Dandan Zhu - Why hard work, determination & being motivated by money will get you far in recruitment

Welcome to the Recruitment Mentors Podcast. My name is Hishem Azzouz. Today I'm very excited to be joined by Dandan Zhu, who is the founder and CEO of Dandan Global and DG Recruit. Dandan started her recruitment career in 2011, where she rapidly progressed from trainee to principal within 2 years, and by the time Dandan left in 2016, She founded their executive search practice for the agency that she worked for. For the last 5 years, she's been supporting hundreds of executives with her career coaching business, Dandan Global. And for the last 3 years, she's been connecting top billers with top recruitment firms across the US with DG Recruit. Dandan, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me, Hishem.

So where we always start, and the first question I have for you is, in your opinion, what characteristics and traits do you think make up a highly successful recruitment consultant?

Absolutely. This is a question obviously every recruitment company will tell us over and over again, and we've seen certain things not only through my personal practice but through my own experience working in an environment to see what works and what doesn't. And it fundamentally comes down to the core drive to be financially well off. I think this is still a very deep-seated need to sustain one's career in such a challenging job, right? There's so many ways that you can make money outside of recruitment. The only reason why you would use recruitment as a vehicle for wealth is if you truly have the commercial acumen to understand how this industry works. So I think it's gotta be someone who's business savvy, who has probably seen the world a little bit, who understand, you know, what a typical job looks like and how recruitment is a completely different and unique beast of a job. So it's just someone who kind of understands and appreciates the opportunity that this business provides and is willing to, you know, sacrifice for the first 1 to 2 years of their career to truly learn the business, be a student, gather all the information and really push oneself to be a sales leader. So the people that really succeed are the ones that understand this is commercial business driven by revenue generation, and that you have to push yourself to appreciate and understand how to convert a thought into money, right? A thought of, I wanna place somebody, I wanna get jobs, to actually doing it and having the guts and the courage to do so. Also, along with that, you need the work ethic to be able to sustainably create your business through time, which requires a lot of dedication and man hours. It's a very, you know, manual job. It's not just something that falls into your lap. You know, you have to work hard towards it. So I think all of these different factors combined, in addition to just basic ability to speak well and to write well, These are all crucial skill sets that today's recruitment consultant has to be able to do and improve upon.

Do you think that most high-performing recruiters that you know, work with, are— their main motivator and driver is money?

I would say probably 9 times out of 10, absolutely.

Okay, I find that interesting. The reason why I want to dig into that is because I've— I speak to so many top-performing recruiters who hit the goal that they're after, that become financially free or whatever, and feel empty, feel they've— they don't know, they don't know why they're doing it anymore, they're unmotivated. So what I keep hearing, and I don't know if this may be a nuance to the American market, but what I keep hearing is that the best recruiters that build a successful career sustainably are really fine-tuned into their purpose. And that typically has got to be bigger than a material object or a sort of a certain number in their bank account. What do you think about that?

I don't really know about other people's feelings towards that. It's just when we see people who have reached a certain level of success, it's usually because they had a serious why. Right? And the why is deeper than dollars and cents, right? It's really the why driving someone to aspire to have a successful life, which usually entails some sort of financial success, right? Like, you can't— in our world, success is determined by your ability to produce and your ability to then share in the profit of your production, right? In the reward. So it's very rare to come across someone who does it simply for joy or for fulfillment because in this career it's kind of like a thankless job. You know, candidates sometimes will not be the nicest to you. Clients certainly will not be the nicest to you. We do it for the money. I mean, I've consistently done this job since I was 23 and I still do it for the money. I still do it for the money. It's fantastic. I love it. I love financial reward. I love success. I love feeling amazing that I can create something from nothing and challenge myself, you know, almost like a mindset. Can I build another 500? Can I build another million? Can I do this? Can I do that? Every step is a challenge with financial wins at the end. So it's very hard for me to conceive why people would sustain and do this tough job. It's a very tough job. To call clients, to ask them for certain things, to call candidates and put their feet to the fire and be really harsh on people and be really tough. And you're controlling as many factors as you can. I don't really understand why people would do that for simple intellectual curiosity. You know, I don't see why that would be the case, right? Again, I think it comes from a deep-seated need of ego gratification in terms of a certain level of achievement. And a certain level of living life standard, right? That's why you get into this business. You, again, you use it for a vehicle for what it is to wealth, and you have fun along the way. You find the joy in it. You enjoy the challenge that comes with making more and more billings every year, maybe building your own agency, maybe building new markets. But the fundamental reason of why we get into this business still is financial reward. So again, I don't really know, but a lot of the people that we talk to who exit the business don't care that much about financial reward. And that's why they exit. Because they're like, it's not worth the trouble. It's not worth the suffering. They don't ultimately see, you know, and care about this amazing sort of financial opportunity. To them, it's like, I know it's there. I understand the commercial aspect, but I don't care. I have X amount. And that's good enough for me. And for me, it's like, ah, there's no such thing as an X amount being like the target and that being over. For me, it's always gonna be evolving more and more, growing my net worth. It's always gonna be growing it and not just growing it dollar by dollar, growing it by, you know, severe chunks of money, right? So you need an acceleration in terms of a wealth-building vehicle. And for me, it's recruitment as a core, that drives all my other investment behavior, right? So I think, again, I don't really know, you know, of course some people get bored, they get demotivated in their own way, in their own, and sometimes attributed to their work environment, the people they're surrounding themselves with, the maybe loneliness sometimes of being a quote, potentially a solopreneur, whatever comes with that. But for me, it's always, every time I feel demotivated, I look to my financial drive and I look to the goals that I have financially and that always gives me hope. That always gives me a dream to aspire to. Otherwise, I could just do some other job that's easier.

Yeah. I know, I think that what— thank you for sharing that. And I think what— why I wanted you to sort of go a bit further on that is because it's where you started that which is the sort of deep-rooted why. And I think Do you think then, I know there's things that I want to go into, but just on this, so if you believe that, do you think that being really anchored to the financial reward, do you think that encourages good practice in recruitment?

