How AI Personas Can Skyrocket Your Recruiting Business with David Stephen Patterson

[00:02:07] The speaker discusses using AI for content creation, particularly in the context of agency recruiters building their brand and online presence. They highlight the difficulty of creating engaging content and the potential for AI to help with this task, but notes the importance of maintaining one's unique style and voice. The speaker also mentions their personal journey in initially dismissing AI-generated copy before learning how to create AI personas that write in their style.

[00:05:47] Jobs are scarce and LinkedIn automation and generic content are causing white noise. To be noticed, recruiters must create visceral content that connects emotionally with their audience.

[00:11:05] Content and inbound marketing are necessary for long-term success, but outbound efforts such as cold calling still have their place. Consistently pushing content on various channels, such as LinkedIn and Facebook, can elevate your brand and make it easier to do business with. Content helps prospects remember and appreciate your value, ultimately leading to more successful sales calls. AI can also assist those struggling with content creation.

[00:18:30] AI can be trained to write in a specific voice and style, but it requires effective training. Recruiters can benefit from using AI for content creation. AI Persona Genesis is a program that trains AI personas for writing blogs, LinkedIn posts, email copy, website copy, etc. It only takes a few hours to fully train AI personas on a specific style and market.

[00:23:57] AI can help recruiters expand their knowledge and efficiency by quickly providing relevant information and feedback. Mem.ai is an AI-based note-taking tool that uses tags instead of folders to help users easily access and draw connections between different pieces of knowledge, sparking creativity.

[00:30:27] Focus on learning sales and marketing, understand why people buy, join the HERC for free training and advice.

[00:32:17] Discussion about high-billing group, DSP as guest, thanks and call to action for podcast subscribers.

Speaker A [00:00:00]:

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 [00:00:19]:

This is gonna be a fun episode of the elite recruiter podcast. I have my special guest, David Stefan, aka DSP. We're gonna talk about all things on really just moving recruiting to the next century. DSP is literally probably one of the recruiters that The only recruiter that I have met that is just so ahead of the game when it comes to artificial intelligence. And I know everybody's talking about prompts and, like, write this or write that. He's putting it together in entire systems to help you, 1, win new business, get more clients, and find the right candidates. And real quick, I I love having DSP on here because when I was many years ago looking at making you the jump from being an internal recruiter to having my own search firm, DSP is actually one of the few people that Behind the scenes with with this content, with this training, with some of his programs that actually helped me make that successful jump, and I am grateful for the lifestyle freedom that I have today because of DSP. So DSP, welcome to the podcast. Cheers. Thank you. Glad to be on here for the This is my third time, I think. 3rd time. 3rd time. Man, third time to charm is pretty cool. So real quick. I know we typically ask the question of, like, how you got in the recruiting space, but for time sake, because I know we got a lot to cover. If you could if the listeners if you go back to episode 38, he breaks down how he got into the space, how he got into recruiting, how he got his own search firm, the ups and downs, and also talking about the lessons that he learned, weathering recessions. So definitely go check out episode 38. But now alright. The AI game. Everybody is talking about AI. It is the hottest topic when it comes to recruiting. Playing with chat, GPT is fun.

DSP [00:02:07]:

Mhmm. But how do How are you taking things to this next level? I knew we will be talking about AI on this session, which why I wore my glasses, my nerd glasses here. So, anyway, when I put these on, I always feel like 10% smarter. But oh, yeah. So so for the AI game, it's yeah. You know, I I will tell you. So I've been a a big proponent far as for agency recruiters to help build their brands and their online presence because the because the more that you do that, the more you you get recognized, the more you get inbound leads, and also to make sure outbound prospecting a lot more effective. We can certainly talk about that. Now I I will say I don't I I don't initially get into the AI stuff when it comes in comes in to see finding candidates because that's that's a whole other area that I haven't really dove much into specifically for me. It's about content creation. What I found is that for recruiters, we're not trying to brand themselves. right, when trying to to create articles and build their authority and create LinkedIn posts and gain visibility, as well as even just writing email copy that gets Then it resonates in the gets replies because that's getting harder and harder to do every day as much more white noises increases in the market. And what I found is that most recruiters just don't eat it all the time or they don't have the writing chops or or they're they're so busy doing everything else Yeah. because, you know, as the agency recruiter, especially if you're independent, you're you're doing everything, and it's it's it's it's a really, really tough job and add content on top of that makes it even more difficult. So using AI to write content, it's only most content that it creates is generally kinda bland. And so what we will help we work on and what have been working to hear a lot is creating content that really resonates in your style and your voice. And so and one thing that that really led me there was, you know, I've been a So so you're on my my email list, and yep. You know, you've been in the email list for for a long time. You're on my o g's, so thank you for that. But I have a very It's always a very spicy email list. I email my my my list every almost every day. It gets kinda political. It gets kinda I tell jokes. it gets it gets kinda dirty, but I also try to find a lot of great content. And I and what one of the things that really resonates with with people that are on the list. The reason why I guess, such a high opener rate, and I don't give very many a subscribe just because it's entertaining. And people generally read because they they they liked the reading, and I have a Delta shirt style around it. Now I say that because when AI was first coming out in terms of of generated content, I poo pooed it for a long time. I would pick up occasionally like an AppSumo tool for AI or I tried Jasper, and it was just okay, but it never was never in my style. I would never in a million years put my name on it. And then I actually learned how to create AI personas from a buddy of mine back in January. and it really just blew my mind. The the the way that I was able to create AI personas that that wrote in my style, which was which was Gary good. And and to be able to not only do that, but also to credit to help it write in in other types of style, like, email style, social media styles, blog article, some stuff that's more professional. Anyway, so I'm I'm I'm I'm a go on a bit of a tangent here, but I ended up having to eat my own words, which I remember in January, I sent out to my list a a long diatribe about how how AI copy sucks. And then is that the the week after that, my my buddy taught me how to make an AI persona and it just completely changed my perspective on it. So, anyway, I'm gonna I I I I can go on on about it, but it's been it's been a pretty amazing journey for me the last few months working with it. Well, I I know one of the things that you've taught about being important is that in learning how to copyright.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:38]:

Now with the, you know, the rise of AI, is that still an important thing? Yeah. It's it's actually even more important now. See, one one of the issues that people don't think about when it comes to

DSP [00:05:47]:

our business is that is that jobs are hard to come by right now. Right? everybody's feeling it. I mean, I every client I have, everybody I talked to, every recruiter out there is feeling it. And if you're not feeling it, then you're you're pretty lucky. but they're feeling it. Right? And so what do we what do we all learn on recruited 101 when the our job board or the white bars starts to look light on jobs. We hit the phones, start emailing, start hitting folks up on LinkedIn. Well, now you have LinkedIn automations, Say everybody's using link to automation, and very few people were using it 6, 7 years ago that everybody's using it. Everybody's everybody's using link to automation to to a certain extent. and now everybody's pushing out content. Right? So now you have AI that's pushing out tons of content. So what happens is everybody's out there or grabbing these really generic email templates from trainers. Right? It's, you know, very generic. Hi, Bob. This is so and so with x y z search, and we've recently come across a great pool of candidates that could be a fantastic fit for your company. Won't be a good time to to connect to see if that would if if it would be matched to or won't be a good time to connect, see if we if it makes sense to work together. Like, very generic like like, a mesh that sounds decent. But when a prospect to getting that 5, 10, 20, 25 times a day, you know, it's just so much white noise, and everybody's sinning stuff like that. Everybody is send a link to automation. Everybody's and of course, our people are calling. And so now you have AI out of the mix. So now AI with the cursor now pushing out tons of generic content, you have a lot of white noise. And so I I think it's harder now, but I also think that it's it's also makes it much more important being noticed because yet straight away to to get past that white noise, and you have to be more polarizing. You have to be more in cisive. You have to have more visceral content content that resonates in the in the in the bones of the people that are treated. Right? For example, And this is a really example about this, like, content necessarily, but just just think about, like, the general like, the type of emotions we're trying to hit in terms of in terms of our audience. Right? So I work with agency recruiters. And so and for agency recruiters, I know, you know, y'all get a lot of pitches on a daily basis from lead gen specialists, you purport should be able to bring you inbound leads on demand. Pipe and hot leads and blah blah blah blah. Right? I I think I did, like, 10 of those a day. Exactly. And and and an email copy, I I somebody could say that we we can help you introduce the family or or bring in cut prospects and leaves, like and that's that's fine. That's decent content. But if I mentioned to you or maybe in my email copy or something, I say, look. The other feeling that you get when you when you drive home Every day on the commute home and you had a sinking feeling in the pave your stomach thinking, man, today might be the day that my my wife or my husband. He's gonna sit me down at the dinner table and say, honey. Maybe it's about time he found a real job. I help you avoid the conversation. Now granted, I'm not specifically seeing what I do, but what I'm doing is I'm I'm hitting that emotional nerve inside of you. I'm I'm showing you that I under Dan, I get it because I've been there. And people that have experienced that, they know what that feels like. And I think the more we can create content like that, that connects their audience, the more we're gonna be be noticed. I think creating a really incisive content is is so important nowadays to be noticed. Well,

