Richard Milligan, founder of Forsee Recruiting, shares tactics for recruiting leaders in crunch periods: tell your family what's coming so they understand the workload, say no to almost everything, watch your diet, and run five 50-minute deep-work blocks a day to crush the work faster and keep stress down.
Hi everybody, Richard Milligan here with Forsee Recruiting, and I want to talk about difficult seasons today. No matter what business you're in, there's always these ebbs and flows where there are good seasons and there are difficult seasons. And just having spent 15 years inside the lane as a recruiting leader myself and recognizing that the recruiting leader role, in my opinion, is the most difficult role inside any organization, the difficulties of managing a team in a difficult season and then also being responsible for growing and building in that It weighs heavily on it. It requires a special person, a special breed to be successful inside this particular position. I have a lot of empathy for you if you're a recruiting leader in a difficult season right now because I've been in a lot of those myself. I want to share with you a few ideas that will help you navigate the waters of the difficult season. Something a mentor taught me years ago was this: in every season, setting the correct expectations for your family, for your spouse, is critical, is important. It's most important in the difficult season. Probably a decade ago, I began to sit down with my wife, Leah, and say, I'm recognizing this next season that I'm moving into in my business, and here's what I think the requirements are going to be of me. Especially, I'd have that conversation especially when it meant that it was going to require more of her as it related to our children. And I would especially have that conversation with my kids when they became old enough to understand, like, Dad's not as available as he has been previously. Well, some of the best advice that I got was to have that conversation because in essence what I was doing was ultimately casting vision for my family. I was letting them know what this upcoming season was going to look like, what it was going to require, and in exchange when I did that, there was a lot of empathy and an enormous amount of support at home simply because I identified the season and was willing to step into a difficult conversation. If this is you in a season like that, I would start there and have that conversation. The other thing I would do is this: in this season, the difficult season, you have to say no to practically everything. Margin's going to be really important to you because in difficult seasons more is required of you than at any other point in your time. And that means that I will say no to everything immediately and always in this season. Now, I may come back to it in 2 weeks and I may reanalyze it then, But the tendency is going to be, you ask me to do this, and as a recruiting leader, you have lots of opportunities to do whatever that is. Speak at an event, teach at something, lead something, be on a board. Like, there's all kinds of things that come up because you're in a leadership role, and so you're going to have to become an expert at saying no to those opportunities as they arrive immediately and always. Specifically when you've identified yourself as being in that season. Now, here's one thing that I didn't put enough credibility in as a young man. As I now am in my mid-40s, I realize that there's more credibility in this now than ever, and that is your nutrition. Look, when your body is dealing with the stress of a difficult season, it requires more of your body in terms of Just energy production than at any other point because mentally there's this mental fatigue that you're dealing with because of the pressure and the stress. So I have found that really honing in my nutrients, my vitamins, my minerals, the food that I eat, what I actually drink, those all play a critical element in me being able to be all in. Because the tendency is that in those moments we seek things of comfort out, right? Things are hard right now. So I'll go eat something. I don't care, it might be a cheesecake, and I love sweets, so I don't have any problem identifying hot apple pie, vanilla ice cream, whatever that is, for me to move towards that. But what I found is that in that season, when I moved towards that, I was ready to shut it down for the day, and I couldn't shut it down for the day because more was needed of me. So there's some great ideas here of what you can go to that will help you as you progress through the difficult season. I'm gonna leave you with one more, and this may be one of my most powerful weapons that I have been able to use in this particular season, and it's what I call a Buy 50 Session. Now, if you've never heard of a Buy 50 Session, this isn't Richard Milligan original content. I actually took this from a person by the name of Brandon Bouchard, and if you know Brandon Bouchard, then you know that he has studied the science and specifically success inside the lane of business and what it takes to be successful. There's a lot of science around this that says that If you're going to enter a difficult season and be successful, you have to be more focused than ever in your entire life to get through this and to get through it well. And sometimes getting through it well means that you can shorten the season. So what a buy 50 is, is this: I'm going to take 50 minutes, I'm going to turn off all the noise. I may shut off my phone, I'll definitely shut off my email, I'll find extremely quiet space That I can go and accomplish whatever a big task is that I need to accomplish in 50 minutes, and I won't do anything else. All portals are closed so I can focus, extremely focus on this particular task at hand. At the end of the 50 minutes, I now will give myself 10 minutes to go get re-energized. Go for a quick jog, go drink 2 glasses of water, stretch, listen to some high-energy music, whatever it is that gets me re-energized and then back to a place where I can go back into another Bi-50 session. Where I'm extremely focused. Now, I'm in a place right now where I do 5 by 50 sessions every single day. So from experience, what I can tell you is this: in those 5 50-minute sessions per day, I can accomplish more right now than I used to be able to accomplish in an entire week. So in the difficult season, what this does is it allows you to move through it much faster, it allows you to get traction, it allows you to accomplish things that you wouldn't accomplish otherwise. Because of all the other things you have coming at you in terms of stress and distractions. So, to go back to this, you've got a handful of tools in your leadership toolbox that I want you to use if you've identified yourself as being in a difficult season. Until we meet again, you can see more videos like this on my website, 4CRecruiting.com, and remember, always have fun when you're recruiting. 4C Recruiting.