I think it's about how you look at business and how you want to grow your business. There are a lot of people out there that are shady and that like to take shortcuts. I've never been somebody who's done that. In fact, very early on in recruitment, I realized that earning people's trust and living off of their goodwill is how— is the easiest way to build a recruitment practice, right? You do right by your people in your network, they will sell for you. They'll drive half of your business. You know, your word of mouth, the reputation precedes you. So for me, it's not because I'm altruistic or a better human or like morally superior. Supreme. It's just simply smart business to treat people well and to give them good service and to tell them to spread the word for you. So for anyone who takes shortcuts, and I see people do that in my network, certainly rec to rec, it's a messy business. I've talked to a lot of my competitors and I've seen, I've talked to a lot of candidates who complain about the other rec to recs. And that's just never something I've ever done because I I've built a successful practice from age 23 over and over again by being good to people, being likable, leveraging my likability, having people sell for me and really being on my side. And therefore you expand faster. Your results are exponential because people like you. And that's like a hidden accelerator, right? Your reputation precedes you. So again, I mean, to me it's just like plain simple, regular common sense to provide a strong offering, an above average offering for your customers so that everybody kind of knows you're the best. And then for that, you can also charge higher rates, right? So this is just like basic business common sense for me to do good work and to be a good person, to make the money you want to make. I don't want to commit crimes to make money. I want to commit like regular Things that I can sleep at night, like I can sleep at night every single night because I don't do anything shady, right? Like everything I do is above board, right? Recruiting recruiters, I even talked to clients that try to do me dirty. Obviously they're no longer clients and I'm just like, I don't understand how you sleep at night. I really don't. I don't just to save a couple of dollars. It's sad. Like, why? Like, you know, I believe in positive greed. Greed can be a very powerful, positive motivator.

Yeah, love that. So, Dandan, how would you describe your first year in recruitment?

My first year in recruitment was really fun. I was in a really cool environment where I was allowed to be myself, and I think I just loved this career from day one because you can leverage, again, your personality to its very fullest extent. And I think that's the biggest difference I felt about recruitment as a career versus every other job, right? In the past, I've worked in banks, I've worked at, you know, medical device companies. I was interning many months and I was like, these jobs are so boring, right? You're just stuck in a silo. You just have to do a certain like X task. But for recruiting, it's like literally living and breathing this new way of life of like, how do I generate money out of literally nothing, right? We had no clients, we had no candidate network. So how do you make money out of literally nothing except your own fake it till you make it energy, right? So my first year was like accelerated learning where, I mean, my first 2, 3 months, I would constantly work weekends. I would work till 9:00 PM most weekdays. And every day my life was just work and then like gearing up for work and working. So I was really immersed in the career when I first started because I had to develop and invest a lot of time. In learning what I had to do and putting the time into the hours needed to have the conversations I need to have so that I could accelerate the process of mastering the jargon that you need to learn when you're just starting to recruit, because you have to speak differently, right? As a 23-year-old selling to 55-year-olds, you can't just communicate the way you want to communicate with your friends or with your teachers. You know, it's a totally different business jargon. To sound adult-like and to earn their trust. So my first few months and the first year was really just mastering the new language and earning people's respect and trust. And that's how you get business done at the end of the day.

And what, what world did you recruit in just for context?

I worked in the pharmaceutical space. So my job was to sell to pharmaceutical companies including biotechs.

Yeah, awesome. Because what I want to— awesome. Because what I wanted to ask you about that early period, right? And I'm sure you like— one of the reasons why I started this podcast was because when I got into recruitment, I got sold the recruitment dream, right? Which was that you earn six figures in your first year and you'll do all these things. But I didn't get told around what you're talking about— the steep learning curve, the amount of rejection you have to go through, the amount of time you have to pull yourself up off the floor, all these things, right? So What I find interesting, obviously on your LinkedIn, you put like literally within sort of 2 years, if I'm correct, you built something from scratch, right? As you shared, where you managed to build $1.5 million, right? In 2 years. Is that right? In dollars, yeah?

Oh, in 3 years. In 3 years.

3 years, sorry. Okay.

Yeah.

In 3 years.

Cool. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's pretty significant, right? In terms from a stand start. And I know there'll be loads of different factors into that, but I guess if we were to sort of work that down to 1 to 3 things, you've spoken about work ethic. Get that. Not everyone's going to be prepared to do what you do. I've heard you talk on obviously other podcasts where you've got— you come from an Asian family and work ethic is huge, right? And you have a chip on your shoulder. You have things to prove. So I get that. But I like the way that you're talking about that you really focused on learning. And building trust. So I guess you speak to people all the time that enter the industry that don't have that success. What do you think the other 2, 3 things that you really double down on that helped you achieve that?

I think one is just again, the endless—

Oh, I can't hear you. Maybe take the AirPods out.

Oh, that's fine.

Yeah.

