This Recruiter scales his agency to $3.7 Million (Solid Advice from the CEO)

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 Dante Nino. Dante has scaled his recruitment agency to 17 heads, and the majority of his team are hitting big numbers. Not only that, but Dante has mastered LinkedIn content and he's building an incredible brand on LinkedIn. On today's episode, we're going to be talking about the numbers that his top billers are hitting and the exact BD strategies they're using. We'll talk about how Dante manages to attract top billers to his company and keep them happy. And we're going to be speaking about some of the biggest lessons that Dante has learned scaling a recruitment company to 17 heads. As usual, guys, grab a cuppa or glass of wine depending on when you're listening to this, and let's get into it, shall we?

Dante, thank you so much for joining us today, my friend. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. How are you doing?

I'm doing great. Friday, can't complain. How are you guys?

Yeah, I'm really good. Thank you. It's beautiful weather here in the UK, which is very rare, and it is Friday, so definitely feeling perky. But I'm super excited about this one and I'm not going to waffle on. I'm just going to jump straight into the first question, Dante, which is what is the number one tool in your toolkit, whether it be a mindset, strategy, or software?

Yeah. They're all important to be successful recruiter, but I think for us most recently over the last, uh, you know, couple of years now, it's been more on the strategy side. Every recruiter that comes into our company is, you know, through trial and error, we've, we've been able to put together like a step-by-step framework on how to get them to their billing goals. So it's not just, hey, come in, here's the software, here's your market, go make calls, go make dials, go close deals. It's like, we're going to come in. We're gonna do some market research, we're gonna dial into their deal box and see where they're gonna tackle, and we're gonna kind of draw out a plan step by step, what it takes to make those placements, how many calls, how many dials. And, you know, if they're not hitting those numbers, we're gonna be able to dive into the data, trial and error, practice, do a lot of role-playing and so on. And we've been able to get people to hit those numbers by following these simple steps. It took us years to figure that out, but it's a good framework that we put along for every single recruiter here.

That's amazing. That sounds wicked. And I can imagine as a new recruiter or just a recruiter going into your business, having that framework must feel so good. Must just like feel, it must be so motivating. It must have so much structure. And I guess it just makes it a lot more believable. A lot of recruitment companies, I guess you're thrown on a desk. It's maybe not quite as bad as the old days where you're thrown on a desk with a laptop and a phone. But I suspect there's a lot of companies that still function like that, like kind of like work it out kind of thing.

There is. And if you're doing well, just go keep doing what you're doing. It's never like, this is how we're going to improve. And as you guys know, technology just changes year after year with AI and everything. So how you were doing business development a couple of years ago was working then, but now it's, you kind of have to be a little more creative and go a little bit deeper as well too.

Out of interest, Dante, is there any part of the— so you've built this system for new recruiters, uh, where you basically talk them through how to be a good recruiter and how to penetrate the market. Any part of the process where you see the biggest ROI or move a needle mover, out of interest, or is it different for every single person?

I'm just curious.

So it depends on their experience. Some people come in with a strong book of business and, you know, some of the things they already have figured out their ideal client profile where they're going to tackle and so on. But I feel like where we've been able to get a lot more successes with people that don't really have a precise book of business or a market to tackle. And we get them dialed in on what they're going to do. So they're not just going after everything. It's like, all right, well, you— we're going to go after this and you're going to piggyback off someone that's currently doing that. So you might work on some of their positions, but we're also going to create a BD strategy for you to start acquiring clients from that too. So once they find good candidates, say they're looking for a senior estimator, in North Carolina and they find 3 people, one gets hired, great. What do you do with the other 2 people that are good? People usually just, all right, let's move on to something else. All right, let's take those people to market. Let's find 10 to 15 companies, 2 to 3 contacts, and let's start doing a BD strategy with follow-ups and a good sales process to kind of go off that. And that's how we've been able to get people to kind of start opening those book of businesses and start going there. And once they find people there, Now they have people to send over to other recruiters as well too. So it's a lot of collab there that's going on.

Nice, Matt. Pretty interesting.

And it sounds very, um, cause I feel like niching is one of the interesting topics that keeps coming up for every single top biller I speak to is that, you know, they are always really honed in on one particular niche. Um, how do you guys, what's your process of selecting that? Is it just trial and error? Is it looking at the data on what where's had the most investment and growth over the last 5 years? Like, it must be quite a tough decision. So how do you kind of formulate which direction to go in, if that makes sense?

