Million-Dollar Momentum: Breaking the $500K Plateau to Reach $1.5 Million with Justis Pederson

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
2025 is going to be the best year that you've ever had, and we're going to help make that happen. We got two summits heading your way. First of all, in January, the Sales and Business Development Recruiting Summit. Make sure to get registered free for the live sessions or go VIP for the replays. And then the Recruiting Growth Summit is coming back for March. These events are going to help you start strong, run strong, so that way you can finish strong. So let's go. Make sure you get registered.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:25]:
You'll see the link in the show notes. All right, enjoy the podcast. Coming up on this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast.

Justis Pederson [00:00:31]:
When we first started it, I didn't really know what I was doing. Like, I think, like, when you start doing anything at first, you don't really know what you're doing and you figure it out as you go. I spent years thinking that the secret to recruitment is work hard, play hard. Like, go out and entertain clients, drink, take them to games and drink, things like that. And it got to a point where drinking had become a problem in my life. 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 [00:01:15]:
I'm excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast. How many times have you been stuck in a plateau? You have done everything. You have worked harder, longer hours, year after year, but you just cannot break through that barrier, Whatever the plateau is. Is it 250k, 300k, 400k, 500k? You just can't break through. We are here to talk about how to actually break through the things that you need to do to take yourself out of the plateau to that next level. I have a special guest that I'm so excited to share with you guys. Like, when I'm talking about breaking through, he was stuck at the fourth 500 mark for years, maybe would jump up to 600, but it just could not break through the barriers. And looking at this year, few months left to go, 1.5 million with time still in the year.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:01]:
So we're going to talk about, like, how he broke through the things that he did, and how you can figure out how to break through the plateau yourself. So, justice, welcome to the podcast, buddy.

Justis Pederson [00:02:12]:
Thanks, Ben. I'm excited to be here.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:14]:
I got the chance to meet you at the Pinnacle Society, which is some of the most elite recruiters in the world that all come together. So we had a good chance to like talk shop. I learned a lot about you. And like, literally like just the conversations, I was like, oh my God. Like, do you know how many recruiters you can help out there? But before we get started, can you tell everybody a little bit about what you're doing?

Justis Pederson [00:02:35]:
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm the president and CEO of the Peterson Group. We are a permanent direct hire recruitment agency specializing in construction and engineering. We started in January 2021. We've grown this company from just me and my wife in our basement to 1800 square foot office with five employees. I would say that the biggest transition that we've made within our business is taking this from one to one cold calling to now we're in the middle of a digital transition and that's really helped us break through that plateau.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:05]:
Awesome. We're going to dive into that. But before we start walking through all the different things that you've done, how did you even end up in this wonderful world of recruiting?

Justis Pederson [00:03:14]:
Yeah, I think commonly, just like a lot of other recruiters, by accident. Just like most discoverers we have, it's by accident. When I went to university or college out of high school, my goal was to become a doctor. I didn't really know anything else. I didn't know anything about recruiting. I didn't even know that recruitment consultants or headhunters was a job. I didn't know it existed. Which is kind of ironic because my dad was actually a partner at Korn Ferry for over a decade.

Justis Pederson [00:03:40]:
Not a headhunter, but actually a management consultant. So a little bit of different perspective on it, but yeah, he worked for one of the largest recruiting firms in the world. So anyway, I was taking maths and sciences, wanted to become a doctor, and going from high school to university was a huge change for me. And I just wasn't getting the grades and I knew I wasn't getting into med school. I bombed the mcat. I didn't even get invited for an interview. And so I figured halfway throughout my university career that, you know, I'm going to have to do something different. So I'm walking through a career fair one day and some guy calls me over and says, hey, how would you like to move to Texas this summer and make $50,000? And I thought, well, you know, obviously that sounds amazing, right? So I went up and started chatting with him and he showed me this commission structure.

Justis Pederson [00:04:26]:
It's door to door sales. You're selling pest control services in the southern United States. And you know, for a kid that's coming from small town Saskatchewan, small town In Canada, where it's cold. I thought that was really attractive. So I said to him, I looked over the commission structure, I said, show me what your best earner made last year. And he pointed it out to me and I said, sign me up, let's do this. So I moved down to Texas for a summer selling pest control services. It's interesting because I learned so much from doing door to door sales that has translated into recruitment.

Justis Pederson [00:05:00]:
And I think that that's a big reason as to how I got into this industry. In that job alone, we were knocking on a hundred different doors every day. And to be really good at the job, you only had to sell two or three accounts per day. So you were getting turned down by 99, 98, 97 people every day. And, you know, I think learning how to handle that type of rejection and fighting through the nose doing door to door sales really helped me become who I am as a recruiter. I did that first summer, loved it, went back again and the following summer, and that's where I actually met my wife. So we did that for a summer. I ended up moving to Winnipeg, which is where I am now.

Justis Pederson [00:05:41]:
And when I moved here, I knew I wasn't going to do door to door sales. So I saw a job ad online for a recruitment consultant and I called my dad and I said, what is a recruitment consultant? Like, I see it's a high commission, low base type of job. And when I was knocking doors, it was 100% commission, there was no base salary. So it was a completely eat what you kill environment. Right. So my dad told me about it and he said, you know what, I think because you did door door sales and you excelled in that, you should give this a try. And next thing you know, I apply online and a week later I'm starting with a company called Haze, who I'm sure your listeners are probably quite familiar with.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:16]:
Oh, I mean, okay, so let's take this a step back. Like you were literally just, you did two summers of door knocking. Did you actually make the 50k that they promised you?

Justis Pederson [00:06:24]:
Yeah. So my first summer, I doubled what their previous guy had made. I went out there and I sold about almost 400 accounts and I made about a hundred grand in my first summer, which at the time was, you know, I felt like a millionaire. I felt like I hit the lottery. Right. So I instantly signed up to go back again the next summer and I fell in love with the job. Yeah. So I was making lots of money, I was meeting lots of cool people and I was really honing in on my sales skills.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:50]:
Most people, when they get a door knocking job, they just hate it. It sucks. They're grinding through the day. But you. It sounds like you, like, reframed it, like, this is a learning opportunity that I can use for future me.

Justis Pederson [00:07:02]:
Yeah, it really was. I was at a crossroads in my life when I took that position. I knew I wasn't cut out to be a doctor, and I knew that I needed to figure out something that I was going to do. So when I signed up for this job, the guy told me right away. He said, I'm not going to sugarcoat this. We hire 100 students to come down here every year, and maybe 25 to 30 of them are here at the end of the year. We, you know, lose 50 to 75% of our staff because they hear nose all day and they don't like it and they quit and they go home and that's. That's what's gonna happen here.

Justis Pederson [00:07:33]:
So there was no training for this job. Honestly, Ben, like, he came out, we parked in a neighborhood, we walked up to our first door together. He knocked on the door, and they said, no. And he said, okay, get ready to hear a hundred of those every day. And if you happen to sell one, great. So I knocked on the very next door, and my pitch was, it was kind of funny because we were selling pest control in the States. So I knocked on the door and I said, hey, I was just talking to your neighbor Robert. He was seeing some ants and some spiders in his house.

Justis Pederson [00:08:01]:
We have our trucks out here, and we're going to get some of your neighbors sprayed for pest control. Would you be interested? And the lady was just like, yeah, you know what? I saw spiders yesterday. Let's sign this paperwork. And so I sold my very first store. And it was. It was so lucky. But it was also something that I needed because I had that confidence from the very first door I knocked onwards. Whereas I think a lot of other people were getting rejected.

Justis Pederson [00:08:25]:
All day, all day, all day. So that's, you know, I do find myself to be pretty lucky. I was lucky in that situation, but I did really turn it around and realize, like, this is something I can be good at, and my future self will thank myself for it.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:37]:
Phenomenal. Now moving into, like, recruiting. So you got the job at Hays. Talk about that.

Justis Pederson [00:08:42]:
Yeah. You know what, Hayes? It's an interesting company. I think it's a really good place for recruiters to start their recruiting career. My experience at Hays at the beginning was phenomenal. I was placed in a very small office. So our office was 200 square feet, like very, very small. And there was five recruiters in that office. Yeah.

Justis Pederson [00:09:01]:
So look around your room and picture five desks, five guys with their backs to each other, all on the phone all day. So it really sounded like a call center. And our boss was very activity driven. He would basically pick up that phone and tape it around your head and say, I want to hear a hundred calls out of you today. So, you know, coming from door knocking, it wasn't that different, to be honest, because I was just door knocking trying to sell all day. And this time I was on the phone trying to sell all day. I had a lot of success with Hayes. It did take me, actually I think it was six or seven months to make my first placement, to be honest.

Justis Pederson [00:09:34]:
So I was almost going to quit.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:36]:
Let's stop right there. Like almost seven months before your first placement, your door knocking experience, like you made your first sale. Why didn't you quit?

Justis Pederson [00:09:44]:
I had enough. I didn't have a plan B. My whole thing was, I'm going to make this work. The other thing is with Hays, when they signed me, it was a 28k base and commission. My previous job was no base salary, 100% commission. So I looked at that $28,000 and I said, this is amazing. Like, at least I have a bit of a comfort to fall back on if I don't do well. And you know, now knowing that these companies, they do the low base high commission so that you are, you know, you're never comfortable and you have to hit your quota.

Justis Pederson [00:10:11]:
Right, is basically the name of the game there. So for me, that first six months was, it was challenging. I was hearing a lot of no's, but I knew that because my activity was there and if I stuck around long enough and hit the phones hard enough, I was going to break through. The other thing that changed when I was with Hayes is my undergrad degree is in biochem. So I'm a science geek, just kind of by nature, to be honest. So they had me recruiting in life sciences. They felt like this guy has a biochem degree. There's some med tech and pharmaceutical industry in central Canada.

Justis Pederson [00:10:45]:
Let's have him cold call all of these organizations and see what he can drum up. And after about four to five months of doing that, it just wasn't working. I wasn't speaking their language. I wasn't good at it. So one day I was actually driving around Winnipeg and I noticed that there was just so Much construction happening in the city. Every road was being torn up. There was cones everywhere, traffic was bad, tower cranes in the sky, hospitals being built, schools being built, homes being built. And I thought to myself, like, we don't have a construction recruitment division here.

Justis Pederson [00:11:17]:
Who does? And I googled it and I couldn't find anything. There was just nobody recruiting for this industry. So I went back to my boss and I said, let me try this for a week. Like I think I can make. Like I see that there's a market out there for it. Why don't I try cold calling these companies? And so I did. And right away we started getting job requirements, job wrecks, superintendents, project managers. Every company we talked to said, yeah, we're looking for good people, let's do this.

Justis Pederson [00:11:45]:
So I think, you know, the success with Haze was the fact that I stuck it out, but also pivoting to a new market that I knew wasn't overly saturated and had a high demand was where the success really came from. Then from month six onwards, it was just gravy.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:01]:
That is awesome. So you started doing well at Haze. You started growing like you started having success but you started hitting a plateau. Can you talk about getting to that plateau point?

Justis Pederson [00:12:11]:
Yeah. So I spent a couple years with Hays as a recruitment consultant and then I went to Top Biller in Canada for my second year. Actually there was my first full year doing construction. I billed 600,000 after that I moved over to a larger local company. I felt like working for a more local company was going to help me break through, but realistically it didn't. I was doing the same stuff. I was still cold calling people. I was still doing the one to one activities you do.

Justis Pederson [00:12:40]:
Right. I had 100 clients in the city and I would pick up my phone and talk to candidates, hang up, pick up the phone, talk to clients, hang up. And I couldn't get through that 4 to $500,000 a year range. And you know what? I worked for Legacy Bose for about five years doing that recruitment, managing a small team of recruiters. And I just felt like this is it, like I've hit the ceiling in recruitment. I'm never gonna make more to become a partner here. And I just don't think there's enough time in the day to call more people. Really? Because that's how you make money in recruitment is you need to make connections and you need to make contacts.

