Ep 310: The Dana Download with Dana Arschin and guest Michelle Perchuk on hmTv

Foreign.

Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today for the Dana Download. Now, many of you have been following know that the Dana Download is a podcast that introduces you to people from all different corners of my life, but also from industries that really spark my curiosity. I'm so excited to be joined today by Michelle Perchak. Before I introduce you, I'll say a little bit more about you. She's just an incredibly successful woman. She's the founder of MTV Coaching.

She.

She's a talent acquisition and recruiting expert, Forbes Coaches council member, a career and business progression Coach. She's had 18 years of experience in the recruiting industry. She published a book called Swimming in the talent pool in 2016. And I'm barely scratching the surface. This is nothing compared to her entire bio of what she's accomplished. You get the point. She's just amazing. So, Michelle, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for inviting me. Of course.

And a shout out to my close friend Justine Ray, who actually told me all about you and said you need to get her on your podcast. So I'm so excited. So I want to know all about MTV Coaching, which you started, but first you told me that you have a Jewish background. I do. Tell me about that. And what you also mentioned right before we started about the Torah and coaching. I love that.

So my family came to New York because my. My parents were fairly young and there were more career opportunities for them. So I grew up in Brooklyn. My parents were not religious, but as early as I could remember, I was wanted to bring God into my life. So being maybe a 9, 10 year old, I had some Jewish friends that were in America and they said to me, well, you know, you have to believe in God. You have to pray. And that's when my curiosity started. And I mean, I always knew that I was Jewish and now I have a family and, you know, we do practice, and it's just really incredible to have this identity.

Wow. So how old were you when you came here?

To me, I was eight.

You were eight. And where did you grow up?

In Brooklyn, in the Midwood area of Brooklyn.

Okay, nice. I actually started as a reporter for News 12 Brooklyn.

Oh, okay.

Spent six years there. And I know every part of that borough inside and out. I spent a lot of time in Midwood. I've been to Shabbat dinners in Midwood. Yes, absolutely. And now you said you live in Fort Lee, New Jersey, Correct? You're of a family, kids? Yes, yes, I have kids.

I'm married.

How many kids do you have?

Two.

Kids, boys, girls?

Two boys.

What are their names?

Jeffrey and David.

Very nice. I have two girls.

Maybe we'll send them up. Okay.

32.

2 and 20.

Okay. So they're a little older than my 6 and 3 year old.

So young.

Thank you.

Amazing.

So, wow. So you came here, your parents escaped, really difficult situation.

Correct.

And look what you've built. So tell me about MTV Coaching. What does MTV stand for? Is that mtv, like the channel mtv?

No. A lot of people actually make that mistake. But I'll tell you how it was born. So when I wrote the book Swimming in the talent pool, my kids started saying, mom, you need to have an Instagram page. So I said, okay, think of something for me that would be interesting. So the boys came up with Michelle Divisionary. And then when I launched the coaching company, we just took the initials.

I love that. And it also because of the. The TV station actually sparks people's interest. Wait a second. What is this?

Correct.

So when did you found it and what made you want to start a company like this? And. And tell me just the whole beginning of it and where it's led to.

Sure. So. So I actually started the company in 2017. I have a recruiting background. I worked for huge companies like Adeco and Manpower. So I would do recruiting for banking and insurance companies. When they couldn't find the technical talent themselves, they would come to our company, which are huge public companies, and they would put a manager, in essence, to make sure that all the staffing needs of the bank would be taken care of. So I fulfilled that part. I was not happy that it was all about transactions. So it was just volume placing, taking people from one bank, putting into another. And I didn't feel fulfilled doing the transactions. And I really wanted to do work that was more transformational. And I went back to school, became a certified coach in 2020. I wanted to really help people be happy in their professional lives and combine their personal lives with their professional lives and really feel holistic. And that's where I started the company. At first I was hired by another recruiting company to come in and kind of redo their best business practices, mentor their recruiters, mentor their salespeople. And that, that is where I saw that I was born a coach.

So what type of people come to you? How many clients do you have? Any information you feel comfortable sharing?

Of course, of course. So people come to me who are upper management or C suite, and they come to me when something does not feel right. It's almost like an internal pain in their body. They are in a high power job. They may be responsible for leading humongous teams or huge companies, but something doesn't feel right. They're either not compensated enough, they are not visible enough to the business world, they're being taken advantage of. They just don't feel fulfilled and they don't know how to get out of their own way to go land their dream job. They're all top in their field, but they just don't have a system. They apply on job boards, they talk to friends, everything actually winds up going to a dead end and they either wind up retiring early, taking something that they wind up settling for, and it's just one bad career move after another.