Yeah, yeah. No, of course. And, you know, being a recruiter and running your own desk, it's a business. You know, we like to tell our people to think like entrepreneurs, but they have our support as well too. And you have to be able to do a lot of research, know what's happening on the market, and so on. I mean, a couple years IT was strong. Everyone wanted to do IT. Everyone's killing it there. But, you know, now a lot of those people are pivoting into something else. So now it's just doing a lot of market research and see what's working, talking to people. Hey, where's the money being invested? And for us, it's architecture, construction, engineering. I would say most of our business right now, it's like 70% construction. But even within construction, we're not going after general contractors, which everyone does. You know, those people have, those clients already have 5, 6, 7 recruiting partners. Right now we're targeting very specialty contractors and we've seen that there's a lot of investments there. So now how do we do that? We talk to other recruiters, we talk to clients, we talk to candidates and see where the money's going. And if we find that, it was all right, well, we need to find, see how we could create a subject matter expert within that specialty contractor and kind of help them expand that. And Most recently we've been able to bring in people that come in from steel, come in from flooring, come in from roofing. And now it's like, all right, well now let's expand that. If we can make that sector into a million, $2 million, $3 million business there within you, you know, we could kind of expand those. And now we're looking at it more that I wouldn't say, all right, well let's just chase business, see what we get. No, we're, we're going to go through these little niches through the market that we know through the, the clients that we already have and what we're hearing on the market as well.

Hmm, super interesting. And yeah, that's really interesting. And why do you think— you might not know the answer to this, but it sounds like you tapped into an area of construction that other recruiters may have not thought of or tried to, or maybe some have but not as many. Why was that area more untapped, do you think?

Um, from interviewing people, to be honest, uh, and just talking to other people that are, are billing, uh, as well too. You know, now, you know, I wouldn't say, hey, I picked those markets. I actually brought in recruiters that were able to bring in that market and kind of expand on it. And it opened up my eyes too, because if you asked me 3 years ago we were going to be doing roofing or steel, I'd be like, no, there's no way. There's, you know, I don't even know what that is. But now, you know, we have recruiters closing placements, you know, 4 or 5, 6 placements a month on those little specific niches and sectors. And it's incredible. So I don't take any of the credit there. It's like the recruiters that come in have been able to open up my eyes on, hey, there's specialty contractors that are willing to invest and they're gonna be investing more money into it as well too moving forward. So now it's finding the right recruiters that obviously have the right mindset. I could provide them all the tools, but they know specific market that they want to grow into and we could kind of help them elevate to kind of expand on that too.

Really cool. And I'm gonna jump onto the second question. I know we've kind of gone off piece, Dante, we do that quite a lot. So sorry, we've thrown you a curveball quite early on. On. Um, I, I take it from the way you built the business, um, that you focus more on a few high-performing recruiters as opposed to, you know, a large team in terms of volume. Like, when did you come to that realization or conclusion? Did you really— did you want to do that from the very get-go, or did you kind of start to realize that further on, like maybe when you got to 5 heads? Like, can you talk us through that?

That's what I wanted to do day one.

Interesting.

Okay. Yeah, right. No, man, there's been a lot of, yeah, there's been a lot of trial and error. I mean, everyone wants to build this big company with 100 people and so on. And by the third year, we were doing really well. We had a lot of capital and we're like, let's, let's hire people. And we hired like 4 or 5, 6 people at a time and our quality went down and our overall revenue was going down per head as well too. Um, we knew that the learning curve was a lot more. We had to invest a lot more in people and we just couldn't manage it. And we realized that We need to step it down a little bit and I'd rather have, uh, you know, 10 recruiters billing $300,000, $400,000 than 25 people billing $200,000 a year or something. And we realized that then now it's like, okay, well, we, we, we definitely have to kind of change how we, we do things. And a few years back as well too, uh, you know, a good recruiter doing well was doing around $240,000 to $300,000. A year, but now, you know, we have people billing that a quarter. So we, we like, we haven't had the $300K, but we're going to have it this year. And it's crazy because I would never expect that before, but now that opened up my eyes. It's like, all right, well, there's recruiters out there that can bill this much. How can we attract better recruiters that way and support them more, whether it's tools, uh, maybe additional sourcing support. And get them to those higher billing numbers where it's less overhead, it's more attention to very few people, and it builds a very reputable business as well.

That's super interesting, man. I'm curious, Dante, when you were— when you had that phase where you had a lot of capital, you wanted to hire like 5 or 6 people at once. What was the main thing you were doing wrong that reduced quality and reduced revenue? Like, were there a few things looking back now you're like, we should have done that differently? Damn it, I shouldn't have done that. Just out of interest.

Yeah. So just like for us right now in recruiters, like we're trying to find our ideal client profile, like ideal clients that we want to go after. We, me and my business partner, didn't really have dialed in on who we wanted to bring into the company. If they sounded good, if they had construction experience, we'll teach them the recruiting. If they have recruiting experience and they have the right mindset, we'll teach them construction. And we were just all over the place. And now we have an ideal recruiter that we want to bring in. They have to have the right mindset. They have to be persistent. They have to have construction experience or background in recruitment, and they have to be at least a couple of years in and are willing to learn. And that's all the people that we go after. If they're doing IT, finance, and they're killing it, we won't hire them. We, we, we, that's just not our recruiter. That's not what we're looking for right now. If they're great and they're persistent, but they have no recruitment experience, Right now we can't hire them right now just because we're looking for high performers that are going to have a fast turnaround right now and get them up and running and help them with more additional support. So now we've realized that what type of recruiter we're hiring for and we're only sticking to that. I mean, I think me and my talent acquisition person, Erica, we had over in the last 5 weeks, or I think it was 186 interviews.