Justis Pederson [00:13:16]:
And the only way I thought to do that was to cold call people. So it wasn't until I started my own company and Had a bit of a breakthrough where I had this. I would call it almost like an epiphany. It's probably the best thing I really ever hallucinated while I was doing the StairMaster. I'm obsessed with the StairMaster at the gym. It helps me think, and I do that every lunch hour, and it really allows me to think. And there was one day we were. There was a large local developer here that was looking for recruitment assistance to build an entire engineering department.

Justis Pederson [00:13:49]:
And we decided to step into that. They were taking proposals from five different companies, and I knew who those four other companies were gonna be. They were much larger than us, they had much more resources than us. They had more recruiters than us. Therefore, they could make more phone calls and likely get to the people. So it's interesting when you line up across, like, the starting line of a race and you see who your competitors are, if you know you can't beat them, you have to think outside the box, right? And so when I got that interview with that company, I basically told them, I said, listen, they have more recruiters than us. They can make more phone calls than us. If you have to hire 20 engineers or 20 recruiters or, sorry, 20 engineers this year, for me to work that math out backwards and like, if you think about how many interviews that needs to be, how many phone calls to get candidates interviewed for you, mathematically, there was just no way I was going to be able to do it on my own, right? So I said to them, why don't we start posting about your company online, right? You guys have an amazing company here that nobody even knows about.

Justis Pederson [00:14:56]:
So let's talk about it on LinkedIn. At the time, I had been posting a little bit on LinkedIn but hadn't really had a ton of traction. So there was a combination of that and then also the combination of I'm a firm believer and always have been that culture starts at the top and trickles its way down through organization. So my key in my proposal was I want to hire the VP of operations first. And that person is going to be so good and so attractive that it's going to make every other hire easier because people are going to want to come work for that person. You've heard that term in the industry before. It's called a talent lightning rod, right? You hire somebody there and they all want to come and work for that person because they're a leader. So anyway, that firm decided to go with us.

Justis Pederson [00:15:39]:
They took a flyer on us and decided to use our small company to do that hiring, that contract was mid six figures, which was huge for our first year in business. That really like got our boat out of the harbor, so to speak. And that really helped us break through our plateau.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:54]:
Wow. Okay, so let's take a step back. Like that's a huge breakthrough at a plateau. Talk about an absolute game changer when it comes to like pitching yourself against everybody else. But walk me through the decision of when you realized it was time to go out on your own.

Justis Pederson [00:16:07]:
Yeah, you know, I never thought I was going to be an entrepreneur, to be honest with you, Ben. Like, I wasn't born to be a business owner. I, you know, even in school when I pivoted from wanting to be a doctor, I never thought I would open up shop. It was actually really intimidating for me. So when I worked for the previous recruitment company, I was three or four years into the same plateau every year. I knew I wasn't doing anything, I couldn't do anything more. It just felt like that. And so one day, the owner of the company, you know, 30 person recruitment firm, they do multimillion dollars a year.

Justis Pederson [00:16:41]:
I just looked up to this guy for a long time, right? And he calls me into his office and gives me this pep talk on how we could be doing better. And I realized at that point I didn't really hear anything special. And hearing nothing basically told me everything. I could actually be that guy sitting in that chair one day and I just had to go to my own and do it. So literally the next day I quit. I. I told them I was going to start my own company. You know, I was also sick of the commission structure, to be honest with you.

Justis Pederson [00:17:15]:
I was on a 40, 60, so I was getting 40%, they were keeping 60%, which, you know, I mean, for some recruitment consultants, that's great, don't get me wrong. But I felt like for the 60% that they were getting, they didn't deserve that because I was doing all my own marketing, I was creating all my own posts on LinkedIn, I was training their staff for them, which who were not supporting me. There was a lot of reasons. So opening up my own shop just felt like the right thing to do at the time. But I'll tell you, it was scary because this was right at the beginning of the pandemic too, right? Think of December 2020, January 2021, the day I quit. And I went home and told my wife that I actually quit. She looked at me crazy because she was actually on Matt leave at the time and I had just quit my job so all of a sudden we went from a comfortable life to zero income overnight. And yeah, then the rest was history.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:05]:
Did you have any troubles just getting out the door and getting your company started?

Justis Pederson [00:18:09]:
You know what? Because I had been working in construction for over five years and I knew I wanted to just focus solely on that. I would say that I took a lot of my clients with me, if that makes sense. So, you know, non compete here in Canada is a thing. So I was, you know, sued and I had to fight through a large six figure lawsuit. But the thing about it was like clients get to pick who they want to work with, right. They can go work with company X, they can go work with company Y, they can work with whoever they want to. And at the end of the day, they chose me. So I didn't bill anything on my first month because people wanted to see what I was, I guess, what my company was going to be made of.

Justis Pederson [00:18:48]:
And also December, January, winter time, and construction is just generally pretty slow, like, if we're being honest. But you know, we got off to a good start for sure. But I think it was just the fear of starting a business was like very scary. Right. I had never had to try to get a business loan before. I went to all the major banks and none of them would give me a business loan. It's funny, they would all give me a student line of credit when I was in university and had no income. But when it came to starting a business, none of them would do that.

Justis Pederson [00:19:18]:
Figuring out how to incorporate, figuring out how to start, you know, the financial management aspect of a business. There is a lot of scary things that I think were actually taking my time away from the revenue generating aspects that I could purely focus on before when I was just a T4 employee. So it took us a few months to get going, but once we started getting the ball rolling, it just never stopped.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:40]:
And talk about like how you guys have grown, because I know that it was pretty much you and your wife starting out of the basement. Walk us through some of the different growth levels that you guys hit.

Justis Pederson [00:19:49]:
Yeah. So, you know, for the first year, like when we started the business, we didn't do it thinking that we were going to grow a team. We actually did it as a lifestyle business. So we figured we would start a business out of our basement, keep overhead extremely low and have a lot of our time back. Like we had two kids under two at the time, like two kids in diapers. So getting quality time with a family was probably the number one priority on our list. But as we started successfully placing people and the amount of inbound business that we got coming to us was, you know, pretty profound. So we quickly realized that we couldn't, we couldn't do it on our own.

Justis Pederson [00:20:32]:
So after about, I guess it was about a year or so of doing it on our own, our first hire was a social media manager who you met when we saw each other in Atlanta, Cass. And that's when we really started our digital transition. From me and Melissa sitting in our basement cold, calling people to having a office downtown, hiring an employee and focusing a lot of our time on content creation, telling stories of people that we've placed, clients that we've worked with, construction sites that we've actually put boots on the ground and walked. And, you know, that was, I would say, probably the biggest change in our business was making that transition.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:19]:
For people that are listening to this right now that hear the word digital transformation, like, what does that actually mean?

Justis Pederson [00:21:27]:
Yeah, so the digital transition for us, when we first, to be honest with you, when we first started it, I didn't really know what I was doing. Like, I think like when you start doing anything at first, you don't really know what you're doing and you figure it out as you go. Like, I bet you if I reversed and looked at your very first podcast, right? I haven't watched it, but if I did it, you know, you'd probably look at cringe. It was probably a nightmare. And that was like our first few months doing digital transition. So for us, I thought originally that it was just going to be okay. We're going to make a video post online and get a bunch of videos viewers and stuff. And that's not what it was like at all.

Justis Pederson [00:22:03]:
So digital transition to me doesn't mean just video, it means content. So short form video, long term video, writing copy. And I think writing copy is probably the most underrated and underutilized aspect on LinkedIn. And I don't just mean writing something. I mean something that's actually thought provoking and inspiring. So copy articles, block blogs, taking other people's news and kind of putting your own spin on things. Content doesn't have to be originally created by you. It could be somebody else's news article or other piece of content that you can kind of reword and wrap in your own branding and put it out there as a summary.

Justis Pederson [00:22:45]:
So there's many different forms of content that can be made. In fact, if I was to restart this, again, not that I would make necessarily that many changes, but I wouldn't try to pivot to video so hard so early because as I'm sure you're aware, Ben, from your podcast and video, video is the most time consuming of them by far. And it's also the most expensive. And it doesn't necessarily get more views. There's a lot of articles or posts that will write and post on LinkedIn that get way more hits and way more views than posting a video of myself talking about recruitment. So I think what's important in digital transition is just the consistency in showing up realistically. But you do need to put some thought into it because the growth of digital transformation takes a lot of passion and it takes a lot of courage. You know, you and me talked about this when we were in Atlanta, but you know, over 90% of people that have LinkedIn don't post at all.

Justis Pederson [00:23:37]:
Right. And you know, I'm not sure exactly what the demotivation is behind that and that's fine. But let's look at it on the other side and look at the opportunity there is. There's only 10% of people that have LinkedIn. That's probably less than 10%. I think I'm being a little conservative there, but a small portion of people that have LinkedIn are posting. So why wouldn't you get out there and put your name out there in a thoughtful and provoking manner though? Because if you post something that's not good, I think that there can be harm done to your brand and your company if it's not good content.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:10]:
And real quick, I gotta give a shout out to Cass. I think every recruiting company needs to find somebody that's as awesome as she is. I've seen some of the work she wrote circles around plenty of people I've met.

Justis Pederson [00:24:22]:
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Big shout out to Cas. She's back here on the video camera. She does a ton of amazing work for us. You know, she actually used to be the person that would get video of the Prime Minister and the government of Canada and post it online. So, you know, she's kind of like an all around jack of all trades. She can do video, she can do graphic design, she can do writing, she can do all different types of content creation. So that's a tough person to find, but very important piece of the business.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:51]:
I was just going to say you got to make sure like you share how you found her, but you just shared exactly how before you started doing the transformation. I know it's still kind of like early in your business, but have you actually seen the ROI of all this?

Justis Pederson [00:25:02]:
Yeah, absolutely. Recruitment math is different math for sure. Let's be honest. But yeah, the ROI is a tough thing to track. But, you know, when we started this, Ben, we didn't do it because we were looking for more Benjamins. Like, I didn't actually make this decision based on money. I did this because we were getting sick of cold calling. And we noticed that when we implemented Cas and our strategies that the amount of inbound business that was coming to us was unbelievable.

Justis Pederson [00:25:29]:
And it wasn't just clients. This is the interesting thing is in the construction market, where we specialize in, there are lots of jobs out there and there are not very much good talent. There's just not that much talent to fill these positions with. So a lot of the inbound stuff that we were getting was actually really strong candidates that had us top of mind when they were ready to look for a change. And that was really interesting to us because we were really struggling to find good ways to source candidates outside of your, you know, standard LinkedIn search. Right. So I mean, to circle back to your ROI question. Yeah.

Justis Pederson [00:26:06]:
I mean, in short, in the last two years, you know, we've gone from $500,000 annually to now. This year, we're already hovering over 1.5 million with time left on the clock. So, you know, that math alone, I think, will tell you that if you put out good content, the return on investment can be there. But it didn't just happen overnight. And I don't just sit back and recruit 24 7. Me and Cas work together. Like, there's a lot of time. There's a lot of economics that go into creating content for clients.

Justis Pederson [00:26:36]:
And I don't just mean money. You know, any recruiter that's a good recruiter can make money. But can they put in the extra time every week? Because I'll tell you right now, like, we go to a lot of events that we shoot. At every event that we attend, Cass has her camera out, whether it's a video camera or photography. She goes back to the office, she spends some evening, some weekends. We go through multiple rounds of editing. It's very time consuming. You have to be passionate about.

