check balances, right? When a client says, when I say, hey, it's two video chats, eight three o'clock, and they go, no, no, just call myself, I'll be running around. Like, okay, I'll do that. But again, are these serious as I would hope they would be to sit down with me? Okay? Again, right? It's just a timing thing. People give their time to what they want to make time for. Makes sense? Yeah. Again, sometimes I didn't do a good enough job of providing value as to why they should sit down with me. Maybe that's on me. Okay? Like, I can own that too. But I've got my, you know, I've grew my swing pretty good to know when it's serious for me. But I get them on the phone. And I focus on RFL reason for leaving. And here's the deal. If I, if I already know, if I'm like, dude, how do I get you on the phone, right? And I don't, people say, why are you looking for a new job? That's not how I ask it. I'm like, dude, I'm a pretty average recruiter. Sometimes I'm better than average, but most of them I'm average. So how does an average guy like me get a guy like you or a girl like you on the phone? Well, I can talk. I don't know. Well, your messaging treat me. I'm like, dude, I'm an okay writer. Come on, there's got to be something else going on. Like, tell me what's going on. How did I get you on the phone? I'm a complete stranger. And so, and then you'll start to dig and you dig and then you'll hear, well, you know, bonuses just came out. I thought I was going to get 20% and I got 7% or, you know, I thought I was going to get a promotion, but I was passed up for this guy that started three months after I did. And that was annoying. Or we just found out that we're going to have a baby, my wife and I. And so I got to be, you know, I'm commuting an hour that way and an hour back. I got to be closer to home or whatever. And if the itch that they have, is it something that my client can scratch, I'm out. Like I'm not going to rupture. Again, close the billy. Like I know they can do the job, but they're going to take it. So that's the difference. Like, again, the conventional wisdom would say if they could do the job, send them, see what happens. And I'm telling you that the credibility as a lone wolf is massively important. And if you're selling yourself to a client by saying, I'm going to protect your time, then do the work on the back end to protect it. And you'll get paid back 10 fold with their jobs coming in all the time because you've done the work ahead of time. So again, close the billy. And it goes to say it goes to this when you have close up, when you talk about close the billy, what you'll find, okay, zoom out real quick. You've got you have a client and they every client in a, every company in America or like probably internationally worldwide is going to hire an A player. We all know everybody's going to hire an A player. They're a rock star, like they're going to get hired if they're that good, you know, they're the best in their business. They're the top of the upper set of the upper set. Like blah, blah, blah, blah, they're going to get hired. Like that's everybody wants that can. That's fine. Okay, we get that. But again, the close billy on that is they might be serious about their job search, but they might have 27 different offers. When you talk about close ability, now we talk about what's your actual chance of getting them to go to your clients, getting them to go to your client. So you might, they might want out of a job. But when you talk about sincerity, sincere, close ability and your clients value close ability, now all of a sudden you could place a B candidate or a C candidate because they're not going to have as many opportunities as that A candidate, but your client understands how much they need to get a higher with a skill set and they can train, they can do all the right stuff. Again, close ability will allow you if your client believes in close ability, as in they value that that's what's going to be bringing the table, which is why worker small companies could smaller companies value that blue cross blue shield, they can value that. But small companies will, okay. when they value that and they value what I bring to the table, which is the top that I told them on the job order. Now I'm literally backing up what I said by getting all this information by saying I know this guy doesn't have all the chops, but I'm telling you this guy I can close him in the range you want and he can start in two weeks and this guy is going to be a sponge. Does that allows my salesmanship and my sales ability to take over? If I'm just putting a Ferrari in front of him, yeah, everybody wants the car, but can they afford it? Can they actually get like that's fine, but like, here's the deal, but if you just need a car to get you from me to be, I got it and it's pretty nice to stereo and air conditioning seatbelt. So