Perfect. Sorry about that. Um, yeah. And in addition to the work ethic, and when I talk work ethic, I mean really like being clever about how you utilize your time at work. So a lot of people at work are just not focused and they don't really commit themselves to this career. And kind of going back to my earlier point, when I got into the business, I realized the financial opportunity in recruitment is unlike any other business model compared to real estate sales, compared to financial wealth sales, compared to a lot of other careers. So I made a commitment day one coming into the business that this was going to be my thing and that I was going to amount to somebody. I was going to be top biller. I'm going to be like on the top of the leaderboard. Like that was a decision I made when I entered the business. And my mentality was I simply will not fail at this. Not only will I not fail at this, I will be one of the best people they ever hire and I will set the example. So that was like ego driving me. So every time I talked to a client or a candidate, it would, it would be like everything meant survival, right? It was like, it wasn't just like, oh, maybe see if you can grab a, you know, a lead, maybe see, maybe it was not, there was no maybe. It was just, I had to keep going tenaciously until I got every single drop of information I could possibly procure. Right? So it's like this cutthroat energy of like, I will not let the prospects go until I get what I need. So I guess it's a bit of ego, it's a bit of tenacity, it's a bit of shamelessness. It's just like, I don't care if you don't want to take my call, I'm going to do whatever I need to do to learn how to keep you on the phone. Because right away, can't— people will be like, oh, I'm too busy, can't talk to you. I'd be like, no problem. I know you're super busy. Let's keep talking. And I'll just continue going. It's just like the shamelessness of being like, you're on my time. I'm not on your time. You're on my time. Because deep down inside, I knew I was going to change their life. I knew that I was the best. And I knew that I had the biggest network. So they're missing out when they don't talk to me. I'm not missing out because I'm going to make money any which way. They're missing out because they don't know it, but they need me. They don't understand the power that a top recruiter can, can do for you to change your life, right? I've changed so many people's lives. They just don't know it yet. So that's the mission really driving my behavior when I'm talking to people. So it's this tenacity, the shamelessness is one, one aspect in addition to work ethic, right? Work ethic on weekends. I drive an hour and a half on my weekends to meet candidates. Because my thought was, I'm not going to spend my Monday to Friday when I can call clients to go and meet candidates. I'm going to meet candidates on Saturdays and Sundays. I would take them out to lunch, coffee. I do 3 or 4 meetings in a day. I drive around, you know, it was just work was my priority. So I guess the next 2 things are the tenacity, the shamelessness, and also the focus and dedication to making this work, making this successful. Having the mindset that this is my exit plan. This is my fast track to retirement. It's not a joke, right? It's this serious dedication to the craft of making this the vehicle, the chosen vehicle of which I'm gonna leverage to power up all of my financial goals.

Yeah, so you're talking about, and I think you, I think it takes a while for a lot of recruiters to get to really believe that, what you're talking about. That sort of real inner belief that if you're speaking to me, then I am the best person you should be speaking to, right? And so I love that you really held yourself to really extreme high standards from day one, and that's what you held yourself account to. So I guess you mentioned focus, and I think this is really interesting, right? And I really agree on this. And one of the most popular questions that I get from recruiters is, Recruiters want to know what did a, in UK terms, £100,000-£150,000 biller, what did their day look like compared to a free £400,000 day biller, right? Like, so when you say focus, where do people get it wrong with focus? Like where are recruiters going wrong when you feel like they're not focusing enough?

I think that the problem is sometimes twofold. Right. One is external. And so let's talk about external. Maybe you're set up in the wrong market. Maybe your boss has you selling to too many different things. Maybe your boss, you're— so we talk to a lot of recruiters that start off not being in control of their job recs, right? So they're working someone else's jobs. And that's really tough because if you can't control the client side, you need two hands to clap. If you can't control the client side and you're just filling jobs, it's really hard to control the quality and the dedication and the hotness of those recs than just getting your own recs that are deeply committed, that you can interview the client yourself. And then conversely, you can sell better because you know what the client is, you know who they are, how they feel. You've had those conversations, you've built up a relationship and you can sell it to the candidate community better. Right. So I think one is the structure of the company and what they have you doing. Right, so when I first started, it was a very targeted market that they assigned me. It was just out of thin air. Here you go, I want you to do regulatory writers. So regulatory writers is a very slim niche vertical, similar to like biostatisticians, clinical operations manager, right? There's just like different verticals, and I think the way I was trained was doing the vertical market specialism, which is very popular in London. I think it's absolutely the right way to go about it, which is become an absolute expert in one type of vertical, all the way from VP to director to the top of the vertical, all the way down to junior person in that vertical. Because the goal is you're just going to shop and mosey around that whole entire ladder. Right. So I love that. I think that's the best way to go about building a recruitment firm relatively quickly, because then you can really become the market expert as opposed to a generalist recruiter who just kind of does everything. So this is what I mean by external. When you're junior, you don't know any better. So your boss is like, hey, I want you to recruit a regulatory writer. I want you to also recruit the biostatistician. And I also want you to recruit the clinical trial associate. That is impossible, right? Those are three vastly different networks. There's zero economies of scale between those networks. So I was just lucky that I started off in the right kind of setup where I was just assigned one specific vertical. Now it was up to me to then develop my vertical. And this is how I kind of did it differently, which was I didn't really listen to my bosses at that point. It was just like, okay, you're given this, this market, do what you will with it. So I just went crazy. I just went to Boston, went to Philly, went to Jersey, went to New York, market mapped out every single possible hiring person in the market. And that's why I stayed late all those days was adding all of them into the system. Right? So there's a certain amount of like focus in terms of time and energy. That you choose to live your life. So I was 23 years old, single in New York, living on a $35K base, which isn't a lot of money after taxes. That leaves me very little. I had to pay for student loans, car loans. I was just like, I need to make money. I don't have the luxury of going to work 9 to 5, hanging out with my friends after work and on weekends to, I don't have that luxury. I need to make money. Right? So in my situation, I had to focus all the living time that I had on work. I didn't have extra time to focus on my hobbies or focus on hanging out with people, right? Year 1 was crucial. I needed to focus on the job and focus on building my market and socializing with the network that was gonna make me money, right? So I think it's again twofold. You need to be in the right situation from a corporate setting in terms of what they have you working on. And then also number 2, taking that opportunity into your own hands and being opportunistic about all the commercial billing opportunities that come your way. Sometimes it might fall out of your typical niche, right? So like sometimes I do some other searches if I have the time, but you need to have a core focus and dedicate your time to becoming an expert at your job.

What, what does your, what does your typical day plan consist of today?

