Richard discusses personal leadership branding and why it matters to the recruiting leader
In this solo episode of Recruiting Conversations, Richard Milligan argues that personal leadership branding on social media is now the most decisive factor for recruiting success, especially in the mortgage industry. He first challenges the prevailing belief that recruiting leaders should focus on high‑volume phone prospecting, labeling it a dying agenda. Using a series of industry statistics, he shows that loan officers and other talent increasingly rely on executive visibility, referrals, and trust in individual leaders rather than corporate messaging. He explains how a strong personal brand—articulated through a clear vision, core values, and authentic storytelling—creates the "attractive leader" who draws talent. Milligan then provides concrete LinkedIn tactics: building a robust network, posting daily, crafting a compelling summary, and sharing truth‑driven, non‑neutral content. He stresses that content must reflect the leader’s personal truth and be delivered consistently via a systematic process, supported by advisory groups and continuous learning. The episode ends with a promise to dive deeper into content strategy and systems in future podcasts, reinforcing that sustained, authentic personal branding is essential for winning in modern recruiting.
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Hey gang, I'm back. Richard Milligan here with 4C Recruiting, and we are about to dive into another podcast, and I am fired up today. Uh, I am always fired up, so if that matters, there, there. There you have it. I'm always excited to talk about recruiting. This is what I love. And to think that I get to do this all day, every day, for as long as I choose. I would say for the rest of my life, but probably won't be for the rest of my life. I probably won't die in this seat, or hopefully I won't die in this seat, simply because I love what I'm doing. And today something comes up. I'm jumping in to do a podcast here, just kind of spontaneously. in the moment, uh, from a conversation that I had. And so, you know, my podcast is called Recruiting Conversations. And so this is a conversation that I had with someone about recruiting earlier today. We're gonna start the podcast here in just a second. We're gonna talk about leadership branding. Now, a lot of times people will say, why are you talking about personal leadership branding when you are someone who specializes in terms of coaching and consulting in the area of recruiting? And it's because there's a significant shift in how we recruit today. And a lot of people, especially from the industry that I come from, that I originate from, the mortgage industry, that are stuck in some patterns, in some thoughts and beliefs that they have around recruiting that are actually false beliefs. So I have to break those false beliefs In order to convince people to do the things they need to do to be successful as a recruiting leader. And your personal leadership brand absolutely matters. So we're going to talk about that today, and we're going to jump right into the podcast here in 3, in 2, in 1. Hey everybody, it's Richard Milligan with Recruiting Conversations, and I'm back. And I'm a little bit excited to be here today, and I'm a little bit excited to be here every day, but especially excited to be here today because I'm coming fresh off of a conversation with a recruiting leader. And there was a little bit of a debate back and forth of, uh, where they should be putting the majority of their efforts in this area of recruiting. And I think part of the tension in that, why I'm here today to talk about this topic, is that inside the area that I coach, which is mortgage recruiting leaders, there is a large group of executive leaders inside that industry that are still pushing an agenda that's a dying agenda. And my challenge is to break a false belief system that is out there. And I'm here to challenge people to innovate inside this area of recruiting, not for the purpose of just innovating, but for the purpose of winning. Like, if you want to win, then you should probably listen to the podcast today. This is a great podcast for those of you that like winning. If you don't like winning, go ahead and click off of the podcast and, I don't know, go, go watch a cooking show or something else that soothes your soul. Today I'm here to kind of get you fired up. I really want to challenge you to make some changes in this area. And this area is your personal leadership brand. The reason why is because your personal leadership brand matters. Not just kind of matters today, it matters more than it ever has in the history of the world. Now, how's that for a statement? But it does. It matters more now than ever. And this isn't Richard's opinion. This is data, ladies and gentlemen. This is data. Like, I'm talking about relevant, current information that says that this is more important than pressing the agenda of you making more phone calls. Okay? And I say that because I hear this a lot. And I don't mean just like now. I mean over the last year. If you knew the number of times I had a conversation with someone that I'm coaching and they come into the coaching session and the conversation goes along the lines of, our big initiative right now as an organization is to make X number of phone calls, 100, 120, 150. And what we've done with the best leaders that we have. These are the most influential, the most impactful leaders that we have in the workforce, is we've turned them into teleprospectors. We've turned them into telemarketers. Okay, so I guess if you want to pay someone that kind of money to dial and to get 1 out of 11 people on the phone, and actually that's going to happen if you dial repeatedly. Because people are— statistics, you can just go look at some general statistics from anybody. Go look at a recent article from anybody and it's everywhere. The phone is dying. Marketers have ruined the phone. You