Peak Performance of 7 Figure Billers with Gary Stauble

Gary Stauble [00:00:01]:
Welcome to the Elite Recruiter podcast with your host Benjamin Menna, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership and placements.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:18]:
I'm excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast. My special guest, I'm so excited about having him talk about peak performance because really there's so many average recruiters out there, but there's very few people that are just doing everything exceptional. What are they doing? What does the work habit look like? What are their goals? How are they impacting and making it through every single hour of every single day, getting the most out of it. I have paid performance recruiting expert who I've, I've actually followed for years, loved his stuff, loved his work. Incredible coach Gary Staubl in here to really just talk about the separation of how you can go from being an average performer to a peak performer, make more money, spend more time with your family and build a better recruiting business. So welcome to the podcast, Gary.

Gary Stauble [00:01:02]:
Thank you. Thank you, Ben. Good to be here.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:04]:
So, real quick, before we do like a deep dive in your background, do you want to give yourself a little bit of like, what are you doing now between recruiting and the coaching that you're doing?

Gary Stauble [00:01:14]:
Yeah, so my business is called the recruiting lab, and I like to think of it as a laboratory. It's a place where our members and myself and my coaching clients, we're basically conducting experiments constantly on what are going to be the levers you can pull to get the most bang for your buck in terms of strategies. And that, as you know, is constantly changing. So it's never boring. There's always something new to go over. What we're going to talk about partly today has been partly my evolution also, even as a trainer, as a coach with flow theory, with the science of peak performance, which didn't really exist the way it does today. When I started in the business, I guess my passion is really human performance. That's psychology, positive psychology, behavioral science.

Gary Stauble [00:01:55]:
That is what I'm very, very passionate about. And so that's what I try to implement with my coaching clients is how do you have the minimum effective dose of effort that's going to produce the biggest result for you? So that's a constant optimizing and tinkering with and if you like bio acting and that kind of thing that applied to the recruiting business. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:14]:
And one of the things I love about you, Gary, is there are so many like, coaches out there. There's so many people out there doing like paper forms and studying high performance principles. But your background, you're a recruiter. So, like, you understand, like, how the things can actually be implemented, rather than somebody, like, talking to XYZ CEO, that's like, this is perfect for recruiting. You start looking, you're implementing, and you're like, what the fuck?

Gary Stauble [00:02:35]:
Right? Right? Yeah, yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:38]:
So, like, that's one of the reasons why I wanted you to share with the listeners. But before we jump into all that, how did you even end up in this wonderful world of recruiting?

Gary Stauble [00:02:46]:
I could say I was going to kindergarten and I had an epiphany and just knew I had to be a headhunter. But I don't think you're going to believe that. You know, I had just graduated from college. This is in the mid nineties, 1994. I just graduated. My degree was in psychology. I had a minor in sociology. I thought I was going to become a psychologist is what I wanted to do at the time.

Gary Stauble [00:03:04]:
Quickly realized I'm not very good at listening to other people's problems. You know, I got enough problems on my own, and now I got a list of your problems. So I realized I wasn't that interested in neuroses, but I was interested, like I said, in performance. But that is also not how I got into recruiting. I got into recruiting because I was actually in a rock band in northern California. Yeah, I was a singer in a rock band and graduated from college and we were trying to make it, you know, this is in the mid nineties. And so we moved to LA to become rich and famous rock stars. And that didn't work out.

Gary Stauble [00:03:37]:
But over the course of a few months, I applied for a bunch of different jobs, most of which I wasn't qualified for, including recruiting. But I hit it off really well with the assistant manager of the recruiting office. The owner of the firm did not think I was a fit. I had long hair and no experience in what we were doing, but luckily the other guy did. We hit it off really well. So I just started working as a recruiter and I sucked for the first good amount of time and made a lot of mistakes. But eventually I got it and it clicked. And it was one of those things where my interest, like I said, in human performance, recruiting is a great business to be in because there's no limits to what you can do.

Gary Stauble [00:04:17]:
You know, it's really yourself that's the limiter on what you can do. I really like the fact that you could design your lifestyle around it if you own your own business. And this is back in the mid nineties. So today people can really decide what kind of life do I want to have and then build a business to give them that life, you know? So that's how I got started. And I kind of help people to do that, figure out what are my values, what am I trying to create and build that version of the business. I think what people do a lot of the time is they will just have an idea of what success is supposed to look like. Right. I'm supposed to build this much.

Gary Stauble [00:04:48]:
I'm supposed to scale at this level. I'm supposed to have this type of an office. And essentially they end up building somebody else's dream of a business. And I did that early on, too. I built a brick and mortar office. I had a bunch of employees. And once I had it all set up that way, I realized I hate this. I don't like this at all.

Gary Stauble [00:05:06]:
I don't like the brick and mortar office. I don't like all the responsibility, everybody looking to be every day and having to motivate them when I could just be doing it myself. So, you know, you make a lot of mistakes along the way and then start to figure some things out.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:19]:
Okay, so you built an office, you scaled it up.

Gary Stauble [00:05:22]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:23]:
And then you had that epiphany. Like, I mean, after you had that epiphany, what the hell did you do?

Gary Stauble [00:05:28]:
I had a few of those in life where you kind of realized like, oh, I built this thing that I thought was going to be the thing that makes me happy or the thing that I want. And then you realize, I actually hate this thing that I built. So it was kind of a few things happened at once. I didn't have a big office. I had an office with about four other people, four to five other people who supported my production primarily. But over time, some of them quit, some of them relocated, some I fired. And then I eventually made more of a distributed office, which is what I have now. I don't work, I don't own a recruiting firm now.

Gary Stauble [00:06:00]:
I do consulting full time, but even my consulting business, it's myself. My wife works full time doing customer support for us. And then we've got a series of contractors who do a lot of different things for us. And thats just a type of model that works really well for me. I call it the Rainmaker model, which is, I developed that for my recruiting business, the rainmaker approach. And then I have the same approach now. But like anything, theres drawbacks, right? Because if I cant sell the business, I have the business. I have is built around my personality, but Im okay with that because ive got a different plan for my exit strategy or for how Im handling things.

Gary Stauble [00:06:38]:
I do think clarity about your values, knowing what it is you're trying to do that's in alignment with your values, I think that's really, really important. And I do think that's a step that a lot of owners skip. It's like the idea that scaling is always good. And I don't know if you heard this, but I told the story a couple of times, like a cautionary tale about someone. I'm kind of merging a few different people that I know into a amalgam. But basically you could say this person decided growth was good, decided growth is always good. Didn't like managing, didn't enjoy being a leader. Hired a ton of people.

Gary Stauble [00:07:11]:
Had a surplus of income. At his best year yet the year before. This is maybe two years ago, at his best year yet. Hired a bunch of people, paid really big recruiting fees to get those people. These were experienced recruiters that he had to pay a high salary, a sign on bonus, et cetera. In the end, he ended up over seven figures in debt. Which is where he is now. Yeah, from the scaling, the infrastructure, all of it.

Gary Stauble [00:07:36]:
And he had the same realization that I had, which is, oh, I hate this. I built a business that I hate, but now it's too late and you're a million dollars in debt. So I think figuring that stuff out in advance is really, really useful.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:48]:
How often do you see somebody sitting down and figuring that out?

