From Sports to Recruiting: Jay Veniard's Secrets to Achieving Long-Term Success

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
Coming up on this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast.

Jay Veniard [00:00:03]:
The reason why most recruiters are not successful is because, number one, they don't have the right mindset. And mindset is 80% of the game. Stop listening to the bitch voice. As soon as you hear that bitch voice talk, smack it away and go to the boss voice. Take immediate action and do the exact opposite of what that bitch voice is telling you. Welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with your host, Benjamin Mena, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership, and placements.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:44]:
I'm so excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast. We are going to talk about why recruiters are winning, what they are doing on a day in, day out basis to absolutely be crushing it in this market. 2022 and 2023 has been tough for many industries, but there are secrets of those that are winning. And here's the thing, they're not even secrets. It's really, it's the mindset and going back to the basics. And I have a returning guest coming onto podcast. Hey, if you guys want to give off, I had the first idea of let me do a podcast out there. I'm bored.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:15]:
It's Covid. I called it like, I think it was like the recession leadership podcast because the whole world was falling apart and Jake was my first guest to talk about how to lead and when the world's falling apart. What I love about Jay is he's, he's not only a coach, he's also day in, day out recruiting for, you know, the plastics industry. He understands what's going on on a daily basis and is plugged in on what's actually working out there. So, Jay Vnard, welcome back to the podcast.

Jay Veniard [00:01:43]:
Hey, what's up, Ben? Man, I cannot believe I'm a third time guest and I'm honored that you asked me to do this again.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:50]:
So we're not going to do a deep dive into Jay's story. If you wanted to go do that, go back to the very, very, very first episode. And when you hit play, it actually isn't going to say the Elite Recruiter podcast. I rebranded it after that episode with Jay. I was like, you know what, I just want to talk to recruiters. Like, I have fun talking to recruiters. Don't laugh. It was a BD play to leverage, like, content and conversations.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:13]:
But, man, I just get so excited when I talk to recruiters. So welcome back, Jay.

Jay Veniard [00:02:19]:
I appreciate you having me and I can Tell you what, dude, your pivot into what you're doing now with the elite recruiter podcast has been fun to watch, and I'm so happy for you because it is absolutely blowing up. And I'm not even being partial here, but it is the number one podcast in the world right now for recruiters.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:39]:
Well, thank you for that. And, you know, just, I enjoy telling good stories, and one day I'll figure out what I'm actually doing with this podcast.

Jay Veniard [00:02:45]:
You'll probably never figure it out, but just keep doing what you're doing.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:48]:
Little voice says keep going.

Jay Veniard [00:02:50]:
That's right, that's right.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:52]:
But let's save it. Okay, so first of all, like, we were having a conversation before we hit record. Recruiters right now are overcomplicating recruiting. Can you talk about that?

Jay Veniard [00:03:01]:
Yeah, I think that's one of the biggest things that we're seeing in recruiting and is overcomplication. And really, at the end of the day, recruiting is very simple. The foundations of recruiting have never changed. I mean, I got into this business in 2004, and the people that were before me said that things hadn't changed since, like, the 1970s or whenever recruiting, you know, first started. And, you know, I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that everyone's on social media. Everyone is in, you know, four or five different recruiting groups. And unfortunately, a lot of those recruiting groups are echo chambers where people come in and they just want to complain and be validated for why they're not being successful right now. And really, it boils down to a couple different things.

Jay Veniard [00:03:55]:
The reason why most recruiters are not successful is because, number one, they don't have the right mindset. And mindset is 80% of the game. When I played baseball, they've said mindset is 80% of the game. Everyone has about the same skills. You've got that elite top 5%. Those are going to be your million plus billers. Then you got, you know, another group below that. But really, 80% of all the athletes or recruiters or whatever you want to say have about the same amount of talent.

Jay Veniard [00:04:27]:
It's just how you execute that talent and what you're telling yourself in your head. And so when we talk about the basics, at the end of the day, Ben, recruiting is making phone calls, sending emails, connecting with people on LinkedIn and having conversations. There are so many recruiters right now that are deathly afraid to get on the phone. And this is a people business. And because we're not meeting people face to face, it is imperative that you're getting these people on the phone. I always tell people you cannot influence someone through an email or a LinkedIn message or what I always say digitally. You cannot influence people digitally. You have to take all of your digital conversations and immediately get them on the phone.

Jay Veniard [00:05:17]:
And there's going to be a lot of people listening to this right now. They're going to be like, oh, yeah, jay started in 2004. You know, maybe they'll call me a boomer, even though I'm not. I mean, I just turned 50. But the end of the day, the one thing that the best recruiters are doing is they are on the phone. And I think I had mentioned something in one of the groups. It's like, you know, I talked to someone who you've had on your show a couple times, Rich Rose, and his whole thing is if you're not at least three hours minimum on the phone, you're doing something wrong. Because at the end of the day, you have to get people on the phone, you have to be able to hear their, you know, voice intonations, and you have to be able to take that conversation in the direction that you need to take it.

Jay Veniard [00:05:58]:
You can't do that digitally. So I think the phone is the basic foundation of the recruiting business and really in sales in general. And that's the one thing that most recruiters are missing from a foundational level.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:12]:
Well, let's take this a few steps back. Like, we talked about just like how over complicating like the recruiting process is. But we also, like you just mentioned, like, we have these massive builders, like the titans of the industry that everybody looks up to. You know, many of them are in the pinnacle of society. There are many that aren't in the pinnacle of society. You know, got a future conversation with somebody to build 2.4 million in one year. Like, many people are crushing it. But then like, you have like the different level of like, you know, we'll say like 4 to 700 or 4 to 800,000, and then you have like, we'll say like 100 to 250.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:43]:
But there's also a lot of recruiters that are like at the 150 and under. Like you play professional baseball. So I'm going to throw this into a world that I know nothing about, so don't make fun of me. I know nothing about baseball or football, but I do know about going pro in your career. How do you go from taking this from a rec league to maybe, you know, JV ball to going pro with your recruiting career.

