From $1M to $25M: Strategic Steps for Recruiting Business Success with Thomas Kosnik

Benjamin Mena [00:00:01]:
Welcome to the Elite Recruiter podcast with your host, Benjamin Menna, 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. This is an important episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast. As a whole, the recruiting and staffing world has had 36 negative months. Months where it has not gone up, months where it's been going down, and it's been impacting the entire industry. You've seen it. You've talked to your friends. There are recruiters out there that are just absolutely struggling.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:36]:
But here's the thing. There are firms out there that are growing in this environment. They're winning hand over fist. They have figured out what to do in this market to win. I'm so excited about this episode because I have an expert with me, Tom Kosnick, who actually is the advisor to so many of these firms. He mostly works in firms like, they're typically like the 25 to the 100 million mark and some over $350 million a year. So he understands what's happening. But here's the thing.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:03]:
He understands how these companies are winning. And I'm so excited to have him kind of just break it down, help us figure out how we can get ahead. So, Tom, welcome to the podcast.

Tom Kosnik [00:01:13]:
Oh, thank you, Benjamin. Very glad to be here.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:15]:
So, okay. We always get started. Actually, typically we get started like how you got into recruiting, but before we. That the Vices group. What is that?

Tom Kosnik [00:01:24]:
Yeah, we are a middle market organizational development gross strategy consulting firm, 100% dedicated to the staffing industry. Our clients are anywhere from startups to north to 2 billion in revenue. And half of our business, we manage a peer roundtable program. We have close to 100 C suite execs in nine different peer roundtables that we manage. And then the other half of the business we do organizational development, growth, strategic consulting, which could be business planning, sales planning, assessments on organizations, compensation assessments, compensation redesign for a whole wide variety of things. And it's not just myself. I've got a dozen subject matter experts that have years and years and years of experience in the industry that can work with me either on understanding the improving the tech stack or improving the sales system, or improving the recruiting or improving the back office. Whatever the challenge is that the businesses is having, we do have some folks on board that can do the coaching.

Tom Kosnik [00:02:28]:
But organizational development, we really focus on helping the C suite team grow the entity, increase the asset value of the business they own.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:38]:
And that's actually why I'm so glad that we got it hooked up, because, like, you, you see this backend, you see what's exactly. You're like. You're in the weeds seeing what companies are doing. You see what's working and what's not working, and most importantly, the companies where it's not working, how they can change to make it work.

Tom Kosnik [00:02:55]:
Yes. So imagine in our peer roundtable, you know, every four to six months, we have 100 or so C suite execs that are talking about what's going on in their business, what's working, what's not working, and we hear all that. We have access to all that information.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:13]:
Before we dive into that, how did you even end up in this wonderful world of recruiting?

Tom Kosnik [00:03:16]:
Oh, my gosh. You can look at my website. This is a true story, by the way. I was making a career change. Long story short, I was studying to be ordained in the catholic church as a priest. Somewhere near the end of my masters at divinity, I realized ordained ministry was not the calling. I was too close to finishing a master's degree, and I'm 100% polish. And one thing you know about polish people is that they always finish what they start.

Tom Kosnik [00:03:44]:
And so I'm like, I'm too close. I've got to finish this master's degree. So I finished the master's degree, got a job in the Chicagoland area, and then met my wife, got married, and her father, who owned maybe a half a dozen different businesses, one of the businesses that he owned was a staffing business. I needed to make a change. I always say, if I was a rabbi or if I was a Baptist minister, I probably could have had estate in the, in the faith. But trying to be a layperson in the catholic church and raise a family and just tough making ends meet that way. But anyway, so I called up my father in law, and he got me introduced into a gentleman that was putting together these peer roundtables, and one thing ended up in another, and we started working together, and just real quick. So there we were.

Tom Kosnik [00:04:32]:
Of course, my father in law, he never does anything small. So he had. He had four of us that were going to start roundtables. And one guy said, hey, I'm going to tell you, vice presidents of engineers, and, hey, I'm going to do CFO's. Hey, I'm going to do vice presidents of engineers. And so my father looked at me, says, hey, Tom, the only thing that's left is staffing, because one of the businesses that he had was a little sales training, sales training business, and he used to do sales training for the staffing industry. And I said, of course, I knew nothing about business. This is how crazy things are.

Tom Kosnik [00:05:07]:
I know nothing about business. But I said, all right, I'll give that a shot. And lo and behold, this was what, 30 years ago. Now the industry was growing at 12% a year. I think the total annual revenues was 40, 50 billion. And now it's 200 something billion in revenue. But the industry was growing at 12% a year. And I just worked hard, and a few years later I had, I don't know, seven, eight roundtables and that was 80% of the revenue.

Tom Kosnik [00:05:37]:
So, you know, off we went. We struck a deal. Father in law, myself, we struck a deal and I bought my piece of the business out. And he's been a great, he's been a great mentor to me, actually.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:48]:
That's phenomenal. So you're going to go to the staffing industry, go figure it out.

Tom Kosnik [00:05:52]:
Yeah, exactly. Right. I had no idea what my liver working the conferences. Gosh, you think about the old days. Just, you go to the conferences and you just hang out at the bars late at night and you just meet a ton. Because, I mean, it's such a people industry. We were so fortunate, frankly. I mean, we're in an industry that's been growing for last 30 years.

Tom Kosnik [00:06:19]:
If you look at every recession, the industry comes back and adds another 20, $30 billion on top end. So we've been in the industry, but we had just wonderful, wonderful clients. They're great people, people, they care about their employees. They want to make good decisions. They want to grow their businesses. I really enjoyed the time in the staffing industry and servicing the industry. It's really been a gift to me.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:43]:
Dad, talk about a start. Like, once again, just stumbling into the recruiting world.

Tom Kosnik [00:06:48]:
Yeah, isn't that how we all end up in the recruiting staff thing? It's like nobody, nobody goes to college to say, hey, I want to get into the staffing industry.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:59]:
I want to get it down and dirty. Like, you know, it's been rough for a lot of like, recruiting companies. Let's focus on, like, the market as a whole right now. What are you seeing?

Tom Kosnik [00:07:09]:
Well, you're seeing on the commercial side, the light industrial side. My clients are telling me that their clients are saying, hey, we know you guys, we like you guys, but we just don't need you. And we just don't have any open orders. There are a handful of economists that I follow and some economic institutions that I follow. And so manufacturing, no big surprise. Inflation. After Covid, we're back up to maximum credit card debt, savings are back down to what they were pre Covid. So people can only spend so much money, they only have so much resources.

Tom Kosnik [00:07:44]:
So consumer spending. And the reason why we look at consumer spending is it's about 70% of the economy, 65, 70% of the economy. So it's a big statistic we look at. But if people aren't buying things, manufacturers are not manufacturing things, or the demand that drops, drops, drops, drops. And so manufacturing has been in a decline. So on a commercial side, okay, you have the decline on the manufacturing side. So then some of you might say, Benjamin, you might say, well, Tom, isn't that a great time for, for manufacturers to use temporary staffing? Yes, it is good time, but in comes the whole immigration. And this is on the commercial side, hospitality side, entertainment, these jobs that are whatever they are, $15 to $22 an hour jobs where a lot of manufacturers are hiring the recent immigrants that are coming into the country versus utilizing a staffing business.

Tom Kosnik [00:08:39]:
And just want to be real clear here, we need immigration, right? We need immigration. And in fact, I think the United States is at the point where we're not birthing enough people to keep our population where it needs to, which is another economic indicator that you look at that, hey, if a population is shrinking, the economy is shrinking. If the population is growing, the economy is growing. Economics 101. So on the commercial side, you have manufacturing that has been inclined. You have the immigration where manufacturers are hiring immigrants versus using staffing firms. On the professional side, boy, quietly, Benjamin, quietly. Companies are, their clients are near shoring and offshoring hundreds of jobs.

