This recruiter has billed $1,000,000 for 5 years straight! (Master at Enterprise deals)

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 Brendan Thomas. Brendan has a pretty insane story. He started recruitment in his mid-30s. At his first company, he was let go after 6 months because he didn't hit quota, then joined another company and absolutely flourished. He's hit $1 million for 5 years in a row, and he is known as the master at tapping into enterprise accounts. On today's episode, we're going to be talking about Brendan's childhood and how going through financial difficulty at a young age drove him to want to make a lot of money. We're going to be talking about Brendan's strategies around how he penetrates enterprise accounts. He's going to be talking about which decision makers he goes after, the cadence, the platforms he gets the best responses on, and so much more. So excited to share this episode with you guys. Me and Ben absolutely loved it. And for anyone looking to penetrate enterprise accounts or just improve their mindset in sales, this is a fantastic episode. As usual, grab a cuppa or a glass of wine depending on when you're listening to this, and 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, Brendan. How are you doing, my friend?

I'm doing great. How are you guys doing?

Yeah, really good.

Thank you.

Really good.

I'm very excited about this episode. I have to say up front, it's probably completely irrelevant and probably no one cares, but I'm in an Airbnb today, and so my face looks ridiculously blue and I can't control the light.

So I just thought I'd say that straight away.

But on to the topic of Brendan. Brendan, thank you so much for joining us. I'm going to jump into the first question as always. What's the number one tool in your toolkit, whether it be a mindset, strategy, or software?

Yeah, I've watched a few of your guys' pods, one with Mike Williams, one with Mike Anderson, one with Brent— what is it, Fortuga is his last name, I believe.

Yes. Brent Osuga.

Yeah. Osuga. Sorry, forgive me. Those guys are all really, really good. And those, those pods are awesome. So I kind of thought about this question and I have an orthodox answer, but I also kind of like a little bit of an unorthodox answer. So if you'll humor me, I'll do both, right? So mindset for sure. I think anybody in this industry has to have a very specific mindset. They gotta have drive, motivation, grit, curiosity, right? Like you gotta be resilient. This industry is extremely difficult. Can be very challenging both mentally and emotionally, right? So I'd say that is definitely the number one. I would say AI technology tools that we use, right? That would be a close number two because that's going to make you more efficient, which can help you do the job better. But the unorthodox answer that I would say, and it's kind of tied to the mindset piece. And yeah, I've actually met quite a few recruiters who have similar stories. And mine would probably come from a little bit of, and I use the word loosely, but a little bit of trauma. Like I grew up in a household with very loving family members, but we had a lot of financial instability. Like my mom was sort of the sole earner in our household. My stepdad was working as well, but they both worked in industries that had to do with the housing market. So my mom was an escrow officer, my stepdad was in construction. So it— there was several housing market crashes in the US, right? One that I felt personally in 2008, that was when I was kind of in the early stages of my career. I was not in recruiting, I was in something else, but I felt that one personally. But there was one in the '90s, there was one in the '80s, there was others that happened when I was a kid. So I'll make a really long story short, but, uh, there was a point in time where my mom and stepdad both lost their jobs, and we ended up having to move in with my grandparents, my, my mom's parents. And, you know, that was hard for her. It was, uh, you know, it was a— it was kind of a weird, challenging time for us, but it ended up being great. You know, we got to— I essentially have two sets of parents. I had my grandparents and then my mom and stepdad, which was an interesting dynamic, but My grandpa was awesome. He was like a second dad to me. It was a really good experience. But as they got older, when I was in high school, my grandma fell ill with cancer. So she got to live out her life in our home, which was a blessing, but it was challenging to go through that. And then my grandpa, not too long after, ended up passing away as well. So I went through sort of that mortality phase of life at a pretty young age. And then when you when you kind of add the financial instability of the, the professions that my mom and stepdad were in, it was, it was challenging. And so again, I use the word trauma loosely, but that was challenging to go through. And my family didn't have money to send me to university. You know, I, I got relatively good grades. I put myself into, uh, community college. I was very specific. I took a business management, uh, program at the local community college. I applied for a grant. I was making like $40 grand a year at the time, and, you know, I felt like I got a good enough start. But ever since then, that's led to my mindset. That's helped me be driven and motivated and want to, you know, excel in whatever it is that I do. It took me a pretty long time to come into this industry, recruiting. I didn't start in this industry until I was like 35, 36 years old. The only regret I have is that I didn't start sooner, which I'm sure most people would say. But I do think, just to tie it all together, a lot of the, the skills I developed from an empathy standpoint, from working well with others to being, you know, very service-oriented, it happened from the experiences I had when I was a kid. So shout out to my mom if she ends up watching this. Stacy, you're awesome. And Yeah, I mean, that kind of helped me get where I am today. And I do think that some of those foundational experiences led to some of the drive and motivation and the mindset that I have today.

Love that, Brandon. Thank you for sharing, dude. That's a really interesting story. So, um, which is interesting because it sounds like you had a lot of love, but then there were also these other things that, that caused you to, to maybe have a bit more drive than the average person. Do you remember The moment when you were like, hey, I, I've decided I want to make a lot of money, or, or I want to be more financially stable— do you remember when you were more conscious of that?

Yeah, probably about 13, because I would start hanging out at friends' houses and their parents were like doctors and lawyers, and, you know, they had the, you know, they had the, the Chevy Suburban, or I guess, you know, maybe the UK version of like a nice, you know, Land Rover or something, right? And, uh, kids had big closets filled with all the clothes in the world, and they always had the coolest bike or skateboard or whatever it was, right? They had a swimming pool. So yeah, it was a young age when I said, I want this when I'm older, and I want this for my kids, you know. I know my parents would have loved to have provided that. It just wasn't, wasn't feasible.

Understood, man. Yeah, really interesting.