Justis Pederson [00:27:03]:
You have to be willing to put in the time and you have to be willing to think outside the box. So when I talk about economics, I'm not talking about money. I'm talking about actual passion for what you want to do. I also will add that the fact that we are in construction, I think helps us a bit. I think we're a bit advantageous to that because I think that if you specialize in, let's say, accounting and you have a videographer, it's tough to get good footage. I mean, what do accountants do besides, you know, crunch numbers at their desk? No offense to accountants by any means, but it's just not as exciting as seeing a building go from raw land to a high rise, or seeing a wall being framed up, or seeing a water treatment plant put together. Right. Like these are landmark projects that we're able to get video footage of along the way and show off.

Justis Pederson [00:27:50]:
And you know, we're very grateful for the industry that we're in, but we also want to make sure that we're giving back.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:56]:
And just for the recruiters that are listening, like, you're just not like, and I know the answer to this, but I need to like, ask it for the listeners. You're not just making content of like you talking like you're actually out there like filming actual construction sites and actual industry stuff, right?

Justis Pederson [00:28:10]:
Yeah, that's right. Like, if you go through our LinkedIn feed, you'll probably see very few videos of me actually talking. To be honest with you, I don't like doing that stuff. I do find that LinkedIn isn't as cutting edge with video anymore as it was a few years back. So there are a lot of people just giving their own recruitment tips and training and stuff on LinkedIn. So I find that if, you know, if you do that, it's almost white noise. Right? Like you don't rise above and you don't stand out. So what we do is we actually go to our clients job sites, we go to industry events, we do different stuff and we're actually out there in the field putting boots on the ground with our clients.

Justis Pederson [00:28:49]:
And so it's a nice value added service. Right. They come to us for recruitment and what they get is they get a great search, but they also get a great recruitment video of the projects that they're working on. And I can tell you right now, I have yet to come across another company in Canada that is able to do that for them.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:06]:
That is right there. Secret sauce. Holy smokes. Well, I want to jump over a little bit towards more the personal side. And I saw this on LinkedIn and you know, when I saw it on LinkedIn and it's right now sitting at over 2,300 reactions to it. Congratulations on this. Crossed 800 days sober. Can you talk about this?

Justis Pederson [00:29:28]:
Yeah, absolutely. You know, about the time we started our digital transition was a big turning point in our business. But it was also a big turning point in my personal life. I spent years, years thinking that the secret to recruitment is work hard, play hard, like go out and entertain clients, drink, take them to games and drink, things like that. And it got to a point where drinking had become a problem in my life. So August 28, 2021, I believe it was 2022. Sorry, I quit drinking. I quit everything.

Justis Pederson [00:30:03]:
No substances, no booze, no weed, nothing. It was really challenging for me because I'm an alcoholic, right. I'm a big believer in the program that I'm in and it genuinely helped save my life. And so, you know, the reason I post things like that online is I think it's important to be vulnerable. But I know that there's a lot of people that suffer in silence of addiction and disease like I did. And people need to know that there's hope out there. I like being around people that don't judge me. And the reason that I like being sober and I like going to meetings is because nobody there judges me, Ben.

Justis Pederson [00:30:38]:
And it's really turned my life around. Like before I joined a program to help me get sober. I've seen meetings in movies and I thought it was like a cult or something like that, right. But what I found when I walk through those doors is it's just a big group of people that are there to support each other and not judge each other and help you through situations. And I'd never really been around and surrounded myself with like minded people like that before. You know when you see a group of fish swim and they turn, they all turn at the same time, right? That's kind of what it's like being in a group of people that are sober is everybody is connected and your heart beats beats at the same time. You're almost on the same like brain wavelength. And being in that group has just really helped me clear my mind mentally.

Justis Pederson [00:31:30]:
I've lost 40 pounds since I've gotten sober spiritually. Before I found sobriety, I was bankrupt. And now I'm quite a spiritual person. So I just like. It's helped me in a lot of different ways. I constantly feel like I'm on my A game now and I'll just, I'll never go back.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:45]:
Did you see an immediate impact in your recruitment business or. It was like a long term growth impact?

Justis Pederson [00:31:51]:
Depends on how you define the word immediate. But I would say within three months I saw quite a big increase in the goals that we were trying to attain, becoming attainable. So at the beginning of my sobriety. I didn't know anything really about this digital transition. And when I got sober, I started using the time I would to drink and focused it on my business. And I started watching podcasts, I started reading books, I started digging deeper. And that's when I really found out about this was I was on the StairMaster one day at the gym because I never really went to the gym before. And I was watching a podcast and I heard somebody talking about how he's posting on LinkedIn more and what it's doing to his business.

Justis Pederson [00:32:31]:
So we came up with this strategy and to be honest with you, my wife is also sober and God bless her, she's, you know, the best thing that's happened to me for sure. But I was bouncing this idea around with her one day about if we want to grow our company, let's look at hiring this digital person. And that was within the first three months of me getting sober. And she looked at me a little cross eyed at first. She's like, why would we do that when we could just hire another recruiter to make more cold calls? And that's when we kind of came up with this idea of we don't need to make more cold calls, we need to start posting content and driving inbound leads. And honestly, I don't think we would have ever had the courage to implement that if I hadn't gotten so over.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:12]:
And my next question, this, like, construction industry, like good old boys, I feel like that's the place of beers. Like, I could be wrong. It's been years since I did construction recruiting. But like, like, how do you incorporate going to all these events? Does anybody give you a hard time?

Justis Pederson [00:33:27]:
Yeah, you know what? For the first, I'd say six, eight months of my sobriety, I stayed away from events and I stayed away from going out because I didn't want to feel at risk myself of potentially drinking again. However, after I had the courage and the confidence to start attending these events more often, I think it was maybe once or twice I was asked like, hey, why aren't you drinking? You know, I think anytime somebody isn't drinking, it's a question mark. Like, I'm very vulnerable and open about my situation. I can't drink, I'm allergic to alcohol. Basically, Ben. So, you know, if you tell me, hey, I'm allergic to strawberries and you eat a strawberry and you get a rash all over your body, well, I'm allergic to alcohol. If I have a drink, I'm going to break out in lies or deceit or something. Right.

Justis Pederson [00:34:12]:
So once you're open about that, people can't really break you down on your flaws anymore. So going to these events, at first, yeah, it was scary, but it's kind of become a superpower now. People come up to me all the time and they're like, man, you're just drinking water, like, good for you. I can't be here without a few beers. Like, I get comments every single time I go to an event and I don't drink. And it keeps me accountable, gives me the confidence to be able to do it again for sure.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:36]:
That's awesome. Well, wanna jump over to the quick fire questions, but before we jump into that, is there anything else that you wanna kind of share about? Like, you know, your recruiting career, you starting the business, you know, the levels and getting off the plateau.

Justis Pederson [00:34:50]:
I think it's just important to be able to go into, you know, whether you have your own recruitment business and you're plateaued, or whether you work for an agency and you just can't break through that 2, 3, 400k mark. A lot of it has to do with a mindset shift, to be honest. And I know that may sound cliche or may sound corny, but if you just keep doing the same old things day in and day out, expecting different results, it's not going to happen. You have to make a lifestyle change, you have to make a change in your business and you have to take the risk. You know, no one ever got successful in business but without taking any risks, right. Whether it's starting your own business or whether it's switching up your business model, changing how you make cold calls, stopping cold calls altogether, focusing that time on creating thoughtful content. There's a lot of different things that people can do to break through that plateau. And it's all based on how you're performing individually and where you want to go.

Justis Pederson [00:35:42]:
But it all starts with a mindset change.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:45]:
Love that. Well, jumping over to the quick fire questions and they don't need to be quick answers, but you know, with everything that you know about recruiting, if you were sitting down with a brand new recruiter, maybe you hired one or somebody like asked for advice, just getting started out in the recruiting world, what advice would you tell them to be successful in their career?

Justis Pederson [00:36:05]:
Yeah, I would say the best recruiters that I know run industry specific offices or industry specific desks. So I would make sure that you pick a specialized area that you have a passion for and you dive into it. There's a lot of people I know that got into recruiting and worked for a generalist recruitment company and they would take on, you know, different types of positions, accounting, hr, construction, project manager, it. And they felt like they weren't learning a lot about anything. Right. They learned about everything but didn't specialize in anything. And those people aren't recruiters anymore. I feel like you talk to the people that have billed a lot or been in recruitment for a long time and they've really narrowed down that niche or that specialization.

Justis Pederson [00:36:52]:
So I guess I would say to a new recruiter is, you know, find what you're passionate about and find that specialization in recruitment.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:59]:
And same question. But you know, think about people that have been in the game for a while. What advice would you give to them to make sure that they're staying successful or getting success?

Justis Pederson [00:37:09]:
I think taking part in the digital transition is going to be important. To be honest with you, for any type of recruiter. I don't think that, and you may disagree with me, Ben, because you're big into AI, but I don't think that AI is ever going to replace recruiting and I don't think marketing is ever going to replace recruiting. But I do think that the recruiters that use very good marketing and use AI to their advantage are going to replace the recruiters that don't. So, you know, take the marketing and the digital transition part of it seriously. Again, it doesn't have to be video. It's, it can be written content. It could be just posting about vulnerabilities, other things, but make sure that you're staying consistent and posting content so that you can be top of mind to not only clients but also the candidates.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:54]:
And we got the chance to actually meet in person at the Pinnacle Society, like one of their conferences. What does the Pinnacle Society mean to you?

Justis Pederson [00:38:03]:
Oh, that's a great question. You know what, before I joined the Pinnacle Society, I was quite uncertain of what it was going to be like. I had my pledge conference in Dallas and I went down with a few other like rockstar recruiters. Shout out to Ryan Walsh, shout out to Mike Williams. And it was pretty nerve wracking going into a group of 60 to 80 of the top recruiters in the world. And I thought to myself, like, if we're all recruiters, how do these people get along? Like, isn't this just going to be a big competition? But you know, since I've been in the Pinnacle Society for a year now, I've realized that it is truly a big family. Everybody is there to share secrets of their businesses, strengths. The thing I love the most is people actually talk about where the weaknesses in their businesses are, where there's, you know, marginal slippage, how they can't source properly, what type of tools they need.

Justis Pederson [00:38:56]:
And really what it is, is it's just a group of like minded people that are there to support one another. I've never met a group that's so open to helping out somebody else. Hearing speakers like yourself, Mark Whitby, Danny Cahill, lots of other speakers at our conferences. We learn so much and the education aspect of it is there. But it's also great to sit down with people in between the speakers, at the lunches, at the dinners, when we go out to events after together and learn about the golden nuggets of each person's individual firm and how they got to where they are. Because everybody's story is so different, right? Like everybody's is so different. Even though we're all recruiters and a good portion of us are also business owners, everybody's story has something where you can take away and be like, I never thought about it that way or I should try doing that and implement it to my business. So these little golden nuggets that you find in between conference days, it's great.

Justis Pederson [00:39:52]:
Pinnacle society is amazing. The amount that they give, give back. They don't take, they just give back, give back, give back. That's what I really love about it.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:00]:
Awesome. Do you have like a favorite book that's had a huge impact on your personal life and career?

Justis Pederson [00:40:08]:
Yeah. You know what, when we first started our business, it was going to be a lifestyle thing, as I mentioned earlier. And then when we started doing well, I started getting a bit of an ego and I said, you know what, we could turn this into a 20, 30, 50 person business easily. Let's do it. Have I read this book called A Company of One by Paul Jarvis. Have you ever read that book before?

Benjamin Mena [00:40:29]:
I've listened to it on Audible on some runs, yeah.