And then my typical day plan today, it's just typical recruitment day, same old, same old. My job actually has devolved into being very much what it was day one, which is calling, messaging, headhunting, like, like referral networking, golden looping. It's just conversations, messages, a lot of messages, because now I recruit recruiters, unlike what I used to do before, which was headhunt people to move companies from, you know, here, you're going to make $100,000 where you currently are. Great. I'm headhunting you today. I'm going to sell you a job that's going to pay you $40,000 more. Do you want to talk? That was my old pitch today. That's not pitch anymore because I'm recruiting recruiters and recruiters are paid on commission. They're not paid on base increases. So I can't call up a recruiter at a top recruiting firm and say, hey, you made $200,000 last year. I'll give you $50,000. Come and talk to me. So that's not my typical approach now. Now I just do a lot of messaging, a lot of golden looping, because it's really about timing people and catching people on the right day that they actually want to discuss a move. Because recruitment market is just a different set of goals, a different set of compensation factors. So this pitch is no longer the same. A lot of the market dynamics are also a little bit different. So my big ask today, my big like task is to do a ton of messaging. It's very manual. Very manual. I write every single message. I reach out to every single person. I do proper market mapping. I literally message everyone. And in the hopes that they would do themselves a favor and not be naive enough to not connect with me. Unlike, you know, what I was like back in the day. Like completely, like, you know, like hoping to catch people.

Golden looping. What do you mean by that?

So golden loop is your a core network of people who know you and already you've been in contact in some way. So a golden loop starts at the top with placed candidates. So anybody you placed, they obviously know you and they have experienced positively with you. So you should be hitting those people up and asking them for referrals time to time, as often as once every month. And you should be staying in touch with the next layer, which is anyone who has interviewed for you. So anyone who has gone out there and interviewed, you need to be hitting them up once a month too to ask for referrals, to stay in touch. And then the third tier is anyone that you've spoken with or met in person, right? Then you kind of talk to— so the goal is every single month you should be talking to the same group of people all the time and constantly adding new people to your loop. That is the ideal scenario.

Yeah, I really like that. So let's go into— I, I'm really excited to dig into sort of Dan Dan's perspective of, of the U.S. recruitment market, right? So How would you just— so like, just to give you some context, so before COVID but I feel like this is really starting to ramp up again now. So before COVID I would say most UK-based progressive recruitment businesses that wanted to grow had on their business plan US, right? And some of those businesses have continued those plans, some of them may have waited, other whatever, but that definitely was always in a typical conversation with a recruitment entrepreneur, right? So, I'm sure there's been plenty of bumps across the road, right, in the last 12 months. But like today, like how would you describe the US recruitment market for agency recruitment?

It's as good as ever. In fact, it's consistently a market that is underutilized in terms of there's just not enough people to satisfy the market demand. There's not enough capable people who can actually do the job. In most US recruitment markets, and I'm sure nationally and internationally, these candidate markets are very tight. So the ability of somebody off the street to come in, insert themselves in a relatively insular network where people are paranoid and don't like recruiters and have been burned by many bad recruiters, that skill is still very hard to execute even on just the candidates. Right? So both sides of the job are hard, like even penetrating candidate markets. So what you hear a lot in the recruitment market in America is, oh, I don't— I just can't find these candidates. I just can't find candidates. And I'm just like, well, that is really sad because that's literally your only job. Like, if you can't do that, you cannot do this job. Like, that's just unfortunate because it's like saying I'm a lawyer and I don't know how to law, right? It's just— this is your job. right? This, if you don't figure it out, you're out of a job. That's it. It's over. So the problem today is you just have a lot of people that either lack the work ethic, organization, ability to call in consistently, right? Some of these candidates, you have to call them 10 times a day. And I hear people saying, oh, I call them once a day, or I call them once a week. Good luck. Well, you are really playing the odds there that that one day that you call them on Monday, they're gonna pick up at that exact moment in time. Right. So I think, I think the answer is this is a phenomenal career that just in general, very few people either know about. So that's the thing in America. Not a lot of people know that this career even exists. They've heard about HR, they've heard about corporate recruiting. They don't know what a headhunter is. I didn't know. And I went to a business school, a relatively good one. So we didn't know. Anything unless your family was rich and your parents were headhunted, you don't know what a headhunter is in America. So some middle-class kid like me, I don't know about headhunters. My parents work in a restaurant. Nobody's headhunting them for anything. So I don't know that headhunting is a thing, right? So same, and that's college educated, right? So the American population has no idea that this career even exists. So because of that, there's just not a lot of people entering the field. And those who do, a lot of them are not cut out for it. And the vast majority leave. It's a stopover. It's a stopgap, right? So what happens is a college-educated American who usually comes from decent family upbringing, they are the ones that can speak the corporate English, 'Cause then you have the class issues in America. So we can only accept the ones that can speak in the corporate English. So the ones who enter the field typically have a comfortable family life, comfortable life. They, they're like, I had colleagues near me who all had like Chanel watches and Cartier bracelets upon entering the workforce as a recruiter.

Oh, wow.

Making $35K in New York. So, so the people who enter the industry are not financially motivated. A lot of them are not because they recruit from these pools of people who are already in a financially comfortable situation. So what happens is the people who actually sustain, and again, like I said, see the commercial opportunity and are willing to work for it, are few and far between because the reality is you can also just quit and get some other job and make like a decent living and be okay. Right? So again, in the US, I think you have this massive labor shortage. And this is still the case. We have a massive labor shortage where there's just not enough people. Staying in the business, coming into the business. So what happens is the recruitment companies who know what they're doing, extremely, extremely profitable.

It's really interesting you say that, 'cause, so a bit of context. So I think, I don't know if you know Lewis Adams-Dunstan at Darwin Recruitment. I don't know if you've connected with him. He said that you both have spoken in the past, but, so, and he was talking about this, right? And I think UK recruitment companies learned this the hard way. right? And basically sort of a typical UK recruitment business plan will normally be, if things go to plan, get a couple of their like longstanding employees first in the ground in New York, first in the ground in LA or whatever. So one, they know what the company culture is, they know sort of what their values are, and they can cultivate and grow that in America. But, and then the sort of constant challenge that I've uncovered multiple times in this podcast, which Lewis was saying, and they learned the hard way, is then Oh, right. Okay. So yeah, attracting recruiters for your agency, recruiters for your own recruitment business here is even more difficult for some of the things that you were saying. And then there's this learning of, oh, okay, Dan, Dan. So I'm talking to you about a $35K base, the commission you can earn, or you could potentially work for Facebook and it's $150 grand salary or whatever, right? As a corporate recruiter. Right. So he was really— and you spoke about it there, but I guess, and I'm sure you're thinking about this every single day. How can you move the needle on that then? Because for me, the conversations I have, UK recruiters, there's loads of UK recruiters that wanna go to the US and we'll see how that pans out with visa delays and all these things, right? But that's, I don't know if you've seen that, you speak to UK recruiters that come over, whatever, but like how can we move the needle? How can you move the needle on that then, do you think?

