From Lead Gen to Leading a $12.5 Million Recruiting Firm with Jeremy Jenson

Jeremy Jenson [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.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:18]:
I'm excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast. The reason is how many of us have legion companies reaching out to us on a daily basis, and they're saying that they're so good. I always wonder, if you're that good, why don't you just fill the jobs yourself? Well, Jeremy Jensen actually was one of those lead gen guys and now turned around and looking at $12.5 million in direct placements this year. So I'm excited to interview him. One, because I have had multiple people ask me to. Two, he's really figured out the secret to not only like the lead gen, but the execution and to actually growing a team. So, Jeremy, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast. Welcome.

Jeremy Jenson [00:00:53]:
Excellent, man. I'm happy to be here. So I wouldn't say that I haven't figured out the secret. Right. I think, you know, job bot and those people are the ultimate lead generators that understand that dynamic. But in Houston, Texas, I would say we're the big dogs here.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:08]:
Well, Jobbot also chases a lot of things. You guys are, I don't wanna say, like, full on executive search, but you guys, like, your average placement fee is about how much?

Jeremy Jenson [00:01:16]:
54K is our average fee.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:18]:
He definitely figured something out.

Jeremy Jenson [00:01:21]:
Oh, absolutely. We could talk about that in a little bit for sure.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:25]:
But I want to know this. How did you even start? First of all, let's take a step back. Encore search partners could talk a little bit about that.

Jeremy Jenson [00:01:34]:
Yeah. So I own a 40 person direct hire recruiting firm here in Houston. All of our employees are in house full time. W two, direct work, nine to five. And so, you know, I've got a lot of friends in the industry, and they've got people fully remote. They're bragging. It's like, dude, I'm old school, man. I want to have them in here.

Jeremy Jenson [00:01:52]:
I want them ringing the bell. I want them going to lunch together, doing knowledge share, collaborating, building one another up. We know in direct hire or recruitment, whenever you lose a deal, you're losing 10,000, 15,000, sometimes 20k plus in personal commission. Right. If you don't have that trust, rapport and camaraderie with your colleagues, it's going to breed turnover and people throw into the towel. And so I think that it's really our culture that's yielded a lot of our recent success, but again, that one to, I don't know, 10 million in revenue. A lot of it had to do with the lead generation resources technology, but.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:28]:
We'Re going to dive into that in a bit. But how did you even get started in this wonderful world of recruiting?

Jeremy Jenson [00:02:35]:
Yeah. So my first company, I started in 2010, it was a company called Market Share Solutions. And so obviously it provided a lead generation resources and, you know, it's 25 years old, I was engaged and I built it to a nice little business, right? We had about 250k in annual monthly recurring revenue clients. And so there would be companies like yours that would pay me $3,000 a month in order to do email marketing and lead generation. And I built it to 250. And it's a nice lifestyle business at 27, 28 years old after a couple of years, right. But I just ran out of hours in the day. I couldn't scale because I was having to be the chief marketing officer, the sales guy, the project manager, everything all in one, like a lot of solo shops, right? And so I took a look at my client base and I said, what the fuck? Half of my clients are staffing and recruiting companies.

Jeremy Jenson [00:03:33]:
Why am I charging them $4,000 a month and they're making 50,070, 5000, 100,000 in direct recruiting fees? I'm going to start a recruiting company. And so I started in January of 2013. Seems like forever ago now. And fast forward eleven years. Here we are.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:51]:
How do you talk about some massive growth? So you made this jump, you decided to become a recruiter. You're like, I'm making all these people all this money.

Jeremy Jenson [00:03:59]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:00]:
You started off just by yourself. When did you go from a solo company to a large company? What really made, made that shift too.

Jeremy Jenson [00:04:06]:
Yeah, we're not even a large company now. Right. You know, I look at, you know, the big players in the industry, like, you know, Robert half and Madison Group and those guys, and obviously those are the big 10,000 pound elephants in the room. Right? But for a regional boutique firm, I would say that we're a good sized, privately held direct hire recruiting firm. The Houston Business Journal did a release today and it looks like we're number six by number of placements in the city of Houston. But when you look at revenue, we're number two. It's because our fees are so high. Right.

Jeremy Jenson [00:04:37]:
But with that being said, it was just slow and steady organic growth over the years. You know, I hired my first recruiter in January of 2013. You know, I think he was making 36k on a draw. Right. You know, 30% commission. And now we're onboarding people at 80,000, 90,100k. You know, we haven't lost that draw model. I think that that keeps our recruiters hungry.

Jeremy Jenson [00:05:01]:
Whenever they lose deal, they feel it, right. And then it helps us protect our gross margins as well. But by going up to six figures plus in order to get somebody that could bring in, you know, a portable book of business, somebody with a complimentary vertical that we don't currently recruit in, that's really allowed us to grow. I think that was the secret sauce to say, hey, we're not only just oil and gas, right? That might be my personal book of business, but let me go out and get somebody that can help commercialize us in commercial banking, right. You know, public utilities, engineering consulting, wealth management, legal. And I think that's where a lot of boutique recruiting firms fail is they want to be hyper niche focused in one specific vertical that's good for an individual desk. But if you want to grow to 10 million plus in direct hire revenue, you've got to have a ten different people with those million dollar verticals.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:54]:
So you got these, these million dollar verticals. But I want to take a step back. Like, your background is lead generation. Your background wasn't recruiting, but you seem to be growing faster than a lot of the technically people that have been around the recruiting industry this whole time. Like, what do you think is the separating them from growing versus your guys's growth?

Jeremy Jenson [00:06:13]:
Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I'll use the analogy of, like, the biggest restaurants were not founded by chefs, right? When you're a chef, there's an emotional tie to your product. You like being in the kitchen, you like putting that passion in each and every bike, right? And if you're the owner and you're behind the stove, you kind of run out of hours in the day, right. And you can grow it to a million, maybe 2 million in revenue with a couple of associates. But I think the biggest difference is I never needed to be the one finding the candidates, scheduling the interviews, doing the job order intakes. If I stayed hyper focused on client generation, right, and new job order generation, I could have a recruiting delivery team execute the revenue seven days a week. Right. So that was my core focus.

Jeremy Jenson [00:07:02]:
Instead of focusing on candidate generation, it was really more focused on the business development aspect.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:08]:
Okay, so you decide to hire. You'd hire a recruiter. Hire recruiter, hire a recruiter.

Jeremy Jenson [00:07:13]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:14]:
But how'd you figure out, like, hey, I need a recruiter. Or, hey, I need this over here. With technically no real experience, you just like, yeah, it was just the money coming in and you're just figuring out and throwing people everywhere. Or is it like an annual format that you guys had in place?