Justis Pederson [00:40:32]:
Amazing book. And I think it's good for anybody that's in business for themselves, to be honest with you. Talking about the power of not just necessarily keeping a company to one person, but just how keeping a company small and nimble will allow you to fight through a lot of adversity through the ups and downs of markets. You don't have to go through big layoffs like large companies do. There's a lot less stress and a lot more of freedom, as he describes it. And I think that book was a huge help to my shift in mindset because we're not Trying to be a hundred person company. We want to be fun, we want to enjoy what we do. I want my staff to be well taken care of.

Justis Pederson [00:41:08]:
Right. That book was amazing. So a Company of One, Paul Jarvis, highly recommended. If you haven't read it, get on it.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:16]:
You know, we've talked about digital transformation and you know, all this fun stuff, video. And you guys absolutely crush it when it comes to video. And I love that you guys bring clients in with your video projects. But do you have like a tech tool or rec tech tool that you absolutely love and can't live without?

Justis Pederson [00:41:31]:
We have a pretty small tech stack, to be honest. Like we don't do anything. I don't. I think that's like overly different than most other firms, but one that I recommend and I know that you and I have talked about it when we were in Atlanta. Warmly has been really good for us. It allows you to see who's actually visiting your website in terms of what tech stacks you're using and the roi. I don't think there's anything that's even been, you know, as close to second. So with Warmly, you can actually see who's visiting your website and follow them as leads.

Justis Pederson [00:42:03]:
And last year alone we closed two or three clients that we wouldn't have even known about otherwise. So for us to pay a few thousand dollars and get multiple search fees in return for that, I mean, tell me something where you're going to get a better ROI on, right? Absolutely.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:21]:
Okay, so looking back on your story, like, maybe it was luck, maybe it was chance. Maybe it was just like you knew you had to make like some shifts, but like you had major success for knocking on doors while in college. It took some time, but like you literally like reworked the entire industry that you were going to work in for recruiting. Like, you didn't just keep on grinding it out, like for nine, 10 months and just figure things out, you completely shifted. What do you think internally is a big proponent of your own personal success?

Justis Pederson [00:42:55]:
Yeah, that's a really good question. I would say just being open to change and open to risk. Everything that we've done in our business, we've had to change or pivot in everything I've done in my personal life. Like the success that I've had hasn't been a straight line, right. I wouldn't say that it's linear, but I also wouldn't say that it's exponential. It's probably somewhere in between, but it's always. Because I recognize things that are working and things that aren't. And I'm not afraid of failure.

Justis Pederson [00:43:25]:
And I was taught that at a pretty young age. You know, doing that door knocking, fail 99 times, succeed once and keep doing that, and you'll find the path to success. And I feel like, you know, that translates to a lot of things in life. You know, the first client meeting I ever had in recruitment was a failure, but I learned from it. You know, the first podcast I've ever been on, you know, could have been a failure, but I would have learned from it. My first LinkedIn post. If I scrolled back, I think I joined LinkedIn in 2016. If I scroll back to, like, my first LinkedIn post, which I haven't done, but I think I'm going to do after this, it'd be gross.

Justis Pederson [00:43:57]:
I would cringe and I would be very disappointed myself. But again, it shows how far you come, right? And I think that transcends into anything of value in life. So I think, you know, rolling with the punches and understanding that, you know, your current situation is not your final destination and you have to walk through the weeds to get to the flowers.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:16]:
And recruiting is hard. It's a hard business. It's a hard job. How do you personally get through those hard days or those hard weeks or even potentially those hard months?

Justis Pederson [00:44:26]:
Yeah, recruiting is a hard business. There's a lot of bad days, but there's also a lot of good days. And I feel like, you know, we go through peaks and valleys, and it's really important to just understand that there is consistency in this job. I've had days where I check my phone at 7:00am and, oh, it's another offer turned down, and I could let that ruin my entire day, or I could get back on the horse and call more candidates and backfill that position with another great candidate. So, I mean, I would say that, you know, understanding that there's light at the end of the tunnel, that's one of the reasons I love golf. Ben. I'll tell you this, like, I'm a terrible golfer, but I know that every hole is a new game. So if I triple bogey hole one, I can restart on hole two at E and try to par that hole.

Justis Pederson [00:45:14]:
And I feel like that's the way I look at recruitment as well. Today could be a bad day, but tomorrow could be an awesome day. And just understanding that there's a lot of consistency in this job. But I don't think I've ever been on anywhere near of an emotional roller coaster as I have in my recruitment career. I couldn't find that anywhere else. There's a lot of highs and a lot of lows. But you know what, My life now is just stable and that's the way I like it.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:38]:
And you got is it two kids and they're both under five, right?

Justis Pederson [00:45:42]:
Yeah. So now I have a five year old and a six year old and we have a third on the way.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:48]:
Congratulations on that. So full house, your wife is your business partner. Like how do you handle the recruiting business while also you guys juggling a soon to be house of theory?

Justis Pederson [00:46:00]:
Yeah, it's a delicate balance. I'll say this. I wouldn't be able to do it without an amazing life partner. Like, she understands that there's days where I'm going to be at the office all day and there's days that I can take off and it really depends on where our projects are at. But you know, family first. I'll be honest with you, like, we just find the time. We say yes to everything and we figure out as we go. I'm a business owner and I'm also the head coach of both of my kids hockey teams.

Justis Pederson [00:46:27]:
I also sit on a board for Young Construction Leaders of Manitoba. And people are like, how do you find the time to do all these things? You know, my wife is an absolute champ at home. Like she does a lot of the drop off, pickup, making kids lunches. I handle a lot of the business aspects. She handles the house. Like I wouldn't be able to be where I'm at without the support that she's given me and the kids. So, you know, picking the right life partner is for sure like the recipe for success, obviously, but just making sure that you're both on the same page. Right.

Justis Pederson [00:47:01]:
Like communication in a relationship is everything. And I know that, you know, you hear that all the time, but the truth is like you, you both got to know where you're coming from and what the end goal is and what you're doing to work together towards that goal.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:14]:
This next question, and I just love that because you guys are juggling a lot plus doing things. And you know, I've seen some people where it comes like, hey, life is put on hold when you have little kids, but life can't stop. But anyways, the next question I have, I'm going to ask it two different ways. And the first way is going to be when you first started your recruiting career. Like everything that you know now, the ups and downs, the wins, success, the failures, you know, potentially getting sued if you can go back in time and sit down with yourself, Give yourself some advice. What would you tell yourself at the very beginning of your recruiting career?

Justis Pederson [00:47:48]:
I would tell myself it's going to be a roller coaster, Buckle up, to be honest with you. But I would also say the more that you help other people, the more you're going to get in return. And that's one of the biggest things I've learned in recruitment. Like when I first started as a recruiter, I was very transactional. Just like door knocking, you know, I would knock on a door, make a sale, and I would never see that person again. Right. And in recruitment, that's kind of the way I approached it at first, is very transactional. But as I've matured in this industry, I've gone from a transactional recruiter to a very consultative recruiter.

Justis Pederson [00:48:23]:
So we take on a more consultative approach. And by that I mean, you know, deepening relationships, nurturing relationships. And that's a really, really important word of recruiting is nurturing. Because there's people that we work with and we talk to that, you know, a candidate or an individual that is a project manager somewhere, he may not leave that company for two years, five years, or ever. But I still have a relationship with him. So being able to, like, nurture relationships and understand that not everything's about you as a recruiter. This is their career. It's not your career when you're placing individuals.

Justis Pederson [00:48:56]:
So you gotta make sure that the roles that you're placing them in are worthwhile and that you need to be giving back. So, you know, I sit on a board for the Young Construction Leaders of Manitoba. And that board is all about giving back to the Construction Association. So me and Cas, we donate our time. We take videos of all the events we go to. And that doesn't add any zeros to our bank account. That's not even like one iota as to why we joined that organization or why I joined it. It's to do it so that we can prop up the construction industry and let other people know what a great career there can be here.

Justis Pederson [00:49:34]:
There's a low barrier to entry. Anybody can join a company as a labor and work their way up. You don't have to have an engineering degree, you don't have to be a doctor. So just, you know, giving back and not expecting a lot in return I think is really important because business will come if you're doing the right things day to day, like, business will come your way.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:53]:
And it's the same question. But, like, look at maybe a month into you starting Your own recruiting business like you guys kicking off the Peterson Group, with everything that you've gone through, if you got a chance to sit down with yourself, what would you tell yourself at that point in time in.

Justis Pederson [00:50:06]:
Your life, knowing where we are now? I would say just keep your head up. There's been days where, you know, earlier on for sure, where we're seriously questioning ourselves as a company, and maybe that's a little bit of imposter syndrome, but, you know, there's days where candidates turn down offers, you get a, you know, a cease and desist letter from a company, you post something on LinkedIn and some hater says something negative about you, and that's all you can think about all day. Right? I mean, there's lots of dark days in, I think, not only recruitment, but also just entrepreneurship in general. And I'd say just keep your chin up and just keep rolling with it because, you know, at the end of the day, you've got a great family, you've got a great business, you've got a great team that you surround yourself with that are here to support you. So, yeah, that's probably what I would tell myself.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:55]:
And this is, you know, I watch you on LinkedIn, you know, 3,000 impressions, a hundred comments, this and that. It seems like a lot of, you know, especially people in your industry, like, you know, looking at you, but also a lot of recruiters. And I'm sure you get asked questions from some of these recruiters like, you know, what are this? How do I do business development? Da, da, da, da. What's the question that you actually wish they would ask you and what would be the answer?

Justis Pederson [00:51:20]:
Yeah, that's a really good question, Ben. One question I do get asked a lot is how are you comfortable posting the things that you post online? And I think that that's something that I would recommend recruiters to do is we hear all the time LinkedIn is for business only. And I get that. But for people to understand the business side of you, they also have to understand the personal side of you. You know, we create content and we make posts that we post it. And, you know, you get six people looking at it and you wonder, like, why did I spend my time creating that? I only got six people looking at it. Then there's something else we'll post that we don't think is going to get that much traction and 2,000 people are engaging in it and there's leads coming in. So I would say, like, just be comfortable posting consistently.

Justis Pederson [00:52:08]:
Whether it's business related, it's personal related. Don't worry about, you know, the haters out there, what people are going to say. It's going to happen. Nobody is going to get successful on LinkedIn or in business without having, you know, question marks and haters around them.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:24]:
Love that. Well, before I let you go, if anybody wants to follow you, how did they go about doing that?

Justis Pederson [00:52:30]:
Yeah. So on LinkedIn, Justice Peterson, I post weekly on my personal account. Everything that we post on my personal account is penned by me by hand. And then we also have the Peterson Group account, which is run by Cass, our content manager. She's doing a phenomenal job there. And that's typically where we post more of our business construction and recruitment types of videos.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:55]:
And before I let you go, my last question for you, buddy. Is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners?

Justis Pederson [00:53:01]:
I don't think so. I think you've kind of dug everything out of me today, Ben. You know, I would say, you know, this has been great. It's been a lot of fun. It's actually been my first video podcast, so I thank you for being such a gracious host.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:13]:
Well, I've already told a few other podcasts to reach out to you, so hopefully they do that soon.

Justis Pederson [00:53:18]:
Oh, thanks, man. I appreciate that.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:20]:
Well, and for the listeners, many of us have, throughout our careers have just, like hit these plateaus where no matter what we do, the amount of hours that we put in, the work that we put in, the time, effort, energy, we literally just cannot break through. This is an interview to sit back and listen to. What kind of changes can you make? What kind of things that you can do to break through to the next level and justice actually, like, walk through everything he did, the challenges, the trials and the new ideas. What can you do in 2025 to make those changes yourself? We're coming to the tail end of 2024. Walking into 2025, I truly believe if you're putting in the work, 2025 is going to be the year of personal abundance. So let's go make it happen. Let's go crush it, guys.

