How a One-Man Recruiter Closed 22 Executive Searches by Doing What Others Won’t

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
Are you still trying to grow your recruiting desk or business on your own? Join the Elite Recruiter community and connect with recruiters who know your challenges. Members get unlimited access to replays from the AI Recruiting Summit, Finish the year strong and all our past events plus biweekly roundtables where we dive into sourcing business development and mindset. You'll also tap into our Billers Club for accountability and a split space to partner on roles. Join the number one growth environment for recruiters. For just $49 per month, you'll be part of a tight knit group that pushes you to grow and you can cancel anytime. Visit the link in the show notes and click Join now to get started and start mastering your craft today. Coming up on this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast A players want to.

Craig Picken [00:00:40]:
Go to work for A companies A players want to work with A players they hate B players A players won't go to work for B companies unless you're there to turn it around. Got my hand slapped by somebody on that. It's not easy, but it's a simple business.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:55]:
Do you think a lot of people try to overcomplicate it?

Craig Picken [00:00:57]:
Absolutely. Well, I think they they make it too hard. And this is where I don't like recruiters.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:05]:
Welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with your host Benjamin Mena, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership and placements. Admin is a massive waste of time. That's why there's Atlas. The AI first recruitment platform built for modern agencies. Doesn't only track resumes and calls. It remembers everything. Every email, every interview, every conversation.

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Benjamin Mena [00:02:28]:
i'm excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast because here's the thing. Our guest just this year has completed 22 executive searches. 22 executive searches. And here's the thing. He wasn't originally a recruiter before jumping into his own business. This is an industry professional that has taken his industry knowledge, found a way into this wonderful world of recruiting, and is just absolutely dominating the market. And here's what we're going to focus on. We are going to focus on the things that he has done to position himself to where he is at.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:03]:
So that way you can do the same thing in your niche. Craig, I am so excited to have you on the podcast. Definitely welcome.

Craig Picken [00:03:09]:
Thanks, Ben. Thanks for having me. Good to be here.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:12]:
Quick self introduction, about 30 seconds. I feel like you could do it way better than me. A little bit about you.

Craig Picken [00:03:18]:
So about me. I am the ultimate boutique. I am an army of one. People ask me, do I have any staff? No. Do I have any help? No. I am literally an army of one. My answer to clients is, that scares the hell out of you. Then that's fine.

Craig Picken [00:03:35]:
We can be friends. But I have a very tight business. I'm very focused in aviation and aerospace. I know the industry extremely well. And I started 17 years ago. 16, 17 years ago now. And having a great time. So that's.

Craig Picken [00:03:56]:
That's a little bit about me.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:58]:
And real quick, is this year going to be your best year ever?

Craig Picken [00:04:01]:
No. No.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:02]:
Okay. Just curious on that. All right, well, let's get started back. And like, I.

Craig Picken [00:04:06]:
It was going to be. It was going to be until Saturday came. Last Saturday came. But that's the, you know, hey, look, that's the ups and downs of the executive recruiting business. So there you go. But there's still a quarter left to go, so we'll see what happens. Yeah, I'm not a quarter. You see what happens.

Craig Picken [00:04:23]:
We'll see what happens. Right.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:24]:
I gotta ask. Let's get a little further back. I normally ask, how'd you end up in this wonderful order? Recruiting. But I actually kind of want us to take a few steps back into your career. What did you do way before you picked up the phone and started recruiting?

Craig Picken [00:04:38]:
All right, so I got. I went to college, Texas Tech. And I graduated. And the only reason I went, I went to college for the sole reason to become a naval aviator. Graduated college, scraped on by with probably the worst GPA someone could get out of college with. And I was fortunately accepted in naval Aviation. I spent eight years as a Navy officer. Aviator, actually.

Craig Picken [00:05:02]:
Naval flight officer backseat. Decided that I didn't want to make it a full career. So when the day came that I could, yeah, I just didn't want to go back to sea again. So I went to Gulfstream Aircraft. I was at Gulfstream Aircraft for four years on their sales and marketing team, running around the world doing jet deals and then moved to Bombardier Business Aircraft and spent about three years with them. Left the industry for a few years for about 5, 6 industries. Went into very, very high end real estate development. And in 2007, it seems like yesterday, but 17 years ago now, you know, 18 years ago, the great financial crisis came and we had a billion dollars worth of loans tied to Wachovia Bank.

Craig Picken [00:05:49]:
And when Wachovia bank blew up, so did my job. Time to go find something new.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:54]:
Something new was recruiting, right?

Craig Picken [00:05:56]:
Time to go find something new. Here's kind of where I was in life. I had just moved to North Carolina. I was a VP of sales for a real estate development company. We had four sites on the Carolina coast. I literally just moved here, bought a house. The financial crisis hit. I'm now 250, $300,000 upside down in my house, with no job, a mortgage, and I'm like, oof.

Craig Picken [00:06:23]:
Looking at my wife going, we got to figure out what's next. And, you know, I was offered a job to go back and sell airplanes. Didn't want to do that. And a guy that I used to hire to train my sales teams in real estate shot me an email one day and said, hey, you would be really good at this. And he was working with a large executive recruiting company on kind of their sales funnel, their process, teaching them. He said, you'd be really good at this. Let me make an introduction. And I was like, okay, yeah, what do I know? And that's how I sort of got into the industry.

Craig Picken [00:07:04]:
That's what was the catalyst to make the move into executive recruiting.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:08]:
I'm going to ask you some questions on that in a second. I'm kind of curious. What did you fly in the Navy?

Craig Picken [00:07:14]:
I flew E2 Hawkeyes. So twin engine turboprop with the radar dish up on top of Airborne early warning command and control.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:21]:
Is that your dream jet or what? Did you have something.

Craig Picken [00:07:25]:
Oh, God, no, no, no. Absolutely not. That's something I talked. That's something I talked to executives about. That was like my last choice. And when I got to my squadron, you find out it was everybody's last choice. You know, everybody wanted fighters Everybody wanted attack. Nobody wanted a big, lumbering turbo prop.

Craig Picken [00:07:46]:
But what it turned out to be was an opportunity. And you know, when you take the opportunity, and this is something I coach executives on, and when you're given the opportunity, you can bitch and whine and complain and say, I got my last choice, or you take the flip side. You can say, I got an opportunity here, let's go jam. The opportunity and what the opportunity gave me was one. I learned a hell of a lot about airplanes and flying and aviation and the industry. I learned a lot about how to deal with people and how to lead. And because of our function in the carrier air wing, I learned a lot about learning other people's, you know, to be a really good support function, which we were in the sky, you have to learn a lot about what the other guys do. So I was always curious, tell me about what you do, talk to me about.

Craig Picken [00:08:43]:
And I earned a really good reputation on the aircraft carrier and became a viable resource to them. There was my opportunity.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:52]:
Oh, that's exactly what you've done in.

Craig Picken [00:08:54]:
Recruiting, and that's exactly what I've done in opportunity in recruiting. But it goes from there. Yeah, I wanted to go live in Europe for a few years. When the time came to leave my squadron and go to do something different in the Navy, there was a job in Europe and Germany that was open. I jumped on it. I'm like, yeah, I'll go do that. And it was less than I expected. But I learned how to travel the world.