Benjamin Mena [00:09:10]:

I I don't know if you saw the notice. I I don't know if you're on TikTok at all, but TikTok just actually sent a notice to all their creators with over a 100,000 subscribers. that the future of the algorithm is going to be about a enticing emotion with a storytelling.

DSP [00:09:25]:

And I can guarantee you that, you know, since TikTok said that out, I feel like LinkedIn's gonna be next. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. Because, yeah, that's I mean, that that's what gets people to to pay attention. even an email copy. In fact, let me let me bring up the demeld Gibson role because this is something that I teach in all of my training when it comes to to writing content. And so there was a an interview of Mel Gibson that he did many years ago. And for this who who who know Mel Gibson, he he he's not just the World of Warriors, not just Mad Max, but he's amazing director. He the he he created a pocket crypto, Bravehart, the Patriot, which is a way underrated movie. And and and and a ton of others. Right? So he's he's an amazing director. One thing that he said about about movies and why and how his stories resonate, he said it's it comes down to the 3 e's. He said it's it's it's entertainment, education and elevation. If you want if you you you need to be able to entertain first because if you don't entertain no matter how much value you're putting out there for not taining and interesting, they're just not gonna pay attention because there's a ton of value out there. Everybody has value. Right? You have to you have to entertain. But, yeah, you do have to educate. You have to educate them, and then thirdly, you have to elevate their thinking. So you can elevate their thinking. Right? That's how they truly remember you. And so when you look at your content or your content strategy as a recruiter, always wanna be thinking about am I entertaining,

Benjamin Mena [00:10:48]:

my educating, and more important than anything else, am I elevating their thinking. I have a supplement grade device. And for, you know, people that are looking at just getting into the content game, why is it so important right now to like, get content out there. Yeah. So where you say make misconception that comes to content, and

DSP [00:11:05]:

there is So you got the folks doing content, and they they preach about inbound marketing. Inbound leads on demand, all that kind of stuff. It doesn't really the the It's it's but it sounds sexy. Right? And it sounds a lot easy they're banging out a 100 cold calls per day. On the other hand, you also have folks that are that the the old school guys. Let's just say, dude, just get on the phone. Get on the phone. Get on from and I I hear you that also works as well, but there's a there's kind of an upper limit to what you can do with that. Right? And so I think it the way to look at it is that you call it hunting versus farming. Right? Hunting is your outbound. Farming is your inbound. Pharma takes a long time to to cultivate. It's a long game. Huntington's your short game. What I found is that If you start pushing that content, link a LinkedIn or or anywhere else where your audience is at, LinkedIn obviously is the number one place. Could be Facebook, could be probably not TikTok from most from most of our our audience because our our our our clients are probably older. but a place to where they're at. Right? And you start pushing on content that again, and there's entertains, edge case it elevates. They start remembering your name, what's going to happen when you call them or when you email them? They're much more likely to reply. And so I'm a big believer that If you make sure that you are hitting all the outbound channels, no, LinkedIn, email, phone I mean, you're still cold calling, all that, right, that there's still a a great place for that, and they they see consistently on LinkedIn with great content or articles, etcetera. They're much more likely to wanna do business with And so the example I usually give is with my own business. So when I was, you know, recruiting for many more years, I've I've been doing this since 97th, And I wasn't really worn out in your recruiting industry because at the time, there wasn't really like an online space for recruiters. When I become a trainer, And when I started moving into that direction, and I started the the the Facebook group that we have, the headhunter, executive recruitment community, joined if you're not a member, the we're recruiting to reviewing that. Right? And now we have close to 13,000 members, search for homeowners, independent recruiters, like, largely agency based. So now I've got that group that and people are marinating them. They see my content all the time. LinkedIn, people send me content. A lot of people have downloaded my lighthouse method sales and marketing guide. They've seen my videos. They they just know my name. So now when I've got 2 sales reps, that do outbound for me. Right? When they do outbound for me, our open rates are crazy high. Our reply rates are crazy high. I get people getting on sales calls with me that They've seen my content. They've been in my group. They've seen me for years, but they never got off their butt to work with me until we reached out and we ping them and they say and they and they book a call because they ignore everybody else, but they they reply to us. And when we get on the phone or a Zoom call, I don't have to do all the back flips and try to establish my credibility. They knew who I am. It's just a matter of, okay. Let's see if it makes us to work together. And one of the really great things in in our world is that if you could do the same thing in your in your niche and and and get the people in your state to to know you and and to appreciate what you do. Maybe you've elevated their thinking, maybe you've helped them out so that you provide a value. The more you do that, the more likely they are to to respond to you and to and to wanna do business with you. It's kind of like it's it's that gonna recruit you, for example. Right? if you have a client that that gives you a job order or search assignment, and, you know, we always want the client that people know about that has an exciting opportunity that we don't have to explain what, like like, what they do. They they're they're maybe they're known in the industry. It makes it a lot easier to recruit for that company. Is it not? Same thing applies with us. If we're known, then it makes it a lot easier for us to get business. We just have to go outbound to do it, but at the end of the day, that's why I think that that content plays a role, and people tend to think it's kind of either or it's either just outbound or either just inbound. It's not they're just two sides of the same coin. And now and I'll leave you with this one little more, like like, as example. You know, people have heard about that that rule where it takes 8 to 12 touches to Get in front of a prospect. Right? Who knows what the number really is? But it's a good rule of thumb. Who put words think it's like it's in a lid year sequence. Right? I I email the LinkedIn and phone, then email the LinkedIn phone, and eventually on the on 8th 12th over the course of months, they finally take my call. It's not that all. It's actually it's it's actually a a messy journey that the prospect takes because they may see article for me here, a social media ad over here, LinkedIn posts over here. They email over here a voice mail this day, another post over here. They see a banner ad over here, another email from me the other day, and eventually they start to get this in my share in in their heads, and content plays a really, really big piece in that. So that's why I think that if you want to really do well in in the space and and to and and and to succeed in this new world, you have to be willing to start doing content. And for those folks who just don't have the ability or just don't have the knack for it or don't know what to do or don't have the time, AI can help you. So that's that's my v one.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:08]:

So talking going back to AI. And, actually, real quick, kinda talking about a content game. I you had, like, a content club, like was, like, 3 years ago where we all, like, posted, like, stuff on LinkedIn and when he commented. And you really highlighted during the time to go write articles. And, like, what I If you want a good laugh, one of those articles that I wrote during the timeline still gets me leads from LinkedIn. Like, just because, like, you know, I think it took me, like, 10 hours to write that but and this is way before the days of, like, AI where you could, like, speed things up. But, yeah, like, yeah, quality stuff matters.

DSP [00:16:40]:

It does and and and here's thing too. Like like, your your prospects actually do read these things. So I remember back in 2018, I wanna say, maybe 2019. when I started training, I was still doing both. I was still doing the search firm and recruiting the SAP space, which is which is my niche, and I was training. And and I I had fully transitioned to over yet like I have now, so at the time, I'll still kinda do them both. And I had his article out there about the state of the SAP marketplace. or the state of the SAP Talent marketplace or something like that. And I got a an email or, sorry, linked a message from the the the head of it was HCL Axon. HCL Axon's North American SAP group, and they were they had something like 40 or some positions they were hiring for it. He had emailed or sorry. He'd sent me, like, the message, excuse me, about that article about how it really resonated, and he agreed with it. He talked about some of the challenges and and he set me up with the media with his head of head of TA for North America ended up being, like, a big boon for me that year. just that one piece of article. And granted, that's not that that's not the norm. Usually, people will read it, but they won't engage necessarily. But, again, they can't remember who you are. But, yeah, I mean, powerful content does even lead to inbound leads. You can't depend on them, but but, again, your prospects do read your content if it's good. It but if it's your typical, you know you know, top 7 hiring mistakes, you know, everybody reads that or there's ton of it out there. They've seen a ton of it. It doesn't resonate. You gotta you gotta bring something, like, unique and unique perspective on it. Honestly, they're in it.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:16]:

So, like, you know, I love chat GPT. I I love Tapio. I love all these different, like, AI tools that out there to help me, like, actually do my job better. But you started talking about AI personas. First of all, what the hell is that? Oh, yeah. So this is

DSP [00:18:30]:

And then I'm hedging my bets in case SkyNet ever becomes sentient. So I I I, for 1, I think, for our future AI overlords just wanna make sure I get that clear and get that out there. Okay? Anyway, that's it. But I'll joking aside. So what I was and, actually, I I was taught this here about, you know, this will really change my mind about AI in the AI content, was you can train an AI persona to, in essence, right as you. So you can actually So when people use AI, the reason why they get frustrated with it, and the content is so bland is because they the reason why they get frustrated or the content is so bland is because they don't train it. They just say writing an article on on blank. Or write me a social media post on blank, and it spits out just regular content. You need to be able to train it to write in your voice. Now whether it's in your voice or an influencer that you admire, you could actually can can have it right in your voice, your your your your lexical style, your, you know, your the syntax that you normally use, it it gets really, really detailed. So if you train it in your voice, and you also train it in different copywriting styles. For example, you train for me, I train AI personas on a blog writing. You can train a trade create blogs. You can train AI to create social media posts. You can train AI to create email. You can train AI to review contracts. I mean, anything that comes down to either analyzing written information or creating written information, that's where AI really excels in my book. but you have to be able to be able to train it effectively. Okay. And I know that you have a current program where you're actually are you doing it for for search firms? Can you explain the request? -- recruiters. If you're not a recruiter, not a search firm, then I I can't help you because I'm I'm super specialized in just that. But, yeah, we actually They have an example of how you can do it. So the way you wanna think about it is, okay, first, you wanna create in your ring style. So if you have a ring style, gray you can train in that. If not, go go pick a an influence that you like that you admire and you could train it in that rings down. And over the course of the time, you can kind of modify it. That's just the first part, but then you have to train it on your company, train it on your company, what you provide, what you offer, what makes you different, but then you have to train it on your audience. and in our world is kind of unique in that we don't sell a service to an audience. We have 2 audiences. We have clients in Canvas, and they each have different pain points. These have different desires. They have different gaps from knowledge, different fears, different nightmare scenarios, etcetera. So the more that you can feed it, that information, the better. So you you want to reach at your audience, find out what makes them tick, and put that in there. And from there, once you do that, then you can train on a particular style of writing. So there is a there are certain block styles. Like, you can have list of goals, You can have leadership articles. You can have how to's, etcetera. But there's also just just within blogs and different styles. You can have different sort of linked or or social media posts. You know, whether it be a thought leader or LinkedIn post or storytelling LinkedIn post, myth busting LinkedIn post. You also have things that are optimized for Twitter Facebook, any other sort of, like like, platform out there. And so what you wanna do is you wanna train it on first the the the style, your voice, then train on your company, then train on your audience, then train on the specific role it's going to have. Like, what is it going to produce for you? Once you do that, then you can actually create start creating content. And then from there, it's just a matter of of fine tuning it because Sometimes AI forgets or sometimes AI kinda drifts, and so you have to be able to have the tools necessary to to kinda bring it back to where it needs to be. So, you know, think of it In a lot of ways, AI or chattyBT is a lot like somebody who is extremely intelligent who has amnesia. and so you have to teach it who it is. Right? And it kinda forgets, and you have to move it back, but it's a genius. And so so it's almost like you have to be have the range so you're you're on in essence, you have to kinda gently nudge it to where it needs to be, and it takes a little bit of practice. But once you get it, you can create As an example, I just I had and our new our our promotion for AI percent of Genesis, which is is the the new program that we just started where we actually will train an AI and AI persona or several AI personas for you. The right to write blogs, LinkedIn posts, email copy, website copy, etcetera. You can actually take this these AI personas. And in about a couple hours, you can get, you know, 4 or 5 of these AI personas fully trained on your style on your market. And once you do that and, again, I I use as an example of my my promotional email copy that I'd sent out earlier in the week, we I wrote a 2200 word blog about the rise of AI and its effect on SAP recruitment, and then I wrote 7 LinkedIn posts, specific to the SAP Industry, a couple for candidates and couple for clients, so about 7 posts in total. All that time, it took me about maybe 15, 20 minutes. and there were really high quality posts. It was it was really high quality blog that you can use as is. In 20 minutes, Hold on. We're just amazing. That would've taken hours