Jeremy Jenson [00:07:27]:
Yeah, great question. So it wasn't even really the money coming in, right. It was the demand generation for job orders, right? So, you know, a new recruiting firm that hits the market, obviously the job orders that we were getting were seventy five k, eighty k, ninety K, one hundred K. There were small job orders because there wasn't brand recognition, there wasn't trust, rapport and credibility in the market. And some of the bigger firms were fumbling the ball on some of those entry level type roles. And so we were kind of getting their scraps. So the first couple of years, our average fee was fifteen k. Seventeen, nineteen, twenty one.

Jeremy Jenson [00:08:02]:
Right? Now, after you get in the door on recruiting, let's say a buyer for steel commodities at 80K, they get to see our process, they get to see our submittal to interview ratio, our speed to market, the quality of our candidates. Now, they started to give us the mechanical engineers, the supply chain manager, and then eventually the vp of operations, the president, searches, right? And so all of that kind of evolved over time. But to answer your question, I needed to hire the recruiters whenever I'd get another ten job orders, 15 job orders. You know what I'm saying? You know, if I had two recruiters, they couldn't effectively work a caseload of 40 open requisitions, right? And what's the main problem of a good technical recruiter in our industry is business development. And so there were no shortage of recruiters that would come over here, right. Take a lower commission as long as they were fed job orders all day. But they understood how to use job boards, they understood how to use LinkedIn, they knew how to do job order intakes and have candidate control, schedule interviews, negotiate offers, but they couldn't generate new job orders. This was the recipe for success, to get those good b players, you know, those hundred k earners that couldn't really like, get to the next level.

Jeremy Jenson [00:09:20]:
Now they could come here and we could incubate them.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:23]:
Okay, so you've hit one of the things that I think a lot of recruiters, like, I don't want to say like, fail at, but they just absolutely suck it when it comes to business development.

Jeremy Jenson [00:09:32]:
Yeah, it's no problem. Yep.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:35]:
So, like, first of all, you said no problem, which I find it interesting a lot of times, like, you have to get better at this. But you've decided to create an environment where these people can still win.

Jeremy Jenson [00:09:45]:
Absolutely.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:48]:
Like, for the people that are listening. And if you're a search firm owner, you talked about some of the things that you have set up. Why did you decide to go that route compared to, like, the structural model that you see at so many other staffing firms?

Jeremy Jenson [00:10:00]:
Mm hmm. Well, that's the key is I didn't have the preconceived notion of how another recruiting firm was operating. Right. I just built it based on the shit that I was seeing on tv, right? Watching the tv show suits, watching the tv show billions, looking at markets that were willing to pay a premium dollar and us saying, hey, well, we need to be in the private equity space. We need to be recruiting for law firms. We need to be recruiting for here. I didn't have this, like, crutch of already having 10,000 contacts in accounting and finance to where it was like, oh, I need to be an accounting and finance recruiter. I went where the money was, you know? And so when you look at our average fee and you say, hey, it's fifty four k, a lot of people go, well, hey, you must do executive search.

Jeremy Jenson [00:10:48]:
I say, well, don't get me wrong. We could place CFO, but I could recruit a fifth year associate for a mid sized law firm that makes $250,000 a year. And so really, the abundance of what we're recruiting is individual contributors. Investment bankers, private equity, vps. Right. You know, wealth advisors, attorneys, right. High level, high performing, highly educated, individual contributors that sometimes have a portable book of business. And our fees can get into one hundred k.

Jeremy Jenson [00:11:19]:
Two hundred k. The largest fee that I've ever charged to date on one invoice was $697,000. That was a recruiting fee on one end. Woods.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:30]:
That's awesome.

Jeremy Jenson [00:11:32]:
It is awesome. And it's because I didn't just have this limited mindset that I was going to recruit the same way that everybody else does it. I was socially influenced by tv shows that were cashing nine figure fucking checks.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:47]:
Recruiter changes their mindset. How did they, like, redevelop and, like, drop the 1020, 30 years of, I don't want to say baggage, but, like, this is the way how it's been done.

Jeremy Jenson [00:11:58]:
I don't even want them to, man, keep doing what you're doing, recruiters. Yeah, yeah. I'll continue to steal market share and create opportunity, just like Google did. Right? Just like YouTube did. We're creating a category in and of itself. You know, you look at the 12.5 million that we're doing today. Yeah. You know, some of it had to do with a lot of the growth capital that was infused into the economy in 2021 after the CARES act.

Jeremy Jenson [00:12:21]:
Right. And there was a lot of hiring. There was positions being created in a low interest rate environment. There were a lot of private equity transactions, and those firms were opening new offices and creating new product lines. Yeah, that contributed to a lot of our growth. But right now, in a slowering hiring, direct hire market, we're seeing a lot of our competitors lay off and we're doubling down. We're investing in more digital marketing. We're investing in impression marketing through social media.

Jeremy Jenson [00:12:50]:
We've got a full time videographer and video editor that's putting out social content to where I'm viewing this downturn that we're destined to experience over the next 24 months as an opportunity to steal market share. If I have 1% market share right now, and I can grow to 5% market share over the next two years, when things recover, you're looking at three x forex or even potentially five x revenue growth. That's what we're focused on right now.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:20]:
You spend a lot of money on digital marketing. You spend a lot of money on inbound leads, lead gen and video teams, and all the stuff that I think recruiters have always shied away from that. You don't see in our space what's actually working. Like, I know we get flooded with, like, you know, this legion product and this legion product. You don't have to share, like, all your systems. But how are you guys getting set up for all this inbound, man?

Jeremy Jenson [00:13:41]:
And, you know, I think a lot has changed since 2013, to be quite honest. You know, back then we were looking at email deliverability rates in excess of 70%. We're getting an 18% to 22% response rate now on an email marketing campaign. We're seeing less than 1% engagement. Right. And so I would be willing to say that lead generation as I knew it back in 2013, whenever I started that, you know, or ended that business and got out of the recruiting world, it's completely changed. And so from a lead generation standpoint now, obviously, we do a fully integrated approach through cold calling, cold emailing, content marketing through social media. But I think it's really more about demand generation now, you know, telling a story, building trust, establishing rapport, and having credibility in a very niche, sub vertical.

