Culture Over Commission: Building a High-Performance Team That Stays

If you sell to people that have money, they're typically not going to be super nitpicky on price or delivery. They want to work with people that are the best in the industry. Right. How can we leverage that operating capital that they just infused and increase the enterprise value of the portfolio asset? That's what we do through people acquisition.

What are maybe some ideas that you have to make sure that everyone is excited to show up to work, really wants to continue to be part of the team? How do you drive that in your business?

The best recruiters have the highest fees. If you're going out and looking for a divorce attorney, the best might be $1200 an hour. You're not just going to hire the guy that's willing to charge 350.

Good day and welcome to the Wealthy Entrepreneur Podcast. I am your host, Bob Govreau. It is a pleasure to have you join me today. I just want to remind you that this is the place where we dissect the elements that contribute to to your entrepreneurial success. From mindset and leadership to profits and even, you know, the big old revenue here as well. Excited today to bring in a guest. This guest is what has the founder of one of the top executive search firms located in Houston, Texas. His name is Jeremy, Jeremy Jensen. And Jeremy's story is one of grit, strategy and really self made success. With over 10 years of experience in executive search, he's built Encore Search partners from the ground up with a sales first data driven approach, growing it to an eight figure powerhouse that serves mid market and private equity backed firms across the US He's a host of Path to Success podcasts and he's a passionate entrepreneur looking to help others break through barriers and define what success truly is. Now in this episode we're going to dive into his entrepreneurial journey, how he scaled a boutique recruitment firm into being a national player. He's gonna share some insights about that and what business leaders need to understand about hiring executive talent and drives that organization's results. So without further ado, I'm excited to bring Jeremy onto the show. All right, so Jeremy, really excited to have you here today. I would love for you to maybe just share a little about you, a little bit about you and your entrepreneurial story. It's this is one of my favorite parts of hosting a podcast is hearing the story, some of the challenges, some of the success of entrepreneurs along the way because we all know it's not an easy road and congratulations for making it to where you are. But maybe share a little bit about what that journey looked like.

Yeah. So there's a two minute answer and then there's a two hour answer. Right. So I'll give you the two minute answer. So young smart guy. Right. Which a lot of the entrepreneurs that are listening can probably relate to that made straight A's in school, didn't really have to work hard in order to do it. Then when I got to college, I realized, man, you actually have to show up to class and you have to listen and you have to absorb. This is long before ChatGPT, right? Or AI note taking. And so I didn't graduate with my bachelor's degree. And so here I was, 23 years old, working in corporate America, making 75 grand a year back in, you know, 2008. And I was doing really well for a young guy, but I was engaged to a petroleum engineer that was making six figures. And I was like, man, I need to become successful. Right. And so I started my first company actually way back in 2010. It was called Market Share Solutions. It was an email marketing and lead generation business. And I grew that company to about 300,000 in revenue. And I kind of couldn't scale past that. Right. It was a good, like one man show. But I took a look at my client base in 2012 and I was like, man, half my clients are staffing in recruiting companies. You know, here I am charging them three or $4,000 a month to generate leads, but they're making 50,000amonth, 100,000amonth from the service that I'm providing. And so that's whenever I said, hey, I'm going to start a recruiting company. And so, best decision of my entire career, started a recruiting company, hired my first recruiter in January of 2013. Fast forward to 2025. We have 40 employees. We're the largest privately held executive search firm here in Houston. And there's no signs of us slowing down even into the headwinds of AI.

Yeah, exactly. Right. And it has to be part of the conversation. And we know it has to be part of the conversation, so that's fantastic. So tell me a little bit more about the firm that you have created. So I know you've got a large number of employees. I can relate to that. Growing through hiring. Not obviously you've got the talent to find the people, but building the team up and setting them up for success internally is a different animal altogether. Maybe just share with me a little bit about the success that you've had with your business.