Craig Picken [00:09:19]:
And then when I went and interviewed with Gulfstream aircraft when it's time to get out of the Navy, I was interviewing a Gulfstream aircraft and I got there and I met a bunch of ex Navy guys. When I saw what the Gulf Stream, I was able to talk about the Honeywell cockpits and the engines and do you have problems with this or how do you sell internationally? And they're like, where you been internationally? I go, where have I not been? So that was the opportunity. And so this is something I talk to, something I coach young people about, or, you know, executives. It's, where's the opportunity? Quit bitching about the hand you're dealt. You know, what's, where is it? And if you want to take it one step further, you know, I don't know when this is going to be released, but this coming Thursday, I'm driving to Annapolis, Maryland to go meet a couple squadron mates. One guy is a founder of a company that's got a billion dollar valuation on it. He found the opportunity and he toos. And the other fellow I'm meeting just sold his company for a big number.

Craig Picken [00:10:23]:
He too saw the opportunity. So there's your. There's my story. I'll stick to that. How's that sound?

Benjamin Mena [00:10:28]:
That's awesome. Because I know it's one of those things, like when you're a pilot, you dreamed about being a pilot, but you sometimes don't get the plane that you wanted.

Craig Picken [00:10:38]:
That's life. It is. That's life. Life is not a straight line. It's a series of these. But it's all about finding opportunity.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:50]:
So want to jump back into this, back to the recruiting side? So you had this meeting with his executive search firm. Did you, like, start with them or did you just be like, huh? No, they're doing something right.

Craig Picken [00:11:02]:
Maybe. I know. Yeah. So I'll be very vague on this, because I don't. Yeah, I'll be very vague on this part. I did not start with them. I looked at it and I said I could do this on my own. And I went and did it on my own via one of the bigger groups, which I want to talk about.

Craig Picken [00:11:21]:
I realized that about a year into it, those guys, they were absolutely the epitome of what I did not want to be. So I went my own direction.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:29]:
Okay, you started as your own direction.

Craig Picken [00:11:32]:
Yep.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:32]:
Did you have a vision in place or is it kind of just like figuring it out?

Craig Picken [00:11:36]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:36]:
All right. I'll just figure this out as I'm doing it.

Craig Picken [00:11:39]:
No, I had a vision, and the vision was I wanted to become the best executive recruiter, one of the most well known executive recruiters in aviation, aerospace, you know, so. But aviation aerospace is a big ocean. I mean, like, people don't realize how big of an ocean is like medical. And I don't want to go recruit in medical, but I wanted to become. I wanted to develop a name for myself in the industry. And so candidly, I started trying to play a little bit bigger than I should have, but it worked. You know, what's the term for that?

Benjamin Mena [00:12:14]:
Fake it till you make it?

Craig Picken [00:12:16]:
I don't want to say fake it till you make it, but yeah, you punch over your weight. And I. I tried to punch a little over my weight.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:24]:
Those days of punching over your weight. Like, what were you doing?

Craig Picken [00:12:27]:
Pick up a phone, call a CEO of a company. I say, that's om. This is what I'm doing. Let's start a relationship. And, you know, sometimes it works. Sometimes it fell on my face. Yeah, there you go. Right? But that the early days or what I'm doing now is not what I was doing.

Craig Picken [00:12:43]:
Yeah. The early days of just trying to make a name for yourself, you're doing things differently. But that's what I was. Yeah, I know. I was. No, yeah. Just like, hey, look who's the CEO of this company. Pick up the phone call.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:54]:
How long did it take you from relaunching your company to making, like, your first placement or two?

Craig Picken [00:13:00]:
Three months.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:01]:
Okay, nice.

Craig Picken [00:13:02]:
Yeah, I think I did quarter million bucks my first year. Did 10 placements. Quarter million bucks. I was like, okay, if I could do that? And I said, yeah, I set a goal for myself. All right, so what if I can? Can I do 25% more in my second year? I did. Yeah, it was easy. Okay. Yeah, I did that.

Craig Picken [00:13:18]:
And then it was just a little bit more and a little bit more and move more every year and just kept going. Yeah. Was it easy? No, it was not. It was. It was not easy days. You just want to hang it up and throw everything in trash and go get a job. But, yeah, just kept going. I just kept building and building and building a business.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:41]:
And in this building process, you slowly started to dominate the market.

Craig Picken [00:13:47]:
I don't know if I dominate the market, but I've become known in it. Yeah, there's. There's some good people out there. There's some good players in the. There's some good executive recruiters in the industry that, you know, look, they're. You know, they're bigger firms than I am. You know, they're with bigger firms than I am, and, you know, because of that, they're going to see stuff that I don't. You know, Boeing just replaced its CEO Bill Craig in North Carolina is not going to get that search right.

Craig Picken [00:14:19]:
But I could tell you I just took one of the senior executives out of Boeing and placed them somewhere else. So, you know, but I do okay. I mean, I found my area, you know, I found my sweet spot to practice in, and I know what to stay away from, and that's. That's. Put your ego in your pocket, understand what's a money loser by understanding what pond to fish in or what pond to play in. I've done really well for myself, so it's. I got no complaints.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:52]:
Before we start figuring out how you did really well for yourself with your journey and how long you've been doing in there, you probably had to say no a lot of times. Like, how do you figure out what to say no to?

Craig Picken [00:15:04]:
If stuff is too small for me, I typically place director and Above, I won't go below director. I don't even like to go below vice president. So a lot of companies will call me up and they're friends of mine and they're like, we, we need something that looks like we need somebody that looks like this. I'm like, oh, I. That's not for me. I just don't have that capability. But I refer them over to. There's a guy that I know that does, and so I flip him some business.

Craig Picken [00:15:31]:
He's great at it. So that's what I say. No to some companies I just don't want to work with. I say no. It's like, if I don't want to work with them, I just like, ah, I'm not the right person for you. Let me go refer you over somebody else.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:43]:
What do you see in them that you turn them down just based on the company level.

Craig Picken [00:15:50]:
Reputation? Am I excited about them? Do I genuinely think I can help them? Are they in an area which I really don't know? Like, if somebody needs a Chief Information Officer, it's not for me. I. I don't understand. I'm not a good, good executive recruiter to go find a CIO or a cto. Okay, President. Yep. Cfo. Yep.

Craig Picken [00:16:13]:
VP of manufacturing, VP of Operations. Yep, yep, yep. But if you need like a cio, that's not for me. Yeah. Certain positions that I just don't really, you know, know enough about to say, hey, I can help you find somebody really good, because I don't know what really good looks like. Okay, how's that?

Benjamin Mena [00:16:36]:
Perfect. And back to the what is working for you? I know you started a podcast about five years ago. You've started, like, really doing a bunch of other things. Has those avenues helped you put yourself on the map even more?

Craig Picken [00:16:48]:
Yeah, I write a blog. So I started writing a blog. And that. That was a big thing. And I write whatever the heck I want because I don't have a boss or a company that I have to report to. I don't get political, but I don't necessarily hold back either. So I can. You know, I write a lot of.

Craig Picken [00:17:06]:
I write a lot of things about, like, hey, look, it's. It's on the edge. Will it offend somebody? Yeah, I hope so. Maybe it'll make them see the day when I say, will it offend them? Maybe it'll make them think differently. Don't do dumb stuff. Here's why this hiring process went bad. I can write a lot of things. I just wrote a blog that a lot of people are looking at.

Craig Picken [00:17:25]:
A players want to go to work for A companies. A players want to work with A players they hate. B players. A players won't go to work for B companies unless you're there to turn it around. Got my hand slapped by somebody on that.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:40]:
Why did they do that?

