$0 to $2.5 Million in 2 years with Mike Williams

Mike Williams [00:00:00]:
You.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:02]:
I'm excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast. I have a special guest with me today. We're going to talk about how him.

Mike Williams [00:00:09]:
And his team went from zero to.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:11]:
2.5 million in two years. We're going to talk about some of the things that he was doing before.

Mike Williams [00:00:16]:
He made the jump into his own company.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:19]:
And we're going to talk about some of the things that it takes to.

Mike Williams [00:00:21]:
Be a highly productive, big billing recruiter. And to top that off, we're going.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:28]:
To talk about some of the things.

Mike Williams [00:00:29]:
That he's doing building a successful team. So I am so excited to have.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:36]:
Mike Williams on as a podcast guest today.

Mike Williams [00:00:39]:
Welcome to the episode, Mike. Thanks. Very good to be here.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:42]:
So real quick, before we get started.

Mike Williams [00:00:43]:
Mike, can you share a little bit.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:45]:
About you before we do a deep.

Mike Williams [00:00:46]:
Dive on your background? Yes. So late. Williams. Name. Our company is called caribbean Search. We're doing search Charlote, North Carolina. We're a team of four people. The company is two years old this month, actually, which is less.

Mike Williams [00:01:02]:
So what we do is place equal to the manufacturing sector. So specifically engineers, what we call operations leadership, people. That's tickable. Type manager, factory manager type person, where the engineer is deciding filing up or deciding manufacturing. Awesome.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:21]:
So before we start figuring out the secrets of everything that you've done and.

Mike Williams [00:01:24]:
All the successes you have, how did you even end up in this wonderful world of recruiting? Yeah, I feel so fortunate, really, every agency can recruiting because I love it. I ended up in recruiting. I always did in sales. In college, my job was in a call center, calling out alumni, asking them for donations. So I got exposed to high volume cold calling from a young age. And then after that, they took kind of the first job that I could find after school. I went to school for English, so I had very little commercial my ability, so I ended up in sales. After school, I was selling the insurance esque product, and I did that for four or five years.

Mike Williams [00:02:13]:
And then I was just ready for the next thing. And the funny thing was, the way I found that first job was through a recruiting agency. Who was that hiring for? A full desk recruiter. So I was kind of aware of who the company was like them, and took that job and it's off their leases.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:31]:
That is funny.

Mike Williams [00:02:32]:
Talk about full circle.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:34]:
So you actually worked with a recruiting.

Mike Williams [00:02:36]:
Firm that found you a job right outside of college? Yeah. So I only ended up five or three job. I just walked in and looked at a resume with him. Three or four of me tried to put me in the shot of like a machine operator, forklift driver kind of guy. Very well on that. And then, so the first white collar type job that I got offered was this insurance company. Yeah, that was how it happened. Wow.

Mike Williams [00:03:08]:
Okay, so you made the jump. You decided to become a recruiter. What did that look like?

Benjamin Mena [00:03:15]:
Whole new world or was this something that you were really looking forward to?

Mike Williams [00:03:18]:
Well, only my family told me not to do it, which they will do in ruler. It was 100% commission job. It was a draw on commission. And so being a members were not as a good option. But I just really, right from the beginning, it made sense to me because in comparison to the insurance thing I was selling, I was cold calling people and having to explain, what is this type of insurance? Why should you want it? What is the meaning? They don't even know or care. Right. So it's hard. It was a hard thing to sell.

Mike Williams [00:04:01]:
And it compares that with, hey, I like our recruiter. I literally see the jaw closing. They got lind. It's been like the 90 days and I have the perfect stereotype right here. Why many do you want to talk to? It just made a lot more sense. It was easier to sell. So I believed in it rightfully. That enjoyed it right off the bat and just find it fun.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:24]:
That is awesome.

Mike Williams [00:04:24]:
So you became like a top biller and a big biller while you were there. Was that self taught? Was it trained?

Benjamin Mena [00:04:34]:
Was it onboarding?

Mike Williams [00:04:35]:
Perfect.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:36]:
How did you even get to becoming a top biller within your first role so quick?

Mike Williams [00:04:43]:
It lies on. Well, I can't say that's a great phrase sometimes in your career or in life in general. It's the hard things that happen that really make you great everyone response to exist. So some people go in and no training and they just give up. This isn't for me. There's no way I possibly. A lot of people go in and it's like a challenge and it's like because it's so hard in the beginning, you learn faster and you have to. So that was not my experience.

Mike Williams [00:05:15]:
What happened to me was I got hired into a range and never done correct art. It was a big company, but they were mostly a contract company in general. And this particular location was 100% contracts for egg. So it's cold as I couldn't fix. There was no house accounts to get right, and then there was no other. It wasn't like there was another big pillar in the office of taking me group for my jobs. It was thing one threat. RNL clients, RML candidates, the equivalent of your phone book and your cell phone.

Mike Williams [00:05:51]:
Let's see what you can do. So I liked it though, because that meant for a line. Then I could rub my own tape. I could do everything my own way. I didn't have any read on my neck saying do this or do that. So someday it actually turned out to serve you lesson. And then later on when I started by what company I had done almost before, I turned the zero office into a high producing desk. So when I first started the puppy.

Mike Williams [00:06:27]:
That is pretty. So before I even had an office, I was upstairs in our house. And I had no clients, I had no communities. I moved to Charlote. I didn't know anyone here. So I started reading cold calls. I was upstairs and I'm loud on the phone. Yeah.

Mike Williams [00:06:44]:
Hi. Awake of the recruiter from the CCB. Open the top of this TD after three days and no one's falling back, right. So it's brand new. I remember going downstairs, Jesus. The third day, no wife was downstairs and she goes for three days and no one's allowing this is going to work out for me desk where there was another thing I knew is that you slept. You do it freely thinking. So it was keep calling.

