This Dev Recruiter bills $550K every year. (Listen to how he DOMINATES his niche)

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 secret to their success. Today's guest is Will Woogat. Will is a $550K biller. He's billed that consistently for 5 years in a row, but this year he is gunning for $1M. To put it bluntly, guys, Will is absolutely obsessed with his niche. He spent years sharing his skills and his knowledge with his community, and it's paid off because he is arguably the most well-known and sought-after dev recruiter in Colorado. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about why niching is one of the most powerful things you can do as a recruiter, how to serve your community with endless amounts of value and play the long game, which is one of the most valuable things you can do as a recruiter. And finally, Will's going to be giving us some tips into his mindset and some software that he uses in order to make his life a lot easier. Will has a great attitude and a great energy, guys. We hope you enjoy this episode, and as usual, grab a cuppa, or a glass of wine depending on when you're listening to this, and let's jump 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. Hey, Will, how you doing, dude?

Good morning. Good evening. Uh, thanks for taking time with me.

Pleasure, dude. Thank you for coming on. We always are appreciative when new guests come on and spend their time with us, and you are no exception. So thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate it.

Yeah, I love to be here. Thank you.

Awesome. So as usual, we start the podcast with every— we start the podcast with the same question every time, which is what's the number one tool in your toolkit, whether it be a mindset, strategy, or software? What would you say to that?

Yeah, I did a little processing on this. Uh, you know, you sent me that one and I've listened to enough that I knew it was coming. I'm gonna cop out a little bit. I've got a secondary that I'll tease on the software side, but, you know, I definitely think strategy in the way I approach BD, in the way I approach building a business, strategy is everything. And strategy is very intentional, but I've used the word consistency. My boss Monte, he says, you know, over and over that that's the the number one thing, right, that we're looking for internally, externally. And I'd rather be slow moving, um, and consistent on the same thing. Drip, drip, drip, drip. Um, and I think everything I do is, is a lot of drips. It's a lot of intentionality. And that is the root of the strategy about how I go about the business at all. And I think the strategy only works— I mean, strategy has a perception of being inauthentic, right? But I start almost every single recruiting call as well as client call the same way. I say I've been recruiting devs for 8 years and I'll still be recruiting devs in 20 years. And I think that intentionality shows the consistency, not just on my side, but it shows the real people involved, right? I think when we think about consistency, not for in a strategic sense, or we think about strategy, not just in a consistent sense, but think about the people behind the story there. When they know that I'm there for them in 20 years, I mean, it kind of changes the game. It changes the game for me in the way I approach them, and it changes the game, I think, for them in the way that they see me in the market. It's just so non-transactional. Yeah, but consistency, long-term focus, I think that that's the root of everything for me.

Awesome, dude. And you were going to say a software as the second— Yeah.

I wanted to drop one that I've been using for 8 years that I don't think many other people use. It's the simplest tool in the world. I've actually seen it change names a couple of times. It's called Briskine. It's a Chrome extension that is an automation scripting tool. So Ctrl+Space, I can be sending a LinkedIn message anywhere digitally. I have 30 or 40 templates that I just— it's Ctrl+Space and those templates go out. So one of them, for example, I love my junior developers. I never place them. No one's paying me a fee for somebody with less than 5 years of experience, but man, those people are the future. And I get 4 or 5 a day that'll send me a message, hey, I'm struggling. Can you help? Can you help? And with AI and with bootcamps in the past, it's tough for those folks. And so 4 or 5 times a day, I hit Control+Space and I send this 2,000-word, very detailed, very helpful Advice to these folks, that's just one example, but, um, and I get, they're like, wow, thanks for taking the time. This is incredible. I'll look into those resources. Thanks for explaining why you can't help me, but when you can and where to go from here. Um, and it takes me 3 seconds. So Briskine, it's just a scripting tool, control space, or it pops up, um, really anywhere you would, uh, you would type. Um, it, uh, you know, you create your own templates. I think you can do like, I think you can do 30 templates for free. So totally not game changer software, but one that I think people aren't using a lot and very, very helpful.