Craig Picken [00:17:41]:
They got mad. Yeah, they got a little mad because they play. Hey, look, you know, it's, you know, it's your, hey, look, you know, don't be talking about A players and B players. I'm like, no, the very best player. The very best people in industry don't want to go to work for some mediocre company unless they're there to make a difference. If you're there to make a difference and you really want to genuinely take off, go hire somebody who's going to take you off. I just placed a guy as a CEO. The marching orders from the private equity group was we want a winning attitude.

Craig Picken [00:18:13]:
It wasn't we want somebody to create P L, you know, whatever. That's all part of it. But it's like we need a winning attitude. We want somebody who can create a team with a winning spirit who's going to take this thing to a level that we've not seen before. Great. So, you know, that's a lot of the blog I write and then I do a podcast. The podcast, I try to get it out weekly. It's getting hard right now.

Craig Picken [00:18:39]:
But I had some great people on. I just did one with an investment banker, Bill Alderman, who's my good friend. He comes on four times a year. We do a quarterly check in. We talk about M and A activity in the industry. Yesterday we talked about this podcast will go out next week. How to value a company and how different companies are valued by different organizations. I just had the CEO of Robinson Helicopter on and I had the CEO of United Launch alliance on United Launch alliance being the biggest competitor to SpaceX.

Craig Picken [00:19:11]:
I had a CFO on talking about. My opinion about the CFO is it's the most important role in the company. Go get a good one. If you're going to get one, get a good one.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:20]:
That was a good interview.

Craig Picken [00:19:21]:
Thank you.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:23]:
Actually went back and listened to that one.

Craig Picken [00:19:25]:
Thank you.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:26]:
You're a one man show. Where did this idea of a podcast even get started and how did you get it off the ground?

Craig Picken [00:19:30]:
I got bored every.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:34]:
That's how I started mine. But yours is industry. Okay, so your one man show, you're handling all these executive searches. When did you carve out time saying I'm Going to start a podcast.

Craig Picken [00:19:45]:
So I, I got really bored and I wanted to do something different. I was thinking about it, I was thinking about, do I write a book? And what would I write about? What's my story? What's so interesting about my story? And then I started thinking about a podcast and I was like, the early days, it was, you know, kind of the earlier days of podcasting. I'm almost at 300 episodes now. And I got referred to a guy in San Diego named Matt Johnson. Matt's awesome and he's been helping me. He does. All I have to do is record the podcast and he takes care of all the rest for me. So I started talking to people like, who do I want to interview? And I went to some people.

Craig Picken [00:20:23]:
I knew you'd be a great podcast guest. Let's talk about what you're doing in your business. Let's talk about what's changing in your business. Let's talk about something that's happening in the industry. I did a podcast with the VP of HR of a company called flexjet. And flexjet, being one of the larger private jet operators in the world, their pilots just decertified the union. I was like, hey, Bob, come on and talk to me about what you're doing as a company. That the pilots would want to decertify the union.

Craig Picken [00:20:53]:
What are you doing so well that the pilots would want to kick the union out? So he came on. So, you know, things like that. And it's been really, you know, industry, industry topics, leadership topics, motivational topics, things that people want to hear about.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:08]:
And how have you interweaved having an industry podcast into actually making placements?

Craig Picken [00:21:16]:
Oh, I do it as a lot of times, you know, a lot of guests are my clients and they want to come on and relationship building. A lot of times it's, people have heard my podcast and they're like, hey, I've had private equity guys that have listened to my podcast and they've called me up and said, can you introduce us to your guest? Sure, I could do that for you. Hey, let me tell you a little bit about me. In the meantime, I'm like, oh, we know about you. Okay, cool. You know, it's a point of credibility, you know, when I have the CEOs of publicly traded companies or really strong mid market companies on, it's maybe this guy actually knows what he's talking about. Can he help us too? So it's plays into the rest of my bit, you know, the rest of my business, which is, you know, it's just about a credibility thing and being a credible reference point of reference to whoever calls me out. So I get calls from CEOs, CFOs.

Craig Picken [00:22:11]:
We're thinking about something. Can you chat? Yeah, I can chat, sure. Happy to help you. And it may not be search related. Maybe we're just thinking about things that give them an idea of different ways to think about stuff.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:23]:
How much of your day would you say you is focused on like, just these, like, relationship calls and these like, touch base, like, let me answer some questions for you.

Craig Picken [00:22:32]:
Couple, maybe a couple hours a week. Okay, but how many of those do you need? I mean, that's, you know, that's once again, you know, so, you know, it's all about elevating my presence. You know, one private equity group I was talking to, private equity group, they called, they were asking about something. I was like, you know, I'm doing a search for this company over here in California and I just finished it. This is the guy I placed. And it was like, oh, we looked at that business. We were like, the competing bit. I'm like, really? And I go, why didn't you? Like, we took ourselves out of the process.

Craig Picken [00:23:04]:
I'm like, why? I said, well, we thought it was a little too tribal. We thought if there was so much knowledge that if it walked out the door, the owner that sold the business, if he walked out the door, we'd be, oh, my God. No, no, that's a. You shouldn't have had that thought because here's who he placed. He's great. He's gonna do. Yeah, he's. He's doing awesome.

Craig Picken [00:23:23]:
I'm like, wow, okay, you've been in.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:26]:
This space for a while. You've been building this business for a while. When did those, like, incoming calls as like you being this expert and not just a recruiter anymore start to really start coming in? Like, how many years of work did you put in before that started happening?

Craig Picken [00:23:39]:
You got to put in a lot of work. You got to become, you know, you got to become good at what you do. But I think that's a function of where, you know, where I came out of. You know, I was used to dealing with millionaires and billionaires selling private jets and very expensive real estate. So I knew how they thought getting the credibility to start getting those calls came with doing the work. That started making me a credible expert. And I can talk to you about how I chose. You know, I'll just dive into this now.

Craig Picken [00:24:12]:
Yeah. One, I was at a conference and one CEO said, how did you choose? How do you. I said, let me explain to you how I do my business. Think of a dartboard. And he's like, all right. I said, bullseye, for me, is the general manager. And he said, why is it bullseye the general manager? I said, because if I know the general manager, I can go up and I can find who the CEO of the company is. Mid market company, I can go up a little bit.

Craig Picken [00:24:40]:
Who's the next rung up? VP of the coo, CEO, who's the rung down? Director of operations. Who am I? If I want to go to the right, I'm probably figuring out who the CFO is. Or. Yeah. I said, so all around that Bullseye are layers of people. And I used to have on my board. I used. I keep a whiteboard over here to my right.

Craig Picken [00:25:03]:
Used to have on my board. I go, okay, here's the company CEO, you know, a little. Little org chart. I go, coo, cfo. My goal was in every company I worked with to know who those people were by name. And I mapped it out. So I started having the dialogues with those people.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:23]:
Okay, so you. You've mapped out this company. You have it on the whiteboard. Out of curiosity, like, once you're looking at the next company and you have to erase the whiteboard, where are you keeping, like, all this information? Is it just in your head? Is it somewhere in the system?

Craig Picken [00:25:35]:
Oh, yeah, my head. Yeah. So, yeah, it's just a generic org chart. Cao, not name Cao. Who are the people I need to know? I want to know the CEO, the coo, cfo, general manager. Who are some other people in that company? I want to know. Yeah, reach out. Hey, I know Joe.

Craig Picken [00:25:54]:
Yeah, I want to know you. I want to know you, too. Let's set up a call. And I figure it out, and I just kind of. I just knew it. And then I started to know my industry and who the players were. It's like, okay, yeah, I know I'm two degrees of separation from the person I want to know. So it's just a matter of digging a little bit.