Jay Veniard [00:07:07]:
Wow, that is an awesome question. And really, again, and we're going to talk about this a lot today, it's all about mindset. Do you think you can be that? You know, if you're $100,000 biller right now, struggling, do you think you can be a 300 or 500 or $700,000 biller? You know, if you're billing a half a million dollars, do you believe that you can bill a million dollars? Because at the end of the day, if you don't believe it, you're screwed. So the first thing I would tell people is stop telling yourself all the reasons that you're not successful and start telling yourself why you should be, or more importantly, why you are going to be successful. Because the subconscious mind doesn't know the difference between reality and what you're telling it. And so when I was a professional baseball player, it was all about telling yourself how good you were and visualization. So the first step would be if you're a low biller, you have to look at yourself in the mirror and you have to be really honest with yourself. And most people don't like doing this, because in my opinion, if you're especially even with things being a little bit slow now, if you're billing below $250,000, you're doing something wrong.

Jay Veniard [00:08:26]:
And really, it all boils down to activity and actions. And so are you not doing the activity and the actions that you need to do on a daily basis to get to where you want to go? Like, are you telling yourself the story in your head of, oh, well, you know, I'm not successful because of the economy or in its election year or whatever it is, because the one thing that I can guarantee every single person listening to this podcast who might be not where they want to be, the excuses you're making are all bullshit. There are a handful of recruiters in your industry talking to the people listening. There are a handful of recruiters in your industry right now that are absolutely crushing it. Billing a million or more. And so if they're doing it, why aren't you? So I think when you talk about winning or getting your recruiting career from the JV squad up to, you know, the big leagues is what are you telling yourself? Do you believe that you can be the level you want? Have you set a vision for your recruiting career? Because if you're sitting here and you're billing $150,000 a year, but you keep telling yourself you want to be a $500,000 biller, have you mapped out that vision? Because if you haven't even mapped out that vision and then reverse engineered what it's going to take to achieve that vision, you're screwed. It would be like getting in a car without a map and driving in Phoenix and driving from Phoenix, Arizona. If you want to go to New York City, would you do it without a map? Would you do it without your gps? No, you wouldn't because you wouldn't get there very efficiently.

Jay Veniard [00:10:11]:
And so you start with that vision, you take that vision and you get in the positive mind frame and you tell yourself you can do it and then you execute. And that's the big thing. A lot of people have big visions and a lot of people have an okay mindset. But if you're not taking action, you're not going to be successful. And again, we're going to go back on this several times. And again, it's something that I heard on a panel interview from Pinnacle Society members. I want to say that every single Pinnacle Society person that I've ever talked to, I could be wrong here, but I'm pretty sure I'm close to right. Every single one of those Pinnacle Society members spends a minimum of three hours on the phone.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:56]:
Well, okay, let me ask you kind of another question when it comes to sports. And like I said, I know nothing about baseball or football. So I'm going to take this back into running. I remember sitting down with my coach and my coach sat down with me and was just like, you know, you can get closer to a four minute mile. I was like, no, I can't, I can't. Like that's just too fast. And she sat down and she's like, you know, cuz I actually never tracked my mileage. She's like, I have been tracking every workout that you have done over the past few years.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:21]:
I have everything put together here. Like, you hit these numbers on your quarter mile repeats, you hit these numbers on your mile repeats. You've done the work, I've seen the numbers. You can do more. But I think that's like looking at recruiting career. She was able to look at my performance numbers, look at how many hundreds of miles I ran per month, look at the amount of times I was in the gym for, the hundreds of miles I was putting on a bike, the thousands of miles I was putting every year. In the recruiting world, when you look at your own scorecards and you have the scorecards of what's like the score of the game, but what are the actions that a recruiter needs to be doing every day and be tracking to be able to analyze where they're at in this moment.

Jay Veniard [00:12:03]:
Yeah, so that's a great question, you know, analyzing what activities you need to do to be successful. And you touched on it a little bit. Just my athlete mindset and everyone listening may be like, well, I was never an athlete, so I can't really relate. But if you think about even watching sports, we can all agree that in sports, there is a scoreboard. At the end of that game, there is a winner and there's a loser. Well, I mean, I guess unless we're talking about soccer or something like that, there's a winner and a loser. And so when you think about recruiting and you think about setting up that scoreboard, what you're wanting to do, number one. And I learned this from my favorite podcast and one of my, you know, favorite personal development people out there, Andy Frisella from the Real AF podcast, and I started utilizing this about a year and a half ago, is the Power List.

Jay Veniard [00:13:03]:
So his philosophy is most people are so task oriented that they have a list of tasks that are more like to dos. And a lot of times you'll look at that to do list or what you think is a task list, and you'd be like, no, I don't need to do that. No, I don't need to do that. No, I don't need to do that. So rather than doing that, what he says is you pick five. Three to five. No more than five. Because if it's an actual critical task, you can't do more than five.

Jay Veniard [00:13:31]:
You write down those critical tasks for the day. On paper? Yes, on paper. Not on your computer. Get a notebook, put it on paper. Because this is going to be your scoreboard and you're going to write down your five critical tasks for the day. And obviously in recruiting, it's all about how do you get closer to the money? What do you need to do to get closer to the money? And so whether that is taking an NPC and making 25 cold calls to targeted companies that could use that particular person, whether it's setting up an email campaign for the new search that you just got yesterday, whatever it is, you write those critical tasks down. And then as you go through the day and you scratch those off, it's something that kind of helps you. Yeah, okay, cool.