Gary Stauble [00:07:51]:
I would say 99% learn as they go. And that really is the value of using a coach or an outside person, because it's sort of like you, myself included. If you're the fish in the fishbowl, it's very hard to get outside perspective on your own head. Trash, right? You've got these ideas, or you're just running on the wheel so fast yourself that it's really hard to take the strategic time to. If I were to work with someone and say, let's do a values assessment to figure what's most important to you, that sounds like, oh, I'm trying to increase revenue, why are we going to do this value stuff? It doesn't seem as important. But Stephen Covey said you can climb the ladder of success to realize that it's leaning against the wrong wall. Once you get to the top, you get to the very top and go, oh, uh, I don't like it up here, you know, and to climb all the way back down and go on a different ladder can take a lot of time.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:44]:
So how did you afford energy and money?

Gary Stauble [00:08:46]:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:49]:
So before we start jumping into this paid performance, you talked about the, the rainmaker recruiting model. Can you explain that?

Gary Stauble [00:08:55]:
Yeah. So I look at it in, this is overly simplistic, but you could look at three different ways that you can be successful in our business. One is a lone ranger. Right? So a lone ranger is very low expenses, very high profit margin, very simple business, easy to make changes. You can change as fast or slow as you want to, essentially, because it's just you. So it's just you. So some of the pluses are speed of change, low risk, easy to get started, and in some ways a lot of freedom. Right.

Gary Stauble [00:09:24]:
Because you don't have some of the things that I talked about with managing. What are the downsides of that? The downsides are very hard to take a vacation, very hard to feel in sense of leverage with the business in general. I am, the business isnt the best. If youre trying to build a business, for instance, that you want to scale, then that would not be a good way to go. Their systems tend to just be by the seat of their pants and theres a cap on how much you can earn because its just you. Then we have the traditional firm owner model, which is somebody whos committing to hiring a team. Youre going to build a team over time, and hopefully youve done the values work to say, I really enjoy that. Thats something I get energy from, is being a leader, leading meetings.

Gary Stauble [00:10:06]:
Somebody's got to review the metrics, all the stuff that you either like it or you don't. You got to find a way to actually do that. The icky part of that would be firing people, doing reprimands for poor performance, poor attitude, poor behavior, people problems, that kind of stuff. But the upside is unlimited income potential. You should be able to take a vacation more easily, as they should, because oftentimes that's not the case. And the other thing that can be problematic is an over focus on revenue versus profit. And I've seen this a lot where somebody, let's say somebody is a successful recruiter. They're a loan ranger, they're billing 500k.

Gary Stauble [00:10:42]:
They decide to scale. They scale up. Now they've got maybe, I don't know, eight recruiters, but their net profit is less than the 500k they were making when they were just solo. I've seen that more times than I can count. So I do think with the firm owner version, you really have to make a commitment to that. That's something that's not a, hey, let's just dabble and try this. Because it's people's careers, and if you're going to have longevity with people staying with you, it's because they see a vision, they're going to follow you and your vision, and you're setting the tone for that company. Right.

Gary Stauble [00:11:15]:
So the upside, unlimited income potential, you can take a vacation. But there's some negatives, too, potentially. The one that I chose is a hybrid of the two, which I call it the Rainmaker model, where it's a different approach. It's more of a functional approach. I'm not scaling for the sake of scaling. I'm only scaling to scale my desk, let's say. So I'm the rainmaker, and there's parts of the business I don't want to do or I'm not good at, or they're just not leveraged time wise. And so I'm going to essentially pay people to do those parts.

Gary Stauble [00:11:44]:
So what I came up with was I had switched to a retained model. And so I said, I'm going to decide what I'm responsible for. And the way I decide that is, what am I naturally talented at, what am I passionate about and what's highly leveraged. Right. Those are my three criteria. And then what I'm not going to do is the opposite. I'm bored by it, I'm not very good at it, and it's not very leverage. And so my list, I really just came up with two things that I'm responsible for.

Gary Stauble [00:12:12]:
Number one is getting retainers in the door. That's my job. And then number two is closing deals, right? So if we look at the search process, like a manufacturing process, I have my hands here in the screen here. But if there's a conveyor belt, then I'm at the front of the conveyor belt getting the retainer. I'm at the end of the conveyor belt, closing the deal. But then everything in between there is negotiable, and I can pay people to do those things. And in my case, I would pay people less than a full cycle recruiter or a, let's say, more of a high level recruiter. I would pay people who were more junior levels to do everything in between there.

Gary Stauble [00:12:44]:
And so with my head researcher, for instance, if I get a retainer in Thor, I could say, okay, here's a retainer, here's the details. This is the baton. I hand it to you, you take it, run with it, and you come back to me when you get to the second interview. So the second interview is the trigger for you to come back. Tap me on the shoulder. Hey, the client wants to actually bring this person back, and now we're going to tag team together. Sometimes I'll finish it completely myself. Sometimes maybe I just help them to massage it through.

Gary Stauble [00:13:11]:
It depends on the situation. But that's what I mean by the Rainmaker model is a hybrid.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:16]:
That is awesome. And I feel like I can ask you, like, 50 more questions on that. But we definitely need to talk about peak performance. I don't want to get an hour into the podcast and like, hey, now, let's talk about peak performance. You know what? If you need more, if you have some more questions about Gary on that, on the Rainmaker model, just reach out to Gary on LinkedIn. All right. Peak performance in recruiting.

Gary Stauble [00:13:38]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:39]:
Explain that. What does that look like?

Gary Stauble [00:13:42]:
So, peak performance, you could define as, you know, feeling your best and performing your best. You know, if you just want a simple working definition, it's a mental state whereby you are feeling your best and performing at your best. Because if you're performing at your best but you're hating life, I wouldn't really call that peak performance. You know what I mean? Like, there's some synergy between you enjoying what you're doing, feeling good about what you're up to, and you really perform it at your best. And if we're talking about flow theory, what's interesting about it is that we all have heard. And if you played any sports, do you play any sports yourself?

Benjamin Mena [00:14:13]:
Cross country, intract.

Gary Stauble [00:14:15]:
Okay, so did you ever have a situation where on a particular race, you felt like I was just almost perfect. I was hitting every, you know, every stride perfectly. I was in the right mind frame. I was doing the right things, making the right decisions.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:30]:
I would say race day, very few, probably. Cause I'm, like, overanalyzing. But, like, practice days. Yes.

Gary Stauble [00:14:37]:
Yeah. And that goes to. Potentially, that goes to if you don't perform well on the performance day, but you do in the gym, that could also be. There's a. Something called the challenge to skill ratio. Like, if you feel that the challenge is higher than you're able to meet, whether that's true or not, I don't want to complicate this too much, but when I say flow state, it's actually a chemical state in your brain, state of the hormones that you're releasing in your brain. So it's not something like Tony Robbins or it's not like, rah rah motivation. Let's get charged up.

Gary Stauble [00:15:09]:
It's a biological state that we all have access to. And that's what's really exciting about it, is if you're an owner with a team and you say, well, so and so is an extrovert, but this person's an introvert, or this guy's really hard charging. This one's more methodical. This one has great communication skills. This one sort of clubs all their words. There's a lot of unevenness in just people's natural capabilities, but flow is available to everyone. It's a biological state that we all have access to. So going back to race day, or let's say a receiver in the NFL who has a perfect game.