Craig Picken [00:26:12]:
And, yeah, that's how I just became. That's how I got to know who I wanted to know. And then people started calling me, hey, I want to know you. All right, let's have a chat. But it all started out with having an idea in my head with the organization that I wanted to play with or I wanted to deal with.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:32]:
I know one of the other things that you would like to do is actually go to conferences. How many Conferences do you go to.

Craig Picken [00:26:37]:
Per year and wow, I'll do five, four, or five a year.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:44]:
And why.

Craig Picken [00:26:45]:
Oh, man, they're great. Great. Conferences are awesome. You meet people and you meet people in a very. You know, conferences are awesome because you can go up and shake somebody's hand and go, hey, this is who I am. This is what I do. Or you just go up and shake their hand. I know you from.

Craig Picken [00:27:00]:
I know who you are. You don't know me, but I know who you are. I'm kind of a professional stalker. As a recruiter, it's my job to know who you are. So I just want to put a face to a name, shake your hand. Here's my car.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:14]:
Do you actually use the professional stalker line?

Craig Picken [00:27:16]:
Yeah. So I've had people go, it's kind of scary. I've got a client I'm working with now, and the CFO and I were talking, I gotta know who you are. And he goes, how do you know who I am? I go, it's my job to know who you are. He's like, that's kind of scary. I go, yeah, it is. I mean, it's my job to know who the players in the industry are. And I know you're a player, and I know you've been there.

Craig Picken [00:27:38]:
I know you're never going to leave because you got a trashload of money tied up in the company, but I know who you are. He's like, yeah, it's kind of scary. I should be. Yeah, we laughed. We laughed.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:49]:
So I'm guessing for you, like, because you're so deep in the industry, going to, like, these conferences within your space is almost like seeing friends. But do you have, like, a game plan? Do you have, like, a mindset? Or before you had, like, all these friends here? Do you have an attack plan for every conference that you went to?

Craig Picken [00:28:06]:
Nah. Very rarely. In fact, I'm getting ready to go. I went to a conference. I went to a big trade show back in. In April, and my dance car gets filled up pretty quickly. Now a lot of people, hey, I want to see. So I typically take up.

Craig Picken [00:28:19]:
You're a laugh. I print off an Excel spreadsheet. I fold it up. I keep my jacket pocket. I. I scratch off the people. I'm like, oh, yeah, I gotta go see this person. So Sam.

Craig Picken [00:28:29]:
But no, I don't have a game plan. I'm horrible at that stuff. Don't be like me. I've been on a couple of podcasts, and I'm like, don't be like me. They're like, what technology do you use? I go, an iPhone and a computer. What else do you use? What else should I use? An iPhone, a computer. I got a pen, I got paper. What else do I need to use? That's it.

Craig Picken [00:28:54]:
It's not an industry where you gotta be tech centric or gotta have a lot of magic touches. You gotta be credible. So I go to conferences, I've spoken at conferences. I like those. But I'll go to a couple trade shows, I'll go to a couple conferences. I'll spend $15,000 a year on that stuff. Because if I'm not willing to invest in myself, why should anybody else be willing to invest in me?

Benjamin Mena [00:29:20]:
Got a question. I want to go deeper on that. Like you just said, talking about investing in yourself. I mean, let's just say like outside of conferences, like, what else are you doing to invest in yourself?

Craig Picken [00:29:28]:
A lot of times to be successful in a search, I need to touch it, see it, feel it, understand it from a visual standpoint. I got it. See what they're doing. I got to see what the organization is like. And that can't be done in a video call. So I will like, hey, what are you doing Tuesday? Yeah. Okay, we could do this, we'll do this. Let's do the search.

Craig Picken [00:29:52]:
But I gotta see you feel it, touch it, see it. I'm gonna come on a plane and come find you and we're gonna sit down and talk about it. And that helps. So I'll get on an airplane. I don't charge client for that. So I was just, I was just.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:09]:
Going to ask that. Is this something you build a client? Is this something that you do after an agreement assigned? No, before an agreement?

Craig Picken [00:30:17]:
Yeah, yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:21]:
Have you ever flown across the country and it just. Agreement wasn't signed or the search died?

Craig Picken [00:30:30]:
I don't think so.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:32]:
So this is almost like a good way to like you're there, it's locked in and you're seeing everything and being able to absorb it, to be able to explain it to somebody else.

Craig Picken [00:30:40]:
Yeah. Like literally last year I placed a CEO of a company startup. Just couldn't quite get it. Yeah, one time, one time I flown somewhere and I didn't sign an agreement. But that I think was more by me or I was kind of reading the room. I'm like, yeah, I don't know about this one because they comp. They weren't. But I did a c.

Craig Picken [00:31:02]:
I did a CEO search for a startup last year and I live in the beach in Carolina. I got On a plane at 6 in the morning. I flew to California. Got off the airplane at noon in California. Client picked me up to the airport, spent five hours with them, six hours with them, got what I needed to see, got on the airplane, flew home in the red eye. It was in the office the next morning. Got to work. 1500 bucks, 2000 bucks.

Craig Picken [00:31:28]:
Church done a couple months, a couple weeks later. And the thing about that was they were talking to me about what they needed. I'm like, you need to meet this guy. And they're like, why? I said, he was on my podcast about a year ago, but he has got the exact demeanor that you're looking for. But this is somebody you need to meet and, like, cool. Who is he? I said, here's his name, here's his LinkedIn profile. He's a good friend of mine. You need to talk to this guy.

Craig Picken [00:31:58]:
And that's who they are.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:59]:
And that probably would have never happened if you didn't hop on that plane.

Craig Picken [00:32:03]:
Nope.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:04]:
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Benjamin Mena [00:32:38]:
I'll see you there. When did you realize that hopping on the plane is like a thousand times better than sitting on a zoom call.

Craig Picken [00:32:44]:
Or just the phone goes back to sales 101. When I was selling airplanes, you got an airplane and you went and saw customers and you just. Yeah, look, it's. It's all about being in front of the customer. It's all about being present. And that's, you know, I learned that long, long, long time ago that, hey, look, you know, a dinner with a customer goes a long, long way to making a. A deal happen. That was it.

Craig Picken [00:33:16]:
So I've always kept that up.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:18]:
Let me just kind of like, switch gears a little bit. Like, you handle everything. You handle your podcast, you handle all these relationships, you're hopping on a plane, you're closing, like, massive amount of executive searches per year. That's a lot. Do you ever hit the point of, like, personally Burning out or I do.

Craig Picken [00:33:34]:
I have to take a reset? Yeah, I take it, I'll take a reset. But I work. Look, you know, there are people out there that think this is a 9 to 5 job. I think about it. I am thinking about things from seven in the morning when I wake up until last night. I was on the computer till 9 o' clock and I just. It's just like, I just gotta shut. I gotta.

Craig Picken [00:33:53]:
I gotta stop. Stop thinking about it. Yeah, burnout's real. And a lot of recruiters. Burnout. I think about it all the freaking time. But I got a great wife, I got a great family. They're very supportive.

Craig Picken [00:34:05]:
I've got good friends who, you know, I can run things past. I do a lot of executive coaching. I'm ICF trained, executive coach. So I coach them too. So I do burnout sometimes. And sometimes I just have to think about, like, you know, I'll come. But when I feel burnout, I'll just come into the office at 9 o' clock in the morning. I'm gonna chill.