That's a great little— so I actually need a software like that, Will. So I'm going to get me to that. So that's a really great tip.

And what is it called?

Briskine, like Briskine, B-R-I-S-K-I-N-E. And it's a Chrome extension.

Cool. Awesome. And are there any other— so you use that software to respond to junior devs. Do you use that software or any frameworks to respond to other people just to speed up The process.

I mean, I have 30 or 40 templates. So, you know, I have follow-up messages with that. I have, you know, HR questions in there. I have a prep document. So, I mean, I do call preps with every candidate before and after, but I've got a very detailed— I mean, we have a 20-page prep document that preps them for my prep. And it's a control space and it drops in this, you know, amazing starter package. Right. And a lot of times people use that stuff. It's copy paste from Word or they try to find the last email. It's just a simple way to make those templates accessible. We all have the templates. It's just the— it puts it at your fingertips quite literally. So game changer, no. But, you know, in a non-AI way, it saves, you know, I'd probably save 2 hours a week, you know, just using it.

100%, man. Yeah, great, great little tip there, dude. And I'm going to try that out as well. So that's awesome. Cool. So for anyone that can't see, you have Dev Recruiter on your hat, Will, and I've never— I've never had someone have their niche on their hat, which tells me from the last call as well that you believe in niching and you are a super niche. Can you, can you tell us why niching has been such a game changer for your business and why you would recommend it to other people? I'm just curious.

Yeah. And if I was sitting in my office, you'd see a poster that says, you know, we are the number one most reliable, respected, and recognized software engineering recruiting firm in Colorado. That's my niche. I've laid it out. I mean, it's as big as— it's probably 3 feet tall. I wrote that down 7 and a half years ago. Um, I knew at that time that was the market I wanted to serve. And candidly, I had a manager at that time that let me do some of that, but I was really pushing to do more of it. And he wanted me to kind of, you know, work over here and work over there. And I was good at working over here, working over there, but it clicked pretty hard pretty early that if I serve this market and I really take care of these people, it's gonna come back around, right? Almost, yeah, I saw it early and I dove in hard. And, you know, again, we could say it's a strategy, it is a strategy, but it is really an authentic way of approaching the market. And I wasn't, I wanted to, find an opportunity to share just like how impactful this is. And we can talk about this later as we dive into my whole, my whole BD strategy, if you will. But just this past week, I'm going to share 5 different things that hit that I think help you understand how niche I am. You know, Dev Recruiter, it's on my— it's everywhere. I go to the meetups, I do the things. In the past week, I've been invited to a whiskey night with CTOs. No recruiters go to that. I got invited to that. I got invited to a baby shower for a tech recruiter at a, someone I care deeply about and didn't know before, got to know through the business. I got invited to a music album launch for a head of DevOps, right? He's got his passion and he's like, I'm launching my album. Can you come? I got invited, not invited. Someone else told me She's a startup founder and she's like, you working with you, Will, is on my vision board. I ran into another guy and we can talk, you know, a little tactic. I send a lot of LinkedIn videos and I ran into a guy at church. He's like, you're Will Wieghardt, the bald recruiter guy, aren't you? I saw your video today and I've seen this guy, you know, 10 times, sent him a LinkedIn video. Like, that's 5 things in the last week that I'm so deep in the niche, like, I don't think I was talking to my wife about this and she's like, well, this is like inner circle. I think that, you know, if I'm going to, if I'm going to title the pod here, like, or title my strategy, it's like ultimately you want to be in these people's inner circle. It's not just niching for the sake of niching. It's these people are my friends. These people are people I care deeply about and I want to help them over the next 20 years grow in their careers. Sometimes as a candidate, sometimes as a client, sometimes going to their baby shower. It hits hard and it gets easier though, right? I'm 8 years in, I'm still grinding, but I do expect in 10 years I might be doing a little less grinding. Cool, man.