anyways, that's a horrible amount to put you to my point. I like it. I like it. Yeah, I got your point. So did I answer your question? So placeability, see that they can do the job. Okay. Yes. Do they check the boxes, you know, that it out and then when you get them on the call, you verify everything suddenly, maybe they say, hey, dude, is anything under resume? Full of it. Nobody's really lying. And I'm like, no, it's all real. This way you do. Okay, cold check, check, check, cool. And I'll tell them, I'm going to say, dude, I'm not here for that. How good you are at the job is frankly, I mean, I understand what you do. That's not what my expertise is. I don't really care about what I'm caring about is I want to see if you figure out how serious you are about your job search. Let's talk about things. Does my client is paying me to find somebody like you that isn't just like you, but will actually take a job. So I'm going to figure out what my chances are when you take a job. So let's talk about them. Talk to me about your job search, talk to me about all this stuff and I'll figure that part out because I say this to Kenneth all the time, my clients don't pay me for considerations. They pay me for expecities. So I don't, again, I don't, and I'll say this. And most Kenneth will respect this, but I'll say stuff like, look, man, I don't really mind if you, if you don't want the job, if you're not going to hurt my feelings, it's totally final. But what I just need is transparency, because what I need, well, I would love more than anything to send them a fat invoice replacing you. I'd love to send them an invoice for 40 grand because you take a job. I'd love that. And I'll tell us the Kenneth. I'd love to do that. But if you're not going to take that job, it doesn't matter. I'm never going to get that invoice from you anyway. So what I want to do and the way that I've lose the chance to get the 40,000 is by telling them that you want a job you don't actually want. And so what I'm asking you is to be respectful of my time and my relationship with my client, don't ask me to go get you an offer. If you know you're not going to take it or go set you up an interview, if you know you're not interested, it's a waste of time. And what I'd rather do is put a candidate in that they can actually place because there's nothing worth it recruited in putting a present under the Christmas tree that they got returned in January because it doesn't work. You get what I'm saying? Yeah, definitely dude. I'm totally ramping out, but this is like the all the stuff that I'm talking about about time protection. Yes, absolutely love that man. We could probably ask about 50 questions on everything you said, Mike. We haven't got a huge amount of times. I just want to ask this last question and then I'd love for you to tell the audience a bit about what you've got going on with the loan will of course. I'm a loan wolf, oh sorry, I'm a recruiter loan wolf left an agency started on my own. Where should I be focusing my time in terms of BD activity? Not only in terms of like the system, but also the volume. And I'm sure it will vary depending on market and all that kind of stuff, but can you push it in the right direction? So first of all, whatever you're doing in an agency and now you come off on your own, your tool of opportunity is every industry across every market in the whole US or whatever you're doing. Like you, everything's available. I mean, you can look at your window. That might be a candidate, that might be a client. You never know, right? I'm just talking about everything's possible, right? So I don't want to hear none about none of this. I don't know where to start. Just stop. That's the problem. 98% of deals or you know, ideas never happen because they just don't do anything. Figure out your steps. But anyways, so a BD process, you got to might, might, if I was going to give tangible whatever it is, if I was the loan wolf, I would not look at deals again. And I talk about this in the course, but there's an amount of money that you should have in your bank account based on your bills, your, you know, what your rent is, your mortgage, your family, whatever the stuff is that you have to pay monthly and how many months that is. And there's actual math equation I talk about in the course that I'm going to, that's a little plugable teaser, but you can figure out, hey, I have the money to go do this because it's not, not every day is candy corn, you know, unicorns and rainbows and butterflies and all that stuff. It's not. So because of that, the way that you need to feel accomplished is by just waking up every single day. How do you, how do you need a whole outfit? One bite of the time. And you literally just every day, you just attack. So I would do five companies. Now, I have a system, my personal system, I do email campaigns. I'm very good at