Well, part of what we do is we try to spread the word, right? There's only so much social media can do though. Like the reality is we're just like a drop in the bucket. We're not famous enough that every single college kid knows us and is like, oh wow, did you recruit? Told us about recruiting as a career, right? And we have no time to go to every single college campus to tell people about recruitment. So I think it's helpful that recruitment companies are trying to do that and they're kind of selling recruitment as a career as best as they can. The reality is, is like there's systemic issues in this country. That are gonna cause this gap, a continued gap in the labor market. And this is just how it is because unless you— I was lucky that even though my parents were immigrants, I grew up in a wealthy town that was predominantly white. I was lucky because my parents understood how America works. They were like, hey, if we want our kids to have a future here, they need to sound white. So we need to grow up in a white neighborhood. Otherwise, they will be severely disadvantaged if they have an accent. And my parents understood this because they're well-educated in China, and they knew how class affects economic structures, right? So I think here you have this problem again, where a lot of people coming from rural America or coming from a disadvantaged neighborhood, unfortunately, how likely is it that they can now speak to executives? How likely is that to happen? So I think the systemic problem is way too serious for any of us to correct. The most we can possibly do is try to talk to college kids who are young enough, who actually have hopes and dreams and want to make commission, right? You have to catch them at an age where commission is appealing because realistically, once someone gets to being 25 years or older, commission doesn't sound exciting because they now want to live in a decent house. They now want to buy food to eat. Now they don't want to cook and they don't want to cost save. So for them, a low base, high commission opportunity is not attractive. We have to really educate, hopefully, the high school age and the college age kids to say, hey, maybe before you decide to take some Joe Schmo, like $70K paying job, have you thought about potentially potentially amounting to more than that. You know, again, however, at the end of the day, you can't convince someone to like money when they don't. So it's a very hard thing for us to change people. And I have this cynical saying, at the end of the day, I can't turn poop into gold. I just can't. Like, they're either gold or they're not. Like, there's not— you can't convince somebody to care about money. You just can't. Like, they either want it or they don't. There's nothing I can say. And I've tried, believe me, I've tried to inspire people to say, look how money changed my life. Wouldn't it be great to like have so much at a young age? People don't care. They just need what they need to live the lifestyle they care about. Not everybody needs to have a car and a ski house and a summer home. Not everybody feels that way or cares enough. So at the end of the day, it's very hard for us to influence the general public. People have to hopefully learn about this career along their journey to getting wealthy. For me, it was just luck. It was just luck that somebody called me and was like, hey, do you know about recruiting? And I was like, absolutely not. I have no idea what this career is about because they don't teach about it in school. I was just lucky that somewhere along the way I bumped into somebody. So again, as a rec to rec, that's about as much as we can do. Is spread the word and say, hopefully I'll bump into that guy or gal who has a dream in their heart. Hopefully I can bump into them. And we do. Here and there, we bump into those people and it's phenomenal. It's amazing seeing someone who's 23 years old, who's never made over $50,000 a year, kill it in their first year and just absolutely love the commercial opportunity. It happens. But we have to put a lot of effort into putting out a lot of videos, connecting with people, asking for referrals. It's a manual process to convert people. It's like a religion. If you want people to sign up, you have to go door to door.

So where are the growth areas and sectors in the US then? So I think two things I'd love you to share, 'cause obviously America is a huge place. What sort of states are you quite excited by that you see really growing the recruiters It's just good context for recruiters listening to this to know where the opportunities are. And then two, yeah, what are the growth sectors that you've seen that have done well during this period? And again, thinking of people who are looking at taking their career to the US, what sectors would you be encouraging them to consider if they could?

Well, I think every sector that is candidate-driven and has decent rates and yields is a good sector, right? So it's not like energy is better than tech. It's not like finance is better than energy. You know, it's not so black and white. And that's the worst is to like chase certain, like oil and gas was popular 5 years ago. Don't do that now. Right. Like, but again, there's money to be made there. So I don't think it's ever the market that dictates the success of a recruiter. I think it's more like your natural, perhaps your natural skills aligning with the potential style of that network. So for instance, pharmaceutical land, it's a lot of older people who are in their 40s and 50s. They have children. So you need to relate with them. You need to really understand how their risk factors affect their decision-making when it comes to career moves. So it's more so understanding those demographics. Um, then the construction market, you're dealing with people who are more blue collar, who are a little bit more like, like grab a drink after work. And these people conglomerate in the cities that are experiencing construction growth, right? So, so you, depending on what sector, you just kind of have to look at the different market verticals and decide, does that fit my style? Right? Again, like, had I known if I could do my recruitment career again, I would have probably picked biostatisticians because I'm Chinese and I speak Mandarin. I should have done biostatisticians from day one because I just could. I, it's an easy in. Right. They all speak Mandarin. And there are a lot of the hiring managers are Chinese. And when would you meet a Chinese headhunter who speaks both languages? It's impossible. So I, I should have done that upon looking back. But I did just fine in regulatory writing because a lot of my clientele were women who have children and I would like mentor their kids. I would go on weekends, I hang out with their kids and we do like— that is the kind of stuff I did to break into my network. I would host like pottery painting sessions. I did what I knew my, my network wanted, right? Like a good example is like barbecue in Jersey. Like I want to do barbecue, I want to do bowling night, I want to— these are things that my network actually has an interest in and might be like a fun social thing for them versus let's say, hey, let's set up a fancy yacht in New York and have all my candidates from Philly drive over. It's not possible, right? So understanding your market, knowing where they are and being accessible possible to them. And nowadays today with like the borders, you know, you can just fly anywhere you want. Obviously not with COVID but you can fly in the future, right? So I did business in Cincinnati. I did business in Chicago. Like you can do business anywhere. So it's less about the location. It's more about like the fit of the market and obviously your intrinsic intellectual capacity.