Gary Stauble [00:15:42]:
Like, I remember Cheryl Owens back in, I don't forget when this was. But Jerry Rice was retiring, and so everybody was covering Jerry Rice. And so Terrell Owens was open the whole game. He caught like 20 passes in one game. He just could not miss anything they've seen anywhere near him. It was kind of sad because Jerry Rice is sitting there retiring, the other guys is feeling all the glory, but he had a perfect game. So that was a place where. And you probably experienced this in recruiting or different things.

Gary Stauble [00:16:10]:
It could be anything where you would experience this, but time dilates. Like, you have no sense of time. You don't have a need to eat. You're making the right decisions. Things are coming easy, you know, when these, like, creative ideas are happening and the work is coming easy to you. Wow. I've been working on this problem for nine months, and then I just solved it in five minutes. I don't know how that happened.

Gary Stauble [00:16:31]:
You know, that probably was a flow state, and it's what athletes used to call being in the zone. You know, I'm in the zone, or he was in the zone, you know?

Benjamin Mena [00:16:40]:
So I love this because, like, those days where that happens, it's like magic.

Gary Stauble [00:16:45]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:45]:
But the thing about recruiting is, like, I feel like, you know, a lot of times in recruiting, like, everything's on fire. Like, you're dealing with so many different things. Like, you know, it's the perfect career for a lot of people that have ADhd.

Gary Stauble [00:16:56]:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:57]:
So, like, how do you, like, deal with, like, these getting into a flow state where you're just crushing it when you're dealing with 50,000 inputs from 50 different thousand different things because you are in recruiting.

Gary Stauble [00:17:07]:
Yeah, yeah. You know, some of that is creating containers for the craziness of the business. Right. So, for instance, if I. And this is just, you know, there's different flow triggers. I have my list of flow triggers here because I know we're going to be talking about it. But there's flow triggers and there's flow blockers. So like a flow trigger would be deep embodiment or clear goals or immediate feedback.

Gary Stauble [00:17:30]:
So, for instance, if I were talking to a client, if you're my client, we're having a conversation. Let's say that the candidate just had their first interview and we're doing our debrief call if you're a human resources person and I say, well, how did it go? What's the feedback? And you say, we're not going to see him, so we need to see more people. And I go, okay, well, can you tell me where was he off target? We'll let you know when you find the right person. That is the opposite of immediate feedback. Right. So my, and again, I was saying biological state. So if you give me feedback, say, Gary, this guy was really close, but here's where we're off target. I feel like you might be able to find some people with these competitors of ours and we really have a sense of urgency.

Gary Stauble [00:18:09]:
Do you think you can get this to me by next Tuesday? I'm going to say yes to that. Right. But your immediate feedback actually gave me a tiny dopamine hit because it's like pattern recognition. Like, okay, that didn't go well, but now I know what to do. I can go out and do something else. So I get the little dopamine is a little extra motivation. Whereas the human resources person who's just like doing this to you, keeping you at arm, slight like that, they are, you could say, hey, you're pulling me out of flow right now for my motivation level, for your searches dwindling as we speak. You know, that's actually what's happening.

Gary Stauble [00:18:41]:
I mean, that's literally what's happening and you know it because you feel it. You know, if the client who maybe isn't even the best searches time, if they give you feedback, they pull you into the clump of the process. They're giving you open dialogue and communication. Don't you just feel more motivated to do good work for them? Don't you want to like go out and do good stuff? So what's kind of cool about this is you can start to tell them that, you know, so you can tell them in advance. Listen, the clients who give us feedback, who bring us into the process, who are open and communication, who tells when we're off target and when we're on target. Those are the clients that put up my top five priority list, the ones who keep us at arms lay. They don't really respond with much detail. They just tell us to go through human resources.

Gary Stauble [00:19:22]:
That's at the bottom of my pile, you know, and you'll be at the bottom of everybody's pile. I'm just being honest with you and telling you that, that whether they say it or not, you'll be at the bottom of their pile just for the reasons we just discussed. And in the same way that I set that as example to you, you can say that as an example to them. And on just a human level, everybody would know that to be true. You know, like a coach who just doesn't give you any feedback whatsoever. You're kind of like, all right, I guess I'll just keep trying what I'm doing. You know, it's not that exciting.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:54]:
I think you made, like, an interesting point. I never looked at it as, like a bit of a dopamine head and, like, getting your, like, your brain going, but, man, if you get, like, great feedback, you're just, like, energized for, like, the rest of that search process.

Gary Stauble [00:20:05]:
Yeah, absolutely. And so I forget what your original question was, but I think, oh, you were saying, the craziness of recruiting, how can you be flow ready or flow adjacent if you've got all these things? Part of that is you taking extreme ownership of the inputs in your day. Right? So in other words, if I have every chime on, my chimes are on for social media, for LinkedIn, every time something happens. Ding. And I got a little red notification bar. If my phone is on all day, my email is on all day, and I'm just always getting inputs, then I'm choosing to not be in flow because interruptions are the enemy of flow. So constant interruptions means you almost certainly can't get into flow. And that just has to do with the brain needed to be in a particular state to get there.

Gary Stauble [00:20:50]:
And if you're agitating it constantly. I use the analogy of a snow globe, you know, like, is this a video podcast, by the way? We're on video. Okay, so if this is a snow globe, if it's shaken all day long, right? So that's all the interruptions, that's all the changing priorities, all that stuff. That means your brain has just got this snow happening, right? And in order for flow to happen, it have to settle pretty much, and then you'd be able to be in that flow state. So it's not realistic for recruiters to be in a real flow state all day, it's just not realistic because of the nature of the work. But what you do is you kind of create a flow adjacent work style so that you have way less friction in your day, and you create some boundaries around things like interruptions or, I mean, the question would be, if somebody emails you and says, hey, we want to make an offer, if your idea is that I must respond to that or I must see it and respond to it within, you know, 30 minutes, then you're basically sentencing yourself to not ever being in flow because you've got a constant like a rabbit with a cocaine pellet just going. But, you know, they're just trying to get that hit because that's dopamine, too. The emails, you know, checking your email is pattern recognition, and it does give you a dopamine.

Gary Stauble [00:22:05]:
That's why they have dopamine engineers at these companies. You know, all the big tech companies, they have people with PhDs trying to puppet master our dopamines. That's exactly what they're trying to do.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:16]:
So I get it, like, turning off TikTok, turning off Instagram, even turning off, like, LinkedIn. But how do you, like, turn off, like, email and phone as recruiters?

Gary Stauble [00:22:27]:
You turn them off and you batch them, right? Not necessarily the phone if you want to be able to answer the phone, but probably depending on how much. The real question is, how many phone calls do you get that are a waste of time or that pull you out of your productive work? Right? That's kind of the question. So, with email.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:45]:
I just had this, like, incoming thought of, like, I think it's like 20 got one out of 20 calls are real compared to the other 20 I get.