I didn't know that you got into recruitment, um, later than the norm, which is interesting, but I'm still become a million, million-dollar biller, which is fascinating. What, what skills, what other kind of transferable skills do you think you learn prior to, to getting into recruitment? Because I, I'm thinking the only way you could have possibly seen so much success is that you learn prior skills that actually were quite transferable to recruitment. Um, yeah, I said the only one, it's my brain trying to kind of, uh, rationalize what you've been through, I guess.

No, no, no. I mean, you nailed it. So it's an interesting story. And again, I'll try and make it as short as possible so we have time to go through this whole pod. But I owe going into recruiting to my wife, actually. She, one of her friends was a recruiter at a full desk agency and we were out one day and I was kind of at a point where we were about to get married and have children and all this, you know, all these amazing things in life. And I was running my own small business for about 10 years. Music's one of my huge passions. I was never any good at playing instruments, so I kind of got into the music industry from more of a business standpoint. So I started a company and I basically became a talent booker, which has a lot of odd parallels to staffing. You're trying to find talent that you think is going to perform well in your, in your local geography where people are going to come out to see them play. You're also working with things like budgets and what have you. So there's some unique parallels there. And then I also got sales from that experience because I had to go out and sell our services. So we would do everything from booking musicians, whether it was DJs, live bands, you name it, even just like performance art. We also would then help music festivals and other event promoters like Insomniac, Live Nation, Golden Voice to help promote their shows. And help to drive people to their shows. So I ended up building a newsletter. I had like a couple hundred thousand subscribers. I was working all over Southern California. And so there was the business development angle where I had to go out and find opportunities for our business. There was the sort of, you know, trying to figure out the best bang for the buck, who was going to perform the best. So again, there was a lot of parallels there. But when you're going to get married and you want to have children and you got the love of your life telling you, hey, you can't be traveling and gone on the weekends and work until 3 in the morning, you just, you get to a point where like, okay, I gotta switch this up. And so I don't have it on my LinkedIn. It's not that I'm not proud of it, but I did go into insurance sales first. Uh, the reason I don't have it on my LinkedIn is because the sheer volume of people trying to convince me to get back into insurance is just such a waste of time that I, I just don't even have it on there. But I worked for a really good guy. I worked for a company called State Farm here in the US. I'm not sure if they're over in the UK, but it taught me to make 100 phone calls and I'd get 99 people that would hang up. Well, I know I'd make 100 phone calls. I might get 10 people who answer. 9 of those 10 would hang up on me, and the one who didn't was hoping to lower their insurance coverage, not increase it. And my job was to get them to increase it. So you could imagine, I mean, that, that was just It was soul-killing, right? Like, I absolutely hated it. So when I, when my wife and I were hanging out with her friend, she was telling us about recruiting. She was telling me what she does. She was talking about how she'll call 50 people in a day and she'll talk to 20 or 30 people and maybe 10 to 15 will want to work with her. And I said, that's insane. Like, incredible. I want to be, I want to do that, right? Because I already kind of had the I guess the resilience and the sales muscle built. But if this was something that people were more engaging, I figured I'd give it a try. So that's how I ended up in staffing. Thankfully, I think a combination of those two experiences ended up helping me a lot when it came to staffing because I just, I was fearless. I'd call any hiring manager, I'd call any business owner, I'd call any candidate. I would tell them how I could provide value. If they didn't see it, move on to the next.

Yeah, I'm guessing going from insurance and, and that scenario, you must have felt like you were in heaven, like, switching to recruitment, which is like, again, very abnormal because most recruiters are like shit scared of like cold calling. But it's funny how when you, when you experience something worse, it's like actually it's a, it's a better scenario to be in, which is, uh, fascinating.

Oh, 100%. I remember my manager to this day, uh, at that time he saw the grin I had on my face when someone answered a call and actually said, yeah, sure, send me a candidate. I was like, I had goosebumps. Like I was smiling ear to ear and he's like, what got into you? And I'm like, I got my first yes. This guy wants to see some resumes. He's like, cool, what are you gonna do now? And I said, I have no idea. I don't even know how to, you know, I don't even, it was at that time the agency I was at was focused 100% on technology, which I'm 41, I'll be 42 next month. For me, I'm that age where, yes, computers were involved in school, but it was mostly just like writing your essays or homework and maybe a very elementary, like, HTML, build a basic website. I still actually remember my website was— I liked the band Nirvana, so I built like a Nirvana fan page, and it was just one page with a couple of links, and it would go to like, you know, a little few facts about their records or what have you. But I knew nothing about modern-day technology as far as engineering, front-end, back-end, DevOps, infrastructure. All that stuff was completely new to me. So yes, I ended up getting leads, but I had no idea how I was going to fill these jobs.

Interesting. Yeah.

And I just want to go back to— because you started, uh, recruitment mid-30s, Brendan, like, so you were at this agency at 35, am I right in saying that?

Well, I would have been, I guess, 36.

Yeah, because I started—

and I started in January of 2020, and I'm sure most people will remember just a few short months later the world shut down. Yeah.

So, okay, cool.

I, I don't know recruiting pre-pandemic or pre-hybrid or pre-remote or pre-any, any of these things. So I think that actually is a blessing for me because I kind of learned to do it in a time that was hard and unorthodox and strange times. So I, I don't know anything other than that, right? I've talked to many recruiters who started in 2010 and they're like, man, 2020 was super challenging. And I'm like, oh, I don't know anything different.

Yeah, really interesting.

Um, yeah, I'm gonna jump onto question number 2 because I feel like we need to get through some of these and because I know Brendan's got some juicy stuff to share.

Yeah, cool.

Super fascinating so far. What, what, what jumped out at me, Brendan, when we had the pre-call was you've averaged $1 million in annual billings for 5 years straight, which is pretty insane. So to hit $1 million in itself is pretty insane, but to do it consistently for 5 years, you've obviously got a system, a strategy, a process in place that's fairly predictable. The initial question was how long did it take you to reach this level? But I'm not sure if that's the best question for for someone who's hit 5 years. What I'd rather know now that I'm thinking about it, Brendan, is how do you hit a million 5 years straight? Like what is the, what are you doing that's giving you that consistency to hit such big numbers?

