The Number One Factor In Your Recruiting Success Is Operating In Your Passion Zone

Hey everyone, it's Richard Milligan here with Foresee Recruiting. I am about to cut another podcast here. Wanted to give you just a quick overview of what we're gonna be talking about today here in this video. We're going to be talking about a framework, a terminology, An idea that I share quite a bit inside my coaching, and I call it the passion zone. What I've found is that the most successful recruiting leaders operate inside that passion zone. So that passion zone equates to being able to create influence. It equates to being able to communicate clearly a handful of things to people that are larger motivators than things like money. It's interesting. I saw a survey recently where it said that 95% of people today would choose culture over compensation. And I think culture gets defined mostly by the immediate leader that someone reports to. I think that is the strongest component in culture. And so, um, that leader who's operating inside a passion zone is creating a really strong culture because they're communicating clearly a handful of things to the people that are underneath their care, underneath their leadership. I think this is where everyone needs to begin when it comes to trying to improve your recruiting efforts. You know, I spent a lot of my career trying to get better at framing the company value proposition, and I don't believe that that matters anywhere in the realm of importance when it comes to something that's As important as passion and operating inside that passion zone. So we're gonna talk about that today on the podcast. So appreciate you joining me. I'm gonna get set up here. We're gonna go live now. There's some secret sauce in how close you get the mic to your mouth. I promise you, I'm still trying to figure that out. We're gonna go live here in just a second, so bear with me. Here we go, in 3, And in 2, and in 1. Hey everybody, welcome back to another Recruiting Conversations. It's your host, Richard Milligan. Thank you for joining us today. And when I say us, I mean, I'm the only person here in studio. It's me, myself, and I. And man, are those 3 a powerhouse today. I don't know, if I don't believe it, who will believe it, right? So I'm coming to you to share a framework that I talk a lot about in my coaching. And this framework is where I like to begin everyone in my coaching that wants to improve their recruiting efforts. I'm choosing my words carefully here because This particular framework is very, um, it's intangible. For example, when I give people a new phone script, that's very tangible. You can see the words on a piece of paper. You can memorize the words on a piece of paper. You can speak those words when you're on the phone with someone. You can measure how many people were setting a meeting with you before you use the phone script that I give you, and you can measure how many people are setting an appointment with you Using the phone script that I gave you after you got it. So it's very tangible. I can draw a straight line from here's where I was setting 17% appointment rates with the number of people I'm speaking to, to 35% appointment rates. It's very tangible. This component here is intangible to some degree until you get to a place where you have it. The terminology I use is called passion zone. So I'm always challenging myself as much as I'm challenging other people. Are you operating in your passion zone? I have found that there's 3 components to this passion zone, that if you are willing to work towards getting clarity in 3 areas, and you'll work towards being able to communicate clearly to people in 3 areas, That you'll move into the passion zone. So that's what I want to talk to you about today is like, how do we get to this place called passion zone? Because this is the most important feature to a recruiting leader. It's the most important function to every leader. It's the most important component in your recruiting system. And the reason why I say that, and that's, you know, some might say, Milligan's being a drama king. You might call me a drama queen, but drama king. The truth is that I can't overemphasize the importance of this. I just literally— I believe this. I can't overemphasize the importance of figuring out where your passion zone is because this is where you create influence. This is where you inspire people to change. And as a recruiting leader, that's what we're about. The only way we grow is if we can inspire someone to change. And this passion zone is directly correlating to your ability to have someone who says they're happy where they're at, or they're satisfied where they're at, make this enormous decision to move from where they are being content to moving to align with you. And I know I've said this from time to time, we don't— we underestimate the amount of things that change when we ask people to move from one company to the next. We underestimate it. It's everything. It's, you know, I remember moving from one company to the next and having to have the conversation with my wife about our pediatrician was going to have to change. And when you have 4 kids, that's a big deal. You're, you know, just when you start looking at some of the health benefits Or perhaps