Jay Veniard [00:14:19]:
I achieved that. I'm done. Then at the end of the day, you come back and you look at that powerless, and you're like, man, I got four out of those five critical tasks done. Okay, so then at the top of the paper, you write 4 to 1. And in every sport and everything in life, 4 to 1 is a W. And so you actually physically write a W on that piece of paper and it starts reinforcing again that mindset of winning. You know, I know it sounds super basic, but the more you reinforce and the more you see those W's on the paper, the more you're going to be like, yeah, dude, I've been crushing it. And so just think about this.

Jay Veniard [00:14:59]:
There's going to be days where you may go five, nothing. You may go three, two, even three to two. That's a W. But what about the one day where maybe you're not feeling good, maybe you're just not feeling it. You got your five tasks down, you're like going golfing today, man, I just don't feel like working. Well, you went 0 and 5, you put the L on there and so you visually see that. And then if you go back week to week and you look at the W's and the L's, as long as you got more W's than L's for that week, you won the week. And so really it starts compounding onto each other and it really starts to set that mentality.

Jay Veniard [00:15:38]:
And if they are actual critical tasks that you're doing and not just to do's, you know, critical tasks, then you're going to be inching your business towards success in little increments every single day. And then like everyone says, by the end of the year it should have compounded and you should see a major difference in your desk. And you know, so that's the one thing that I always tell people. Start doing something like a powerless. But as far as the activities go, it all starts with the placement. There is no KPI bigger than placements. And so what you need to do from an activity level, what people need to do from an activity level is you need to figure out and kind of reverse engineer how you get to that placement. You know, you need to figure out, how many calls do I need to make per day? How many emails do I need to send out per day? How many LinkedIn messages do I need to send out per day? I don't know if I coined it, but I'll claim it.

Jay Veniard [00:16:36]:
I call that the three headed monster. I know some people will say, well, what about text? Yeah, you could do text as well. But if you figure out what your daily cadence is for, the number of calls you make, the number of emails you send, the number of LinkedIn messages you do and you hit those, you're going to be successful. Things are going to work out for you. But I could tell you this right now. If you think that five calls a day is going to get the job done and five emails and five LinkedIn messages, you're just kidding yourself. Because that activity level is going to get you to be $150,000 biller. So you really need to take the actions that are necessary on a day to day basis to be able to take your recruiting career to the next level.

Jay Veniard [00:17:20]:
And then if you're really tracking those critical tasks and keeping score on it, you're going to see that, hey, I'm killing it. I killed it this week. And it's going to reinforce that positive mindset.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:31]:
Well, and, you know, okay, so we're working on the mindset. We figured out some of the actions that you need to take. You know, when it comes to like, you know, using a sports analogy or using like even anything. Like if you love playing video games, how do you get better at video games? By playing it in practice. You know, when it comes to like running, I'm a runner. Like, I go out there and, you know, typically like four or five times a week go crank out like five miles and half time. I'm with Gabe in his stroller, which is awesome. But when it comes to your professional career, you are a recruiter.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:59]:
How do you even practice in the wonderful world of recruiting other than just picking up the phone and start cold calling clients?

Jay Veniard [00:18:07]:
Yeah, that's a really good question. You know, people ask me all the time, what do you mean by practice? I don't understand how I practice in recruiting. So really practicing and recruiting is doing the things that you need to do daily to get to the next level. And it's really more about getting comfortable with the monotonous tasks of recruiting. And those monotonous tasks are, you guessed it, making phone calls and talking to people on the phone, sending emails, sending LinkedIn messages, and having real conversations with both candidates and clients every single day. That's never going to go away. You have to do that every single day. I think every recruiter listening to the podcast right now, and I think you and I can agree those tasks for a majority of the time suck.

Jay Veniard [00:19:01]:
And so you really have to get comfortable doing the things that suck. I mean, if you think about professional athletes, they spend more time and I'll step away from baseball and use football as the analogy. They play one day a week and they practice the rest of the week. And so as recruiters how do we practice? Well, we practice by doing those daily activities that we know we're supposed to do. And then we go back and we watch what I like to call the game tape. And some people are going to be like, wait a second. I've never heard this concept before. What is the game tape? Well, in sports, when you would get done with the game, when I would get done pitching or whatever, you would go back and watch the game tape.

Jay Veniard [00:19:41]:
And don't get in the habit of looking at the good things you did. Look at where you messed up. Look at where you know, in my case, why'd that guy hit a home run off me? What happened? How can I do better? What did I see in the replay? You could do the same thing in recruiting. Pretty much everyone in recruiting now has a phone system or whatever that records phone calls. You know, I use Ringcentral. All my phone calls are recorded so I can go back and listen to the recordings. A lot of people are doing their phone calls with candidates and clients, all on zoom. Record all your zoom calls and go back and watch that game tape.

Jay Veniard [00:20:19]:
Because if you do that, you're going to pick up on where in the conversation you crushed it, and then you're going to pick up on the part of the conversation where you didn't crush it. And so oftentimes, it's the one thing that, you know, most recruiters, especially when they're starting off they suck at is rolling out your fees. And so if you find yourself struggling when you get to the fee negotiation, you need to go back and watch that game tape and figure out what am I doing during this process that's getting it to where I get a lot of resistance or they start beating me up about my fee. And that will help you really kind of lock in where you need the most helpful. And then you can take that information and do your own practicing. You know, either with an accountability partner, a coach, maybe someone that's in your industry that you like, go and ask someone to role play with you. Role playing right now, in my opinion, is a lost art in recruiting. Very few people do it now.

Jay Veniard [00:21:25]:
And the reason why very few people do it now is because since COVID basically recruiting has become a remote job. So they're not working in an office with people. They can't hear other people talking, and they don't do role play. So I think that's a big thing when it comes to practice is watching the game tape, doing the activities daily that are monotonous, and do them anyway because it's the foundation that's going to get you better and then, you know, finding someone that you can role play with.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:56]:
I think a running partner or accountability partner or partner to run with is super powerful or even a coach. How do you go find that right accountability partner or that right coach or that right running buddy?