Yeah, so I was fortunate enough. So the first agency I worked at, I was only there for 6 months and it didn't go that well at first. I, my first quarter I did zero. That was Q1 of 2020, zero. Second quarter, I was at $65K and they let me go because in 6 months, only done $65K in revenue. It's not enough, right? Like payroll, payroll tax, benefits, commissions, et cetera. It just wasn't enough. And so I'm really lucky because those people that I worked with at that time didn't believe I could make it happen, even though I believed I could. So I immediately reached out to, and I'll be cautious not to drop the company that I work with, their name too much because I don't want this to be about endorsing the company I work for, but I wouldn't be here talking to you guys if it wasn't for them. They, I reached out immediately to the owner of that company and said, hey, I just lost my job at this previous agency. Here's what I've done so far. If you'd be willing to give me a shot, I know I don't meet your hiring criteria. But if you give me a chance, I'll work for commission only. You don't have to give me any paycheck. I will do whatever it takes. Don't even have to give me insurance. Just give, let me, you know, put me as a 1099 if you want. And the owner of the company I work for, her name's Heidi. She said, well, I'm not going to do that, but let's talk and maybe I could give you an entry-level role. You're going to have to start at the very bottom, lowest pay rate, but I'll give you a shot. And so thankfully that worked out. Shout out to Heidi and Tanya 'cause they gave me a chance. And in that 6 months in 2020, 'cause I joined in June, to the end of the year I had done $650K in revenue on my own dime.

That's massive.

And yeah, it was, so it worked out, right? And I would say honestly, the biggest reason why I was able to do that was the company I work at now, Jobbot, they didn't force me into any vertical. They didn't say you have to do tech, you have to do this. They said, run it like your own business, figure it out. And so I leaned on my managers, I leaned on colleagues, and thankfully I was able to figure it out. I got into an industry at the time that was booming. And, you know, like I said, first year ended up closing over $600,000 in billing. My second year, I did $1.2 million on my own desk, but the total revenue I brought into the organization was closer to like $1.8 million. There was about $600,000 that I had given in split deals with other recruiters because I had a really— at that time I picked up a whale and I think I hired 130 people in 9 months for them. It was a startup. So very lucky, right? But I'll tell you, going into— so in 2021, did $1.8 million into the organization, $1.2 million on my own personal desk. Going into 2022, that whale stopped hiring. They hit their goals. I had major imposter syndrome at that point because I was thinking, am I only here because I got a whale and I got lucky, right? Can I repeat this? And that pressure was almost harder than the pressure of starting from zero, quite frankly. So I just had to dig deep during that time when I hired for that startup. I had to take on 12 hours a day minimum, some days 14, 15, 16. My wife would walk into my bedroom where I had my desk. I would be giving this sales pitch to candidates all day, every day, to the point where literally my eyes would start to close and I would still be talking virtually in my sleep. No joke. And she would have to come nudge me and wait and I'd wake up and, you know, it was, it was rough. But I'm blessed because After that, I decided I'm gonna keep 5:00 AM to 5:00 PM as my daily schedule. 'Cause I work west, I work from New York to California and everything in between. So I kept that schedule and when that whale stopped hiring, I just pumped business development 12 hours a day. And I was lucky enough to pick up a couple more large accounts. I was told early in this business to avoid large enterprise accounts because there's too much red tape, there's too much, you know, hierarchy and politics involved in large business. But for me, that seemed like a bad idea. And so I just bet on going after large enterprises and startups, nothing else. Everyone else was going for that, you know, 250 to 500 employees, maybe $100 million to 400 million in revenue. They had this like ideal customer profile. I threw that out the door. So I got super fortunate, picked up a couple large accounts and I've been basically known as the enterprise account manager ever since. So back to your question, I've been able to, I have very good relationships with about a dozen clients and they'll spend anywhere from $100K to $350K a year with me, right? And so while I'm not, and I'm not doing that much new business development, I'm in a position thankfully that I can actually be picky about the company I work with because if they don't have a process that's gonna work for me or they don't have the need that's urgent enough, I can walk away from it and I can focus on the companies that, that have that need. So long story short, I've been able to maintain $1 million plus in total revenue into the company, all direct hire perm placement. By working with large companies that have constant needs.

Wow. I have so many questions after everything you've said, Brendan. I just want to go back to— I want to get into the strategy in a second because I'm really fascinated, you know, the tactics of landing enterprise deals. I definitely want to get into that. But I just want to go back because you're 35, you start a recruit— you start a brand new industry and you get let go after 6 months. You know, that's tough, man. I think that's like, you're— you've just started a new industry, you're mid-30s. At mid-30s, a lot of people have like solidified themselves for like 10 years in an industry at that point. So you get let go, you start a new company, and you start entry level. A lot of people would have probably been defeated by then and let their ego get in the way, Brendan. And I'm just fascinated what was going through your brain at that point. Were you just like success at all costs? Was there any ego getting involved? And like little questions popping into your head? What, what was going through your mindset at that stage?