the lack of health benefits. You take one single piece of information like that and it's a big change. Not talking, not even talking about moving the system and the process around everything that you do in the office and everyone that you interact with at the office. This is enormous. So, if I'm going to inspire someone to leave where they're happy to go to another place, it will not come through the lens Of your opportunity improvement offer. Get this. If you're calling people today and you're saying, are you open to a new opportunity? Or would you be willing to look at a new opportunity? You're missing the boat on the Passion Zone. You're literally missing it. That's the opportunity improvement offer. And those will always exist at any moment when anyone wants to make a move, anyone wants to make a change. You can find someone that will frame something up in a way that makes it sound like it's better than where you are to move you towards that. But that's a small motivator. I don't care if it's more money. It's a small motivator. A recent survey I saw is that 95% of people today said they would choose culture over compensation. I'm not making this up. It was a large study. That people today would choose culture over compensation. Well, what is culture? Well, I think culture comes down to the immediate leader that you report to or that you're under and how they present the organization, how they lead with the tagline of leader inside the organization. That's culture. So, let's break this down. This passion zone, if I want This, and I call the passion zone kind of the it factor. Like, like if I said like that person has it, like we all kind of come to a place where we're like, yeah, kind of, kind of know what you're talking about, Milligan. It's like, um, you know, they're really enthusiastic, lots of energy, great communicators. Like there's a long list of things here that we could say about this individual that has this. It factor. And I think, like, I could give you my entire recruiting system that I teach. And look, I spent 3 hours yesterday with someone who's the head of recruiting for a large organization building out a recruiting blueprint. And that blueprint's gonna make a significant difference in the wins that this organization has as they move to execute on that. But if there's, if there's one thing that will move the number of hires that you make Most, it is having leaders who recruit that are operating inside the passion zone that can communicate that with clarity. So let's break this down. I want to make this as simple as possible. And of course, I don't want this to be like a 2-hour podcast. I could talk about this for hours. I could literally, and I do, I hold events where I talk about this for sometimes 3 and 4 hours and break this down and get people to a place where they actually have The it factor, the passion zone factor now operating in their favor. So let's talk about the 3 major components because I think we're looking for a bullseye here. Okay? There's a big circle in the middle here. And I tell you what, I hadn't planned on doing this, but here's what I will do. On my website, recruitingconversations.com, I'm going to drop a very— it'll probably be a 12-page presentation that will actually give you a visual of what I'm talking about here, because we're talking about bullseye, passion zone, if factor. But in that, there's these 3 things that kind of overlap that bullseye component. Okay. And so I'm going to put that recruitingconversations.com/it. How's that? I hadn't planned to do that. We'll do that. So recruitingconversations.com/it. We're going to upload a presentation there, a PDF that you can download that will give you some additional insight into this. Let's talk about those 3 things. First, you need to know why you do what you do. That's pretty simplistic. You need to know why. Now, how I define why is this purpose, cause, or belief that inspires you to become more, that inspires you to be more. For me, was a huge turning point in my life. I go back to 2007, and in 2007, I'd been in the mortgage industry for about 5 years. And for those of you that can reflect back to like 2007, 2008, 2009, it's hard to believe that 2007 has been 12, almost 13 years ago. But I can reflect back those moments. I was in growth mode inside my mortgage business. And I'd taken a lot of risks to get to the next stage of my mortgage business, and I had just taken that risk. I just signed leases on facilities to do 5-year leases to do entire build-outs. I was in growth mode. And there's that statement, you don't know what you don't know until you know it. Well, that was true about me, and I didn't know it until it was too late. And I'd taken this enormous financial risk and What was coming at me pretty quickly, being in the mortgage industry, was a lot of pain. I had to recreate myself. My business model was broken. And so in the recreating myself and getting from one revenue stream or one book of business to the other revenue stream and the other book of business, it was painful. And for those of you that know a portion of my story, look, I grew up incredibly poor. And You know, when I left home, one of the things that I said is that I'll never go back to that. I mean, remember missing meals, eating saltine