Tom Kosnik [00:09:27]:
We used to think that whole offshore thing was the big companies that had big it departments and, well, we're going to send half these workers, or we're going to utilize workers in India and you know, our pay rate all. Well, I mean, small, small businesses offshoring and utilizing offshore resources to fulfill their jobs, fulfill the work that needs to be done in their businesses. And that has a big, big, big effect on the professional staffing. Whether you're in engineering, it, accounting, finance, life sciences, that has a big effect. And it also has a big effect on the direct hire recruiting side. Regardless of who you talk to, clients like nobody, you know, it's a love hate relationship, right? No, no one likes to pay $25,000 fees. And I've got clients that do high end retained searches. I mean, those are 90 to 110, $120,000 fees.

Tom Kosnik [00:10:26]:
So companies aren't jumping up and down to pay those fees. And they're always looking at ways to, hey, can we do this ourselves? You know, hence that whole thing like pre Covid, when all that on the supply side, the candidate side, when it was so tight, so restricted, you had how many companies, all those big companies were hiring recruiters, paying them 100k base salary, 110k base salary. And the variable was $10,000.15 grand, something like that. But they're thinking, well, gosh, if I hire a recruiter, bring them on board, let them work from home if they want, but if they just do one hire a month, I'm saving 25 grand. So 25 times twelve, 225. You know, I do the numbers. You know, the finance guy. Let's go hire a bunch of recruiters and let's get a recruit.

Tom Kosnik [00:11:12]:
Let's get Benjamin to recruit and to manage these remote recruiters. He's a good guy. He knows what he's doing, and, you know, and off we go. So, you know, that was the whole pre Covid thing. But now, now it's like companies are offshoring near shoring, and they're also utilizing upwork. They're utilizing people that have very specific skills on many projects. You know, we don't need to hire a proposal writer. Let's go to upwork and find a proposal writer and just, you know, contract by contract by contract versus hiring somebody full time and paying for benefits and paying for place for them to work and their phone and their Internet at home if it's remote.

Tom Kosnik [00:11:54]:
So our client, our. My clients clients, they're trying to figure it out. Like, we're trying to figure it out. They've gone through the wage inflation thing just like we've gone through the wage inflation. Well, anyway, I could. I could talk for a while.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:05]:
Well, I mean, it just shows the reality of what's out there. And, like, we have to figure out and face what the reality is. But here's what I definitely am excited about. How are these companies out there winning and growing in an environment that's tougher than it's been in a long time?

Tom Kosnik [00:12:21]:
And you're talking about staffing clients? Correct.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:23]:
Staffing recruiting firms.

Tom Kosnik [00:12:24]:
You got to get creative. You have to start having different kinds of conversations with your clients than you had before. If you think you're going to grow your business by hiring a bunch of sales guys, knocking on doors, asking for job orders, good luck. I've been in this industry for 30 years. I'm connected with people that, frankly, I mean, they're far more experienced in staffing than I am and managing, you know, half billion dollar business units. And these folks are these, quote unquote. I mean, these folks are saying to me, look, if you think that you're going to grow your business by utilizing the same sales methodologies that you did two years ago, three years ago, five years ago, good luck. Not going to happen.

Tom Kosnik [00:13:03]:
How are these companies doing it? Well, they're having different kinds of conversations with their clients. They're getting deeper into their clients to say to their clients, they're bringing value added information. And this is more than a wage salary survey. They're bringing them data on demographics, data on wages, data on wage inflation, on specific jobs in specific geographical markets. And they're having these different conversations asking the questions, guys, what your human capital, your human capital acquisition strategy, what is it? How can you make it? How can you make it better, faster? How can you utilize outside services to bring the kind of talent that you need? What kind of talent do you need? Do you know what kind of talent you need? A lot of these large organizations, frankly, even though they're billions in revenue or millions in revenue, a lot of those large organizations, their HR departments are not that sophisticated in terms of human capital acquisition strategies. And those HR departments are stretched thin just like any other departments, big companies. But the staffing companies are having those kinds of conversations with their clients in their positioning. Great word, positioning themselves to be a consultant, to be an advisor, to be a different kind of an organization than somebody that's just going to find them bodies that they can place.

Tom Kosnik [00:14:25]:
And then you've got to be smart enough. You got to be. You have to have enough capital. You have to be, whether you're investing in a certain business idea, you got to be smart enough to then be able to come back to your client with a creative solution to help them achieve what they want to achieve. Is there going to be business out there? Job order, you know, go out and get me job orders and when our recruiters will fulfill it. Yeah, sure, you know, low hanging fruit. But I mean, come on, if you're looking to grow a business, what do you need? Client satisfaction and client retention. You know, when you've got 30% turnover rates, 40% to client turnover rates.

Tom Kosnik [00:15:03]:
Good luck. You're never going to grow your business.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:06]:
Let's just open up two questions. First question is going to be, has some of these large recruiting companies and just the way the market is, have they changed some of their offers that they're offering their clients, or is it just how they're approaching their clients?

Tom Kosnik [00:15:19]:
Well, you know what's going on. The large staffing firms are, oh, Tom, like instead of 30 outbound sales calls, you got to start making 60 outbound sales calls. Oh, we need to hire sales, sales, sales. I mean, you've seen it switch almost overnight. And that's, by the way, that's both on the direct hire side and the contract side of the business. In short, the way that they've responded is, hey, let's put the gas pedal on the sales. And anyway, it's just that's not a viable long term solution. And the reason why I say that, Benjamin, is that, hey, we're going, we don't realize it, but we're going through seismic changes in the staffing industry.

Tom Kosnik [00:16:00]:
I mean, we haven't even started talking about AI and what that's doing to the industry. But we can't sell the way that we used to sell. We cannot position ourselves the way we used to position the buyers are so much more sophisticated. You've got to bring value. Add, it's more than bodies, it's more than. Okay, yes, recruiting, we're doing what they can't do. We can recruit in places where they can't recruit. Sure we get all that, but where those used to be differentiators, those are now table stakes.

Tom Kosnik [00:16:31]:
Tom, if you cant even do that, theres the door. See you later.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:36]:
Were going to talk about more growth in a second, but ive been talking with a lot of people about whats coming forward. You just mentioned were on the cusp of seismic changes in our industry from all the people that you talk to and the network and the vision that you could see based on the conversations that you have and the places that you work with people on. What do you mean by seismic change?

Tom Kosnik [00:16:57]:
Well, here's what I mean. A couple things. One, many clients of staffing firms and many staffing firms use offshore recruiters either in the Philippines or in India to source candidates. You know, scrape the job boards, send emails, you know, all that stuff. For a grand or 1250 or $1,500 a month, they can get a source cert to do that. Well, that job task is today fully automated to the point where you can manage it through a technology automation. So it's not going to happen overnight. But this is the crystal ball.

Tom Kosnik [00:17:39]:
All that offshore sourcing, you're going to start seeing it decline, decline, decline, decline, decline, decline, decline. The smarter, more astute the clients of staffing firms and staffing firms, they'll invest in the technology and make it happen. So that's like one dynamic. The other dynamic that's happening in the industry is, and again, the whole automation, the whole AI, the language models, man. It's just happening at light link speeds to the point where for most of us it's even overwhelming. And I'm no expert in any of this, but when you think about training people, when you think about. I'll tell you. I was at a conference, ta tech, they're the job board conference.

Tom Kosnik [00:18:23]:
And they had a keynote speaker, which was a chro of a hospital in city of New York. And he's given his presentation, and he throws up on. Clicks a button on his laptop and up pops this AI of a nurse. Hello, my name is Sharon, and I'm here to do the first phase interview with you. Can you spell your name for me? He goes, he plays it for like three minutes. And this is a year and a half ago, so, I mean, what's it now? Who knows what that technology is like now? But anyway, he stops it for three minutes. He said, hey, we got 25 recruits. We have 25 recruiters, you know, in our hospital system.