Gary Stauble [00:22:54]:
Yeah, I mean, there was somebody, there was a trainer who used to say leaving your ringer on is like walking around with a kick me sign on your back, because you're just open to be kicked by anybody. But whatever, they're like, hey, we're dropping something off, and we'd like to, you know, just like, whatever the interruption is, it's okay. So it's kind of like, if I have a proactive schedule, I know what I want to get accomplished today, and I've done the work to do that the day before. I know what I want to get done. And then there's my agenda, and then there's priority items that come up during the day, which is what you're talking about. But the real question is, how do we parse through and decide what's a priority item and what's just a general interruption. So, for instance, with email, you could say, I'm going to check email six times a day, I'm going to batch that, and I'm going to set up six alarms on my phone. I check it first thing in the morning, I check it mid morning, whatever that schedule is that you like.

Gary Stauble [00:23:47]:
We have one guy in our program who made a bunch of changes like this. That was one of, I should say only a few changes, maybe three or four changes in our working together. And his production went from 350 to over seven figures in one year. And that was one of the changes is he batched his checking of email. So if you think about faucet, if the faucet is on all day, then it's going to be hard to mono task or get into a very productive state. So the email faucet, you turn it on, you clean it out, then you turn it off and you go do something else. Then you come back and you turn it on. But if you're kind of trying to leave your brain in a state where you can be productive, it's a little hard to explain, but that would be setting boundaries with people.

Gary Stauble [00:24:33]:
Setting boundaries. When you take a search assignment, just like the example I gave of immediate feedback, just being honest with your clients about the best way to work with you and how to get at the top of your priority list. So it's a lot of training yourself and then training people around you a.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:48]:
Little bit for the listeners. That guy that went from 350 to over seven figures in the year with some changes. What were some of the other bigger changes that he made?

Gary Stauble [00:24:55]:
We only did a few things that I worked with them on. So one of them was the batching his email. The other was he went really heavy on appointments, appointment focus. So instead of just cold calling people, his goal was eight appointments per day, eight phone appointments per day. And he does up to. So he only does 15 minutes appointments, which is really weird because I've been on the phone with him during one of his 15 minutes slots. When you get the 14 minutes, he's like, okay, I got to go, because he's got somebody right after you. So he does 15 minutes appointment slots.

Gary Stauble [00:25:26]:
He'll do up to 20 of those per day. He outsourced a lot of kind of that rainmaker model. He really took it and ran with it. So we had researchers working with them who are more and more dialed into what he's doing. Their job is to schedule those appointments. So he used leverage by getting other people to do a lot of the stuff for him, setting things up. And it's kind of like if he's doing 20 appointments a day, which is a lot, that's a tremendous amount of appointments, it's like he's doing high quality conversation and communication with people throughout the day, and he's got other people kind of helping to set all that up.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:02]:
So he was definitely having a lot of help to actually get to the appointment process, where I think a lot of the recruiters are spending so much time just to get there.

Gary Stauble [00:26:08]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:11]:
Okay. So, awesome. But I wanted to ask a question about peak performance and about recruiters, because over the years, you've really been studying this. You've been digging in. In a typical recruiter's day, how much time in the workday do you think is actually productive?

Gary Stauble [00:26:28]:
Extremely low, I would say. And then if we're talking about, I don't mean busy, because you can be extremely busy, but not extremely productive. And so I would say really, really low, because if you think about an octopus with eight plates in its hands and it's just spinning them and they're moving and it's kind of moving with them, that's probably what most recruiters feel like. And like you said, some people actually do really well that way. You know, you and I probably both know very successful recruiters who are add and they're great at it. But there's probably a limit on what they can do to build the business, though, because if you're operating that way and you try to scale and be a leader for other people, other people are going to need systems. They're going to need things that are repeatable. They're going to need other stuff.

Gary Stauble [00:27:12]:
So, yeah, I would say it's very, very low and much lower than most people would think it is. I had an experience when I started. There were. I could just tell you from experience, I started in the business a long time ago. As I said, I went to a seminar from Peter Lefkowitz. Back then, I knew I was supposed to track my calls, so I was tracking how many calls I made of. I was working my butt off, and I remember I was making around 17 to 20 calls per day. And this is when calls were like b metric, you know, and people were saying, you should do 50 to 100 calls a day, and I'm getting like 17 to 20.

Gary Stauble [00:27:44]:
And I didn't know why because I was working really, really hard. You know, I went to the seminar, and he talked about batching your tasks, single tasking and planning and I implemented those overnight, and literally the next day I doubled my calls. Suddenly I'm making 35 calls just from planning, just from single tasking. So that was kind of the first time I went, oh, so it's not just that I'm working hard, it's that I have to actually prepare to be productive. You know what I mean?

Benjamin Mena [00:28:14]:
Well, I got two more questions on this. First of all, I know we've covered this in a few other podcast episodes, but planning, I know many times when it comes to recruiters getting in the space, you know, you think of your planner, you think of this like, okay, cool. Here are my three things need to do. But I have learned over time from experienced recruiters, and I know many of other people have planning is one of the most important things you can do. So what is, first of all, a successful recruiters planning look like?

Gary Stauble [00:28:40]:
Well, I'll give you the ideal, and then we'll kind of be more practical. I think ideally you would have monthly goals that say that you set once a month and you have goals, so you know what you're trying to accomplish for that month. And then you break those down into weekly goals, and then your daily goals are related to that. So, for instance, if I say I want to get 15 1st send outs this month, that's my goal for the month. So hopefully what I'm doing in the day reflects that. So you don't have to do this every day. But I think there has to be some connection between the bigger goals you're trying to accomplish and whatever you're about to do, because that's clear. Goals is a flow trigger.

Gary Stauble [00:29:13]:
When our brains feel like, I know what I'm supposed to do, it gives us a dopamine hit. And when I say a dopamine hit, I just mean free motivation. It's free motivation. So if you said, what are the differences between highly successful people and those who are not? One of the biggest ones is passion. Because if you have passion, it's like free energy. You know that passion is a force that is pushing you along and it's giving you free energy to work off, you know? So in terms of planning, if you connect your actual goals you care about to what you're doing tomorrow, it does help. So again, if I said 15 send outs for the month, then tomorrow my goal is one send out, let's say. So clear goals are a flow trigger.

Gary Stauble [00:29:53]:
I know my goal is to get one send out today and then breaking that down into as few essentials as possible. This is the other thing that I've changed over the last few years is to plan a lot, a lot smaller amount of things that you have to get done or that you think are really essential. There is some good research around. The longer the list, the less chance it's going to get done. So if you're somebody who has a to do list that looks like that, and if you're listening on audio, I mean, a gigantic to do listen, we all do, right? My to do list is way more than I can accomplish. There's no way I can do it. But what I've found is that taking that and then getting under ten, I would suggest between three and ten essentials that you want to get done tomorrow so that you really know what those are. So clear goals is a motivator, a flow trigger, and knowing essentially what you want to get done tomorrow.

Gary Stauble [00:30:41]:
The way that I would look at it is an airplane that gets to cruising altitude. Right? Cruising altitude. When I say peak, peak performance, state your cruising altitude. Everything's easy at cruising altitude. But the question is, how do I get off, how do I take off and how do I land? Because those are the two things that are more difficult. Then how do I not get pulled out of cruising altitude by a torpedo or a, you know, a duck or what? You know, like flying into the propeller or whatever. So the planning just gives you the ability to minimize things going sideways. But I wouldn't over plan because if you do that, then you're going to find you don't get to your list.