Jeremy Jenson [00:14:33]:
You know, if you own a recruiting firm and you say, hey, we do accounting, right? Yeah, you might grow that to a million, maybe $2 million in revenue with you and your wife. That's a good lifestyle business. Maybe you guys are making a million bucks a year, right? That might sound exciting to a lot of independent recruiters, but if you go, I'm going to be the number one recruiting firm that only recruits in house audit managers that have CPA, CIA combo, specifically in the retail and consumer goods vertical. And now you've got 1000 candidates that exist that you know, there might be 200 people changing every year. If you get 40% to 50% of those placements and you're known as the guy in that vertical that creates scalability and profitability because the candidates are coming to you. It's not you having to get the requisition, get the job order, get the client. If you've got that candidate that you know is in high demand, you're opening up doors at 30%, 33% contingency fee, right? And you're moving those individuals because of your credibility and your technical acumen in that space. That's how you build a scalable business.

Jeremy Jenson [00:15:47]:
That's what we do at encore search partners is we have ten different recruiters that have those million dollar books of business, if you will, plus, right, the little sub vertical. This person only does female certified financial planners. This person only does female cpas that are re entering the workforce after being a stay at home mom for four plus years. If you can tell a story and be hyper focused on marketing to people that fit that specific demographic, you're seeing 50% engagement rate through social marketing, right? You develop a brand and rapport with that audience. They start referring their friends. That's whenever you create these million dollar books of business. And so that's what we're doing at Encore search. We're creating those hyper niche focused individual desks.

Jeremy Jenson [00:16:34]:
And then I give them an associate that supports them, right. You know, the 60k person that doesn't have any illusion that they need to make 50%, 60% of the deal and they're grateful at 75, 80k in commission. You see what I'm saying? And so that's what we do is we have that million dollar producer, we pair them with an associate, we infuse that direct marketing, that integrated marketing approach, and we create seven figure billers all day at encore search.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:00]:
That's exciting, but you're amazing at that. Like this demand generation, you're so good at crafting like copy online. It's like in your blood, based on like everything I've been reading. But how do you teach that to those other members of your team. How do you grow that and scale that?

Jeremy Jenson [00:17:16]:
I don't need to. I don't need to, Benjamin. I need individuals that are focused technical experts in a sub vertical that has a tremendous amount of demand. Right. Mechanical reliability engineers inside of chemical plants. Right. Tax managers, audit managers, certified financial planners. Right.

Jeremy Jenson [00:17:36]:
Corporate M and a law firm, associates. I have subject matter experts in that vertical. Then I can deploy the demand generation, resources and technology. But I don't take the call. It's ringing to them. It's ringing. To Megan, to Sally, to Jennifer. Right.

Jeremy Jenson [00:17:53]:
All she knows is God dang. I've got six meetings with no prospects this week. Thank you, Jeremy. Our marketing team is working effectively, right. And I don't even need to pay a premium rack rate and commission because I'm keeping a portion of what Richard Wayne and Roberts or Robert half would have to pay if that person self generated that leap. You see what I'm saying? Oh, yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:13]:
That's genius.

Jeremy Jenson [00:18:14]:
So that's what we've done now, Jeremy, they say, oh, what if you got hit by a bus today? Obviously, we've got individuals that are non producers, they're non recruiters that understand the resources and technology and the why behind the what. And one way that I did it was I hired somebody in October of 2022. And her name is Jacqueline Vaiddeh. And Jacqueline had no staffing and recruiting experience. She was actually the HR manager for a tax consultant company. And so we hired her to be our manager of talent acquisition, learning and development, because I was the bottleneck for the company whenever it came to recruiting our own people and then being responsible for training and developing them on our own proprietary internal systems. So we created a position that would eliminate from me being the bottleneck. Well, guess what? She didn't know what was in my mind, right? She didn't know the process.

Jeremy Jenson [00:19:09]:
She didn't even really know direct hire recruiting. So even though she has an office three doors down, 75% of the time, she sits here in my office, working at my conference table right here, and hears me on every single call. She hears me hard closing. She hears me on podcasts, right? She hears me training and mentoring and coaching employees. So she's kind of like that chief of staff that's shadowing me for the last year and a half, almost two years, and I've created somebody that's kind of like a mini me just because she's my protege. That essentially just carries the bag everywhere we go.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:46]:
You have a lot of success hiring people without the recruiting background.

Jeremy Jenson [00:19:50]:
Dude, that's the last thing that I want, man. I don't want someone with bad habits. I don't want someone that's gonna try to tell me how to do it. If you were going to tell me how to do it, then you would be me. Right? You'd be the one starting a 40 person recruiting firm. Instead, I want the individuals that know how to qualify the difference between somebody that does, you know, internal audit, external audit, it audit, operational audit, the shit that I don't know. Let me hire the expert that knows how to qualify all that stuff. That's only billing 350 at her firm.

Jeremy Jenson [00:20:24]:
She's billing 350. She's making 175 grand. She thinks she's killing it. Right? I'm going to show her a mechanism where she's going to make half a million to a million dollars a year at encore search. Those are the people that we hire.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:38]:
Fantabulous. Now, one of the things I've also just digging on you, you're actively involved in EO entrepreneurs organization, your board chair. I've run across a lot of people that have had success because of that organization and getting around that, has that made a difference for you?

Jeremy Jenson [00:20:55]:
It's 100% transformed the way that I think and has changed me as a human being. I wouldn't necessarily say that the entrepreneurs organization was the growth catalyst to my business. I would more attribute that to eos, the entrepreneurial operating system. But EO has taught me that just because you make a million dollars a year doesn't mean that you're successful. Okay. Whenever I joined EO, I want to say my business was doing about 2.4 million in revenue. I was making seven figures. But I was overweight, I was a bad husband.

Jeremy Jenson [00:21:29]:
I wasn't a very present father. I was very cocky, arrogant. I knew that I was the smartest person in every single room that I was in. And most of the time, I was the most successful person. Joining EEO put me in an environment where people didn't make a million dollars a year. They were making a million dollars a month. And not only were they making a million dollars a month, they weren't even really working that much. They were heavily diversified.

Jeremy Jenson [00:21:55]:
They had officers running their business. They were participating in alternative investments, real estate development and investment. Right. Private equity, venture capital, private financing deals through debt equity. Right. And in learning about what these other people that weren't 10 million net worth, they were 50 million, 100 million my age. Also, dads, that's. That was a very humbling experience for me to be like, dude, I'm not fucking shit, right.

Jeremy Jenson [00:22:24]:
Because you are influenced by the five people that you spend most of your time with. When I started to hang it around, people that were more humble, grateful, had more time, we started doing cool stuff together. They didn't need anything from me. They didn't need me to pick up the tab at Mastro's. We were playing credit card roulette, you know, on the $3,000 tab with each other. That's what elevated me socially and actually probably turned me into a good human.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:53]:
Mentioned, like, beforehand, before. Yo, about not spending time with your.