That's a really good question. Um, so it's hard to sit here and talk about, you know, like success and everything else without feeling like you're kind of stroking your ego. But I would honestly say, and I think most people, if you were to talk to them about what it's like to work with me, I have a very low ego. And I think that does go back to sort of my upbringing where I had a lot to prove. I didn't have a lot to show off, you know what I mean? I had to prove that I could become something. So I would say I was much more the quiet optimistic, like, hey, this is just one setback. It's not the end of this story, right? And then also just running my own small business. And when I ran my own small business, I did okay. You know, I made like $70,000 to $90,000 a year on average running my own business, but it was not nearly enough to raise a family, get married, and, you know, still the life, right? So, but in that business, I had so many setbacks, you know. I, it really resonates whenever I, I listen to like a motivational speaker and they talk about how anybody who's successful has seen more failure than success. That is 1,000% true. Like, every, every, anybody who's in this position is a 10, you know, what do they, how do they say, a, a 10-year-long overnight success, right? Like, it's all about what you've been through. That gets you eventually to be at the right place, the right time, in the right room with the right people. So quite frankly, when I got into staffing and it was my first job, I actually felt refreshed because I was gonna do something new, right? It's like, you know, I don't know, think of gaming, right? Some gamers are excited when the new release comes out because there's a new campaign, there's a new story, right? And so That's what it felt like for me. It felt like a new chapter. I was excited when I got into insurance until I wasn't, right? But when that first company I worked at let me go, quite frankly, at that time I can remember feeling like this is not the end of this chapter. That was just the prelude, right? That was just kind of cutting my teeth. And I also felt deep down inside that that was not the right place for me. Just the culture, the people. The mindset of my leadership just was not in line with, with my own. Uh, so starting over again at the company I'm at now, it still felt exciting. And I knew, especially coming out of insurance and all that sort of, you know, uh, I guess torture I went through, I still felt like this industry was much better for me. So, um, so yeah, I, I get what you're saying. A lot of people would probably feel like, hey, I'm better than this. I deserve more. Like, these people don't understand me, or they don't know what they lost. There was a little bit of that maybe because I still believed in myself. But honestly, I had sold my small business for a very small amount of money, invested it in Bitcoin, which was great. That was a big, huge personal win.

Interesting.

Wow.

Yeah. And that was back when I think Bitcoin was $500 a coin. So I bought 10 cents, sold them at $65K a coin.

So that was a good day. But that's epic. Yeah.

Yeah.

You're probably one of the only people I've actually ever spoken to, Brendan. Maybe I don't speak to enough people with Bitcoin, but have actually purchased a Bitcoin and held long enough to make money off it.

Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Well, I kick myself because I shouldn't have sold them. Yeah.

Yeah, true. But still, I mean, You made more money than 99.9% of the population did with Bitcoin, so, or any kind of crypto. So that's awesome.

Yeah, well, it helped us, helped us get, you know, helped us get our house, helped us, you know, helped us with a lot of different things. Right. So that was, that was a good time. But yeah, the ego part, it really wasn't, you know, for me, I just felt like I had so much more to prove still that it just didn't really register. Right. Like I just felt like on to the next. You know, I'm up for this challenge and thankfully I still had it in me because where I landed ended up working out pretty good.

Love that, dude.

Should we go to strategy now? I want to jump straight into— you're known as the enterprise guy, Brendan, which is— I always, I'm always fascinated in enterprise deals because they typically are more sophisticated. They require more patience, they require more follow-ups. That require multiple decision makers. I might be overthinking it, but I'm just wondering if you wanted to land an enterprise client right now, a brand new one, what would be your process? How would you go about doing it and what would you expect to happen and unfold?

Sure. So, you know, we could talk— this could be like its own podcast, right? So I'll try to, I'll try to kind of dumb it down to like the most critical factors because awesome. And I'll kind of get in the mindset of if my desk disappeared right now, where would I start?

Right?

So I think one of the most important things I work— the company I work at, I can work anywhere in the United States. I can work any vertical. I can basically do— it's like having your own business within the business. It's an intrapreneur role. So for me, the first thing I would do is probably figure out a market, right? Like find a market that— and also a vertical. So let's just say hypothetically, whatever you're into, manufacturing, technology, healthcare, legal, construction, whatever it is, pick that vertical, find a market. The reason why I think that's so important is because later when you start digging into whatever role it is that you want to dig into, let's say hypothetically, let's say it's finance and accounting and you want to work on accounting managers. Well, it's going to be important for you to find a market that has enough opportunity there. So once you do get a strong enough candidate pool, you have multiple opportunities to send them out to. If I was to talk to Sam, for example, and Sam's in a, you know, came from public accounting, wants to get into the, you know, the private sector or industry, right? And he's completely open to a new job. I don't want to send him to one place. I want to send you to like 5, right? Because there's a better chance that one of those 5, if not multiple, are going to want to hire you. And you're probably going to like one of those companies the best. We're probably gonna place you somewhere. So important to find a, like a basically a geo hub, if you will, and a vertical. Then hone in on a specific job. I always say 1 to 3 jobs. Then with now with ChatGPT or Perplexity or whatever AI platform you choose, you can take a job description, dump it in there and say, give me the most important experience and skill sets for this job? It's gonna spit out a list. You can even say, give me a recruiting roadmap for this job. It's gonna tell you, here's your booleans, here's your keywords, here's what you're gonna wanna do. I mean, it'll literally lay it out for you, right? So I'll save that whole piece because now we're fortunate enough where we can lean on technology for that. The most important thing though, I think, and I think going into the future, is being an SME. You have to be a subject matter expert at whatever you're doing because all those intangibles, when you're talking with a candidate, if you can understand what they've done in their career, how that's driven, whatever, efficiency, value, savings, whatever they've done in their past positions, then you can find an employer or a client or a prospect who needs somebody with that skill set. To drive those same savings or efficiencies or whatever it is in their environment, and you can speak on the candidate's expertise and how it's gonna benefit that company, that's when you're gonna earn the trust and credit and, and your credibility is gonna shine with that prospect or with that future client. So you can't, I mean, I know there's a lot of people who are like, hey, volume, I just wanna send out a bunch of messages. Hey Ben, I have an accounting manager that's got, These bullet points of experience, looking for a new opportunity, wanna take a look at a resume. That's, that's worked for a lot of people for a really long time. I personally feel much better if I look that company up, I figure out what they're doing, I look 'em up, spend 5 minutes just, you can even dump the company's name in a, in a, in any type of AI tool. What has this company done in the last 3 years? What are they doing in the next 3 years? Okay, great. You get a story there. This company has gone through a business transformation. This company has been acquired by, by a private equity firm. Whatever intel you can get, and there's tools out there, ZoomInfo and others that you can actually just get that data. Then when you go to reach out to that hiring manager, how much better of a pitch is it when you say, hey Ben, I see that your company went through a recent merger and acquisition. I'm sure there's probably some, you know, positions that have been eliminated, perhaps some that you need to backfill. I'm curious, I see these accounting positions on your careers page. I've worked with another company in the area to help them fill very similar roles. And hopefully that's truthful. But if you have to, you know, if you have to say, I'm confident I can help you fill these roles, you know, I don't, I'm a big fan of not lying to a prospect about something that you truly haven't done because you're starting the relationship off on a lie. But whatever you need to say just to show them that you understand what they're going through, you understand what they're looking for and that you're willing to put in the work to help them, right? Our, our biggest job as recruiters is to find companies that are losing more money not having their jobs filled than what they're gonna pay me in a fee to fill that job. And so until I find that person or that company, I just keep rinse and repeat.