Tom Kosnik [00:19:01]:
He says, what do you think? Those 25 recruiters, when I showed them this video, there goes my job. Here's the other kicker again, that we're just. We're not thinking. We're not. You're not reading about this, but candidates. The kids that are coming out of school, you know, the baby, the millennials, the later millennials, and the kids coming out of school now, they'd rather talk to a bot than a recruiter. You know, Benjamin, I like you. You know, nice guy, you know, but what are the job opportunities? What do I need to get you? Can I fill it out on my iPhone?

Benjamin Mena [00:19:37]:
I did an interview last week with a company that a hiring manager could put in a JDEv and it will automatically go source, have conversations, do the recruiting screen, and then schedule the interviews on the hiring manager's calendar. And once the interview is done, build out a scorecard.

Tom Kosnik [00:19:53]:
Yeah. Yeah. This is what I'm talking about. Seismic. I'm afraid to say that for a lot of these recruiting firms, it's like the frog that's in the water that's getting hotter and hotter and hotter and hotter and then. And the frog wakes up one morning and they're in heaven. How'd I get here?

Benjamin Mena [00:20:14]:
And, you know, that's another thing when I talk about it, you know, what's worked five years ago doesn't work today. What worked even three years ago isn't working today. How can somebody prepare for this future? But how can they grow their company right now?

Tom Kosnik [00:20:28]:
You have to have some way to not necessarily be on the bleeding edge. But you have to have the technology innovation to understand what that is, how it's unfolding, and how I can bring that into my business. Number one, so a lot of small to mid sized staffing businesses, they just don't have the internal resources to do that. They just don't. They don't have the internal resources to do that. So, number one, you have to have some way, and whether you contract it out on a contract basis to an external person, some way to have a Benjamin or to have, you know, a Tom or to have a Diane that is going to understand what that technology is and then bring those ideas into the business where, okay, let's take a look at this. And can we use this to make our recruiters more efficient and more effective? So, more efficient, more effective means more gross profit production on a month to month basis, more interviews, more starts, whatever it is. For the last ten years, twelve years, companies have spent thousands, thousands, thousands of dollars on technology.

Tom Kosnik [00:21:37]:
And you look, and the average gross margin, gross profit production per internal resource hasn't changed a dime. I mean, what did you do? I mean, that technology is worthless if it cannot increase gross profit. And that's a little bit of a paradigm shift in terms of how I'm thinking about my technology and bringing it into the business and utilizing it. So that's one PIecE that has to happen. The other piece that has to happen. So that's an operational efficiency thing that's going on internally. And by the way, get YOur employees involved. Get your recruiters and salespeople involved.

Tom Kosnik [00:22:12]:
Sales. In the end, somebody's got to talk to somebody. In recruiting, in the end, a human has got to talk to a human. So, I mean, you're not going to automate the entire process, right? Something like this example that you gave, I'm not sure about those jobs and all that, but at these various levels, you're not going to be able to extricate the entire human contact and relationship. Well, what can we automate in order to get Tom, the recruiter, talking to candidates 6 hours a day instead of 3 hours? Do you remember that? Do you remember the 180 minutes? Yeah, I mean, the old direct, our guys will tell you, if my recruiters are on the phone talking 180 minutes a day, they're going to be successful. Well, how do you turn 180 minutes into 240 or 300 minutes a day where they're talking to candidates? That's on the internal operation automation improvement side, and it's got to be tied back to production. It's got to be tied back to helping people become more productive on the sales side. It's, again, it's having different kinds of conversations with your clients.

Tom Kosnik [00:23:26]:
It's asking different questions, and by the way, asking those different kinds of questions, having those different kinds of conversations, you're positioning yourself as more than a recruiting firm. Those are like two, two key critical things. You know, we used to say, gosh, I'm at 7 million in revenue and I want to grow to 15 million in revenue. Well, okay, two recruiters and a sales guy can do three and a half million in revenue. So I need to hire two new sales guys and four new recruiters. That thinking is rapidly past, say, old school. It just doesn't work that way anymore.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:05]:
If you want to have those growth numbers, we'll say from seven to 10 million or seven to 15 million. What is the strategy in 2024 and 2025 to actually do that?

Tom Kosnik [00:24:15]:
We haven't yet talked about the whole marketing piece of it, but marketing used to be maybe whatever, 15, 20% of the sales. Marketing used to be the website and the colors and the business card and the brochures and the presentations, things like that. Marketing now is like 80% of the sales process. And marketing really needs to be tightly aligned with sales messaging, getting messaging out on social media, helping your recruiters and your sales people build their personal brand on social media. So that people call Benjamin, because Benjamin is the guy that places life science people in these skill sets, in these kinds of companies. I want to know that guy. And not only do I want to know that guy, I want to stay in touch with that guy because, you know, I'm going to move. I've got aspirations in my careers and my career and all that stuff, and he's going to be much more connected than I am.

Tom Kosnik [00:25:12]:
So you want to grow your business. Wow, it's just changed. Just as I'm talking, I'm thinking so many things have changed for us, it's almost overwhelming. But, yeah, you want to grow your business. So then it's getting marketing involved in a way that marketing has never been involved in terms of helping get that message out on the Internet. And again, so, you know, what does marketing do? This is real simple thinking. It's simple, but marketing just gets the message out there and pulls prospects back to us, whether it's candidates or buyers, where sales, you know, I'm picking up the phone or I'm working a networking event, or I'm working a meetup event. That's the other thing.

Tom Kosnik [00:25:51]:
We haven't, I haven't talked about either. But anyways, the whole marketing piece of it is getting marketing involved and getting marketing aligned. And the consistency is so important. Like, if I'm trying to be an advisor to my clients, then that consistent professional message has got to be in the social media, across the board. Like, whatever you're doing, these podcasts, things like that. Well, I mean, in part, kind of a differentiator, but it keeps, it keeps you in front of your clients and all that. But look, I mean, you start inviting a bunch of yahoos on this thing, like talking about whatever, baseball statistics and things like that. After a while, people are like, you know, Benjamin's a nice guy, but there's no value out of that podcast.

Tom Kosnik [00:26:37]:
So on and on and on, you're trying to maintain a certain consistency, to maintain that client base and that connection. That's all part of your marketing strategy. Same thing's got to happen with a staffing firm, recruiting firm. At a certain level, I can't stress. The other thing that I can't stress more. Gosh. And my clients are just not even thinking about this. And that is the personal branding of your salespeople and your recruiters.

Tom Kosnik [00:27:03]:
It's just so you got to cut through your recruiters and your salespeople. They have to have a brand. We're living in a land of influencers, right? I don't have time to listen to influencers. My wife does. Oh, you got to hear this influencer about this recipe or about the color of these drapes against the color of this wall, and, you know, whatever, you know. But we're living in the land of influencers. And so your recruiters and your salespeople, they have to become like influencers and cut through the crap of all the other salespeople that are doing what, Benjamin? They're making phone calls. Hello, this is Tom Koznick.

Tom Kosnik [00:27:43]:
We specialize in recruiting it professionals. I'd like to find out more about your business. Please call me back at dot dot dot dot dot dot dot. Right? That's what you're trying to do. You're trying to cut through the crap. And by having this podcast and position yourself in social media, I can't tell you how important that is. Here's another thing that we never used to think about. You're talking about we can't sell, you know, the old.

Tom Kosnik [00:28:05]:
The old Google. The Google ratings and all that stuff. First off, if you're not doing Google ratings, you're already screwed. Secondly, if you're not at 3.43.5 and better, you're screwed. You're hurting yourself. And why is that important? Because 80, 84%. These are valid and reliable statistics. 84% of your candidates, 84% of your clients, prospective clients, are going to look on the Google ratings or some other kinds of ratings, and they're going to trust those ratings more than they're going to trust in a person's referral.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:42]:
84% of clients are looking.

Tom Kosnik [00:28:44]:
84%.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:45]:
It's insane. Well, okay, let me take a step back, too. Like that.