Yeah, great question. So you know my background, whenever I Started was in lead generation, right? And so I've always kind of embraced that as my core focus as an individual contributor, not just the CEO. So if I can focus on keeping the top of the funnel full, then sales solves all problems, right? You know, sales can solve high turnover, low profit margins, you know, and so, you know, I've been really, really core focused on business development and marketing over the last 12 years. And so, you know, when you say, what differentiates us or how have I built the company? It's really been separating three roles that are common in my industry, right? So you've got the business developer, the rainmake, the guy that brings in the logo, right? So think about Wells Fargo retaining us for a senior VP search in Chicago, right? And so the company stays focused on bringing in that client. Then you've got the account executive, right? The guy that's got 5 years, 7 years, 10 years of deal making experience. He understands technically the job in which we recruit on, right? And so he's the advisor to the client, right? He's the confidant to the, to the candidate. And then we've got those soldiers that come in, the smile and dial folks that, that we say, hey, read this script to these 500 people. And your goal is to get three. It's just a numbers game, right? And so we've kind of segregated, segregated out those three roles. The recruiter, the account manager, and the business developer. And I think a lot of my competitors, they try to find one person that can do it all. And it's like, that's a recipe for disaster. Because if you, if one person can do all three facets, then, shit, they're gonna go out and start their own company, right? And I think when you look at public accounting, it's the same thing, right? You know, everybody wants the partner that's got a $3 million book of business. But it's like, golly, you know, like I'd rather have a lead generation system that brings the clients like Jeremy Jensen in the door that need tax planning and strategy. Have some associates do the work and, and then a technically strong tax manager that understands blocking and tackling, managing the relationship, right? Then you don't need to give equity then. You don't, you're not, you don't have a flight risk of these enterprise level people leaving with half of your clients, right? And so we've built it more as a corporation and a little bit less as a partnership.

Gotcha. And so thinking of who your clientele are, who is it that you're focusing on specifically like what's your niche as you're building this, this recruitment firm.

Absolutely. So we have three different practice areas that we recruit in. The commonality between all of them is they're professional services that have really, really high profit margins. Right. So if you sell to people that have money, they're typically not going to be super nitpicky on price or delivery. Right. They really want to work with people that are the best in the industry. Right. When you walk in to go buy a Rolls Royce or a Ferrari, you don't say hey what's the price? Let's haggle. No, dude, like you're buying a Rolls Royce, man. Like you either want a Rolls Royce or you want a Mercedes. It's entirely up to you. Right. So, and so we're trying to position ourselves as that Ferrari, as that Rolls Royce. Right. Of the industry. But when you say who are the verticals that we support? Wealth management firms. Right. So even in a high interest rate environment, even though we've seen signs of economic slowdowns due to high interest rates and low economic growth, the capital markets are doing very, very well. Wealth management firms are continuing to poach high level producers from their competitors and they're motivated to invest in mid level talent that's going to help service their existing clients. That way the partners can go out there and bring in new business. Right. And so that's our core focus, that's probably about 70% of our revenue is the wealth management industry. Right. Then we have a legal recruiting practice where we recruit for law firms. Right. Senior level associates and partner level attorneys that have portable books of business. And then our largest growing practice area is going to be private equity and venture capital. So aligning ourselves with the operating partners at those firms whenever they infuse $50 million in growth capital into whatever the business is. A healthcare technology company, an industrial service company. Right. A plastics manufacturer. How can we leverage that operating capital that they just infused and increase the enterprise value of the portfolio asset? That's what we do through people acquisition and private equity.

I end up having a bunch of different conversations with private equity. They're an exciting space. You know, you can't help their, their little bit of run and gun and they've got the resources to invest and to make things great. So what a fantastic fit for you. I want to actually just touch on one thing for, for anybody who's listening as our business owners. I remember early on in my career I would get so frustrated when I would have a recruiter reach out to some of my team members and offer them roles at a different organization. And at first I used to be angry and I was like, you know, I can't believe that this is actually a thing that happens. And then as I matured as a business leader and owner, you have to realize that this is going to happen. So Jeremy and his team, this is exactly what they're doing, is they're looking for top quality people. And if you've built these top quality people, congratulations. But the second part of having your top quality people is to make sure that they aren't interested in Jeremy calling them. Right? And so, like, this is our responsibility as a leader and, and then we hire Jeremy to go do the exact same thing to other people, right? And, you know, our job is to make sure that if people are calling to try and recruit because they have a better offer, what is it that we as business owners can do to make sure that, you know, our team isn't interested in that? I don't know. Jeremy, I know you talked about building a high quality team yourself. Any thoughts on that? Like, any ideas of how you would do that so that any other recruitment firms aren't poaching your high quality recruitment talent on your team?