them. I've always been very good at creative writing. I know how to create demand out of them there. That's my super power. I know we didn't ask that, but like that's what I love doing. That's what I'm good at. But whatever yours is, if you want a cold call, I coach people that call, that's totally fine. Whatever you could be LinkedIn messaging, it could be voice notes. It could be, I mean, it could be now. I'm going, I don't care what you do. I literally don't care. You could go to local mall and just to walk into five stores. I don't really care. But five new companies every single day with a follow-up method that goes out. Okay. I would suggest a three or four IDFOR steps, but a three or four step method that is split up. So like maybe a, maybe a Monday, you know, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday campaign. And it's okay to set up stuff up. Some people will say, well, Mike, I don't, how do you be so disciplined? I personally use Outlook and I'm just very committed to the time that I do. I don't have a tool. But there are a million tools out there that, you know, you can do that. We'll send, send automated stuff. That's what you want. You can talk to these guys, Ben and Sam. They can help you with content. They can do all that kind of stuff to get beaties. But you have to do five new companies a day. Like, that's important. Like stick to that. And while five thousand or life five companies a day, you know, why does my app tell me I need to do 10,000 steps? They just told me to do it. Just do it. Who cares? Like, it's good to have a plan in a direction. If you get to four and you got to go pick up your kid, that's fine. Go do that. Come back and do a pitch. No miss. No miss. Because I see this all the time. The moment you miss once, you're like, oh, well, I can justify. You can justify anything as a long wolf. You must buy, taking a whole day off. You can always justify. Don't do it. Okay. The key is consistency. Your body will get into a routine and it's good. Okay. A routine is important for a little more five new companies a day. Okay. With that at the end of a two week period, then I would look at my response rates. Okay. So I take two weeks. So that would be if that was five companies a day, five weeks or sorry, that 25 in a week in two weeks, that's 50. Okay. In theory, a good goal and a 50 companies would be able to say, okay, I got two new calls set up. If you can get one new call a week, that would be four and a half and then out and then half of those convert to an agreement, which by the way, let me just give a little plug for low wolf life. When you're on your own and you're in a job or a call and they're like, why should I work with you? You'll be like, does this is my office that I've got to pay for it? And that's where you come in, mister. Like you can say things like that. You know, hey, dude, I'm not putting money in a bunch of like big wigs pockets. I'm putting money in not talking. So help me out. Let's work together, dude. You're something company when you went out on your own, reward me for doing the same thing. You got me? Like I will say that. Anyways, so you four calls, okay, four Zoom calls or whatever, new flat calls, out of those, you try to convert to them. And now you've got two new agreements. Times that out by 12 months, 24 agreements. If you get 24 agreements and you don't build 400,000, you should call me and you should coach with me. We should talk because that's a problem. You should be able to do a lot more than that. Honestly, I'll take you guys right now. We have Connor and I have been in business since July 28th. It's now, what is January 30th? So, how many months that is? That's six months. Okay, and we've had probably, I'm getting a round number, maybe 45 job or a call, okay? We have 24 signed agreements. Okay, so a little more than that. Okay, 24 signed agreements in a six month period. Because we get on these calls, we stick to the cadence. Okay, like he has a minimum number of candidate submissions that he focuses on a week. And I have a minimum number of what my job is is to bring in new clients. And then wherever, whenever we're deficient, if I'm deficient, he'll jump in on some BD to help me out. And if he's deficient, I'll jump in on candidate time. But that's where it's at. And we just want a very efficient machine. And I'll focus this. Top of funnel always. Okay, I focus on a point system. Two points for every submission. Three points for every interview. Five points for a signed contract. 