Yeah, it's insane how, how, as you say, how much, how deep you are into your niche and people's inner circles. And remember when we spoke on the intro call Will, you actively did some interesting things to gain access to the inner circle. Of course, it comes from being personable, speaking to people, just being a nice guy. That goes without saying. But I remember you mentioning two things, which was being very active on online communities. And the other one was you have a roundtable or you have an event. I forgot what you called it. I'm so sorry, my ignorance.

No, great.

But can you just talk about those two things and anything else?

Yeah, you can, you all can kind of visualize this. Um, but I, I would say it's overspoken in the industry, but you have to have a niche first, right? None of this works if you're not serving the same market drip, drip, drip consistently over time. Um, but once you are locked in on who you're trying to serve, um, I do have kind of a threefold strategy actually. And I, I do believe that 1 1 1 3 here. Um, And so the two, the one that people talk about a lot is direct outreach, right? We're talking about phone calls and emails. We're talking about do more work, get, you know, tell them you do the business and they'll come to you. I do that too, of course. But the two kind of behind the scenes things that I think exponentially make that work is what I call, I mean, it's face-to-face marketing and it's digital marketing, right? And so the one thing that happened 7.5 years ago, I joined this Slack group called Denver Devs. It doesn't exist anymore. 10,000 developers in Denver, and I chatted them all the time. I never once asked for business. I found ways to add value to that group. When they're asking what the heck is going on with these recruiters, I would explain it to them. When people ask about salary or how to negotiate, I would help with that. And I became a pillar of that community. Again, a community that historically doesn't like recruiters. And I think a lot of people don't like recruiters, right? We're pushy. We do all the direct outreach. We're spam. But when I made that call and when I make that call, a lot of them now recognize me, right? They know who I am. I'm the baldest dev recruiter in Denver. And I've made— I've been in their communities. I figured out where they hang out digitally, literally. So a lot of it's the digital side. It was a Slack group, but I found 6 or 7 other ways to get in. I live a lot on LinkedIn, kind of build my own network there. But also going to the meetups, right? There's two big meetups that are hit in my audience. There's a lot of meetups that are just— it's all recruiters and they're no good, right? You just kind of feels like a spam meeting and I've been to those. But the two I go to consistently is I run the local tech recruiters meetup. I help all of those people and I help all those people oftentimes for free. I don't often place tech recruiters. That's not true. I often place them. I don't place them for a fee. Because I care about them. And I also, guess what? I know they're gonna come back to me and be a client someday. I'm gonna be doing this for 20 years. And by feeding them, by knowing all the tech recruiter jobs that are open, and by knowing all the people that are on the market, those tech recruiters come back to me. Same thing with CTOs. I go to CTO lunches, I sponsor, and I don't really sell hard there. I listen, I, you know, make friends. I, I find ways to add value and You know, that's those two. I'm always looking for new ways to really deepen that, both strategically and authentically. I think the two go hand in hand, but finding your audience, knowing your niche, who's the person that pays and ultimately decides to pay the fee to a recruiter. For my market, for my niche, it's CTOs and tech recruiters. Those are the people I want to know, and I'm going to go to nothing else, but I'm going to be where they are digitally and face to face.

Love that, man. And it shows your long-term mindset as well, Will. And I think it's such a rarity to be able to think like, you know, 2, 3, 5 years down the line and be planning for that, and not just like month to month or even year to year. Yeah, that's really interesting. Um, can we go into your, uh, BD process now, Will? So my— from speaking to you and understanding your world, a lot of your BD is being immersed within the community, you know, offering value, um, offering expertise for free, and kind of, um, waiting for the right moment for it to come back to you, because it typically does. You know, if you give enough value out to your audience, it does typically come back to you at some stage, doesn't it? I'm interested if there was any BD activity that you, that you were to do if you wanted to get immediate business Um, what would that, what would that look like if it, if it was more like an immediate, I, I, I need to get some business in today for whatever, I've got a wedding to pay for, I've got whatever, what, what, where would you go for that?

