Secrets to Scaling: Mike Williams on Recruiting Success, Startup Challenges, and Building a Rockstar Team

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.

Mike Williams [00:00:30]:
Elite Recruiter Podcast, you have to trust your people. You absolutely have to give them a little bit responsibility that they're not ready for. The right question to ask is not how do I get clients? It's how do relationships work and how do I build strong relationships with people of influence in companies that are growing? That's how you want to think about this. 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 [00:01:13]:
I am so excited about this episode of the podcast. My guest, who has had phenomenal growth, started as a top biller, still a top biller, but is now scaling his company. We're going to talk about what he's doing being a billing manager and how he is scaling and building his team, especially in this environment where he's been growing, growing, and not very many other people have. But I am so excited. He is a brand new Pinnacle member. So, Mike Williams, welcome to the podcast.

Mike Williams [00:01:40]:
Thank you, Ben. Good to be here. You know, it's funny, when they said to me, do you want to go on the podcast? I said, man, I get a chance to meet Danny Cahill. I've been looking up to him my whole life. And they said, well, Danny Cahill actually doesn't do the podcast anymore. It's Ben Mina. And I said, you know, I love Ben, but I mean, it's kind of a. Kind of a letdown, man.

Mike Williams [00:01:58]:
It's like the goat of recruiting or Ben And I just talked to you too. I'm. I'm only kidding. I'm really here with you.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:07]:
Well, maybe we can, like, you know, down the road, bring Denny back in for an interview for you, but. Yeah, I get it. I get it. All good.

Mike Williams [00:02:14]:
I hope you know I'm just kidding. I love being here too. I.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:16]:
For the listeners sake, I do. So real quick if you want a deep dive on how Mike got started listening to Danny Cahill and how like his origin story in recruiting, go back and listen to two podcast episodes. He was on the Elite Recruiter podcast and he was on the Resilient Recruiter podcast with Mark Whitby. So go check those out if you want to get like how he got started and where he is to now. That's the conversation. What we're going to talk about is we're going to talk about how he's actually staying a billing manager, being a highly successful top biller, but still building a team because you guys just like, was it 4x your office space, 5 extra office space a month ago?

Mike Williams [00:02:54]:
Yes, 7x to the office space. So that was really fun and scary because you have to sign a long term lease and it's a lot of money. And to get a lease these days is actually really hard. I thought that it would be easy because people talk about commercial real estate, industry is dying and, you know, shuttered offices because people work from home. Well, what actually happens is when these companies find someone who needs office space, they really try to get every penny out of you. So it's, it's very difficult. But we finally got it done.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:26]:
Well, we're going to talk about that, we're going to talk about the growth and we're going to talk about some of the things that you're doing as a billing manager. So first of all, congratulations on joining the Pinnacle Society. Why did you join this elite crew?

Mike Williams [00:03:40]:
Yeah, that also goes back to Danny Cahill. So everyone knows me and Ben know each other, so we can joke around like that and bust chops. So when I first started in the recruiting business, I worked for a company that had never done direct hire recruiting in the office that I was in. It was a test trial. They thought that because it was such a rural area that perm could not survive, that only businesses would want temp services. And so me being an ignorant, you know, person had never worked in this business before. I kind of blissfully, blissfully ignorant to the challenges that would come with starting a temp perm desk, accepted the role. But the problem there was there was no one in that business that had done perm that could train me.

Mike Williams [00:04:25]:
So I had to do was go out and find resources on my own of top billers. And I kind of stumbled through some, you know, not great resources until I found Danny Cahill. And when I did, I just absolutely fell in love with everything that he does. His. According to Danny trainings, which we're you know, proud to be a member of. Last week, in fact, I just sent one of my recruiters from Charlotte to outside of Hartford, Connecticut to meet Danny in person. Very cool. He did a training called the Rookie Retreat.

Mike Williams [00:04:57]:
And one of my rookies, a guy named Travis, did a two day kind of intensive training with Danny. If you're someone who follows Danny, you'll know that not only is he in Pinnacle and a former president of Pinnacle, but he really evangelizes Pinnacle and he talks to people about how it's a great goal to have to kind of make it into the 1% of recruiters worldwide and to, you know, have a forum where you can meet with these people a couple times a year, see what they're doing and implement it into your business. So the long story short is it's been a lifetime goal for me and just really proud to say I'm today in Pinnacle society.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:33]:
Congratulations. And it takes a lot of work to get in Pinnacle. You have to be a big biller, not just like one awesome year where everybody else is crushing it.