Benjamin Mena [00:23:43]:

normally. I can't I can't tell you how many mornings over the years. I've gotten up early just to, like, work on writing. 1 because I suck it riding, but I need to get better, but just try to do stuff like that in 15, 20 minutes. The machine

DSP [00:23:57]:

It's amazing, but wait. There's more. So so on top of that on top of that, one thing we've we've been experiment you with here lately, kind of then my newest experiment with this is if you're, let's say, an IT recruiter right now. And right now, tech recruiting IT already is really crowded. It's A lot of things are drying up, and it's it's it's if you're in tech, it's kinda tough for a lot of you. So let's say you have a client that you have a contract with. And you normally recruit tech for them, but they're just not hiring or whatever it is. And but you know that they have accounts in advance position open, or they have you know, maybe a a a job in audit or whatever it is. This is something that you would normally say, I don't do that because you only work in a tech. If you're to have a contract with them and they're willing to give you the order, I mean, you know, it's not ideal, but if you could take an accounting and finance job that you would not normally work on, but they're willing to give to you. and you don't know what to ask. You don't know, like, you know, etcetera. Take that job description. You feed it in and feed feed that in and feed in career section for that company. It'll speed you back out of the great employer applied value proposition, a recruiting campaign, and screening questions. Ask these 5 to 10 questions and hear all the answer they have to give you. So you can literally recruit constantly and knowledgeably about whatever field that you wanna recruit in and you can do that all in the course of maybe 50, 20 minutes, which is a lot of that easy. So yeah. And your program sets that up for the recruiters. Right? Oh, yeah. Yep. It does. It does. We'll have the I'll have the link for that here. show notes. Well, I didn't know. What I will say too is that for my a i per my a i percent of Genesis promotion that I just started I had AI write the entire promotion. My AI wrote my sales page. It wrote my all my email copy. It wrote everything. 90% of it is written by AI just as a demonstration proof of concept. And to be honest with you, one of the best sales pages ever created, So, you know, it it even create a card for the video that's on the page on top of that. So that's awesome. You know, before we jump into our fire questions. Is there anything else that you wanna chat about with AI and recruiting? Yeah. Yeah. What area that I'm bringing it into, and this isn't something that I'm necessarily putting out there as, like, a product or anything, but but something that's really, really interesting that I think that a lot of recruiters get a lot of value out of, especially once you like to expand our knowledge. So one of the tools I've been really excited about is called Mem AI. So it's mem.ai. So For a lot of you folks who are into productivity, you guys have probably have heard about things like a second brain where, basically, you take the knowledge that you have. or knowledge that you get from courses, YouTube videos, books that you read, etcetera, notes, and then and then putting it into a maybe a a knowledge manager to, like, ever notes or notion or, you know, a a a a Nimbus, the one I used to use. But but the only problem with those is that granted you probably notes in there, but just because you have a note in there or have your knowledge in there, the it's it's not easily accessed. and it's very hard to draw connections in between different pieces of knowledge, which is how you spark creativity. So and then wait. Again, what is and then I don't I don't don't have anything to do with them. I'm just and I'm I'm not promoting them, but what I've been working on with them is that they you can it's it's based in a note taking software account like Evernote, But the difference is it's all it's it's all AI. There's no folders. We use tags, but you put all your knowledge in there. And what'll happen is it has a little chatbot in the system, and you can go ask a questions based on your knowledge. So you can you can take your podcast notes, put them in there. YouTube notes, put them in there. course notes from course you take, put them in there. Any any other notes, anything and all you could put in there, you could you could actually upload entire books in there, and then go ask a question about the knowledge contained within the book. And it'll answer while, what's even more data you could take. disparate books. You can take a book on finance and book on entrepreneurship, load them both in there, and ask a question. They don't pull knowledge from both areas, and put them together into new and interesting ideas based on all the different different disparate piece of knowledge that you have in that system. It's really amazing. So this one area, let me get it into quite a bit. So for anybody who's interested in productivity knowledge management, check out mem.ai.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:15]:

I'll definitely put that in the show notes also. Alright. DSP, we're moving to the quick fire questions. Alright. What what advice would you give to a brand new recruiter that's actually just starting out in 2023?