Justis Pederson [00:54:03]:
Thank.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
2025 is going to be the best year that you've ever had, and we're going to help make that happen. We got two summits heading your way. First of all, in January, the Sales and Business Development Recruiting Summit. Make sure to get registered free for the live sessions or go VIP for the replays. And then the Recruiting Growth Summit is coming back for March. These events are going to help you start strong, run strong, so that way you can finish strong. So let's go. Make sure you get registered.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:25]:
You'll see the link in the show notes. All right, enjoy the podcast. Coming up on this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast.

Justis Pederson [00:00:31]:
When we first started it, I didn't really know what I was doing. Like, I think, like, when you start doing anything at first, you don't really know what you're doing and you figure it out as you go. I spent years thinking that the secret to recruitment is work hard, play hard. Like, go out and entertain clients, drink, take them to games and drink, things like that. And it got to a point where drinking had become a problem in my life. 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 [00:01:15]:
I'm excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast. How many times have you been stuck in a plateau? You have done everything. You have worked harder, longer hours, year after year, but you just cannot break through that barrier, Whatever the plateau is. Is it 250k, 300k, 400k, 500k? You just can't break through. We are here to talk about how to actually break through the things that you need to do to take yourself out of the plateau to that next level. I have a special guest that I'm so excited to share with you guys. Like, when I'm talking about breaking through, he was stuck at the fourth 500 mark for years, maybe would jump up to 600, but it just could not break through the barriers. And looking at this year, few months left to go, 1.5 million with time still in the year.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:01]:
So we're going to talk about, like, how he broke through the things that he did, and how you can figure out how to break through the plateau yourself. So, justice, welcome to the podcast, buddy.

Justis Pederson [00:02:12]:
Thanks, Ben. I'm excited to be here.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:14]:
I got the chance to meet you at the Pinnacle Society, which is some of the most elite recruiters in the world that all come together. So we had a good chance to like talk shop. I learned a lot about you. And like, literally like just the conversations, I was like, oh my God. Like, do you know how many recruiters you can help out there? But before we get started, can you tell everybody a little bit about what you're doing?

Justis Pederson [00:02:35]:
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm the president and CEO of the Peterson Group. We are a permanent direct hire recruitment agency specializing in construction and engineering. We started in January 2021. We've grown this company from just me and my wife in our basement to 1800 square foot office with five employees. I would say that the biggest transition that we've made within our business is taking this from one to one cold calling to now we're in the middle of a digital transition and that's really helped us break through that plateau.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:05]:
Awesome. We're going to dive into that. But before we start walking through all the different things that you've done, how did you even end up in this wonderful world of recruiting?

Justis Pederson [00:03:14]:
Yeah, I think commonly, just like a lot of other recruiters, by accident. Just like most discoverers we have, it's by accident. When I went to university or college out of high school, my goal was to become a doctor. I didn't really know anything else. I didn't know anything about recruiting. I didn't even know that recruitment consultants or headhunters was a job. I didn't know it existed. Which is kind of ironic because my dad was actually a partner at Korn Ferry for over a decade.

Justis Pederson [00:03:40]:
Not a headhunter, but actually a management consultant. So a little bit of different perspective on it, but yeah, he worked for one of the largest recruiting firms in the world. So anyway, I was taking maths and sciences, wanted to become a doctor, and going from high school to university was a huge change for me. And I just wasn't getting the grades and I knew I wasn't getting into med school. I bombed the mcat. I didn't even get invited for an interview. And so I figured halfway throughout my university career that, you know, I'm going to have to do something different. So I'm walking through a career fair one day and some guy calls me over and says, hey, how would you like to move to Texas this summer and make $50,000? And I thought, well, you know, obviously that sounds amazing, right? So I went up and started chatting with him and he showed me this commission structure.

Justis Pederson [00:04:26]:
It's door to door sales. You're selling pest control services in the southern United States. And you know, for a kid that's coming from small town Saskatchewan, small town In Canada, where it's cold. I thought that was really attractive. So I said to him, I looked over the commission structure, I said, show me what your best earner made last year. And he pointed it out to me and I said, sign me up, let's do this. So I moved down to Texas for a summer selling pest control services. It's interesting because I learned so much from doing door to door sales that has translated into recruitment.

Justis Pederson [00:05:00]:
And I think that that's a big reason as to how I got into this industry. In that job alone, we were knocking on a hundred different doors every day. And to be really good at the job, you only had to sell two or three accounts per day. So you were getting turned down by 99, 98, 97 people every day. And, you know, I think learning how to handle that type of rejection and fighting through the nose doing door to door sales really helped me become who I am as a recruiter. I did that first summer, loved it, went back again and the following summer, and that's where I actually met my wife. So we did that for a summer. I ended up moving to Winnipeg, which is where I am now.

Justis Pederson [00:05:41]:
And when I moved here, I knew I wasn't going to do door to door sales. So I saw a job ad online for a recruitment consultant and I called my dad and I said, what is a recruitment consultant? Like, I see it's a high commission, low base type of job. And when I was knocking doors, it was 100% commission, there was no base salary. So it was a completely eat what you kill environment. Right. So my dad told me about it and he said, you know what, I think because you did door door sales and you excelled in that, you should give this a try. And next thing you know, I apply online and a week later I'm starting with a company called Haze, who I'm sure your listeners are probably quite familiar with.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:16]:
Oh, I mean, okay, so let's take this a step back. Like you were literally just, you did two summers of door knocking. Did you actually make the 50k that they promised you?

Justis Pederson [00:06:24]:
Yeah. So my first summer, I doubled what their previous guy had made. I went out there and I sold about almost 400 accounts and I made about a hundred grand in my first summer, which at the time was, you know, I felt like a millionaire. I felt like I hit the lottery. Right. So I instantly signed up to go back again the next summer and I fell in love with the job. Yeah. So I was making lots of money, I was meeting lots of cool people and I was really honing in on my sales skills.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:50]:
Most people, when they get a door knocking job, they just hate it. It sucks. They're grinding through the day. But you. It sounds like you, like, reframed it, like, this is a learning opportunity that I can use for future me.

Justis Pederson [00:07:02]:
Yeah, it really was. I was at a crossroads in my life when I took that position. I knew I wasn't cut out to be a doctor, and I knew that I needed to figure out something that I was going to do. So when I signed up for this job, the guy told me right away. He said, I'm not going to sugarcoat this. We hire 100 students to come down here every year, and maybe 25 to 30 of them are here at the end of the year. We, you know, lose 50 to 75% of our staff because they hear nose all day and they don't like it and they quit and they go home and that's. That's what's gonna happen here.

Justis Pederson [00:07:33]:
So there was no training for this job. Honestly, Ben, like, he came out, we parked in a neighborhood, we walked up to our first door together. He knocked on the door, and they said, no. And he said, okay, get ready to hear a hundred of those every day. And if you happen to sell one, great. So I knocked on the very next door, and my pitch was, it was kind of funny because we were selling pest control in the States. So I knocked on the door and I said, hey, I was just talking to your neighbor Robert. He was seeing some ants and some spiders in his house.

Justis Pederson [00:08:01]:
We have our trucks out here, and we're going to get some of your neighbors sprayed for pest control. Would you be interested? And the lady was just like, yeah, you know what? I saw spiders yesterday. Let's sign this paperwork. And so I sold my very first store. And it was. It was so lucky. But it was also something that I needed because I had that confidence from the very first door I knocked onwards. Whereas I think a lot of other people were getting rejected.

Justis Pederson [00:08:25]:
All day, all day, all day. So that's, you know, I do find myself to be pretty lucky. I was lucky in that situation, but I did really turn it around and realize, like, this is something I can be good at, and my future self will thank myself for it.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:37]:
Phenomenal. Now moving into, like, recruiting. So you got the job at Hays. Talk about that.

Justis Pederson [00:08:42]:
Yeah. You know what, Hayes? It's an interesting company. I think it's a really good place for recruiters to start their recruiting career. My experience at Hays at the beginning was phenomenal. I was placed in a very small office. So our office was 200 square feet, like very, very small. And there was five recruiters in that office. Yeah.

Justis Pederson [00:09:01]:
So look around your room and picture five desks, five guys with their backs to each other, all on the phone all day. So it really sounded like a call center. And our boss was very activity driven. He would basically pick up that phone and tape it around your head and say, I want to hear a hundred calls out of you today. So, you know, coming from door knocking, it wasn't that different, to be honest, because I was just door knocking trying to sell all day. And this time I was on the phone trying to sell all day. I had a lot of success with Hayes. It did take me, actually I think it was six or seven months to make my first placement, to be honest.

Justis Pederson [00:09:34]:
So I was almost going to quit.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:36]:
Let's stop right there. Like almost seven months before your first placement, your door knocking experience, like you made your first sale. Why didn't you quit?

Justis Pederson [00:09:44]:
I had enough. I didn't have a plan B. My whole thing was, I'm going to make this work. The other thing is with Hays, when they signed me, it was a 28k base and commission. My previous job was no base salary, 100% commission. So I looked at that $28,000 and I said, this is amazing. Like, at least I have a bit of a comfort to fall back on if I don't do well. And you know, now knowing that these companies, they do the low base high commission so that you are, you know, you're never comfortable and you have to hit your quota.

Justis Pederson [00:10:11]:
Right, is basically the name of the game there. So for me, that first six months was, it was challenging. I was hearing a lot of no's, but I knew that because my activity was there and if I stuck around long enough and hit the phones hard enough, I was going to break through. The other thing that changed when I was with Hayes is my undergrad degree is in biochem. So I'm a science geek, just kind of by nature, to be honest. So they had me recruiting in life sciences. They felt like this guy has a biochem degree. There's some med tech and pharmaceutical industry in central Canada.

Justis Pederson [00:10:45]:
Let's have him cold call all of these organizations and see what he can drum up. And after about four to five months of doing that, it just wasn't working. I wasn't speaking their language. I wasn't good at it. So one day I was actually driving around Winnipeg and I noticed that there was just so Much construction happening in the city. Every road was being torn up. There was cones everywhere, traffic was bad, tower cranes in the sky, hospitals being built, schools being built, homes being built. And I thought to myself, like, we don't have a construction recruitment division here.

Justis Pederson [00:11:17]:
Who does? And I googled it and I couldn't find anything. There was just nobody recruiting for this industry. So I went back to my boss and I said, let me try this for a week. Like I think I can make. Like I see that there's a market out there for it. Why don't I try cold calling these companies? And so I did. And right away we started getting job requirements, job wrecks, superintendents, project managers. Every company we talked to said, yeah, we're looking for good people, let's do this.

Justis Pederson [00:11:45]:
So I think, you know, the success with Haze was the fact that I stuck it out, but also pivoting to a new market that I knew wasn't overly saturated and had a high demand was where the success really came from. Then from month six onwards, it was just gravy.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:01]:
That is awesome. So you started doing well at Haze. You started growing like you started having success but you started hitting a plateau. Can you talk about getting to that plateau point?

Justis Pederson [00:12:11]:
Yeah. So I spent a couple years with Hays as a recruitment consultant and then I went to Top Biller in Canada for my second year. Actually there was my first full year doing construction. I billed 600,000 after that I moved over to a larger local company. I felt like working for a more local company was going to help me break through, but realistically it didn't. I was doing the same stuff. I was still cold calling people. I was still doing the one to one activities you do.

Justis Pederson [00:12:40]:
Right. I had 100 clients in the city and I would pick up my phone and talk to candidates, hang up, pick up the phone, talk to clients, hang up. And I couldn't get through that 4 to $500,000 a year range. And you know what? I worked for Legacy Bose for about five years doing that recruitment, managing a small team of recruiters. And I just felt like this is it, like I've hit the ceiling in recruitment. I'm never gonna make more to become a partner here. And I just don't think there's enough time in the day to call more people. Really? Because that's how you make money in recruitment is you need to make connections and you need to make contacts.