Jeremy Jenson [00:22:58]:
Daughter, the three boys. Three little boys.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:00]:
Three boys. Sorry, three boys, yeah, yeah. And that all changed with her out, yo.

Jeremy Jenson [00:23:06]:
I mean, it didn't happen overnight, right? But when you're an independent recruiter and you're billing a million, $2 million a year, you are plugged in, right? You have to be. You're checking your LinkedIn app, you're scheduling interviews, you're confirming interviews, you're scheduling candidate profile calls, job order intakes, you're always on your phone. Even if you're there at the house, on the couch, and the kids are on the ground playing legos. You're on your phone whenever you own your own independent recruiting firm at a million or 2 million revenue. Am I right? Yes or no? Yes, always. Yeah. And it was really surrounding myself with people that could put the phone down. They had it under control.

Jeremy Jenson [00:23:47]:
They had mid level managers, right? They were willing to carve out that 100,100, 50,000. That way, they didn't need to worry about facilities. They needed to need to worry about event management. They didn't need to worry about this. And when I started to create this layer of middle management, right, these operations managers and executive assistants and talent acquisition managers and training managers and a COO, that's really what allowed us to put in the processes, systems, and infrastructure to scale, because it wasn't relying on me and my talent. It was the system that was growing. Right. And I'm not going to say that it was eo that gave me those resources, but it was me going, hey, Chris, how do you get away with that? Hey, Mike, how come you don't have to do that? It was learning from people by having an inquisitive mindset and them caring enough about me because they knew my character and they knew me as a person to where they wanted to help without receiving anything in return.

Jeremy Jenson [00:24:46]:
These weren't paid coaches, right? But these individuals were functionally mentors for me in different facets of life. They didn't need to be in just business coaches, they could coach me on health and wellness. They could coach me on parenthood. Right. One could coach me on, you know, helping me change my relationship with money and investing in luxury goods and living a different lifestyle of luxury travel. Right. But surrounding yourself with people that inspire you in areas where you need to be inspired, that's what that created for Trey.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:20]:
You mentioned about how you started hiring, like, middle managers and executive assistants and more people. And I see a lot of times, like, recruiting companies, they hire the recruiter to hire salespeople, and that's it. What were the, like, the two most important, out of the box hires that you've made that you typically don't see in a recruiting company?

Jeremy Jenson [00:25:36]:
That's a great question. So I would say that whenever you have the recruiters and the salespeople, you expose yourself significantly to losing those individuals to go start their own recruiting. Right. Because there's not a lot of resources and infrastructure that's keeping them there tethered to your business. Right. And so we kind of take, like, an integrated approach to client development. We've got a business development manager. We've got a client relationship manager.

Jeremy Jenson [00:26:03]:
We've got the senior recruiter. Right. We've got the division director. We've got myself. We've got a coo. We've got an operations manager, a talent acquisition manager. There's probably seven people that have a relationship with each and every one of our hiring managers. Right? And so that kind of keeps the client tethered to the firm to some extent.

Jeremy Jenson [00:26:23]:
Right. They're more tied to the brand and not necessarily just Joe Smith, the recruiter. So that's the first thing I would say, that it wasn't really, like, a specific person that helped us tremendously scale. It was the system that he brought. In 2016, I hired a VP. His name is Scott Kelly. And Scott came from the managed IT Services world, so he didn't even have staffing and recruiting experience. Right.

Jeremy Jenson [00:26:49]:
But he understood professional services, and he brought a system called EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system. And EOS is basically a business framework that was created based on the book called Traction, written by an author named Gino Wickman. Eos helped us really implement processes, systems, and scalability into our business and helped us clearly defined our mission, our vision, our values. We meet quarterly at our executive offsites and help us define our quarterly rocks that we need to achieve that, and that created the ecosystem that held me accountable to scaling the business. Right. It wasn't just me and my emotional tie to spending $100,000 to implementing an ATS system or spending $50,000 in launching a new website. Right. This was a strategic forum that we could have that kind of governed our growth initiatives.

Jeremy Jenson [00:27:44]:
Right. And so I would say EOS was a massive growth catalyst for us. And then also that same year, 2016, even though I was only generating a million dollars in revenue, I gave a guy a 150k base. His name is Casey Knight. And Casey helped us commercialize the financial services space in an area where I knew nothing about. We charge our fees completely different than even in contingency, direct hire, recruitment. Right. But hiring somebody that was better than me took a tremendous amount of humility.

Jeremy Jenson [00:28:15]:
Right. And reaching into my pocketbook and saying, hey, I'm willing to pay to play. When I think a lot of other recruiting firm owners, they go, well, I want to make their base as low as possible and give them a high variable because I want to keep them hungry. I just think that's such a limiting mindset. That's what worked on us, because we were crazy enough and hungry enough to go out and fucking walk away from everything in order to go start our own Bermonda. But how many high elite performers that have amazing business acumen, strong technical acumen, incredible work ethic, but they've got a stay at home wife and two young kids. They can't walk away from their 150, their 200. Right.

Jeremy Jenson [00:28:58]:
They come to encore search partners, and we build a seven figure business unit around that person, not just their four or 500k in individual production. That's who we want. The elite recruiters that are not confident enough to go start their own recruiting firm. We can build it around you.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:19]:
I think that's a lot of. Not everybody's cut out to really build their own recruiting firm, because there's so many things that you're doing, and not a lot of companies really just create this intrapreneurship model, which I think is one of the reasons why a lot of top performers will say, fuck it, and go start their own thing.

Jeremy Jenson [00:29:34]:
Yeah, 100%. Yeah. My president over my financial services business unit, that guy, Casey Knight that I just told you about, will make $1.8 million this year. As an employee at Outcome search partners, he's got more freedom and autonomy than he's ever had in his entire career. He's got an operations manager, an executive assistant, five account managers, and 13 recruiters to support him. His business unit does over $8 million a year. Right. He wanted to be an entrepreneur, but he couldn't walk away from the six figure guarantee.

Jeremy Jenson [00:30:10]:
That's why he came to ESP.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:11]:
So many times. Recruiters look at other recruiters like, hey, I want to hire this person, but so many companies just want to give them. I think you've said it. I've seen it. Hey, as low as base possible, just to keep them hungry.