Gary Stauble [00:31:15]:
And then the next day it's like, well, what was the point of all that? You know? So if you're starting out and you're not used to it, I would just plan from breakfast to lunch. You know, try to plan that pretty meticulously and maybe that's all you plan. Maybe that's enough for you and that gives you the boost you need, or you get good at it, and then you start planning the rest of the day.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:35]:
You know, I love how you said we start with half your day. That's actually super smart. Yeah, well, I got a question about something else that you brought up. I'm just baffled. So I'd love to ask you on that, but I want to focus on the planning and talk about the flow state. How do you get the most out of every hour of your day or at least a few hours of the day? Because as we spoke earlier, there was a lot of people aren't being productive throughout the day. So what if you could do some deep work, deep recruiting work in a small amount of time and get more done. How do you get the most out of every hour?

Gary Stauble [00:32:08]:
So if you wanted to, without going too deep on a flow state, because that might. We might lose some people in the sense that a flow state is a four phase state, right? So you've got a struggle phase, the release phase, the flow stage itself, and then a recovery phase. That is, you can do that in recruiting. If you've got a project that is important, let's say you're going to write five articles, right? Because you're putting together some content that you're going to market. If you have something that lends itself to that kind of activity, then you can plan to have a flow session. And if you were just some ideas around, that would be, let's say, between 90 minutes and 2 hours is a good flow block. Enough time to get into that. And whatever you can do to do the preparation and rehearsal in advance and not have to do it while you're executing, is a big PiECe of it.

Gary Stauble [00:32:57]:
So, for instance, if you think about what's sometimes called the athlete entertainer model of time management, so if you think about how does an athlete get paid or an entertainer get paid, it's both the same way. It's a little different than how we work in that. Let's say a professional football player, they spend six days or five days a week in what we could call PRepaRatiON, rehearsal, which is practiCe. They're practicing their game plan, they're practicing receiving and throwing all the stuff they do. So they spend a really large amount of time in preparation and rehearsal, and then a very small amount of time in performance. So the performance is only 3 hours a week. That's a game. But for that three hour performance, they get paid millions of dollars.

Gary Stauble [00:33:38]:
And how they can execute at the peak of their game has to do with the large amount of time they spent in preparation and rehearsal. That makes sense.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:47]:
That makes sense, yeah.

Gary Stauble [00:33:49]:
Same with a rock band, right? Like a really big rock band, they spend a lot of time on tour, preparing, rehearsing, but the performance is maybe only 2 hours, but they make a lot for that. So what I usually tell people is try to separate preparation from execution, whatever that looks like for your desk, and it's going to change day to day. But if you say, how can I, at least in the morning hours, be in execution mode as opposed to planning mode or thinking mode, like, what do I do next? What do I do next? Is not a great question. You want to have something you're following with those priorities already outlined. You know what I mean?

Benjamin Mena [00:34:26]:
Are there things that you see out there, you know, based on the model that we just talked about with entertainers and athletes and how important preparation is, are the things that recruiters should be spending more time preparing on?

Gary Stauble [00:34:38]:
Yeah, I mean, anything that's going to get in the way. So let's say you were going to make a whole bunch of calls or emails tomorrow. Whatever the preparation is to get you there would be. It's easier to talk about phone calls because you need a phone number, your phone, and you didn't know who you're calling and why you're calling. Right. So if I walk in the next morning and I say, I want to do an hour of phone calls, if I have to say, well, who do I call? What's their phone number? Do you know what I mean? I'm already dead right. It's never going to happen. If you put on top of that call reluctance and the friction you have, your approach avoidance.

Gary Stauble [00:35:08]:
I don't really feel like it now. It's a disaster. Right.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:12]:
I was going to say, I think you just nailed it. Like booking an hour of calls and then you start that hour. It's like, wait, who am I going to call? Build that list.

Gary Stauble [00:35:19]:
Yeah. Okay. There we go. Exactly. That's an easy one to think of because. And that's why something like phone burner is so powerful. Like a piece of software that doesn't fully automate it. It just.

Gary Stauble [00:35:30]:
I always describe it as a people mover at the airport. You know that you get on the people mover and you still have to walk, but you're getting pushed along by it. So just as an example, phone burner, I had one client try it out over the last two weeks. She made 500 calls in three days and wasn't working 8 hours a day doing it. That's just an example. But something like a phone burner forces you to do what I'm talking about. You have to have your call list, you've got to put it in. It's got to be ready to go.

Gary Stauble [00:36:01]:
You got to have the phone numbers. That was all done in advance, so you can only make 500 calls in three days. If you had done all the advanced preparation for it, it's whatever's going to get you in execution mode as opposed to preparation.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:16]:
You know, one thing you mentioned earlier was talking about how passion was like this, like additional hit that you have now. Here's the thing about recruiting. A lot of people fell into this space. It wasn't like we all woke up and dreamed about being a recruiter.

Gary Stauble [00:36:30]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:31]:
How do you develop that passion, or how do you turn that passion on if you know this isn't the career that you initially wanted and were dreamed of your. All your life?

Gary Stauble [00:36:41]:
Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. I think it's different for everybody. Some people are just inherently, like you said, maybe they're add and this, this is just such a fit. It is the thing they've been looking for. You know, other people might come to it because they want a lifestyle business. They want to be able to coach their kids, little 18. That's important to them.

Gary Stauble [00:36:58]:
And so they like the flexibility of it. There's different reasons. I'll tell you, for me, when I started the business, I started doing it recruiting, and I had zero interest in it. And I was in Los Angeles, and I would go on meetings, like in person meetings to go get to know clients. And I do remember one time it could have been anxiety, but it was a mixture of anxiety and boredom. But I was yawning uncontrollably. As they're going on and on about their software and our software does this, I'm just like, oh, that was great. Really exciting stuff.

Gary Stauble [00:37:31]:
And I walked out of there going, oh, my God, this is terrible. I couldn't stop yawning because I found it so boring what they were talking about. And that's when I realized, like, I gotta, I gotta switch my niche. You know, I gotta get out of this, this niche. And I did, and I switched to legal. I had made my first placement. I was doing it recruiting, so it just happened to be a large law firm, and it was an it placement in that law firm. And I didn't know why I liked working for law firms because I never would want to be an attorney.

Gary Stauble [00:37:58]:
And I thought their hours were ridiculous. And a lot of things I didn't like about it, but I just loved working for law firms. So it's kind of like following the blinking lights. It doesn't have to be logical. It's just in my case, like, I'm excited about law firms. I'm not excited about it. So I'm going to go towards law firms. Or for me, I'm really demotivated by contingency search, by dealing with tire kickers and people who are not serious.

Gary Stauble [00:38:22]:
So I'm going to go towards retained search, you know, and. Or I hate sourcing. Like, I never liked sourcing. I didn't even like the first stages of recruiting. You know, do all this work to get a retainer. You get the signed retainers. Yeah, I'm excited. And then immediately after going, oh, shit, now I gotta find people.

Gary Stauble [00:38:41]:
That sounds boring. So that's what I said. Okay. I'm gonna pay people to do the stuff that I find for, you know. So I'm trying to make my job description something that I'm excited about, something that comes easy and that is highly leveraged. And for the stuff that isn't bad, I'm gonna pay other people to do it. That held the passion part of it.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:02]:
I love that. And that kind of goes into the next question I have, is, I've seen you travel a lot, which is phenomenal. I believe more people should travel, but as a recruiter, how do you set up those systems that give you a little more freedom? And I think you just kind of highlighted that hiring. But is there anything else, system wise, that we could do?