Tom Kosnik [00:28:49]:
So that this is. So, Benjamin, this is what I'm saying. Like, you've got these small to mid sized businesses that are. Okay, so the numbers are declining. Recruiters aren't. Like, well, so, guys, guys, we got to make more dials. We got to hit the phones. We got to do this.

Tom Kosnik [00:29:03]:
We got to. It truly is a paradigm shift. And all that stuff that I've been talking about for the last seven minutes, that all falls under the camp of the marketing person. And, look, if you can't afford $150,000 or $180,000 a year marketing person, then go find a fractional person that can work with your team and get that stuff going in your business. I can tell intuitively, you know I'm right, what I'm saying. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:30]:
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. But, okay, so here's the thing. A lot of what I feel like a lot of companies don't empower their teams to go start building a brand. Cause I think they're afraid that they're gonna lose somebody. Turn that.

Tom Kosnik [00:29:45]:
You're talking now. You're talking about the power to see ourselves. And, you know, why do businesses grow? Because the guy at the top doesn't grow. The woman at the top doesn't grow. The married couple at the top doesn't grow. You got to challenge yourself. You never were their age. It's a different world now.

Tom Kosnik [00:30:00]:
And so the men and women that own these businesses that are afraid to have people build their brands, what I would tell them is, let your people build their brand and focus on creating an amazing, engaging culture. That's how you win. That will occasionally somebody go off on their own, will occasionally somebody go off, take a job with somebody else because it's 100% remote. Yeah, look, that's life. You're going to have turnover. As long as you know how to hire an onboard people on the front end, which is a whole nother podcast, as long as you know how to do that, then off you go.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:39]:
You started talking about the leader, and I really wanted to dial in on this and talk about leadership. What type of person is good at scaling a recruiting business.

Tom Kosnik [00:30:49]:
The people that are good at scaling recruiting businesses, first off, they are constantly in growth mode. They're not happy with the status quo. When I think about, and I tell people this on the front end, every executive that's in our peer roundtable program, they are in growth mode. In other words. And I tell people before they even come, if you're a lifestyle business, if you're a lifestyle minded person, like don't come because you'll get run over after the third meeting. When you come back and you're at the same revenue, people are going to be like, Benjamin, like you haven't grown your business in the past year. What's with that? What are you doing over there? These executives, first off, they're always in growth mode, never happy with the status quo. And I'm not saying they're greedy, right? Because people grow businesses for all kinds of reasons, right? First off, who wants to be in a business that's not growing? Do you know of any a players that want to stay in a business that's not growing? I don't know any.

Tom Kosnik [00:31:50]:
So if you want to attract a players and people, the executive that's growing, a recruiting staffing company understands this. They understand that a players are attracted to growing companies. And why are a players attracted to growing companies? Because that's a career path. That's a, hey, I want to grow. I want to grow from here to here to here to here. And this business is growing and I want to jump on that train and ride with them. Open to innovation, which we've been talking about, innovation and whatever, they're open to change. So you always have to be putting things, you always have to be evaluating.

Tom Kosnik [00:32:24]:
You always have to be improving. We haven't talked about ATS, applicant tracking systems, but you know how many companies put an applicant tracking system in place and then they utilize 20% of it, 30% of it, and they're really not fully utilizing the ATS system. So when I say open to change, they have an agile process going on within their organizations where they have maybe a cross functional team that is constantly looking at the ATS. How can we improve it? How can we use it better? How can this system make our people faster, better, smarter, whatever it is, whether it's automation, whether it's learning how to use control, something in the software, all that stuff. They're open to change. They're open to innovation. They're always in growth mode. And here's the other thing, is that they're not afraid to talk to competitors.

Tom Kosnik [00:33:19]:
They're not afraid to get in a room and, hey, Benjamin, what's working for you? Hey, what are you experiencing in the market? So they tend to be highly collaborative. They tend to be. They go to the conferences and not just the staffing conferences. I mean, they'll go to other kinds of conferences that are going to continue to challenge them and that are going to continue to help them develop. So, you know, the person that's successfully growing the business, growing a business is somebody who is constantly growing, constantly develop, constantly change, and they know that and they seek it out. Some of them will have mentors and coaches. You have peer groups, advisory groups, a board of advisors, informal board of advisors, formal board of directors. You know, all that stuff to do what depound on them.

Tom Kosnik [00:34:08]:
Tom, you're not thinking right. You're going to do what? Why are you going to do that? Where's the cash flow on that? Have you fleshed this idea out? Is there an example of how that worked in other firms before we make this decision? Of course, you know, Tom doesn't want to hear that because Tom's ego is in between the way of the advice from the board of directors or board of advisors or mentor or coach or whatever, and. But eventually, you know, I go home salt, I have a drink and. Okay, well, maybe Benjamin's right. I guess I got to do more research on this before I make this decision. That's the Persona of the kind of person that's successfully growing these businesses. And here, let me tell you, like, get yourself in some kind of a peer group. My God, I have a client that was in one of our peer groups and he's going off to start his own thing, and he asked the question to the peer group, hey, what is one thing that you would have done differently 15 years ago when you started your business? Unanimously, everybody around the table said, I would have found a group of executives like this to join.

Tom Kosnik [00:35:10]:
To be a part of. It would have saved me so much headache, time, mistakes, money, all that. That's the Persona of the people I find grown.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:20]:
So this isn't the quick fire questions, but we're going to kind of do like a quick fire of growing a company from like one to five, five to 1010 to 25.

Tom Kosnik [00:35:27]:
Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:28]:
So, like, if you can. Like, if you can really just like.

Tom Kosnik [00:35:31]:
One to each working 80 hours a.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:33]:
Week in each of these, like, if you can maybe give like one or two points of growth between the next jump, and then we'll go to the next one. So, like, you know, one to 5 million, like one or two things.

Tom Kosnik [00:35:42]:
Hey, your next hire, your second hire, your third hire, it's more important when you're trying to grow from one to 5 million. Those hires are more important than growing from five to ten or ten to ten to 25. So you've got to figure out how to hire, you know, key a players. Number one. Number two, cash flow. You're going to run out of cash. I mean, you're starting a business, one to five, you're going to need twice the amount of cash you need to get from here to there. It's like the number one reason why these businesses don't make it is cash flow.

Tom Kosnik [00:36:15]:
So those are two right off the top, and then the owner has got to be, you know, I'm not joking, but like 80 hours a week and the owner's got to wear every hat in the business. Like they're taking out the trash on Friday night and they're recruiting and they're selling and they do whatever it takes to close that deal, to get that sale, to make that client okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:37]:
Five to ten.

Tom Kosnik [00:36:39]:
So growing from five to ten is number one sales plan, not business plan. So have a very well thought out sales plan. And by the way, a recruiting agency, staffing company is a sales organization. So you could make the case that your sales plan is your business plan. But invariably I get called from people that are 7 million in revenue, 8 million, whatever. Oh, my banker says I need a business plan. I said, tell your banker you don't need a business plan. You need a good, well thought out sales plan.

Tom Kosnik [00:37:09]:
Well, what's a sales plan, Benjamin? Value proposition. Ideal client profile. The people, the top 25 top 50 lists. What's your specialization tactics? Who in these accounts am I going to go after? What's the marketing strategy? So you're moving from one to five. You're moving from reactive. God, I just need to get. I just need to get a dozen clients and get this much revenue rolling. So you're moving from 100% reactive to you're starting to plan.

Tom Kosnik [00:37:37]:
Right. So in the sales plan is more important than the business plan changes as you get larger. The other thing growing from five to ten is start thinking about, like, inside recruiting managers. You have to force yourself at these. Well, how can I spend 15, 20% of my time working on the business versus fighting fires all day or working in the business? So you got to figure out a way on how you can allocate that time. Because these businesses are like octopuses, a staffing business. These tentacles will come up and grab you in the ass and pull you back down underwater in seconds. Like when you think, oh, I got a free hour to work on my business.