DSP [00:28:26]:

Doctor. Leaders. So right so right now, leaders in the industry are a little bit of a free doubt. A lot of them probably worried about getting laid off or what their career prospects are. So now is a better time than any than any time else to reach out because you're headhunter. You can help them with their own careers. You can help them get to their next level and help them find their next opportunity. Right? Like, you I said, it's a big carry way for another face that no one else can really do. Right? If you saw software, you can't do that. Use that. Use that angle. Talk to me as leaders as you can to want a build the connections to build relations, but also to get knowledge of your market, find out what's going on, find out who's hired, who's not with pain points are, etcetera. Right now, it's a better time than ever to to to start booking those sorts of calls. So I think talk get on the phones or talking leaders ASAP.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:11]:

Number 1, they Awesome. Same question, but for recruiters that have been in the game for a while, what advice would you give to to them to win in 2023. Sim alias. Awesome. Next to the last. Yep. Next to the last. I and I personally know the answer next question, but I'm gonna ask it again. Is there a book that has had a huge impact on your career? Yes. The one you're thinking of, is it the the war of art? Yeah.

DSP [00:29:33]:

Exactly. Yep. The war of art, my number one self help buggery, every 6 months. Like like clockwork, I've given out probably dozens of copies at this point to friends and family. It's the work art, and I think it's it's a it's it's a book that is I describe it as a book that will grab you by the throat and and kick you in the you know what's you know what I mean? It's gonna make it get to work. It's very motivating. It's not a lot of fluff. It's not a lot of woo woo. It's just very down and dirty. How to get to work and how to in in essence, it's it's if I were to encapsulate it in a sentence, it's it shows you how to beat your inner demon that keeps you from doing your best work. So Warwart.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:17]:

Awesome. Even with everything that you know now, the experiences you've gone through, the knowledge that you know, If you can go back and talk to yourself at the beginning of your recruiting career. What what would you tell yourself?

DSP [00:30:27]:

Oh, gosh. I would teach I I would talk to myself well, I would that's a good question. I think I'll it it would come down to learning more about sales and marketing originally. So what I, for started. I I did very well in the business when I first started, but it it came down to be just outwork in the market. I did you know, I was doing, you know, 100, 150 calls per day, get of phone times. You guys remember what phone time is. I was getting lots of phone time top of the office in terms of my phone time hours, and I actually outwork the market. You know? I I was it's kind of like a blood instruments, you know, just hammering away. And then and then it was it was it wasn't till later on in my career. I learned a lot of the the the finer nuances of sales and marketing and why people buy. And then once I learned that, everything just got easier. So I think I think the more people can understand why people buy the how you can influence, be how you can persuade, the more you can learn there, the better off. So I think I would go back and teach myself those things. I think it would have had a a much easier time early on if I had learned those early. Awesome. Well, DSP, before I let you go, is there anything else you wanna share with the listeners? Well, I guess the the only thing I can think of is if anybody's interested in a a percent of program, we'll leave the link in in the show notes and and Also, if you're interested in joining, learning any sort of sales and marketing or just really anything of a agency recruitment, one of the best places you can go is the headhunter and executive community Facebook group on on Facebook. It's called the HERC. And I brought a lot of training in there, free training, but there's also a lot of great recruiters, a lot of veterans in there willing to give of their time and give advice to help other other newbies in the in the space. So perfect. Anything else, whether you use me, whether you give me money or not, I don't care. Join the group. We'll get a ton of value out of it.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:17]:

I'll just say there's plenty of 500 to over a $1,000,000 billers in that group just sitting there happily sharing advice constantly. I was not free. Oh, it's huge. Huge. Huge. For sure. Well, DSP, thank you for joining the podcast and into for the listeners until next time. Thanks for listening. To this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast, with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit subscribe and leave a rating.