Mike Williams [00:07:22]:
That is awesome. So you became a top biller there.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:26]:
And you were there for multiple years. President's club if I remember, like five times.

Mike Williams [00:07:30]:
You really just hit it out of the park. What made you start looking for a change? Yeah, I guess the big decision to quit your job, start your own business, there is a lot of incentive to not do it. You already have clients, you already have curious. You can kind of go on autopilot if you want to. And there's never been time to do it either because I had a lot of cost receivable waiting for me. If I see. In fact, in my last month I built a little round of debt. That was loan, which I think is a good loan by anyone's metric.

Mike Williams [00:08:10]:
Right. And so I didn't get any of that commission loan. It's not quit. And so you get paid if he's paid. And there was money coming in from previous months too. So it's a big decision financially. So you literally walked away from maybe like 50 to 100K in commission or more, just a nice amount of medical sufficiency. And then from there's probably close to would be you're looking at this money and you're like, should I make the jump now or should I do it?

Benjamin Mena [00:08:48]:
And let's talk about you making the jump. But in that moment, was there like a little guy on your shoulder saying.

Mike Williams [00:08:53]:
Should I stay here a little while longer? It went by again, yeah, for the last month or two and then quit. That wasn't really for me. And I wanted to leave. I didn't. I did my best to work hard until the day, though. It wasn't my fault. I will have a breaking last month when deals close. Yeah, there was a little bit of insight.

Mike Williams [00:09:21]:
Should I do this? It's normal to go from a sure thing, a career to starting your own business. But the reason that I did it was because five or six years into being a recruiter and the president, love had made me money. And I learned something about myself in that time, which was money is great to have, but it wasn't really like winding my clock every day. It wasn't like, I'm not a base person. I don't have base car. I don't care about this stuff. What really motivated me to make up every day how the phones want to keep going in this route is I would like to see how good could I be at recruiting. I really wanted to try to be amongst the best in the world at recruiting.

Mike Williams [00:10:09]:
It was just competitiveness, and it's just also feeling like a bit of appalling. This is what I think I was here to do. So let's not half has it. Let's see. How big can you actually be? So after five years with my last company, the thing was, we weren't building anything, so I never had a chance to build a team. It was just me. I was a solo old ass. Every deal was a 360 deal.

Mike Williams [00:10:39]:
Okay. And I will answer those things. 100 people. And so is a tiny niche, a huge company. I happen to be manufacturing guy. I want to get my hands around a grande, a niche, who we are, what we believe in, where our values are. And it's really hard to do that as per someone else's infrastructure.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:01]:
Okay, before we start talking about kind of like some of the things that.

Mike Williams [00:11:04]:
You did to make that jump, could.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:09]:
There have been anything they could have.

Mike Williams [00:11:11]:
Done to keep you? That's a great question, because this is what I ask myself for my own people now. I don't want to lose my ESC recruiters. And it is hard because at some point you might say to yourself, I don't know if I need to come and do this. And that's what I'm trying to build here. Something that's fun, that's exciting, but people feel like I'm generally too shitty, so they need a visual growth. So I don't know what that would look like. Person to curse some. Their growth is like, I'm going a ton.

Mike Williams [00:11:52]:
I just want to take six weeks vacation. And if you show me that you're building over 500,000 for a couple few years, you can put off on the gas a bit. Then you've proven yourself. It's not going to happen in the first year or two or maybe three, you kind of have to come in and clone your grass and show me that you truly are elite. Whatever kind of you can work towards that other people. It's like I just want to get better and better and better on elite team. So you could be like, today you're a cop, rulers and worry about going in. Andrew, it's the next day you're managing direct, going to the next day you're a harbor track, you're clinicious with faucets, with the companies you're being open and grace for us.

Mike Williams [00:12:35]:
So last old design is as long as I'm diligent about making myself better every day, I can then pull them to their next level. I can't get any further than I already bet. I can't have me better than I already. So I just focus on doing right thing, trying to do the best thing to be, trying to be really attuned to. What do you need on your path? So getting to your question correctly, that was never discussed with me. Okay. It was a flat. What's next for you, Mike? It was like, big mouth, great job.

Mike Williams [00:13:11]:
Let's keep this. Get another month, next month. And after five years of that, you're like, what it is? Ten years? 1520. I mean, at some point it's just you're on history. So jumping back to your story, and.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:24]:
I find this super interesting. So you were recruiting up in the northeast, but now you're in the amazing city of Charlote. How did that.

Mike Williams [00:13:36]:
Attribute to a lot of our success, especially our success rate to have a great tactical ability. If you just hunt ll on the phone, you know how to overcome an objection. You know how to take job where you know, crackhead, you gotta have this business is your strategy. Tell me. Was a very strategic decision. So I was cremated in western Massachusetts just because that's where I grew up. It was not a particularly desirable territory. It was slick.

Mike Williams [00:14:14]:
Did I remember Mapdog industry? Yeah. It's 2 hours west of Austin in an hour ish north of the park. So they have murder all tests. So what I did was I said, I'm not clipping faster than this. Now is the time to pick what is the hottest market in the hottest niche, that this bonus will really be the best chance of success. So every day after work, when I would do that, a spreadsheet and I had column filling up what areas of the country have the most population growth, population density, lowest climb rate. I was looking at manufacturing activity, who's opening up plants, who's closing down plants? Because I pretty much decided I want to see manufacturing engineering recruiter again. I went and visited multiple cities in Austin, Texas, because at the time that was a very hot seat.

Mike Williams [00:15:11]:
Tesla was going there and it was bizarre pandemic time. So we went there. Didn't really love it. It wasn't totally for us. It was also a little far from home. We looked at some places of Florida that have very good numbers as far as economic growth, but shot it. And it was really hard to beat. They were strong in every category, immediately loved it.