Craig Picken [00:34:23]:
Today I went home for lunch. My office is a mile and a half from my house. I don't work out of the house. I went home, like, played with the dog for half hour, had a cup of coffee, sat on the back porch. I'm like, all right, I'm ready to go back to work, make a bunch of calls, you know, get, get stuff done. But yeah, I mean, it, it gets. Sometimes you're like, okay, I gotta take a break. But it goes in cycles.

Craig Picken [00:34:42]:
But I work a lot and that's okay with me. You know, people are like, yeah, we're gonna give it up. I'm like, I wouldn't know what to do if I stopped working.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:48]:
You just mentioned that you're ICF trained and you're a coach, right? Is this like coaching that you do only within, like your industry, or do you coaching for executives across the board? Is this like another business, like revenue source that you have or is it something you do for free?

Craig Picken [00:35:01]:
I just don't charge anybody for it. I don't know if I'm that good. There's a guy at Dallas, he's a friend of mine who's a executive coach and he's phenomenal. His name is Bill Koch and Bill's this former CEO of a company and he's awesome as a coach. I don't know if I'm that good or not. I bring unique perspectives. My workout partner is the CEO of a company and he's been dealing with some stuff with his board. And I've coached him through some stuff, and sometimes that's just giving him a cold bucket of reality.

Craig Picken [00:35:32]:
And he's like, whoa, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, here's your issue. And I told him he was pushing too hard. I've listened to you now for three weeks. You know, the conversation, you're pushing too hard. Back off.

Craig Picken [00:35:47]:
They get it. And he's like, yeah, you're probably right. So, again, that's one of the things I wanted to do just to enhance my own credibility as a recruiter.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:56]:
You got a podcast, you have blogs, you're a coach. Like, you're always on relationship calls. What else are you doing to really increase this credibility perspective?

Craig Picken [00:36:06]:
Somewhere in there, I got to go find candidates. And that's the part I really, you know, that's the part that's the hard part right now. Finding good quality candidates for companies. You know, people don't want to relocate right now. You know, they've got their 2% mortgages or 3% mortgages, and the companies are doing everything they can to hold on to their talent. So it's probably one of the most challenging times I've seen. I think every placement I have right now is like a knife fight. I feel like it's just a knife fight, and nobody wants to make it easy.

Craig Picken [00:36:39]:
So, all right, where's the opportunity in this? So that's. That's the issue right now is going and getting high quality candidates for solid companies.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:51]:
Now, when you say knife fight, you know, they always have the rules. Like, you never bring, like, you know, XYZ to a knife fight. Like, what are you coming in with to. To handle the situation and turn this knife fight around into a successful placement?

Craig Picken [00:37:03]:
Well, I just talked about, you know, I was going to have a record year until Saturday came, Right? So I had a COO placed, and he called me up and said, yeah, I can't do it. He came in and said, I can't, I can't do it. I'm like, why? What's up? He goes like, I don't want to get into it, but I just can't. I'm out. All right. You sure nothing we can do to change your mind? Yeah. Then I had another guy, CFO placed, and his company threw him a huge counteroffer, which he accepted. I'm like, okay.

Craig Picken [00:37:40]:
And I'm kind of at the executive level. If you're taking a counteroffer, good riddance. I don't want anything to do with you anymore. It Shows, in my opinion, executives that take counter offers are not executives. They're okay, they're mediocre. Maybe it was a blessing. So there's my opinion on counter offers. And then the third thing was a guy.

Craig Picken [00:38:03]:
The search got a little sideways for a lot of reasons. Nobody's fault. Travel, client travel, a lot of people in Europe, whatever. And it allowed a competitor come in. My number one candidate got taken away by a different company. And he called me up and said, hey, look, I know you guys are going to make me an offer, but here's what, here's where I'm at. So that all happened in one day. I went home, I looked at my wife.

Craig Picken [00:38:28]:
I'm like, oh, it's not a good weekend.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:31]:
And that happened on. Was it Saturday, Friday, Saturday, Saturday. All on a Saturday.

Craig Picken [00:38:35]:
All on a Saturday.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:37]:
What did that Monday look like after that happened?

Craig Picken [00:38:39]:
Well, that was yesterday. Today's Tuesday or Wednesday. What's today? Tuesday, Tuesday. Going to work. And I make things happen. And then, you know, on Saturday afternoon, client called me up. There's VP of hr called me up and said, hey, we want to keep you on retainer. There's some things we want to do.

Craig Picken [00:38:58]:
I just done a big placement with them, and we want to keep you on retainer. Okay, can do that. Let's talk about what it, you know, look, you can't. It's the people business. You're going to get turn downs. Things happen in people's lives. Other companies are looking for talent too. You just can't take it personally.

Craig Picken [00:39:16]:
You can't freak out about it. Was I mad? Yeah, I was freaking furious. You know, a couple hundred grand worth of. More than a couple hundred grand worth of income just walked out the door. Did it walk out the door? No, it just had means. I have to go work a little harder to get it back, which changes the game a little bit. But that's going to happen. It's the people business.

Craig Picken [00:39:38]:
And you can't get mad at them. You know, they got their own lives to worry about. So, yeah, you just have to go. Clients were cool about it. They understood that one, you know, one client understood that we delayed that, opened a door for somebody else. Let's go start the search again. Do you want to go with the backup candidate? No, let's start the search all over. All right.

Craig Picken [00:39:57]:
Start the search all over. COO who personal life got in the way. Let's go start the search over. Okay, we'll go do that. Go find you somebody else. They're cool about it. All right. And then the guy took the counteroffer.

Craig Picken [00:40:10]:
I just got off phone with client. He's like, yeah, it's no big deal. Actually, we're kind of thinking about it. And that's what he wants to do. That's what he wants to do. Let's go find somebody else. We'll think about it. If we're just good to.

Craig Picken [00:40:21]:
Okay, cool. Back to work. Back to work.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:26]:
In the work, do you have, like, personal KPIs that you try to hit every single week or every single day?

Craig Picken [00:40:31]:
No. No. I know it's probably disappointing for people to hear. I used to keep a sheet of how many phone calls I made every day. But in this day and age, I don't know what a phone call does for you. There used to be a high in this industry. Used to be hundred calls a day. I'm like, well, if you're making 100 calls a day, who are you talking to? How many.

Craig Picken [00:40:53]:
How many conversations you having? Or you just leave a voicemail for people? Yeah, I did 100 dials a day. Congratulations. You know, I had five great conversations that lasted 20 minutes each. What's more valuable? So I used to write down phone calls, left voicemail. That was one of the early days. Now I just, like, I get in, I got my calendar done. I keep my whiteboard up. I got my searches here.

Craig Picken [00:41:21]:
I get on the whiteboard. Who do I need to talk to about this? Who do I talk to about that? I just kind of keep a rolling deal in my head. And yeah, that's my business. It's a simple business. It's not easy, but it's a simple business.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:37]:
Do you think a lot of people try to overcomplicate it?

Craig Picken [00:41:40]:
Absolutely. Well, I think they. They make it too hard. And this is where I don't like recruiters. I like industry professionals who do executive recruiting. And I think there's a lot of people out there who are recruiters. They're very transactional. Like, there's only two ways for me to make more revenue.

Craig Picken [00:41:58]:
Do more searches or do searches that pay higher service charges. You know, I kind of like b, do searches that pay higher service charges, you know, and you got people out there. I don't know what your audience is, but, you know, you got people out there that I know that are scraped. They're contingent. They're scraping and scratching, and they're. They're like, you know, they get. You know, they lose stuff. They go down a long path, but they're contingent and they keep doing the same thing over and over not only one guy who's been contingent for 15, 20 years and he's always complaining about clients.