Great question. Um, for that specific component, and actually it's hitting me fresh, um, I just hired a gal, her name's Cass, she's killing it. Um, and that means my capacity has grown, and that means, well, I've had no less than 15 jobs for about a year as a team of one. You know, now I'm a team of two and a lot of those roles are getting filled and that means I need to go get more. It's phenomenal. But I've had that immediacy problem, right? There's the long-term problem of how do I create BD, but the immediacy problem and I'll be the first to admit I don't do it well, but it's the strategy that I consistently go back to when I need short-term. I call it ABC marketing. So 52 weeks in the year, 26 letters in the alphabet. My concept is I want to— and I don't really blur the lines a lot between clients and candidates. They're just people. And people, I help them grow in their careers, right? Sometimes as a client, sometimes as a candidate. But those people, if I can find a touchpoint twice a year, do all the A's this week, all the B's next week, everybody that starts with C the week after. That means every single person in my network— and I use— we're on Bullhorn. I just literally go through the alphabet. It's not uber complicated. I don't use, you know, pins and, you know, fake outreach. Like, it's usually a call. It's, hey, Sam, how you been? How's your kiddo? Will I see you at the next meetup? And as I'm putting those spokes together, right, the face-to-face piece, the digital piece, they've seen my content on LinkedIn almost certainly for the last 6 months. They'll comment on it. I usually know something about their personal life or their family, and then I'll invite them to one of the meetups. And so those spokes start crossing over to each other. But on a formulaic sense, if I want to go get 5 jobs, I'm going to get on the phone. I'm going to not send emails. I'm going to get on the phone right now and I'm going to call people I know and I'm going to ask them to catch up. And we do, you know, shout out to— I mean, we're really, really big on training here and we just did one, so it's fresh in my mind, called the 5-Prong. You know, when we're talking to somebody, we're not just trying to get a singular transaction. We're trying to get Either a job order or a job order lead or a candidate or a candidate lead or market information. And that market information, that fifth spoke, it helps me know about the clients, who's moving, who's laying people off, who's growing, who has bad managers, what's the vibe in my small niche. And so a lot of these catch-up calls, they are strategic. I care about the people, but I will start very soft. I'll start, how you been? And we'll catch the vibe. Sometimes it's 30 seconds and they don't have time, right? Sometimes we'll talk for 20 minutes and at the end of that call, it's, hey, by the way, my friend's hiring over here. You should call them. And also, by the way, we're going to be hiring in 3 months, but I might be looking because of X, right? There's 3 different— I got a candidate there. I got a job order lead. And I got maybe a job order and then, you know, scripting things out. One of the— I'll often ask, we talk about the MPC, you know, often I'll, if I'm deep in that call, I'll say, look, I know you're not looking, no, you're not using recruiters right now. Is there someone that would be so hard for you to find that you would want to hear about them if I came across them? And because I'm talking to these people all the time, I make some placements like that, right? If you find Unicorn who has XYZ skills that nobody else has, I don't care if HR has an agreement or not, we'll pay a fee for that person. And it's that knowledge of the market, um, and asking that question, you know, deep in a relationship-driven conversation that drives a lot.

Love that.

And just to clarify, Will, are the calls that you were or are making, are they, are they typically cold, or are they people that have seen you either digitally or in, in face-to-face meetings?

All of the above. So if I'm trying to go get a new job order, uh, a new client to work on today, I'm gonna call the people that I know know me first, right? I mean, there's— at this point, I mean, you start with zero, you're starting a new niche. A lot of people listening to this probably, you know, are still trying to define their niche. So some of that is cold, you know, but every week, you know, I have one today and I have two tomorrow and I have four the next week and I have eight. And then, you know, my list right now is probably 3,000 people. That I know would know me and know who I am. And so it gets easier as you're deep in the niche. That said, I'm doing a lot of cold outreach as well. I mean, my, my three-spoke strategy is the ABC. It's MPC, right? Have a baller candidate that you're reaching out saying, I have this exceptional person and that person has pre-cleared with me that I can market them. And then the third, I call it CCC, you know, keep my C's going, cold call campaign. And a lot of that is very organic, authentic to my tiny niche market, saying, you and I don't know each other. I'm actually kind of shocked we don't know each other. Let's— are you going to be at the next CTO lunches? Will I see you at the recruiter meetup? I do this. I don't even need your business today. I'm slammed. How can I become the person that you do call when you are looking for a recruiter? It's so organic. So yeah, lots of cold call. And honestly, I mean, in a world of AI where everybody's saying 2,000 messages, you know, let's automate everything, I'm going back to the phones. You know, I'll shout out to, you know, my favorite trainers. We're, again, we're big on training. Danny Cahill, you know, he's got some phenomenal stuff there. I work with him pretty closely. And we're, if you know Peter Lefkowitz, kind of OG trainer, but Peter, Peter and the Morgan Method is deep, deep rooted. And yeah, that's a cold call methodology, um, you know, at the— and a very organic one, um, at its roots. So very different kinds of trainers, but, um, two, two folks that have really been impactful in how I go about that. And I think it's with authenticity. And, uh, yeah, coming back to your question, absolutely cold. Uh, I think it's awesome.

