how to go from agency recruiter to Lone wolf (Advice from a $2.4 Million biller)

Hey guys, welcome back to yet another episode of Top Billers Toolkit, where me and my twin brother interview top billers from all around the globe to unlock the secrets to their success. Today's guest is Mike Anderson. Now, we've had Mike on the podcast 2 times. This is his 3rd time being on. Every single time he gets an insane response because he is a master at his craft. For anyone that doesn't know Mike, he's a $2.4 million biller. He's one of the most talented recruiters I have ever spoken to. He's absolutely obsessed with his craft. On today's episode, Mike is going to be talking about the type of mindset that's required to go off on your own and be successful, and whether or not staying at an agency is actually the better option. Mike's going to be talking about client disqualification and the difference between a billable role and a fillable role. And Mike's going to be giving us a masterclass in candidate disqualification, giving us a clear distinction on a candidate that can take the job and a candidate that can do the job. Guys, this is an extremely valuable episode. There are absolute moments of gold in here. This isn't just for recruiters who are at an agency and looking to go off on their own. This is valuable advice for any recruiter who wants to bill more. And this is a little plug for Mike because I love him so much. He's got a new course available called the Recruiter Blueprint Lone Wolf, and that is hours of footage and training specifically designed for recruiters who are at agency and want to figure out if going off on your own is the right step. If you're interested in accessing the course, I've put a link in the YouTube description below. Hope you enjoy the episode. As usual, guys, grab a cuppa or glass of wine depending on when you're listening to this. Let's get into it, shall we? Wait a second, guys, quick question for you. If you could land a new client on LinkedIn in the next couple weeks, how much would that be worth to you? 20, 30, maybe 40K? Well, we have a pretty crazy offer on right now. If you are a recruitment business owner, then we will work with you for free and write you 2 posts at absolutely no cost. And here's the cool part, other recruiters that have come through this free trial have managed to win new clients. They've racked up hundreds of thousands of impressions and started conversations with top-tier candidates. It's completely risk-free, so you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. If you're interested, the link's in the description below. If not, no worries. We hope you enjoy the podcast. See you later. Hello, Mr. Anderson. How are you, my friend?

The Miller twins, round 3. Let's go.

Mr. Anderson, this is— you're the only guest to come on, I think, twice, but 3 times is insane, man.

You just—

we just keep on getting you back on because you keep on coming with the value and the nuggets, the golden nuggets. So, uh, really happy to see you again, man.

Um, when you're 38 and you're single and you like just go to bed thinking about recruiting, wake up thinking about recruiting, you just want— you got to share it with somebody. So I'm like, dude, where are the twins at? Let's talk.

Well, we always love speaking to you, mate. And without a doubt, every time we speak to you, the knowledge you drop is insane. So this podcast is— I have high hopes for it, and I'm sure it's going to be just as good as the others. We've asked you the original question twice. I'm just going to skip that, which is what's the number one tool in your toolkit? I don't think that's applicable right now. We're just going to jump straight into the lone wolf reality check. And just to give the audience some context, Um, the kind of main topic we're covering today, because Mike is— Mike's created a course on it, is if you're an agency recruiter and you want to go off on your own, do— what's the best way to do this? Essentially, we're going to be covering that whole topic with Mike. So Mike, the first question I want to ask you is, um, what do you see people underestimate about going out on their own once the initial excitement has worn off?

Well, I think, I think, I mean, it is It's a pretty loaded question, but like in general, um, and by the way, the, the lone wolf, we've also had lone wolves could be successful and that were just in regular B2B sales or B2C sales that weren't even in recruiting that wanted to go try something on their own. They just didn't want to do whatever commute they were doing or outside sales or whatever and try this too. So we've seen success there as well. Um, but in general, uh, when you have agents or recruiters that are sort of like they underestimate what it could be like going on your own, um, I think that Everyone thinks like they just— you build $800,000 in an agency, you get— oh, well, I don't, you know, and I'm making 50% on that, so I made $400 grand last year. I want to go make— I'll just build $800 grand on my own and just put it all in my own bank account. And it's not apples to apples. Um, you definitely have to under— you, you have to assess, uh, your strengths versus what where you're at might provide you. Like, if you, um— I mean, I could go— I could talk about this for, for hours, but like, if you are somebody like me, right, like I eat, sleep, think, breathe business development. Like somebody like, just, I want to break down doors all day long. Like, I just love it, love it, love it, love it, love it. And so when I was at an agency, like, my most valuable to them is just breaking down doors, getting new agreements, talking to clients, etc., etc. But at the same time, that's one part of it. You gotta— now we gotta deliver. And so I had to understand, like, for me, I can't say, you know, I built, you know, a million and a half to $2.5 million, um, when I was billing 7 figures, all of that, that's great. But like, I'm not gonna go translate that to myself by doing it on my own because there's no way I can get the efficiency without having the candidate flow. So I under, you know, I wouldn't say I underestimated it, I knew it, but I knew where my strength was and I knew to keep the engine running, I'd have to have the other side of that taken care of, albeit whether that's a system that you have or a tool. For me, it's a partner. But like, that stuff's really, really important. So knowing where you're strongest, knowing where you're weak. And then the, something most people underestimate and I've seen a lot is they think they're way more disciplined than they are. Like, they think like, I don't know, people think that they have a gym membership. It just makes you be in shape. Like, no, you got to go to the gym once you get the membership. Like going off on your own, you have to like wake up and you got to like do business development. You got to like stick to it, stick to the stuff you're supposed to do. You have to have KPIs, you have to have top of the funnel metrics. Otherwise you just kind of willy-nilly just waking up, flipping a coin and hoping it lands on heads. And that's a good day for you. Like you have to have structure. And if you're not self-disciplined, like I see people fall apart in that sense all the time. And so a lot of the people that, lone wolves that have bought my course or people that I coach or et cetera, like one of the big things that they want is they just want to help me create a system for 'em and then keep them accountable in that, which, which a lot of people at agencies get from their bosses, their managers there, et cetera. And then when you go off on your own, you're like, wait, who's my boss? And it's like, is it your cat? Is it your dog? Is it your spouse? Is it your kid? Who? I mean, some, something's gotta be or whatever if you don't have that intrinsic motivation. So, um, I always say this, like, you're on the ultimate draw when you go off on your own. The ultimate draw, right? Like, it's totally worth it. But like, if you don't have the discipline— if you're a person that when you walk by an ice cream store, you got to walk in every single time because you need ice cream and you can't say no— maybe like you got to apply this to your self-discipline in doing agency recruiting by yourself. You know what I mean? Kind of a bad analogy. But you guys get my point, right?

Yeah. Interesting. No, I completely get that, man. That's really— and, um, you kind of already answered it, Mike, but— and you must have spoken to a few recruiters in the last couple months who are like, hey Mike, I want to go out on my own and I've been working for agency. What are some of the things they say that you're like, hey dude, I'm not sure this is going to be right for you, like you should probably stay in agency? I'm curious, what words or things do they say?