Sure.

Right?

So there are not any particular states that you're excited by then? Because yeah, they're just— no, not really.

You, I mean, I'm a national recruiter, so anything to me is the same. Like, it doesn't matter if Austin, like Austin's, it just doesn't matter because I recruit the same profile in every single city, right? And then I do the relocation. So I'm a national recruiter. I've always been national from day one. So I'm not in a regionalized model. Some recruiters are in a regionalized model where they can only sell to a certain location. And to me, that's kind of limiting because then It's like Boston market, for instance, it's a very insular market. It's only so big. So like at a certain point you just run out of candidates. So then you have to import them. Oh, you might as well just do business also in Jersey where you can like, you know, shop them to each other. Right. So I think in America, because of this, people also relocate nowadays, you know, millennials entering the workforce and aging. There's a lot of people that want to move and need to move. And if you're not really national or you have the capacity to service that, you might be leaving money on the table. So I don't know if there's any particular— again, it's not the location or the market who makes the recruiters. It's what you make out of it. My only caveat to that is like low-level paying jobs.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

Hey, I need an admin assistant for $65,000. You have to question yourself, why is that a market that you want to enter? Why is that? It wouldn't be, 'cause how could you scale a team, right? So you have to look at average margins and what you think you need to attract talent and to build a team.

So just quickly, so last couple of things before I'll ask you the last few questions. I just wanna find out your opinion on reality of UK recruiters still coming over to the US. I don't know how much experience you had in that or just the conversations you've been having. And then two, just wanna hear around, the actual reality of how much the actual commissions in America, like one of the main things you always heard is, look, I can recruit the exact same tech salesperson in the UK for £15 grand, and then in America I can actually get the exact same skill set and get paid $40, $50K, right? So firstly, reality, I know visa situation and things, but I don't know what the conversation you're having. Are there still going to be opportunities for UK agency recruiters? Come to the US, do you think?

Absolutely. I mean, there exists right now— I know a lot of UK recruiters who recruit in the US. They already do it. They don't even have to be physically here. As long as you're willing to work the odd hours, you can do it. Like, when I travel to Europe for vacation, I work US hours. I'll stay up till 1:00 a.m., and it's great. I get to party all morning and and then work at night. It's kind of a nice setup because, you know, if you don't mind the hours, it's nice. You get a whole morning where you don't have any clients or candidates bothering you, right? It's actually kind of cool. So I do see a lot of UK recruiters already doing that. And then when they come here, yes, the commissions are higher. And this is again a systemic problem, right? We don't have a lot of social benefits like healthcare, right? We don't have our our housing prices are insane. So like to attract talent, that's why the salaries are so high. And I noticed that with even my old market, right? I would talk to a GSK employee and be like, oh my God, you're a director of medical writing and you make £100,000. Here you get double in the US dollars, like for being, you know, even less experienced, right? So I think again, this is a reality of kind of how the economic structure works. But again, that could hurt you as much as it could help you. Because it's just completely dependent on the foreign exchange rates. Right now, America sounds great and feels great. I don't know what's going to happen to the dollar. If the dollar tanks and the UK pound is now double the US dollar, I don't know if you want to uproot your entire life to come here. You got to think about, is it really worth the squeeze? So I do think the US is a great market so long as the US dollar is great. Great, but the minute the economic winds shift, recruiters today have to be very globally minded, right? Because if the dollar depreciates to be very low, then why am I even going to do it here? I probably wouldn't. I'd probably recruit for some other country because all I need is a phone and ability to talk to people, right? So I think that's like more philosophical. But the reality is, is like, yes, in the next 10 years at least, there's a lot of opportunity in America and for Brits, thinking about coming here, the question you really need to ask yourself is, do you really want to schlep it again like you did in year 1 in your recruitment career? Because when you come here, you have to work all the time. So a lot of times I think people have this vision of how easy it's going to be, how amazing it's going to be. But the reality is, is you're going to come here with a lot of pressure on your back to perform. You're going to be in a new city with relatively little social network. And then you're going to have to shut up it and you have to figure out the entire market dynamics. You're going to have to learn a lot of things that probably aren't the same in the UK. Like what makes Americans tick? What are their risk factors when it comes to moving and leaving? And you don't know the things like you used to know. You're going to have to learn the economic structure, the comp parameters, the client base. So there's, there's a lot of work to be had. And that's what I've seen. I've seen, I used to think working at a British firm that all Brits by nature of them being British were better at recruiting. And the reality is they're not. A lot of them come here and they're just not great. They can't bill, they're not very good, and they can't crack the market. They're struggling, right? And it's usually because they tend to not put in the hours. They tend to not be humble enough to start from the bottom, truly like groveling again, like for business and trying to like starting off with crappier clients, starting off with lower rates, starting off with less scope. Good candidate. Like they just can't adjust to doing that again. Right. And at the same time they want to live it up. They want to meet the people. Everyone's like enamored with the accent. They're just getting a lot of attention and they don't want to work all the time. But the reality is when you set up a business, you have to work a lot. Right. So I think for an experienced recruiter that's been comfortable doing pretty well in the UK, coming here is a rough adjustment because it is going back to basics.

Yeah. So before we finish, Dan, are we okay for time? Yeah. I've got 5 questions before we finish. So look, I absolutely love your energy and passion for your work. Right. And obviously I saw your Inc. article, right, where you've worked so hard, you sacrifice, you've put in the work and you've then built up to a position where you're financially free under 30. Right. So what I wanted to ask you, and you've spoken about your drive and you've, as you said, as you quite rightly said, shamelessly said, how motivated you are by money, right? So what I wanted to ask you was, people listening to this, I don't think enough people are spoken to about what to do with their money, financial acumen, right? And this is definitely something in the UK where you will, you will have in some firms, teenagers, early 20-year-olds making 6 figures, right? And they will end up spending that on alcohol and drugs and these types of things, right? But, and that's fine. That's part of your life and part of growing. But I don't know, I would love to just for you to share just before we finish, like, I know you went to a very great school and college, but like, what would your sort of advice be for people to start that sort of curiosity around what should I be doing with this money that I'm working so hard to build, right? Can build me income streams for long-term success and the platform for my life, right?