I've got to ask now, Will, so you— because I'm all for training and development, it sounds like you're big into it as well. You mentioned two cold callers here. Um, what was the best, if there was like one or two, like super valuable things without giving away their secrets, like what were the things that you learned that drastically improved your cold calling from, from doing this training, do you think?

Yeah. Um, Peter Lefkowitz is, his is a system, right? And I would say it's this, I mean, I did a week-long training and I think it's a 3-day training and I've done it. 3 times, right? I mean, it's so embedded in our, our firm's root system. So it's hard to say like a specific thing, but I'd say if I can summarize what he does exceptionally well is really understanding the roots of someone's problem. So I think many, many recruiters approach candidates, especially in a, I have job, you have resume, do they match? You can make money on that, but you don't build an organic repeatable system doing that. And what Peter will really, really pushes and is encouraged and is built into my very blood now is you need to understand someone's true pain points before you ever talk to them about a job, before you ever start the process of pitching anything. You need to understand why they're looking. So I'd say that's kind of the one big takeaway I've got from, um, from Peter, if I'm trying to summarize it. Danny, um, Danny's got— he's brilliant, um, and I'm always watching his videos and, you know, this new tactic on this, new strategy on that. But say a root of what he's taught me on the cold calling side, um, one is you just have to do it. Um, I think that there's— and you have to do it consistently. That's been a consistent reminder that he's pushed back on me is, you know, it's not about doing 100 calls today or 200 tomorrow. It's about did you do 20 today, 20 tomorrow, 20 the next day, 20 the next day. That drip, drip, drip is so much more impactful, I think, internally and externally than these highs and lows. So that's been huge with, with Danny's how to go about it. Lots more he's given me there. But I'd say those are— if I'm going to try to highlight real, those are probably the two big ones.

Yeah, super valuable. So pain and I guess consistency, which makes perfect sense. I think we've heard that from other like amazing cold callers as well in terms of those, those areas, which is very cool.

To go back, Will, because I noticed something you said when you were kind of just mock playing a cold call that you would do to your network. You said, I don't need the business right today, I'm slammed. That little thing is actually quite powerful because a lot of cold callers go in like wanting immediate business, but by saying that you're kind of putting them off in a, in a, putting them in a positive mindset, like, okay, he's slammed, he doesn't need business today anyway, so he's probably not going to ask me for a role. I just like that little saying. I think that's quite powerful.