can go and leave me a voice message, I feel no tension there. I feel zero tension when you leave me a voice message. Now, if you leave me the voice message and you follow up with a text message, now you got my attention. Right. But just simply dialing on the phone or even just simply text messaging, you are really putting yourself in a very small bullseye to go win at recruiting. Look, inside the mortgage industry specifically, 1 out of 4 recruits now comes through direct solicitation. That's not my data, that's somebody else's data. 1 out of 4. So if you're going to focus 90% of your energies and efforts in being a telemarketer and being a teleprospector, well, I wish you luck. But the person that invests their energy and efforts into the 75%, they're the ones that are going to win. And guess what? They're the ones that are winning right now. Like, this isn't— I'm not guessing the wind, the direction of the wind for tomorrow. I'm I'm telling you, these are the people that are winning right now, are the ones who have built their leadership branding piece, their personal leadership branding piece on social media that are out there being what I call the attractive leader. If you listen to my podcast, you understand the attractive leader is someone that has a vision, is clear on their core value system, is able to articulate it extremely well, and then lives and acts in alignment with the core values. Which With the vision. And where else is there a more perfect place to actually live that out? Hello, social media. So you can't not have a presence. It's just unacceptable. If you can't have a presence in social media today as a leader and brand yourself with your core value system, then you really shouldn't be in the position. You really shouldn't be in the role. The expectation is that this has to be in play. This has to be in place. Okay? So my rant's now over. I do want to talk about data because I'm a big numbers guy. I'm going to follow the data, and the data says that this is a relevant conversation and that you should tune in. So I'm going to go through some of the boring data here, but I challenge you that as I go through this, think of the narrative that it's creating. Okay, so let's just start here. Inside the mortgage industry, 97.8% of loan officers say that engaged and responsive executive management is important to them. Almost 98%. Now, if I'm not inside your organization, how would I have a clue that you're engaged and responsive if you're in the executive management role? I would have zero clue unless you had a personal leadership brand. And social media is key to reflecting this to people outside your organization. Yes or yes? It is. It's the only way you're going to reflect that unless you plan on text messaging or voicemailing a few million people. This is the only way you're going to do it. The only way you're going to get there. Right? Inside the mortgage industry, here's an interesting stat. 45% of loan officers said they were referred to the next mortgage company, to their next employer. They were referred. Almost 50% of every loan officer that goes to the next company is referred. You can make a direct conclusion there that the leader's vision, Leader's Core values, their beliefs, And being able to see those from a distance and being able to create alignment with those is critical. It's not just critical to the person that's being— that's transitioning, but to all the influence around them. The real estate agent, the title company, the MI rep, the other loan officers in the market. And this isn't just inside the mortgage industry, gang. Data goes on and on and on about this. 92% of people trust— today trust recommendations from individuals over companies. That's in direct correlation with that statistic I just gave you prior. Even if they don't know them, even if they don't know the individual. Here's one for you. The personal leader that actually shares something on social media gets 561% more engagement and more reach than when the company shares it. The power is in your hands today. Thank you, social media. You go back 10 years ago and the company could have dominated radio, TV, and print and could have had— it could have been the only person to afford to have the influence. Today, where attention is so diversified across so many platforms, Like, we have the power as leaders. We have the power. Proof of that is this: every single week I get 3 to 5 people on my calendar I've never met before, I've never spoken before, I have no clue who they are, but they end up on my live calendar because I have influence in some of these areas. Here's one for you: content shared by an employee is reshared 24 times more frequently than when it's shared by a company. There's power in that. Here's one for you. 82% of people are more likely to trust a company when senior executives are active on social media. It's pretty obvious that social media and leadership brand matters. 77% of people say they're more likely to buy from a company when the CEO of that business uses social media. And look, this doesn't just impact like that single piece of people purchasing your product. It actually influences whether people stay with your brand, whether people stay with your organization, right? And while I teach about recruiting, part of what I believe recruiting is reverse recruiting. Reverse recruiting being that you should be working really hard To retain the people that you bring on board. Data says that almost 7 out of 10 people don't even decide the company that they transition to is a good fit. If you leave one company and go to another company, almost 7 out of 10 say they will give— they won't even give them up to a full year before they decide whether they're a good fit or not. Okay, so we've got to have some good ideas on how we retain our people. Well, here's some statistics around that and why social media even matters to that. Companies that invest in the personal branding of employees found 3 things. One, the employees were 27% more hopeful about their company. They were 20% more likely to stay, and they were 40% more likely to believe in the competitiveness of their employer. This even matters in retaining our people today. So a big focus that I put on people when they come into my coaching is LinkedIn specifically, because while I think that LinkedIn is a relationship-building platform, a lot of people see LinkedIn as a recruiting platform. And to some degree, LinkedIn in the early stages really promoted itself as a recruiting platform. And I see a transition now where It's now becoming more of a business social media platform. And so building relationships is really critical. On that specific platform today, in the United States alone, there's 150 million users. 