20% or more. No refund. By the way, do not do refunds. It'll cripple you in this business as a long wolf. You don't want to do it. You need the money. Okay, so do not do refunds. If somebody wants to refunds, just don't work with them. It's that simple. You just walk away. Not a big deal. You don't need to agreement that bad. Fill them do it. Within, and his six of those tools did just fill the top of the fund. Don't reward yourself for deals. None of that stuff is all that is the residue of it. Focus on the controllables, the KPI stuff. We've had days where we have done a deal. And I didn't do five companies to be the, and I feel less accomplished than on days when we did not do a deal. And I'd hit my five companies. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. I focus on top of funnel. Like you've got to focus on the top of the funnel. I see it all the time. And we always look at the bottom line. Where people, I get it. I'm part of it too. But like you've got like focus on the top of the fund. We're a Connor and I are off to, you know, we're at $120,000 for the year so far. So we're you know, we're month in. We're doing well. We're on track to do over a million bucks. Great. It's awesome. We love it. But we're not focused on anything else other than top of funnel. That's it. So that's the key that I would say. And if you, and if you can't hit those metrics that we're talking about, you can get a coach, get a network of our tutors, get somebody to keep you accountable to help you do that because it's not, that shouldn't be that difficult. It's really not. Love that. That helped. Yeah, I'm really helpful. That was a massive video. But I just want to go back to the list. So five companies every day, how are they? How do you advise? And this might be too broad of a question, depending on the group, about how are you segmenting those companies? The ones that you're sending, you know, five companies a day, how are you selecting and or segmenting or choosing which companies are going to be? Are there some companies that are more light to hit, you know, in times of size or industry. Yeah, for me, it's real simple. It's whatever industry I'm going to target that day. It could be whatever, you know, picking industry, just do whatever. Like, and I'm mixing maps, you know, like I don't have right now. We have out of 24 signed agreements, we've been to probably like four or five different niches in there. Like it's different, you know, different, whatever. Because it doesn't, again, like I said, my values are higher in these. I'll tell clients that all the time. Like, and I've had clients where they said, you specializing this, I'll be like, no. And then they'll say, great, we don't think we want to work with you. It's really fine. No problem. Like, take care. Don't be do. Anyway, my focus is every time is literally focused on size. I focus on companies between 25 to 150 employees. It's just, it's never changed. I just don't, whatever. A guy like me too, as aggressive as I am, put me on like, if you throw me on a call with Nike, they're going to hate me. Like, I'm going to be bossing. Like, I'll be so annoying. But if you have a company that's like, yeah, do we're at 97 employees and like, we'd like to get to like 120. Like, yeah, I can help you. Like, I'm good. I can help you. You don't want me dealing with a big company. They might hire a thousand people, but like, I still, I'm, there's no, I don't have a value add to them. Like, what am I going to do? Hey, do you ever heard of a secret company called Nike? Like, no, they're not. They already knows about it. But like, if you, if you have a company that nobody's really ever heard of, you're 80 people, you know, maybe you just got some money coming in. You have, maybe you have clients that you can't, you can't serve us the work that you need. Because, you know, you're, you're lacking on talent or whatever it is. Like, I can add value to that. Like, I can, I can create a great story, a great narrative, etc. And again, I can put candidates in front of you, they're not going to clock up your interview, funnels, aren't going to waste your time. And then you can actually close. Like, if that's what you want, great. hire me. And if you don't, don't, not if we deal. Like, I don't, it's fine. But I focus on the number. I just focus on, it's really a metric system, 25 to 150, no more name. And I have, and I have a cutoff. My cutoff, if I really want a company, I don't ever go more than 200. I just don't. I just won't go more than 200. So like, have like, because again, you have to have your parameters. And as a lone wolf, you can justify anything. Like trust me, you can justify anything. But like, oh, it looks cool. Like, maybe I should go work with them. They have two people there. Like, they're probably going, like, no, two is too small. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you've got to work, you have to understand that. Can't, it's got to want to work there. But clients also got to want to hire. And again, my focus on the BD side is simply saying, I don't know of any companies that I've ever dealt with. That got to like 72 employees and be like, yeah, we're done. For instance, one, one that we did sign up this week, they're like, hey, we're at, they say, we're at 130. And we'd like to be at 180 in the next two years. I can help. That, I can help. That made sense to me, right? Like, and then they had done, I think they paid a bunch of ADCVs. Like, it was, it was great. And she's awesome. And she got my name from somebody else. That was actually a referral. But like, that stuff happens. Here's another piece too. Generally speaking, when you deal with smaller companies, okay? This is like super important. When you do with smaller companies. And if you're doing, what are you doing? A service-based pitch or an NPC pitch? Okay, service pitch is like, hey, I'm going to help this is what I do. NPC pitch is here. I got a guy, whatever. You can do it alone. It doesn't matter. I've got pitches for ball. Different conversation. But whatever you're doing, if you are doing it, never sales, right? Sales says buy this from you right now. Marketing says when you're ready, I'm here. The consistency of just doing your stuff, being in people's inboxes, how you market yourself naturally. Like, it will just happen. And what all of a sudden, a message that you sent three weeks ago, we'll get back or a lot of these smaller companies, they're in different networks within. So like CEOs of different companies might be sitting at a table one day, all talking about their own companies. And they're like, yeah, oh, you're hiring for this. I just got an email from someone, knowing I name Mike, but he'd said he had a good candidate. I'll forward it to you. Let me know if you have interest. And so I'll get messages for people to be like, hey, Mike, a buddy of mine got this email from you. You know, what's the deal here? Can we work together? Whatever. Some like that. Like I get that all the time. Not all the time, but a good amount. I'd say once a month that happens, which otherwise it wouldn't, if I wasn't doing that. So again, that's why I just focus on top of funnel. I'm not results oriented. I'm processed oriented. Massive difference. Yeah, love that. We need to wrap up now, guys, because I've got to go pick up my daughter from nursery. Oh, yeah, it's not Mike. This was such an epic podcast, dude. Every time you come on, you blow my mind with knowledge and wisdom in the recruitment game. So thank you. This has been an amazing pod. Can we wrap up the pod with you telling the audience about lone wolf and who should buy it and work? Where should they go to find it? Oh, I'm going to take 40 seconds to do this. All right, guys, check this out. Look, do you enjoy the podcast? Like obviously, I'm super passionate about the stuff. I know what I'm talking about. But I have two forces. One is the recruiter, Bill Print, which is whether your agency or on your own. It's how I do my business. Everything is fantastic. We sold it in over 15 countries. It's great. The recruiter, Bill Print, is a fantastic force. It's worth it. It's to brand, go buy it. The ROI is a problem. There's the lone wolf. Okay, the lone wolf is not a course of me trying to sell you on going off on your own. I don't really care if you go off on your own. The lone wolf was created for. It's another course. Recruiter, Bill Print, regular, and then Recruiter, Bill Print, lone wolf. The Recruiter, Bill Print, lone wolf is that course was created so that you can sit at your agency or whatever you're doing. And you can have peace of mind to say, I should go off on my own because it makes sense. Or I should. And I address every elephant in the room, every question you would have, why you should, why you shouldn't, how much money should be in your bank before you do. Maybe it's, here's the thing about the lone wolf. A lot of people bought it and say, great. Now I have, I need to fill up my cash reserves to get to this amount. Before this time, and then I'm going to go off on my own. So like I've seen that a lot. It's a great course. We charge it for 1750. It's a little bit cheaper than the regular Bill Print. If you want to buy them together, you get both packages for 3,500. They're incredible. They're really, really good. Like I'm just telling you guys, we've never had one complaint. I would have thought by now, I said, knowing it is allowed as I can be, somebody would complain about my course. Nobody would complain. Like, thank you. Like I do. You're going to love doors. It's worth getting guys. I didn't come on the twins podcast and not do a plug. Appreciate the plug. I hope you get the course. It's that good. You'll love it. Love it. Thank you, Mike. And great to see you again, dude. Absolutely amazing to have you on. And thank you. Yes, sir. Thanks, twins. Hey, guys. Thanks for tuning in to this episode. If you enjoyed it, please don't forget to subscribe on YouTube and Spotify. Tune in for another episode next week. And we look forward to seeing you again very soon. Peace and love. (upbeat music)