Taking the pressure off, right? I think— and I do that when I cold call a candidate too. I'm not insinuating you're looking for a new job right now. That's what— if you call, you're like, I have job, and they go, I'm not looking, call's over. There's nothing to do. But if you say— if you take that objection away from the beginning, I'm not insinuating you're looking for a job right now, but if I had something that was better than your current situation, would you want to hear about it? I'm the guy in the space. I, I'm the number one here. So I'm going to know when it comes along. Right. And so on the candidate side, it works very well too, because it's not tactical. It takes the pressure off and it allows for an open-ended call that I don't need anything. Yeah, maybe I place you today. Even when I have the perfect role, I I won't talk about it. I won't talk about it till 20, 25 minutes into the call very intentionally, because if I do, I'm going to just hear what I want to hear instead of hear what's really at the root of their issue. And if I can't diagnose the problem that is at the root of their trajectory and pain points and why they're looking and what they love— I'm not saying every role I have is perfect. Oftentimes they're not. But, you know, I may go in with one role in mind and leave with zero roles or leave with 3 totally different roles. It happens regularly because I'm so niche. I have enough going on. Um, and I mean, I made a placement the other day, right? Uh, it was an Elixir dev and it was an Elixir contract. And candidly, it was another example of the niche. Uh, I was referred to this, this company. Um, Elixir is pretty, you know, not— I don't place a lot of that. I have done a few, but— and I was referred to the candidate in the same week. It was like the stars aligned. Like, I did nothing for that. It was, it was a no-brainer. Two things dropped in my lap and I said, you guys should chat. And I never introduced anybody else. Big fee is coming out of that. The candidate's thrilled, the client's thrilled. But it's because of that authentic— I knew it. I had listened to the client, what they wanted. And I listened deeply to the candidate, what they wanted without having either in mind. And then I— it was like that. It was like, these people want the same thing. Even though for that instance, the candidate wasn't looking at Nor was the client. They said this might be coming soon. It was. And I was like, yeah, I'm a month early, but you guys got to talk. And a week later they partnered, right? So that's cool. Just another, yet another example.

Love that. And the other thing I noticed you said on the cold call example is you said, will I see you at the next meetup? So my feeling is there's a lot of clout and confidence that comes from the fact that you have in a— you have— you're in the inner circle in these prestigious meetups, I'm guessing. And are they likely to come along to those? Like, why do you use that as a leverage point? I have interest on the—

Yeah, I mean, candidly, I think that's where the digital component, right? If we're talking about the three spokes, the digital, the face-to-face, and then the cold call of the, you know, we'll say, say 20 people show up to an average meetup, right? There are 200 on each of those lists or 300 or 1,000, depending on which list we're talking about, that see that I'm sponsoring or that I'm reminded of. So yes, there's a ton of clout that's being the guy that runs the tech recruiter meetup, right? There's a lot of clout that I'm the guy that most consistently sponsors the CTO lunches. There's also a drip, drip, drip clout that happens because they see my name, even the other 180 that don't show it up and don't see my face and don't see my bald head, you know, they, they do see me digitally in their channels, right? That means that the CTO meetup is emailing, Will is sponsoring again. I didn't send that out. That isn't me self-promoting. That's somebody else promoting me. Same thing. I mean, a lot of these cold calls, my actual goal is to learn about them and to connect with them on LinkedIn. If I connect with them on LinkedIn, that is a win because now one most frequent comments I get from my audience is, I've seen your stuff. Sometimes people I don't even remember, they— we've been connected for 6 years and I couldn't pull them out of, you know, recognize their face, couldn't— wouldn't know their name. And they say, I see your content all the time. And my content is pretty loose. Like, I've, you know, connected with some of the best in the business and I'm, I'm not great at it. I'm okay at it, but I'm consistent. I don't stop dripping. Sometimes it's once a week, sometimes it's 3 times a week. Sometimes I go 2 weeks. But when I find something that I think my audience will find valuable, I drip. So the cold call translates to the digital, which pushes over to the face-to-face. The 3 are interconnected so deeply that I think oftentimes I will get recruiters that tell me, oh, I just, I pounded the phones, I did 500 calls last weekend, I didn't get anything. Um, you know, or I went to the meetups. Why are you getting business from the meetups, Will? Or, you know, I've posted on LinkedIn and it's not working. Um, I believe that sometimes, again, I'm, you know, to borrow the same phrase over and over, 1 1 1 10 here. I think the 3 together create an inner circle. Um, and I think that, you know, going to digital strategy a little bit, Some of that is, you know, my strategy is very loose, but I'd say a third of that is adding insane value. Sometimes that's salary information. Sometimes that's what's going on with AI. Sometimes that's, it's the stuff that the people are talking about. And because I'm in a lot of Slack groups and hanging out where they hang out, I know what they're talking about. So then when I can be a voice of authority and a voice of a perspective that they want and don't have on LinkedIn, that adds a ton. So that's about a third of my content. I'd say, you know, market knowledge, add value. I'd say another third then is almost intentionally, we'll call it contrarian, right? You know, I love to create dialogue. I think that we could call that an algorithm thing, a strategy thing, but I will post things intentionally that are slightly controversial because I wanna hear what people are, and that's a way to listen to my audience, not just to stir up the algorithm, but I really wanna hear what people are saying on opposite sides of the spectrum. Sometimes that's polls on LinkedIn. That's genuine, rooted in genuine curiosity. But I will post something that I know has a virality so that I can be, I can listen to the dialogue there. And I said the third piece that I think a lot of people forget is the humanness, right? We can talk about the baby shower or the music, but I post a lot of goofy stuff. Just people remember, like, I'm real, they're real. We're talking about jobs here, right? We're talking about somewhere that they're gonna be for 40 hours a week. I like them, but I talk with them for a couple hours, right, over the course of a year, maybe. They have to work this job 2,000 hours a year. Like, it's a big deal. It's the most time they spend anywhere. And so, when I humanize myself, and then I remember that they are also deeply human, that ultimately this job is about what— where they're spending the large majority of their day, I think it kind of breaks down some of those roadblocks. That are very traditionally transactional.