Well, she—

24 went to second rounds and we extended 3 offers. So, and there was thousands of applicants. So we're being very precise who we're bringing on as well too.

Really interesting, man. So you chose an IC or like you chose an IC, so to speak, and now you know who you're targeting.

Yeah. And we don't steer away just because someone sounds good or anything. It's like, no, this is what we're looking for. If it doesn't tick all the boxes, we're not going to move forward.

And I'm guessing the way you came to that was from the mistakes you made, you also hired some people and you were like, oh cool, we want more people like Sally and Sally has this criteria, right? Something like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So out of those, we did make some good hires. Yeah. But, uh, yes, we, we saw what's working for us. Well, this type of people are working for us. Well, let's do more of that instead of trying to create or reinvent the wheel.

Yeah, interesting.

And, sorry Ben, I just want to jump in. There was one other question, because now you're being a lot more selective. I'm guessing you're— even if you have to train them up a bit in a niche, you're getting a higher caliber of recruiter, it sounds like. And so my instant question was, what are you doing differently to attract higher caliber people? Because every recruitment company wants better recruiters, don't they? And you're going a level deeper in a specific niche, but like Is there something that you found attracts these top billers and makes them want to come and then stay out of interest?

Well, just like what you guys are doing. I know you guys are very big on social media, but I've been posting for almost 5, 6 years now and I've been doing it consistently over then. And in the beginning it was more about construction recruiting my clients and so on. But as I pivoted away from that, now it's more giving, providing more value to recruiters, providing, you know, you know, showing off what our recruiters are doing, the numbers that they're doing, but not only that, but what type of value we're giving out to our clients, sending them out to client visits. So this way we've been able to attract more people now. And, you know, I already have recruiters that are going to come into our company second and third quarter and some at the end of the next year. But that's because I've been constantly poaching them, talking to them. They've been seeing my content. We've been kind of connecting here. They said, no, I'm not interested right now. And that's okay. But I know that once their manager doesn't do something that they don't like, or they're just fed up with it, I'm going to be the first call for them to come over here. And of course they're billing and that's okay. I mean, I've hired probably 3 recruiters over the last year that took me from 6 months to a year and a half to bring them over. And now I'm just thinking more long-term. So, you know, all those good recruiters, they have everything at their current companies, but, you know, if I tell them that, hey, I could bring you in, I fly you out to go meet your clients, I want to build you, I want you to become a subject matter expert within your expertise. I want to build a good team around you and I want you to lead it, think like a business owner, but you're going to have the support from me, my business partner. You're also going to have someone on the business development strategy. And on the recruiting strategy as well to the delivery side. And we're going to be helping you kind of get that team together to hitting those high-performing goals. And you're going to be benefiting from it as well too. And that's my long-term vision with these people that are coming in that are already high performers. And, you know, they see us doing it. They see us putting the numbers and, you know, building a good brand. People are going to— people are starting to want to come and say, hey, I want to be a part of this.

Mm-hmm. Because A players attract other A players, right? That's the whole principle. And I've got to say as well, Dante, I absolutely love your content. And I don't say this about everyone. I genuinely think you've got great copywriting skills. The topics you speak about are awesome. And it's funny because, you know, I guess a lot of the topics you're speaking about are just stuff that's going in, in your business, going on in your business, right? And it's like you're like reporting on what's going on, which is what I love. That more recruiters should be doing that, like reporting on what's going on in the business. So if you're listening to this, look at Dante's content. It's bloody awesome. I love it. Um, no problem, man. And I'd love to go to BD because I feel like before we come from the call, um, Dante, you sent me an email with like a really detailed outline of what you guys do for business development. So I suspect you have got this down to like a science. And as most things, they always need improving and changing and adjusting. Um, but I'd love to get into your BD methods. Like, maybe we can start off higher level. What have you found that's kind of working at the moment in, in your sector? Just like, what's the number one thing or number two thing that you do to get the best results with client acquisition?