Mike Williams [00:15:37]:
Felt like home for us. Also checked the bounce on the river. I got to be happy. It was hard to have a quantity assign a net trip to that, right? Especially when you're a solo premiere tip person. If you go somewhere where you're miserable. I've been members, but you're not performing. It was a strategic decision, but because we hit such a hot market, we were getting to take the grab running bill bait numbers, really since that first month we were Bill 19. That is awesome.

Mike Williams [00:16:11]:
And I know you are huge for in person meetings. And when it comes down to if you were still trying know hit the Charlote market but still live know the.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:24]:
Northeast, that'd be a little.

Mike Williams [00:16:27]:
Especially. It gives you the ability to go out and see a lot of different companies because there's so many of them here. So we value that as much.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:39]:
And I think that's one thing that I think a lot of recruiters, and I'll just say this, including myself, we've taken such advantage of this virtual world.

Mike Williams [00:16:47]:
That the conversations I'm having with people.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:50]:
Like you and other recruiters that are.

Mike Williams [00:16:52]:
Billing great numbers, I think clients are looking for that in person stuff now. I think so. I think if you can get farther in person than it has been because of this, but if you can get it is a huge competitive. So much has changed in the last five years, especially your career. I remember being a new recruiter. It was like you go out almost every night. You go out to that bar, that stroke, whatever. Managers going out every night.

Mike Williams [00:17:29]:
My teeth goes out after work. Everyone goes home. You can't see like people at an early slice. They're just not into that. Companies and clients are the same way. It's harder to get a visit going or dinner after work, or even a lunch, but I think that you can get people see through the. Sounds good. Awesome.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:52]:
So going back to this jump, the.

Mike Williams [00:17:54]:
Start of your company, you strategically built out this excel spreadsheet.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:00]:
Massive data. You went and visited all these cities, which is super smart. I think that's something that a lot.

Mike Williams [00:18:05]:
Of recruiters don't even think about doing.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:09]:
And if you want a good laugh, I spent two years planning on moving.

Mike Williams [00:18:13]:
To Washington, DC because that's the epicenter of government contracting.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:17]:
So absolutely love that.

Mike Williams [00:18:20]:
But did you have any challenges when.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:22]:
You made that jump?

Mike Williams [00:18:23]:
You left the firm and made that jump to your own company? There's a lot of challenges. Just the self doubt of, am I this guy or not? And another thing is tough is you go from going to an office every day, break room and insurance. Yeah. Everything that comes along with being an employee to being whatever you might call that business owner. Even though it's very unglamorous, it's literally you in the spiral of your house, making calls, not answering, and with close appeal, and there's no bell to ring or like, high five. You're high fighting. Your wife comes up from work, she's out, busy day, calls a deal off. She said, great, indeed.

Mike Williams [00:19:18]:
We're going to get it. She was supportive and everything, but no, Marie gets it. It's really an isolating experience. In your first year, trust you in the hard days are harder and the funny days are a little less. I mean, I remember there was a time I was having a tough week in the first year. I think it was at late at month. So I had one month where I had a zero. You start to question everything, just change it knowing on here.

Mike Williams [00:19:57]:
And it's so hard. And it's just a lot of change at once. It's like kind of the tough part of a bit like, you're in a new city, you don't know anyone other than this was all my decision. My wife's dream that's I had to die was like, let's find a house next to my parents house. And that is my dream. And so we thought we ended up agreeing that this would be what was best for both of us, but it was kind of a sacrifice for her at the end. And so that was for her too, because the same page now, hard times, but this is worth it. Awesome.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:44]:
Now, was it your first year on your own? You built what was it, 900,000 if.

Mike Williams [00:20:48]:
I remember right in there. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:52]:
First year in business, you build 900,000.

Mike Williams [00:20:54]:
How did you even do that? We got fortunate in some ways. We work really hard too. So both of those things told me in the end, what I learned over time is we benefited a lot from the niche that we set and for the level of role within that niche. So what I mean by that is manufacturing was pretty high, especially in Charlote. But beyond that, I picked to recruit for really individual contributor engineers, that first line managers, which is not the sexiest choice. We're not getting decades for replacing the vice president of engineering for 90 or $100,000 fee, and a lot of recruiters won't be in that world. We are having an effort fee of like 45,000, which means we have to go higher quality. And so my first year, I was running like four or five drills a month.

Mike Williams [00:21:57]:
And then you had a couple more followers where I'm learning and you see your qualities, everything you have to do more of. But the big advantage is there's a huge amount of repeatability and that level of search. So rather than placing a CFO when they place it with being lost, hopefully that is there for years. In this case, a manufacturer of engineer for $2,000 fee, he's joining a team of probably ten other manufacturer engineers at that company. And someone's always coming, going, quitting, retire and getting loaded, and then they'll come back to you to place the next one. And that has really been huge key of our success for me to start it so quickly.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:41]:
So because you've been so successful in.

Mike Williams [00:22:43]:
That space, it wouldn't surprise me if.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:45]:
A lot of your clients tried giving.

Mike Williams [00:22:47]:
You more business outside of your niche. How do you handle that? Yeah, really good question. Because that was a huge deflection point for us, because when I first 1st started, you try to be crazy to turn down work, but after three, four, five months of building consistently, you really have to specialize. And I remember specifically one conversation with a new client who did just this. You placed a syntax of a junior actor. How could you find the tax confidence right where I was during that conversation? And they went through my name, I could say yes, I kind of need the work. And I instinctively said, you know what, it's just not our area. I don't think it's for me.

Mike Williams [00:23:39]:
I could try. I think I might be able to find it, but I'm going to have to say no because I want to be specific. That guy called me a few weeks later. He was like, you are one of the only recruiters who's ever turned down work for me. That was just so. Yeah, he respected it, I should say. Right. So he disrespected it and he's like, now we're going to give you all our insurance to the state.

Mike Williams [00:24:06]:
Admirable. And just looking for the next job. And they lie. Oh, we're a specialist in this. Oh, we'll specialize in that. Whatever reason you need, we'll specialize in it. But they can appreciate it and I think our clients have come to appreciate it. And actually counterintuitively, you get more work to the end because they will give you the searches that you're a good fit for.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:29]:
That's powerful right there. You are 100% right.