Gary Stauble [00:39:20]:
Yeah, as much as possible. You want to rely on systems and not on anything personality driven, if that makes sense. So if you're an owner who has a staff, then you'd really want, we call them sops, you know, standard operating procedures. You want everything written in fifth grade reader language so that if you get hit by a bus, if somebody else gets hit by a bus, that we can repeat the processes, you know, as easily as possible. And then you might have rules around if you're. You mean if you're actually on vacation and you want to unplug as best you can. You just have to think of that. Yeah, you have to think of that in advance.

Gary Stauble [00:39:56]:
Right. Like, so if you're the lone ranger, there probably isn't that much to think about, because it's you. If you're a firm owner, you've already got infrastructure. You've got people that you can leverage. You've got technology you can leverage. And if you're a hybrid, then you're somewhere in between with that. So hopefully you've got some coverage for checking your inbox. What I used to tell my staff, and I'll still do this a lot when I travel, is I will check email first thing in the morning.

Gary Stauble [00:40:23]:
So I will always check email first thing in the morning when I'm traveling. Not always, but in this kind of a mode, traveling. But after that, I might want my researcher to check it several times that day. Right. So it's their job to check it. I check it once. If anything comes up that you need before then, you're going to text me. So it's kind of having those rules laid out in advance.

Gary Stauble [00:40:44]:
I do think retain search is a little easier than contingency, at least in some ways, to have more of a travel lifestyle, although there are some downsides with that, too. Of course, you can be chained to a bad search as well. But the bottom line is it's really systems, systems and systems. You know what I mean? Automation systems leverage other people's ability to help you. And then don't be afraid of operating rules or being really clear with your clients and candidates as well. So, for instance, on your voicemail, you could say, if you're currently working with me on a project and it is time sensitive, hang up and text me at this number. And maybe that's your real cell phone number, maybe it's a different number. But having those operating rules in advance and knowing what the rhythms of your business are as well.

Gary Stauble [00:41:32]:
If you're slow in the summer, maybe that's a good time to travel. If it's slow over Christmas, then you travel at Christmas.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:38]:
Oh, Mandy. You know what the problem is? Talking with you, Gary, I feel like we can go on for another two more hours on this.

Gary Stauble [00:41:43]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:43]:
Which we're already 45 minutes into the conversation, but I got a question on this before we kind of jump over the quick fire questions. You know, a lot of people are just so busy and they just going hard throughout the day, you know, just handling so many different things and like, they feel like they can't do anymore. They feel like they can't make any changes. You know, they feel like they're just like there's no room for, like, this magical peak performance.

Gary Stauble [00:42:05]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:06]:
They're having average numbers. How does a person know, first of all, what lies might they be telling themselves? And two, how do you actually make that change?

Gary Stauble [00:42:15]:
Yeah, that's a great question. I would just say that good time management is about subtraction. It's not about addition. So if you're thinking I'm at the max of what I can do, addition is not going to help you because you don't have any more bandwidth. So it's what can I subtract? What can I subtract to clear away? You know the analogy of a sculptor who takes a block of marble and they reveal the statue that's inside of there. It's kind of the same thing. And that's why I said your to do list ought to be in some ways kind of short so that your brain knows exactly what's essential. Like getting one send out today is essential, or getting three candidates for this search is essential.

Gary Stauble [00:42:54]:
But I'm spacing out now. What was your question again, exactly?

Benjamin Mena [00:42:57]:
It's like, what are some of the lies that, you know, average performers are telling themselves that are keeping them from being peak performers?

Gary Stauble [00:43:04]:
Yeah, that's a very good question. I think just going back to what you can do, I would say the first thing I would do is abandon ship on the over bloated to do list. And the idea of you getting it all done, right? So fomo we all know about, and I have a pretty good case of Fomo all the time, but there's something called jomo. Have you heard of that? It's the joy of missing out, because, as I said, your to do list, right? Now, if your to do list has, let's say, my to do list, if I have two to do lists, right, I have today's list, but then I have what I call tomorrow. And tomorrow is an infinite list. Today is not an infinite list. Today is three to ten. Right? So if I have an infinite to do list, no matter what I do, I'm going to feel fomo constantly because I didn't get it all done, and I will never get it all done, and neither will you.

Gary Stauble [00:43:52]:
We're going to die with our inboxes full and our to do lists really, really long, you know? And you won't talk to all your friends that you want to talk to. You're not going to keep in touch with your family members. You're not going to write the book. You're not going to learn Spanish. Like, there's a whole bunch of things you're not going to do. And so I do think that this starts with taking ownership of that sober reality. Like, I'm not going to get all these stuff. It's just not going to happen.

Gary Stauble [00:44:16]:
So I need to be really choosy about how I spend my time. And this is where maybe in my case, I said I'm done with contingency. I'm going. Going to retain, because I just. I'm allergic to people wasting my time at this point. You know what I mean? But even if I do contingency, I'm going to be much more deliberate about my pre closes. You know, we need timely feedback. We need direct current authority contact.

Gary Stauble [00:44:37]:
We need to have full disclosure and open communication. I need to know where we stand in relation to your other candidates. We're the ones who extend the offer, not you. Like, there's a lot of things that I want to cover, and those things are all helping me to do what you're talking about, which is not feeling this sense of bloat and, like, I can't possibly take anything else on. A lot of times when people say that it's because they are choosing, they're not narrowing down enough on their task selection. So, for instance, the way that I work with people is you just give me a job order and now you're a client, period. There's no criteria. There's no, you don't have to pass any kind of a test then maybe I've got ten searches on my desk.

Gary Stauble [00:45:16]:
All of them are crap quality, but I'm completely stressed out by them, even though they're not going to go anywhere, but I'm really stressed as opposed to, I've got criteria for who I work with, under what conditions. I work with people who see me as a partner, not as a pest. And so I have less things to work on, but we're working together in a more close way and I'm getting a higher hit rate with my things. That goes back to that feedback, which then starts a positive momentum loop where I'm starting to feel like I'm working on stuff with people who give a shit and they're treating me with respect. That makes me want to treat them with respect and that fuels my motivation. It's almost like taking ownership of the fact that you're not going to get everything done and you need to be much more deliberate and communicative with your clients and your candidates so they know how to work with you and so that you enjoy what you're doing, you know?

Benjamin Mena [00:46:04]:
And, you know, one of the things I wanted to go a deep dive on you is like words of the impact of words. But I think we might have to save that for another episode. One quick question. Good researchers, where do you find them?

Gary Stauble [00:46:16]:
Well, I've got a long list of them that, you know, as far as companies, it's funny, there's never been a better time to find research help, and yet nobody's really happy with their research company, you know what I mean? There's so few people who are, or if they are, they're happy today, but they won't be happy in six months. I always say if I were hiring today, I would outsource all of my digital stuff. So if people can do the sourcing that is just online sourcing, that I would outsource cheaply overseas. But for people, if you want people to be able to make phone calls with you, then you need probably an employee for that. I found two really good sweet spots, if you're thinking about an employee. For me, it was women who were in their thirties. Let's say, who had had a couple kids, had some business experience, and were wanting to go back into the workforce after having been gone, but wanted a sort of like 30, 25 to 30 hours a week job that for me, when I was hiring people from my office was a great sweet spot because they were mature, they had some seasoning, and they were appreciative of the flexible schedule. You know, I've hired college students to make calls for me before.