Jay Veniard [00:22:09]:
So that's the million dollar question. How do you find the right accountability partner, the right coach, the right mentor, whatever it is. And as far as an accountability partner goes, you know, you can find a recruiter in your industry or a recru recruiter who you know wants to do role play with you, but you have to choose wisely because there are, and I'll kind of go into, you know, the coaching business, so many coaches out there that have never accomplished anything, who are just really good at marketing and marketing their coaching business and have not really had any real success. I mean, my opinion is this. There's any coach out there saying that you never have to make a cold call again, you should run from them. And there's going to be people listening to this who are coaches that actually sell that and they're going to say, yeah, Jay, you're full of shit because you can never make a cold call again. And I just don't believe that. I would love to see the W2s of the coaches and or recruiters who are making zero cold calls because I just have never gotten any concrete evidence from anyone who doesn't work the business that's been successful.

Jay Veniard [00:23:28]:
So you have to choose wisely. And really choosing wisely oftentimes is just going to be trial and error. My whole thing is this, you know, just because you've hired one coach and you failed doesn't mean you should never hire another. You know, I went through several different coaches when I was on my weight loss and fitness journey. And finally on the third one I found the one that was for me and it worked. And so you have to find the person that is for you because you're not going to jive with everyone. Like there are a lot of people who, if they wanted to hire me as a coach, they would not like my style, they wouldn't be able to handle my style and it wouldn't be the right fit. And so you just have to make sure that you find the person that's the right fit.

Jay Veniard [00:24:13]:
And if you're $150,000 biller, don't find an accountability partner that's doing $100,000 or 150, find the person that's doing where you want to Be you want to be 300,000, you should be role playing or ask a $300,000 biller to be your accountability partner. You know, if you're looking for a coach, do you want a coach who has never done a day of recruiting in their life, but they've been in marketing and they're really good at marketing? That might be where you want to go, but I really think that someone who's been in the trenches and is still in the trenches to a certain extent from a coaching perspective is who you want because they are still up to date on the day to day of what's going on in modern recruiting, and they'll be able to help you on all aspects of the recruiting business, not just marketing. You know, that's the big thing out there right now with coaching and recruiting. Everyone wants to teach you how to market and automate and make no cold calls and all that. What about the coaches out there in the recruiting business? And there's a small few of them who are going to teach you the fundamentals. Then they're going to teach you, you know, a little bit about mindset, and then they're going to teach you how you take all of that and put it into your marketing and make it work.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:33]:
And I actually have another question this. And I love how you said, like, you know, you find the coaches right for you. It's the same with this podcast. If this podcast isn't right for you and you're a recruiter, I will point you to many other podcasts that can help you out because, you know, there are other great people out there. I know some of the other podcasters. I love them.

Jay Veniard [00:25:51]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know what I mean, you were kind of the innovator, Ben, to be honest with you. I mean, anyone who says this podcast isn't right for them, you're going to struggle in recruiting. You were the pioneer that got some people to actually do the right kind of like, you're really good at interviewing people and you pull things out for the recruiting community that are super useful.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:15]:
Well, thank you for that. And like, like I said, this was a dumb idea that I was just like, hey, Jay, you want to hop on an interview?

Jay Veniard [00:26:22]:
And of course, way back when, of.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:23]:
Course, it's kind of funny where it went, but okay, here's another thing that I think is important. Let me just say this to the listeners. I live in a recruiting bubble because of this podcast and because I'm constantly interviewing, I have to go back and do some edits. Working with my Editing team. So I live in this weird bubble where I'm seeing this, I'm seeing what works and all that stuff. But they say for the longest time that you are exactly who your five friends are and the books that you read, you become exactly them easily within five years. In the digital world, I think it's different. I think that five person rule almost doesn't matter anymore.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:57]:
I think it's the 25 people that you see the most on your digital feed and what you're consuming, you become that. How do you kind of like start curating or putting yourself around these right people? And how do you go find that digital bubble?

Jay Veniard [00:27:13]:
Yeah, wow. How do you find the digital bubble in recruiting? Is the million dollar question. And actually, I'll answer your question in a minute. But I'm going to digress on something that you just said is the five people you surround yourself is kind of who you become. What's really interesting is I think I was listening to a podcast or maybe I was reading a book or something like that, and there is actually a study out there by, I want to say it was someone from Harvard or something like that. They are now coming out and saying that that is 100% true. But it's the person that you spend the most time around that creates 80% of who you become. So that's really scary because oftentimes the one person that's in our space the most is our significant other, our family, whoever it might be.

Jay Veniard [00:28:09]:
So what are they putting into your mind? Are they a positive influence on you and your career? Because if they're not, maybe you need to try to work on them, maybe even find the study or cite the study and be like, you know, hey, you should check this study out because I spend all my time with you and we need to work together to be successful. And I thought that stat was really, really interesting because I always talk about, and I do it with my kids all the time now that they're all going off to college. I'm like, the five people you spend the most time with is kind of who you become. So make sure that those five people you surround yourself with, and especially the person you surround yourself with the most, is doing more or is further along the path of where you want to go than where you are right now. And that's really the key to building that network is you always want to find people above where you are and learn from them so then you can get to their level. And then when you get to their level, you got to find people above that level. And so the problem that we're having right now in recruiting and oh, if it's okay with you, I'm going to self promote a little bit right here, is that most of the recruiting Facebook pages out there, like I mentioned earlier, an echo chamber full of people complaining and making excuses for not being successful. Well, because of that, when I started my coaching business, I set up a new Facebook group for recruiters.