We have three different business development strategies that, you know, bring in clients. Uh, you know, MPC— everyone knows the MPC is Most Placeable Candidates. Uh, It's around 60% of our new business that comes in. Uh, the outreach is 20%, and job postings, calling from job postings, around 20% as well too. Um, you know, but, uh, the NPC just works the best because you provide value from the start. And, uh, I was a corporate recruiter for a year before I started my business, and I signed up two agencies in, in my year. And though one of the agencies was just Persistent, called me every other week, just found me at the right time. And I was like, hey, I actually do need help with this. I know, like, uh, here you go. And the other one, just one email, uh, perfect timing. It was a sales rep in a location that I couldn't find anyone. And I was like, all right, you got my attention. Like, I actually, I need to talk to this person. I actually need someone. And that was through an NPC. So now within our business, I'm like, guys, like NPCs do work, but you also have to find the right person. It has to be good quality. And you have to be persistent as well too. We realized, uh, you know, a couple years back, um, if we send out 20 emails to, you know, our ideal client list, uh, we get an open rate, uh, about like 70%, and we'd get a response rate about 30%, which was good. You know, for every 20 emails you're getting, you know, a response rate of 30%, and some are good, some are, you know, not, but at least they're replying to you. Now, if you're doing that, we're seeing less than 5%. And even then, sometimes we're not even getting any responses now until we do a good follow-up. And it takes us, you know, 3, 4, 5 times to kind of reach out to someone to actually get a hold of someone and get in touch with them. I think emails and, you know, AI is good. You get a lot more out there, but it's been making it a lot harder to get in with these companies just because everyone's kind of doing this. Interesting. But as far as a business development strategy, we realized that— I mean, I sat down with our business development manager last week, and, you know, we were kind of talking, and we're changing it all around just because we're seeing that 7 steps is not working right now. You know, we have a 7-step process that we follow. So call, email, email, call, email, call, email. And now that was spread out between 2 weeks. Now we're doing a couple more, a couple more in between that, but we're spreading out between 4 weeks. So our lifespan reaching out to a client is 4 weeks. Um, and we've seen that it's now taking us around almost 8 times to get to, to try to get ahold of someone now. And that's a lot higher than before because before it was a lot easier. So now we're, through our ATS, we're able to kind of create a deal box where if we're gonna start a new BD strategy, let's say, Ben, we're gonna tackle the Carolinas, then we're gonna go after steel fabricators. We're gonna find companies that do up to $50 million, you know, $1 to $50 million. That's kind of our bread and butter. We're going to find 20 companies that do that in that space. We're going to find 2 to 3 contacts on each that are hiring managers, and we're going to put all their data into this campaign here where you're going to follow. Week 1 is going to be, you know, 4 touches. It could be a call, email, send a LinkedIn connection, send a LinkedIn message, let it, let them breathe. Then the second week, we're going to follow that, but you're going to go through every single thing and be organized with that. And we're going to do it throughout 4 weeks. And while you're doing that, you're still recruiting on some of the positions you have or someone else. And if you find new candidates that are good, we're sending them out to that list as well too. On the second week, send another NPC. Hey, I also came by another estimator in your area. Not sure if there's a need or if there's anyone I can talk to. I just want to send this over to you. Let me know if you have any questions. Be polite and move on. And we've been seeing that we've had a lot more success that way. but you know, a lot of recruiters, I feel like now give up on, on the one outreach. Like, I just didn't get any response. Well, how many times did you touch base with them? I was like, oh, once, or I did it last week. I was like, well, you should be doing it consistently week after week for 4 weeks now. And then if you do that consistently, you don't get any response, then we gotta look at your outreach. Your outreach is probably not there. And there, there's always something to kind of look at into there.

Wow. Really interesting. Got so much to unpack there. Sorry, go ahead, Sam.

No, I was going to ask something slightly different.

So if you've got a question— Yeah, I'd like to stay on.

Yeah.

Um, what— so that's really interesting. I think it's interesting to note that you, like, you just have to do more follow-up, and I'm guessing that's because it's become a lot more competitive. Their emails are full, they're busy, and there's just a lot more noise in the market right now. Dante, I'm guessing that's the main culprit, right? Um, what are you— from, from your team, I'm guessing there's I'm sure there's lots of people that are very good at business development in your business, but there might be some people that are just a little bit better or getting better clients or a little bit more consistent with— what are they doing differently? Is it volume?

Is it—

are they, are they tweaking their stuff to sound— make it different? Are they better on the phone or something? Like, have you noticed any nuances between the people in your business who are better at business development?

Yeah, I mean, I feel like, uh, some people are just better understanding their markets and, and just being better with people. I mean, we have some people that are building better relationships and some people that are more, you know, straight to the point. And that's okay. You know, if it works for them, it works for them. But I feel like some of our recruiters that are really good with our clients, they're texting them memes and they're like, dude, get back to me. Like, what's going on? I had a recruiter yesterday, she was telling me, it's like, yeah, He said they're having the final interview and I told him, if you don't make an offer by this week, I'm going to be pissed. And I'm like, you said that to him? He's like, yeah, he's a good guy. Like, you know, we've worked together for 4 years. I'm like, well, yeah, I know, I love it. And, you know, those are the relationships that happen. Those relationships don't just happen over the phone and, you know, phone calls and, you know, emails. We've been able to kind of— our best recruiters have met most of our clients in person as well too. I mean, 2 weeks ago we had 4 recruiters, 2 in Vegas and 2 in Kentucky for different steel conferences. And, you know, they said it too. It's like, it was like walking into and seeing celebrities because all these people that they've seen, they've seen them on LinkedIn and within their niche and what they do. And it was great. You know, we flew out 2 camera people as well to shoot content with them as well. And they shot videos. They did some content as well too. And now they've said like, yeah, like I was able to shake hands and I got more positions, I got more recs. And it's so good to meet people in person because the relationship just goes a lot differently there. But I feel like some of the people that are better is not just because they're good at selling better, it's because they're building closer relationships and partnership with these clients.