Interesting. That's great. Really fascinating, Brendan. And So that makes perfect sense. And I'm getting that there's more upfront research that you need to do to really speak the language of these guys and just knowing your market, knowing what, knowing how to match problems and solutions. I'm also thinking now, I'm guessing, and I think we talked about this as well on the prequel, Brendan, that first interaction, even if they're interested, probably isn't going to be a deal. It's probably going to be, correct me if I'm wrong, weeks, maybe even months until anything signed and sealed, maybe could you talk us through like an average journey from, from that point onwards? Let's assume they've come back and say, hey, Brendan, that sounds interesting. Let's have a chat. What's the kind of, what's the journey you're taking them on and what are the touchpoints? What does— and again, what do people need to know in order to actually convert this into a customer, do you think?

Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Enterprise accounts are, it's very rare that your first message gets a, oh my gosh, Brendan, thanks for reaching out. Absolutely. Let's book a call tomorrow and I'm gonna give you 15 roles to work on, right? Has that happened to people out there? I'm sure. But chances are that enterprise account is probably working with every agency they can to try and capture all the talent they can. More power to 'em. That's great, right? I actually prefer the customers that take a few touchpoints to break in there. Because there's a good chance they maybe have 3 to 5 preferred vendors and I want to become the 4th, 5th, 6th, or maybe the 3rd or whatever, whatever spot I can come in at. I actually prefer that. And so yes, there is definitely a journey. It's definitely not going to happen with your first message. So typically because I'm reaching out to less companies, I can afford the time to be more intentional and more thorough with the ones I do reach out to. So for example, if I find a company that I think is doing something really compelling, maybe they're experiencing rapid growth or they just, you know, maybe they got some major backing or they're just hiring a ton. I'll focus, you know, I like to focus on finance and accounting because I feel like folks in finance and accounting can oftentimes provide value pretty quickly to an organization, right? Especially things like cost accountants or accounting managers. Like these people provide value relatively quickly. So companies tend to be a little more willing to pay for talent like that, pay my fee, which I'm completely contingent. So they don't pay me anything unless I'm successful at filling the job. So yes, first outreach, telling them, messaging them about, hey, I see you're going through this scenario right now. I've worked with other companies that have gone through a very similar scenario. In fact, I see you're looking for these 3 positions, which I have experience filling those types of roles, I'll definitely want to point out a pain point that I know they're going through, whether it's, I understand that this local market is challenging, there's only so many candidates, or I understand that, you know, like turnover in this type of position can be high because there's a lot of stress involved. Anything I could do to hopefully grab that hiring manager's attention and help them to understand like, oh, this, this guy gets it. He's a recruiter who understands what's going on. Imagine if my message said, hey, I've filled 20 of these roles in the last 2 months. I can fill yours too. Most people are probably gonna call BS on that. So, but if that first message goes left on read, if you will, and I get no response, perfect, no problem. Couple weeks later or a week later, hey, Sam or Ben, I wanted to follow up on my last message. I see those positions are still up. I know my first message maybe just wasn't the right timing, but how is the timing now? Are you— could you use some help? How's the search coming along? Sometimes that message will go, you know, left on read and I don't hear back. No problem. Maybe I'll check in if it's an accounting role. Maybe I'll check in at the end of the month when I know they're really feeling the pain, right? It's month-end close or quarter-end close. And then I'll talk about that. Hey, I know it's month-end close. You're probably strapped right now. Thought it would be a good time to check back in, see if you need any help filling these positions. So that's just a quick example. But yes, sometimes it could take multiple touchpoints, but there will come a point when that client will say, hey, Brendan, thanks so much. I'm sorry I haven't gotten back to you. I appreciate the follow-up. And yes, we need help. Like we've— and then when I talk to them, that's when they tell me, look, the role's been open for 60 days. We were trying to fill it internally. I kept your messages to the side, but we're at a point now where my team is feeling the pain. Everyone's working overtime. Like, I got to get this filled. What can you do to help?

Really interesting. I've got quite a few questions lined up, but Sam, I'll let you have a turn.

No, thanks, Ben. I just wanted to know, Brendan, what decision makers are you typically looking to go after in enterprise accounts first? Is it HR? Is it the hiring managers? And do you always focus on one or do you message multiple decision makers out of interest?