Mike Williams [00:24:33]:
Most companies or most recruiters are like.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:36]:
But it's business and it's right there. They're ready to sign the paperwork and I could start. But there's just one of those things. What I've seen in a lot of.

Mike Williams [00:24:46]:
The top billers is the ability to say no. Yeah. So it's just outside your niche. It's also bad contract terms. We're not going to ever research less than 20%. Really try to dove the 25. If there's huge amount of repeated volume then we're not going to be legalistic and be like 25 and nothing. You're going to give us 15 orders, trade quick payments or loser.

Mike Williams [00:25:16]:
If it's a short guarantee or something, resolve someplace definitely can make it work. But yeah, you got to be able to. I learned that relatively early on because I had a client that was not as good. All of their jobs didn't pay very much. They didn't have a very good ecosystem for the test. I was doing most of them with a really low total scene. When we closed them later, I walked away from them. My whole bully fucked up simply because I wasn't spending wasting my time to get the next client who had lean at home.

Mike Williams [00:25:52]:
I completely agree with that. That is awesome. So build nine hundred k first year.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:57]:
Out of the gate.

Mike Williams [00:25:58]:
Strategic awesome. Worked your ass off.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:02]:
When did you decide and how did.

Mike Williams [00:26:04]:
You decide that you needed to grow the team or help to grow? It was always the goal. That was my vision when I first started the company. I never want to be just the guy who is the lifestyle business. Go a lot pulling up a bunch of vacations. I love the work and I want it. It was important for me to find people who reminded me of myself when I first started recruiting, which was no idea where it put that energy. So you just need to feel really good at society. Related that or recently, you know, to college and say, like, I'm going to help you put that energy as something that will help you, help you make money in this world where you're helping people find prosperity in their careers, developing companies that are big companies to grow.

Mike Williams [00:27:11]:
Exactly. Put this money into finding the next person who needs to help outside or tries to do deers. Build a business that states that maybe a decade from now, where we're 2034, the two is just graduating from college, no idea what to do in us finding our company. And you can find a way to a top delay within a couple of years. That's possibly we could either actually help that person. Yeah. Working really hard now. So the short story is that that was always my goal.

Mike Williams [00:27:48]:
That was why I wanted to do this business, was to roll something that I was proud of. That was a business at the last. How did I know that? It's time. There was a couple things happened. One, I was clearly not able to keep up with you. So it was kind of obvious we needed help. But then the second thing that happened was just, I was introduced to my first employee, Isaac, who was a friend of a friend. And the friend said, you just got to graduate.

Mike Williams [00:28:25]:
I know since he was a little challenge that someday. So with the seminars, I knew I have a better talent. He was going to be great at something. He goes in moderator as I got to know him, I was like, this is a dobbling recruiter. This shit out of what it takes. So it made me feel a lot better about Deacon plunge and hiring the first one because I was creature. I had a tiger grab a tail and he's 13 months in with me and it's been nothing but an absolute beast on the phones. Okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:08]:
I think this is one of the.

Mike Williams [00:29:09]:
Challenges a lot of high performing recruiters have is they're really good at recruiting, but not always the best at transferring.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:17]:
That knowledge and training and onboarding and all that stuff.

Mike Williams [00:29:22]:
How did you set him up to be successful? So just yesterday, I hadn't done this a lunch before, but what I said to myself was, this is what I'm going to do is we're going to sit right next to each other in person, obviously in British, listen to every call that I make. And I was in a good position because I just had some big monster. There was money in the banks, in the company. I was spending longer. I was saving it so you could hire people. I said, have my best month, first month. We can kind of sit down and work together during I didn't let the wheel sort of fall off. Then what I did client calls and trying to build the best I can.

Mike Williams [00:30:12]:
But I also was really focused on training. So what we did was I said, already set up that training model that looks like this. At first you're just going to do what we call splits. Then you're going to do what we call splits. Then you're going to do what we call 360. What that means is a split would be I just am on the phone making each line of calls a day saying this. Hi, my name is Idaho recruiter senior mechanical engineer. Have a mechanical engineer job in Charlote would you open a fountain? I boss like millions of dollars and you need someone who has drive to be able to make that call.

Mike Williams [00:30:54]:
It's just dialing the numbers, right. And it's saying if they say maybe what's the job about? We started training aerospace company pains light hours. Okay, sure. Yeah, we'll mention lights off. So that's what we did for the first couple loss. Then after doing that you do the next stage route so that the activity was pay whatever. And I said I need to even start doing full fear any side and if you get stuff just ask afterwards. So they started doing just the candidates.

Mike Williams [00:31:34]:
That took probably six or eight months. But that was all he did was he called candidates, he would recruit and he wasn't doing any sales. Then I was getting ready for him to do sales and I could tell that he was how he asked us to be able to do it. He kind of belt in his eagerness to boopie shop. He was calling for a sales pension. You had cop someone that only had like three years experience in sales. He called the vice president of the company, asked him, do you want any sales? If they should be enthusiastic. I had a team of like 45 sales engineers under me.

Mike Williams [00:32:16]:
So I don't fit on the team. Each steps backwards. But we're hiring here too. So if you want then you can regroup for us. So you think of a client through sheer dumb luck. But they lot to raise him clients.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:32]:
The sheer dumb luck is also the amount of calls that he was making before that too. That is awesome.

Mike Williams [00:32:42]:
And don't have to agree to client.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:46]:
Fantabulous.

Mike Williams [00:32:47]:
So you now have a team of four.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:49]:
You had your first hire. How did you get to the next two hires? What happened with the company? Where'd you go?