It's interesting. That's really interesting. So that— it's hard to to like pinpoint exactly what they're doing, but it's something about their personality, something about the way that they're building relationships that it's, I guess it's, it's a tighter hold. It's somehow they're managing to differentiate themselves to kind of latch on to that client in a deeper way. It's really interesting.

Are any of your top billers doing unorthodox BD methods that you're like, oh wow, I didn't know that could work, or that's really cool?

Is anyone doing that or does anyone Yeah.

No. Yeah. Uh, I had a recruiter that came in and, um, she ran me through some of the BD strategies that she was doing and it was interesting. And I put it out on a post the other day, cause I'm, I mean, the thing about that is some people tell me like, why do you give so much value away? Like, well, because most people won't do this consistently. And that's the thing is like, you could tell them how to do it, but most of them won't do it. So, you know, the few that do good. But one thing that she does is if she's working on a role right now, And let's say she's sourcing and she finds hiring managers through the— so for us, we work on very specific niches. So when we're going to be doing sourcing, what we're going to do is let's find 10 companies that are competitors. Within 10 companies that are competitors, let's find what job titles work for this. So if it's a project engineer that's doing roofing, we're going to go through every single roofing contractor, 10 of them there. And find every project engineer there. And we're going to contact them, of course, you know, go through people that are open to work, go through people that recently updated their resume first. Then after that, we're going to go a little more passive. But within those 10 companies, you're going to pass through hiring managers. You might pass a VP, you might pass someone else. So what she does, she already has an automated template saying, hey, I'm X, Y, and Z. I specialize in— I work on 'X, Y, and Z roles. I'm not sure if you're looking right now, but I would love to connect sometime.' That's it. Short and simple. But when she's sourcing, she's sending out 10 to 20 of those a day on that. So, you know, you're getting 10 to 20 touches a day on that, and it's short, simple. You're not really chasing business, but if it does come back, great, you get a response. But, you know, they've been very fortunate to get a lot of responses that way just from doing that simple other step. And it's a template that you could just save It's short and simple. And while you're sourcing it, you're just sending it to hiring managers with those, those 10 companies. And they're not companies that are just random companies. They're within your niche, they're within your sector, and you're kind of going for there. Hmm.

Interesting.

So just so I get that right, Dante, she's, she's going after the hiring managers and she's sending templated messages to other decision makers that aren't necessarily part of the initial goal, but people who could be useful.

Am I right in saying that?

So she's sending, so she's sending like double the amount of messages and getting her foot in the door in more areas of the business potentially?

Am I right in saying that?

And it's not aggressively, hey, can I talk to you? It's like, hey, it's simple. So she's just finding hiring managers that are competitors to what she's looking, she's working on right now. And she's just saying, hey, my name is Sid. I specialize in X, Y, and Z. I work on X, Y, and Z roles. If you are ever looking for anything or need any, any assistance, let me know. Have a good one. That's it. It's short and simple. You're not asking for a meeting or anything. You're just trying to see if there's a response. Just get in their ear or something.

I love that, man.

Really cool. Great value. Awesome. I'm curious, Dante, in terms of your 7-step sales process, the one that you sent me, I think you kind of briefly went and mentioned it. I completely get that there needs to be more follow-ups and over a longer period of time. But what are you— where are you finding— is there a point in the process where you're finding the most responses? Is it like step 4 or is it step 5 or is it really the end of the process? Like, where are you— I'm not sure if you have the data around that, but where are you seeing the best responses or the best kind of initiation?

It's hard to track that just because, uh, in recruitment it's all about timing. If you get someone on when they're necessarily needing that person and they'll respond on the first time. We'll get responses within a few minutes or a few hours, but there's some companies that aren't really looking for that. So we might see a response on the third or fourth. So that's why I said our bread and butter is 3 to 5. We do see some in the beginning, we do see some at the end, but we've seen like we've gotten probably the most responses between 3 to 5 touchpoints.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Cool. And so for people that are listening, 3 to 5 is a Number 1 is call the hiring manager, right? Number 2 is send the NPC email. Number 3 is the follow-up email. So you'll get from that point onwards, you've had 3 touch points: a call, an NPC, and a follow-up email. You'll get the best responses from that follow-up email onwards. Yeah, cool. Step 4 is a call again. Step 5 is another follow-up email. And I guarantee you most recruiters are probably doing a fraction of this. As you say, they're probably doing one one or two, absolute max, um, which is really interesting.

Yeah, and I think the fear around that is they don't want to seem too pushy. That seems to be the biggest kind of pushback I get from— or when I, when I speak to recruiters about one follow-up, it's typically, I don't want to come across as pushy. What would you say to those, those recruits who have that fear, Dante? They're like, oh, I don't want to come—

I don't want to piss them off by, you know, consistently chasing them up.

Is there anything that you would say?