Yeah, yeah, great question. So I'll try to be intentional on the department within that organization that I go after first. So I don't want to go after multiple departments at once because they talk or, you know, God forbid, let's say I go after operations, sales, engineering, finance and accounting, and I give them all a similar message and they all make their way back to HR. And then HR is like, who is this guy? Right? Like, so I'll try and focus on one department within that organization. Let's call it finance and accounting. And I will start with the hiring managers because I do find that they're the ones that are living that problem. Right? And they're also the ones that typically will tell you like, hey, Brendan, I'd love your help, but we don't use outside agencies. Okay. And I might challenge them a little bit on that. Or maybe I'll just say, well, I'll check in with you in a month and see how, you know, see how it's coming along. See, you know, if maybe we can get a dialogue going at that time. However, it is crucial to build a relationship with HR and talent acquisition, right? I find that there's really two buckets that I'll put HR and TA in with the clients I work with. There's the one bucket, which is they're a great partner. They want your help. They're incentivized to fill jobs no matter what it takes. They're not incentivized to fill them on their own. That's my ideal client, right? There's the other bucket though, that they're incentivized to fill it on their own. They don't have a lot of recruiting budget, if any, and they're going to very quickly shut you down. And I get it. If I was in their shoes, I would do the same thing. You know, I've had folks send really thoughtful messages like, hey, I'd love to have your help, but unfortunately I don't have the budget. I've had folks tell me, you know, block me, don't ever contact us again. You know, I've had, I've had it all. But I do think going through a hiring manager first makes the most sense because if that hiring manager can vouch for you or, you know, reach out to HR and say, hey, this recruiter has reached out a few times, he seems to really understand what we're looking for. He understands the market. I'd like to work with him. Then it's a little more of a friendly introduction when you meet with HR and TA.

That's interesting. I'm out of the, out of the successful accounts, excuse me, that you've had, Brendan, how many of them are in— because those two buckets are really interesting in terms of are they incentivized or are they not. Out of your clients, how many of them have been incentivized compared to the ones that haven't been incentivized to work with recruiters?

All my clients are incentivized to fill roles no matter what it takes. The ones that are incentivized to fill roles without agencies, I don't have any clients like that.

Interesting. And so what, what is the difference? Bit of a, bit of a, uh, a, um, a, um, a silly question almost, but like, what's the difference between the ones that incentivize? Are they always in like high growth mode, or are these roles just more valuable to them, or are they in different areas in, in the tech space? Like, what, what's going on to make them incentivize, you think?

I think it's a— I think it's really about the company. So some companies want their HR team to focus truly on HR, and usually that's going to be if you're working for a company that has multiple sites, whether it's manufacturing or services, whatever they do, if they've got 5, 10, 15 locations throughout the United States, that person sitting in an individual location is oftentimes tasked with all of the standard HR duties as well as interviewing candidates, setting up interviews with hiring managers, and hiring and onboarding. Those folks love to work with a good recruiter. If you go to the corporate level, they may be in a different situation where, you know, their role is still HR function overseeing the whole organization, but they may be getting all the general applications and then maybe doing some of the screenings at the HR or at the, sorry, the corporate level and then sending candidates to the individual sites, right? So I'm trying to make this kind of as simple as possible. There's a lot of nuances to it. But I find that the best relationships I have start from reaching out to a hiring manager at a specific site. Hiring manager will then reach out to HR, introduce me and ask to work with me. HR and I will meet, we'll agree on terms, then I'll start helping and filling, filling roles, right? Sometimes when you get to that corporate level, they may have a few agency partners they already work with on a national level, and that's okay. My goal is hopefully to get to that corporate office eventually and become another preferred vendor of theirs on a national level. But I like to start individually at different sites for that company. Now, if a company only has one headquarters in the United States and there's only one team to reach out to, I'll still do it and I'll still find success from time to time. But I think starting very, very organically at the site level where they're feeling the pain the most is definitely beneficial.

Hmm, really interesting. I just want to go back to the data side of things, Brendan, because I feel like— correct me if I'm wrong— but the data you are armed with before you send this message is, for a lot of other recruiters I've spoken to, is like the 80/20. Like, the context that you have before you approach them is super important. I don't know if it's the same with you.

Uh, 100%.

Awesome. So, so I guess my next question is where is your go-to place to find data? And is there any particular bits of data that you like the most in terms of like, oh shit, that's, you know, that's, that's a really great piece of data and I'm gonna go in with that. I'm just curious.

Yeah, yeah, no, great question. And, and LinkedIn is actually really good when it comes to that. Um, depending on the type of LinkedIn seat that you have or the type of account that you have, um, if you, so if you stumble upon, upon a company that's hiring, Of course, I'll look at things like, I'll look at their careers page. Do I see 4 jobs posted, 40, or 400, right? If I see 40 to 400, I'm pretty excited. If I see 4, I'm, you know, I'm not, not excited, but I may, I would much rather see a company with 40 or even 400, right? Super important would be to quickly then check that location in LinkedIn, search for their existing employees, and just see what the average tenure looks like. Where are they coming from? What, you know, what type of growth have they experienced? You can find a lot of these tools. Again, I don't want to go over every different recruiter site, but we use RPS Plus, which is kind of in beta right now. But there's some really good tools that can just help you understand. If I see they've grown 15% in a location, average tenure is 3+ years, and that location's got 25 jobs open, That's a really great opportunity, right? Because there's a good chance if I fill a couple, I'll get access to more. So I'll look for things like that. I'll also then just quickly check. I mean, again, you can use any AI tool or if you have like a ZoomInfo or something like that, you can quickly check the news of what's going on with that company. If I see those type of metrics and then I do a quick search and it shows this company just picked up a major contract with the government or they just got private equity backing and they plan on expanding and growing by 50% in the next 2 years, I'm even more excited. So I'll do that quick research. It doesn't take long. The more you do it, the quicker and more efficient you become at it. Some people could sit there and spend an hour before they send a message. I try to avoid that. I want to spend 5 to 10 minutes before I'm sending a message. That's usually plenty of time. For me.

Love that, dude.

Lots of detail. That's wicked. Uh, Ben, any, any follow-on questions from that?

Yeah, and now I'm thinking, I'm not sure if this is true, Brendan, but you may have had, you may have observed other recruiters trying to do what you do, trying to penetrate enterprise accounts, or maybe had conversations with other recruiters who are like, oh, Brendan, I tried it, it failed, it's impossible. What are the biggest mistakes you see other recruiters making when they're trying to penetrate enterprise accounts?