crackers and powdered milk for breakfast, you know, being evicted from homes, having homes that were ultimately just taken from us, and having to move and downsize enormously, and just all these things that created confusion as I was a kid. And looking back on them, some of them I didn't realize what they were at the time. I just knew it was change and change and— There was a lack of and a lack of. And when I left home at the age of 19, I just said, I'm never going to live like that. And so 2007 rolls around. At the time, I've got a 5-year-old son, Ethan. I've got a newborn, Gavin. And I'm looking failure for the first time in my life straight in the face. And there's no way around it. It's only through it. And I can tell you in that season, like, there were times where I actually asked the question to myself, Like, is this even worth living for? And I think some of those components played into the fact that I'd made a promise to myself, I'm never going to get here. And in 2007, we lost our house, we lost our cars. To a large degree, I lost my, I would say dignity, but honestly, I lost my pride. And that was of value to me in that season to get to where I am today is that I lost my pride. But I would've told you in the season it was dignity. Because to go through that and to fail publicly in front of your family and your friends and a community, because I positioned myself in a leadership role, to walk through that failure, I got ultimate clarity on my why. And I remember waking up in the mornings and thinking to myself, like, today's just not worth living. I'm gonna walk through hard conversations all day long. I'm gonna have to walk through a season of recreating myself. And I'm not even sure I want to do that. And in that season, Leah and I were married, had been married for almost 10 years. Ethan's 5, Gavin's a newborn. I looked in the face of those 3 human beings and said, that's my why. They are my cause. They are my purpose. And my belief was that, like, like, they need me. Like, I've been called to provide, to, to Have a role in the 3 of their life. And that inspired me to become more in that season because it wasn't about money any longer. It wasn't about success. It wasn't about like what people thought of me. It wasn't about any of that. What it was about was about them. And so I did it for Leah. I did it for Gavin. I did it for Ethan. I did it for the 3 of them. And that clarity in my why actually inspired me to go through that season and to become more. You've got to know why you do what you do. And it doesn't necessarily have to be your family. Sometimes I think where we get to a place of comfort, we get to a place of convenience, we're like, hey, we've made it. We've arrived. Financially, we're safe. Family's good. Things in my world are going well. I'm in a place of leadership in my organization. Sometimes you have to create a larger why, a larger purpose, a larger cause, a larger belief that inspires you to become more. Look, we're doing it. I'm doing it right now. Now, inside my own organization. I'm talking to someone, an individual in Uganda that has an orphanage, that's an individual that was born and raised in poverty in Uganda that now has 60 children under the care of what they are calling their orphanage, and they have little to zero funding to go from day to day, week to week, month to month for food, For clothing, for schooling, for some basic needs. And so I'm calling bringing myself into a larger why today. This larger purpose, cause, or belief that's going to inspire me to become more. Clarity on your why is where you're going to start with this. The second component to this is going to be clarity around your core value system. Now the core value system is like, it's these guiding principles That dictate our choices and our behavior. And I'll say that again. It's our guiding principles that dictate our choices and our behaviors. These are not words that we speak. These are things that we do. Too many people say they're something and then don't live that out. And that's a problem. And it's a short-term runway for anyone who says they are something and then behaviorally doesn't live that out. It's a short-term runway. It's a failing model because we as human beings figure that out over a season and that individual and that business will fail. It doesn't mean that they can't right the ship. I mean, look, there have been times where I haven't operated in alignment with what I said my core values were. I've made those mistakes. But where you're clear on this and you're living this out, this comes to some of the Attractive Leader Framework that I've talked about before on this podcast. The attractive leader represents 3 things: clear vision, clear value system, Someone who can clearly communicate that, articulate that, and someone who lives and acts in alignment with it. That's an attractive leader, and we all want to work for that person. Okay? That attractive leader has clarity around their core value system, and they're living them out. This is an overlap of that it. It's an overlap of that passion zone. You've got to have this. You've got to be able to communicate that, communicate this, and when you do, then People will move towards you that are like-minded. This is a connection for