If they don't want to do it, the other recruiters will do it. And, uh, I'd rather be pushy and say sorry than not hear anything at all. And I think that's the approach we should be saying. I mean, it's a sales job, but if you do really feel like you could provide value and you have really good candidates for them, you want to talk to them, you apologize. Hey Sam, I'm sorry for bugging you. I'm not even sure if you're the right person to talk to, but, uh, I do have an estimator experience. They have experience in X, Y, and Z. Do you know who I could, you know, potentially talk to about this, about his candidacy and just apologize. Just say, sorry. At the end of the day, if you say, okay, well, what type of estimate? Well, you know, they have X, Y, and Z. It's like, what do you ask? What do you ask? What do you guys have going on right now? I see you guys everywhere. And once you're able to talk the talk and they know exactly that, you know what you're talking about, you'll have more responses that way instead of just going out to a new niche and unknowing. But I think that you need to be a little bit pushy, especially now because they're getting bombarded with res— with resumes, they're getting bombarded by recruiters. And if you could get them on the phone and they see your name often, you'll be surprised that you're going to get in front of them. And right now it's super competitive. It's hard. You know, there's markets right now that are down and it's, it's only going to get harder here for the next month. But I do believe that there's specific niches and there's specific sectors that you could definitely be successful in. And there's recruiters that are killing it right now too. So there's really no excuse for you to not be successful. You have to do a little bit more and you have to get a little bit out there, and most people are not willing to, but if you are, you're going to be successful. There's no doubt about that in the recruiting industry.

Awesome, man.

I feel like— I don't know if you found this, uh, Dante, but I find a lot of recruiters, once they pick a niche, they find it really difficult to pivot if they need to. And it's like, if they've been experienced, if they're experiencing like SaaS for 10 years and SaaS is completely, you know, let's assume— I think— I don't think SaaS is doing great at the moment, I'm wrong, but there's some markets that are just going to be way tougher, aren't they? Like in terms of the investment and just how it's functioning. And I feel like a lot— I did— correct if I'm wrong, but I feel like if they were open to pivoting more and going to where the money's at, they'd have a much easier time of making more placements and winning more clients. What's your kind of thoughts on that?

Yep. Yeah, it's very hard and it's uncomfortable in the beginning if you're not going to be— if you haven't done that, you haven't done that for years, and obviously it's a new market and everything, it's going to be a challenge. It's not going to be easy and that's okay. But, you know, with recruitment, you have to kind of follow the money sometimes. And that's just part of it. I've had recruiters that were on the insurance side a few years ago and they were killing it, and now they have to do something slightly different. Um, I would say if you're completely like on SaaS and you're trying to jump into construction, that, that is going to be tough. My suggestion would be try to find something that is still working. That's somewhat relatable to what you're doing. Like even for us now, we have a recruiter coming in and she just does manufacturing. We do nothing in manufacturing. I have, I have no idea what manufacturing does. Uh, I was honest with her and I let her know it's going to be a challenge. You're gonna be on your own. But we do have a good framework. We do have a good support system, and we will tell you how we're gonna get to your billing goals and give you a daily game plan, a weekly game plan. We're gonna coach you, mentor you to get you there. So if you're not afraid of that challenge, then I believe we can be successful together. But I will let you know it's gonna be a challenge. I have no idea what manufacturing is, and none of our, you know, recruiters is, but I do believe that if you're a good recruiter and you're good good people, you could pivot and kind of be successful there. But at the end of the day, it won't be easy. Just know that it's going to take some time and it's going to be very tough.

Um, pretty interesting. Um, you answered this question in the pre-call, but I'd like to go through it again, Dante, because, um, a lot of recruiters struggle to get from like $300K to $500K or make that jump in their billings. I know that you're quite prolific for taking recruiters from a certain level and really getting them up to like another level, whether it be $500,000, $600,000, $700,000 in billings. What are the biggest needle movers you found really taking a good recruiter, you know, to an amazing recruiter or an average to a good recruiter in terms of billings? What's your feeling?