Jay Veniard [00:29:37]:
It's called Recruiting Revolution, Mindset Peak Performance Mastery for recruiters. And I set that up and it's going to be more of a curated and moderated Facebook group. We're still working on, you know, kind of how we're going to do the moderation. I don't want to not let people say what they want to say, but I want to make sure that the information that is being put out there is the right information. So I've got some heavy hitters in the recruiting industry that are in that group and I've asked them to kind of be moderators and the people who answer some of the questions. And I'm really going to kind of lean it toward. Don't come in this group and complain. If you're going to come in the group and complain, you better be asking for a solution on the back end of your complaint.

Jay Veniard [00:30:25]:
Because at the end of the day we can complain all day long, but what are you going to do about it? Like, that's what it's all about. What's the solution to overcome the problem and the challenge that you're having.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:40]:
Smart. Yeah. And definitely it's a good way to get around like, people that are just moving forward too. But like, I think one of the fundamental basics of somebody that wants to go do something is of course the desire, but also a vision of what they want their future to be. Yeah. And I also think that's one of the hardest things. I think as a recruiter or even just a person in general, there are more people that spend more time on their fantasy football league than they ever do on their own personal vision.

Jay Veniard [00:31:10]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:11]:
Like how do you actually create a vision for yourself that can actually set yourself up for success?

Jay Veniard [00:31:17]:
Yeah. So creating a vision to set yourself up for success is something that I found very few people do. And I'll be honest with you, I was in that boat until about 10 years ago. You know, I never really was a vision type person, or at least I thought I wasn't. But here's the funny thing. When I was nine years old, I told everyone that would listen that I was going to be a professional baseball player. And guess what? They all laughed at me. I mean, I wasn't even a starting pitcher as a junior in high school.

Jay Veniard [00:31:50]:
And then between my junior and senior year, I just blew up and the rest is history. You know, Division 1 baseball, professional baseball, all of that. And it wasn't necessarily that I intentionally set that vision, but I did. I just didn't know it. It was me telling myself since I was 9 years old that I was going to play professional baseball. That's that whole thing of the subconscious not knowing the difference of what's real and what's not. And so when it comes to your recruiting vision, anyone who works with my coaching program, the very first thing that they're doing is a vision exercise. I want to know a couple of different things.

Jay Veniard [00:32:34]:
I want to know where you want your business, where you visualize your business to be in five years. But then I even take it a step further and I ask them to think about when they're 80 years old sitting on their porch in their rocking chair. Because I'm just going to tell you right now, if they execute on their vision when they're 80, they're going to have a shitload of money because they were a super successful recruiter. And that porch and that rocking chair that they're sitting on is probably going to be either oceanfront or lakefront. What did you accomplish? And so I do that because you have to not only visualize what you want in five years, but then I want you to reflect on what did you do to accomplish that success. So when you're 80, you could tell your grandkids that you did this, this and this. To be able to afford to sit on this porch in front of this beautiful lake and have the jet skis for the grandkids to, you know, take out and go. And so you have to set big goals and big visions.

Jay Veniard [00:33:39]:
Too many people, they, they play too safe even when they're writing out what they want to do in five years. You know, someone who is billing a hundred thousand dollars might be like, well, in five years, I want to be billing 300,000. That's not a big enough vision because if you're executing on a daily basis, you can easily go from a hundred thousand dollar biller to a million dollar biller in two years if you work at it. So I think that's the one main thing is people don't set a big enough vision. And then when they set the vision, they don't actually put the action steps in place that they know they're going to need to do to hit that vision. So I think that's a big thing.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:21]:
You know, looking at this from an athlete and deciding to go pro in your recruiting career. And let me just preface this. Like, it's okay to not go pro. Like, it's a hundred percent okay to be in the rec lake. It's a hundred percent okay. Like it depends on what your life wants to look like right now.

Jay Veniard [00:34:38]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:38]:
But for those that want to go pro, or most importantly, they want to stay pro, is there anything else that you would want to cover or instill into them?

Jay Veniard [00:34:48]:
Yeah. Stop kidding yourself, stop making excuses, and stop telling yourself the same story as to why you aren't successful or can't be successful. Because again, I'm going to go back to it. It's 80% of your success is in your mind for the most part. Every recruiter out there has the same ability. You don't have to have any special talent or any special ability to be a recruiter. All you have to do is you need to know a little bit of sales, a lot of influence, and you need to be able to have conversations and relate to people. And so I think that if you want to stay pro, and again, I agree with you, not everyone wants to be a high biller.

Jay Veniard [00:35:35]:
There are some people who are just fine with, you know, doing $150,000 as a solo, which, you know, after taxes and everything, you know, might put about $100,000 a year or so in your pocket, and that's okay. But if you really want to take it to the next level and be serious and be a pro and be someone who's going to still be a recruiter or recruiting firm owner, that could be something that, you know, grow into. You have to have that mindset that you're going to do it. And you have to know what the day to day monotonous actions are to get you to where you want to be. Because if you don't do those, if you don't take action, nothing's going to happen. A vision without action is just a pipe dream.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:20]:
Hmm. Vision. Action is a pipe dream. Well, then before we like jump over to the quick fire questions. I know it's something that I've dealt with in my recruiting career. It's something I've dealt with as a podcast host. It's something that I've dealt with when I was a runner is dealing with burnout. And burnout is a hundred percent real.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:37]:
But the thing is, like in a recruiting chair, like you Know this is our source of income, this is how the business is built. This is how we feed our family. This is how we are setting up. If you're a listener, how you are setting up your future is in the recruiting chair. How do you deal with burnout when it hits?

Jay Veniard [00:36:52]:
Yeah, burnout is tough. And every single recruiter is going to run into it multiple times in their career. I've been recruiting for 20 years and I've probably had to work through burnout at least five or six times. And I would say over the last 10 years, the one thing I learned about burnout is burnout's created by rejection. Nobody likes being rejected and unfortunately in our business we get rejected 98% of the time. But there are also times, and I think a lot of people saw it last year and probably are seeing it this year. A lot of people are getting their butt kicked and they're getting rejection after rejection. Now instead of 98% rejection, you're at 99.9% rejection.