people. People move quickly towards you that are like-minded. For example, I just shared my larger why. It's still my larger why today. Now that why's grown. I now have 4 kids, not 2 kids. And Leigh and I've been married for going on 21 years, not just about 10. So that why's actually grown, but it's the why. The core value system, communicating those components. And then the third part of this is going to be your vision. Now, we've talked about vision from time to time on this podcast, but let me give you a definition of vision. Vision to me is this: it's a clear roadmap to where you want to go. That's really it. Like, when I started this organization in 2017, I said in 2027, In that year, in the 10th year, we want to impact 10,000 recruiting leaders. Now, let me explain a component to that, which was this. I clearly understood what vision was. I don't know that a lot of people clearly understand what vision is. A lot of people see vision almost like a goal. And to some degree, there's some truth in that. The goal is like, I'm not there, but it's somewhere where I want to be. Right? I think it's more than that though, because it's easy for me to look at next year and say, okay, we impacted X number of recruiting leaders. We want to impact 30% more. So X is this. One of the things I love to do is I love to go to old languages. Okay, go to Latin, go to Hebrew, go to Greek, go to an old language and get the definition or the word usage for some of these words that we're talking about to get a clearer definer or a clearer idea of what that word actually means. So I'll give you a perfect example. Status quo. When I say status quo, you would say, oh, I'm content. Oh, I'm satisfied. Status quo. That to me, a lot of that's connected. But the word status quo in Latin means Mess we're in. So on the recruiting side, when I hear someone say, I'm content, I'm satisfied, right? I mean, I look at surveys, a lot of times they use that word satisfied in surveys when they're surveying, you know, industries. And so they'll say, what's the satisfaction rating? Okay, what I know is that there's a big difference in being very satisfied or very happy And just being content. I would dare say most people would tell you— I mean, most people, if I look at their lives where they say, I'm happy where I'm at, they're actually in a mess. It's a mess that they're in. They're lacking good leadership. They're lacking clear direction. They're lacking someone who's actually providing some accountability, this motivation, inspiration to get them to where they want to get. They're lacking a clear path, a clear roadmap, and so they're kind of in a mess because they could be more. They could become more. Let's use vision in this example here. The word vision in Hebrew is the same as dream. Think about this. How many of us have just taken our vision and reduced our vision to a goal? Like, I go back to 2017 and I said, 10 years from now, I'm going to impact 10,000 recruiting leaders in that single year. That was an enormous dream. I hadn't even coached one person. I've never launched a podcast. I hadn't written a book. I hadn't posted 1,000+ times in LinkedIn alone, social media. I didn't even have ultimate clarity around moving from an 8-week coaching program to a 12-week coaching program to— there were a lot of things that I lacked ultimate clarity on. But I just dreamed. And I began to think, like, if I impact 100 people in the next year, what could it look like in year 2? And what could it look like in year 5, in year 7, year 10? And exponentially, as I continue to improve and grow and provide resources to people, what could it look like? It was an enormous dream to get there. I think vision done best Is dreaming. Look, we'll get to 10,000. You come back here 10 years from now, or now it's 8 years from now, 8 years last week. Come back 8 years from now, I can assure you that we will get there. And the reason why is I'm clear on why I'm doing this. I'm clear on my value system that I have wrapped up in this. I'm clear on the vision of how we're not just going to— what we're going to accomplish, this roadmap of what I would like to achieve. But I'm clear on how we're going to get there. And look, the vision statement around the 10,000 recruiting leaders in 2027, that's one part of that. I need clarity of the things around that. So, I'll give you a perfect example. Here's a vision that I could just speak out loud. And it's a very simple vision. But if you're in the mortgage industry, this will make a lot of sense to you. A simple vision could be, we want to become the lender of choice For real estate agents in the markets that we serve. Simplistic vision. We want to become the lender of choice for real estate agents in the markets that we serve. That's really clear. Okay? Now, I got to do— like, I'm focused on realtors. I'm focused on becoming the lender of choice, right? I'm focused on only the markets that we serve. Okay? There's a lot of clarity around that vision. Now, but I'm going to go beyond that, and I'm going to actually create a clear roadmap to that. What does that mean? Well, then that might mean that we say, as part of this vision, we're going to develop a real estate agent, a state-of-the-art real estate agent training center in every market that