Interesting. And question just came to my, my mind, Will, out of— because I have a feeling a huge amount of your success has been playing the long game, giving value, setting up groups, speaking, speaking in Slack groups, communities. If you were to pinpoint like an 80/20 of where you've seen the most ROI? Has it been the meetups? Has it been the Slack groups? Like, where— where is there any point that you can say, hey, this is actually one of the biggest needle movers regarding my community and what I've done for them?

I think I'd have to push to the digital.

Okay, interesting, interesting.

If I have to pick one, um, but I think that's, um So before recruiting, I trained in copywriting, actually. So I ran a resume writing business for 6 or 7 years, and I studied— if you're familiar with Dan Kennedy, again, OG.

Yeah, yeah.

Read all his books. So we're talking about direct response. And so I think the concept that I learned way before recruiting was less sales and more attraction methodology, right? How do we pull people to you? And I think I'm very soft at being on the digital, but if I go back and look at my biggest clients, many of them, maybe not quite 80/20, but maybe 60/40, have come from inbound where I almost can't trace it. But I, but I can trace the roots of where it came from. I know that I'm connected to 2 or 3 people that probably referred me. I know that they've seen my content for a while and I'm a big believer that I'm a big believer in referrals, right? In inbound. I think that it works better when, but I also don't believe that referrals are a strategy, right? That just means I'm good at what I do and I just sit around and wait. And so I have tried to make this as formulaic as possible. And trace where those referrals come and do more of that over and over and over again. And part of that is just being good, taking care of people, finding people that others can't, being authentic. But part of that is you can systematize it, right? It's, it's where are these people hanging out? You know, and it's why, I mean, a lot of people talk about meetups, for example. We could say the 80/20 there is I figured out the 2 that matter. I don't really go to others. I don't really have a lot of time for one-on-one coffees. Because I'm working at two kids at home and, you know, my son, I'll shout out him. He said this morning, he said, Dad, don't say anything stupid. So I did.

Sorry, but I just want to jump in there and say I am so happy to hear a recruiter who has studied and understands direct response copywriting. I feel like if there was one thing that recruiters should learn about that would drastically increase almost every area of their job. It's understanding what direct response copywriting is and how it works, because it's exactly what you said, Will. It's like how to get attention with your words, like how to sell with your words. And that's essentially what recruiters are doing via email, via LinkedIn, via DMs, apart from, of course, on the call. Every other touchpoint is really with writing, isn't it? Or with video. Yeah, but I feel like it's just— I'm so glad you said that. And I feel like if anyone's listening to this, you know, start buying books on direct response copywriting and learning it yourself because you get a ton of value.