It's so interesting because when you think of coaching, usually think of helping people who are just starting out, who are just getting their foot in the door, who need that guidance. It's unusual and probably a great niche to help people who are at such high levels. But when you're already C suite or an exact how much higher is there to go?

It's not about going higher, it's about really taking all of your skills and having them shine in your workplace. So just because somebody is a CEO and they're leading humongous teams and making millions of dollars, it doesn't mean that they feel great inside. As a matter of fact, when you look below the surface, many of them don't. Many of them are just doing it because it's just the momentum. They really don't feel like they're doing anything meaningful.

So how do they find you? And also kind of takes guts to actually admit that to themselves and say I want to be. Especially when you're at that high level, you probably have an ego of sort which you kind of need to have Correct. To succeed. So how do they find you? And. And what is that initial conversation like? Is it difficult for them? Sometimes.

So they find me through a variety of things. So we have a very extensive email list which I've compounded over the years of being in recruiting. I'm very, very active on LinkedIn, so I do a lot of posts on LinkedIn, educational posts and so forth. Same thing on Instagram. But most of them find me by reading my articles and Forbes and through a referral basis. So if I helped one executive and they're so happy and they landed their dream job and they're feeling fulfilled, for more money, you know, more visibility, they will refer their other CEO friends.

Wow. So how does it work? Do they pay you a one time meeting fee? Is it a subscription Is it a monthly thing and what exactly do you do for them?

So it's a program. It usually takes six months, it can take a little less. But they commit to a certain period of time to work with me because it is transformation and transformation doesn't happen happen in one day. So they pay a flat fee. We evaluate what are their problems. I do some assessments, obviously I do deep questioning and then we, we start the work. So with everyone it's different. It's not a soapbox solution because everyone comes with different problems. It's like going to the doctor. No two humans are the same.

That's so interesting. I really had never heard. It's like you are a doctor of.

So I am a doctor for your career. Correct.

So do you ever bring in outside experts? Like what if it's an industry that you're just not familiar with? Or what if it's, I don't know, something that you just haven't had that experience dealing with before.

So when I meet an executive or a leader, I do deep questioning and we figure out together if we're going to work well together. If it's not an industry that I feel that I feel comfortable with or I feel that I cannot create the impact with my client, I will just not work with them. It really needs to be a partnership. I always say it takes two to tango where they need to be able to do as much for the coaching journey as I am. So I'm literally a guide. So just to give you a visual, let's say they are one. They are on one side of the river. That, that, that beach is where they feel unhappy, unfulfilled and they want to go to, to the other beach where they're going to be happy, making tons of money and so forth. I just cross, I just help them cross the bridge.

Can you give us an example of one of your success stories without using a name or company?

Absolutely.

I love it. So give us like a clear idea of the start to finish process.

Absolutely. So I had this client, let's just call him O. And he came to me. Brilliant man, two PhDs in, in spatial computing. I mean just brilliant. You know those people that you read in books about and he was in a middle management role for a translation company, really not feeling fulfilled, not knowing what to do, dreaming to be a chief AI officer for a company. So we got introduced, we established that I can help him and we started the work. During the entire coaching journey, he just became a different person. His facial expression changed, he gained confidence, he started smiling he started talking about his background with more ease. He was really connected to what is it that he wants to do. And one day when the perfect recruiter called him and said, listen, I have an opportunity for you, he made the recruiter fall in love with him because he was confident and he was so clear in what he's looking for. And hence, within 14 days they had an offer for him.

Wow. So had he had recruiters call or interviews before that and they just weren't coming through. So what type of work do you do? Can you give an example?

So it all starts where people are just not clear what they're looking for. And the deepest work that I do is when I take an inventory of their skills and I map it perhaps to a new type of role in industry or sometimes even a brand new profession. You know, professions today are born every single day. Like Chief Client Success Officer wasn't even a title by six.

That makes a lot of sense. So you help them figure out how to narrow down their skill set.

Correct.

Interesting. I actually created this role for myself.

Oh, really?

Told you anything?

No.

About what I do. I was a broadcaster for a long time. I was a Reporter first at News 12 in Bronx and in Brooklyn, and then at Fox 5 for six years.

Okay.

And at Fox, I was able to start a Holocaust series, which was an incredible opportunity. And I was so fulfilled. And, you know, I was pregnant with my second daughter. We moved out to Long Island. I'm working these crazy long hours. And while I loved the news industry, I just felt like it was time for me to be a little more present and I didn't want to report on like, crime and fires and um, things that just really didn't like, make me feel fulfilled and happy each day. So I was like, well, what do I want to do? I'm like, I want to be the Holocaust, like storyteller somewhere. And I pitched myself here to HMTC on Long island. And long story short, here I am. And they created this role of storyteller for me. I've since transitioned into calling myself documentarian. I really feel like I'm so much more than a storyteller. I fully documented mentioned. Right. But, but this is an example of like, I was like, what do I want to do? And I just created that for myself. So I can really respect what you've done.