So here's, here's what I'd say. The— I'm gonna, I'm gonna make— I'm gonna say it in like 2, 1 sentence, and then I'm gonna elaborate on it. So in general, if I— the way I would ask somebody is, if I took away every client, every candidate, every tool that you have right now, if I took it all away from you and I dropped you in the desert and I said build a desk from scratch with an internet and a phone, would you— would that be exciting to you, or would that be scary to you? And like, if that is— I always say this, a good lone wolf looks at the unknown and says attack. A not good lone wolf looks at the unknown and says run. So like, I stare into the unknown. For me, I love it. Like, every day I wake up and I have a free calendar, I'm like, oh baby, what's today gonna bring? Let's go, ready to go to town. But then there are days when it's like, uh, but if that— if you wake up and you're like, I have an empty calendar, I don't even know where to start, I don't know what to do, I, I like— that's not You should not be that. If you need that structure, you need that, you know, etc. So I always say that if you have the joy of the unknown, go off on your own. If you have the fear of the unknown, stay where you're at. Now, if you want to extrapolate that down or I don't know, like we can go granular on that. If you look at this and you say to yourself, okay, yeah, some classic examples. You're a recruiter and you had a, you had a $500,000 leader. In the last, last 12 months, you did $500,000. Not bad. Like, that's good. You're a good recruiter. You're top, I don't know, 5% probably. Like, you're doing well. Okay, cool. So you build $500,000. Now you did it across 3 clients, and those clients are a big part of your agency. You're probably not going to be able to get that client to go with you, especially if it's a heavy delivery client where it's like, you, you know, you do lots of deals and multiple people want to do splits with you on those companies, and they want to send you candidates to do that. So if you're if you're not spread out where like, you know, you can, you can just pick up a new client, you could do a deal with new client, you could build a relationship with them. If you— if that stuff is not good and you're just a rinse and repeat, steady, steady as she goes, etc., like you might want to just stay on your own. Like there's something to be said for having a client that's repeat business consistent. Like that's a really nice thing to have. And like if, if you— if every client you get in general, my focus is this is every 3 clients I pick up I want one of them to be a client I do at least 5 deals with. That's like really important to me. That's like what I focus on. If that sort of like math doesn't jive with your history, like you, it doesn't mean you can't go off on your own. It means you should really assess like, are you ready to deal with the grind of like building that business up? Because if you like, I'll tell you what right now, if you haven't been grinding at an agency, you ain't going to start grinding on your own. Like it's not going to You know what I mean? But the value of going off on your own is when you're grinding so hard and you're like, dude, I could do— I could grind just as hard but keep more money. And there's nothing proprietary about what the agency gives me that I couldn't do on my own. You know what I mean? So like, I always say this, like, if you— like, if picking up clients, if you look at your last 12 months and you picked up 2 new agreements and you've done deals with the same 4 companies that you've done for the last 3 years, probably not go off on your own. But if you have been like, yeah, I lost— I did $600,000 and it was all with 14 new accounts that I picked up in the last year, and every client, you know, only did 42 deals and only 4 of them or 10 of them were splits and 32 were on your own, fuck math says maybe you should go do this by yourself because you have— you know how to do this, you know what I mean? Yeah. So if the agency isn't providing you the value that you need to make sure that you're maximizing your efficiency on what your take-home is, go off on your own. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So, uh, but those are some general things too. Um, other issues that I see when you're good in an agency, oftentimes they'll tap you on the shoulder and they'll like want to raise you up, and then you become a manager and a director and on and on and on. Then you start collecting money on the people underneath you, etc. Like, that's very common. That's cool. And there's nothing wrong with that. Like, I was a part of that. That's— it's totally— there's nothing wrong with that. But I'll say this, like, When you do that, oftentimes your own desk can take a hit because you become much more managerial and you're jumping in and you're helping and you're, you know, whatever. So all of a sudden now your own efforts, your sort of individual contributor, product producer mentality will, will take a back seat. And so now you're in managerial stuff. Then all of a sudden the head honchos of the company come along and say, hey, we gotta have meetings and talk about our rules of engagement and the tools we're gonna use and this, that, and the other. And now all of a sudden you look at a 40-hour work week and you're spending 26 of the hours on stuff that doesn't necessarily make you and your bottom line money. I mean, it does because you're on base salary, but I tell people all the time, if— or base salary or a big draw or something like that— but if you are being paid by a company, that's quite literally that company's subscription model for your service. So you better be available to what they want, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

So interesting way to put it. If you, if you are doing stuff that you look at, you're like, how is this making me money? And you'd rather— and you know that your time is worth X when you're on desk. Like, if you take away your— if you look at your individual contributor hours and you say every hour I worked as an individual contributor, I made $250 an hour, and every hour I worked as a manager, I made $100 an hour. I mean, it's a math equation. So it's like, okay, you want to be the ultimate individual contributor, leave that thing and go off on your own. But again, there are checks and balances, which I talk about in the course. But like, that should give you a good idea. So it's not for everybody, but the main factors I would say is, uh, does the unknown scare you? If it scares you, stay where you're at. If it doesn't scare you, go for it. And then, uh, number 2, do you have intrinsic self-discipline? Like, you don't need somebody sitting next to you to say, do your work. Love that, man. So important.

Can I jump in with a question? Um, of course.

Yeah, thank you.

I just want to go to— I've been looking at why, why most recruiters waste time. I've got the heading in front of me, and I really want to know, like, if there's a recruiter that has decided to jump out and go on their own, maybe just as a fly on the wall, if we were to look at them, what are the things that they typically waste time on, things they shouldn't be doing, or things they should be doing more of? Like the top 1 or 2 things you think, Mike, that they—

that are wasting their time when they're on their own? Yeah, so I mean, it's, it's classic recruiting. And this— I mean, you could make that— you could make the argument that this is this is in general, whether you're on your own or at an agency. But the number one reason, and this was when I, you know, when I was a boss at an agency and I had to, you know, you got to let people go. I mean, the attrition rate in agency recruiting is very high. We all know that. Like, very few make it long careers, etc. But like, if you do, you can have a great career. But the biggest reason that you see people come into this business is in general, it's like, it's kind of funny. They come in out of college and they're like, oh my gosh, I just want to help people get jobs. This is so great. Like, ah, you're like, this is not that, but that's okay. So they, and then they kind of, you know, we all kind of started in that mindset and then we'd realize this is not what that is. And then so you, you sort of graduate into, okay, I can do this. Now the discipline to have the self-assessment on should I be working with this? The quickest way, like I'm so big on the moment that you realize, and, and, and, and the, the veteran recruiters or the ones that do this for a long time can see this coming a mile away that it's all about time. The number one commodity that you can never get back is more time, right? You get another client, get another candidate, get another deal. Go get another interview, get another blah blah blah blah blah. You can get all that stuff. You can do that a million times. What you can't get back is any time. And so the protection of your time is the most valuable thing you will ever do in this business, whether you're on your own— especially if you're on your own— or in an agency, to protect your time. Now, if you have a base salary at an agency, you know, you might not look at it as that important. But when you're on your own, the protection of your time is massively important. That's why we're doing this thing on Friday, because Monday through Thursday I was hammering, you know what I mean? So anyway, But the quicker that you can vet out the two things, right, is a client, is it billable, and is it fillable? Is the client billable and is the role fillable? Okay, those two things, okay, billable and fillable. The quickest you can, the quicker you can vet that out, right? And then here's the thing, when you vet it out, when you understand that it isn't or it's not what it is, call it out. Like, dude, we talk about this all the time, but billers tell it like it is. Non-billers tell it how it might be, like, oh, perhaps maybe we can move a little quicker. No, like, if we don't move quicker, we're not going to close this. Like, it's that simple. So billable and fillable. Okay, so is the, is the client billable? Are they ready to pay a fee? And is the role fillable? Can you actually get that fee? Okay, that's— there's that. Now you go to the candidate side. Candidate placeable— can the candidate do the job? Closeable— will the candidate take the job? Massive difference. Massive difference. Okay, there's a lot of people that can do jobs. There's a lot of— not everybody's going to take the job. And so the quicker on whatever side of the business that you're on— again, if you're a lone wolf, you're doing both sides of it— you've got to figure out billable, fillable, and you got to figure out placeable, closable on candidate, client. Those are your two things. And the quicker you've got that out— like I always say, the mark of a great recruiter is, uh, lots of stuff scheduled but you're with like lots of interviews scheduled, but a free calendar for you. In other words, you can go do what you need to do. Like, that's when your, your business is at its finest. And the way that you get that done is by constantly vetting out. And here's the thing, okay, we're in the people business. So a big mistake I often see is a client— is some people say, oh, I've done a deal with them, they're a good client. No, they're not. That doesn't mean anything. That they're a client, they paid you, But like, you have to have a criteria. And I've talked about the 5 criteria. We can go through that again if you want to. But like, there's the 5 criteria of what a good client is. And like, you need to constantly be assessing that. And so this is the people business. People are fickle. Like, come on, we're in the recruiting business. Like, they're mad at their boss on Monday and they want to quit. The next day their boss takes them to lunch on Tuesday, now they're going to be promoted. Like, it's— and so now they're never going to talk to you again. Like, you have to understand that they are fickle. You have to make sure storylines check out. You have to look for patterns of behavior. You have to look for changes. And then when those things happen, the good recruiters will call that out. The average recruiters won't. And so here's the thing. There's massive freedom in this business when you understand that you are not good enough and I'm not good enough and none of us are good enough to change someone's mind. All you are trying to do is get the result faster than it would have otherwise come without you pushing it. That's all you're trying to do. Like, you're not going to change the outcome. The answer is going to be the answer. But if the answer is going to be no in 4 weeks, I want to know the answer is no in 3 days because I want that 3 and a half weeks back. You see what I'm saying?