Craig Picken [00:42:36]:
I'm like, well, quit being contingent.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:40]:
You have everything that you do retained?

Craig Picken [00:42:42]:
Oh, yeah, yeah. Do you do that?

Benjamin Mena [00:42:45]:
The 1/3? 1/3. 1/3 model, or is it.

Craig Picken [00:42:47]:
No, I don't like that. And I'll tell you why. Because I don't have to. Because that makes me. That requires me to do invoices, and I don't like doing it. I don't like doing. I don't think paper. I don't like doing paperwork.

Craig Picken [00:42:59]:
It's like, you know, things like that. That's admin stuff. I hate doing admin stuff. So I do a one, A one big service charge. And I've known people that do. Well, I got. Yeah, they're all happy. They got five grand up front.

Craig Picken [00:43:12]:
No, I don't do five grand up front. It's minimum. Most of my service charges are about. But most of my fees are 60, $70,000 or more. And I want a third up front. If I got a third up front, we're good. And then I'll just bill them on the back. But if I get a third up front, I know we're good.

Craig Picken [00:43:32]:
And that's all I care about. And, yeah, something happens where the search dies or whatever else. It's like, hey, I got. I got it up front. I'm cool. I don't get too bad. I know the relationship, the client's good for the long haul.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:46]:
We've covered a lot. And before we jump over to the next part of the podcast, is there anything that you want to go deeper on that we didn't cover?

Craig Picken [00:43:53]:
No. I mean, you tell me, what are we missing?

Benjamin Mena [00:43:55]:
I. I think we did great. I'm having fun here. I'm glad Jared hit me up. I was like, hey, you need to go talk to Craig. And I'm like, craig. Oh, he looks cool. So the quick fire questions, they don't need to be quick answers.

Craig Picken [00:44:10]:
Okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:11]:
But for somebody that the first question is like, and I know you, you think of recruiters and executive recruiters as industry professionals in two different lights. But let's just say that somebody's, like, looking at this industry, looking at becoming an executive recruiter, somebody that has like a non recruiting background is from industry. What's the best piece of advice that you would give them if they hit you up like, hey, I'm looking at this recruiting thing, strong industry background. Can I succeed here, and how do I succeed?

Craig Picken [00:44:37]:
Yeah, you can. If you've got an industry background and you've got a network of people, and that's a good foundation for you to start from. Yes, you can go from there. You can take it and do advisory work. You can do executive recruiting. You can just find a place where you're really good. Map it out, you know, map out the value you bring, the industry knowledge you bring, and how you're going to use that to make a decent living. And not a decent living, but make a really good practice and take it from there.

Craig Picken [00:45:08]:
And that's how I, like, I know guys was a public company cfo, and he started as a finance recruiter in Boston. And he's like, I'm like, how do you do that? And he just said, look, it's going and finding out who all the good CFOs in Boston are. And, you know, there you go. And you can say, I'm a CFO myself. I know what good looks like. Go do some marketing. Here's how you position yourself. You can do that if you want to start on your own.

Craig Picken [00:45:34]:
That's how you do it. Look, you know, candidly, right now, I've been thinking to myself, like, if I had to start all over again, how would I do it? I mean, people don't pick up the phone. They want text. LinkedIn is getting very. What's the word? Full. It's not unique anymore. How do you get your name out there? And you know, it's an opportunity. That's an opportunity.

Craig Picken [00:45:54]:
If you don't understand the industry, don't try to become an executive recruiter in an industry you don't understand. People will sniff you out. Go to work for an agency or firm and let them teach you the business and then figure it out from there. But if you're an industry professional, VP of sales, CEO, coo, you know, you could probably. You could figure it out.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:18]:
What is one book that's had a huge impact on you?

Craig Picken [00:46:21]:
Extreme account. What's the word? It was written. It was extreme ownership. Yeah. Thank you. I'm a big believer in extreme ownership. I take full responsibility for everything that happens in my business, even if it's not my fault. It's like somewhere in there, I should have seen something it was going to miss.

Craig Picken [00:46:40]:
You know, Saturday, for instance, I should have seen it coming. You know, one guy I knew was going to take the counteroffer. In fact, he called me on Saturday, but I called the client on Friday. I go, this guy's gonna take counter offer. I see. Think so? Yeah, I think so. Maybe not. He says he Won't, but I know he will.

Craig Picken [00:46:58]:
Saturday came, he broke up by email. There you go.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:03]:
Broke up by email. Love that.

Craig Picken [00:47:05]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:07]:
Since you've started your search firm, what is one of the biggest challenges that you've had to work through getting it all done?

Craig Picken [00:47:13]:
I mean, it's, you know, challenges, you know, trying to be perfect. You're never going to be perfect. Understanding that you're not going to be perfect. There's going to be stuff that goes sideways and it's the nature of the beast. It's the nature of, you know, it's, it is what it is. It's just, you know, I try to be perfect. I'm a one man show. It's, you know, getting out of my own head.

Craig Picken [00:47:36]:
I always think about, like, who do I not know? You know, you see blog, you see press releases go out that Joe Smith or Mary Louise became the president or the VP of sales at some company. Like, how did I not know them? Then it gets in my head, I'm like, all right, you have to reset a little bit. So I hope that answers the question.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:59]:
Actually it gave me another question like, you're a one man show. You've been a one man show for so long. Why haven't you looked at expanding or adding a team?

Craig Picken [00:48:06]:
I did expand once and the guy I expanded with was not. He was afraid of the phone. And he was a really good salesperson as long as he had a product to sell. But selling executive recruiting and selling himself as an executive critter was. He could talk to the industry all day long and he could talk about, you know, everything, but he was not a good executive recruiter. And, you know, it's like, what are you doing? What you know, and so anyway, I tried it and then I found out it was a distraction. So here I am. I'm just a one man band and I've never really, I just always been too busy to start building a team and that.

Craig Picken [00:48:41]:
I didn't want to take the focus off that. So here I am. I make a lot of money. Why? Why mess with success, right? I get recruited a lot. I get big search firms calling me, hey, why don't you come to work for me? And you've worked for us. How's that going to work? Explain to me how it's going to work. So those are short conversations too. So anyway, here I am, a one man band and I'm okay with it.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:06]:
What would they offer? What could they offer you that would you to leave?

Craig Picken [00:49:11]:
Like what you're doing therein lies the problem, right? That's the first thing I'm like, you know, hey, I'm not sure. I just tell them candidly, I go, I'm probably not the best fit for you. And they're like, why? I go, well, look, you know, here's what I make now. I don't want to go make double to make what I make now. So if I come to you to make anything, any upside for what I make now, I actually probably have to build triple. And they're like, yeah, we got a good team, though. We got all this support. Whatever else.

Craig Picken [00:49:39]:
Well, yeah, okay. Probably not.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:44]:
Well, this is actually one of my favorite questions, but I'm going to ask, like, two different ways this time. You know, one for just the executives that you work with, the executives that you talk with, you know, you have these. These calls, these coaching calls, these career calls, these placement calls. They ask you a lot of questions, I'm sure, like, over the years, 17 years. Do you ever wish these executives would ask you, like, a question? But they never do. What question would that be and what's the answer?

Craig Picken [00:50:12]:
Oh, that's a great question. The question they never ask is they always come with a framework in mind. They always think about, this is what we want. You know, more times than not, this is what we want. This is what we're looking at the role. This is what we're thinking about. And the question they don't ask, and are we thinking about this correctly? You know, are there different ways to think about it? What are some different ways to think about this thing that we're not thinking about? Which would get into a whole different dialogue. Sometimes they'll ask, are you sure you're looking at this the way it should be looked at? They'll go, no.