Yeah, I mean, I've been referred to as the fairy godmother that makes dream career dreams come true. I've had clients tell me that I saved their lives, I saved their marriages, I saved them from bankruptcy. I mean, our careers and our livelihood is really the heart of everything that we do. If we're not earning, then we really can't afford to do all the other things that we love to do and we don't feel confident. I mean, most of the people that I work with are breadwinners, so they've got their whole family relying on them. And if they're searching a job for six months and they still haven't found anything and they're going to be replaced in their current company, I mean, it is life saving.

Do you have any people who don't need you anymore, but they want to keep coming back to you just for like therapy sessions and maintenance?

Absolutely. I bet they do.

Because I love talking to you.

I always, I always say, say that MTV coaching is like Hotel California. You check in, but you never check out.

Honestly, that's a, that's a great, great way to be. So do you feel comfortable talking about pricing at all? Or if not, you can lead people to the best way to contact you.

So pricing varies because it all depends on what people need. Some people need just a starter package where you need to have your resume redone, your LinkedIn profile redone, and a crafting of your bio and maybe a little bit of interview prep. But some people really need deep work. They've been in one role for maybe 20 years and they don't know what other role they can go into. So they need me to peel those layers of the onion deeply and really have them practice with me more. Because people say a lot of things and I never trust any of my clients because they say one thing to me and then they go in an interview and they say completely something else, by the way.

I do, but it's like being live on tv. Like sometimes I'll go on and I know exactly what I want to say. But you're on, millions of people are watching and something completely opposite comes out. You can't even blame them because when you're under so much stress.

Yes, but if it's authentic. Yeah, if it's authentic authority, like if you would wake me up two o' clock in the morning to talk about coaching, I would be on like that. When I was in corporate, that wasn't always the case because I was not clear on my authentic authority. See, I'm my own project and I speak about my own journey from corporate into being an entrepreneur, very often to my clients. And that's why my C suite clients really respect me and that's why they hire me.

That's incredible. Tell me about writing for Forbes. So you write these articles and is this a job? Forbes pays you for this or this is something you're just allowed to contribute? So they have, because I clearly like this, I know nothing about.

So they, it's, it's. They have nine different councils. Accounting, technology, management and coaching. So you have to be approved and I was approved back in 2021. And what I can do is I could contribute my expertise to their panels, to their platform. So this is actually an honor that they approved me to write for them. It's not paid, but I have so much business. I have an opportunity to really share with the world. And because of Forbes, my business went international because it is a global organization and it is a very big like a blue chip stamp on you, on your firm. So people find out about me in, in Europe. I have a lot of clients in Europe.

That's incredible. So what do you see in store for the future? Where do you want this to go? Do you want it to keep growing?

My company?

Yeah. Do you, do you have any staff who work for you?

I do have staff. It's always project based because I really want to keep things light and be able to scale very quickly. I actually see my company evolving in three different ways. I definitely want to build a division of the business that's going to be for people who are starting off in their career. I mean, my son is a GW now. He's applying a lot of the things that I've taught him over the years and how to get a job. I mean, this kid is going to have five offers. How it's unbelievable. So I definitely want to do something for young people because a lot of my clients ask me as a favor to coach some of their adult children. And I see how the young generation is struggling, how to market themselves, how to follow up. They don't really understand professionalism the way let's say my generation did. So they do need a lot of help. So I want to form a service offering for those people only. And then like you said, you know, people that do land their dream jobs after my help, they never want to leave. They want to be part of the community. They enjoy networking with other success stories. So my dream is to have retreats for executives.

Oh, that's a great idea. And you probably, I mean through doing this for so long, you probably have so many connections. Do you ever help them get jobs? Like if you have someone who comes to you, they want to hire you, but you know, someone in an Industry that could maybe help them. Do you make those intros as well or.

So since I'm a certified coach by the icf, so it is a licensed profession, and, you know, I was tested and so forth, that actually is against the code of ethics, because then you're kind of double dipping. Not only are you helping the person find themselves, but you're making money off of them on the back end. A lot of people ask me, why don't you do that? You have a recruiting background. You could literally pick up the phone to bank of America and, you know, place a senior executive. I would rather them. What my program preaches is you need to find that opportunity for yourself. It's very easy for me to pick up the phone and say, please hire this person. They're worthy. But like that saying says, if someone is hungry, give. Don't give them fish for dinner, teach them how to fish.

So you like what I was saying before, how my job's. This really fulfills you?