Yeah. I have my parents to thank for this because I grew up in a very like money-driven household where from a very young age, my dad was like, you need to start investing in the stock market. Like you need to start like figuring this out. Like he didn't know it. He wasn't very familiar with it. But he was like, you do though. You need to read, you need to look into this. So in college, my dad gave me a book called Rich Dad Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki, very famous financial education book. Right? So I read that on spring break in Cancun, like, and I was like, this is amazing. Right? That's when I was already making money as a bartender. I was selling things on eBay. I'd studied very little. I was actually running lots of side hustles to make money because like my parents didn't pay for, you know, anything really. If I wanted to eat out, I would have to earn that money myself. And I didn't want to work a 9-to-5 because I'm like, they get paid $9 an hour. That's like nothing after taxes, right? So I need to just like flip things on the internet, right? So I was like flipping these on the internet. My dad's like, hey, you should buy stocks. So then I started investing like early. And so I went through 2008, that big drop. And then I just held on because I was like, this just decreased 60%. There's just like no point in selling at this point. It's so low that like I should just keep it. And in 2011, it went double, right? So I think from a very young age, I was lucky that my parents kind of told me, don't do drugs, don't get wild. And like Asians, like I'm allergic to alcohol. I'm not like loving drinking it all the time. You know, it like literally hurts me and like I lose my voice. It's not very uncomfortable. So I think again, like my dad was a gambler. Like he was like what, he's like a classic kind of immigrant man that came to the country. Got into gambling really badly, almost ruined our lives, ruined our livelihood. So I saw from a very young age the consequences of your actions when you indulge, when you overindulge in something like a vice, like drinking alcohol, like the opposite sex, whatever it may be. It could rip you up. It could ruin your life. So I think from a very young age, I had a worldview that was like, I'm not going to mess up. Like I'm not going to even try. I've never done coke in my life ever. Like I've not even tried. I've never even smoked a joint because at a very young age, I was like, look at my dad. I do not want to end up like that.

I do not want to end up like this.

I don't think you had the time either, Dandan.

Yeah.

Well, trust me, we partied. We would party a lot. But I just never engaged because I'm like, I just don't want to open up that door. Right? Like so from a very young age, it was like I need to get rich as soon as possible. Because the consequence is working when I'm old and that sucks. Like, I really don't want to do that. So from a very young age, I was like, when I started the recruiting job, I lived in a really cheap area, very far from the office, and people would make fun of me and people would call me, oh, you're so cheap. And then being Asian, I got like the double, I got the whole stereotypical, I'm so cheap, cheap Asian person. Like people would treat me like they really would look at me like that. And honestly, I didn't care. 'Cause I'm like, while you're living in Manhattan spending $1,500 on rent, like you can't buy nice things because you are so tight on money, right? So I had nice things even though I lived in a crappy part of town, right? Because like I was really low. My fixed costs were really, really low. I would eat hot dogs. I would eat like cookies. I would eat Subway sandwiches. Like I would cook, like I would be really cheap. Like I would really eat badly, right? I never ate salads, salads were expensive, right? Like until I really started billing, I didn't really indulge because it was about survival, right? So I don't know how to like influence people with that. Some people just have a different financial and family upbringing that makes them feel a different way towards money. For me, it was like, if you wasted it, no one's gonna give it to you again. And it was darn hard to get it. So I don't wanna squander it. Right. So from a very young age, I was like, if you don't take risks too, you're not going to make any money. And that's another really interesting dichotomy I see with recruiters. Recruiters are so risk-taking, but when it comes to investing, they're really conservative. They don't know how to invest. They don't know where to invest. They don't want to invest. Right. So like here and there, I'll meet a recruiter that like has some Bitcoin. But like, I would expect most recruiters to have purchased Bitcoin because it's like a very risky kind of like, you may as well. You're making $200,000 a year. Why wouldn't you just take $5,000 and buy Bitcoin back in 2017? Like, why did you not think of this? And I think it's because recruiters naturally are also very paranoid and worried, like anxiety, right? I think recruiters, like, we're always looking for, like, the deal killer. We're always looking to protect ourselves. So I get it. Like, I understand. And then recruiters really, again, interestingly enough, like, I purchased real estate outside of New York. I did that very early. I bought real estate in really bad areas. I never wanted to buy a house that I live in because I want my tenants to pay for that. It's like a basic, very easy equation for me. But I think a lot of recruiters, either because they didn't read Rich Dad Poor Dad— recruiters don't read. It's another thing. They don't read. They don't take the time out of their day to study financial education. They party and they go shopping and they go on vacation and they socialize. A lot. They socialize a lot because I guess the job is really stressful, so they need socialization. I get it. But like, again, you're wasting your own time. You see your coworkers every single day at work. You do not need to hang out with them on weekends. Like I did it for like social clout. After I did a certain amount, I would just study tax law on weekends. So I was like, I don't have enough hours in the day to socialize with the coworkers that I see every day at work. Like, I do not need to put in the hours. Like I'm not getting zero gain out of that activity, right? Like it's just a blind leading the blind. Like, what am I getting from hanging out with people who are just going to drink and talk about things I'm not interested in, right? I want to get rich. I want to retire. I want to retire by the time I'm 30. Like, that was my goal from the very beginning. I read a book called Millionaire by 30, and I was like, great, I want that, right? So like, I read books and reading is something that I think everyone can benefit from. I need to do more of it. Right, but also taking action. If someone tells you, hey, buy this stock, I'll try it. Just do it. Like, I'll even ask my candidates, like, what kind of stocks are you buying? Like, what should I buy? And then I'll just do it. Like, to me, it's just like, save money, have enough that you can invest, and just frickin' just gamble. Just gamble a bit, right? This is how I responsibly gamble, is I just take risks. Like with real estate too, I buy in crappy areas, right? And this is back to the real estate point. A lot of recruiters I talked to, they're like, I need to buy a house to live in. Why? Why? Why do you need to do that? Who told you to do that? Society. Why listen to society? Is society rich? Is average American well off? No, because they're chained to their home debt, right? Like most Americans make $200,000 a year, but they're chained to a $500,000 mortgage and they have very little external assets, right? So it's just like being a contrarian, like stop following your parents' advice. And just think for your own, like learn this stuff on your own time. Prioritize it because you work so damn hard. That's the thing too. Recruiters work so damn hard. It breaks my heart to see their money wasted. And all the time I try to help my colleagues like, hey, maybe don't do that. It's such a waste of money. And they're like, you're just so cheap, blah, blah, blah. Like I get so much crap for trying to help people be cheap because I'm like, oh my God, I can't believe you're spending that much money on like a mattress. Like, believe it or not, I've never purchased a new mattress other than the ones in my rental homes that I rent out on Airbnb. Like, I just don't. I just buy used things. Like, if I can save hundreds of dollars, I will. Like, and I'll still do that today. I'll haggle today. Like, it doesn't matter. Just because you get richer doesn't mean you stop haggling. Like, money still is money. A dollar still is a dollar, right? So I just, I don't know. I'm just cheap. I really just am. Like, I just didn't grow up with much. And it's hard for me to just shell out thousands of dollars for furniture. Like I just furnished my new apartment for like literally under $500. I got free tables, free things. Like I just get free stuff from the internet. Like, you know, just that extra effort to save hundreds of dollars is worth it. Like, you know, and there's some people like, oh, well your hourly rate should be higher and it shouldn't matter. I'm like, okay, cool, whatever. Do what suits you. I just don't feel comfortable spending hundreds of dollars on things that are just not even that important. Instead, I could use that money, put it into Bitcoin. You know?