Tom Kosnik [00:38:18]:
Know, upcome the tentacles to grab you and pull you under the water. And so, sales plan, figure out how to get, you know, 10%, 15% of your time working on the business. And the way that you. The way that you do that is you hire either an office manager that is unbelievable, right? That can manage the office, solve problems, or hiring, more likely than nothing, a recruiting manager that's going to be able to manage and grow and develop three, four recruiters into eight recruiters, ten recruiters, because you at that five to ten, you're still going to need to go out and do sales. And that's another big mistake that I saw, is that people get to be 7 million in revenue and they stop doing sales. Like 50% of your job needs to be getting on the phone, visiting clients and things like that. So staying, staying, staying, because nobody can sell. Nobody can sell your business like you can.

Tom Kosnik [00:39:14]:
Nobody can sell my business like I can. And so you want to grow? Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:19]:
All right, you do it ten to 25.

Tom Kosnik [00:39:22]:
So ten to 25, that's where you, you still have a sales plan. So then you move into putting together more of a business plan, having some kind of a system. So, for example, there's the EOS entrepreneurial operating system out there. There's a, there's the gazellese, there's the scaling up. There's a whole host of them. And then there's like a gazillion knockoffs off, you know, off those. But having some kind of a system where you've got, okay, here's our goals, here's what we're going to try to get accomplished is some kind of a regular way of meeting with the team who's making decisions, making things happen. We used to think out yearly, we used to think out three years, which you still need to do in a business plan.

Tom Kosnik [00:40:03]:
But more importantly, you're setting key initiatives on a quarterly basis. This quarter, we've got to get our ATS fully implemented. This quarter, I've got to get my marketing, we got to get the website done and up and running, or we got to get the marketing thing, whatever. Setting those quarterly key initiatives and having them tied back to the metrics of the business. Having some kind of a system where, okay, you've got a plan, you got quarterly initiatives, you've got metrics or measures, hard measures that you're looking at week in and week out and it doesn't matter if you're a direct hiring contract, whatever those key performance indicators are for the business, we know what they are for. Sales reps and recruiters. Right? Number of face to face meetings for sales reps, number of networking events, number of follow up on referral leads from recruiters. Recruiters.

Tom Kosnik [00:40:55]:
You know, hey, number of phone interviews, phone screens, number of submittals, number of interviews. We know what those are for, salespeople and recruiters. Well, for the business, what's the KPI's for the business? You know, number of new accounts, number of clients billed, average fee, average billable hour, the headcount, you know, knowing what those key performance indicators are for the business. So you're moving now from thinking about producers to thinking about, oh, I've got this entity, I got this business, and this business has got KPI's. And we're looking at that stuff weekly, not monthly, weekly. And when you see something go down, then you're like, okay, let's look at that. Why did that go down? Oh, we lost a key account. Okay, so now what do we do? We got to go get that key account.

Tom Kosnik [00:41:44]:
So those are the big things. And then the ten to 15 million, a lot of times, companies, the banks won't talk to companies up to 10 million in revenue. I mean, they'll give them like a crappy little line of credit and, oh, we want you to sign your house and all that stuff. And so then they're forced into going into factoring relationships to finance receivables. So once you get like north of 10 million in revenue, you got to get off the factoring, you got to get smarter, you cash flowing and all that stuff. Get out factoring, and then get it. Get a traditional line of credit with a bank, and you can even get a good traditional line of credit with a bank. And maybe factorization, you know, maybe you've got client concentration.

Tom Kosnik [00:42:22]:
So you factor a couple of, couple of accounts. So there's that whole financial management of the business, if that makes sense.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:29]:
That makes sense. And what about over 25?

Tom Kosnik [00:42:32]:
Well, now you're moving in the middle market. So then the man or the woman or the married couple, now they begin to build their role change. And by the way, the people that own the business, your role is going to change from one to five. Your job is going to change from one to five, five to ten. But when you want to grow significantly into the middle market, now you have to build a management team. Your number one focus becomes building where you. Okay, I've got a controller I got a vice president of sales. I've got a director of recruiting, director of operations.

Tom Kosnik [00:43:01]:
I have a director of it. And you build that management team, and then you're responsible of managing the management team. And then you're from a decision making purposes, it's not a Tom Costner making decisions now we have a decision making tree, and it's the team that's making the decision to grow into. And then your vice president of sales is now responsible for putting the sales plan together and your VP of Ops for the recruiting plan. And then those two better be talking to one another, which is going to flow up into your business plan. And then your IT or director of it is driving all the it efficiencies and things like that. And then you really, you're really thinking about, you know, you've got cash flow now, so you can do things from a marketing perspective that you couldn't do earlier because you just didn't have the cash flow. So there'll be some things that you do.

Tom Kosnik [00:43:48]:
Like maybe you start hosting a podcast. Just kidding. So the. Yeah, yeah. And then the focus also for, like, the person at the top is business. What is our business model? And then how can we continue to refine that business model? So, you know, their job, you know, going to the conferences, refining the business model. And by the way, gush, I know I'm talking a lot here. So the business model is how you hire who you hire, your technology, your marketing, all that stuff's got to align into the business model that you're taking to the marketplace.

Tom Kosnik [00:44:30]:
And the business model, by the way, has got to have some kind of a value proposition to its clients. You got to be able to walk into a client's office and they say, well, why, Benjamin, why should I use your firm? And you got to be able to say, well, because our business model allows us to do XYZ, which is better, faster, smarter than our competitors. And here are the statistics that we have on that.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:54]:
Yeah, and I feel like we're not wrapping up this conversation yet, but I feel like I need to have another conversation with you down the road.

Tom Kosnik [00:45:03]:
Happy to.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:04]:
We're talking about, like, you know, all this growth, all this revenue. To hit those numbers, you also have to hire the best people. How do you find top performers? And then how do you develop top performers?

Tom Kosnik [00:45:14]:
So those are two separate questions. So top performers, first off, if you're lucky enough to have looked into a hiring a top performer, you got to put that, you know, top performer, and then you yourself are likely a top performer. Otherwise, you wouldn't own your own business. But anyway, you're really talking about three things, and that is, you have to have a good personality profile assessment on the front end. You have to have a good cultural assessment on the front end as well. So personality profile. We kind of know what makes a good salesperson a great recruiter. You know, they have the ability to remain in charge of a verbal transaction.

Tom Kosnik [00:45:51]:
Right. They typically have healthy ego strength, which means that they get what they want. They go after it. They have goals, you know, on and on and on. We know that they're people people, but they're not, like, way out people people. So, like, high extroverts. High. Real high extroverts.

Tom Kosnik [00:46:07]:
This is the thing, people, my clients, a lot of time make the mistake where they hire somebody who doesn't have strong ego strength, but they're highly extroverted. Oh, my God. My clients are going to love this person, but they make terrible recruiters or salespeople. And the reason why is because they can't ask tough questions, they can't negotiate, and they want to make friends and help people find jobs. And they don't realize that this isn't social services. This is actually a business where we got to make money. Welcome to America. It's a capitalistic society.

Tom Kosnik [00:46:38]:
So healthy ego. Extroverted, but slightly. And then analytically, they have lower analytical skills, and that doesn't mean that they're bad in math or don't understand math. But what it means is that they make decisions not based on analysis. So, for me, for example, I use the example, we just bought a new car. And so my wife, she'll go, well, oh, gosh, I like this look of this car and this car and this car and this car. And so she'll go test drive them, and then she'll say, I want to buy that car. And when she says that, you know, I say, okay, well, why don't those four cars.

Tom Kosnik [00:47:09]:
Why don't you give me those four cars? I'll get on the Internet. I'll do all the research. I'll kind of find out who's got good transmissions and which ones are a pain in the rear to work on or cost more money. And that's me. I just gather. I make decisions based on gathering data. Real good salespeople and recruiters don't make decisions based on gathering data. We know that if they have good ego strength, and we know that if they make decisions based on intuition versus analysis, that equals drive, which is what you want.