Yeah, that's a fantastic way to put it.

Um, always look like you're not going to change it. And so too oftentimes we think that we will influence by what we say or do, that we're going to change the way somebody works with us. The reality of it is, is that two things are true. As long as it's not illegal, as long as not immoral, you're probably not going to be changing anybody's mind. And so just say what it is that needs to be said and then see what the outcome is and then deal with it. Again, the only commodity you can never get more of is, is your time, and this will help you achieve that. So, um, I think, I think in the lone wolf life, I think when you're at an agency— man, this is getting my juice flowing— okay, I think when you're at an agency Stay with me here. Now, obviously a lot of the world's remote, but like, if you go like in the conventional recruiting world, when I— where I grew up in, like, you're in an office, you go whatever, right? Like, you are surrounded by 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 people around you that are all sort of doing the same thing. And so when you call up a client and they're like, Mike Kickross, we hate you, and you're like, that was never— it's Larry, like, and then you hang up and then you like laugh with your buddy about it. Like, you can just— let's go to lunch, dude. Let's go get some Chipotle or whatever. Like, you could hang in the pocket because your buddy's right there kind of like in the trenches with you, you know what I mean? But when you're off on your own, you might not say something that you know you should say because you're like, well, who's going to support me? Like, you're kind of like, I don't have any— I don't have any family. Like, my cat's gonna like, you know, put my leg, but that's about it. Like, you got to make sure that you have somebody— like, like, you got to understand that, like, you need to be able to say what it is. And if you're— if your total support system comes from having other people around you then you're probably not going to say what needs to be said when you're on your own, which therefore means you might get ran around circles chasing your tail, which means you won't have to be nearly as successful as you would be at an agency. Like, you have to even double down even more and say the more aggressive thing when you're on your own because you hate to protect your time, because you've got nobody else that can— you, your blind spots, you're the only one that can see how you're recruiting. And that's why I say every— I think every agency recruiter should have a network of people or a coach or something with them so that they can see, hey, in your game, this is the blind spot. This is an area of your game you got to improve on. You can't see it, but I can see it, you know what I mean? And I like my business partner, he keeps me in check in various things that I need to be, whatever, because sometimes I can go too much and he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let him breathe. Like, um, and so it's, it's good to have a blind spot, you know. Sometimes I need to, I need to slow down my, my aggression or whatever, like different stuff like that. But like, that's, that's really, really important. Um, but I guess my point, what I'm really trying to say is that Protecting your time comes with you saying the thing that needs to be said. And oftentimes the thing that you don't want to say is exactly what you should say. Love that.

Love that, dude. Um, billable, fillable on the client side, and then do the job, take the job. I want to go deeper into those, Mike. So I'm a lone wolf, I've gone out, I have the right personality traits, the right discipline. How do I figure out, uh, that the— how do I go deeper into billable, fillable and actually tick them off and be like, cool, Client's billable, this role is fillable. What am I asking? What am I looking for?

Yep, got it. So first of all, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna answer that, but I'm gonna start a little bit higher than that. Cool. You, when you go up on your own, you have to have a system. You have to have a business development system. You have to have something that you can stick to that is like, this is how I operate. These are the hours. This is my process. This is what I do. The reason why you have to do that is because when you have your equilibrium, so you sort of have like, this is from the moment I initially outreach on a cold outreach to a client all the way to me doing a deal and placing a candidate, right? Like this is— it's never going to be a perfectly straight line. We all know that. But like in a perfect world, it goes from here to here, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 4 days, whatever it is. Like, like that's what you want, right? If that is your baseline, then every single thing that happens that goes outside of that baseline, the way that you figure out the billable and fillable is how quickly you can get somebody when they start going outside of the lines back to the line. So your job as a recruiter is to funnel them to as close to that line as you possibly can. Now, it's never going to be perfect because people are people, but as quickly as you can. And once you start to see that now you're there, even your funnel, like you're sort of— you have the perfect line, then you have like your actual barriers, your bumpers in bowling. And if they're starting to bowl in the other lanes, like you got to move on. And so for me, when I look at outreach, right, I have a 3-step process when I do my business development. Okay. Technically 4 steps. If somebody gets back to me, the time frame by which they get back to me on my email, which number of email, which one of the emails they got back to, and what they said in those emails is all part of billable fillable. Then it becomes how many responses do I have to send them to get them on the phone? In general, the ones that I have the greatest success with is it takes one response because they have a sense of urgency on their side and they're happy to talk because they have to hire. Again, I'm just like— and it doesn't mean— okay, it doesn't mean anything. It's just giving me a cadence of what I'm typically used to, right? Because I've done so many deals and worked with so many clients over my career, I know what a billable client looks like, and I know what a fillable client and a fillable role looks like. I also know when it's not billable. Again, it's easy to chase down money if it's there. The hard thing to do is when it's not there, to actually say, I'm gonna walk away, because you oftentimes we look at our time as the investment. It's kind of like the gambler's fallacy of like you go to, you go to a roulette table and it's like red, red, red, red, red, red, red. And then you're like, I'm going to bet on black. That last black bet has nothing to do with the prior 10. And so you can't look at it as I put in this much time. That's not going to change whether they're going to hire me, you know what I mean? Yeah. So that often, that is often a mistake that people make. You have to look at the client itself as are they billable and is the role fillable? Okay. But at the time I was thinking back, How quickly you get on that call, how that call goes. Okay, for me, I find that clients, generally speaking, if I set up a video chat with them, usually that goes stronger. And I have a very high, high, high, high— maybe it could be just be me, but I have a very high, high, high rate of getting a contract signed if I want that business. Because most of the people aren't going to just get on a video chat with you if they don't like actually need something that they think that you can provide value in. Okay. So my, so my billable, and then on that, we, I've talked about this in the job order, but the 3 things I talk about in a job order call with billable is billable, and then is the role fillable, and then agreement, BFA. Those are the 3 areas of a job order call. Okay. And a client that's serious, a client that's serious will give me like, that will go, that will flow just fine. But if you get on a job order call and it turns into an interview and they're like, so why are you different than everybody else? I'm like, you have no interest in hiring me. There's not an answer I could give you that you're going to be like, oh, good answer, we'll hire him. Like, no, dude, you either need to hire and you think I can hustle because you dangle a carrot in front of me that says, hey, we're going to pay you 30% of this person's salary if you can find them. That's the carrot that I need. And I'll show you how good I am. Like, but I'm not going to be able to tell you. The only way that the best value in recruiting is showing somebody. Like, that's a fact. And so anyway, where you go through billable, we talk and there's, there's 5 main questions. But in general, the big things that I look for when I find out if they're billable Okay, is I ask basically 3 or 4 main things, but in the last 12 months, how many hires you made as a company? Then I'll extrapolate on that and I'll say, out of those 20 hires, how many of those were from recruiters? And they'll say, like yesterday we had one, we made 20 hires. Great. Actually literally said 20. It's like, cool, how many recruiters? One. So I'm like, 5% of the people that you hired last year were from an agency? Like my fee could be 80%. I'm not going to get that money. It doesn't, doesn't matter. Like, so again, that was me figuring out what I would probably figure out in 5 weeks if I took that business on. Are you tracking with me?