Mike Williams [00:32:55]:
How'd you do that? So me and I do our thing for six, eight months or so. And it was actually motivating for me. I told him from the beginning. We're not filming something here that hopefully we all in my digital careers, we want to build something that sustains last. Especially when he's considering after college joining my code that it's just me joining spaceships here. I mean, this is doing the stare room of his house, making freaking cold calls. You need to share that stuff with people, right? It's not going to just be like, you also work in my garage. It takes.

Mike Williams [00:33:45]:
That is super compelling. I want to share fishing Isaac from first one in the bowl. We'll play our three, five years from now. We have to make people with us. And you're going to have been the first one we're going to be really proud of. So after six or eight months, lineage and money pulling eels, and he felt like, hey, let's say.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:15]:
Accountability burn.

Mike Williams [00:34:16]:
No, they're like, we do have to do this. So I didn't want to let them down. We do have more work to keep up with. Again, we started good with people and yeah, we found this girl, say I'm boo, who's been with us seven or eight months now. She's also doing awesome. She's off to a really great start. So she's not been with us, like I said, for about half of the year. And then at that point we again had more work we can really keep up with.

Mike Williams [00:34:49]:
So I spent a little bit of time, an hour or two a week just recruiting, for instance. So nothing new is that people who look like a pretty good job. And I found our most recent hires. It's Travis. He fastest for three to four weeks now. So it happens logarithmically. It happens through having the work to do, support it and just these girls. If you say trustability clocks aren't taking very last, it is great.

Mike Williams [00:35:16]:
Overdoing the grouping of that is awesome. Your four hires have been doing great.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:27]:
What do you look for in a.

Mike Williams [00:35:28]:
Recruiter that you're just catching? Yeah, we have to be selective right now, especially with that first few in the door. And if you're not, it's going to require a lot more advantage training. Hopefully try to train me above or if it's not working out, having those hard conversations. Because obviously this child is not forever. And that's just something that trying to learn as much as possible because I had a lot this that I'm trying to keep up with and train these people. So what I look for is first thing is I try to be very transparent in the interview process, who we are for equal. We are not for actually the interview guy recently that I thought could be a good. I know he could do the job of a recruiter, but it turned out he's probably not going to be perfect for us because who we have for is people who want to work really hard, who are not afraid to make cold calls, to do it in person.

Mike Williams [00:36:33]:
Because we have a lot of speakers and training and just culture for what we do and trying to get fun and in person and exciting. You wouldn't like it's just me aspects. A really good comp plan where we're sharing the progression of this guy lost some of you is not going to match for us. He was intrigued by us that he's identified 50% more per year, a huge, huge raise. But it turned out he's not for us. He does it's centuries of vacationing right now, and for us we do two weeks and then the League of Christmas is also a total of three. Had three years of experience. He was off of the starting recruiting.

Mike Williams [00:37:12]:
He was at another agency. But the most important thing for him was time away and we had a Chiggle team. But the most important thing for us is learning, growing early, a ton of money, trying to make this company grow, simplicity. So we can't be all things to all people. We can be trained with who we are and try to be the best in the world at it. I'm looking for people is people who aren't share that with them, excited by it and not who are afraid by it. That's what we're doing.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:43]:
I love that. You're probably a little more transparent in the process than I feel like a.

Mike Williams [00:37:47]:
Lot of other places.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:48]:
So you've done a good job explaining everything that's going on, explaining the culture.

Mike Williams [00:37:55]:
Talking about the culture.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:56]:
And because of that, I think that's.

Mike Williams [00:37:58]:
Also helping filter out the wrong people. I think so. And it's nothing against them. Of course, everyone's different, and there's now what is for that guy to go work that will align better with what his values are. And so, yeah, I try to just be really honest. I know it's not always the most invoked thing to say, yeah, you can't work from home. Yeah, you're going to really are cold calls. But there are some people out there like myself and the people who we've hired so far, that that's what they're not turned off by the fact of we're going to have an in person culture and we're part because of that.

Mike Williams [00:38:46]:
Because of all that effort you're putting in. I'm going to make sure that they are financially rewarded for their efforts above and beyond what's usually out there. Awesome.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:58]:
I want to shift gears a little bit. I want to talk about business development. I want to talk about getting new clients. Literally two years of you starting your business, $2.5 million in placement fees, what is working when it comes to sales?

Mike Williams [00:39:12]:
I think that what we believe in is a mix of old school and new school when it comes to business at all, old school and where we start is making cold anti sea calls. But you're really consistent. I mean, that's how you do it. On how that affects how I do them every week. We really do them every day, at least every other day, every two, three years. Right. So even if you have jobs, you got it. Continuous business development.

Mike Williams [00:39:45]:
Can't hear them. PC pets work no. Which I've said we also believe in useful and for me that is digital marketing. I've had a ton of success through just like this podcast that you can put on LinkedIn. Post it and stuff is an awareness of you and your brand. So I post frequently. I really study what is going a post that is authentic and transparent and hopefully attractive and I will want a lot of visits to that. I've had companies cold call me and say, I saw your post.

Mike Williams [00:40:25]:
We have this shop. We'd love for you to work on it. It's an amazing human paradigm shift. Lighting those two together is found in a key for and I want to.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:37]:
Talk about this because I was actually just speaking at a conference this week and one of my slides was some of your LinkedIn posts. I know so often people are using artificial intelligence chat GBT to share content.

Mike Williams [00:40:54]:
And I feel like we're pass at it. People can see through it.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:57]:
You've done such a good job storylining.

Mike Williams [00:41:01]:
And sharing and it feels authentic. But then on a back end it.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:05]:
Has like a business hit. How are you writing your LinkedIn post? How are you thinking about this and how are you sharing it?

Mike Williams [00:41:10]:
Because it's brought you tens of thousands.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:13]:
Of dollars of placements or hundreds of.

Mike Williams [00:41:14]:
Thousands of dollars of placements. Well, for far do I appreciate saying that. They're saying that it's intentional. So I try to write posts that, like you said, are authentic and truthful. Always in the back of my mind, want the sub narratives to be. I am an elite recruiter in this space and you support us. And you can't just say that over and over or else it is boring. In fact, people do basically say that when they're close to hey, somebody for this job, please apply.