I feel like the recruiters that are in the $200,000, $300,000 kind of ballpark, they're good recruiters. But every time I ask them, who are your best clients? It's like 3 different things, 3 different answers and so on. And, you know, I always tell them as well too, it's like, find your top 2 clients and make sure that they're within the same niche and so on. And let's go after that. Let's do more of that. You know, why are you working on a mechanical engineer that you make $20K and you have $100K in business in construction? Like, that's just a little bit off. Yes, it's some money off the table. Maybe we could work on if it's a really good client that you have. But I think we just can't go at everything. We have to be very precise on what we target. And now we've seen that people that come in with, and, you know, we get them to kind of focus on a good niche and a good client profile is simply by identifying who their top performers are, who their best clients are. And we're going to do more of that. And, you know, now that's, uh, we build a good base, you know, recruiters that come in, uh, we had a recruiter come in on the electrical side and, uh, he's helping out one of our other recruiters that does electrical as well too. And they made, he made a placement within 22 days and that's because we already had business in that sector and he already knew it. So they're doing a lot of collab there and now he's building his client list as well too. And he's been very successful, but that's because we were able to tell him you're going to do electrical, One candidate you find is going to work with their clients as well too. And your candidate, you can start pro-marketing as well too. You know, the worst thing that we're having right now is that one of our candidates has an offer for the other recruiter's client and his client says like, ah, shit, well, I wish it was my client, my candidate, but now it's going that way. And some of the people, some of the candidates that we have right now are, they have 3, 4, or 5 interviews with some of our clients. And, you know, now they have to kind of pick on who they want to go with. So, you know, now you're getting more placements where you find one candidate, you got 2, 3 companies that you could send them to. You have more opportunity to make more placements that way. And I think that's the biggest thing right now, because we have recruiters that will find one good candidate and there's roles for them already. We already have roles. The hardest thing right now is finding good candidates that are going to be good and sticking to that. Because if you're a subject matter expert and you keep growing that, and you have a good team around you, that's gonna help you kind of build up that. Uh, we've seen the most success there where they're now they're making a split here once a month, but they're also making a placement themselves, or they're making 2 splits, 2 placements themselves, and they kind of keep building up from that. So now, and it's also important because I realized that many recruiters that I talked to, they don't really have a good automation system set behind before coming in. Like, What we do is we have job posts up just to kind of see what's out there and the current roles that we have. But we also have alerts. We have alerts for jobs that are going up. We have alerts for candidates on Indeed, ZipRecruiter, and LinkedIn. So every time there's an estimator that puts up their resume, we get an alert on our inbox that that estimator is on the market. So, you know, we have a time block in the day. You're going to go through all your alerts, all those candidates that are there. If they're good, let's get them to market. So now a lot of our placements are going that way where we have a system that's automated with candidates that are within your niche, with job postings that are getting posted constantly, and we're getting those candidates out there really quick. And, you know, a lot of our placements are very active, you know, people that are up against the resume, people that are getting there, but we want to be the first ones to get to market. And a lot of the recruiters that I talk to don't really do this. They just kind of go out and hunt. Which is good. You always want to do that, but you also want to be proactive. What's on the market today? What's on the market tomorrow? Make sure you go through those alerts every single day and get those people out to market as well too.

Love that, man.

Really interesting. Are there any—

Oh, sorry, Ben, go ahead.

No, I just want to go back to that point because I think a lot of people assume that to get to 300 to 500 or to make that massive jump, it's like you need to do more calls, you need to wait you know, you need to, you need to stay in the office till 8, 9 PM. You need to, you know, burn yourself to the ground. And of course you need to work really hard, I'm sure. But it's, you know, it's interesting that you're saying that actually the ITP is the biggest needle mover for people that make that big jump. I just think that's fascinating and a really valuable insight for other recruiters who want to make that jump as well. Sorry, Sam, go ahead.

No, I'm just curious on the automation side, Dunsey, because I found that really interesting. The fact that you get an alert when any new candidate has put their CV up, which is really cool. Are there any other automations that are really useful, like one or two that you've implemented that move the needle forward?

Uh, no, I mean, uh, I feel like alerts— setting up job alerts is, is always important within your niche and your markets. Uh, setting up candidate alerts on ZipRecruiter, Indeed, and LinkedIn is very important. And other people— Monster has them as well too, Dice. Um, those are very important for, for people to kind of be active. But other than that, no, I think, you know, we have a rule here in our company to post 2 times a week on LinkedIn. Some people are very uncomfortable with that. But you think that in the beginning, just post your jobs. Let's just let people know what you're working on. Another thing that we do as well too is 100 connections a week, you know, connect every single time you're sourcing, connect with those people, start building your list from that thing because Now you're going to have a list of 5,000, 10,000 people within your specific sector. And once you're posting that job on LinkedIn or just putting something out there on LinkedIn, they're seeing it. And, you know, when they're looking for a job, they're going to be like, hey, I remember that guy, Ben. He posts a lot about X, Y, and Z. Like, I'm going to contact them. And we've seen a lot of that too. And that helps. But that, that is slow. And it takes time and it doesn't happen overnight. You have to do it consistently and you'll start seeing the returns. And we have, you know, right now we have recruiters that are getting a lot of inbound business and now we're saying no to a lot because these are our terms. This is what we do. And if we would be doing a disjustice to you, if we went and did this and we have other partners that we, uh, We cannot recruit at this rate. Like we, we wanna make sure that we prioritize every single of our clients, you know, we wanna make it work. Um, and we, we've been turning down a lot of business that way and, and we're okay with it. And, and I tell the recruiters, I'd rather you go in every year with, uh, you know, 3 to 5 clients that are 6-figure clients for you that are good clients. They believe in you and want you. And then, you know, maybe sign on a couple others that are gonna give you a couple placements there and you're gonna become a $500K biller that way. but I don't want you, I don't want you signing 20, 30 agreements that are irrelevant and not meeting your terms and not valuing yourself. And I think that's very important cuz a lot of recruiters just sign up anyone. Mm-hmm.