Jay Veniard [00:37:40]:
And that's a really hard thing to deal with. So again, it really boils down to that mental toughness and grit, which grit to me is the number one trait that a recruiter should have in the recruiting business. You are going to go through hundreds of peaks and valleys. You're going to go through different economies, you're going to go through. You know, I wasn't around when the.com bubbled first. I was around after 9, 11. I saw what happened there. You know, we had the COVID thing, we saw what happened there.

Jay Veniard [00:38:10]:
So what you have to do is you have to know that those times are coming. And you have to know that as long as you keep doing the things you need to do, it will end. Every recession ends, every down economy ends. And so as long as you know that and you can kind of what I call mind, I won't say the full word we use of baseball, mind, F yourself. You'll really be more resistant to burnout because really burnout is what you're telling yourself. It's hard because of this, it's hard because of that. I'm getting rejected because of this. If you know that all of this is going to eventually happen and you continue to do the day to day things that need to be done.

Jay Veniard [00:38:56]:
And when the industry is down, like some people are facing last year and this year, and I hate to be the one that says this because I sound like probably a lot of people's managers right now that are telling you to do more. But when you are struggling, you have to work your way out of that struggle, and you have to work your way out of that burnout. And people are going to be saying, well, wait a second, Jay. If I'm about to go through burnout, working harder isn't going to help me. I disagree with that. I think that if you increase your daily activities when things are going tough, you'll actually work out of that problem or that challenge quicker and your burnout will disappear a lot easier. Now, another trick that I have for burnout, and this is something that I believe since I owned my first search firm back in 2008, I think because of the stress of our job, every recruiter should take a minimum of a long weekend off once a quarter. And I think that right there will help out, too.

Jay Veniard [00:40:00]:
And when I say take a long weekend off, I'm talking about you're not thinking about recruiting. You're not checking your emails. You're not, you know, taking phone calls. You are shut down for at least a long weekend because you're going to be taking some time off here and there on those other parts, and you're still going to kind of be working your recruiting business when you're technically maybe off on a Friday. But what I'm saying for burnout is take a minimum of a long weekend off every single quarter and really take it off. No recruiting allowed.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:35]:
You mentioned one thing. I think this is a definite important conversation because we actually, as recruiters, we have tons of conversations. Like we are conversations, nonstop conversations with our clients, conversations with candidates, conversations with other recruiters. But we have conversations which probably amounts to 90% of our day with ourselves. And you mentioned the story that you tell yourselves. And one of the stories that I struggled with in my recruiting career, I got told by somebody that was influential in my life that we're menace. We're never great salespeople, we are never good at sales. And it's a story that I retold myself over and over and over and impacted so many years of my recruiting career.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:16]:
How do you work on rewriting those stories in your head?

Jay Veniard [00:41:20]:
So I've got a great tip for people. As an ex professional athlete, I've worked with some of the top sports psychologists in the world. I've worked with some of the top performance coaches in the world. And I was always very mentally tough just because of, you know, coming through. You have to be mentally tough to be an athlete. And, you know, I got into the recruiting business and I was successful from year one. And a lot of that had to do with the Fact that I didn't know the meaning of. Like, I wouldn't take no for an answer, and I still don't.

Jay Veniard [00:41:55]:
And a lot of people are afraid to hear no. But really, what it boils down to and what I learned about three or four years ago. And again, I'm going to cite the podcast, Andy Frisella, the Real af, he talks about the bitch voice. So you got the devil here. Who's the bitch voice? And you got the boss voice on this shoulder. That's the angel. What a lot of people don't realize is that it is human nature. It's ingrained in our DNA to make things, to protect us, to make things easy.

Jay Veniard [00:42:28]:
You know, as they always say, it's the part of our brain that back in the caveman days, made us realize that there's a saber tooth tiger over there. I need to go an opposite way. And so a lot of people don't really realize that 80% of their internal discussions are negative. You're telling yourself why you can't do everything. And so what they talk about on the podcast, that's your bitch voice. So the way to combat that is every single time that voice comes in, you have to smack it away. And so, for instance, one of the big things, and you and I have been friends for a long time and, you know, kind of the story behind my fitness and weight loss journey and all that so many times, man, I do not want to go to the gym. I'm like, I'm not going to the gym.

Jay Veniard [00:43:16]:
I'm not going to do this. I'm not doing that. And then as soon as I learned that bitch voice and boss voice concept, as soon as that started talking to me, that was immediately, get off the couch, go put my gym clothes on, walk your ass out the door, and get to the gym. And so if you think about it, in recruiting, there's going to be the one main thing that I'm going to go back to. I don't want to make a phone call. I'm afraid to make a phone call. No one's going to answer anyway. Who cares? Okay, well, if no one's going to answer the phone, why are you afraid to make that phone call? Make the phone call.

Jay Veniard [00:43:52]:
And who knows? Someone might actually answer. And so I think if people really kind of start thinking about the bitch voice and the boss voice, they will realize that as soon as that voice comes in, that's telling you, you can't do this. You're not good enough. You're no good in sales, you're no good in recruiting. Cold calling doesn't work. This, that and the other, like, literally, like slap it away and go to the boss place. Who's saying, I'm going to make this call, I'm going to go to the gym, I'm actually going to eat this salad instead of a hamburger. Or I'm going to set up the email campaign right now for this new search that I got.