Yeah.

Again, I'm— all I'm trying to do is just get them into a funnel where I have the information. We talk about this all the time. Information is gold. Whoever has the gold makes the rules. That is why when you ask questions, great questions produce better results, because it gives you money or it gives you time. Both of those are wins, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Like, you never understood the phrase time is money until you go off on your own. I'm just telling you. But we talked about this. So last 20— so last year, how many people you have? 20. Uh, how many of those— let's just give an example— how many of those went through an agency? Then what I'm looking for is I'd love to hear them say more than 50% of the hires. So I'd love to hear total double-digit hires, so at least 10 or more total hires, and at least 5 of those being through an agency. When I hear those Now you've got my interest. Okay, now, now I'm like, okay, okay. All right, cool. So, and I'll say this, I'll be like, cool. So I got a chance to make some money with you. I can send you guys an invoice. They're like, great. And then I'll say this, I'll be like, okay, cool. What is the target projection for the next 12 months? How many hires? And they'll say 17. Cool. So in the last year, you hired 6 people from an agency out of 10 total hires, 60%. So if you have a goal of 17, on 6 and you stick at that 60% mark, I potentially have a chance to do 10 places or 9 or whatever that math is, 9 or 10 places with you guys. Is that accurate? Yes. Cool. And I'll say this, I'm going to want your business as long as what you're looking for is actual fillable. So let's talk about that. What are you looking for? And then I go into the 3 main— I talk about 3 main topics of this. Now we're in the fillable part. There's one question that I interweave into the conversation, either invillable or fillable, all depends on where the conversation is. But I don't let the job order, if I want the business, if I want the business, I don't let the job order, this call that I'm having with the client, pass without me asking this question. Hey, I got a question. What's your biggest pet peeve with recruiters? And then I'll just shut up. And then they're just like, oh my God, well, you know, they recruit out of us and they lie to us and they don't have candidates and they inflate salaries and oh my God. You hear, you hear them. It's like, okay, cool. So invariably, whatever they're annoyed at, whatever they're annoyed at always comes down to something. Just don't lie to them. Tell them the truth and be available. Like, that's pretty much answers every whatever. And so I always joke with them and I'll be like, great, I'm glad my mom taught me how to be a recruiter, good recruiter when I was 7. You know what I mean? Just don't lie and show up. So I'll joke with that and then, you know, usually get a little bit of a smirk out of them, which is good. And so then, but then I go into fillable. You might have the greatest billable client. And this is, this is classic. You hear the billable, billable, billable. You hear that. And then what they're actually looking for is not billable. Because I mean, for a myriad of reasons, it could be that they want somebody in Moose Jaw, Montana. It's gotta be local. There's only moose in Moose Jaw, Montana. There's not people. Okay. Or they, or you look up what they want and you find out that the 4 people, they, they wanna hire 4 people and you search, you literally are on LinkedIn while you're on the, while you're on video with them. And you search and you find out that 4 people that they want in that city already work there. So I'll literally share my screen and I'll be like, dude, these are all 4 people and they already work for you. Where are you? Where are you expecting to find people? Remember, I'm a recruiter, not a magician. Okay? I can find talent. I can't create it. Okay? Big difference. Big difference. And so again, good recruiters tell it like it is. Non— not bad recruiters tell it how it might be. Okay? Billers, non-billers. That's the idea. So you gotta say this stuff. And again, this goes back to, you're not a, it's not a customer service job. This is, goes back to me protecting my own time. Like I need to call out what needs to be called out. If, if it's a really billable and fillable account, they're gonna be able to rebuttal what I'm saying with great data. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean?

Yes.

The problem is if I don't say it, I'm just gonna wonder about it. And then that's when the times start adding, adding you, and then you start, then you send candidates, then you start to see patterns. And it's like all of that would have not happened if you would have asked these sort of questions. You could have saved yourself time. One of the reasons that my business partner Connor and I, we don't have to send— I don't know, I don't know what the average agency rate is, but I'm guessing 8 to 10 resumes for a hire, maybe even more than that, maybe 15 to 20, I don't know. But like we're at like 3 or 4 because we're just not going to let it get to a place where that's even possible. Like it just wouldn't happen because again, we do such a good job of heavy vetting up front on both the candidate side and the client side, make sure the candidate's serious, but also the billable part. And so my part of the business, the part that I do where, you know, Connor does a lot of the candidate stuff, is being on these job order calls with these clients and vetting them out. Okay, I had one yesterday, had one yesterday, billable as all get-out. She was awesome, she was great. We were laughing with her, cracking jokes. She thought we were funny. We were, you know, hot, you know, doing the dance. They do a half-hour call scheduled. I think it went like an hour and 7 minutes. It was blah blah, we were just jogging, right? It was sweet. She had a bad case of the Mikeys. Let's go. And so you're all fired up. So that— so we got this thing going. So I'm like, billboard. Yeah, we'll pay fees. We got to hire. Let's go. We're— I'm responsive. That and all the stuff, right? She was great. She'd been there like 30 years. She was awesome. Fun lady. Super cool. You know, sort of like probably had like maybe 10 years left before she retired. But she was just like, she just wanted to deal with like, you know, fun, cool guys. So we're like, great. And then we got to the billboard part. It was like, what are you guys looking for? And then what they were looking for is what everybody else was looking— what, what every client is looking for, but they wanted it in a market that did not have that at all. And we knew that, and we knew that, and we knew that. So again, at that point, she was ready to sign our fee with whatever. I could have literally said any percentage possible. I also could have done— and this is a common mistake in my opinion, this is just an opinion— where I could have said, hey, it's a tough role, So for us to work on it, well, for us to work on it, you need to pay us upfront on a retainer. I do not do that. I do not want that. I don't want retained search. I don't want any of that because I do not want to be under anybody's sort of like, they paid me, so now I owe them. No, I, I do. I love the contingent model. And again, there's different schools of thought on this, but for me, I have zero interest in being on any, on retainer, especially on a role that's impossible to fill. And if it's, and then, and then the other side of it is if it's an easy role to fill and they want me on retainer, why? Why would you want that? Like, this is not that hard, you know what I mean? So again, there's, there's questions, but like, it did not make sense. What they wanted did not make sense. But fillable, I talk about what they specifically want, remote or onsite. Then I figure out the interview process, then I figure out compensation. Okay? So basically roles and responsibilities, interview process, and then I figure out compensation. Under roles and responsibilities, And under interview process and under compensation, what you're going to hear me do every time is I'm going to do what we call stretching the job because I want to see how a client reacts to this. So they'll say, we want A, B, C, D, E, and F in a candidate. And I'll be like, well, what if I only find a candidate with A, B, and C? Can D, E, and F be negotiable? And they'll say, um, yeah, we can work with that.

Cool.