Jeremy Jenson [00:30:23]:
And that's the associates. Don't get me wrong, our associates, low base, high variable. Right. They're here at the office at 637 730, trying to create a name for themselves.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:36]:
I love how you've, like, kind of created in a capture this way to keep those top performers. And that was going to be one of the questions I was going to ask you, like, jumping over to a new, like, subject, is, you guys have grown and scaled. Why do you think other organizations just aren't doing what you guys do?

Jeremy Jenson [00:30:50]:
Hmm. I can't answer that. Right. You know, I think that we're limited by the, you know, the knowledge that we've accrued to date. I think that there's that mentality of this is the way that it's always been done, and so I just need to just make more calls. Right. I think that that's, like, the most common rebuttal in our industry. Right.

Jeremy Jenson [00:31:08]:
And I think that it's that we're very ego driven as recruiting firm entrepreneurs is. We like to be the smartest in the room. We like to be the best recruiters. And I think that that's such a self limiting strategy because I would love one day to where I've got 20 people that are all better than me in their respective practice area, right. And then I could just own the company. But if they've got their business units that are doing 5 million, 7 million, 10 million in revenue times 20 people, you're looking at a nine figure recruiting firm. That's awesome.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:37]:
Well, before we jump over to the quick fire questions, is there anything else that you want to kind of COVID about your story?

Jeremy Jenson [00:31:42]:
You know, I sacrificed a lot. You know, the hustle and grind of growing a business, walking away from stability and security put a lot of stress on my marriage. Unfortunately, we decided to call it quits in 2019. So I will say that whenever you look at entrepreneurship and the struggle and grind that comes associated with it, you have to be willing to sacrifice in certain areas. Because who's to say that I'm more successful than the other guy who maybe only has a $2 billion recruiting firm, but he's happily married, he gets to tuck his kids into bed every night? I think I'd be willing to say that that person's probably just as successful or in many cases, more successful than me. Right. And so it's about what you value. It's not just about the revenue.

Jeremy Jenson [00:32:30]:
It's not just about the Ebitda. Right. And so we. We have to make sure that we don't lose sight of the reason why we started the recruiting firm in the first place. If financial security was the reason, maybe 500K is providing the security that your family needs. And so we potentially maybe just need to be a little bit more grateful for what we have and not necessarily just compare ourselves to encore search.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:54]:
Sounds like that's a lesson that you learned, like, recently, within the last few years. Like, how did you really come about that understanding of, like, reassessing what your goals were?

Jeremy Jenson [00:33:06]:
You know, I hired a life coach in 2021. Whenever I'd faced rock bottom, you know, I'd mentioned that. That I had gotten divorced in 2019. Well, you give a guy a couple million bucks and let him loosen to the wild at, you know, 34, 35 years old, he's got to make some very selfish decisions, right? Especially whenever you shut down all the clubs and bars, and he's got a 5000 square foot house in the party epicenter of Houston, Texas. And so I became the party guy in Houston. Throwing parties, inviting people, DJ's, bartenders, all of the above. And I lived a very selfish, gluttonous life. Grew to about 284 pounds, bad skin, drinking heavily, eating red meat each and every night.

Jeremy Jenson [00:33:56]:
And I was just unhappy. You know, I was using these. These instant gratification type resources in order to convince myself that I was winning, right? And one night, I had come home from a bar, and I had started the bathtub in my house, a first floor master, because I wanted a soak in the bath. It was like, January 6, 2021, and I was, like, working out every day. And so I was, like, really sore New Year's resolution, right? And I fell asleep. I fell asleep with the bathtub running. And I quickly learned that my bathtub doesn't have the mechanism that is, like, the overflow control valve. So I woke up to $77,000 worth of damage being done to my home.

Jeremy Jenson [00:34:40]:
And that was a very eye opening experience for me to be like, I need to get my shit together. And so I processed this issue with my rise leadership group, which is kind of like Eo. And one of the guys is a life coach. His name is Michael Anderson. He's with a firm called the Diker Group. They're headquartered out of Boston, Texas. And after learning more about what he did. I started working with him as my life coach.

Jeremy Jenson [00:35:02]:
And so he. Sometimes we talk about business. Sometimes we talk about relationships, fatherhood, being a son, being a friend, being an influencer, being a mentor, being a mentee. Right. But he helps me identify what it is that I want to improve in that season of life. And then we reverse engineer what it is that we're gonna do. And then I've just been tackling each and everything over the last three and a half years. I've repaired my relationship with my mom, with my ex wife, with my children, with my coo, with my executive vp.

Jeremy Jenson [00:35:37]:
Right? I've lost 77 pounds. I've gone on a skincare routine. I had a hair transplant done. Right. You just having an accountability partner that helps you level up in every single area of life one at a time. I think that was a critical component because it's great to say, oh, man, I just want to become successful. But what do you want to become successful at today? Maybe I need to hyper focus on just being a better husband. Then I can give all of my time and attention into that.

Jeremy Jenson [00:36:06]:
That was the growth catalyst for me and my business to become successful.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:10]:
Love that. When you were going through that dark time, did it impact your business?

Jeremy Jenson [00:36:17]:
You know, it's funny, because it did not. We were still winning. We were still growing. And, you know, I think that it could have been very easy for me to look at the bottom line and arrogantly think that I was successful, right? But I wasn't. I was lonely. I was isolated. I was tied to individuals that just wanted to use me and take what they could for me in order to elevate themselves socially, financially. Right.

Jeremy Jenson [00:36:47]:
I was a very unhappy individual, even though the bottom line was growing each and every quarter. And then I reached a certain level in wealth building to where you realize that it's not the $10 million in the bank that brings you happiness. It's really the way that people make you feel, right? It's the welcome that you get whenever you walk into your favorite restaurant. It's the way that Benjamin introduces me to the next person that he meets. It's the public display of affection that my ex wife, you know, posts on social media because she's grateful for the life that I'm able to provide for my family. All of those components are really what breed long term growth and success. It's not just the bottom dollar. And so when I started to care less about how much money I made and just focus on taking care of my people, filling in the holes in the boat.

Jeremy Jenson [00:37:42]:
Right. Creating mid level managers, investing in resources and technology to grow and create brand, reputation and credibility. Well, Benjamin, I accidentally started making more money. It's crazy. It's crazy. My profit margins have gotten less. Right. But 50% of 2 million, that's a lot of profit.

Jeremy Jenson [00:38:03]:
But would you rather have 25% of 20 million? Of course. Right. You got to spend money to make money. I think that that's one thing that small business owners need to recognize.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:13]:
I think that's a super important topic, like. Absolutely. But last question before we jump over the quick, fair questions. Are you happy now?