Jay Veniard [00:44:35]:
Even though I'm telling myself I'll just wait till tomorrow. No, do it right now because time kills all deals and that's exactly what your boss voice is telling you. So I hope that people can kind of relate to that analogy because it has been super, super helpful to me for all of the negative self talk and all of the doubt that comes in my mind because, look, I'm not immune to it. I go through the same thing. I mean, last year, you know, we had a really down year, but I just kept telling myself, hey, it's the ebb and flow of recruiting. Just deal with it, keep doing what you're doing and things will pick up. And guess what? This year things have picked up.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:16]:
Awesome. Well, jumping over to the quickfire questions that I think my normal two quick fire questions, I think we've done a good job spending the last 49 minutes covering that. So we're going to mix this up a little bit. I saw that you were just recently at a conference. Is seeing people in real life IRL a game changer this year?

Jay Veniard [00:45:34]:
So I just started doing the trade shows and conferences and I can 100% tell you that it is something that every recruiter should be investing in. And the thing about it is you don't just show up to the conference. You have to have a plan in place about a month and a half beforehand to, you know, touch the exhibitors that you want to target, try to get them to at least meet you to say hi. And obviously you're not going there necessarily to sell your services. You're going there to be seen, I think as recruiters and really anything in life, especially in sales, it's all about your personal brand. And so you could be like, I was always very well known on LinkedIn in my industry. I would make phone calls, people would say, oh yeah, I see your stuff on LinkedIn all the time. But then I realized there was a recruiter out there who, interestingly enough, now works for me, who is more well known than I am.

Jay Veniard [00:46:31]:
And the reason why he's more well known is because he showed up to every single trade show and People would see him and talk to him, and it created a better bond. And I am a firm believer that it doesn't matter how many times you talk to someone on the phone or see them on Zoom. There is no better client or candidate connection than in person. And so that's what I've been doing since I started doing that last year. So now every industry trade show, I went to one in May, I just got back from one the other day, I'm going to another one in November, and then I'm going to be hitting the big one in, in January. So, you know, there's going to be some people who say, I can't afford that. I say, you can't not afford it. I mean, there are different ways to skin that cat.

Jay Veniard [00:47:21]:
You can, you know, put it on a credit card, borrow money. I highly, highly recommend people starting to go to some of their industry trade shows to get more FaceTime with more people in your industry.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:36]:
Okay, here's another question. Would you say, and this actually came from a listener, you made a placement with a client a few years ago, and you really haven't touched or talked to them since. And, you know, I'm sure they've gotten.

Jay Veniard [00:47:47]:
A lot of noise.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:48]:
How do you, like, get back into that client again or into those conversations with that client that you made a placement with years ago?

Jay Veniard [00:47:54]:
Yeah. So, you know, I think the one thing. And again, it's an evolution, you know, you learn. I mean, I've gotten to a point now where, you know, we make a placement with someone, we actually have a cadence set up. And the great thing about it is you can automate this as soon as you make a placement, you should have an automation sequence in place that touches that client and candidate on a regular basis. So for us, it's, you know, day of placement, then 90 days out, then 100. What's six months? 100, 180 days. Six months.

Jay Veniard [00:48:26]:
I'm not great with math, so don't hold me to that. But six months out, we'll touch them again. And then from six to 12 months, we don't touch them at all. And then at 12 months, we do that. And then we just kind of keep them in a little drip sequence after that, just so we can stay in front of them. And then, you know, because they're not always thinking about you, there'll be times in between some of that sequence where I'll just shoot a LinkedIn message to either, you know, the hiring manager that made the hire or whoever my contact is, hey, you know, hey, so, and so I haven't talked to you in a while. I was on your website and noticed you had this search. If it's within your specialty, you can specifically point that out or you just say, hey, I want to let you know that I'm still here.

Jay Veniard [00:49:08]:
Is there anything that you need from me? Is there anything that we can help you with right now? And that's kind of how I stay in touch with clients. Because if you go a year or really even six months without following up or talking to them, they're not going to think about you when the next search opens. So it really creates that vicious cycle, the hamster wheel, the roller coaster of man, I'm not getting a lot of repeat business. Well, you're not getting a lot of repeat business because you're not following up with the people and you're not staying in front of them. And they don't value you as a partner. They just see you as a vendor.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:45]:
Awesome. Do you have a favorite book that has had an impact on your career?

Jay Veniard [00:49:50]:
I prepared for this one. I knew you were going to ask this a favorite book for recruiters. So if anyone goes back to the two previous podcasts, you'll hear the ones that I like. On the last podcast I mentioned the Power of One More by Ed Mylett, and I would say that's still my number one book. But what I wanted to do on this episode is I wanted to give a list of. I don't know, I'm looking at it right here. It's either six or seven books that I've read recently that were really good and I think could be helpful in different ways for recruiters. So I'm just going to go.

Jay Veniard [00:50:25]:
So the Power of One More by Ed Mylett. I've got. This was in your book club, I think. Both of them. Relentless and win. So Relentless by Tim Grover. Winning by Tim Grover. It Takes what It Takes by Trevor Moad.

Jay Veniard [00:50:40]:
How Leaders Learn by David Novak. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight from Nike and Open by Andre Agassi.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:51]:
Awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome.

Jay Veniard [00:50:53]:
And what's interesting, just real quick on the last two, Shoe Dog from Phil Knight with Nike and Open from Andre Agassi. Those two are really good books because they're about their story, but there are so many mindset and leadership tips and exercises in those two books that as I was just kind of more wanting to read them to find out more about their story. And then as I got into it, I'm like, wow, there are a lot of like mindset peak performance tips in these Two books. So I thought it was a good idea to add those to the list because I knew you were going to ask me that question.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:31]:
I need to check out open. I love Shoe Dog. I just love, like the crazy stories they did and how scrappy they were. The early days. Yeah, it feels like us recruiters, like, so, like the early days when you just scrappy, just doing stuff to make it happen.