we serve. And then we're going to hold monthly trainings there for real estate agents in the 3 areas. Right. Might be personal development, it might be business development, business planning, and it might be whatever the 3rd component is. Okay, but we're going to have a state-of-the-art facility in every market to educate and train real estate agents to becoming the best. And then our objective here is that every one of our loan officers would get continuing education certified so that we can become that lender of choice. And then we're going to also every single year bring in one of the top real estate agent coaches to speak in our market. And we're going to have one quarterly synergy event every year. We're going to have a monthly training event. We're going to invite every real estate agent in the market that we're in to those events. I can take that very simple vision, we will become the lender of choice for real estate agents in the markets that we serve, and I can create a clear roadmap to what I want to achieve. If you will get this, if you will work towards this, if you will work towards getting clarity on your why, and that means peeling the layers of you back, you're an onion. Peel the layers back. Ultimately, why? Continue to challenge why. Continue to challenge why that, why that, why that, to get back to a place where you could make a statement like me. I remember when I was 19 years of age and I made a promise to myself that I would never go back to that. I can connect the dots to my why on being 19 years of age, leaving home, having $50 to my name, driving 1,000 miles to get to a college where I didn't know ultimately anybody. To start a new life. I can draw a straight line from where I am today to that moment and the emotion of that moment and the commitment that I made to myself and where I want to be in the future. My why, my passion meter, my passion zone is there. You start there. Peel the layers back. Figure out why you do what you do. Figure out what are your top 3 or 4 core values. I would limit that to your top 3 or 4 because you've got to be able to communicate this clearly. Any more than 3 or 4, it gets very difficult to communicate. You have more core values than that, yes. But what are the top guiding principles around the core values that you have that are pieces that dictate how you decide and how you behave? And then your vision, the clear roadmap. You have to have this. And here's what will happen. Here's how I define the passion zone. What will happen is you'll move to this place, this place where this emotional— you'll have this emotional space that will grip you. It will motivate you. It will light your imagination on fire. It will define you. It will define you. You will be so enthusiastic and you'll be able to, with clarity, communicate To the individuals you get in front of why you're so energized, why you're so alive. And look, that is transferable. Where someone says, I'm satisfied, but they're lacking a leader who's in the passion zone and you show up, I want to align with you. That's just a true statement. We want to align with people like that. I know I do. It's how we've been designed as human beings is that we actually want to operate from a place where we're aligned with people that have a clear why of what they're doing. We want to align with people that have clear core values that we also believe in. We want to go somewhere bigger than where we are today. And the vision that you cast For the 3-year, 5-year, 10-year window of time is going to be this adventure that you're inviting people into to go do something more. And I honestly believe that inside every single human being, there is a desire. If you can light that desire on fire, there is a desire where people actually want to be more. People actually want to be a part of something bigger than they currently are. I think that's there. This is worth fighting for. As a recruiting leader, this is worth fighting for. So here's what I'm gonna do to help you on the journey. I will upload a presentation that will be about 10 to 12 pages long that will have some visuals here for you to look at. Challenge this as we move towards 2020. One of the things I love about 2020 is that it's connected to vision. 2020 vision. Okay? You've got to have a vision going into 2020. You've got to have clarity around your core values and you've got to understand the larger piece of why you do what you do. When you get there, you'll be in this space where you will be on fire. It will literally define you. People will leave a meeting from you and say, they have it. They won't necessarily be able to define it but they'll understand that you have it. And I think most people want to align with a leader that have that it factor because they realize it will propel them forward. It will move them into the future, into places that they want to be as well. So, there you have it. We talked about Passion Zone today. I'll leave you with this. We're working on— we've got a project in place. I teased it last week on the podcast where we are going to have something available that will most likely include a closed Facebook group where leaders like yourself, where we have several thousand leaders right now Now that are downloading and listening to this podcast