I feel like this is a good transition just to speak about the brand that you've built, uh, Dante, cuz you do video content, your copywriting is amazing. I feel like you're 5 to 10 years ahead of the recruitment industry. Um, when did you decide to start doing content and why did you decide? Cuz Sounds like you've dedicated a lot of time and effort into it and gotten to the level you are. Do you remember the point when you were like, okay, I'm going in on this and these are the reasons why?

I met someone else that was very many years ahead of me that was a lot more successful than I was. Uh, he does private equity, uh, recruitment, and, uh, he, he was building around $4 million with like 2 other people himself. And, uh, I sat down with them, we think we sat down for lunch and everything, and he had a a large following. He would post a lot and everything. He's like, man, you should start now because in the next 5, 10 years it's going to be huge and a lot more people are doing it. I think, I think he told me like, uh, less than 1% of people post online on LinkedIn.

Yeah.

And I was like, if you post once a week or, you know, or consistently once a week, you're going to be part of the 1%. Don't you want to be part of the 1%? I was like, yes, I do. And I want to be like that. And, um, I think that was the, the, uh, the turning point for me. I was like, I was uncomfortable. I really like to be low-key, kind of just do my own thing, but I was like, if that's the, if that's what I need to sacrifice to be successful like him, like I will do it a hundred times. So I was just like, screw it. I'm gonna start posting. And, uh, you know, I was nervous and everything, but I feel like that was the biggest turning point for me. Like I wanted to be, uh, successful and I wanted to, uh, make a lot of money as well too. Um, but the branding and content started pivoting from there. Like before it was just about me, the recruitment industry. What I recruit on, my roles and so on. And now it's more like about the recruiting industry, providing value to recruiters because eventually I want those recruiters that are within my market and my sector and that are good billers come work here with Tielo and we'll help them elevate their success, more branding, more marketing and so on.

Love it, man. And if you could quantify, it might be a tough question, but can, if you could quantify how much impact LinkedIn has had and branding specifically building your brand has had on your business? Could you put a figure to it or could you articulate it?

Yeah, I mean, I think even the last two recruiters that came in from, you know, the branding and marketing have generated over $1 million in 6 months just from, you know, bringing them on board. So, you know, you can't really put a value, oh, hey, I made this much for this post. But, you know, I think if it wasn't for LinkedIn or branding, they would not even know who I was or what the LO is. And now that we've been able to bring them, you know, from day one, you know, they were able to bring a strong book of business. They were able to believe in our mission and where we're looking to take our company. And, you know, if it wasn't for LinkedIn and branding, they would have never been here. And now, you know, we're, you know, they've been able to close a lot, a lot of deals that are more than 7 figures. And, you know, that's to the company. And thanks. Thank you to LinkedIn and the branding for that.

Awesome, man.

That's so cool. Yeah, it's funny, people forget that LinkedIn— people think that LinkedIn's just for like client acquisition and candidate acquisition, but actually it's an amazing tool for new recruits, for new team members. I hear that time and time again, actually. So that's really cool. Dante, this is amazing. And we're coming towards the end of the pod, but I'd like to ask you another question, if that's okay, which is probably— I know, crazy, right? It always goes by so quickly. There's a recruiter listening to this right now and they're like, oh my God, this has been amazing, Dante. Is there anything else you have to share with me to help me make money as a recruiter? I want to make more money. I want to be happier. I want to live the best life. From your experience of growing a successful company, observing all these top billers and building up top billers, is there anything that we missed, do you think, that we should share with our audience?

I think just know that it's going to be a lot harder than you think it is. It's going to be tough. It's not easy. And that's okay. But go into a company, even if you could sacrifice on the salary and do more commission-based, you're going to make a lot more money. Copy everything that a top performer does, you know, lynch to them, ask questions. Don't be afraid. You're going to learn that way. I think if you're starting out, find a good mentor, find a good a company that's willing to invest in you. And if you work hard for 12 months, 24 months, you know, year 3, year 4, year 5, you're going to be very successful and making a lot of money because there's a lot of money to be made in the recruitment industry. You know, we have recruiters that are killing it and are life-changing. They're buying houses, they're, you know, they're buying their parents' houses and, you know, they're living a good life. And recruitment can definitely do that. So know that it's going to be hard. Find yourself a good mentor, find yourself a good company, be willing to sacrifice short-term, and long-term you'll have that flexibility and success. But just know that the hard work never stops. It's going to be a grind, it's always going to be a grind, and that's okay because, uh, you know, you could be part of the 1%, uh, 10%, uh, if you do it right.

Great advice, man.

Epic piece of advice, Dante. And on that note, I think we're going to end the pod here. Thank you so much for coming on today, Dante. It's been super valuable. I've absolutely loved listening to you and would love to get you on for round 2 if you're up for it, because I feel like you've got so much knowledge. I feel like we've probably just scratched the surface in this, in this episode today. So thank you so much for joining.

Yeah, that was fun. It went by super fast. I thought we were like 20 minutes in. Good question. You guys ask good questions.

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