Jay Veniard [00:51:43]:
People have to realize, and I think Shoe Dog would be a good book for them to realize. There's going to be several times in your recruiting career, in your business that you're about to go out of business. I've owned Ventech search group since 2017. There has been several times where I looked at the bank account and I was like, oh, shit. And so then I read Shoe Dog and I'm reading about Nike when they were doing. I can't remember what they were doing, but they were doing either like 10 or 20 something million in revenue and they were about to close their doors. And Phil Knight made some decisions and really just pressed through it because he knew that if he just kept doing what he would do that eventually it would be success. And look at Nike now.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:26]:
You know one of my favorite questions, how to get out of funk. And I think we did a good job covering that. But I'd love to, like, hear yourself again in this question. Like, if you got a chance to go back early on in your career and have a conversation with yourself, what would you tell yourself?

Jay Veniard [00:52:44]:
Man, if I could go back to my early recruiting days and tell myself something, you know, again, I knew you were going to ask this question, and I really still haven't come up with an answer. But I do have an answer. Stop doubting yourself. You're going to have good years and bad years. You're going to have good weeks and bad weeks. You're going to have good days and bad days. It's really just a matter of how are you going to react to the bad days. Are you going to let one bad day turn into a bad week? Because that's really what the career killer is, not being able to rebound from a bad day or a bad week or even a bad month or a bad year.

Jay Veniard [00:53:32]:
And so if I could go back and tell myself one thing, it would be to learn how to have more grit and bounce back quicker. Because the story and I may have talked a little bit about it on the first episode. My first search firm, I started it back in 2008 and we were doing residential construction and the first nine months of business we absolutely killed it. And I was on my high horse. I was like, we are awesome. And then the real estate market crashed. I was recruiting residential construction. I didn't pivot quick enough.

Jay Veniard [00:54:09]:
We went out of business. And so what I ended up doing after that, I got out of the recruiting business for, like, five years. And so if I could go back and do what I just recommended, bounce back. Don't let a bad day turn into, you know, a bad week. Well, I let that bad experience of going out of business after, I think we're only been in business 14 months, I let that get into my mind, into my head, and said, maybe I'm not good enough. You know, I don't want to deal with this headache. If I would have just stayed with it and instead of getting out of the business, pivoted into a different industry, I would be further along than where I am right now because I essentially wasted five years by getting completely out of the business and not doing anything. So I would tell my younger self, dude, you have to learn how to bounce back quicker.

Jay Veniard [00:55:06]:
And I think that would solve a lot of problems for a lot of people.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:11]:
So between your coaching and all the recruiting ups and downs, including going out of business and leaving the recruiting space for almost a half decade, you get a chance to talk to a lot of recruiters and they ask you a lot of questions. And I've seen you answer questions, especially like over time in all the different groups. Is there a question that you wish they would ask you and what would that answer be?

Jay Veniard [00:55:35]:
Yeah, you know, we talked about the basics and the fundamentals. You know, I wish more recruiters would ask veteran recruiters, what are the basics and fundamentals? You know, I'll go back to baseball. If you don't learn the basics and the fundamentals first, how can you hit a baseball? How can you throw a baseball? How can you field a ground ball? If you don't know the basics and the fundamentals, you're not going to do it right. And so I wish more young recruiters or recruiters getting into this business would ask more about the fundamentals. And unfortunately, I think they don't ask that question because they know. One of the first answers from anyone who's been in the business for a long time is going to revolve around the phone, have to have conversations with people, and at the end of the day, if you're not having conversations with people, you're going to have a really hard time in this business. You're only going to be mediocre if you're not willing to talk to people.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:30]:
I love that. Well, for anybody that wants to follow you, how did they go about doing that?

Jay Veniard [00:56:35]:
Yeah, so, I mean, I'm all over LinkedIn. That's probably the number one place since I started back my coaching program because, as you know, I was doing it before COVID and then I shut it down during COVID because nobody needed coaching during COVID Most people couldn't afford to do coaching during COVID because they weren't making any placements. So because of that, I'm now on Instagram and TikTok, which is funny. And let me just tell you, my teenage kids hate it. They hate seeing my videos, but my handle on both of those is officialjvenard. And then I started the new Facebook recruiting community about three months ago. It's called Recruiting Revolution, Mindset and Performance Mastery for recruiters. So would love to have people come and get in on that group, check out the things that we're doing on Instagram and TikTok.

Jay Veniard [00:57:26]:
And connect with me. Everyone listening, please go connect with me on LinkedIn. I put out a lot of valuable, you know, mindset and peak performance tips on LinkedIn as well.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:36]:
Awesome. Well, Jay, before I let you go and this has been an awesome conversation, is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners?

Jay Veniard [00:57:42]:
No, just stop listening to the bitch voice. As soon as you hear that bitch voice, talk, smack it away and go to the boss voice. Take immediate action and do the exact opposite of what that bitch voice is telling you.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:57]:
Awesome. Well, Jay, I just want to say thank you. I wanted to say thank you for just, like, talk about, like a masterclass of high performance when it comes to recruiting. But also, like, about how we talked about going pro and staying pro and it's okay if you don't want to go pro. Yeah. It's also okay if you don't want to be Taylor Swift's boyfriend or Tom Brady. I don't know who the guy's name is. That's how much I watch football.

Benjamin Mena [00:58:19]:
But there are professional players out there that have been pro for 15 years, for a decade, for 20 years. They're not the big names, but guess what? Their paychecks are big.

Jay Veniard [00:58:31]:
That's right.

Benjamin Mena [00:58:31]:
And they're in it for the long game. So thank you for sharing how you can be a pro recruiter and take your career to that next level. And for the listeners, whatever you do for the rest of this year, you're finishing off 2024 is going to set you up for a successful 2025. So make 2025 the year of abundance for yourself. Keep crushing it.

Jay Veniard [00:58:53]:
Thanks, man.