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And what's so interesting is we have group coaching sessions every Thursday. All of the clients are on there, the entire cohort, they're helping each other, they're establishing buddy systems, they're exchanging recruiter names, they're exchanging leads. So if someone is, let's say, working at Wells Fargo and one of my other clients wants to get into banking, they'll say, well, what do you do? Let me introduce you to hr. So they're uplifting each other and they're networking.

I love the idea of a retreat. I think that's a really great idea. So we have about five minutes left. We can talk about anything. Is there anything else you wanted to promote? Do you want to talk about your book? What is it that you want people to take away from hearing this interview?

So I. I really would like to explain, like, what is my personal mission statement? What is the reason why I'm doing this? And the reason is that I want to empower the job seeker. You know, being out of work or being unfulfilled in your job is a very lonely journey. And most people do not confide in their families because they're afraid that the spouse is going to worry, they're not going to make any more money. And I really find it so fulfilling to hold that person's hand and show them that you don't have to be alone in this, that once you have a system that I've invented you, all you have to do is show up and apply it. That's it. It's gonna work. By Default.

I love that. It's amazing. When you wake up every day, how do you feel?

I run to my desk. I run to my desk.

I mean, I work from home.

I work from home. I literally have to walk across the hallway. But, you know, I get dressed like I'm going to work, and it's. I love my clients.

That's amazing. And you really built this from scratch.

I built it from scratch.

Does this exist, this exact type of job? Are there any.

Yes. There are many career coaches. You know, I know who my competition is. There are really good programs. Very few come from a recruiting background like I do. So what's really wonderful is that I know what happens on the other side of the table, and that's why I get people the outcomes. I mean, last year we had 100 success rate.

Wow. And you personally meet one on one with all of them.

Correct.

It's amazing. Yeah. I have a closing question that I'm not going to ask you yet. I'm going to. I'm going to put it in your head now, a few minutes to think about it. It's. What's one moment in your life that changed how you see the world? But first, I want to talk about. You mentioned that you spoke to a rabbi about coaching and what's in the Torah. Can you fill us all in on that?

As far as I could remember, a lot of the coaching principles, because coaching is not therapy. It's not talking about the past. It's about making a decision today that you're going to be different and you're going to be moving forward. And that's actually one of the pillars, you know, of Judaism, that we don't really have to think about the mistake that we made yesterday. All we have to do is just bring God into our heart and move forward.

I love that. Amazing. And do you do belong to a synagogue?

Obviously.

You said you have a rabbi?

Yeah, yeah, I belong to Chabad, the Fort Lee.

That's so special. Oh, I belong to the Chabad of Port Washington.

Yeah. I'm sure that the rabbis are related.

They probably are. I love Chabad. I was actually married by a Chabad rabbi, and I went on all these Chabad trips in college, and I love it. Big fan. For anyone listening who's unfamiliar, Chabad is a sect of. It's called Chabad Labavich of Orthodox Judaism. But they're really. Oftentimes people see Orthodox communities as very insular. Chabad is very open. They bring in people of all types of religious beliefs. Within Judaism, there's Zero judgment. Everyone is welcome. They teach what they know, but they don't force anyone to follow any type of certain script. I guess it's just such a lovely and inviting.

It is. We love it there.

All right, so what's one moment in your life that changed how you see the world?

When I became a coach, I just know that, first of all, I was meant to be a coach. I think I was a coach before I even knew that this existed. But when I went through my coaching program at Rutgers, I realized that this was really my calling, that this was my destiny to become a coach. And I've been able to see so many different difficult situations in my life which, you know, happen to all of us, and I had to face some difficult situations. Since becoming a certified coach, I've been able to maneuver by seeing different perspectives of the problem. And being a coach, I truly believe that there's always a solution. I just have to keep looking.

I love that. You are so inspiring. I can talk to you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Fly on the wall. One of your. Absolutely.

Absolutely.

All right, so before we close out, how can people find you? How can they reach out to you?

So the best thing to do is to go on my website, which is mtvcoaching.com you could also connect with me on Instagram under Michelle Perchuk or on LinkedIn.

And Perchuk is P E R C H U K. Correct. Michelle, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me back. Anytime.

Thank you.

I hope all of you listening learned a lot about this industry. I really didn't know much about it, and I'm trying so hard to bring in guests from all different industries so we can all learn more. I'm really interested. I kind of want to send your information to my husband and see.

Absolutely.

You know, I just. I think you can help so many people in so many different ways. So thank you so much again. This is the Dana Download. Michelle, it was a pleasure, and I hope you come back again soon. And again, thank you to Justine for connecting us. Justine, Ray. And to Mark Swern, who is our tech director today. Thank you so much, Mark, and hope you all have a great day.

Sam.