So look, I just wanna— normally I have a couple of questions to ask you, but I just wanna ask you this and we'll leave it here. Like how— 'cause I think this is important to talk about 'cause it sort of relates to, again, sort of top billers making the money they want, reaching their goals. Like how did you actually feel when you sort of got to a point where you're like, wow, I actually don't have to work for the next couple of decades. Like how did you actually feel?

Totally. So 2016, I retired in January after 5, literally like a week after my 5-year anniversary. I just like bounced. At that point, I owned like 2 houses. I was in the process of like selling one, buying a bunch of others. And I was just like, yay, I did it. I won. Like I won against you, life. I'm now free. I'm out of the rat race. 28, out of it. Yay me, right? At this point, I have enough that I don't ever have to work again if I just carry my wealth correctly. And what I really felt was scared, lost, confused, and really lonely. Because what happens when you're that young and you don't have to work anymore? It's like, what is the meaning of life? You know, I was so driven for so long. And I have so many things to be excited about. And so many like, things to do at that point. Okay, I parked all my money into real estate and I had tenant issues. And then in the meantime, I didn't have the lifestyle I had before with recruitment. With recruitment, you're making over $200,000 a year and you can get all the manicures you want. At that point, I was like living it, right? Like I was, you know, doing what I wanted. I still wasn't buying $100,000 jewelry or whatever. I wasn't being too extravagant. Yeah, like I could eat out. I didn't have think about money. But to go from making recruitment money to going to making money off of your investments, it's still a big drop in quality of life. And realistically, you know, having a million isn't enough. It just isn't enough to like carry you to have that $200,000 life that you had before because your money is fixed at that point and you're kind of tied to whatever the financial markets or whatever investment tools you decided to put your faith into. So I was a little bit scared. I was like, I don't want to lose this. At the same time, I feel lonely. I have no one to live my life with. I don't have the camaraderie. I don't even have a day job. Like, what am I going to do all day? Like, I wake up at 11 AM and just be like, yay me. Like, this is, this is what this looks like. I wake up at 11 being like, I'm a sack of lazy bum. Like, I'm a lazy bum. Like, I'm living so far below my capability. By being like this lazy person that just like quit. So I think this fundamentally comes down to loving working. I truly do enjoy working. Like, I really do enjoy it. It's better than not working. And not working, I was skiing on the slopes by myself and I was like, yay, for one second. And the other second I was like, and what? Right? So what? I get to ski. Yay. I can also ski with a regular job and just like take a day off work. You know, so very quickly the novelty wears off. And then back to your point, a lot of top billers, yes, you've had money now. Yay. Right. But now you need to think, what am I going to do to benefit the world? What am I going to do to like help other people hopefully tap into this, tap into a similar structure where, wouldn't it be great if everyone in the world had financial stability, had a certain amount of financial, you know, the foundation. So that became the driving mission at that point was like, how can I leverage what I have to consistently also make money for myself? Because I don't want to stop. I'm still too young to like just stop. Right. Like, how can I continue to make big money, make good money, and also help others at that point? So that, that is where I am today, where I'm like able to help other recruiters hopefully see the light in this opportunity, you know, recognize that maybe They're burnt out for a variety of reasons unrelated to the actual role. Maybe we can help them. Also spreading the word about like how amazing this career is if you leverage it correctly. Also giving great advice to how to manage their money. Like just giving them like basic advice of like, hey, maybe don't buy the $700,000 house. Maybe just don't do that. Maybe that's not a smart idea. These are the reasons why, right? Because they didn't have access to that knowledge and their parents are telling them, go and do it, go and do it. Right. So I think again, like right now, I really am very happy and fulfilled in my life. I'm probably going to have to work very hard for the next many years to really achieve what I want to achieve. But that's the exciting thing about having something to strive for, right? It's like you actually have something to do every day and you're not bored, that you feel like a lazy bum. You actually have something to contribute to the world and leverage your skill set.

Yeah, no, thank you for sharing that. Dandan, it's been a pleasure. Love your energy. Thanks for joining me on the podcast, and it's been a real pleasure.

Awesome. It was nice to be on your podcast. Thank you so much for featuring me. And of course, if anyone wants to connect, I'm all ears. You can find me on LinkedIn, best place to drop me a note.