Yeah, absolutely. Again, I'll give the short answer, right, Because I think you can have a whole podcast just dedicated to that information. Right? But, you know, obviously you want to treat your people fairly, right? You know, it doesn't mean you need to pay the highest salary in the industry. It doesn't need to mean that you need to promote them after three months of employment, right? But as long as you compensate them fairly and you illustrate a clear path for advancement and whatever they want to pursue, right? Some people want more responsibility. Some people want to diversify their skills. Some people want public recognition, Some people want strong variable compensation. And so as long as you're aligned with attracting the right people that are motivated by what your unique selling point is, right, Then there's going to be some organic stickiness there, right? So like we at Encore Search Partners, we don't like to hire people from our competitors. It sounds ridiculous because we specialize in helping companies steal from their competitors. But, you know, let's hire people that have strong character, integrity, work ethic, grit, resilience, right? Competitive drive, focus, discipline, gratitude, right? Let's hire the core value fits. We've already invested in best in class systems and technology, right? And then we just have a very disciplined effort to get people up to speed on those systems and technology. And then because we invested in their professional growth because we invested in their personal growth, that breeds an element of loyalty and stickiness with the firm. And once we identify who those a player rock stars are. Right, because it ends up being about 20% of your workforce in any organization, you have to provide a clear path for upward mobility for those individuals. And sometimes that means creating positions that have never even existed before.

You're preaching my language, my friend. So we, at this point, we're just shy of 200 employees in our firm, and I could count almost every single month. It seems like we have a new role that sort of created out of opportunities that just continue to arise. But showing and demonstrating that people have opportunities to move into these new unique roles with opportunity is. It's fun. Right? And I want to recognize too, I see that you guys have been recognized six times as the best place to work, which is not easy. Right. And I think we've been on the best place to work list for, I think three years. And in the between 100 and 1,000 team members were top 20 in the country, which was pretty cool. I didn't know that that was a thing. But it's so important, like if. If you want to continue to drive the retention of your top people that, you know, you are getting recognized for this type of culture. Is there anything else, you know, from a recruitment side for your team? You mentioned that you're specifically looking for the values fit and as a lead gen background as well for you, do you find that when you do your recruitment obviously away from stealing from other people, Is this really a true marketing campaign as you go from start to finish, like, what does that look like for you guys as you're trying to attract that talent?

Yeah, absolutely. Right. So I think that it was very different during stages of evolution of the organization. Right. So you, you know, you think, okay, 0 to 5 million in revenue, we were kind of just hiring our friends and family, right. You know, people we trusted, people that respected me, people that said, oh, Jeremy's smart, he's good at what he does. I just want to learn from him and I'll do what he says. Right. And then to get from that 5, you know, to 10 million, you know, we did a good job of tapping our network, right. You know, asking for referrals, getting, you know, hiring people that were our social media followers and things of that nature. Right. And so, so then when you get from this year, we'll probably finish here around 14 or 14 and a half million in revenue. It's a completely different strategy that we've got for talent acquisition, right? Maybe like the people that we hired three years ago maybe wouldn't even make it through today based on personality assessments and aptitude testing and things of that nature, right? And so what we've done is taken a fully integrated marketing approach, right? Focus on creating organic, high quality, professional, professional content that's, that's extremely diverse, right? For Instagram, for LinkedIn, right. For Facebook, for YouTube. Right. Having a diversified approach through my own personal brand, our company brand, right. Our podcast brand. Right? Because as long as there's consistency around the production value and the content quality, right. You're going to organically attract people that, that 100% align with my vibes, right? You know, what are they wanting to buy? What I am selling from a culture standpoint and many of the times it's somebody that we never would have even known that existed.

So let me ask you this because I know that I have had my challenges along the way of growing a team and hitting different scaling sort of roadblocks. Now that you guys are in the multiple eight figure space, maybe just share a couple instances where you had to rethink how the business operates. I'll give you an example for us. When we hit about 55 people, we had to relook at our accountability system or lack thereof, because as you were talking, you know, having that clear path for people to understand how they succeed in the organization didn't really exist because you know, at the early stage with us, we were just able to have conversations with everybody all the time and everybody was connected. And then all of a sudden you get to 50ish people and you know, a little bit tougher to be doing that. So we had to really re look at our accountability system. And then I would say Once we got 100 people, I really had to relook at my leadership skills and up level myself because I wasn't where I needed to be for the organization to succeed. Did you have any milestones yourself, Jeremy, where you had to relook at yourself and the organization and say, well, what do we have to do here to make it better?