Mike Williams [00:05:40]:
It's true. There's some pretty rigorous kind of standards that you have to meet in order to get in. You also have to really humble yourself because you have to go, I wonder if I'm supposed to be telling you guys all this, but you're going to get the inside scoop from me here today about what it's like to get into Pinnacle. So you have to go through a pledge process. So you interview. You have several rounds of interviews with the best recruiters in the world. Essentially, there's kind of no doubt that it's really, really, really strong recruiters. And they ask you very pointed questions about, you know, your recruiting methodology, your ethics, your results.

Mike Williams [00:06:17]:
And they are not easy interviews. They were challenging questions. And I think, you know, to even get an interview, you're someone who's had a lot of success. So not everyone would maybe have it in them to humble themselves to go in and like, really, you know, admit like, these people are probably better than me at this, even though I think that I'm pretty good at it. And then if you get through the interview process, then you get invited to a conference as a pledge, meaning you're not in Pinnacle. You go and get to attend the conference and hopefully get a chance to get voted in. And there's a voting process. So, yeah, there's quite a bit to it.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:57]:
Congrats on that. And you've been crushing it, which has been awesome. I want to talk about how you've been Growing and how you've been scaling. So, you know, a lot of times, like part of Pinnacle, from my understanding is you have to personally bill XYZ amount, which you've been doing, but you haven't just done that. You haven't just been a solo biller. You now have a team of five. How are you managing scaling a company while at the same time keeping your personal billings up?

Mike Williams [00:07:24]:
That's a really hard thing to do. And so we're in a tough season of our business right now where it's trying to do parallel goals. We want to hire people, we want to train people, we want to make them top billers, and we want to, you know, not only maintain my own personal billings, but grow on them. So I can give you some tactics of how we do it, but I think it's helpful to start off with the strategy and the overarching vision so when things get hard, you come back to your vision. It motivates you to want to continue on. And when I first started this business, the reason why I did it was because I wanted to bring new people into this industry who could experience what it does to you. When you go from someone who maybe has had a little bit of success in sales or is right out of college, or has had a little bit of career success to becoming a million dollar bill, There's a financial aspect to it, but there's also a huge, just personal, relational, you know, confidence. I guess part of things, you go from a point in your life where you're not sure what you want to do with your career to VPs and CEOs of companies calling you and asking you for advice on who should we hire, what should we pay them? Hey, you know, let me help you understand our organizational strategy and where you're going to fit into it.

Mike Williams [00:08:42]:
It's just a great thing to have. You know, you start to stand on your own two feet. When I was not a recruiter, you know, I'd never made really any money. The most money I'd ever made in my life was $42,000 in a year. So, you know, I was living in a basement apartment. I was doing fine, I guess, like I was in my early 20s, but I wasn't. Like, I would have never been able to buy a house. I wouldn't have been able to buy, you know, my girlfriend then, you know, now wife, a wedding ring, like a good one.

Mike Williams [00:09:07]:
You know, I would have had to use credit for it. But then, you know, you get into this business and you can see that if you Just work hard. If you just follow certain trainings, if you just make certain cold calls, you can have an unlimited amount of prosperity. I just felt like it was a exciting goal in life to try to show people what that does to you. So that's what I'm here to do. And that's why, you know, despite it being hard to build my own pre, build my own desk and hire people and train them, that's what keeps me waking up every morning. And at this point, we've now had one guy who's been with me a little over a year. He billed like 300k in his first year.

Mike Williams [00:09:43]:
He's gonna probably bill half a million this year. He's gonna W2 over $200,000 with me. He's 23 years old and I got to see him go from living in his parents spare room of his house to brand new car and an apartment, like living a great life. Right now he's actually, he's in Cancun right now this sov. So he got the week off, he's in Cancun. So there's nothing more fun than that for me. So that's the first way of how you do it is remember that you want to do it because it's really important and a great way to get back.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:15]:
Oh, that's awesome. There's so many times that I've seen billing managers, owners talk about everything that they want and you just like turned it around and just like, I want this. I want these people to have what I had. I want their lives to be changed by how my life was changed.

Mike Williams [00:10:35]:
Yeah, I feel a debt to the recruiting industry. You know, sometimes people will ask you, what do you think you would have been if you weren't a recruiter? And it could have. You know, I'm kind of afraid of what my life could have been without it. I. I don't know what it would have been. I wouldn't have made as much money, no doubt. And I wouldn't have had the same level of impact. And that's like the beautiful thing about being a recruiter is the amount of money you make is equivalent to the amount that you help people.