Gary Stauble [00:47:21]:
That was the thing that I used to do. It wasn't my most successful run, but it was one that I tried, particularly business majors and english majors seemed to do the best. That would be more, like I said, if I was doing employees to make calls. But if you're doing overseas, then I would go to the Philippines. I would go to those countries where you can find good english skills. Skills. And you just have to vet a lot of people, you know, and you have to watch them like a hawk, and you have to ask them. One thing that I would just say is a quick tip is ask them what metrics they will provide you to measure their own success.

Gary Stauble [00:47:50]:
And if they look at you like, it's probably not the right company, you want a company that says, oh, yeah, we will send you a report showing you, we talked to this many people, or we interacted with this much from the ad response, we whittled it down that this many converted to an actual resume out. Most of the companies will not have the answer to that, but how approximate they are to being able to do that and how willing they are to work with you on that, I would say is a decent starting point.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:18]:
Awesome. Well, is there anything before we jump over to the quickfire questions that you want to talk about, like peak performance or any of that nature?

Gary Stauble [00:48:25]:
I guess just the deliberateness of your communication with the people that you work with. I see it as, I don't want to say a gift, but as a good thing that you do when you're honest with your clients and your candidates. So when the hair on the back of your neck stands up and you say, oh, that doesn't sound right, I would just say one of the best bits of advice is just articulate whatever that is. Because the frustrating thing for me as a consultant is to hear smart owners say, yeah, I was working on this search and it was really, really good and I was really excited. I was putting a lot of time into it. And then they're really slow now, and they're trying to cram me into HR, and I'm just the whole thing is slowed down, and so I'm really not even working on it. And I will always say, oh, okay. Did you tell them that? And the answer, 99% of time.

Gary Stauble [00:49:10]:
No, no, I just, you know, there's no point. I'm like, you're missing the opportunity. The opportunity is, hey, mister client, your search is on the back burner. I'm not putting anything into this. And the reason is my hands are tight. You know, I want to be able to give you that level of service. I want you at the top of my priority list. I want you getting the best service for myself, for my team.

Gary Stauble [00:49:29]:
In order to do that, we need this, this, and this, you know, so that would just be one tip, I guess, to. To be more communicative.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:39]:
And you know how smart that is. And I can guarantee you, looking back at my history, I'm like, there are times I should have done that.

Gary Stauble [00:49:45]:
Me too.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:46]:
Well, jumping over the quick five questions, they don't need to be quick answers. But what advice would you give to somebody that's just starting off in the recruiting industry this year?

Gary Stauble [00:49:54]:
Just starting out? I would say focus on systems and metrics and planning. You know, the good basics would be systems, metrics, planning, single tasking. If you just do those things, you will have a foundation that you can build on. If you're spazzing out all over the place and you're kind of hit and miss, it's very hard to build anything on that. But if you've got the basics down, like I said, single tasking, which is basically what we've been talking about a lot here, planning. And your planning doesn't have to be perfect. It could be 15 minutes. It's just your best version of a plan for tomorrow.

Gary Stauble [00:50:27]:
You'll get better at it as you do it. And a focus on metrics, knowing what you're shooting for and tracking those meticulously so that you can't fool yourself, you know?

Benjamin Mena [00:50:35]:
Yeah. If you want to get left for a single planning or mono tasking versus multitasking. But once a year, I try to do, like, an audit of the week, and I use, like, a time tracking app that's probably made for employees, but I have, like, all these different things, and my God. Switch, switch, switch, switch, switch. It helps me, like, realize how much I've been multitasking, but focusing on single tasking or mono tasking, I'm like, man, they're on my date.

Gary Stauble [00:50:59]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:01]:
Well, same question, but for people that have been in the game for a while, like, what advice would you give to them to see success or continue to have success.

Gary Stauble [00:51:07]:
I mean, I kind of would start where I started before, which is know your outcome, know what it is you're trying to create. Are you building a business that you want to sell? Are you building a business that you're going to turn over to your employees in some way? Are you going to scale it to where it's a part of your self esteem? This is really my baby, and this is my legacy. Or is it a lifestyle business? Is it something where you're going to use the profits from this to funnel your investments and that's going to be your strategy, and maybe freedom is at the top of your list. So I think getting clear on your values and what you're trying to create and what benefits you're going to get by doing that makes everything else easier, because, you know, like in my case, when I went from a brick and mortar office to a digital office, every decision can be filtered through. Can I be location and dependent? Is this a heavy appointment requirement? Do I have to be at one place at one time? Like, there's certain list of things I can come up with which I did. I have an old list that I use for that, but that's in line with my values. So it speeds up business decisions, and it means that when you get to where you were shooting for, it's a place you're going to be happy to be. As opposed to the story of the seven figures in debt with an office that didn't get off the ground.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:16]:
Oh, yeah. Has there been a book that's had a huge impact on your own personal career?

Gary Stauble [00:52:20]:
I mean, the four hour workweek, you know, back in the two thousands, that was probably one of the biggest.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:25]:
Real quick for the four hour workweek. Is that when you have really shifted your brick and mortar business after that?

Gary Stauble [00:52:29]:
No. No. I sound like I should have wrote the four hour workweek. I was like, damn, that was a really good, really good cop set. No, I had done it before that, but it really, it really resonated with me. And then more recently, atomic habits, I think, is just incredible. If you, if you care about behavior change, habit formation. And there's an app for that as well called Adams.

Gary Stauble [00:52:49]:
If you're interested in atomic habits, I would get that atoms app. And then the other book I would suggest is the art of Impossible by Stephen Cutler. And he is really the, he's the founder of the flow Research collective. And that's a program I've been in for like three years, like a graduate style program. On the science of peak performance. So that book, the Art of Impossible, is really a primer for sort of everything I've been talking about.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:11]:
That is awesome.

Gary Stauble [00:53:12]:
And I.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:13]:
What are some good ways for a recruiter to get themselves out of a funk?

Gary Stauble [00:53:16]:
Out of a funk? That's a great question. You mean like if they're in a slump?

Benjamin Mena [00:53:20]:
In a slump?

Gary Stauble [00:53:21]:
Yeah, if you're in a slump, I would say go back to really, really basic stuff and this is so hard to do, but try to focus on the process and not the outcome. Everybody says that and it's not easy to do. But what I mean by that is if you're, we talked about before, your to do list is here, or maybe your goals are here. You want to just make those micro. So it's not big goals, it's tiny goals. And the tiny goal might be make ten calls before 10:00 a.m. that might be a tiny goal. You know what I mean? Submit two candidates in the next 48 hours.

Gary Stauble [00:53:55]:
That's a tiny goal. So I would get really, really tiny with the goals from martial arts. This is one of the best things that I've heard because I can get in my own head with how I'm doing or, oh, these guys are catching on quicker than I am or I'm the old guy or, you know, you get your own ed trash going with whatever it is. Right. But the advice is focus on what you're doing, not how you're doing. So if I focus on what I'm doing, what I'm doing is I've got this to do list and I'm going to move through. And hopefully the reason I say a short to do list is you want that pattern recognition. You want to see yourself crossing things off because that's starting to create that positive momentum loop as opposed to if I have a to do list with 2000 items on it, at the end of the day, I'm probably still gonna feel like shit.

