Grace Marlin, founder of DG Recruit, moved to Panama for a relationship and hit a language barrier that taught her to evaluate risk by asking if she could live with the outcome. She argues recruiters give job seekers market insight and aligned incentives, and that revenue-generating roles give employees the most leverage.
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Welcome to the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.
¡Hola! All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. I have a great friend of mine, Grace Marlin. She is working on early-stage startups and is helping build DG Recruit, which is a recruiting agency startup. So welcome to the show, Grace.
Thank you so much, I'm so excited to be here.
Of course, and I am very excited to have you here. We'll dive into the first one. The first question I have for you, Grace, is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Absolutely. So this one is actually hot off the presses and currently ongoing. So my answer to this question might be a little bit different in a couple of months. But in October of last year, I moved out of the country for a relationship. I moved to Central America to a Spanish-speaking country, which I found out very quickly people do not speak English. And I moved there without really knowing any Spanish or having very limited Spanish knowledge. And on a daily basis was extremely uncomfortable for multiple reasons. I couldn't interact with people around me. I had lost my entire community and my relationship wasn't going the way that I expected it to. So I was pretty depressed day in and day out. And at the end of the year, everything exploded as I was kind of seeing happen. And I lived my worst case scenario because I came back to the US and basically my entire life was completely different than the way that I had left it. And I was in shambles. So since January of this year, I've been putting myself back together. And it turns out that things are better now than I ever could have imagined. And they never would have ended up the way that they are now if I hadn't have taken that risk. So the question and the lesson that I got out of that, And now when I'm evaluating decisions that involve a magnitude of risk, I look at them and say, is this something that I can live with? If the worst case scenario is X, is that something I'm comfortable with? And if the answer is yes, then I'll do it because you never know what's on the other side of that.
Yes, I love that. Thank you for sharing that. And I cannot fully relate, but I would just, I wanna relate a little bit 'cause I live down in Miami and they speak a lot of Spanish down here, but they do speak English too. So I can't fully relate, but I feel you, girl. There's a lot of Spanish.
Spanish there. Yeah, it's definitely interesting, the cultural differences. It's beautiful and I love it, but it's hard when you're taken out of everything that you know.
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, luckily in Miami, obviously, but there are like some places in Miami that it is like pure Spanish. So I can't like imagine if I couldn't talk to anybody for like months on end when I would go out because like, you know, that's just difficult. So, and it's really hard. Where in, just out of curiosity, where in like Central America were you?
I moved to Panama.
Ah, got it. Okay. I actually been thinking of visiting there soon with a friend. So I'll have to ask you after the show some cool spots.
Absolutely. I'm super down to talk about it.
So the next one I have for you is what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
So I've been working in recruiting now for 2 or 3 months, and I came to recruiting with a completely different background. I worked in healthcare consulting prior to that. So I really didn't understand what recruiters did. And now that I'm in this field, I couldn't be a bigger advocate for utilizing recruiters and headhunters for a multitude of reasons. Even if you don't want to get a new job, they're so valuable because they have access to networks, they have access to evaluating market value. If you're curious if you could be making more money or if you could be working for XYZ type of company, reach out to a recruiter who specializes in that area because they have your best interest at heart and they have the same goals that you do and the fact that they make money when you move jobs. So they want you to move to something that you love. And it's definitely, most people don't, or are kind of annoyed by recruiters. I used to be one of those people as well when they'd reach out to me, but now that I'm in this field, I couldn't be a bigger champion of them.
And what is your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry specific.
I think that working in a revenue-generating position, if you're going to be an employee, is the best bet that you have because your leverage is so much higher than if you're working in a cost center.
Hmm, interesting. Yeah, because then the value is like obvious, you know?
Exactly. And if you need something, you can advocate for it because you can really show the value that you're bringing to the firm.
Got it. Um, and if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
Maintain an open mindset because you do not know everything. And everyone has a lot to teach you. And that is a lesson that I'm learning over and over again by being humbled by life and by experiences. Yeah.
And in your opinion, what's the key to happiness?
Managing expectations. Because comparison is really the thief of joy. And if you expect every single day to be perfect, No day is ever going to be like that. And it's a really surefire way to become pretty unhappy.
And what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
So I'm currently reading Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss. And I have to say that this is becoming my favorite book because I could read it probably a million times and still get something new from it. I think that learning how to experiment and being willing to try things even on a trial basis, like 30 days, just implement a new habit, routine, tactic is always really helpful. And that's what this book is a huge advocate of.
Yes. And what is your favorite quote and why?
Be better. It's simple. It's not profound. I don't know who to attribute it to, but that's how I live my life every day. And I'm actually getting it tattooed on myself because I believe it's timeless and I need to be reminded of it all the time.
Yes, I love that. Thank you so much for coming on. The last question I have for you, Grace, is where is the best place for people to find you online?
LinkedIn, by far, is my favorite place. It's just my name, linkedin.com/gracemarlin. And I also hang out on Instagram. My username is grace.evol for evolution, because I believe I'm constantly evolving.
Yes, perfect. Well, we'll be hanging out with you on LinkedIn and Instagram. We'll talk with you soon.
Thank you. I appreciate it. The podcast you just heard was published with Anchor. Got something you want to say to the creator of this show? Send them a voice message using the Anchor app, free for iOS and Android.