Justis Pederson [00:13:16]:
And the only way I thought to do that was to cold call people. So it wasn't until I started my own company and Had a bit of a breakthrough where I had this. I would call it almost like an epiphany. It's probably the best thing I really ever hallucinated while I was doing the StairMaster. I'm obsessed with the StairMaster at the gym. It helps me think, and I do that every lunch hour, and it really allows me to think. And there was one day we were. There was a large local developer here that was looking for recruitment assistance to build an entire engineering department.

Justis Pederson [00:13:49]:
And we decided to step into that. They were taking proposals from five different companies, and I knew who those four other companies were gonna be. They were much larger than us, they had much more resources than us. They had more recruiters than us. Therefore, they could make more phone calls and likely get to the people. So it's interesting when you line up across, like, the starting line of a race and you see who your competitors are, if you know you can't beat them, you have to think outside the box, right? And so when I got that interview with that company, I basically told them, I said, listen, they have more recruiters than us. They can make more phone calls than us. If you have to hire 20 engineers or 20 recruiters or, sorry, 20 engineers this year, for me to work that math out backwards and like, if you think about how many interviews that needs to be, how many phone calls to get candidates interviewed for you, mathematically, there was just no way I was going to be able to do it on my own, right? So I said to them, why don't we start posting about your company online, right? You guys have an amazing company here that nobody even knows about.

Justis Pederson [00:14:56]:
So let's talk about it on LinkedIn. At the time, I had been posting a little bit on LinkedIn but hadn't really had a ton of traction. So there was a combination of that and then also the combination of I'm a firm believer and always have been that culture starts at the top and trickles its way down through organization. So my key in my proposal was I want to hire the VP of operations first. And that person is going to be so good and so attractive that it's going to make every other hire easier because people are going to want to come work for that person. You've heard that term in the industry before. It's called a talent lightning rod, right? You hire somebody there and they all want to come and work for that person because they're a leader. So anyway, that firm decided to go with us.

Justis Pederson [00:15:39]:
They took a flyer on us and decided to use our small company to do that hiring, that contract was mid six figures, which was huge for our first year in business. That really like got our boat out of the harbor, so to speak. And that really helped us break through our plateau.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:54]:
Wow. Okay, so let's take a step back. Like that's a huge breakthrough at a plateau. Talk about an absolute game changer when it comes to like pitching yourself against everybody else. But walk me through the decision of when you realized it was time to go out on your own.

Justis Pederson [00:16:07]:
Yeah, you know, I never thought I was going to be an entrepreneur, to be honest with you, Ben. Like, I wasn't born to be a business owner. I, you know, even in school when I pivoted from wanting to be a doctor, I never thought I would open up shop. It was actually really intimidating for me. So when I worked for the previous recruitment company, I was three or four years into the same plateau every year. I knew I wasn't doing anything, I couldn't do anything more. It just felt like that. And so one day, the owner of the company, you know, 30 person recruitment firm, they do multimillion dollars a year.

Justis Pederson [00:16:41]:
I just looked up to this guy for a long time, right? And he calls me into his office and gives me this pep talk on how we could be doing better. And I realized at that point I didn't really hear anything special. And hearing nothing basically told me everything. I could actually be that guy sitting in that chair one day and I just had to go to my own and do it. So literally the next day I quit. I. I told them I was going to start my own company. You know, I was also sick of the commission structure, to be honest with you.

Justis Pederson [00:17:15]:
I was on a 40, 60, so I was getting 40%, they were keeping 60%, which, you know, I mean, for some recruitment consultants, that's great, don't get me wrong. But I felt like for the 60% that they were getting, they didn't deserve that because I was doing all my own marketing, I was creating all my own posts on LinkedIn, I was training their staff for them, which who were not supporting me. There was a lot of reasons. So opening up my own shop just felt like the right thing to do at the time. But I'll tell you, it was scary because this was right at the beginning of the pandemic too, right? Think of December 2020, January 2021, the day I quit. And I went home and told my wife that I actually quit. She looked at me crazy because she was actually on Matt leave at the time and I had just quit my job so all of a sudden we went from a comfortable life to zero income overnight. And yeah, then the rest was history.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:05]:
Did you have any troubles just getting out the door and getting your company started?

Justis Pederson [00:18:09]:
You know what? Because I had been working in construction for over five years and I knew I wanted to just focus solely on that. I would say that I took a lot of my clients with me, if that makes sense. So, you know, non compete here in Canada is a thing. So I was, you know, sued and I had to fight through a large six figure lawsuit. But the thing about it was like clients get to pick who they want to work with, right. They can go work with company X, they can go work with company Y, they can work with whoever they want to. And at the end of the day, they chose me. So I didn't bill anything on my first month because people wanted to see what I was, I guess, what my company was going to be made of.

Justis Pederson [00:18:48]:
And also December, January, winter time, and construction is just generally pretty slow, like, if we're being honest. But you know, we got off to a good start for sure. But I think it was just the fear of starting a business was like very scary. Right. I had never had to try to get a business loan before. I went to all the major banks and none of them would give me a business loan. It's funny, they would all give me a student line of credit when I was in university and had no income. But when it came to starting a business, none of them would do that.

Justis Pederson [00:19:18]:
Figuring out how to incorporate, figuring out how to start, you know, the financial management aspect of a business. There is a lot of scary things that I think were actually taking my time away from the revenue generating aspects that I could purely focus on before when I was just a T4 employee. So it took us a few months to get going, but once we started getting the ball rolling, it just never stopped.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:40]:
And talk about like how you guys have grown, because I know that it was pretty much you and your wife starting out of the basement. Walk us through some of the different growth levels that you guys hit.

Justis Pederson [00:19:49]:
Yeah. So, you know, for the first year, like when we started the business, we didn't do it thinking that we were going to grow a team. We actually did it as a lifestyle business. So we figured we would start a business out of our basement, keep overhead extremely low and have a lot of our time back. Like we had two kids under two at the time, like two kids in diapers. So getting quality time with a family was probably the number one priority on our list. But as we started successfully placing people and the amount of inbound business that we got coming to us was, you know, pretty profound. So we quickly realized that we couldn't, we couldn't do it on our own.

Justis Pederson [00:20:32]:
So after about, I guess it was about a year or so of doing it on our own, our first hire was a social media manager who you met when we saw each other in Atlanta, Cass. And that's when we really started our digital transition. From me and Melissa sitting in our basement cold, calling people to having a office downtown, hiring an employee and focusing a lot of our time on content creation, telling stories of people that we've placed, clients that we've worked with, construction sites that we've actually put boots on the ground and walked. And, you know, that was, I would say, probably the biggest change in our business was making that transition.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:19]:
For people that are listening to this right now that hear the word digital transformation, like, what does that actually mean?

Justis Pederson [00:21:27]:
Yeah, so the digital transition for us, when we first, to be honest with you, when we first started it, I didn't really know what I was doing. Like, I think like when you start doing anything at first, you don't really know what you're doing and you figure it out as you go. Like, I bet you if I reversed and looked at your very first podcast, right? I haven't watched it, but if I did it, you know, you'd probably look at cringe. It was probably a nightmare. And that was like our first few months doing digital transition. So for us, I thought originally that it was just going to be okay. We're going to make a video post online and get a bunch of videos viewers and stuff. And that's not what it was like at all.

Justis Pederson [00:22:03]:
So digital transition to me doesn't mean just video, it means content. So short form video, long term video, writing copy. And I think writing copy is probably the most underrated and underutilized aspect on LinkedIn. And I don't just mean writing something. I mean something that's actually thought provoking and inspiring. So copy articles, block blogs, taking other people's news and kind of putting your own spin on things. Content doesn't have to be originally created by you. It could be somebody else's news article or other piece of content that you can kind of reword and wrap in your own branding and put it out there as a summary.

Justis Pederson [00:22:45]:
So there's many different forms of content that can be made. In fact, if I was to restart this, again, not that I would make necessarily that many changes, but I wouldn't try to pivot to video so hard so early because as I'm sure you're aware, Ben, from your podcast and video, video is the most time consuming of them by far. And it's also the most expensive. And it doesn't necessarily get more views. There's a lot of articles or posts that will write and post on LinkedIn that get way more hits and way more views than posting a video of myself talking about recruitment. So I think what's important in digital transition is just the consistency in showing up realistically. But you do need to put some thought into it because the growth of digital transformation takes a lot of passion and it takes a lot of courage. You know, you and me talked about this when we were in Atlanta, but you know, over 90% of people that have LinkedIn don't post at all.

Justis Pederson [00:23:37]:
Right. And you know, I'm not sure exactly what the demotivation is behind that and that's fine. But let's look at it on the other side and look at the opportunity there is. There's only 10% of people that have LinkedIn. That's probably less than 10%. I think I'm being a little conservative there, but a small portion of people that have LinkedIn are posting. So why wouldn't you get out there and put your name out there in a thoughtful and provoking manner though? Because if you post something that's not good, I think that there can be harm done to your brand and your company if it's not good content.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:10]:
And real quick, I gotta give a shout out to Cass. I think every recruiting company needs to find somebody that's as awesome as she is. I've seen some of the work she wrote circles around plenty of people I've met.

Justis Pederson [00:24:22]:
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Big shout out to Cas. She's back here on the video camera. She does a ton of amazing work for us. You know, she actually used to be the person that would get video of the Prime Minister and the government of Canada and post it online. So, you know, she's kind of like an all around jack of all trades. She can do video, she can do graphic design, she can do writing, she can do all different types of content creation. So that's a tough person to find, but very important piece of the business.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:51]:
I was just going to say you got to make sure like you share how you found her, but you just shared exactly how before you started doing the transformation. I know it's still kind of like early in your business, but have you actually seen the ROI of all this?

Justis Pederson [00:25:02]:
Yeah, absolutely. Recruitment math is different math for sure. Let's be honest. But yeah, the ROI is a tough thing to track. But, you know, when we started this, Ben, we didn't do it because we were looking for more Benjamins. Like, I didn't actually make this decision based on money. I did this because we were getting sick of cold calling. And we noticed that when we implemented Cas and our strategies that the amount of inbound business that was coming to us was unbelievable.

Justis Pederson [00:25:29]:
And it wasn't just clients. This is the interesting thing is in the construction market, where we specialize in, there are lots of jobs out there and there are not very much good talent. There's just not that much talent to fill these positions with. So a lot of the inbound stuff that we were getting was actually really strong candidates that had us top of mind when they were ready to look for a change. And that was really interesting to us because we were really struggling to find good ways to source candidates outside of your, you know, standard LinkedIn search. Right. So I mean, to circle back to your ROI question. Yeah.

Justis Pederson [00:26:06]:
I mean, in short, in the last two years, you know, we've gone from $500,000 annually to now. This year, we're already hovering over 1.5 million with time left on the clock. So, you know, that math alone, I think, will tell you that if you put out good content, the return on investment can be there. But it didn't just happen overnight. And I don't just sit back and recruit 24 7. Me and Cas work together. Like, there's a lot of time. There's a lot of economics that go into creating content for clients.

Justis Pederson [00:26:36]:
And I don't just mean money. You know, any recruiter that's a good recruiter can make money. But can they put in the extra time every week? Because I'll tell you right now, like, we go to a lot of events that we shoot. At every event that we attend, Cass has her camera out, whether it's a video camera or photography. She goes back to the office, she spends some evening, some weekends. We go through multiple rounds of editing. It's very time consuming. You have to be passionate about.