Perfect question, easy answer. They lose focus and they quit too early. Uh, it's a longer game, but I personally would rather— people have heard me in my organization say this— if anybody's ever been fishing, you can go fish at a dock and you can catch quickly, catch, you know, plenty of small fish, probably throw a lot of them back in the water. Maybe you go home with enough to eat that night, great. Or you can go on the 2-day journey out into the deep ocean where you're catching tuna that can feed a small village, and you're catching them one after another, right? I'd rather take the 2-day journey. I'd rather, you know, go out there and fish for a couple days straight and bring home the maximum catch I can. Bring it home, chop it up, throw it in the freezer, feed my family for a year.

Love that.

And so that makes— so they lose focus, they're not patient enough.

Yeah.

What would you say, like, what is a good— I'm now I'm thinking, okay, cool, I've got to be patient, I've got to put time in. What, how, what's the kind of average time that people should be looking at? So they've got like a— I know this is a tough question because I'm sure it varies quite a lot, but if there was like maybe an average, like, okay, you've got to put in minimum 60 days of follow-up, like that is absolute minimum if you want to win an enterprise account. Do you have anything like that that we can use, Brendan, or is it too broad?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, I can definitely tell you just because I've been doing it for so long now, Now, of course it varies. I have gotten lucky where someone's responded to my first message. Of course, then it took months to grow it from one requisition for one location, prove yourself, fill it, then they give you two more, right? Then you fill those. Then they're like, hey, I want to introduce you to my colleague at this location in this state. They need your help. Okay, great. Then you start with them with one requisition. Then they give you a couple more. Then you ask, hey, I see there's this other site and they're hiring XYZ. Can I get an intro there? So that takes a while, right? It could take you a year to, to go from doing one placement to doing 5 to 10 a year on average. So there's that element. But as far as the upfront business development and how long it can take before you actually get into an account, yeah, that can take a couple months for sure. And not everybody has that much time to wait, right? Like, I, I do recognize that I got very lucky to pick up a very large account that was in startup mode and during the pandemic. I got extremely fortunate that I landed that lead and that fed me for a while. It also taught me a lot of really good habits and behaviors. So I don't, you know, I don't neglect how lucky I was that I got that account. But I did get that account. It wasn't handed to me. I did get that account because I was spending 12 hours a day doing business development. So I would say on average, if you're going to go after an enterprise account and you don't have time to just wait around for a couple of months to land one, still go after the lower hanging fruit, still go after the, you know, the companies that are a little smaller in size that have more urgent needs. Maybe they're going to want a lower fee. Maybe they're going to— it's not the best account in the world, but if you can transact and close a deal in 30 days or less, don't walk away from them, but maybe just put 30% of your time into these long-term plays, these longer enterprise account plays. Because yes, it will take on average, I would say a month to get a response. You know, then by that time I've maybe sent them 3 emails, I've connected with them on LinkedIn, I've shot them a personal note, I've sent them an InMail, I've called twice, left them voicemails, I've liked their post on LinkedIn. You can't do that type of activity with 100 companies. You just wouldn't have the time in the day to do it, but you could do it with 10 companies, 15 companies, right? So I would say put 30% of your time into those long-term opportunities that are gonna be bigger accounts, then focus, you know, 70% on the quicker, the quicker turn, right? The quicker lower hanging fruit. Then once you get enough billing going and maybe you've made enough money or you have enough coming in, then you can maybe go to 50/50. And then eventually, if you've got enough repeat business, you've built up a desk, you're established, then you can get to where I'm at, where when I do BD, it's pretty much 100% enterprise BD.

Interesting. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And as you were saying that, I was like, yeah, that if I, if I was to do get into it, like, I would And I've heard this from other recruiters as well. It's like that you can focus on the smaller clients, but you should, you should always, I think, like you, uh, Brendan, have like these whales that you're nurturing over the long term. Um, because then when you cash in, it's like the opportunity must be incredible.

Um, and I just had a follow-up question from that. We are absolutely peppering you with questions, Brendan, so thank you for your patience.

Yeah, it's all good. Hopefully people get value out of it.

Oh yeah, I'm sure they will, man. Me and Ben have, so I'm sure other people will. Um, are you— let's say you target an enterprise account, we know it takes like, you know, can take 2 or 3 months to, to, or 1 to 2 months. Are you sending those multiple follow-up messages, phone calls, emails to one decision maker, or you have you targeted 3 within that department? Like, how does that work? Um, Brendan, out of interest, because my thinking is multiple decision makers increase my chances of someone reaching out and saying, hey, yeah, I've got a role.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, definitely you've got to reach out to 3 to 5, I would say, is a sweet spot. If you reach out to too many— could you imagine if the 3 of us worked and were in a company together and we're all in finance and accounting at different levels and we're out to lunch and I say, hey, have you guys been getting this message? I got this recruiter who's trying to work with me and You show me your phone and we have the identical message just with our name is different, right? Imagine if you, if you were hitting 15, 20 people in an organization like that. Yeah, it's going to start to come off as a little bit aggressive and maybe some, maybe some companies would appreciate that. I've seen it before, but I think 3 to 5, especially if it's at a site, right? Like a lot of companies have multiple offices throughout the United States. I'm sure it's the same in the UK. All over the world. If I'm going after one site within an organization, 3 to 5 in that department is a good, good number in my opinion. If you only do one, you run the risk that person maybe is just like has a habit of just ignoring recruiters no matter how good you are, right? Like maybe they had a bad experience with a recruiter and they said, I don't care if it's the best recruiter in the world, I'm never working with a recruiter again. Well, then you're just you're just wasting time. Um, but 3 to 5, you're bound to have somebody in that mix that has had good experiences with recruiters and will appreciate what you're bringing to the table.

Really interesting, dude. And, um, have you— this is a really tough question, so I wouldn't expect you to answer this or have the data for this, Brendan, but I'm just going to ask anyway. Have you noticed where most of your replies come from in terms of like, hey Brendan, thanks you know, perfect timing, thank you for reaching out and following up multiple times. Is it email, LinkedIn, phone? Like, where do you usually catch them in the, in the, in the process, do you think?