Yeah, yeah. So there's probably 10 different answers to that question. But one thing in particular that that was critical to our sustainable success was, you know, my industry has always been focused on hiring hunters, killers, entrepreneurial minded people, people that were super money motivated. Right. And so we offered it like a very low draw as far as their guaranteed compensation and then a really high commission plan. Right. But you know, we operate on eos, the entrepreneurial operating System. And so analyzing data is a huge component of our quarterly off sites and executive strategy meetings. I identified a business unit that was not the practice area that I personally managed. My, my executive vp, it was actually his practice area that he managed. But I realized, man, if I invest more time, energy and resources into this other practice area, right, Even though the sales cycles are 18 months in my practice area, it's only 90 days, I think that we will have much greater profit margins and sustainable growth by investing in this. Right? And so we were compensating people on a draw, but the sales cycle was just so long, we would lose people after two years that weren't making the money that they needed in order to support their families, you know. And so what we did was we actually scratched the draw, increased the base salary by about 40%, right. But we lowered the commission probably by another, you know, 50 or 60%. Right? So having the discipline to say, hey, look, in order to reduce turnover, right. We've got to increase our fixed expenses and overhead, right. Decrease our variable and just have trust and faith that fast forward 36 months, it would all even out. And more importantly, not just did it even out, right. The net income almost increased by 70% in that specific business unit.

Yeah. That's awesome. And two questions on that for you as the accountant in me is thinking about this. Obviously there's a lot more risk in having a fixed compensation model versus a variable compensation model. And I don't know that everyone really understands that who's not a business owner, right? Like, business owners get that, but employees are like, oh no, like we just want to, we want to just have more, we want to be guaranteed more. And so that's just shifting the risk to the business owner much more substantially. Do you feel like, obviously in the recruitment space, you guys see, you know, compensation models across the board with so many different organizations, do you feel with the, with the change in generations, you know, even post Covid, that a lot more people are focused on higher fixed compensation versus variable now? Like, is that, Are you seeing that mix a little bit more?

I mean, absolutely. Right? And why wouldn't they? Right. Whenever you look at the cost of groceries, right. You know, the cost of rent, right. The cost of insurance and fuel overhead has increased across the board, right? And so just in order to sustain, you know, not living with your parents, you can't live off of 45,000 anymore like you and I did whenever we got started in business, right? So, you know, people are asking for 55, 65, 75. Right. Especially whenever you're looking at sales, because the good people, you kind of know whether they're good within the first year, right. You don't need 10 years of experience to see if somebody has confidence, the ability to, you know, influence others. That fearlessness, right? You know, ability to connect the dots. And so you're hiring SDRs out of college, paying them 55k, but if they're good, they're getting those 90,000 base salary offers, right, For a junior account executive role. And so if you're not creating a structure that's gonna compete with that, you're literally just exposing yourself to losing top tier talent right out of the gate, which is a recipe for disaster for sure.

I wanna go back to being one of the best places to work and talking about, you know, the morale that you have on your team and keeping everybody engaged. What are maybe some ideas that you have to make sure that everyone is, you know, excited to show up to work, really wants to continue to be part of the team. How do you drive that in your business?

Yeah, so it's one word I'm going to say. Authenticity. Right. And so when you look at the content that we create on social media, when you look at our behavior in the job interviews, there's 100% continuity and authenticity even whenever you start at the organization, right. If you're on your best behavior and you're painting a picture like it's fucking sunshine and rainbows on social media and people show up to a sweatshop, they're probably not going to be super excited. Culture is not going to be aligned, right? But you know, yesterday my, my senior manager of growth, she put a social media post on LinkedIn and she's like, we fired half the interns that we hired for the summer. Like, that was like the way that she led it. And she's like, hey, doing an internship at Encore Search is not about grabbing coffee and run fucking errands. We make you do real. And so the people that are not aligned with that culture have no interest in working here. But the people that raise their hand that say, oh, you know, I'm, I'm going to Wake Forest. I'm an incoming senior, right? My dad is a senior vice president, a commercial bank and makes half a million dollars a year. I don't want to be an accountant, I want to be a producer. Jeremy, teach me how to be a producer. Yeah, that guy wants to work at Encore Search Partners.