Tom Kosnik [00:47:38]:
Drive. That was it. Every eight performers got drive and then conformance. They have low conformance. So which means that they don't take no for an answer. I've got a gazillion examples, but basically low conformance is the. Hey, look, okay, I see the sign on the wall that says that I can't talk to hiring managers. Well, I'm going to figure out a way to talk to hiring managers.

Tom Kosnik [00:48:02]:
That's low conformance. So we know you have a good survey on the front end that can survey the personality, the personality characteristics traits. Those. And by the way, Benjamin, the hardcore personality characteristics traits, those are agenerational. It doesn't matter if you're a baby boomer, doesn't matter if you're a Gen Z, doesn't matter if you're a millennial. They don't change. We're homo sapiens. These are hardcore personality characteristic traits.

Tom Kosnik [00:48:28]:
What does change are the work preferences. So you want to work remote. I want to work in an office. That's a work preference. And so your culture survey is going to tell you, well, first off, it's going to understand what your culture is, number one. Oh, we're a decisive decision making organization versus a loosey Goosey decision making. Oh, we're a collaborative organization versus a individualistic. Oh, we're centralized versus decentralized.

Tom Kosnik [00:48:57]:
And people are attracted to certain cultures and they work better in certain cultures. So understanding, you know, the understanding on the front end, the hardcore personality characteristics, understanding that there's a good cultural fit, you know, Benjamin, how many times have you known a really good sales rep that went to go work for staffing company and it was a disaster?

Benjamin Mena [00:49:17]:
I've seen that, yeah.

Tom Kosnik [00:49:19]:
You have seen that. Yeah. And the reason why that is the individual probably has the hardcore personality characteristics, traits to succeed as a superior or an a sales rep. But it was a cultural mismatch. All right? And so they're a fish out of water in that culture. They're never going to gain traction. They're always going to be swimming upstream. They're always going to be fighting against status quo.

Tom Kosnik [00:49:41]:
It never works. So in terms of onboarding, those are like two simple, simple things that companies can do. You can get far more complicated with looking at your a players and creating job profiles and then creating interviewing questions, looking for specific responses that would respond to if you don't have a hiring process. That's another thing where, I mean, you should be every interview you're doing to hire a plus people, I mean, you should have, like, set questions. You're going to ask the same questions, the same 20 people that you're going to interview, there's, because otherwise there's no way you can compare candidate three to candidate seven to candidate 17. And you look at the way that they respond to those questions and, oh, look, they're responding to these questions the exact same way that Johnny is responding to these questions. And Johnny is a $10 million a year in revenue producer on and on and on. So you can get much more complicated than that.

Tom Kosnik [00:50:37]:
But, gosh, even if you just have a good personality profile, understand what your culture is, that's going to help you. And then the whole onboarding process, you know, it takes a full year to get really orientated into an organization, and that is orientated in terms of the buying cycles of your clients, the cycle of the industry, the cycle of what happens in the business in the fall versus the spring versus the summer versus, you know, all that stuff. And then how we celebrate birthdays and, you know, and when do we go out and celebrate little successes and things like that? But it takes a full year. But the whole onboarding process, you got to have some kind of a training methodology where you're training them on the ATS system, you're training them on the sales methodology, you're training them on the recruiting methodology, and then comes management, which is very challenging in today's day and age. I don't wish managing people to anybody. It's very challenging.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:30]:
Well, that goes into another question I have, like, you know, you have an absolute, a player that's just absolutely crushing it. You know, you're looking at growing your business. What happens if they, like, I want to go grow my own business now or want to go start my own business? How do you keep these a players? How do you keep these big, big billers that are just so dominant? Theyve built their brands. Youve helped them build their brands. How do you keep them for the long run?

Tom Kosnik [00:51:53]:
The short answer is have some kind of a deferred compensation component that you can offer them. Offer them some kind of a insurance policy thats theirs theirs, that regardless if they stay or leave later on, that they can take with them. Thats part of their retirement package, the phantom stock thing. There's different ways to do that. There's qualified deferred comp, unqualified deferred comp. So you can certainly introduce those kinds of components with a players. And then the other thing is you got to get that a player educated because a lot of times they don't understand, you know, this a players make terrible managers you know, they just, they defeated terrible managers. It's a whole different skill set.

Tom Kosnik [00:52:34]:
I mean, they're a players for a reason, but if they really understood, like, what's it going to take to go start my own business financially, what's it going to set them back financially? So if you can pull out, if you can roll out and introduce to a players a plan to say, hey, like, stick with our organization, you know, you can move into these kinds of roles. You can get this kind of decision making authority, you can make this kind of money. You got to start thinking in those kinds of terms to retain a players. I mean, what's the allegis? They had a great program. They still have a great program. I mean, they figured that out on the front end years ago. So there are things like that that you can do, and invariably we do a lot of compensation analysis and a lot of compensation design work, like in all these areas that I've been talking about. But invariably I'll get with a key employee, an a sales rep, you know, hey, I want ownership, but, oh, my lord, they don't realize what ownership means.

Tom Kosnik [00:53:34]:
They don't realize it from a tax perspective, and they don't realize it from a fiduciary practice. They don't realize it from a liability practice. When an owner comes to me and says, hey, I've got this person that wants to do XYZ, you know, I'm saying, well, let me schedule a call with them, and I'll just ask them some questions and get them on track to doing some research. You know, invariably they come back and they're like, tom, like, I never even thought about that. I never even thought about that. Didn't even think about the liability perspective and the fact that, like, something happens and we get sued by the state of California, that now I'm responsible on that, my name gets named on that lawsuit. Never thought of that. You know, I like living in California.

Tom Kosnik [00:54:16]:
I don't want to move to Mississippi where the state doesn't sue staffing companies, you know. Anyway, I'm being a little facetious, but.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:25]:
Everybody moved to Mississippi then, right?

Tom Kosnik [00:54:27]:
No.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:31]:
So, okay. I know we've covered a lot, and I feel like there's more that we can cover, but I'm kind of curious. Like, you have somebody that comes into your organization or somebody that calls you up for help. You've had many of these conversations over the years. Is there a question that you wish a recruiting firm owner would ask you, but they never really do?

Tom Kosnik [00:54:49]:
You know, it's a funny thing a lot of people hire us and pay us good money to coach and give them advice, and a lot of times they don't take our advice. That's not just the staffing industry, by the way. I've got associates that are organizational development, growth strategy consultants, and so they all kind of experience that. So the question is, I know I need to change in order to grow my business. Are you the organization that can help me change? So that would be the quiet. I mean, if somebody comes to me and asks me that question, I'm like, oh, my gosh, like, we can work together. This is going to be fun.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:24]:
And you've helped a lot of people grow over the years. Has there been, like a firm or a company that you've seen just go from like 5 million to like 100 million?

Tom Kosnik [00:55:36]:
Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:39]:
I know we've covered a lot, but is there something that really just stands out about that later?

Tom Kosnik [00:55:44]:
I would say they have charisma, they have drive. I know somebody that took a company from a million dollars of EBITDA to $3.5 million of EBITdA. True story. Professional directory recruiting and contract staffing. A million of EBITDA. 3.5 million of EBITDa in three years. Who does that? And the crazy thing is that this guy never worked in the staffing industry prior to that. What did he have? What did he do? He just knew how to solve problems, build culture.

Tom Kosnik [00:56:21]:
He knew how to be present to every one of his employees in a way that his employees just, they raved about this guy, and they still do. Occasionally I find somebody and like, oh, you know, so and so. I loved working with so and so. Those guys that grow companies from five to 100 million in revenue, they have a certain charisma, might not be the right word, but they have that certain where they walk into the office and people, they just like, you know, I don't want to disappoint. I don't know if you're married. I'm married. But it's true with marital relationships as well. You know, my wife has made me a better man, better husband, better father.