Craig Picken [00:50:53]:
You plant that seed in their head. They're like, if you're asking that question, the answer is probably not. You know, that's. You know, that's. That's a question I wish they would ask. Are we looking at this correctly, or what should we be thinking with our business? The other question is, what are our competitors? Candidly, what are our competitors doing that we're not? They never ask that question. They should, but they don't. I talk to everybody.

Craig Picken [00:51:21]:
You know, here's what your competitors are doing. Not that I'm going to give up their secret recipe, especially if they're a client of mine, but, yeah, here's maybe a couple things you might want to be thinking about from your competitor's point.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:32]:
Of view, and I want to ask the same Question. But for recruiters. I know you've been on Mark Whitby and I love Mark a lot, his podcast. Twice you've been on with the Miller brothers on their podcast. People look up to you. I got introduced because someone was just like, hey, I love Craig, or I look up to Craig. I'm guessing with being on all these different podcasts, you probably get recruiters hitting you up. What's the secret to these big numbers? I'm sure they see these numbers that you talk about and they start asking, like, what about this? What BD process works? Are you doing NPCs, this and that? Is there a question that you wish they would actually ask you, but they never do?

Craig Picken [00:52:08]:
Yeah, what should I be doing? But they're not going to like the answer I give them.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:13]:
What's the answer?

Craig Picken [00:52:15]:
And the answer is, get out of your comfort zone. Work a little harder. Understand what a CEO is thinking about. And when I talk about CEO, it's not like a big company CEO, it's the president of a company. It's understand what they're thinking about every minute of every day. So you can have good business conversations. And when you can have good business conversations with the people who matter, it changes the whole focus. It changes the dynamic of the conversation.

Craig Picken [00:52:51]:
I'll give you a case of point. This gets out of recruiting, but I'll give you a case of point. You know, my, my aviation background. I was invited to the Santa Monica airport one time to meet a really famous person who was petrified to fly. You know, really famous person. And his lawyer was the introduction. I knew his lawyer at his agent, attorney. And I went out to Santa Monica and I met with the guy and I walked him around the airplane.

Craig Picken [00:53:24]:
I talked about every bit of the air. I said, so what do you want to know? And he says, well, we're afraid to fly. I go, why? Well, I'm afraid of some crazy whatever, phobia. Let me talk to you about this airplane. Let me talk to you about this. Talked about the engines, talked about the wings, talked about why the wings are heated, talked about the airplane. My aviation knowledge of airplanes came in. This is how the airplane's engineered.

Craig Picken [00:53:51]:
This is why this is here. So he's getting comfortable. I said, let's go fly. Got the pilots. I go, come on, we're going for a flight. Let's go for a 45 minute flight. We're going to get on board. And I made him sit next to the exit door.

Craig Picken [00:54:05]:
He's like, I don't like sitting next to the exit door. I'm like, well, this is why you can't. This is why the exit door doesn't just fly off in flight, because it's got a seal and you literally would take a thousand pounds. You know, I'm in his head. I'm understanding what he's thinking about. When you can do that in business, you've got the client. You understand the client. Quit thinking about the placement, quit thinking about the fee or HR or why they're coming to you or what.

Craig Picken [00:54:35]:
What your process is. Get in the head of the client. And when you can do that and have a strategic conversation with them, they understand you know what you're talking about. And then you can go higher in the organization. You're not talking to the HR guys or girls. You're not talking. God forbid, you're talking to an internal recruiter. Like, I wouldn't even talk to the internal first.

Craig Picken [00:54:56]:
Like, yeah, yeah, I'm an internal. I'm like, I won't even talk to you. Like, who's the P and L leader? Who's the hiring manager? Who's got. Well, that's Joe Smith. Put Joe on the phone. Well, no, no, no, no, we got it. I'm like, no, you don't got it. If you want to work with me or you want to talk to me about it, you put Joe Smith on the phone.

Craig Picken [00:55:14]:
Because if Joe Smith is willing to outsource this to you, he doesn't give a damn about his business, and I'm not wasting my time.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:21]:
Have you ever ended a search for that?

Craig Picken [00:55:23]:
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, Dozens of times. I know. Not talking to you. I don't know you. Who are you? What do you do? I'm the internal recruiter. What's your background? Whatever. Now will I talk to a VP of HR? Absolutely.

Craig Picken [00:55:40]:
They understand the business. Some of the VPs of HRs I've talked to are actually phenomenal. They really know the business. They knew the CEO. They understand. Was that. So you talk to the CEO, you do the search for the VP of hr, we're good. If I get a call from an internal recruiter.

Craig Picken [00:55:55]:
No, I'm not talking to.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:58]:
Have you ever ended it and then ended the relationship? And then the company came back and was just like, no, we still want you. We'll skip the recruiter.

Craig Picken [00:56:06]:
Yeah, yeah, that's happened. I've ended searches. And then two, three years later, they come back to me. It's like, hey, you know, I remember you. I got a search going right now. I got a search going right now. That, yeah, probably heading to the company. CEO knows me.

Craig Picken [00:56:21]:
I hadn't talked to him in 10 years, but he knows me, he knows how I'm out there hanging. But the one thing I haven't done is tried to recruit anybody out of his company. You know, it's like he does a really good job of taking care of his people. He's hired some really good executives. I've never tried to recruit somebody out of his company. Actually, I did once, way back when and he kind of called me up and said, hey, look, I'm like, all right, but we never did business. But I see him all the time and I like him and I shake his hand. And they came to me a month or two ago and said, hey, look, we got this really important search.

Craig Picken [00:56:54]:
Help us out with it. Like, okay, I'll help you out.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:58]:
Did you not pull from that company for a reason? Is it just like you couldn't yank anybody or he was like kind of on a list, like, I like this company, I'm not going to touch them.

Craig Picken [00:57:07]:
Probably for a lot of reasons. Like I said, he's a good CEO. The people that, the people that are meaningful in his company are really freaking good. And he takes care of them really, really well. And I know that it's a hard putt to get him out of there. I'll talk to them, but I've never really tried to actively recruit him. He just takes care of the people that in his company that are meaningful. He's taken good care of.

Craig Picken [00:57:31]:
You know, it is what it is. But they just came. I had talked, I hadn't done business with him a long, long time. He called me up after a decade, hey, help us out. He texted me. I was like, holy crap, what's he doing? What's he doing? So yeah, that's good. But that's what, yeah, that's what recruiters, they're taking everything. They're trying to do deals through internal recruiters, they're trying to go up, they're trying to get into the company from the bottom up.

Craig Picken [00:57:57]:
And this is the hard work. It doesn't happen overnight. But hey, look, you know, if I want to talk to an executive, a lot of times I'll shoot them an email. Yeah, I can get through email zoom and I can figure them out. I'm gonna shoot an email. I do CEO searches. CEO, cfo, CEO searches for mid market private equity. This is who I placed.

Craig Picken [00:58:13]:
Love to have a relationship with you. Can we connect on a call? Non threatening. Just want a relationship. Let's talk about it a little bit.

Benjamin Mena [00:58:21]:
Oh, feels so easy getting in.