Sounds like you need that. That— now I'm seeing that I've got some wiggle with them. Like there's some— there, there's some elasticity to this client, you know what I mean? So I'm on— so that piece is important. Then I go to interview process and now it's like, yeah, we have a, you know, we got a 4-step interview process before we even bring them in and then we're going to fly them out and they got to go meet my, you know, my ex-wife and then they got to meet my dog and then they got to go fly out to Cancun and we got to take them on a trip to make sure they can vibe at happy hour. It's like, dude, this is a 3-year interview process. It's not going to happen. But in general, whatever the interview process is, you hear anywhere from 2 steps, 3 steps, 4 steps. Okay. Whenever it's 1 step, I'm suspect of that because I'm like, now I, I don't know if there's enough there to get a candidate excited after 1 interview. So that's I usually like to have at least 2, but 2 or 3 is our sweet spot. Well, what you're gonna hear me do every time is I'm always going to say, whether it's 2 interviews or 3 interviews or 4 interviews, I'm always gonna, you're always gonna say, hey, is there any way that we can combine, combine those to get it down to 1 or get it down to 2 or get it down to 3 from 4 to 3? Can we combine anything? And then oftentimes you hear, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That we can do that. And then I'll say, great. And if you're out of town or Bob is out of town, whoever's doing the first interview, do we have somebody that can step in on that? What's the plan for that? And oftentimes you'll see them say, oh yeah, oh no, we have, we have a contingency plan in place for that. We know what we're doing. Okay, cool. So it tells me that they've dealt with it before and they know what they're doing. If not, they're like, oh, we don't really, haven't really thought about that. Or, you know what, it doesn't mean again, I don't want it. It just is something to think about. These are all touchpoints giving me information because what am I ultimately trying to do? Protect my time. So based on when you extract, take all that information that I get, how much stretching I could do, how much elasticity, how many agency recruiters they've worked with, how many times they've hired through agencies, what their budget is to pay agency fees this year, whatever it is, all of the stuff. When I take away all that, then in my head, if it all adds up— and by the way, I would have my business partner on this call too— if it all adds up and he'll message me on Teams while we're on, he'd be like, yeah, we want this one. He'd be like this, and it'll send me a sleepy face if this one's boring, right? So like, it's whatever. So depending on what I see from him, because he's at this— when they're talking, he's literally looking on LinkedIn, listening to what they're saying, seeing what's out there, what makes sense. Us so we can in real time say cool. And that is why when I quote my fee, like, I'm quite literally going to quote based on what it is. And in general, if they want local, it's 30%, and if they're willing to hire remote, it's 25%. That's generally where we sit at because— and it makes sense. And I mean, I had one yesterday or, uh, last week where I quoted him 30%, he's like, that seems reasonable. I was like, cool. And then, uh, now he's coming back saying that he's willing to sign me at 25%, but he only wants local talent. I said, no, I'm not doing that. Like, and I walked away. And so that's it. I don't need that business more than I need to stick to what I know is worth it. Because again, it's— I'm protecting my time because I understand at the end of the year I have an hourly on my time that I want to be able to maintain. And so my goal is to sit at about $400 an hour in total work and to say at the end, is it working? So when I'm talking to a client, I'm thinking to myself, Is me spending an hour looking for candidates going to yield me $400 an hour with this client? If I think the answer is yes, let's go. And if it's not, the answer is no. So there's that. The other part is you don't want— this is another thing where we think that just because a client needs to hire, we, we have to get an agreement with them. Like, you're not doing enough investigation if you think that every client that you get on a call with you need to get an agreement with. Like, that's— you're, you're not asking the right questions. I mean, Understanding what a good— understanding what potentially a good client could be, like, that will save you a lot of heartache. So for instance, right, this year we've had— I think we've had like, well, what is this, January 30th? So we've had like, yeah, we've had— we've averaged about 3 a week. So 3 new client calls a week. So, you know, I bring them in all the time, scheduling. This week we had 4, I think. But we're not— I think we only signed up 2 this week. Like, we're not trying to sign up everybody because we're trying to vet out what makes sense and what doesn't. And so oftentimes when I get a response on BD and they'll say, what's your fee or whatever, I'll be like, dude, that's adorable. But the good news is you're talking to— you're talking to the CEO. I can make a call on the spot. I just don't have enough information to coach you. And I always say this, I'll be like, it's the cardinal sin to quote fee on email, so don't make me do it. You know, most people respect that. They're like, yeah, that's fine. And if they don't want— and here's the thing, if they're like, no, not unless you can tell me your fee, I'm not talking to you there. It's clearly I'm not going to be the right recruiter for them because if I annoy you with this, oh God, you're going to hate me the rest of the process too. Like, no question. And so I understand just basically my equilibrium, and it allows me to protect my time because I'm comparing all the information I'm getting to how I operate. And if it makes sense, I want it. If it doesn't, I don't. And trust me, if it does make sense, I will go after it hard. Like, hard. But I know when it's got to make sense. And that all comes from right probing, right questions, not afraid to say what needs to be said, etc. Man, I just went super long-winded, but did that help?

That was super, super useful, dude. Absolutely love that. I'm curious, with the client that you spoke to the, the woman that was really cool and had a great time with, and then you said, uh, hey, the, you know, you're not going to find anyone. What happened with them? Did you— I'm just curious what happened.

I told them exactly what I told you guys. I said, I said, it was great. I'm not going to say her real name because I don't want people to go look her up. Let's just say her name was Karen. I'll be like, hey, I was just like, hey Karen. And not like the weird Karen, like nice Karen. Yeah. And so I was like, um, and I was like, hey Karen, um, Uh, I was like, hey Karen, I loved our conversation. Honestly, if I was ever in your town, I'd want to hang out with you, but I gotta level with you. Like, this is money that no matter how much you want to dangle a carrot, we're never gonna be able to get this because what you guys are looking for, it's not— it's just not going to happen. It's not going to happen. So if I charge you 45 or 50 or 60 or even double every other recruiter fee you've ever paid, it doesn't matter because, you know, of the 30 of a grape— or sorry, 60 of a grape is still not as good as 20 of a watermelon. You know what I mean? Like, it's not going to worth it. And so she's like, honestly, I really respect that. And so, and I asked her, I said, how many, how many agencies are you guys signing up? And she's like, oh, we've got quite a few. And I'm like, and they're not producing? I was like, that should tell you something about the role that you have. Like, most agencies want to sign up companies. And so the fact that I'm walking away from it should tell you that, like, this is not business that you should have. And so, and I said, if you get to— and I, I listed out, if you go remote, if you go remote your salary is this and you change your interview process to 2 steps, it's business I want. But until that happens, it doesn't matter how good I am, I'm not gonna be able to place anybody and it's not gonna be worth my time. So I walked away. Love it. She respected it. And like, and you just leave it, you just left like that. And so I was just like, you know, take care, and gave her a little heart right here. That's literally what I did. She left. So great. And that was it. But like, that's— but again, but again, I don't When we talk to candidates, right? Like they're very big on like, this is what I'm worth, this is what I make, this is whatever. Like, I don't know why we as recruiters don't do it the same way. This is what I make, this is what I'm worth. This is what, you know, like this is what it costs to work with me. We, we, we too oftentimes we, we come across as the desperate ones and it's like, we shouldn't be desperate. And if you are desperate in this business, you gotta ask yourself, why'd you get to this point?

Yeah.

Like that's another, that's a whole nother avenue. But like if you run your business a certain way, you can kind of You just say, hey, this is what it's like to work with me. This is what, this is what you'll get. This is what you won't get. This is why we're good, why we're not good, whatever. If it makes sense to work, if you guys want to work with us, we'd like to work with you. And if you don't, no problem.

Yeah, 100%, man. Um, so much stuff there to unpack, dude. My initial gut was to get the most value possible is now to go to the candidate side. Do the job, take the job. Can we dissect, uh, those two things and how to figure out those two things.