Tom Kosnik [00:57:01]:
And so business leaders that when somebody comes in and they meet that leader and counter that leader, start developing a relationship with that leader, the employees that know, like, oh, this person is going to make me a better person. Those are the people that really, we talk about it, you know, how do people run through brick walls for you? You know, business planning, sales planning, metrics, comp plans, all that stuff's important. But now we're talking about the affect, right? The affect, the heart. And then when you're able to do that, I mean, this is no big surprise, right, Benjamin, like, when you got a leader that's, like, engaging with their people like that. And now I'm just thinking in my head of how many people I know in the staffing industry that are like this, that, like, grew their businesses like that. I like being around them. You know, they're just, like, great people to be around because their energy, that just goes out to the client base. So then the clients are like, wow, like, this sales guy's not like any other sales guy that I meet from the staffing industry.

Tom Kosnik [00:58:04]:
I got to find out more about this business. It's how it goes, right? You know, this. I mean, people do business with people that they like, you got to make that affect connection. And then they'll go figure out and dot the I's across the t's and figure, okay, yes, I'm going to do business with Benjamin, you know, but you got to be able to connect down the heart level, an affect level. First leaders that can do that, they're going to be successful wherever they go.

Benjamin Mena [00:58:30]:
Can somebody learn how to do that?

Tom Kosnik [00:58:32]:
You can get coaching. You can get mentors to help you do that. You can refine your skills. You got to get comfortable in your own skin. You've got to learn to really be present to your people. You know, the whole thing where, you know, Benjamin's walking into my office, and I'm looking at my phone and, you know, okay, what do you need? How can I help you? Is this going to take long? Benjamin versus you walk into my office. Hey, Benjamin, how you doing? How's your day going? What can I help you with? Sit down. Sit down.

Tom Kosnik [00:59:02]:
Being really present to look, and we all read faces, right? You're having blue, right? Every day. That's a billion years of being homo sapiens. You know, you walk. You have an employee that walks into the office, like, you immediately know they didn't sleep well the night before, or they're stressed. And, hey, like, you look stressed. What's going on? When people feel comfortable to then, like, oh, my gosh, you can't. My mom fell and she broke her ankle, and she's in traction and she's like, and I'm just in dot, dot, dot, you know? So people, the employees, they just say they understand you're connecting with them on a whole. So can you learn that? You can get mentors, you can coach, you can meditation, frankly.

Tom Kosnik [00:59:52]:
I mean, read the gurus. They all say the same thing. If you read Tim Ferriss's book, Tools of Titan. You know, Tim said when he was doing the interviewing for that book, he said 100%, every titan that I interviewed journaled basically took time to focus, to pen, paper. Whether it's a thank you journal, whether it's, you know, here are the things I need to personally work on, 100%. But the other thing is that the whole meditation thing, just being able to, like, get myself in a quiet space and be able to focus, learning how to focus and then being able to take that focus to my relationships with people, whoever those people are, we all experience it, right? But when we're in the service sector and we experience somebody who, like all of this noise, I am 100% here for you. We know it. So, yes, you can learn to do.

Tom Kosnik [01:00:51]:
To do that for the listeners.

Benjamin Mena [01:00:52]:
I think I have, like, another five or ten more things I want to go to, but, like, just because of time, we're going to jump over to the quick fire questions and.

Tom Kosnik [01:00:59]:
Yeah, yeah, cool.

Benjamin Mena [01:00:59]:
But, yeah, this is. This has been awesome. And make sure to, like, you know, follow Tom on LinkedIn so you could just, you know, see more.

Tom Kosnik [01:01:05]:
Yes, reach out, but do me an invite on LinkedIn. We're posting stuff all the time as well, so.

Benjamin Mena [01:01:10]:
All right, heading over to quick fire questions. We're going to make this. Instead of, like, recruiters, we're going to make it more on firm owners. If somebody's looking at just starting their own recruiting firm, what advice would you give them?

Tom Kosnik [01:01:20]:
Starting their own recruiting firm, I would say build your own personal brand. On social media, you probably already have some kind of a personal brand, but you got to start building your own personal brand. The other piece that I would suggest is find a mentor. Find somebody that owns a recruiting firm. You know, I'm 63 something. Find somebody that, like, is in tune with what's all the changes that we've been talking about in this podcast or that's even open to those changes? Me personally, I wish I had. I've had mentors through my career, but I wish I had more mentors when I was first starting out. They would have been invaluable to me.

Tom Kosnik [01:01:59]:
Those are two things that I would say.

Benjamin Mena [01:02:01]:
And the second question is, somebody that's had a firm for a while, we'll say, like, small firm, but they've been stuck. And they, every year they want to grow, but they've been stuck for a while. What advice would you give them? To become unstuck.

Tom Kosnik [01:02:11]:
Yeah, to become unstuck again. The peer groups are fantastic. There's so many out there now. It's funny. The more technologically we become, the peer roundtable experience keeps growing and growing and growing. So find a good peer roundtable. Not a family member, not a business partner. These have to be people that are outside your organization that are going to tell you what you don't want to hear.

Tom Kosnik [01:02:36]:
So it's your decision to either take that in or not. But look, if you're stuck, if your business is stuck, you're stuck. And so you've got to, you've got to be thinking differently. You've got to be behaving differently, having some kind of a peer group that's going to tell you what you don't want to hear. And then you've got to be able to decipher what they're telling you. You got to put together an action plan on yourself. And I would recommend, you can put this in the notes there. The power to see ourselves.

Tom Kosnik [01:03:05]:
It was written back in 1962. James Paul Brouwer, that's a fantastic read. So if you're looking to develop and grow, I mean, that's just, he's got a whole methodology in there. You can apply it to managers and or business owners. You're always seeking advice. And look, you gotta. The other thing, Benjamin, is you got to have humility, right? I don't know everything. I'm going to make mistakes.

Tom Kosnik [01:03:29]:
Nothing's going to be perfect, never going to be smooth sailing. There's going to be hills and valleys. That's life. So you just got to take it with a grain of salt and roll with it. Those are really, truly, those are the best. And a lot of times, look, I mean, even though, you know, my spouse works with me in the business, but a lot of times your spouse is not the best person to give you that advice, you know, because you're living with them and they love you and they care for you, you know, so you really need people that are going to tell you like, you know, Tom, you know this, and it's not fun. It ain't fun, it ain't easy, you know, growing, developing as an individual. It's work.

Tom Kosnik [01:04:03]:
It's work. So you got to be willing to put that in.

Benjamin Mena [01:04:06]:
Has there been a book that's had a huge impact on your own personal career?

Tom Kosnik [01:04:10]:
The power to see ourselves is an article that had a big impact on me because after I read that article, I started to utilize the practices that he talks about there on my own development. So that was really important. The only business book that I've read nonstop, cover to cover. I've never had that experience with a business book. The only business book that I've read is the first break all the rules. I read that book after I finished my masters in organizational development from Bowling Green State University. For all you Ohioans out there, but first, break all the rules, which talks about the four things that managers that they discovered. There's two seismic things that happened in that book.

Tom Kosnik [01:04:55]:
One, they talk about the four things that their research discovered that the best producing managers do different from the other managers. And by the way, those four things are 180 degree opposite of what they've been teaching people in business school. It's built on the foundations of positive psychology, which is all about the strengths that we used to think and I was trained in. Hey, you've got weaknesses here and here and here, Tom. You got to go work on your weaknesses. Right? I've run 30 marathons in my Dave Benjamin. Nobody needed to tell me how to run a marathon. I knew how to run a marathon.

Tom Kosnik [01:05:31]:
I knew how to place between the two and 5% mark. I had goals, I had plans, all that stuff. Basketball is a different story. So somebody came to me and said, tom, you need to work on playing basketball anyway. So that resource there, the foundation of it is the positive psychology, working on gravity towards your strengths versus your weaknesses. Sue anybody that says in Reddit, you're missing out. You're missing out.

Benjamin Mena [01:06:02]:
You've had a lot of success. You've worked with a lot of successful companies. You watched them scale. You've helped them scale. What do you think has been a huge contributor to your own personal success?