Yeah, I love that. And two, you know, it's interesting if you build an organization where you tolerate Mediocrity across the board, you know, that's what you're gonna get. The high performers don't like to work with people who are mediocre at their job. You know, you will lose them because they don't want to work with people who are just. Okay. They want to work and be part of something that's remarkable. And, you know, I've definitely seen that as. As a takeaway across all spaces. Right. You've got to. If you accept that people will just ride on the coattails of others, then you'll see that morale drop. You'll see your high performers sort of tank in. In what they're able to do, because what's in it for them to continue to be that high performer? Right. So completely agree. And. And good point. I can feel your passion on that too. Right. And which. Which I like, because I feel like a lot of people don't get excited about that the way that they should. And it's true, you know, like, we're trying to create. I remember when I first started. So I was similar Jeremy in 2008. And I remember when I first started, I wanted to create an organization that I wanted to be part of. Right. I wanted to build a business that I wanted to show up every day and be part of and perform at my best. And I refused to ever go down the path of mediocrity because I don't want to be part of that. So if I don't want to be part of that, who else would want to be part of that? Right. So love it. I get it. Let me ask you this. I want to get some of your advice on what it's really looking like in the recruitment space right now. And specifically, I have a few questions for you around, you know, MIS hires. What is the true cost of having a MIS hire in your organization? We're kind of leading into that right now. But, you know, it's not just his salary. What else is included in that?

Yeah, I mean, you know, what I can say is we mishire also, right? You know, we're the plumber with the leaky faucet. Right. So don't get me wrong. And I think that the way that you can mitigate risk with MIS hires is pull the plug very early on. And I think that that's what so many employers are missing, is we want to see the best in people, right? We want to give them a sh. And we want to be mindful of their feelings and emotions. But at the end of the day, if you know that Somebody doesn't have the right attention to detail. Right. If they don't have the right communication skills or professional etiquette. Right. Business acumen, technical acumen, there's nothing wrong with shaking their hand within the first or second week and saying, hey man, we missed on this, I apologize. We're not going to set you up for success. We feel like we need to let you loose so you can go find something else that's a better fit for your skills and experience. Right. And so I don't necessarily think that mis hires are a bad thing. Right. And maybe I just, I got that way of thinking whenever I was a single guy Post divorce in 2019, you know, okay, if you go on two or three dates with a girl that you were optimistic about and once you realize the red flags, hey, bro, like, there's no reason it needs to turn into a nine month relationship.

Sure, Ms.

Hire.

You know, I think that's relatable. I think a lot of people can relate to that.

Yeah, but we see the good in people, dude. It's like, hey, like, why don't you just see what they're, what they're showing you? You know, you can't, you can't change. You know that they're walking into the office 11 minutes late three days in a row. And sometimes that's all that it takes to say, hey, you're not aligned with the company culture at Encore Search Partners. And when you have the discipline to let people go that are not 100% aligned with every single core value, it breeds trust with the colleagues, it breeds respect from the colleagues. Right. And I think that that's what creates a positive culture.

Excellent. Love that. Let's talk about organizations. Like, obviously you're growing fairly rapidly. We're growing fairly rapidly. When people are growing their business and they're looking at recruiting and bringing in top talent, how often do you see that people are under investing in recruitment, just trying to do it the quick, easy way. And what does that cost look like for the long haul?

Yeah, great question. And so I'm not going to be selfish and say that you need to pay a recruiting fee for every single person that you hire in the organization. Right. But what I can say is if you are an organization that has revenue producers, then the recruitment fee that you paid is not necessarily an expense, it's an investment. And as long as you, I mean, you're in accounting and finance, right. You understand how to calculate return on investment. You know, if you need a tax manager and you bill her out at 525 an hour and she bills out 1400 hours a year. That 800,000 in revenue, what is the difference in paying me $40,000 recruiting fee?

Right. To make sure it's the right person.