Mike Williams [00:41:50]:
That's not that compelling with a narrative. I think what this goes to is people might say, hey, I was saying I'm making a throw up stonewall for you and the people that do it. It would be foolish. Why is not everyone doing it? Because they're not right? So why aren't they? The reason why people aren't doing it is because people aren't afraid to be fun. And then if you close, and that's pretty embarrassing, you close to gains. If they get zero likes, right, that would suck. Or it can flow. So if they get up on you and saying you're wrong, I don't believe in that.

Mike Williams [00:42:36]:
There's kind of a fear level to doing so. Because of that, people post anyways. But they post the most milk toast. Lame. Not saying anything or any content that is posted by Korea by Chet GPT or is just the same thing over and over. We support people of the world. Of course we do. But that's what everyone is saying all the time, so it doesn't capture people's attention.

Mike Williams [00:43:07]:
So I think what I try to do is I try to be honest to truthful to myself and things that we believe in that might be compelling in some way that's different for your craft. We're finding now with our place for people with except old calls, and that's messing that video on and up on and posting that people find it interesting, usually, or being perseverance. You mentioned the glory person. You said a lot of people are doing. So we make a point to call it out, like all about me in person with our clients. And this is the laser we got from it. You know what some people post on there? You're wrong. That's okay.

Mike Williams [00:43:49]:
The public has the disagreement. It's not laid out accurately. So that's kind of my strategy.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:59]:
And I want to kind of like chime one more thing, a question about your strategy.

Mike Williams [00:44:02]:
So I do see you have a lot of recruiters, like, commenting and liking. I'm one of them. But I went through your connections and.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:11]:
I think this is something that a lot of people are missing out when.

Mike Williams [00:44:13]:
It comes to LinkedIn content.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:15]:
Yes, you are connected with a lot of recruiters, but you are also connected with a lot of people within your space.

Mike Williams [00:44:23]:
You're sharing it for them. And I think that a lot of.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:27]:
Times us recruiters, we're sharing posts for other recruiters.

Mike Williams [00:44:32]:
You are primarily building out like an.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:34]:
Omnipresent network on top of the cold.

Mike Williams [00:44:36]:
Calls, on top of the emails for your industry. You could technically criticize what I'm doing in that way of like, well, the number one rule of marketing speaks to your audience. So if I'm saying this weird recruiting thing happens, why should plan manager whose I ultimately target Kyrie man for care? I actually think that's not an antiquated reason. I dislike because of the way that things like a Reddit algorithm works. If I post something that is very intriguing to recruiters and it gets hundreds or thousands of likes, LinkedIn starts showing that more and more and more. It just going like, this is a hot post. People that want to see us and all of a sudden is the hiring enter sees it and vote doesn't speak necessarily to him. He then aware of me, sees me.

Mike Williams [00:45:32]:
I will have me clicks on my page that talks about everything that we do. There goes my website. Did he reach out to me? Because I think even if he doesn't do that, he sees me. He sees that post that has sort of virality to it. And that's a positive way to be seen on through your client's eyes. You want to be seen as a guy in a person, in business and has connections and likes, and people just think he's cool, right? The algorithm makes you an expert.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:07]:
It's one of the things I really believe in. Kind of what you're doing is building.

Mike Williams [00:46:11]:
This brand because the perception of your.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:13]:
Expertise really gets highlighted in the brand. But yeah, so good job on that. I wanted to make sure that I could highlight that for the listeners out.

Mike Williams [00:46:19]:
There because you do such a great job with that.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:23]:
I have another question for you. You've had a life change recently.

Mike Williams [00:46:28]:
How are you juggling building a business.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:33]:
Making placements, hiring people, working with your.

Mike Williams [00:46:37]:
Team, with a brand new baby? Yeah, it's awesome. Gold hour at home and it changes you through the Paris on any unexpected ways. But it is hard to juggle these days. Basically, when you end up living with is a lot of guilt. If you're at work, you're like missing out on time. I'm missing my family. If you miss your family, you're like, this is easy. What am I going to do? I can't let my team down.

Mike Williams [00:47:14]:
So that part is hard, but I do all that too. What helps me through both signs is I had very clear and open communication with my wife and agree on what we want our lives look like before we went on. This jury is she grew up where her mom didn't work, but her dad traveled for work. I grew up where my mom didn't work, say, well, my brothers then my dad worked off. We just said, we want that for us too. I don't call you after work, and that means I'll probably have to work harder and more. And then also you have to be a little selfish as far as what do you want coastal end of your career in your life? It is a ton of career. That means so much to me because I want to leave home.

Mike Williams [00:48:09]:
Water means that it resents that rule for that. That's not good for anyone. It's not good for me, it's not good for my wife, it's not good for my kids. Right. So we really sat down and said, what do we want to do? And we said, well, what we're going to do is have finally stay home and go work every day and try to be on as much as you can. But we understand that you have a job and career. Hopefully someday after five or ten years, when the business has grown and you got a team of 20 or 30 or 50 people, you can take cathartic ass up. You only have a five year old.

Mike Williams [00:48:43]:
And if we're blessed enough to have more, a three year old and what I can move on kids so we'll be shaped well as good week early. So suck it up now. Feeling the pain and missing out on unfortunately sometimes to be able to hopefully support our feeling there.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:01]:
I love that one thing that you.

Mike Williams [00:49:02]:
Really just hit on.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:03]:
You guys came together with a common.

Mike Williams [00:49:08]:
Goal, and you guys are working together for the common goal.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:14]:
You guys are just working different parts.

Mike Williams [00:49:15]:
Of different pieces of the puzzle.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:21]:
It sounds like there's something that you guys are doing great on, and it's.