Gary Stauble [00:54:37]:
Maybe I got six of them done, but now I've got 1994, I don't feel much better. You know what I mean? Whereas if I just pick the five things I have to get done that day and I check each one of them off, you know, if I could show you my whiteboard, I have a little checkbox next to the word done, exclamation point. And at the end of the day I just checked that box because I know I want that little bit of recognition that there's some closure and I can feel good about what I did.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:03]:
You know, you got time for a few more questions.

Gary Stauble [00:55:05]:
Yeah, yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:06]:
Awesome. Just want to double check.

Gary Stauble [00:55:08]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:09]:
I mean, looking like, at yourself and your own personal success and like, you know, the things that you've done, you know, you've built a great recruiting company. You know, you decided to make a change and make it like a rainmaker model that was super successful. You've traveled the globe, you have an incredible coaching business, you've had a lot of success. What do you think has been a huge personal driver for that?

Gary Stauble [00:55:28]:
Well, for a long time it was fomo. Like straight up fomo. Like, I been very aware that time, and I mean on an existential level, like, time is running out. Every day I wake up, like the Glock is ticking, time is running out. Like, I just have to cram as much as I could into everything. And it's only been in the last couple of years that I've kind of tried to adapt the JoMo, the joy of missing out, because I think being driven, I like being driven. I enjoy it. But after a certain age, it can kind of start to backfire a little bit because you're never able to relax.

Gary Stauble [00:55:58]:
You're never to really enjoy things. So for me, being motivated by just dollars, which is what my boss used to always just try to motivate me by money goals that only worked up to a certain point. And then when I'm at a certain point financially, money goals in and of themselves are not a big driver for me. What I found is that mastery, excellence, I would just say those two, mastery and excellence, those are things that drive me. Those are things that I feel like have some deeper meaning, deeper rich value to them that my version of that would be very different than someone else's. So I think I'm driven by, yeah, trying to achieve a sense of mastery and excellence in what I do, but try to keep a sense of humor about it, too, and not be too aggro.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:43]:
And that kind of goes into the next question is like, you know, I'm sure this business, you've had tons of ups, but also tons of downs. It's a very cyclical business. It's roller coaster, per se. You've learned a lot, but if you got a chance to. I'm going to ask this two ways to go back, back in time. Have a cup of coffee with yourself. We'll say about a month or two into your recruiting career, what advice would you give yourself?

Gary Stauble [00:57:07]:
Well, if I knew what I know now to share, it would be, stop taking yourself so seriously. Don't try to be like uptight business guy. Because when I started, it was really like, I need to adopt this Persona and act a certain way when I'm dealing with clients. And I found that very demotivating. So I would say, be yourself. Flaunt your quirks, because people respond to something that they feel is genuine and they don't respond to something they feel is generic or just kind of cookie cutter or like a cardboard cutout. So I think, be yourself. And then this sounds cheesy.

Gary Stauble [00:57:39]:
I won't say follow your bliss, but follow the blinking lights when it comes to what you're going to be passionate about. Because again, that free energy of being able to find what you're passionate about, it just makes everything else much, much more fun and exciting. Like Simon Senick says, start with why. You know, understanding your why. And it's like, there's a great quote and it's working hard for something you don't care about is called stress. Working hard for something you love is called passion. You know? So it's like the constant is you're working hard. Let's say either of those, you're working 60 hours a week, you're working your ass off and you're working really hard, but one of them feels like stress and the other one feels like passion.

Gary Stauble [00:58:20]:
So the difference in how you feel is very different. So I would follow the blinking lights with what you're passionate about, and that could be your niche. It could be your location, it could be your retained versus contingency. It could be, do I build a big office? Do I have a lean office? All of those questions, and the next.

Benjamin Mena [00:58:38]:
Question, you get a chance to coach a lot of people. So you get to see a lot of aspects. People are asking you a lot of questions. You've analyzed the results from the people that have done things. What is it that you wish recruiters would ask you, and what would be that answer?

Gary Stauble [00:58:56]:
That's an interesting question. What do I wish they would ask me? What would be the answer? I'm not sure I know how to answer that. I will say some of the things that I think are blind spots. I probably already mentioned these, but not knowing where you're going is maybe the biggest one. I think that's very, very important. And probably this question about subtraction versus addition in terms of time management, in terms of what you're thinking, just think of, say, productivity tools or automation software. We keep a tools page for our members, and I'm always adding to it. We're always refining it and changing it, but it is nonstop.

Gary Stauble [00:59:33]:
I mean, now with AI, the amount of tools you could have on your phone are just endless. But I'm trying to delete as many apps from my phone as I can. Just as an example. I'm trying to keep as few apps as I can on my phone. I'm trying to keep as little as possible in my office because, you know, increased output necessitates decreased input. And I don't know if you've ever heard of that, but increased output, me performing like at my peak, requires decreased input. I can't have this snow globe constantly shaking in my head because I'm just not going to be at my best. So I'm trying to be minimalist in my technology, minimalist in my office, and minimalist with what I let into my brain.

Benjamin Mena [01:00:13]:
If that makes sense, that makes perfect sense. And I feel like I need to go to lead stuff off my phone. Now I'm talking. I mean, the screen time thing at the end of the week is always a big wake up call. I'm like, oh, me too, Gary. For anybody that wants to follow you, how do they go about doing that?

Gary Stauble [01:00:33]:
Really easy. Just go to the recruitinglab.com dot. There's actually two things you can sign up for, no charge. One of them is a webinar. It's called when the morning, when the day. How predictable. Mornings drive predictable revenue. So you can go, you can get access to that webinar at no charge.

Gary Stauble [01:00:48]:
There's also a new report coming out probably by the time this is out called how to minimize rollercoaster revenue. So it's just seven steps that you can take to minimize the fluctuations that really drive people crazy and cause a lot of burnout in our business. So those are both on my website, free of charge, the recruitinglab.com, and you can learn all about our programs and everything else there as well.

Benjamin Mena [01:01:09]:
Awesome. Well, before I let you go, is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners?

Gary Stauble [01:01:13]:
Yeah, I would just say you're in a great business. If you're an owner, take ownership of the direction you're going in, take ownership of what you're doing. And like I said, there's something about the joy of missing out that requires you to take extreme ownership of your time. Because we want to feel like I could do all these things, I could evaluate all these software tools, I could get all these searches, but the reality is you can't and you won't and you never will. So I'd say be really sober about how you spend your time, because you don't have a lot of it and figure out what's essential and keep doing that.

Benjamin Mena [01:01:46]:
Awesome. Well, Gary, I just want to say thank you so much. You know, it's one of those things I feel like as recruiters, we just, you know, many times, many of us recruiters, the day just gets away from us. You know, we want to be a paid performer. We don't want to be an average performer. We want to be able to fill the needs of our clients. We want to be able to also spend time with our family, be able to take the vacations and be really build our future. So thank you for coming on, really just breaking it out and sharing the things that we need to do.

Benjamin Mena [01:02:10]:
And for the listeners, I want you to keep crushing 2024. I want this to be your best year yet. Keep going, guys.

Gary Stauble [01:02:16]:
Thanks, everybody. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit subscribe and leave a rating.