Make sure it's the right person and not just the right, not just the best of the applicants. Right. You know there's going to be roles where you get strong applicants, right. I'm not saying you need to pay a recruiting fee on everybody. But if it's somebody that's client facing, if it's somebody that's relationship building, if it's somebody that is responsible for bringing in revenue to the organization, hey, why not call a contingency search firm that understands your business practice area? Right. Are we explaining it the right way to candidates? Right. Are we being good stewards to represent your business in the community? There's literally no downside. Right. In a perfect world, we bring you four candidates, you say dang, Jeremy, all four of them are great. We only had one roster spot, we'll hire that one. But shoot, we're going to create another position for Joey. Right? You know that's how we make our money as recruiters. Right? Is 100% being aligned with our clients mission, vision, values and go to market strategy and finding people that fit that, that are going to create long term revenue value for your organization. That's why we specialize in wealth advisors. Right. Attorneys, private equity, venture capital, investment banks, commercial banks. Right. Insurance producers. Right. People that can bring in revenue for the organization because our recruiting fee is no longer viewed as an expense. It's an investment in growth.

So let me ask you this because. And all great. I remember back when I first started my firm, I remember the Enron scandal, remember? You know that, that huge.

You're not old enough to remember that.

Oh, come on now. Come on.

How old are you?

I'm 42. How old are you, Jeremy?

I'm 41. But we were kids. We weren't. We were in high school.

Yeah, but, but that was my space. That was my space, right? Like it was finances, it was the audit. It was the audit firm that misrepresented or went along for the ride. So that was a big deal for me at the time. So I remember, I remember when this was happening in all of the media, it was talking about accountants in sort of a dark light, you know. And it was always referred to as the bad apples. Right. Are making the industry not look as, as shiny as it once was with your space. There's also some bad apples in your space. Right. And just like mine still. And they make us look bad. So I want to know from you, what does it look like to hire, you know, an elite firm and what is it that someone should be looking for when they're looking to hire a recruitment firm like yours?

Yeah. So when you're evaluating a search firm, you want to hire someone that really understands your industry, Right. Not just the smooth talking car salesman that say, hey, I'll do it for lower fee. Right. You know, because the best recruiters have the highest fees. Right. I mean, if you're going out and looking for a divorce attorney, right. The best might be $1200 an hour. You're not just going to hire the guy that's willing to charge 350. And so I think that I would really encourage companies to do their research and hire the best. Right. And one way that you can showcase whether or not you are the best is results. Right. How many placements have you made in my industry? Right. Are you continuing to have revenue growth? What's your proven business development strategy? Do you have a system in order to go out there and evaluate strong talent? Right. So hire people that understand your space. That's number one, Right. Not just the cheapest, you know, number two, I mean, there are so many people out there that want to bend the rules in order to make a deal happen. Right. Maybe you tweak employment dates on a resume. Maybe you fudge, you know, an advanced degree. Right. And to be quite honest, right. There is no gray area in our industry in my opinion. Either you have integrity or you don't. Right? You can't say that. Oh, well, it was just a little white lie. No one's going to find out. It's going to be all good, right? He's going to do a good job, Right. If I know that that guy is four hours short of getting his MBA from Northwestern, I should have the confidence as a recruiter to tell you, Robert. Oh, and by the way, he's only four hours shy. So like within the next two years that might be something that he wants to finish. Just an FYI. Okay, Jeremy, thanks. Right. But we want to like, hide from the truth, right? Sometimes. And I'll tell you that that's absolutely a recipe for disaster. And when your employees see you bending the rules, that loses trust and credibility with your people. And a lot of times that's what exposes you to losing them to other firms as well.

That end. Now all of a sudden you're attracting people who also are not high in integrity as well, right? Next thing, you got an entire team full of liars and deceit. You know, definitely not something.

And there are companies that have built tons and tons of revenue on those types of business models. And I'll tell you, that's just one guy's opinion, man.

Yeah, I hear you. Let me ask you this, Jeremy. So what's next for you and Encore Search Partners?