Mike Williams [00:49:24]:
Probably also because you're great at other places, but a strong communication with your partner. Thank you. Yeah. It doesn't mean that it's not hard. First it's hard, but it's just what we agree that we wanted. And now that we're doing it, you see the way that you're doing it. This is what we've always wanted. I'm really fortunate that my wife is the way that she is and she wants to be a mom for us.

Mike Williams [00:49:56]:
She did live a lot for a career. She left more of a job than a career, so she was fine. Set and wait for a minute. She told me a lot more than kind of the day to day job that she has. So we're just working our plan. There's no magic elixir to make your mouth stop floor out the door and worry just your baby I just send it to this and what I've seen.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:23]:
With a lot of entrepreneurs like yourself. The wife also becomes part of the.

Mike Williams [00:50:27]:
Business and a key part of it pretty soon. But I got a almost four month.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:32]:
Old at home, so I understand the chaos.

Mike Williams [00:50:38]:
Kind of same things right now. It's working family. It is.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:42]:
And there is time where I walk off during the day, so that way she can make sure she's getting things done and all this other stuff. And one of the things I didn't realize is how tough it is to get into childcare here in the US. That's a whole nother story for another day.

Mike Williams [00:50:55]:
Are you sleeping? Are you sleep? Don't hate me. I get lots of sleep. That's awesome. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:04]:
Knocking on wood. I'm going to pay for saying this now.

Mike Williams [00:51:09]:
We were really struggling with sleep.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:14]:
There were days where before it flipped, my dad's like, making calls and there'd.

Mike Williams [00:51:19]:
Be a few days, I'm like, I.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:20]:
Pick up the phone, make the call.

Mike Williams [00:51:21]:
And I'm like, who did I just call?

Benjamin Mena [00:51:23]:
What did I just.

Mike Williams [00:51:26]:
Same things and just bumping your shirt leg up, even direction. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:31]:
Well, jumping back to anything. Is there anything else you'd love to share before we jump to the next.

Mike Williams [00:51:36]:
Part of the podcast? No, this is Netflix on everything. Awesome.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:42]:
So quick fire questions, and they don't.

Mike Williams [00:51:44]:
Have to be quick answers.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:46]:
And this first question, I absolutely love.

Mike Williams [00:51:48]:
It because you're dealing with this right now. What advice would you give to a recruiter that's just getting started in our industry in 2024? Come in, work really hard, try to learn as much as you can, raise a learning part is a huge, huge aspect of this. So trying to figure out podcasts like this one, go up and listen to older people who are doing what you want to do. If you learn from seek out books on sales, look at books that recruiters have written, study for craft, because no idea is an expert in your first year. It's just that you have to be 10,000 hours in for you. Become an expert. It's faster if you get a lot of reps in, and that's the hard work part. You can meet all of you reps possible.

Mike Williams [00:52:34]:
And that's study. Same question, but for experienced recruiters, would.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:40]:
You tell them that the recruiters have.

Mike Williams [00:52:41]:
Been around 510, 2030 years, what advice would you give to them to see success? I think if they're asking them a question, and that saves us a little bit of insight, if you know a decade of experience in recruiting, you're still saying, how do I get better at this? They probably find the user. So it's not having that mindset mind learning and trying to false start from the beginning and recross this, engineer it to become better and better and better. I'd say I can show up, desire yourself around other people who are really good at this and better. Say you know, everything, that you always have to be humble enough to try something new that maybe will make you better. That's awesome.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:31]:
Has there been a huge book that's.

Mike Williams [00:53:32]:
Had a huge impact in your career? There's been a lot. So one thing that helped me was I went to school for English teaching commercial abilities, but it taught me how to read, learn things, applying. So I didn't think on this type of stuff. There's a few. One of them is a company's called Carnegie Search and the book by Joe Carnegie. How influenced people is the reason for that? Because that was like a story point in my life. I just read it. And I not only learned this from the book, I learned because I read it early on.

Mike Williams [00:54:13]:
Right career. I learned that you could, which is not something you really taught in school. It was kind of a turning point. I was like, there's probably a billion books about everything that I've never needed to learn. So that was a huge learning problem. With his own Danny Cahill, who was this amazing recruiter, he wrote some books that I read, that I read multiple times. The one that I've grown is that Grace Savage was amazing recruiter in Australia or just put out reading that a couple of times. So trade publications and stuff.

Mike Williams [00:54:56]:
Really fantabulous.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:58]:
And you mentioned a second ago that iron sharpens iron.

Mike Williams [00:55:02]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:02]:
I know that you're actively involved in some elite groups, you're actively working with other high headhunters.

Mike Williams [00:55:10]:
Talk about how being around these great.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:13]:
Mentors and great coaches and other great.

Mike Williams [00:55:15]:
Recruiters has impacted your career in business. Yeah. Just last night I'm going to sit there with this guy who is sole staffing firms, human mentor, relationship, executive leadership. Some of the biggest staffing firms in the world that certainly human being loves is. I just met him and you couldn't ask him on the lake. I could tell her that he was a guy who was sheriffs for this time. I had a question that was a good question, like not how do you got clients? And you have this specific issue that I don't know if I ever came across this. It's like something to do with our training or nothing to do with where you can't deal that's so long, or there's something that's very specific that shows that you're not just asking someone to do the work for you shows that you have done the work.

Mike Williams [00:56:22]:
You just gotten into a really harmed situation. He probably asked him those things and he was in your call. He may answer the questions. He sort of respected like, yeah, I referred you the first time I was that it helps in a careful way. You're not going to know what we don't know. Right. So it's kind of like if you were a golfer and you suck at golf and you're like, I'm sick. You play DTL over and over and over and over until I get better.

Mike Williams [00:56:55]:
It'll get a little better just through brute force. But if you book take a health lesson, you're going to get much better way quicker. So it's that Sadie idea. Love that. Now, when it comes to you see.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:10]:
A lot of recruiters, you probably talked.