where they can actually engage with each other, inspire each other, share ideas with each other. We'll have an opportunity for you here over the next month. I'm hopeful the next couple of weeks to provide you with some more information around that. So I'll continue to tease this information. Come back next week. We'll have another Recruiting Conversations podcast for you. And until then, everybody, have a great week. There you have it, everyone. Took me a little second to find a little pause button over here, but, um, thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for actually seeing this video through. If you're seeing this at the end, you've invested about 30 minutes of your time, and I know your time is valuable. Um, fight for this. What I just talked to you about, fight for this. I have now coached over the last 2 years. Last year I coached like 138 people, I think to be exact. This year we will get close to 450, 450 people individually that we've coached. What I know about those individuals is that these are the best of the best in 3 different industries that we focus on. We focus on mortgage, real estate, and insurance. These are the best of the best in those industries. The reason why I say that is because they're actually pulling out their own checkbook to write a check to get coaching. Here's what I know about— these are already the best of the best, and out of that group, only a handful, okay, less than a handful, have shown up and had clarity around these 3 components. These are the best of the best, okay? I mean, these are some of the greatest people in the industries. That they're in, but they're lacking clarity around these 3 components. If, okay, if, if you will lean in here, if you will fight for this space, you will be an anomaly in your market. It's just a true statement because this is going to require a lot of white space. This feels very intangible when I say white space. You're going to have to have a lot of white space up here. You're going to have to have no noise up here. You're going to have to go and get quiet and ask yourself a lot of hard questions. Most people won't do that. It's counterintuitive to getting things done, right? Almost. It seems like it's counterproductive. And this is so intangible. What do you have when you're done? Some words on paper, right? Some words that you can communicate, that you can speak to people. I mean, what do you actually have? Do I have a larger paycheck? Do I have more people on my team? Do I have like a larger opportunity inside my organization? I don't have any of those things. So because of that, it feels intangible. But the truth is this: if you will create this, go through a process of getting clarity around this, actually writing this out, and then playing this into a recording— like, here's what I do. I use an app called ThinkUp. Okay, 2 words, ThinkUp. It's available on a smartphone. You can buy the lifetime version of it for $24.99, I think. I have taken, I've written out My why? Why do I do what I do? I've written it out. Okay, I think you can actually see it at recruitingconversations.com forward slash. I think it's vision. We have that uploaded there. Go check that out. I have actually recorded that in an app called Think Up. I've recorded my core values in an app called Think Up. I've recorded my vision in an app called Think Up. And you know what I do every single day? I did it today. Okay, for somewhere between ten to sometimes as long as ninety minutes. I was on a plane 2 days ago. You know what I did for about 90 minutes? I recorded those things in ThinkUp app and then I put them to music and the music plays in the background while I hear myself regurgitate those again and again and again. It's weird, right? It's kind of odd, right? But I know my why. I know my vision very clearly. I know the core values that I'm going to operate in and I make decisions around those all day long. When I get in front of someone, we're a small team here. When I get in front of someone to join my team, it's highly likely that person is going to join this team because I can communicate those things to them. It's highly likely I can get people to join what I'm doing, whether that's something inside my work or outside my work, because I can communicate those things to people. This may feel like a game of wordcraft. I don't know what wordcraft is, but if that were a game, Crafting words were a game. It feels like it's a game of that, and it's not. Okay? This is a bullseye that's wrapped around your ability to succeed as a recruiting leader. And for those of you that fight for it, for those of you that get to it, you win. There's just a way the universe works. You win. This is how you motivate people. You inspire people to change is with this. I am convinced of this with everything in me. So thanks for staying to the end. I know this brought some value to you today. So now is time for you to go act on it. And this— that's going to be the hard part. I got to have the easy part communicating it to you, but I've walked through this process myself. Now go do it yourself. So until we see you again on another video here on this either YouTube channel or Vimeo channel or wherever you're seeing this at, we'll look forward to it. Have a great week, everyone.