Yeah, so what's next for me? The thing that I'm probably most excited about in my life right now is I just got engaged back in February. You know, I was in my entrepreneurs organization forum yesterday, and one of the guys, he made a joke. He was like, oh, and Jeremy has a passport now all of a sudden, right? But I was a workaholic for so long, and that's given me such an incredible roi, right? On my time and investment. But, you know, really, you know, focusing on adventure, right, Is something that I'm super mega excited about over the next few years before I have more children. I've got three boys now. But focusing on adventure. I'm a recent angel investor in a pickleball league called the Honcho Pickleball. We're in over 60 cities nationwide. We just signed a brand partnership with Yola. And I would say that, like, what's most exciting for me is my fiance and pickleball, right? Because of our growth marketing strategy, because we hire competent individuals, because we have leaders that are 100% aligned with the mission, vision, and values. I know that our business is going to be profitable and sustainable, right? And it's perfectly okay for entrepreneurs in different seasons of life, right? To focus on health, to focus on relationships, to focus on their children, to focus on fun, adventure, and, you know, diversifying their investments, right? It's perfectly okay. And you shouldn't be embarrassed to admit it.

100%. Yeah. In fact, I feel like health, first and foremost, health is just a sign of your commitment to anything. You know, if you're not taking care of your health, how are you going to take care of your clients? Right? It's so. It's so very true. Jeremy, tell me a little bit about your podcast.

Yeah, so my podcast was something that I started in 2024, and it's called the Path to Success. And it's something that I created probably as a lead generation mechanism, right? In order to meet really, really interesting, cool people in the city of Houston, right? So as I was kind of transitioning from this kind of, like, you know, single guy to, hey, I'm ready to, like, grow up a little bit, right? And let me Stop hanging out with people that are day drinking at patio bars and let me meet more cool entrepreneurs like Robert. Right? And so we recorded 16 episodes. Athletes, influencers, executives, entrepreneurs, people that had had nine figure exits in their business. And what I can say is those 16 episodes, I've created some of my very best friendships, right. Transparently, Robert, I haven't recorded an episode since January and I think it's because I'm investing so much time in pickleball and Yulia. Right? But I think it's perfectly okay to recognize, hey, what do I want more of and how do I reverse engineer how to acquire that? And I think that that's my lead generation mindset, right? And I think that if more entrepreneurs focused on how they can increase the size of the top of the funnel on whatever it is they want to secure, right? Whether it's more sales, whether it's more employees to hire, whether it's more friends, whether it's more dating opportunities, right? How can I implement a creative strategy in order to secure that? And I've done a good job with podcasting, done a good job with social media, and I've done a good job in communicating the why behind the what to my leaders. That way they can go out and be aligned with my mission as well.

Jeremy, where can people find you best as well as Encore Search Partners?

Excellent. So I'm pretty active on LinkedIn and so it's just my name and I've got a little goat emoji at the end. So. Jeremy Jensen, J E N S o N. Our URL is encore search.com and if you want to follow the personal life, I really like using Instagram as well. So I look forward to connecting on Instagram. But yeah, man, this has been super fun and exciting. You're obviously very aligned with the way that I think as an entrepreneur and as a marketer and an innovator and as a leader. And I hope that I have an opportunity to come to Toronto to meet you in person, man, because I think that's where a lot of the authentic friendships are created is whenever you're shaking hands, breaking bread. Right?

Awesome. Well, I look forward to that as well, my friend. And guys, we'll make sure that all of the contact info that Jeremy shared is in a link below. So everybody has access to Jeremy and Encore Search Partners as well. Jeremy, thank you for sharing some of your guidance and wisdom and your story today. I appreciate it.

Excellent, man. Thanks for having me on.

All right, guys, this has been the Wealthy Entrepreneur Podcast. My name is Robert Govreau. It's been a pleasure to have you here. We are here to empower entrepreneurs with the financial confidence to make informed decisions so that together we can change the world. And I know there were some really great insights shared today, especially about building the human capital element of your organization. If you found any of this information is helpful to someone that you know, make sure that you share it out. Right. Again, we're we're here to try and support all entrepreneurs along their journey so the more people we can get access to through sharing information that would be incredible. Make sure you give us a follow. Make sure you give us a like drop a question in or a comment in if it's for me or if it's Jeremy, I'll make sure that we get those answers in here for you. We're here to support you along your journey. As always, it's a pleasure to be your host and I look forward to seeing you all again next week. Thanks again everybody.