Jeremy Jenson [00:38:20]:
You know, I'm happy in so many different facets of life. Right. You know, because of the work that I do with my life coach. Let's say there's twelve different versions of Jeremy, right? Ex husband, father, potential dating partner, CEO, mentor, et cetera. Philanthropist. I would say that I'm elite in probably ten out of those categories. One of the things that I really want to spend more time doing is actually playing more pickleball. I think that will help me accelerate in the 11th category.

Jeremy Jenson [00:38:49]:
The one category where I've got a lot to improve is I do wish that I had a romantic partner that I could really lean into. Right. That was consistent. That elevated me into areas that I wanted to be elevated. Right. Didn't have anything to do with business. I think that there's this common misconception that a high value man needs to be with a high value woman. But just because your definition of value might be tied to income, mine might be tired to somebody that has nursing aspects that could take care of me physically and emotionally.

Jeremy Jenson [00:39:19]:
Right. You know, that might be the highest value that could create. Maybe I want to travel more. So being with somebody that lives a life of travel and social influence in that community could be of high value to me. Right. And so I would say that I'm happier in the ten and ten of the twelve different facets of life, but I probably could improve in fitness. Relationship.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:42]:
Awesome. Well, hopefully you'll find a pickleball championship to join.

Jeremy Jenson [00:39:46]:
Let's go. Maybe. Maybe it would be a bonus if she was a great recruiter too, because then I could be a mentor and a resource to help her increase her business. Right. You know, then it would be a symbiotic relationship. Challenge me. Let's go.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:04]:
Well, Jeremy, jumping over to the quick fire questions, they don't have to be quick answers, but love to get your insight on this. What advice would you give to somebody that's actually just starting off in recruiting in this industry? In 2024. And I think you'd be great because I've seen you hire some people that aren't even in this industry, they're doing great.

Jeremy Jenson [00:40:19]:
Yeah. So the number one thing is the riches are in the niches. Really hyper focus on one area that you are a subject matter expert in. Right. Where you know that there's a high demand of direct hire recruiting fees in that vertical. So for us, we've really leaned into, like I said, those corporate attorneys, the litigation attorneys, the certified financial planners, the wealth advisors, the private equity vps, the private equity operating partners, the engineers and the technical salespeople, the work for venture capital and private equity backed portfolio operating companies. We know that if we hyper focus in those areas, that we can create a tremendous amount of scalability because of our direct marketing approach. Right.

Jeremy Jenson [00:41:05]:
So if you're an expert and you know that big fees are being paid, like I used the example earlier for audit managers, focus on audit managers. You don't need to be the accounting and finance, you know, tell all, be all right. You don't need to compete with Robert half because in that area, you become better than Robert if you hyper focus on one specific seller.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:28]:
Okay, so that's for the people just hitting the industry. What about the people that have been around 510, 30 years in this game, coming from you? What do they need to be doing to continue to have or have success?

Jeremy Jenson [00:41:39]:
Yeah. And again, it depends on where they're at in their growth evolution. Right? What is their EBITDa, what is their revenue, what is their organizational structure look like? As I mentioned earlier on the podcast, EOS was a critical component to our scalability. Implementing eos, the entrepreneurial operating system, gave us the discipline to walk away from stuff that was white noise. It was bogging us down. We didn't need to work on 90k account manager searches for managed it service providers anymore. We could be more hyper focused in the areas where we knew we could scale. And by having clarity around our data, it gave us the discipline to really lean into the areas that we could grow.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:24]:
So you guys evolved. What was the hardest thing to walk away from?

Jeremy Jenson [00:42:28]:
Oh, that's a great question. It's 2024. I have fired my top biller from 20 15, 20, 16, 20, 17, 20 18 2019 2020, and we still have 21, 22, 23. It's hard to walk away from a person that generates 700,000, 800,000 in direct hire billings, even if they're a cancer inside of your organization. So I'll tell you, the hardest thing to walk away from was that first guy having the discipline to fire someone that had generated over 2.5 million in career direct card billings, for me, that was tough. But recognizing that that made us a healthier firm on the other side of it. It's just, it's been a very liberating experience because we do have a no asshole policy now. We don't accept arrogance.

Jeremy Jenson [00:43:26]:
We don't accept entitlement, right? Professionalism is one of our core values. And it's easy to mandate that from the top down. But when it's. When it's on the wall in the lobby in big right 24 inch letters, right. Each individual word, it's easy for the team to hold me accountable as leadership as well. So it was hard to walk away from toxic people if they generated money. But I'll tell you, it needed to be done.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:55]:
Do you think you would be where you're at today if you kept that.

Jeremy Jenson [00:43:58]:
Toxic person, man, I'm telling you right now, I interview people two weeks ago. I don't want to give away too much information. Her owners make a lot of money, and it's a toxic work environment. And they generate about $3 million a year in revenue. People that have been with the company five years, ten years, 15 years, and they have this limiting belief that it's okay because the bottom line is generating seven figures in that income. But where they're failing is they're having an inability to groom the next generation of elite all stars in the organization. And keeping those toxic individuals is actually limiting them from growing to 10 million, 20 million, even though they have the technical acumen, the brand strength. Right.

Jeremy Jenson [00:44:46]:
You know, they've got the recruiting agreements, but that's what's holding them back. And so it definitely would help me back. Would I go out of business? No, but I'd still be two and a half, 3 million in revenue. I'd still be working, but still be on my phone. I'd still be, you know, yelling at my wife for no good fucking reason, just because I'm in a bad mood, because somebody fucking pissed me off that day. And why? Why would that be okay? Because I made 300,000 that month. That's not okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:16]:
We went a little deep, and I was worried to ask you about lead Gen. So real quick, we're going to jump back and go deep in a few minutes. But what is working on lead generation and recruiting right now?

Jeremy Jenson [00:45:28]:
You know, I've hired the AI lead generation companies. They failed. Right? I've used video and, you know, sent the AI videos and they fails, right? And so I would definitely say that I have personally migrated away from being a lead generation guru, if you will, to where I'm really leaning a little bit more into demand generation, right. If I can hyper focus on getting an organic following on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on some other resources from LinkedIn, people that want to hire me, right. And retain me to recruit on direct hire openings in their company and then on Instagram, an environment where I create demand for individuals that are coachable, grateful, resilient, meticulous and competitive to come want to work for me, right. If I can really lean into creating demand on those two social platforms, that's going to be the growth catalyst to get us to the next level. Right?