Justis Pederson [00:27:03]:
You have to be willing to put in the time and you have to be willing to think outside the box. So when I talk about economics, I'm not talking about money. I'm talking about actual passion for what you want to do. I also will add that the fact that we are in construction, I think helps us a bit. I think we're a bit advantageous to that because I think that if you specialize in, let's say, accounting and you have a videographer, it's tough to get good footage. I mean, what do accountants do besides, you know, crunch numbers at their desk? No offense to accountants by any means, but it's just not as exciting as seeing a building go from raw land to a high rise, or seeing a wall being framed up, or seeing a water treatment plant put together. Right. Like these are landmark projects that we're able to get video footage of along the way and show off.

Justis Pederson [00:27:50]:
And you know, we're very grateful for the industry that we're in, but we also want to make sure that we're giving back.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:56]:
And just for the recruiters that are listening, like, you're just not like, and I know the answer to this, but I need to like, ask it for the listeners. You're not just making content of like you talking like you're actually out there like filming actual construction sites and actual industry stuff, right?

Justis Pederson [00:28:10]:
Yeah, that's right. Like, if you go through our LinkedIn feed, you'll probably see very few videos of me actually talking. To be honest with you, I don't like doing that stuff. I do find that LinkedIn isn't as cutting edge with video anymore as it was a few years back. So there are a lot of people just giving their own recruitment tips and training and stuff on LinkedIn. So I find that if, you know, if you do that, it's almost white noise. Right? Like you don't rise above and you don't stand out. So what we do is we actually go to our clients job sites, we go to industry events, we do different stuff and we're actually out there in the field putting boots on the ground with our clients.

Justis Pederson [00:28:49]:
And so it's a nice value added service. Right. They come to us for recruitment and what they get is they get a great search, but they also get a great recruitment video of the projects that they're working on. And I can tell you right now, I have yet to come across another company in Canada that is able to do that for them.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:06]:
That is right there. Secret sauce. Holy smokes. Well, I want to jump over a little bit towards more the personal side. And I saw this on LinkedIn and you know, when I saw it on LinkedIn and it's right now sitting at over 2,300 reactions to it. Congratulations on this. Crossed 800 days sober. Can you talk about this?

Justis Pederson [00:29:28]:
Yeah, absolutely. You know, about the time we started our digital transition was a big turning point in our business. But it was also a big turning point in my personal life. I spent years, years thinking that the secret to recruitment is work hard, play hard, like go out and entertain clients, drink, take them to games and drink, things like that. And it got to a point where drinking had become a problem in my life. So August 28, 2021, I believe it was 2022. Sorry, I quit drinking. I quit everything.

Justis Pederson [00:30:03]:
No substances, no booze, no weed, nothing. It was really challenging for me because I'm an alcoholic, right. I'm a big believer in the program that I'm in and it genuinely helped save my life. And so, you know, the reason I post things like that online is I think it's important to be vulnerable. But I know that there's a lot of people that suffer in silence of addiction and disease like I did. And people need to know that there's hope out there. I like being around people that don't judge me. And the reason that I like being sober and I like going to meetings is because nobody there judges me, Ben.

Justis Pederson [00:30:38]:
And it's really turned my life around. Like before I joined a program to help me get sober. I've seen meetings in movies and I thought it was like a cult or something like that, right. But what I found when I walk through those doors is it's just a big group of people that are there to support each other and not judge each other and help you through situations. And I'd never really been around and surrounded myself with like minded people like that before. You know when you see a group of fish swim and they turn, they all turn at the same time, right? That's kind of what it's like being in a group of people that are sober is everybody is connected and your heart beats beats at the same time. You're almost on the same like brain wavelength. And being in that group has just really helped me clear my mind mentally.

Justis Pederson [00:31:30]:
I've lost 40 pounds since I've gotten sober spiritually. Before I found sobriety, I was bankrupt. And now I'm quite a spiritual person. So I just like. It's helped me in a lot of different ways. I constantly feel like I'm on my A game now and I'll just, I'll never go back.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:45]:
Did you see an immediate impact in your recruitment business or. It was like a long term growth impact?

Justis Pederson [00:31:51]:
Depends on how you define the word immediate. But I would say within three months I saw quite a big increase in the goals that we were trying to attain, becoming attainable. So at the beginning of my sobriety. I didn't know anything really about this digital transition. And when I got sober, I started using the time I would to drink and focused it on my business. And I started watching podcasts, I started reading books, I started digging deeper. And that's when I really found out about this was I was on the StairMaster one day at the gym because I never really went to the gym before. And I was watching a podcast and I heard somebody talking about how he's posting on LinkedIn more and what it's doing to his business.

Justis Pederson [00:32:31]:
So we came up with this strategy and to be honest with you, my wife is also sober and God bless her, she's, you know, the best thing that's happened to me for sure. But I was bouncing this idea around with her one day about if we want to grow our company, let's look at hiring this digital person. And that was within the first three months of me getting sober. And she looked at me a little cross eyed at first. She's like, why would we do that when we could just hire another recruiter to make more cold calls? And that's when we kind of came up with this idea of we don't need to make more cold calls, we need to start posting content and driving inbound leads. And honestly, I don't think we would have ever had the courage to implement that if I hadn't gotten so over.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:12]:
And my next question, this, like, construction industry, like good old boys, I feel like that's the place of beers. Like, I could be wrong. It's been years since I did construction recruiting. But like, like, how do you incorporate going to all these events? Does anybody give you a hard time?

Justis Pederson [00:33:27]:
Yeah, you know what? For the first, I'd say six, eight months of my sobriety, I stayed away from events and I stayed away from going out because I didn't want to feel at risk myself of potentially drinking again. However, after I had the courage and the confidence to start attending these events more often, I think it was maybe once or twice I was asked like, hey, why aren't you drinking? You know, I think anytime somebody isn't drinking, it's a question mark. Like, I'm very vulnerable and open about my situation. I can't drink, I'm allergic to alcohol. Basically, Ben. So, you know, if you tell me, hey, I'm allergic to strawberries and you eat a strawberry and you get a rash all over your body, well, I'm allergic to alcohol. If I have a drink, I'm going to break out in lies or deceit or something. Right.

Justis Pederson [00:34:12]:
So once you're open about that, people can't really break you down on your flaws anymore. So going to these events, at first, yeah, it was scary, but it's kind of become a superpower now. People come up to me all the time and they're like, man, you're just drinking water, like, good for you. I can't be here without a few beers. Like, I get comments every single time I go to an event and I don't drink. And it keeps me accountable, gives me the confidence to be able to do it again for sure.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:36]:
That's awesome. Well, wanna jump over to the quick fire questions, but before we jump into that, is there anything else that you wanna kind of share about? Like, you know, your recruiting career, you starting the business, you know, the levels and getting off the plateau.

Justis Pederson [00:34:50]:
I think it's just important to be able to go into, you know, whether you have your own recruitment business and you're plateaued, or whether you work for an agency and you just can't break through that 2, 3, 400k mark. A lot of it has to do with a mindset shift, to be honest. And I know that may sound cliche or may sound corny, but if you just keep doing the same old things day in and day out, expecting different results, it's not going to happen. You have to make a lifestyle change, you have to make a change in your business and you have to take the risk. You know, no one ever got successful in business but without taking any risks, right. Whether it's starting your own business or whether it's switching up your business model, changing how you make cold calls, stopping cold calls altogether, focusing that time on creating thoughtful content. There's a lot of different things that people can do to break through that plateau. And it's all based on how you're performing individually and where you want to go.

Justis Pederson [00:35:42]:
But it all starts with a mindset change.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:45]:
Love that. Well, jumping over to the quick fire questions and they don't need to be quick answers, but you know, with everything that you know about recruiting, if you were sitting down with a brand new recruiter, maybe you hired one or somebody like asked for advice, just getting started out in the recruiting world, what advice would you tell them to be successful in their career?

Justis Pederson [00:36:05]:
Yeah, I would say the best recruiters that I know run industry specific offices or industry specific desks. So I would make sure that you pick a specialized area that you have a passion for and you dive into it. There's a lot of people I know that got into recruiting and worked for a generalist recruitment company and they would take on, you know, different types of positions, accounting, hr, construction, project manager, it. And they felt like they weren't learning a lot about anything. Right. They learned about everything but didn't specialize in anything. And those people aren't recruiters anymore. I feel like you talk to the people that have billed a lot or been in recruitment for a long time and they've really narrowed down that niche or that specialization.

Justis Pederson [00:36:52]:
So I guess I would say to a new recruiter is, you know, find what you're passionate about and find that specialization in recruitment.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:59]:
And same question. But you know, think about people that have been in the game for a while. What advice would you give to them to make sure that they're staying successful or getting success?

Justis Pederson [00:37:09]:
I think taking part in the digital transition is going to be important. To be honest with you, for any type of recruiter. I don't think that, and you may disagree with me, Ben, because you're big into AI, but I don't think that AI is ever going to replace recruiting and I don't think marketing is ever going to replace recruiting. But I do think that the recruiters that use very good marketing and use AI to their advantage are going to replace the recruiters that don't. So, you know, take the marketing and the digital transition part of it seriously. Again, it doesn't have to be video. It's, it can be written content. It could be just posting about vulnerabilities, other things, but make sure that you're staying consistent and posting content so that you can be top of mind to not only clients but also the candidates.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:54]:
And we got the chance to actually meet in person at the Pinnacle Society, like one of their conferences. What does the Pinnacle Society mean to you?

Justis Pederson [00:38:03]:
Oh, that's a great question. You know what, before I joined the Pinnacle Society, I was quite uncertain of what it was going to be like. I had my pledge conference in Dallas and I went down with a few other like rockstar recruiters. Shout out to Ryan Walsh, shout out to Mike Williams. And it was pretty nerve wracking going into a group of 60 to 80 of the top recruiters in the world. And I thought to myself, like, if we're all recruiters, how do these people get along? Like, isn't this just going to be a big competition? But you know, since I've been in the Pinnacle Society for a year now, I've realized that it is truly a big family. Everybody is there to share secrets of their businesses, strengths. The thing I love the most is people actually talk about where the weaknesses in their businesses are, where there's, you know, marginal slippage, how they can't source properly, what type of tools they need.

Justis Pederson [00:38:56]:
And really what it is, is it's just a group of like minded people that are there to support one another. I've never met a group that's so open to helping out somebody else. Hearing speakers like yourself, Mark Whitby, Danny Cahill, lots of other speakers at our conferences. We learn so much and the education aspect of it is there. But it's also great to sit down with people in between the speakers, at the lunches, at the dinners, when we go out to events after together and learn about the golden nuggets of each person's individual firm and how they got to where they are. Because everybody's story is so different, right? Like everybody's is so different. Even though we're all recruiters and a good portion of us are also business owners, everybody's story has something where you can take away and be like, I never thought about it that way or I should try doing that and implement it to my business. So these little golden nuggets that you find in between conference days, it's great.

Justis Pederson [00:39:52]:
Pinnacle society is amazing. The amount that they give, give back. They don't take, they just give back, give back, give back. That's what I really love about it.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:00]:
Awesome. Do you have like a favorite book that's had a huge impact on your personal life and career?

Justis Pederson [00:40:08]:
Yeah. You know what, when we first started our business, it was going to be a lifestyle thing, as I mentioned earlier. And then when we started doing well, I started getting a bit of an ego and I said, you know what, we could turn this into a 20, 30, 50 person business easily. Let's do it. Have I read this book called A Company of One by Paul Jarvis. Have you ever read that book before?

Benjamin Mena [00:40:29]:
I've listened to it on Audible on some runs, yeah.