Tom Kosnik [01:06:10]:
My clients, first off, I mean, God almighty. I mean, my clients have taught me so much about the industry and about growing businesses. I'm very fortunate in that regard. I even have. It's funny, I even have clients that I will call up and say, hey, I need your professional advice. They were honored, actually, when I do that. We've got wonderful clients. So that's one thing in terms of my own personal.

Tom Kosnik [01:06:38]:
My wonderful wife, she has got two sisters. And when, like, she's introducing me to somebody she's never met before, like, oh, yeah, this is Tom. And she say, I have two sisters. My one sister married 100% italian. My other sister married 100% republican. And I married a guy that's 100% polish. I say, honey, you talk about that like it's a bad thing. I said, don't you know Copernicus was polish? I mean, we'd still be thinking the world was flat if it wasn't for a polish guy.

Tom Kosnik [01:07:08]:
But I call it the polish persistence again, you know, back to the very beginning of the park with my M div, you know, three quarters way through, and I like, well, I made it three quarters way through. I gotta finish it. But business and you know, Benjamin, you know this, man, there's just. There's a lot of days where you go. Days where you're walking in the belly, right? You're slugging. Slugging poop, and you're like, man, is the sun ever going to come out? And you just gotta. You gotta have the chutzpah, you gotta have the persistence to kind of walk through that. So I certainly have done that.

Tom Kosnik [01:07:40]:
You can't be afraid to invest. So I've invested in my business. I've worked hard, and we want to try new things. It's going to cost me $100,000. We cash flow it out. Let's go. Let's see if we can make this work. And some ideas work and some ideas are it lost at the craft stage.

Tom Kosnik [01:08:01]:
So those are the things for me personally that have worked.

Benjamin Mena [01:08:04]:
You mentioned the perseverance in those dark days and those hard days. But outside of perseverance, how do you make it through those hard weeks or potentially hard months?

Tom Kosnik [01:08:12]:
First off, I got a loving spouse, a loving, forgiving spouse. And then secondly, I have a small cadre of other professionals that I can call and rely on. And I learned this early on, actually. And sometimes, sometimes, you know, I have a short list where I'm just having a terrible day. And a lot of times, you know, people go home and they're having two or three martinis after a terrible day. But when I'm having a terrible day, terrible week, I've got a short list of people that I'll call and say, hey, Ted, tell me a funny joke. It'll make me laugh. You got to have folks that can just get you laughing, get you smiling again.

Tom Kosnik [01:08:56]:
The other thing is back to basics, big man. Back to basics. Exercise, food, and sleep. When it's coming down on me, I got to make sure I'm eating good food because I'm going to gravitate towards eating bad. You know, you're going to want to eat bad food. You got to get enough sleep, man. I really don't feel like hitting the gym today. That's when you got to hit the gym because it just releases all that stress inside of you.

Tom Kosnik [01:09:19]:
And those are basic basics. And I've stayed faithful to those three. I used to run after work, but I'm too old and I'm too tired. Go hit the gym after work. But in the morning at lunchtime, it's a great thing.

Benjamin Mena [01:09:32]:
How far do you know my run?

Tom Kosnik [01:09:33]:
Well, I don't do marathons anymore, but I'll run between. Sometimes I run just a few miles, like 3 miles. Sometimes I'll run five to 7 miles, something like that. I can still do three k and do pretty well for no timer marathons.

Benjamin Mena [01:09:49]:
I've hung up that hat. Don't want to do them again. Have no desire.

Tom Kosnik [01:09:52]:
Well, how many, how many have you done?

Benjamin Mena [01:09:55]:
I think five or six. I probably like six or seven or you.

Tom Kosnik [01:09:58]:
Good for you. Yeah. You know, less than 1% of the population runs a marathon.

Benjamin Mena [01:10:03]:
Good for them.

Tom Kosnik [01:10:05]:
Yeah. So you're in the top 1%.

Benjamin Mena [01:10:07]:
Recently it's been traveling for a half marathon has been, like the thing to do. We did a half marathon in Nice, France recently.

Tom Kosnik [01:10:14]:
Oh, wow. Nice.

Benjamin Mena [01:10:16]:
Yeah, my full marathon was nice to Cain's, but like, you know, halfway stop, ride the bus back.

Tom Kosnik [01:10:21]:
Yeah, nice. Good for you. That sounds like fun.

Benjamin Mena [01:10:24]:
It's like a travel thing now.

Tom Kosnik [01:10:25]:
So I haven't done any marathons in Europe, and the only international marathon I did was Detroit Free press, which starts in Detroit. It goes over the investor bridge and in the Windsor, Canada, and then under the tunnel under the Detroit river and all that. I've heard that the Victoria, British Columbia marathon is a beautiful marathon. It was on my radar, but I hear it runs along the water for all 26 miles anyway.

Benjamin Mena [01:10:53]:
Yeah, I'm all about, like, the destination, training to stay healthy, not training, like, race hardcore anymore. But, yeah, it's. We do it as a destination to make it a trip.

Tom Kosnik [01:11:01]:
Now, nice, nice, nice.

Benjamin Mena [01:11:03]:
Here's actually my favorite question, and you've kept the same business near my ass is like two different ways. But you've been in business for so long, with all the successes that you had, all the clients that you worked with, the crap that you've dealt with. If you can go back in time and give yourself advice, what would you tell yourself?

Tom Kosnik [01:11:22]:
The advice that I would give myself would be, don't be so hard headed so early on, you know, my way or the highway. You know, I'm smarter than everybody, better than everybody, quicker than everybody. I would say the advice I would have given myself is not be so hard headed. And the other piece would be, or the other side of that coin is have a little bit more humility about who you are and what you're doing. You know, somebody once told me, and this was later, on. Somebody once told me, because you meet these folks at conferences and you're like, gosh, this guy can't even tie his shoe, like literally. So how's this guy running an $80 million year business? And somebody said to me, well, he may have not figured out how to tie a shoe, but he sure has figured something out. And that's what you got to go find out.

Tom Kosnik [01:12:12]:
What did that guy find out that you didn't find out, you know, versus I'm Tom Kosnick. You know, I can figure this out. I can make this happen. I can build this house and dot, dot, dot. So, yeah, humility, not be so hard headed and then really have more humility early on. That would have been awesome.

Benjamin Mena [01:12:32]:
Well, Tom, before I let you go, if somebody wants to follow you, how do they go about doing that?

Tom Kosnik [01:12:38]:
Tom G. Kosnick on LinkedIn and then just that. You have the option to the Vices group to follow the vices group. And then you see all our posts and we pump out a lot of things. I do like these little ten minute videos on different things in the industry, whether it's challenges, whether it's growth strategies, whether it's compensation. So I try to get, you know, a few of those out, and then we do a lot of these podcasts, things like that. Welsh thank you so much for inviting me, Benjamin. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Benjamin Mena [01:13:06]:
This has been fun. Before I let you go, is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners?

Tom Kosnik [01:13:11]:
Just you can, you can find us advicesgroup.com and yeah, reach out to us on LinkedIn. That's really the tool that we use. We use LinkedIn more than our database.

Benjamin Mena [01:13:22]:
The fancy CRM system that you guys bought.

Tom Kosnik [01:13:26]:
The rest of 2024 is likely to be a slog. And we'll see. You know, hopefully 2025 will bring us better times in the staffing industry.

Benjamin Mena [01:13:36]:
Awesome. Well, Tom, I just want to say thank you. It's been tough for so many recruiters out there. It's been hard, but you're working with people that are growing, you're working with organizations that are still winning in this environment. And thank you for spending some time just sharing with the listeners, like what they're doing, how they're doing it, how they can become a better leader themselves. So for the recruiters out there, I want you to keep crushing it. Make 2024 your best. Forget and remember everything that you do right now for the rest of this year lines you up to have a 2025 where you can absolutely crush it.

Benjamin Mena [01:14:07]:
So keep going, guys. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite recruiter podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit subscribe and leave a rating.