Benjamin Mena [00:46:25]:
Okay, so you've tried all the programs up. My next question was going to be like, do you have a favorite tech tool?

Jeremy Jenson [00:46:30]:
My favorite tech tool absolutely is LinkedIn. Do we have all the same tech tools that Java has, that Michael Page has? Of course. We're best in class. We've got the best ats, we've got the best data sets, email marketing, demand generation, things of that nature. The best one is having the balls to reach out to somebody that you know you've got a unique value proposition for and having the confidence and the technical acumen and the ability in order to make it their idea to say, yes, I'll take a meeting. Right. So I would say the best tech tool is confidence. I don't know.

Jeremy Jenson [00:47:09]:
Is that technology? Yeah. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:11]:
For the recruiters out there that don't have that confidence that you exude, how do you grow it?

Jeremy Jenson [00:47:18]:
Come to encore search partners, that's how you grow it. The way that you grow it is because we have the systems, resources, and technology that can put meetings on your calendar to where you're doing the job, order intakes, you're building the LinkedIn projects, you're finding the candidates, you're scheduling the interviews, you're sending out the invoices, but you just need the clients that are willing to retain you for the job orders. We have the process. We have the systems, the technology. And it's so funny because people go to our website, they say, hey, Jeremy, you don't have commercial banking on there. The areas where I want to grow, Benjamin, are areas that I'm already not in. Does that make sense? I want to grow in commercial banking. I want to grow in engineering consulting, in architecture firms, in R and D tax credits.

Jeremy Jenson [00:48:12]:
I want to grow in all of these areas where we don't have that subject matter expertise. But I know that there are millions of dollars in direct art fees being paid. I need the person that is a technical expert at recruiting, that just needs the growth catalyst for more job learners.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:30]:
Love that. Absolutely. Now, you've mentioned a book you've mentioned in some systems. Has there been a book that's had a huge impact during your own personal life and career?

Jeremy Jenson [00:48:39]:
Unfortunately, I think it's my extreme adhd, but I don't have the discipline to sit down and read a book. I pay people a lot of money, right? We've got our vistage coach that I pay over $100,000 a year to, obviously, my life coach, my president, Scott Kelly. Now we're talking millions of dollars of people. The aggregate of what they get paid. They read books and then they give me the cliff notes. So Scott Kelly would be a better person to ask for the book. But I'll tell you, I'll answer that question in a different way. I consume a lot of media through Netflix, synapse billions.

Jeremy Jenson [00:49:19]:
Right. Harvey sector has been an inspiration for me as a leader, as a closer, right? As somebody that was arrogant but still could have said that they're successful and it took them nine seasons to become elite, right? The humility and gratitude, the recognition to know that it's not about me and my financial success. It's about me being a steward of others in the community and them becoming centers of influence that elevate my brand and my success. Harvey Spector was the book that I read. I just consumed it 22 episodes a season times nine seasons. Right? You look at individuals like that, you look at Bobby Axelrod, you look at individuals like Andy Elliott, Alex Formosi, David Goggins. Right? These are individuals that are my books. They're the ones giving me the light bulb moments that are saying, hey, dude, you need to fucking get your shit together.

Jeremy Jenson [00:50:13]:
You're not as successful as you think and stop letting everybody tell you that you are.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:18]:
It sounds like, I know you're on social media a lot, but it sounds like you really have your social media feed curated. Can you talk about that real quick? You're seeing, like, the David Goggs. You're seeing this guy. The inputs are very positive compared to the inputs of crap.

Jeremy Jenson [00:50:31]:
Yes. I mean, I'm just going to give that to the meta algorithm. Right. You know, I think that it's important to consume the media that makes you better. Right. I don't need to see fucking cat videos, right? You know, I don't. I don't need to see. I mean, it's cool.

Jeremy Jenson [00:50:46]:
Whenever people forward me tiktoks I don't ever log in, but I looked whenever they forward them to me, you know, that was a cute video. Whenever that little girl was like, I want to pet that dog, you know? But that doesn't make me a better person. I don't need to see hot to a videos on my fucking Instagram. I want to follow somebody that makes me a better father, makes me a better leader, makes me a better innovator. Right? That's the media that I consume.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:11]:
Love that. I didn't even know what hotel was until somebody posted on LinkedIn. I was like, what the hell's the LinkedIn? Oh, man.

Jeremy Jenson [00:51:17]:
Oh, stuff. Literally.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:20]:
They told me to google it. I was like, why is this here? Well, you've gone through some dark times. You've gone through some tough roads. How did you make it through those tough times, those tough days, those tough weeks, those tough months?

Jeremy Jenson [00:51:35]:
Yeah. I think having somebody who I would consider one of my very best friends as my coo for the last several years, somebody who I trust, respect, and admire, who is also a father, who has helped me build this business from 1 million to 12 million plus, having that person be that confidant, that individual that I could bounce ideas off of and help me process my emotions, has been critically important to get through the tough times. Right? And even though I may not have my ex wife, you know, I may not still have the wedding band that we put on our finger back in 2010, she's still a confidant for me as well. And so it's individuals to just vent to voice frustrations that could be unbiased resources that have no skin of the game, that don't need anything from you that really, truly care about me processing my complex emotions in order for me to make the most educated, best decision in order to move forward. So it's really the confidants, for sure.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:35]:
And, like, you're highly successful, like, you've been growing. When you look at yourself internally, what do you think has been a major part of your own personal success and driver for that?

Jeremy Jenson [00:52:45]:
Yeah, I think it's completely losing my emotional tie to money. You know, I've been able to, you know, do $500,000 private equity investment deals. I've been able to, you know, do debt financing for purchase orders of, you know, PPE equipment that was coming over during COVID $2 million debt financing that was yield $500,000 in return on my investment. And so really, it's like losing that emotional tide of money and saying, this is a logical expense if I need to hire a vp of sales and pay the person $250,000 a year. In order to get me from 12 million to 25 million, I'm going to outperform the stock market seven days a week. You see what I'm saying? Because I'm controlling that investment, right? And so it really wasn't until I realized I have enough. Now I'm playing with bonus money, right? It's like going to casino, bring in 50 grand, winning a million, putting 500 in your pocket, and then just betting like crazy with the other 500. What could you be capable of?

Benjamin Mena [00:53:58]:
When did you hit that point where you could break that association with money?