Mike Williams [00:57:11]:
To a lot of recruiters. You have lots of recruiters liking your posts. What do you think has been a.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:15]:
Huge driver for your own personal success?

Mike Williams [00:57:21]:
Well, I think that it just really depends what you want to do with your career and your life. So success could be defined in a lot of ways. I think there's some people who are super successful in life who are not successful in business. So I have friends through high school. We're multi different paths in life. Right. A lot of my friends, they're doing different things than Elo. One of them is a musician.

Mike Williams [00:57:53]:
He's also lived in Portugal for a year. He's white tables and he's living. He's not rich, but that doesn't matter if he's. He's playing concerts, he's meeting other musicians, he's living in Europe, and he's just living the exact life that he intends. So I think personally depends how you define success then. The second thing is you have a plan, what you want, just relentlessly going after it until you get. So that's kind of what I'm letting it throw down is for other reason. I had big dreams.

Mike Williams [00:58:32]:
It wasn't just a blue desk, it was like, grow up, business. The last thing I'll say about this topic is, for me, is what I believe is why I was put here, right? This is what I believe is why I exist in this role. The summer reason I was fortunate enough to be good at this thing I've recruited. I don't know exactly why. It's just some combination of my denation X and legislative and easier, right? So now I think it's my duty and responsibility to this extent at it cat as much as possible, help as many people do job as possible. There's as many ones to do careers as possible. You get as many people into this industry of recruiting. That really would be like the same experience I had in sign them up.

Mike Williams [00:59:29]:
This is kind of what my purpose of life is. I've lost about fulfill that purpose. And on the same note, everything that you know now, the ups, the downs, the move, those months that you've really doubted yourself too by self doubt creeping in. If you can go back to the.

Benjamin Mena [00:59:52]:
Very beginning of your recruiting career and have a cup of coffee with yourself, what advice would you sit down and.

Mike Williams [00:59:56]:
Give yourself so you don't get too high when things are going good, but low on yourself when the things are going bad. Try to see things in a bigger perspective. Just as, you know, one frame up, you are not the best you're in the world. Just because you have one bad love doesn't mean you suck at this. But Saudi, there's a company in the news right now that's called Nvidia, their chip manufacturer. And their stock is without the highest stable gain of any stock in the history of the stock exchange. In fact, the delta for the front of the day, end of the day, was equivalent to the market cap of Netflix. So they learned about.

Mike Williams [01:00:47]:
Right. And I saw an interview with James Echols, who is the CBO of that company. They asked the same question, what would you say to yourself? And he said, his answer, I thought, I'm smart, was, if I had the opportunity to say to myself the truth, I probably wouldn't have actually done all this. It's too hard. If I knew how fringe hard it was going to be, I would have probably just said, I'll go to job and do something. So you have to go into with a little bit of blissful ignorance and just light faith in yourself. But the hallmark of an entrepreneurial person is to be good at this. I'll figure it out.

Mike Williams [01:01:33]:
Maybe you will do all, but it's just suck at certain times. So maybe it's best that we don't know what the future holds. I absolutely love that.

Benjamin Mena [01:01:43]:
I'm going to ask you one more.

Mike Williams [01:01:44]:
Tactical question before I let you go. What does a day look like of a top Biller yourself? My days right now are a little different than the day in the top biller, I think, because I'm a serving full sales manager, billing manager, and you could see for the last three weeks we had a new hire. So I'm doing a lot of call a stand attached to a different set of headphones that's on mute. Just haven't listened to my calls. So I'll do training. So right now my day is more about training until I get this guy out. But what my life will hopefully and the plate is throwing a little top biller after east trade and Jen, my needles. I think it's going to be some planned for the day in advance of shop.

Mike Williams [01:02:43]:
So hopefully go to that lead previous day starting at 430 or five because I believe at 530 I'll have half hour or 16 minutes getting my profiles lined up, my numbers lined up. And what we do is we work through batches of 20 calls. So 20 calls, usually those three calls you get two people if you're lucky, Dan yesterday and the rest are voicemails and actually three posts. Take a break, get coffee, talk to your coworker, send everything else of everywhere. We try and get four or five of those submitted. Now, when you create a new, you should be doing four or five batches of tweak every day simply because calls are that good. So most people aren't going to even if they do have answer talking through it. But to me, once you become someone as a destination, I actually under call I think what, 40 to 60 a day because people like call, they know my loader.

Mike Williams [01:03:44]:
I've called them before talking to applying edict, not a clone talking. So I have times and they need more help that will call. So yeah, it's talking to your carriers like your clients, what are they going to do? Previous clients, where do you have again, some of you are like, hey, probably next quarter. Next quarter. That's for that. And just try and stay awesome.

Benjamin Mena [01:04:15]:
Well, Mike, before I let you go, is there anything else that you would.

Mike Williams [01:04:18]:
Love to share with the listeners? Just thank you so much for having me on. This has been fun. I really enjoyed the conversation. Those are great questions. Maybe think and I really appreciate you having me on your show. Awesome.

Benjamin Mena [01:04:29]:
And for the listeners, how can they follow you?

Mike Williams [01:04:34]:
Mike Williams Leaf in and it should come up if you type that in and if it doesn't come up, just send me Willie Lee, recruiter from Mike Williams on a search. It will come up and I'll do it again.

Benjamin Mena [01:04:46]:
Awesome. Man, I'm so excited that you shared. Like I said, I ran across you on LinkedIn.

Mike Williams [01:04:51]:
I really loved how you started structuring your posts and because of that I.

Benjamin Mena [01:04:57]:
Started digging into your story a little more. So super excited for listeners that they.

Mike Williams [01:05:02]:
Got to hear this, see this. And I really hope that this is going to make somebody and help somebody dream bigger. So, for the listeners, I know 2024.

Benjamin Mena [01:05:12]:
Is going to be your best year.

Mike Williams [01:05:13]:
Yet, so let's make that happen. Thank you. Bye.