Craig Picken [00:58:25]:
It is. You just gotta have the right mindset to do it. But if you're trying to do quality managers for billion dollar companies, if you're going in the low, if you're trying to do these low level stuff, you're never gonna have the business conversations with the people that really matter in the companies and people that are willing to pay the larger service charges. When you can have real business discussions at conferences with CEOs and CFOs and people that matter. I'm going to a trade show in two weeks. My dance card's full. I'm not buying a meal because my clients are literally like, hey, you're coming to us for dinner. I win.

Craig Picken [00:59:04]:
Okay. What are you doing for dinner? I got tax. What are you doing for dinner? Tuesday night, no plants. You're joining us for dinner. Okay, cool. I'm CEO, coo, me, a couple other bankers going to dare. Those are the business conversations you need to be able to have.

Benjamin Mena [00:59:23]:
I got one last question I want to add on before we wrap up. You've got in with PE and like, I know in the aviation space and the aerospace, PE is huge. Like, how did you get into the PE doors? Is it just through time and networking and successful placements?

Craig Picken [00:59:39]:
Time networking, successful placements, meeting them at conferences, understanding who they are once again, really, you know, doing good placements for a PE company. And then the PE group is like, hey, who did the placement? Or. And God forbid you place an executive at a company and then you email the PE guys go, hey, I just placed your guy over here at this company. How come I don't know you? Shouldn't we know each other? Your CEO is the Portco CEO knows me. Shouldn't I know you? Yeah, let's have a call, let's have a chat. So that's, you know, look, is it simple? Yeah, it's a simple business. This whole business can be done with a computer, a pen, a piece of paper and an iPhone. An email.

Craig Picken [01:00:23]:
That's it. Whole business can be done with that. Zoom, LinkedIn. That's all you need. Everybody wants to make it so complicated. And the whole business can be done that way if you do it right. Yeah, I don't know if I do it right or I don't know if I do it right or not. I've been lucky.

Craig Picken [01:00:42]:
I just been lucky. I've been very, very lucky. I feel very lucky. I got a big imposter syndrome. Yeah. So there you go. I feel like I've been very lucky.

Benjamin Mena [01:00:50]:
Imposter syndrome. With you billing probably more than 98, 99 of the recruiters. You're dealing with imposter syndrome every day.

Craig Picken [01:01:02]:
You know, it's like, all right, what am I, you know, just don't be an idiot today. So it's, it's, you know, it's. It's a mindset in my head. Don't be stupid. An idiot today. That's it. It's hard work every day. It's hard work every day.

Craig Picken [01:01:14]:
It's being on your game. If you're not on your game, don't pick up the phone.

Benjamin Mena [01:01:18]:
Are there days where you haven't picked up the phone?

Craig Picken [01:01:21]:
Oh, yeah, all days. I'll just go to the beach, just go surfing, something. Not very many, but there are days you're like, hey, I'm out of my game. I'm burned out. I'm mad. Yeah, whatever. So you just take a day off. So it's or half a day off.

Craig Picken [01:01:35]:
And you're like, all right, when I get in the right mindset, you come in and do it.

Benjamin Mena [01:01:38]:
I think imposter syndrome stops a lot of people. Like, how do you just get back to work every single day when you say that you're dealing with it every.

Craig Picken [01:01:44]:
Single day because you just got to get in. You know, this is where a lot of recruiters don't. They're afraid to have that conversation. They're afraid to pick up that phone. And if you're running with fear, you can't have fear. You gotta be willing to do that. What's going to do to make you successful? And it's understanding every conversation you're going to have, Thinking about every conversation you're going to have. How are you going to attack it? What are you going to do? Thinking about the things, you know, don't go willy nilly.

Craig Picken [01:02:14]:
Don't go sending out a lot of stupid emails. You know, just think about the conversations. I'll give you one last story before we wrap up. Division president of a probably top three executive defense contractor called me. He's like, I need to make a move and this is where I want to go. But I can't do that. I can't call them on my own. Okay? I called up their competitor and I got the CEOs, I got the email for the CEOs.

Craig Picken [01:02:46]:
EA and I called her up, emailed her, and I called her up. I said, look, this is who I'm working with. This is what he's looking to do. If your boss is interested in a Conversation. Here's my phone number. The answer is in his response. If he calls me, I know he's interested in the conversation. If he's not interested in the conversation, this is who I am.

Craig Picken [01:03:18]:
This is what I do. Maybe we have one down the road. Are we cool with that? She's like, yeah, I appreciate your. I appreciate your candor on that. You know, a lot of recruiters would have gone in and just pounded on the guy. I'm like, I know who you're. Is ea. You get it? This is the conversation.

Craig Picken [01:03:37]:
She called me back. I was driving down to a conference, and she called me back and she said, hey, I appreciate your. Your candor on this for a lot of reasons. A person we can move forward with. I'm like, cool, thanks. There you go. But those are the. If you're not willing to make those calls, don't be in this business.

Craig Picken [01:03:54]:
How's that?

Benjamin Mena [01:03:56]:
That is the perfect thing to end it on. Craig, two last questions before I watch. Go. If somebody wants to follow you, how do they go about in doing that?

Craig Picken [01:04:04]:
Follow me on LinkedIn. I'm very. I'm out on LinkedIn. I'm. You can just kind of. I post a lot, I blog a lot, I comment a lot. You can follow me on LinkedIn. You can connect with me if you want.

Craig Picken [01:04:17]:
Following me is probably best. I get a lot of people calling me up, hey, do you have 20 minutes to talk? I probably don't, and that's the challenge I get. But shoot me an email and maybe one day. Yo, if I can find a gap in there, I'm happy to talk to people as I can, but my dance card gets pretty full every day.

Benjamin Mena [01:04:33]:
And before I let you go, is there anything else you want to leave with the listeners, which I know you've left a lot already?

Craig Picken [01:04:38]:
No. I hope this was. Yeah, I hope this was beneficial.

Benjamin Mena [01:04:41]:
I think this is fun. This was good. Well, Craig, I just want to say thank you for, like, just breaking it down, especially for other industry leaders that are looking to go into executive recruiting and really just like, talking about how simple the business can be and how we're. Many recruiters are over complicating it, and it's just putting in the freaking work.

Craig Picken [01:05:02]:
Yeah, you got to do the work. You got to do the work. You got to set yourself apart. And if you're not doing the work and you're not setting yourself apart, you're just another recruiter. And that's the one thing that I kind of figured out early on was how do I set myself apart. I'm willing to do the work. How do I set myself apart?

Benjamin Mena [01:05:24]:
All right, guys, you heard it. Do the work and set yourself apart. So keep crushing it. And until next time, guys, Admin is a massive waste of time. That's why there's Atlas. The AI first recruitment platform built for modern agencies doesn't only track resumes and calls, it remembers everything. Every email, every interview, every conversation. Instantly searchable, always available.

Benjamin Mena [01:05:47]:
And now it's entering a whole new era. With Atlas 2.0, you can ask anything and it delivers. With MagicSearch, you speak and it listens. It finds the right candidates using real conversations, not simply looking for keywords. Atlas 2.0 also makes business development easier than ever. With opportunities you can track, manage and grow client relationships. Powered by generative AI and built right into your workflow need insights. Custom dashboards give you total visibility over your pipeline.

Benjamin Mena [01:06:12]:
And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported up to 41% EBITDA growth and an 85% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. No admin, no silos, no lost info. Nothing but faster shortlists, better hires, and more time to focus on what actually drives revenue. Atlas is your personal AI partner for modern recruiting. Don't miss the the Future of Recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive listener offer at recruitwithatlas. Com.

Benjamin Mena [01:06:37]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit, subscribe and leave a rating.