Jeremy Jenson [00:54:02]:
I built my will. I hired a wealth management firm in 2021. I thought I was a fucking day trader for a week, and I lost about a quarter million dollars. I was bored, you know, and hired a wealth management firm. And the work that I did with them for a year, obviously, we were pre funding my kids 529s. We established three different trusts. We did all the financial modeling for their trusts and their inheritance. I was educated on a book called die with Zero, and I adopt a lot of those mentalities that as long as I help create three young men that are motivated, competitive, meticulous, coachable, grateful, resilient, that constantly want to become better versions of themselves, I already know my kids are going to be successful.

Jeremy Jenson [00:54:50]:
They don't need to inherit $50 million whenever that does, right? So put a couple million dollars in their trust, make sure that my employees are all taken care of. I've got my will set up. I've done all my estate planning. It's all pre funded. So now when you make $2 million a year, $3 million a year, you're constantly thinking of ways that you can bet, right? Because of the information that we now have access to, because of the rooms that we're in. My friends, they're not the mechanical engineers that are sitting in the cul de sac in Katy, Texas, anymore, right, where we're talking about the Houston, Texas, and the fucking Houston Astros. My friends are the guys that are asset managers for 3.2 billion in asset center management that are talking to me about innovative investment strategies, right? Investing in this new AI enabled tech platform for ranches, right? And me going, here's 200,000, here's 300,000. Because once you get to that next level, the amount of information that you have access to, that's a massive growth catalyst.

Jeremy Jenson [00:55:56]:
And that's why they say that ten x is easier than two x, right? Are you familiar with that phrase? Yep. It's because once you get there, man, if you're willing to fat biggest. It's insane. Zero to 10 million in net worth. Took a long motherfucking time. 10 million to 100 million. I'm willing to bet that I do it in the next seven years.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:18]:
Awesome. So really, the association break with money that be catalysts was almost like looking at your death logic.

Jeremy Jenson [00:56:27]:
Making decisions out of logic and not out of the emotional tie of money.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:34]:
Awesome. Well, and that kind of goes into the next question that I have is you've done so many things, so many ups and downs. If you got a chance with everything that, you know now I've gone through to go sit down and have a conversation with yourself at the very beginning of encore search partners career their first month without what you tell yourself.

Jeremy Jenson [00:56:55]:
As much as I've lost, as much as I failed to, dude, I just had to fucking learn it. I don't think I would tell myself anything. I honestly don't. I needed to fail as much as I did in order to succeed as much as I had, and I would have just let it happen. I don't know. Maybe I've seen butterfly effect too many times to where I wouldn't want to pollute, you know, my little 28 year old brain. Because I'm happy. I'm happy with where we're at.

Jeremy Jenson [00:57:25]:
I know that's not the answer that you were looking for. No, it's takes time. It just takes time. Become a better version of yourself each and every day that it's not just about the bottom dollar numbers in the bank. That does not make you successful. What is your reputation? Right? Would you want your daughter to be married to you? Right? I mean, ask yourself questions like that. You know, that's a very eye opening question to ask, right? You know, listening to your. How other people talk about you in the community, that shit matters, man.

Jeremy Jenson [00:57:57]:
And we can all say that just because we make a couple million bucks a year that I'm winning. But, you know, I think that. That our emotions and, you know, really keeping a strong, close pulse on that and identifying why we feel a certain way and reverse engineering, hey, I'm going to exploit that and get more of it if I love it, or I'm going to plug the hole, if maybe this is an emotion that I don't think that I like. Right? So, yeah, continually improve. Stay hyper focused on becoming a better version of yourself each and every day. It's not a yearly basis thing. It's literally every day. You know, recently I started wearing, how old are you 40? I'm 40.

Jeremy Jenson [00:58:40]:
You might remember these. Recently, I started wearing one of these bracelets. You remember these? Wwd. Yeah. Yeah. And so people joke, they say, well, what. What does that mean? What would Jeremy do? I go, you know, it means whatever you want it to mean, you know? But this is something that I started wearing just as a little reminder for me to maybe try to be a little bit better version of myself from a character and integrity standpoint. It's easy to say yes to the DM from the Instagram model.

Jeremy Jenson [00:59:11]:
Right. But that doesn't make me a better dad. That doesn't make me a better entrepreneur. Right. So, I don't know, stay hyper focused on achieving whatever it is you want more of in life. That's for sure.

Benjamin Mena [00:59:23]:
Well, and this probably be my last question, Jeremy, like, I'm sure a lot of people reach out to you, asking you for questions and advice and that kind of stuff. What's a question that you wish they would actually ask you?

Jeremy Jenson [00:59:33]:
Ooh, great question. I wish that people would ask me. How were you able to get Casey Knight? How are you able to get Christina Lyles these big. Right. Massive. $3 million biller, $8 million biller. You see what I'm saying? Because I would love to tell them what it takes in order to get an elite high performer. And it's going to cost you way more than you think, but you have the money to do it.

Jeremy Jenson [01:00:01]:
You want to add more to.

Benjamin Mena [01:00:04]:
Or did you reach out to you for that?

Jeremy Jenson [01:00:06]:
Reach out to me. You know, I'll say, like David Meltzer, you know, he makes people send him a paperclip, right? And then he knows if you send him a paperclip with the letter that you listen to a podcast or that he actually wants to give you the time of day and answer the question. So you don't need to send me a paperclip, but you could send me a DM on LinkedIn.

Benjamin Mena [01:00:26]:
Cool. Perfect. Well, Jeremy, before I let you go, if somebody wants to follow you, how do they go about doing that?

Jeremy Jenson [01:00:32]:
Yeah. So I'm heavily involved on two social platforms. If you want to follow the business growth and success and a lot of the stories of just everyday life, of running a 40 person direct hire recruiting firm, connect with me on LinkedIn. Jeremy Jensen. There's a little goat emoji. That's Jenson. And then if you want to follow the social life of Jeremy Jensen, right. Follow me on Instagram, and I'll be happy to engage there as well.

Jeremy Jenson [01:00:57]:
I checked both of them in real time.

Benjamin Mena [01:01:00]:
Well, Jeremy, before I let you go, is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners?

Jeremy Jenson [01:01:04]:
Follow me. Connect with me. I hope you've been inspired, and I hope that you grow some balls and go ten x your business because it's not as hard as you think. It just takes time.

Benjamin Mena [01:01:13]:
Well, Jeremy, I just want to say thank you so much. Like I said at the very beginning, when we get those lead gen emails and you're just like, if you're so good at this, why aren't you doing your fucking self? And next. Next thing you know, like, we're having a conversation about growing goals, ten x ing your business, and just absolutely crushing it in the recruiting game. So, Jeremy, thank you for coming on and for the listeners, make 2024 your best review. Go better than yourself. All right, thank you, guys. Bye.

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