So yeah, so here's the deal, right? Like, and I don't know how much scrutiny this will get, but you hear a lot of people that are like super niche recruiters. Like, this is like what I focus on, dude. I want people in Bloomington, Indiana that know how to do plumbing on toilets that are 3 feet high. That's my market. Like, I know how to do that. Like, or whatever, right? Okay, cool, dude. I'm sure you own that market. That's cool. For me, like, I don't people say, what do I specialize in? And the reason why I say this is, let's just say hiring. Like, I don't really care if you're looking for an 11th grade, you know, Russian, uh, uh, somebody that teaches Russian as a, as a language at a high school. Like, I don't need to speak Russian. We'll just need to be able to find somebody that does it. Like, again, I'm not worried about what it is you want. The, the minimums I focus on are my fee agreement, Is my fee going to yield me at least $25,000? Okay, that's, that's what we want. We want to do, we want to do $25,000. So I want a $25,000 fee. So again, that would be $100,000 or more at 25% or more. You guys with me? Okay, simple math. Then I want to make sure that there's a 3 steps or less interview process, you know, whatever. And then I want to make sure that I have 24-hour communication with client. Like, that's a good place for us to start. So if that all checks out, then I'll go find, I'll go find candidates. And so from that perspective, it doesn't matter what I'm recruiting for. Now you're going to find, you're going to find that like that, those barriers that I want are going to be in markets that are actually moving. Problem is, is that if you stick to one market always and that market slows down for whatever reason, let's just say it was like 2020, whenever crypto died, 2022 and 2023, and you were all in, you were like, I only do crypto. It's like, okay, well, I guess you're not going to eat this year. So I don't know. So From that perspective, I really don't care what I'm recruiting on, okay? Because I'm focused on the relationship piece. Now, once I get that, whoever the SME is on the other side of the— on the other side of the table, the client, on the client side, they're the ones— whether it would be— whether it's a freaking, you know, CEO of a manufacturing company or the CEO of a tech company or the CEO of a healthcare company, the CEO or whoever it is, whoever it is high up there on the other side, they are 1 billion times percent smarter than I am on whatever they do. Okay. Like, I don't— whatever. What I'm really smart at is figuring out how to not waste their time with candidates that aren't serious about their job search. So my pitch to them every time is this is, look, dude, I'm a really good person. I know how to match a job description to a resume. That part's not hard. What you're going to get the value with me in is all the stuff that's not on the resume to make sure that they're not just in your inbox clogging your funnel because they're not serious about their job search. They're overpriced. I'm going to get all the stuff that you're not getting when you look at a resume. We all can see that so-and-so is a good match for your job. I'm going to figure out if they're actually going to take your job. So placeability— can they do the job? That's as simple as just matching a resume to a job description or matching a LinkedIn to a title or whatever. That's just— that's match game. I mean, that's junior stuff. That's not hard. The closeability starts— then starts on the first call, right? We talk about RFL. Does their reason for leaving make sense? Okay. Then we talk about, and by the way, this is like, I mean, this is big on the agency side, but let me give you a little difference in lone wolf agency. Okay?

Yeah.

When you're at an agency and you might have a database of, I'm making this up, 5 million, 10 million, 20 million candidates, right? Like you can get away with not being so honed in on every candidate you deal with. You can get away with that because you have a database where you can throw in a Boolean search and spit out 100 resumes. You call 7 or 8 of them and you get, yeah, Bob, yeah, Steve, yeah, Wendy, yeah, blah, blah, blah, send, send, send, send, send, send, send. You play the volume game. Maybe they like 1 or 2 of them. They interview, do a deal, blah, blah, blah. Like check, check, check, check, check. That's cool. Again, and that's part of what your margin is, right? Because you have that database. So you might get 50% of your deal. That 50% goes to the house. That's what you're paying for. Makes sense. When you're on your own and you don't have that and you, and you quite literally are only getting out the effort that you put in. In other words, I talk to a candidate, I have to get that candidate, which means I don't have— I'm not going to send them 10 resumes. We don't have 10 resumes. They got to go get 10 people to say yes to me. So what I'm assessing for is just closability, which is, again, it goes back to like my BD and the client. It's kind of like business development for a candidate, candidate development. How quick they got back to me, what they said when they got back to me, how quick they converted that into a phone call. And once I'm on that call, now again, if it's like, yeah, let's talk, I could talk today, like, okay, I'm starting to see some buying language from this candidate, you know what I mean? Versus hey, I'm free after Thanksgiving, you know, call me. Nine months, it's like, okay, I'm like, nothing's going to happen. Again, protecting time. But once I get them on the phone, first of all, I'm never submitting a candidate that I don't talk to on the phone ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. Which is why, which is why I will never say the name of my client or the salary ranges over an email or over a message case. It's not what I want to do. The argument, You should just be transparent with the stuff. And I totally understand that. What I'm saying is I need to figure out closability. And by the mere fact of them willing to let me tell them over the phone tells me that they do are interested in an actual job. Makes sense. Just by them getting on the phone with me, it's kind of the reason that I ask for— it's the same thing I like when I do checks and balances, right? When a client says, when I say, hey, let's do a video chat, say, 3 o'clock, and they go, no, no, just call my cell. You know, I'll be running around like, okay, I'll do that. But again, is it— are they as serious as I would hope they would be to sit down with me? You know what I mean? Okay. Again, right. It's just a timing thing. What people— people give their time to what they want to make time for. Makes sense. Now, again, sometimes I didn't do a good enough job of providing value as to why they should sit down with me. Maybe that's on me. Okay. Like, I can own that too. But I've got my— I've got my, you know, I've got my swing pretty good to know when it's serious. But I get them on the phone and I focus on RFL, reason for leaving. And here's the deal. If I— if my— if I already know, if I'm like, dude, how do I get you on the phone? Right. And I don't— people say, why are you looking for a new job? That's not how I ask. I'll be like, dude, I'm a pretty average recruiter. Sometimes I'm better than average, but most of the time I'm average. So how does an average guy like me get a guy like you or a girl like you on the phone? Why are we talking? I don't know. Well, your message intrigued me. I'm like, dude, I'm an okay writer. Come on, there's got to be something else going on. Like, tell me what's going on. How did I get you on the phone? I'm a complete stranger. And so— and then you'll start to dig and you dig and then you'll hear, well, you know, bonuses just came out. I thought I was going to get 20% and I got 7% or You know, I thought I was going to get a promotion, but I was passed up for this guy that started 3 months after I did, and that was annoying. Or we just found out that we're going to have a baby, my wife and I. And so I got to be, you know, I'm commuting an hour that way and an hour back. I got to be closer to home or whatever. And if the itch that they have isn't something that my client can scratch, I'm out. Like, I'm not going to ruffle again, close the building. Like, I know they can do the job, but they ain't going to take it. So that's the difference. Like, Again, the conventional wisdom would say if they can do the job, send them, see what happens. And I'm telling you, the credibility as a lone wolf is massively important. And if you're selling yourself to a client by saying, I'm going to protect your time, then do the work on the back end to protect it, and you'll get paid back tenfold with new jobs coming in all the time because you've done the work ahead of time. So again, closeability. And it goes to say, it goes to this. When you have close— when you talk about closeability, what you'll find— okay, zoom out with me real quick. You've got— you have a client, and they— every client in America, every company in America, or like probably internationally, worldwide, is going to hire an A-player. We all know everybody's going to hire an A-player if they're a rock star. Like, they're going to get hired if they're that good, you know, they're the best in their business, they're the top 1% of the 1%, like blah blah blah blah. They're going to get hired. Like, that's— everybody wants that candidate. That's That's, that's, that's fine. Okay, we get that. But again, the closeability on that is they might be serious about their job search, but they might have 27 different offers. When you talk about closeability, now you talk about what your actual chance of getting them to go to your client is, getting them to go to your client. So you might— they might want out of a job. But when you talk about sincere, sincere closeability and your clients value closeability, now all of a sudden you can place a B candidate or a C candidate. Mm-hmm. Because they're not gonna have as many opportunities as that A candidate, but your client understands how, how much they need to get a hire with a skillset and they can train, they can do all the right stuff. Again, closeability will allow you, if your client believes in closeability, as in they value that, that's what you bring to the table, which is why I work with small companies, cuz smaller companies value that. Blue Cross Blue Shield ain't gonna value that, but small companies will.

Okay.

When they value that and they value what I bring to the table, which is the stuff that I told them on the job order. Now I'm literally backing up what I said by getting all this information, by saying, I know this guy doesn't have all the chops, but I'm telling you, this guy, I can close him in the range you want and he can start in 2 weeks. And this guy is— will want to be a sponge. That allows my salesmanship and my, my sales ability to take over. If I'm just showing— if I'm just putting a Ferrari in front of them, yeah, everybody wants the car, but can they afford can they actually get? Like, that's fine. But like, here's the deal. But if you just need a car to get you from A to B, I got one. And it's pretty nice too. Stereo, air conditioning, seatbelts. So anyways, that's a horrible analogy, but you get my point. I like it. I like it.

Yeah, I get your point.

So did I answer your question? So placeability, see if they can do the job. Okay.

Yes.