80% of those users say that professional networking is important to their career success. Well, what does that mean? Well, that means that if you ask someone to connect with you, they're highly likely To actually follow you, connect with you, because they see that connection is important to actually having success in their career. 8 out of 10 say that. 89.7% of those 154 million users say they find it extremely useful in growing their network. So if you have a narrative of, gosh, this platform is just full of people throwing the right hook bomb, They'll connect with you, and then they've got something that they want to push or sell. And look, there is a lot of that. Like, my inbox is full of that. I know your inbox is full of that. That's why we got to have a strategy in how we use the platform. And there's multiple layers to that strategy. The first layer is becoming an influencer, which means that you have to have connections. You can't influence the platform unless you have connections, right? The average CEO on LinkedIn has a whopping 930 connections. Now, I probably made a lot of you feel really good about yourself, but the truth is that that shouldn't be the measuring stick. If someone comes to your profile and they're in your market and you're trying to build relationship with them so that you can attract them to your team, when they come to your profile, you either appear to be an influencer or you appear to not be an influencer. And there's some things like number of connections that you have that matters, the tone of what you're posting, or if you're posting for a lot of you, that matters. And if you're vacant there and if there's nothing there, you miss out on a big opportunity to move people towards you and to who you are. So you've got to have connections. You've got to be posting daily. And when I say posting daily, I know some of you are going to give me a big eye roll. Look, I've seen those eye rolls before. When I tell people this. If you post every single day, only 60% of your audience is going to see you one time per month. That's LinkedIn data. So yes, you've got to post daily. Look, if you follow someone like a Gary Vee, Gary's going to tell you to post 5 to 7 times per day on the platform if you want to hit your entire audience and you want to start saturating it. I'm just saying you got to be relevant. Because if you're the recruiting leader and your name comes up in a conversation, or I see you in my newsfeed, or you call me, or you text me, or I bump into you in a networking event, then I'm immediately going to go over to your LinkedIn profile and I am going to see who you are. So you have to have a summary built. LinkedIn calls it the summary. I call it the about me. You got to have that built out. So you got to build out your summary. You got to be building your connections, and then you've got to be posting to the platform daily. That is minimal, okay? That's minimally what you got to be doing. That's going to literally get you to the start line, okay? So you start there, and you start there because you understand we aren't on the platform to get likes and comments and shares. We're on the platform to be relevant, to influence, And to build relationships. And if you're not doing the things that I just mentioned, you can't do any of that. And all of that is in the 75%. The 75% of people that are gonna move to the next company will move to the next company because of an attractive leader somewhere. That attractive leader can be you, or it can be somebody else. It doesn't have to be you. Somebody will fill that void in some way, shape, or form. So it's important that you do that. Now there's other pieces of this. One piece of this is how good is your content? There's a lot of noise that's being created on the platform today simply because people think they've got to create noise in order to be relevant. And the truth is that, like, as an— or as a, um, the— in the business sector in general, if you get to to any social media content, you're going to see that we are literally drowning in noise. All kinds of bots are posting on individuals' behalves. You see that. You see a lot of really corporate-y type marketing materials that just don't resonate with the audience. Most people don't connect with that on any level, especially if they are searching for an attractive leader. It doesn't connect with them on any level. What I'm looking for is, what is your truth? Who are you authentically? What are some of the things that you believe? Talk about those things. I came into this podcast maybe with a little more energy than I needed to, but there's something here today that I believe I have some really firm beliefs around, so I'm pretty passionate about this. So what things are you passionate about? What makes a successful salesperson in your business, in your industry? What makes you relative to your consumers in your market? What are some of the things that you believe as a leader? What makes great leadership? What are some of the things that you value in leadership? What are some of the things that you're actually trying to deliver to your team as a leader? All of that's great content. There's a quote that says, we're drowning in information while starving for