I think it's the unspoken roots of— I mean, candidly, it's why I was a good resume writer when I did that. It was why I think it's the roots of why I've had success in recruiting is because I'm always thinking about, you know, we can call it the, the call to action, right? I think very few people think about that. When I write, I'm intentionally in my emails, My, my cold call outreach, my call to action is let's connect on LinkedIn, right? When I'm on LinkedIn, I'm trying to get a little bit more information from folks or have them post. When I'm on the face-to-face, it's, it's pushing to set up, you know, occasionally that the very rare one-on-one meeting, or it's pushing a client visit or pushing to connect on LinkedIn, but looking for some call to action at every free time. You know, this isn't just this abstract, I float around in the market and hope stuff comes to me. That's not a strategy. That's better than nothing. You know, being in a niche and floating around, honestly, you know, we all know the retention in recruiting. What is it, 9 months, you know, a year? It's not long. So the fact that I made it 3 years and then 4 and then 8, there is something to that. You could— but I think it's why my growth has been starting to be a little, you know, closer to exponential is because very, very deliberate about direct response, which is the roots of copywriting, right? So it's in copy, but it's also in all three spokes. Hmm.

Really love that. Cool.

I think we've covered everything on the list that I've got in front of me, Will, and I can't believe 40 minutes have just flashed by. Is there any final points that we haven't spoken about that you would like to end the pod on, dude?

I think I'll just say to keep emphasizing that folks continue learning. That's listening to podcasts like this, right? Maybe hopefully there's one nugget here and there's another nugget in the next one, right? It's jumping into folks like Danny K. Hill's content and just soaking it up. I think that the consistency, the same way that I am consistent in my outbound strategy, I believe so deeply in the consistency of how I am learning and evolving. Um, and, you know, I'm— we'll see if I hit the million. I'm, you know, right there this year. Um, you know, and, uh, but in the end, I don't want to say I don't care. I, I do care. I deeply want to hit it, and it's a passionate goal, but I'm going to hit it at some point because of the consistency of learning and getting better and better. I'm going to be a little bit better next year. So I just want to encourage folks, you know, go back to the roots here. Consistency with your niche, consistency in the way you're growing. Consistency in the way you're learning. It's Atomic Habits, right? So appreciate it.

I was just about to actually ask, Will, in terms of— and you may like that it may be just ingrained in your personality, like this kind of drive and this consistency and this showing up every day. Do you ever— have you got little tips, tricks? Have you got anything that you might give to a new starter to help with consistency? Like Or is that really just your personality? Like, in a nutshell, what's your feeling?

It's a few things. I think it's getting around to other people that are good. I mean, I'm in an office right now. There's 20 of us here. Um, I deeply believe if someone's new, uh, I mean, this may be contrarian, and for devs, half the devs I work with are now and forever remote. But even the developers, right, talking about the most stereotypically, uh, want to be at home, I think that's actually more stereotyped than, but they have found juniors in any market. And I think especially in recruiting is get around other people. And that can be if you, if they don't have that option, it's getting around other people digitally. It's, it's listening again to podcasts like this. It's books. It's, there's a wealth of information available and you don't have to go do 7 hours tomorrow. It's put the podcast on your list, delete your Twitter, Delete your Reddit, get rid of everything else and put the things that are going to help you grow on the front screen of your phone, right? Like I have that. I ruthlessly eliminate things that aren't helping me, and that's recruiting-wise and otherwise. But I have a podcast app all the time. I've got, I've got a couple books that are, you know, I'm diving into heavily. And so I think, you know, Atomic Habits, not a recruiting book, phenomenal. Darren Hardy wrote a book, similar concepts, The Compound Effect. It's those small things. It's the 1% better every day. And I think if you stay in that, some days will be good, some days will be bad, but don't miss 2 days. You know, take 10 minutes to learn something today. Take 10 minutes and care about somebody today and do it every day for 7 years. You're probably going to go somewhere. Love that. Love that.

Go, dude. Thank you so much for coming on, Will. It was a pleasure to, to, um, have you on and thank you for sharing some little wisdom bombs today.

Appreciate it.

Yeah, super fun. Thank you. We'll catch you.

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