Do they check the boxes? You know, that it out. And then when you get them on the call, you verify everything, send the resume, be like, hey, dude, is anything on your resume full of it? Nobody's really lying. Like, no, it's all real. This way you do. Okay, cool. Check, check, check. Cool. And I'll tell them, I'll be like, hey dude, I'm not here to find out how good you are at the job because frankly, I don't even understand what you do. That's not what my expertise is. I don't really care about that. What I'm caring about is I want to figure out how serious you are about your job search. So let's talk about things. Because my client is paying me to find somebody like you that isn't just like you, but will actually take a job. So I'm going to figure out what my chances are of you taking a job. So let's talk about them. Talk to me about your job search. Talk to me about all that stuff. And I'll figure that part out because I say this to candidates all the time, my clients don't pay me for considerations, they pay me for acceptances. So I don't— again, I don't— and I'll say this, and most candidates will respect this, but I'll say stuff like, look, man, I don't really mind if you— if you don't want the job, like you're not going to hurt my feelings. This is totally fine. But what I just need is transparency because what I need— I would love more than anything to send them a fat invoice for placing you. I'd love to send them an invoice for $40 grand because you take a job. I'd love that. And I'll tell the candidate, I'd love to do that. But if you're not going to take that job, it doesn't matter. I'm never going to get that invoice from you anyway. So what I want to do and the way that I lose the chance to get the $40,000 is by telling them that you want a job you don't actually want. And so what I'm asking you is to be respectful of my time and my relationship with my client. Don't ask me to go get you an offer if you know you're not going to take it, or go set you up an interview if you know you're not interested. It's a waste of time. And what I'd rather do is put a candidate in there that I can actually place, because there's nothing worse to the recruiter than putting a present under the Christmas tree that they got to return in January because it doesn't work. You get what I'm saying?

Yeah, definitely, dude.

Um, I'm totally right now. But this is like all the stuff I'm talking about, about time protection.

Yes, absolutely love that, man. Um, we could probably ask about 50 questions on everything you said, Mike. We've got— we haven't got a huge amount of time, so I just want to ask this last question, and then I'd love for you to tell the audience a bit about what you've got going on with the Lone Wolf course. Um, yeah, I'm a lone wolf, uh, oh sorry, I'm a recruiter lone wolf, left an agency, started on my own. Where should I be focusing my time in terms of BD activity? Not only in terms of like the system but also the volume. Can you— and I'm sure it will vary depending on market and all that kind of stuff— but can you push us in the right direction?

So first of all, whatever you're doing at an agency and now you come off on your own, your, your, your net— your, your pool of opportunity is every industry across every market in the whole US, or wherever you're doing. Like, you— everything's available. I mean, you can look out your window, that might be a candidate, that might be a client. Like, you never know, right? I'm just wrong. Like, everything's possible. Right? So I don't want to hear none about none of this. I don't know where to start. Just start. That's the problem. 98% of deals or, you know, ideas never happen because they just don't do anything. Figure out your steps. But anyways, so BD process, you gotta— my, my— if I was gonna give tangible whatever it is, I— if I was a lone wolf, I would not look at deals again. And I talk about this in the course, but there's an amount of money that you should have in your bank account based on your bills, your, you know, what your rent is, your mortgage, your family, whatever the stuff is that you have to pay monthly and how many months that is. And there's an actual math equation I talk about in the course that I'm going to— that's a little plug, little teaser. But you can figure out, hey, I have the money to go do this because it's not— not every day is candy corns, you know, unicorns and rainbows and butterflies and all that stuff. It's not. So because of that, the way that you need to feel accomplished is by just waking up every single day.

How do you—

how do you eat a whole elephant? One bite at a time. And you literally just every day. You just attack. So I would do 5 companies. Now, I have a system, my personal system. I do email campaigns. I'm very good at them. I've always been very good at creative writing. I know how to create demand out of thin air. That's my superpower. I know we didn't ask that, but like, that's what I love doing. That's what I'm good at. But whatever yours is, if you want a cold call, I coach people that cold call. That's totally fine. Whatever. You could be LinkedIn messaging, it could be voice notes, it could be that— I mean, it could be knocking on the door. I don't care what you do. I literally don't care. You could go to the local mall and just go walk into stores. I don't really care, but 5 new companies every single day with a follow-up method that goes out. Okay. I would suggest a 3 or 4— I do 4 steps, but a 3 or 4-step method that is split up. So like maybe a, maybe a Monday, you know, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday campaign. And it's okay to set stuff up. Some people will say, well, Mike, I don't— how do you be so disciplined? I personally use Outlook. And I'm just very committed to the time that I do. I don't have a tool, but there are a million tools out there that, you know, you can do that will send, send automated stuff. That's what you want. You could talk to these guys, Ben and Sam. They can help you with content. They can do all that kind of stuff to get BDEs. But you have to do 5 new companies a day. Like, that's important. Like, like, stick to that. And, and why 5,000 or why 5 companies a day? You don't know. Why does my app tell me I need to do 10,000 steps? They just told me to do it. Just do it. Who cares? Like, it's good to have a plan and a direction. If you get to 4, and you got to go pick up your kid, that's fine. Go do that. Come back and do a pitch. No miss, no miss. Because I see this all the time. The moment you miss once, you're like, oh well, I can justify it. You can justify anything as a lone wolf. You can justify taking a whole day off. You can always justify it. Don't do it. Okay? The key is consistency. Your body will get into a routine and it's good. Okay? A routine is important for a lone wolf. 5 new companies a day. Okay? With that, at the end of a 2-week period, then I would look at my response rates. Okay. So I'd take 2 weeks. So that would be if that was 5 companies a day, 5 a week, or sorry, that's 25 in a week. In 2 weeks, that's 50. Okay. In theory, a good goal out of 50 companies would be able to say, okay, I got 2 new calls set up. If you can get 1 new call a week, that would be 4 in a month. And then out— and then half of those convert to an agreement. Which, by the way, let me just give a little plug for Lone Wolf Life. When you're on your own and you're in a job market call and they're like, why should I work with you? You'd be like, because this is my office and I gotta pay for it, and that's where you come in, mister. Like, you can say things like that. Be like, hey dude, I'm not putting money in a bunch of like bigwigs' pockets. I'm putting money in my pocket, so help me out. Let's work together, dude. You started a company when you went off on your own. Reward me for doing the same thing. You got Like I would say that anyways. So you— 4 calls, okay, 4 Zoom calls or whatever, new client calls. Out of those, you try to convert 2 of them and now you've got 2 new agreements. Times that out by 12 months, 24 agreements. If you get 24 agreements and you don't build $400,000, you should call me and you should coach with me. We should talk because that's a problem. You should be able to do a lot more than that, honestly. I'll tell you guys right now, we have— Connor and I have been in business since July 28th. It's now, what is this, January 30th? So I don't know how many months that is. That's, uh, about 6 months. Okay, and we've had probably— I'm getting a round number— maybe 45 job order calls. Okay, we have 24 signed agreements. Okay, so a little, a little more than that. Okay, 24 signed agreements in a 6-month period. Because we get on these calls, we stick to the cadence, okay? Like, he has a minimum number of candidate submissions that he focuses on a week, and I have a minimum number of what my job is, is to bring in new clients. And then wherever, whenever we're deficient, if I'm deficient, he'll jump in on some BD to help me out. And if he's deficient, I'll jump in on candidate side. But that's where it's at. And we just want a very efficient machine. And our focus is this: top of funnel, always, okay? I focus on a point system, 2 points for every submission. 3 points for every interview, 5 points for a signed contract of 20% or more. No refund, by the way. Do not do refunds. It'll cripple you in this business as a lone wolf. You don't want to do it. You need the money. Okay, so do not do refunds. If somebody wants a refund, just don't work with them. It's that simple. You just walk away. Not a big deal. You don't need the agreement that bad. Don't do it. But then, and then stick to those things and just fill the top of the funnel. Don't reward yourself for deals. None of that stuff is— all that is the residue of it. Focus on the controllables, the KPI stuff. We've had days where we have done a deal and I didn't do 5 companies to BD, and I feel less accomplished than on days when we did not do a deal and I hit my 5 companies. You see what I'm saying?