Yeah, yeah. No, that's an easy one actually to answer. So I would say LinkedIn and LinkedIn and email, only based on what I'm doing. Okay, so there's probably plenty of businesses that will answer the phone when you call and will, will say, hey, yeah, you got 10 minutes, tell me what you got, right? I have no problem doing that. What I find is I'll call and leave a voicemail, then they'll reply to an email and say, hey, Brendan, I got your voicemail. Thanks for reaching out again. Sorry I haven't gotten back to you. Let's schedule something. Because look, everybody's busy, dude. Not everybody can just stop what they're doing, take a call, and really have the attention span to truly take in what you're trying to sell them or tell them, right? We live in a world where it's chaotic. We're on our phones 24/7. We've got emails and meetings and calls and texts and social media and everything else. How could you expect someone to pause what they're doing and give you 10 to 15 minutes of their time uninterrupted and actually focus on what you're trying to tell them, right? So leaving a voicemail so they know you're a human, making sure that that voicemail is friendly and professional, right? Under a minute if possible. Nowadays, most people can just read your voicemail on their phone, right? Or they may play it while they're driving in their car and listen to it. But I do find that the voicemail oftentimes will lead to a response, but it'll be through email and it'll be a response to one of my emails. And when I leave a voicemail, I even say, hey, if you don't have time to call me back, that's fine. Just search Brendan, B-R-E-N-D-A-N, in your, in your email. You'll find my last message, shoot me a reply with your calendar and we'll book a time that works for you.

Nice.

That's awesome. Good thing.

Love that.

So do you find that most of your— that's the trigger? It's the, oh, hey, Brendan, I heard your voicemail. Is that, is that normally the trigger that gets them to reach out and like to actually respond from the email?

Brendan, it's a really good one because we live in a world now where AI is going to start becoming more and more prevalent in our industry. You know, there's going to be AI tools that send all your emails and do all your follow-ups for you and everything else. So I think hearing a human is super important. I've even gone as far as to say, hey, this is Brendan. I wanted to follow up with you. I wanted you to know that I'm an actual human. I'm the one emailing you. I'm the one sending you LinkedIn messages. I'd love to talk to you. I know you're busy. Reply to one of my emails. Let's book a time that's convenient for you. I'll make myself available. Here's my number. You know, whatever the case may be. But yes, I do find that it helps a lot. But every industry is different. Some people might just reply to your email, no problem, and they'll send your, your calendar, their calendar. So it varies. But that is one good, good way to convert.

Yeah, I'm hearing almost across the board that the more prevalent AI becomes, the less effective it's becoming in messaging and outreach just because they all look the same. They all— like, most AI messages all look the same, and, uh, there's no— there's very little nuance. So it's interesting that you said that as well, uh, Brendan.

Yeah, absolutely. I think AI is great for automation, right? Like, but I still think we as humans should still be dictating what the AI is doing for us, right? Um, I do think AI could be helpful in, in initial phone screens. I mean, if I get 100 applicants, I can't call 100. But if an AI can call them and say, hey, this is an AI, you know, agent for Brendan. I wanted to cover a couple of questions with you really quickly, then I'll share the info with Brendan so he can book a call with you if this role is a fit. And it can dial all 100 of those people and talk to 50 of them for me in a day. That's great. But they need to know it's AI. They need to know that this is just a part of the process. It's one step in the process and it's going to help me to be able to get enough time in my day to actually give them a call. I don't like the idea of AI for business development unless it's just automation tools on the back end. I don't want AI reaching out to hiring managers and talking on my behalf. That's, that's just something that I like to maintain. Yeah.

I mean, I don't think I would love to see someone who is using AI successfully, consistently for BD. Like, I just don't think— I think it's few and far between. I just don't see how I know people are banging on about AI, but I think for BD, I don't know. Have you met anyone, Brendan, that's using AI like really successfully for BD or I mean, yeah, outreach?

Yeah, the actual outreach. So look, I think, and this again could be a whole nother podcast. I think AI is great. I am a firm believer in AI. I think it should be used to supplement certain tasks that could be, that time could be better spent Yeah. Having real relationships and real conversations. That's, that's where I stand on it. So if it can help me do more in a day, great. But if it comes to, if it comes to building a relationship with a hiring manager or a HR manager or even a candidate, I personally feel like the whole point of AI in this space would be to free up more time to have those personal one-on-ones. And so for me, I'm happy to use it in that way. But yeah, I don't know. There's definitely going to be people who are going to try and use AI for business development and they may find success in it. But like anything else, I still think humans are super intelligent and I think we're emotionally intelligent and we can tell when we're getting AI messages. I mean, everyone already knows the em dash or they know the, you know, if the verbiage is just a little too perfect, right? Or, you know, even some folks are going as far as to intentionally misspell a couple of words. We're gonna pick up on that, you know what I mean? Humans are still very intelligent, we're emotionally intelligent. So I do think it's great for prioritizing and maximizing your time doing busy work. But I still, I'm old school in a sense where I still want to be handling my conversations with clients and candidates personally.

Awesome.

You've frozen for us, Brendan, but that's absolutely—

oh, there you are.

You've come back.

Awesome.

Yeah, sorry.

No, it's all good, dude.

That was it.

That was the AI. I didn't like my answer.

They interrupted and infiltrated our pod.

No, my AI broke down for a minute.

Just, um, conscious of time. Um, yes. Yeah, I was about to say that, Brendan. Um, I think we're going to come to a natural close now because this has been epic. And I, I honestly believe we should have you on for another one, Brendan, because I feel like we're just about to say that. Yeah, surface of, of what you know. And, um, but really appreciate your time today, mate. It's been super valuable. I've loved this conversation. And, um, just thank you so much for joining us today.

Yeah, thank you guys for having me. Absolutely down to do a part 2 when the time's right. Awesome.

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.