wisdom. And if there was ever a moment in history where we're drowning in information and starving for wisdom, it's now, as the noise begins to increase, where people are trying to get attention while they're trying to attract people. So live out your truth. And the beautiful thing is that I'm giving you permission to be you. That's what I'm doing. I'm giving you permission to be you. Nobody wins when they're neutral. When your content is neutral, nobody wins. If you're trying to be Switzerland, nobody ever gets recruited to Switzerland. Okay? So Understand that whoever you are, live that out. Now, I think there's a difference between being polarizing in who you are and creating polarization that actually triggers conflict. And so in this case, I'm saying live out your truth. Who are you outside of work? Like me, I'm a father of 4. I've been married for 20 years. I got 2 dogs. I love the outdoors. My family loves the outdoors. We hunt and we fish in our spare time. That's who I am. So, not gonna hide that. I've got a methodology of how I operate in life, right? Put God first, my family next, my business next. Okay? And so, that's part of my truth. I have a family purpose statement. That I live out. I have 19 statements that I hold myself true to, and I can go to those at any moment, and I can live through the lens of those. And so I'm very clear, and that clarity gives me the ability to create content very quickly. And so as part of this, maybe one of the things that is a takeaway for you today is get clear on what you believe, get clear on who you are, get clear on what is your truth. When you have that, content will flow. A lot of people think that being relevant on the platform is being a thought leader. No one's asking you to be a thought leader. No one's asking you to become a marketing creation team. Move away from the idea of creation and move towards identification. Identification says that you've got moments all around you that you could document that are your truths. If you simply identified those moments and then documented those, you're living in alignment. It's part of the attractive leadership piece that I mentioned earlier. What's your core value system? What's your vision? Being able to articulate around that and then living and acting in alignment with that. When you document the moments where you're already living in alignment with what your truth is, you become an attractive leader and that content is relative on the platform. So it's not about getting likes, it's not a lot about it, about getting comments and shares. Those things are great, and as you do this consistently, you will attract an audience. But for a season, you've got to be okay with being a guy or a girl with a single lit candle in a dark room. Look, I could go back a handful of years ago, and that was me. Okay, like I remember posting consistently and getting 1 like or no likes and feeling the tension of that. Like, my voice hasn't changed any today, right? But this podcast will get 500 downloads on it. So the truth is that by living out who I am, what I believe, and what I'm doing, Over a season, the people that are in my tribe that I bring value to will lean in. And so then it becomes consistency. Will you do this forever? Will you make that commitment? Like, I'll do this forever. This is part of the game and I'm going to do this forever. And if that's true, then you got to have a system. You see what I did there to you? I always talk about the importance of a system. We never rise to the level of our goals. We always fall to the level of our systems. So now I started talking about leadership branding, and now I've brought you all the way full circle to, if you're going to create content, you're going to do this on an ongoing basis, you got to have a system. And so here's what I'll do. In the next podcast, I'll talk about that. How do you break some of this down into something that's more systematic to wherever you're not waking up every single day and going, oh my gosh, I got to create more content. What am I going to talk about today? So I'll share with you some of the things that I do. That I've kind of grown through over the past few years, and hopefully there's some value in that to you. And we'll talk about them in the next episode. Okay? So we're going to talk about this a lot here over the next coming weeks. I've got some really cool data that comes from social listening that I think is going to really surprise you. I've done a study on a handful of leaders that are in business in general that have been on the edge of leadership branding for the last 5 to 6, 7 years. And what it's done for their organizations. These are CEOs. So I'm going to share some of that data with you over the next few podcasts. So if you're listening to this one first, stick with me in the next few podcasts so that you can even get more clarity around this. Right now, I'm trying to motivate you and inspire you, but also educate you on why I'm saying what I'm saying. I'm not just making this up. This is legitimate. This is real. You got to move towards this if You're going to win in the space of recruiting. Okay? So with that said, and all of my exuding energy, I wish you a fond afternoon and lots of wins in the area of recruiting. And I say this from time to time, but I really mean this. Have fun with this. Like, I think we've taken the fun out of recruiting simply because we've turned ourselves into telemarketers. And there's a big grind in the space of that where it's like, I got to just smile and dial. I got to just smile and dial. And yes, there's an element where you got to pick up the phone and you got to talk to people. But at the end of the day, the game has changed. So until I talk to you again next time on Recruiting Conversations, use your time wisely and have fun recruiting. All the best to you. Have a great week, everybody. Bye. Okay, done and done. So, um, I'll talk about in the next podcast this idea of content strategy and system. How do you