Justis Pederson [00:40:32]:
Amazing book. And I think it's good for anybody that's in business for themselves, to be honest with you. Talking about the power of not just necessarily keeping a company to one person, but just how keeping a company small and nimble will allow you to fight through a lot of adversity through the ups and downs of markets. You don't have to go through big layoffs like large companies do. There's a lot less stress and a lot more of freedom, as he describes it. And I think that book was a huge help to my shift in mindset because we're not Trying to be a hundred person company. We want to be fun, we want to enjoy what we do. I want my staff to be well taken care of.

Justis Pederson [00:41:08]:
Right. That book was amazing. So a Company of One, Paul Jarvis, highly recommended. If you haven't read it, get on it.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:16]:
You know, we've talked about digital transformation and you know, all this fun stuff, video. And you guys absolutely crush it when it comes to video. And I love that you guys bring clients in with your video projects. But do you have like a tech tool or rec tech tool that you absolutely love and can't live without?

Justis Pederson [00:41:31]:
We have a pretty small tech stack, to be honest. Like we don't do anything. I don't. I think that's like overly different than most other firms, but one that I recommend and I know that you and I have talked about it when we were in Atlanta. Warmly has been really good for us. It allows you to see who's actually visiting your website in terms of what tech stacks you're using and the roi. I don't think there's anything that's even been, you know, as close to second. So with Warmly, you can actually see who's visiting your website and follow them as leads.

Justis Pederson [00:42:03]:
And last year alone we closed two or three clients that we wouldn't have even known about otherwise. So for us to pay a few thousand dollars and get multiple search fees in return for that, I mean, tell me something where you're going to get a better ROI on, right? Absolutely.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:21]:
Okay, so looking back on your story, like, maybe it was luck, maybe it was chance. Maybe it was just like you knew you had to make like some shifts, but like you had major success for knocking on doors while in college. It took some time, but like you literally like reworked the entire industry that you were going to work in for recruiting. Like, you didn't just keep on grinding it out, like for nine, 10 months and just figure things out, you completely shifted. What do you think internally is a big proponent of your own personal success?

Justis Pederson [00:42:55]:
Yeah, that's a really good question. I would say just being open to change and open to risk. Everything that we've done in our business, we've had to change or pivot in everything I've done in my personal life. Like the success that I've had hasn't been a straight line, right. I wouldn't say that it's linear, but I also wouldn't say that it's exponential. It's probably somewhere in between, but it's always. Because I recognize things that are working and things that aren't. And I'm not afraid of failure.

Justis Pederson [00:43:25]:
And I was taught that at a pretty young age. You know, doing that door knocking, fail 99 times, succeed once and keep doing that, and you'll find the path to success. And I feel like, you know, that translates to a lot of things in life. You know, the first client meeting I ever had in recruitment was a failure, but I learned from it. You know, the first podcast I've ever been on, you know, could have been a failure, but I would have learned from it. My first LinkedIn post. If I scrolled back, I think I joined LinkedIn in 2016. If I scroll back to, like, my first LinkedIn post, which I haven't done, but I think I'm going to do after this, it'd be gross.

Justis Pederson [00:43:57]:
I would cringe and I would be very disappointed myself. But again, it shows how far you come, right? And I think that transcends into anything of value in life. So I think, you know, rolling with the punches and understanding that, you know, your current situation is not your final destination and you have to walk through the weeds to get to the flowers.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:16]:
And recruiting is hard. It's a hard business. It's a hard job. How do you personally get through those hard days or those hard weeks or even potentially those hard months?

Justis Pederson [00:44:26]:
Yeah, recruiting is a hard business. There's a lot of bad days, but there's also a lot of good days. And I feel like, you know, we go through peaks and valleys, and it's really important to just understand that there is consistency in this job. I've had days where I check my phone at 7:00am and, oh, it's another offer turned down, and I could let that ruin my entire day, or I could get back on the horse and call more candidates and backfill that position with another great candidate. So, I mean, I would say that, you know, understanding that there's light at the end of the tunnel, that's one of the reasons I love golf. Ben. I'll tell you this, like, I'm a terrible golfer, but I know that every hole is a new game. So if I triple bogey hole one, I can restart on hole two at E and try to par that hole.

Justis Pederson [00:45:14]:
And I feel like that's the way I look at recruitment as well. Today could be a bad day, but tomorrow could be an awesome day. And just understanding that there's a lot of consistency in this job. But I don't think I've ever been on anywhere near of an emotional roller coaster as I have in my recruitment career. I couldn't find that anywhere else. There's a lot of highs and a lot of lows. But you know what, My life now is just stable and that's the way I like it.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:38]:
And you got is it two kids and they're both under five, right?

Justis Pederson [00:45:42]:
Yeah. So now I have a five year old and a six year old and we have a third on the way.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:48]:
Congratulations on that. So full house, your wife is your business partner. Like how do you handle the recruiting business while also you guys juggling a soon to be house of theory?

Justis Pederson [00:46:00]:
Yeah, it's a delicate balance. I'll say this. I wouldn't be able to do it without an amazing life partner. Like, she understands that there's days where I'm going to be at the office all day and there's days that I can take off and it really depends on where our projects are at. But you know, family first. I'll be honest with you, like, we just find the time. We say yes to everything and we figure out as we go. I'm a business owner and I'm also the head coach of both of my kids hockey teams.

Justis Pederson [00:46:27]:
I also sit on a board for Young Construction Leaders of Manitoba. And people are like, how do you find the time to do all these things? You know, my wife is an absolute champ at home. Like she does a lot of the drop off, pickup, making kids lunches. I handle a lot of the business aspects. She handles the house. Like I wouldn't be able to be where I'm at without the support that she's given me and the kids. So, you know, picking the right life partner is for sure like the recipe for success, obviously, but just making sure that you're both on the same page. Right.

Justis Pederson [00:47:01]:
Like communication in a relationship is everything. And I know that, you know, you hear that all the time, but the truth is like you, you both got to know where you're coming from and what the end goal is and what you're doing to work together towards that goal.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:14]:
This next question, and I just love that because you guys are juggling a lot plus doing things. And you know, I've seen some people where it comes like, hey, life is put on hold when you have little kids, but life can't stop. But anyways, the next question I have, I'm going to ask it two different ways. And the first way is going to be when you first started your recruiting career. Like everything that you know now, the ups and downs, the wins, success, the failures, you know, potentially getting sued if you can go back in time and sit down with yourself, Give yourself some advice. What would you tell yourself at the very beginning of your recruiting career?

Justis Pederson [00:47:48]:
I would tell myself it's going to be a roller coaster, Buckle up, to be honest with you. But I would also say the more that you help other people, the more you're going to get in return. And that's one of the biggest things I've learned in recruitment. Like when I first started as a recruiter, I was very transactional. Just like door knocking, you know, I would knock on a door, make a sale, and I would never see that person again. Right. And in recruitment, that's kind of the way I approached it at first, is very transactional. But as I've matured in this industry, I've gone from a transactional recruiter to a very consultative recruiter.

Justis Pederson [00:48:23]:
So we take on a more consultative approach. And by that I mean, you know, deepening relationships, nurturing relationships. And that's a really, really important word of recruiting is nurturing. Because there's people that we work with and we talk to that, you know, a candidate or an individual that is a project manager somewhere, he may not leave that company for two years, five years, or ever. But I still have a relationship with him. So being able to, like, nurture relationships and understand that not everything's about you as a recruiter. This is their career. It's not your career when you're placing individuals.

Justis Pederson [00:48:56]:
So you gotta make sure that the roles that you're placing them in are worthwhile and that you need to be giving back. So, you know, I sit on a board for the Young Construction Leaders of Manitoba. And that board is all about giving back to the Construction Association. So me and Cas, we donate our time. We take videos of all the events we go to. And that doesn't add any zeros to our bank account. That's not even like one iota as to why we joined that organization or why I joined it. It's to do it so that we can prop up the construction industry and let other people know what a great career there can be here.

Justis Pederson [00:49:34]:
There's a low barrier to entry. Anybody can join a company as a labor and work their way up. You don't have to have an engineering degree, you don't have to be a doctor. So just, you know, giving back and not expecting a lot in return I think is really important because business will come if you're doing the right things day to day, like, business will come your way.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:53]:
And it's the same question. But, like, look at maybe a month into you starting Your own recruiting business like you guys kicking off the Peterson Group, with everything that you've gone through, if you got a chance to sit down with yourself, what would you tell yourself at that point in time in.

Justis Pederson [00:50:06]:
Your life, knowing where we are now? I would say just keep your head up. There's been days where, you know, earlier on for sure, where we're seriously questioning ourselves as a company, and maybe that's a little bit of imposter syndrome, but, you know, there's days where candidates turn down offers, you get a, you know, a cease and desist letter from a company, you post something on LinkedIn and some hater says something negative about you, and that's all you can think about all day. Right? I mean, there's lots of dark days in, I think, not only recruitment, but also just entrepreneurship in general. And I'd say just keep your chin up and just keep rolling with it because, you know, at the end of the day, you've got a great family, you've got a great business, you've got a great team that you surround yourself with that are here to support you. So, yeah, that's probably what I would tell myself.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:55]:
And this is, you know, I watch you on LinkedIn, you know, 3,000 impressions, a hundred comments, this and that. It seems like a lot of, you know, especially people in your industry, like, you know, looking at you, but also a lot of recruiters. And I'm sure you get asked questions from some of these recruiters like, you know, what are this? How do I do business development? Da, da, da, da. What's the question that you actually wish they would ask you and what would be the answer?

Justis Pederson [00:51:20]:
Yeah, that's a really good question, Ben. One question I do get asked a lot is how are you comfortable posting the things that you post online? And I think that that's something that I would recommend recruiters to do is we hear all the time LinkedIn is for business only. And I get that. But for people to understand the business side of you, they also have to understand the personal side of you. You know, we create content and we make posts that we post it. And, you know, you get six people looking at it and you wonder, like, why did I spend my time creating that? I only got six people looking at it. Then there's something else we'll post that we don't think is going to get that much traction and 2,000 people are engaging in it and there's leads coming in. So I would say, like, just be comfortable posting consistently.

Justis Pederson [00:52:08]:
Whether it's business related, it's personal related. Don't worry about, you know, the haters out there, what people are going to say. It's going to happen. Nobody is going to get successful on LinkedIn or in business without having, you know, question marks and haters around them.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:24]:
Love that. Well, before I let you go, if anybody wants to follow you, how did they go about doing that?

Justis Pederson [00:52:30]:
Yeah. So on LinkedIn, Justice Peterson, I post weekly on my personal account. Everything that we post on my personal account is penned by me by hand. And then we also have the Peterson Group account, which is run by Cass, our content manager. She's doing a phenomenal job there. And that's typically where we post more of our business construction and recruitment types of videos.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:55]:
And before I let you go, my last question for you, buddy. Is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners?

Justis Pederson [00:53:01]:
I don't think so. I think you've kind of dug everything out of me today, Ben. You know, I would say, you know, this has been great. It's been a lot of fun. It's actually been my first video podcast, so I thank you for being such a gracious host.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:13]:
Well, I've already told a few other podcasts to reach out to you, so hopefully they do that soon.

Justis Pederson [00:53:18]:
Oh, thanks, man. I appreciate that.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:20]:
Well, and for the listeners, many of us have, throughout our careers have just, like hit these plateaus where no matter what we do, the amount of hours that we put in, the work that we put in, the time, effort, energy, we literally just cannot break through. This is an interview to sit back and listen to. What kind of changes can you make? What kind of things that you can do to break through to the next level and justice actually, like, walk through everything he did, the challenges, the trials and the new ideas. What can you do in 2025 to make those changes yourself? We're coming to the tail end of 2024. Walking into 2025, I truly believe if you're putting in the work, 2025 is going to be the year of personal abundance. So let's go make it happen. Let's go crush it, guys.

Justis Pederson [00:54:03]:
Thank.