Yeah.

I focus on top of funnel. Like, you've got to focus on the top of the funnel. I see it all the time, and we always look at the bottom line. We're people, I get it, I'm part of it too. But like, you've got like focus on the top of the funnel. We're— Connor and I are off to, you know, we're at $120,000 for the year so far, so we're No, we're a month in, we're doing well, we're on track to do over a million bucks. Great. It's awesome. We love it. But we're not focused on anything else other than top of funnel. That's it. And so that's the key that I would say. And if you, and if you can't hit those metrics that we're talking about, get a coach, get a network of recruiters, get somebody to keep you accountable to help you do that. Because it's not, that shouldn't be that difficult. It's really not.

Love that.

Can that help?

Yeah, really helpful. That was massively helpful. I just wanna go back to the, to the list. So 5 companies every day, how are they— how do you advise, and this might be too broad of a question depending on the group, but how are you segmenting those companies, the ones that you're sending, you know, 5 companies a day? How are you selecting and/or segmenting or choosing which companies are going to be— are there some companies that are more likely to hit, you know, in terms of size or industry? Yeah, location.

For me, it's real simple. It's whatever industry I'm going to target that day. It could be whatever, you know, pick an industry, just do whatever. Like, and I mix and match, you know, like I don't have— right now we have out of 24 signed agreements, we've been applying like 4 or 5 different niches in there. Like, it's different, you know, different whatever. Because it doesn't— again, like I said, my value is the hiring piece. And I'll tell clients that all the time. Like, and I've had clients where they say, do you specialize in this? I'll be like, no. And then they'll say, great, we don't think we want to work with you. Totally fine, no problem. Like, take care, not a big deal. But anyway, um, my focus is every time is literally focused on size. I focus on companies between 25 to 150 employees. It's just— it's never changed. I just don't— whatever. A guy like me too, as aggressive as I am, Put me on— like, if you throw me on a call with Nike, they're going to hate me. Like, I'm going to be exhausting. Like, I'll be so annoying. But if you have a company that's like, yeah, dude, we're at 97 employees and like, we'd like to get to like 120, like, yeah, I can help you. Like, I'm good. I can help. You don't want me dealing with a big company. They might hire 1,000 people, but like, I still— there's no— I don't have a value add to them. Like, what am I going to do? Hey, dude, you ever heard of this secret company called Nike? Like, no, they're not— everybody knows about it. But like, if you, if you have a company that nobody's really ever heard of, you're 80 people, you know, maybe you just got some money coming in, you have— maybe you have clients that you can't— you can't service the work that you need because, you know, you're lacking on talent or whatever it is. Like, I can add value to that. And like, I can, I can create a great story, a great narrative, etc. And again, I can put candidates in front of you that aren't going to clog up your interview funnels, aren't going to waste your time, and then you can actually close. Like, if that's what you want, great, hire me. And if you don't, don't. Not a big deal. Like, I don't— it's fine. But I focus on the number. I just focus on— it's really a metric system, 25 to 150, no more names. And I have a cutoff. Cutoff. My cutoff, if I really want a company, my— I don't ever go more than 200. I just don't. I just won't go more than 200. So like, have like— because again, you have to have your parameters. And as a lone wolf, you can justify anything. Like, trust me, you can justify anything. Like, oh, well, it looks cool. Like, maybe I should go work with them. They have 2 people there. Like, they're probably going— like, no, 2 is too small. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you got to work— you have to understand that candidates got to want to work there, but clients also got to want to hire. And again, my focus on the BD side is simply saying I don't know of any companies that I've ever dealt with that got to like 72 employees and be like, yeah, we're done. For instance, one, one that we did sign up this week, they're like, hey, we're at— what did they say? We're at 130 and we'd like to be at 180 in the next 2 years. I can help that. I can help. That made sense to me, right? Like, and then they had done— I think they paid a bunch of agencies. Like, it was, it was great. And she's awesome. And she got my name from somebody else that was actually a referral. But like, that stuff happens. Here's another piece too. Generally speaking, when you deal with smaller companies, okay, this is like super important when you deal with smaller companies. And if you're doing, whether you're doing a service-based pitch or an NPC pitch, okay, service pitch is like, hey, I'd love to help, this is what I do. NPC pitch is here, I got a guy, whatever. You can do either one, it doesn't matter. I've got pitches for both, different conversation. But whatever you're doing, if you are doing it, remember sales, right? Sales says buy this from me right now. Marketing says when you're ready, I'm here. The consistency of just doing your stuff, being in people's inboxes, how you market yourself naturally. Like it will just happen. And what all of a sudden, a message that you sent 3 weeks ago will get back. Or, or a lot of these smaller companies, they're in different networks within. So like CEOs of different companies might be sitting at a table one day all talking about their own companies and they're like, yeah, oh, oh, you're hiring for this. I just got an email from some annoying guy named Mike, but he said he had a good candidate. I'll forward it to you. Let me know if you have interest. And so I'll get messages from people, be like, hey, Mike, a buddy of mine got this email from you. You know, what's the deal here? Can we work together? Whatever. Something like that. Like I get that all the time. Not all the time, but a good amount. I'd say once a month that happens, which otherwise it wouldn't if I wasn't doing that. So again, that's why I just focus on top of funnel. I'm not results-oriented, I'm process-oriented. Massive difference.

Yeah, love that. Um, we need to wrap up, uh, now, guys, because I've got to, um, go pick up my daughter from nursery. Oh, um, yeah, Mike, this was such an epic podcast, dude. Every time you come on, you blow my mind with knowledge and wisdom in the recruitment game. So thank you. This been an amazing pod. Can we wrap up the pod with you telling the audience about Lone Wolf and who should buy it? And, and yeah, and where, where should they go to find it?

Cool. I'm gonna take 45 seconds to do this. All right guys, check this out. Look, if you enjoyed the podcast, like obviously I'm super passionate about this stuff, I know what I'm talking about. All right, I have two courses. One is the Recruiter Blueprint, which is whether you're agency or on your own, it's how I do my business, everything. It's fantastic. We sold it in over 15 countries. It's great. The Recruiter Blueprint's a fantastic course. It's worth it. It's $2,000. Go buy it. The ROI is incredible. There's the, the Lone Wolf. Okay, the Lone Wolf is not a course of me trying to sell you on going off on your own. I don't really care if you go off on your own. The Lone— what the Lone Wolf was created for, it's another course, Recruiter Blueprint Regular, and then Recruiter Blueprint Lone Wolf. The Recruiter Blueprint Lone Wolf, that course was created so that you can sit at your agency or whatever you're doing, and you can have peace of mind to say, I should go off on my own because it makes sense, or I should And I address every elephant in the room, every question you would have, why you should, why you shouldn't, how much money should be in your bank before you do. Maybe it's— and here's the thing about the loan rule. A lot of people bought it and say, great, now I have— I need to fill up my cash reserves to get to this amount before this time, and then I'm going to go off on my own. So like, I've seen that a lot. It's a great course. We charge it for $1,750. It's a little bit cheaper than the regular bill print. If you want to buy them together, you get both packages for $3,500. They're incredible. They're really, really good. Like, I'm just telling you guys, we've never had one complaint. I would have thought by now, as annoying and as loud as I can be, somebody would complain about my course. Nobody complained. Like, thank you. Like, you're gonna love yours. It's worth getting, guys. I didn't come on the Twins podcast and not do a plug. Appreciate the plug. I hope you get the course. It's that good. You'll love it.

Love it. Thank you, Mike, and great to see you again, dude. Absolutely amazing to have you on, and thank you.

Yes, sir. Thanks, twins.

Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to this episode. If you enjoyed it, please don't forget to subscribe on YouTube and Spotify. Tune in for another episode next week, and we look forward to seeing you again very soon. Peace and love.