create a system around this? Because this is going to be where long-term you're going to see wins, you're going to see successes. The consistency of it, you'd be surprised. How many people show up in my inbox, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on email, or even via text message or voicemail that will leave me a message and will say, you've been popping up again and again and again in my newsfeeds, and it's the consistency of the message that has me reaching out to you. I mean, over and over again. So your consistency in this area is really going to determine the level of success. You can't influence In a large part of the market by simply doing this for 90 days and then disappearing. It ultimately has to become part of who you are. It's almost like eating breakfast, eating lunch, eating dinner today. If you are a leader who also recruits, then this is a hat you've got to wear. It just is. Now, is it like this forever? Probably so. I mean, social media has probably changed the game of recruiting for you as a leader forever. So those of you that are on the edge of this, that are going to get really aggressive with this and lean in with this, you're going to be the ones that are going to win. You will. And I think in this next season, this next era of leadership, the ones that don't, the ones that aren't great leaders, that are these information aggregators that actually can contextualize ideas and bring lots of value to the people that they lead, they're going to get exposed. And when I say exposed, I don't mean that in a bad way. I just think that there's a lot of complacent leaders out there. Okay, if you don't consider yourself an information aggregator today, I challenge you, I encourage you, I implore you, this has to become you. The average person is reading 2 to 3 books per year. The average CEO is reading 50 to 60. Where do you fit On the continuation of that. You have to become the information aggregator. You have to be constantly improving your leadership skills. You need to be in a small group of other individuals that are challenging you, giving you input, advising you, growing you, stretching you in this space. That's got to be part of this too. If you're an individual leader and you're on an island, you need to change that today. You need a board of advisors. You do. I have a board of advisors. I came out of a meeting this morning with 3 other people. They are my board of advisors. These are highly successful individuals. I meet with them every single week, 3 other entrepreneurs that have very similar beliefs as me, and they are all stretching themselves. They're all stretching themselves to become the best leader they can be. And so there's always value in that 90 minutes to 2 hours I spend on Tuesdays with these individuals. That stretches me, asks me to grow, challenges me to grow. If you're bringing value and I'm not bringing value, you feel the tension of that in that relationship when you have those kinds of relationships, right? And so if you're not in a group like that, the challenge for you right now is go identify that group. And if you need help identifying a group like that, shoot me an email, okay? I'm, I'm in most markets with a group of people that are gonna fit that category, that are gonna fit the category of someone that's challenging themselves to constantly grow. So the only way you have great content and great ideas and the ability to actually overflow, right? 'Cause that's how the content is created ultimately, is from an overflow, okay? If you feel tension in creating content, some of that can be that you just don't have the habit of creating the content, But a large part of that typically comes from because you don't have the overflow. Look, in arm's reach right now, I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. I have 6 different either magazines that I'm reading articles from or books, hardback books that I'm reading. I could pull up my iPhone. I finished a book today, this morning on my iPhone. That I got off of Audible. So for myself, I sense the tension of this. I sense the tension of bringing value from a place of an overflow instead of having to come from a place of really striving to try and create content. So I can get really fired up about this and get really excited about it simply because this is a truth, and whether you believe it or not, is ultimately not gonna matter because over the next 3 to 5 years, this will continue to play out. And I ultimately am here because I'm sharing this with you because I want you to win. And so there's a lot of nuggets here for you. Take these, create a plan, begin to act on these. There's some very actionable items. And then in the next couple podcasts, we'll continue this conversation with a content strategy because you're gonna need that. How do you capture the content? How, where do you create the content? What's the structure around that so that you're able to post the content? Having a system in play there is going to be ultimately whether it happens or it doesn't happen. Because look, I get it. In the time that you've watched this, your door's opened 5 times, your phone's rang 10, you're getting text messages, your email's blowing up, someone's texting you 911. I get it. The recruiting leader is such a unique role that if you don't have a strategy around capturing and creating content and making sure that you're deploying it, It won't happen because you can't spontaneously create this with all the noise you have coming at you. With that said, I'm gonna end the video. I know I brought value to you because these are the things that other people are doing and winning. I talked to a guy this morning who just landed $100 million this month that landed over $100 million in volume last month in recruiting. I know He's doing these things. He's taking action on these things. And because of that, he's winning. You do it, okay? All right. All the best to you. Look forward to talking to you next time. See you guys. Bye.