Mike Williams [00:11:01]:
It's just so great. You know, it's like a win, win, win. You can help a company grow. You can help an individual switch jobs. They don't switch jobs for less money. I don't think I've ever placed someone who was taking less money between jobs. And then you help yourself because you're cash a commission check in the process. So I really look at our business as, you know, part of our mission is to be a force for good in the marketplace.

Mike Williams [00:11:25]:
And I really believe that we are doing that for people.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:28]:
Okay, so let's take a few steps back. How did you find your first few rock stars?

Mike Williams [00:11:34]:
That's a really good question. And I'm so fortunate for having found my first guy. He's the guy that was just telling you about his story. His name's Isaac. Shout out Isaac. By the way, he's. He's killing it. So that was just happenstance.

Mike Williams [00:11:47]:
So he was a friend of a friend. When I first started this business, I came to Charlotte. I didn't know anyone down here. So what I endeavored to do was make some basic connections by building out, like a framework of a network foundation, I guess you'd say. And what that included was like, an accountant, a financial advisor. What else? A realtor who helped us find our house. Like, just people who are in your world. And so my financial advisor, this guy Chip, who is a very well connected guy, he just, like, knows a ton of people.

Mike Williams [00:12:22]:
He connected me also to what turned out to be one of my best clients. So that was really big. And we would talk, you know, like every few weeks because I didn't have anyone to talk to. I was new down here, so I just called him. We talk about investing, but at one point we were talking about, hey, my business is growing. I don't know, I might need to hire someone. And he knew a guy through his church who had a son who was about to graduate college. And Chip said to me, mike, I've known this kid Isaac since he was, like, in diapers.

Mike Williams [00:12:51]:
He's always been an extrovert. I always have thought of him for sales. I have no idea if this will go anywhere, but would you have lunch with them and maybe help him find a job? Or maybe he wants to work for you. I don't know. I took him out to lunch and, like, I knew I had a tiger by the tail with this kid. Like, he clearly had talent. He was so personable, so ambitious. Just everything that you look for in a recruiter.

Mike Williams [00:13:13]:
And, yeah, that's how I met him.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:15]:
That's awesome. What about your next one?

Mike Williams [00:13:17]:
So the next one and the next. All of them were the same in that I recruited them so the same way. And I learned this from Mark Whitby, by the way, who I know that you're connected with. And, you know, I saw you on his podcast, by the way, or him on your podcast. Great stuff. But Mark was Explaining to me, like, if you're hiring in your business and you have a pipeline of jobs that you're recruiting for for your clients, which level of priority would you put your own job? Number two? Number one? Number ten. Let's say you have ten clients right now. Well, obviously the answer is number one.

Mike Williams [00:13:49]:
There's no one more important than recruiting for your own jobs. But what we, what do we do as recruiters? We do the same thing we tell companies not to do. We post and pray and hope that someone will come along, and they never come along. And then we interview them one at a time. It'll be like, oh, well, I'll look at this other resume after I finish the interview process with this one. The other resume is dead and gone by the time, you know, we commit every sin that we say that we shouldn't do. So, Mark, help you to understand, don't do that. And what I did instead was I just started headhunting.

Mike Williams [00:14:17]:
I started cold calling in, mailing, and posting everything, like, aggressively for my jobs. And that was how I found my next three or four that we hired.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:26]:
And okay, so I know you talked about this on both of the other podcasts, but I think it's important that we talk about it here. Like, how did you, like, onboard these people? How did you train them up? Because I've seen many recruiters start a recruiting agencies, but not many of them. Often time are like, hey, I'm going to go. You know, was this first or second year? First year bill, like 300k. Like, that's not normal. So what did you do to help get these people going?

Mike Williams [00:14:49]:
Yeah, so these guys took a big risk to enter into this business as a startup. And fortunately they ended up with a big reward. So, like, when I hired Isaac, we didn't even have an office. Like, I interviewed him at lunch. Like, there was no office for him to go to. We didn't have health insurance. I barely knew how to run payroll. So it was, it was pretty pathetic.

Mike Williams [00:15:12]:
But the thing is, and like, we recruit for startup companies too. And now I tell Isaac, like, you can tell the candidates the same thing. You join a startup, you take a big risk, but there is a chance for a huge, huge, huge reward. And that's what these guys have experienced. They came in, I have a board of clients that are mine that I cannot keep up with. That's kind of rare for the agency recruiting world. Like, usually you come into a firm and they want you to do biz dev, or they want you to source for someone else's something. And you get a small piece of the pie.

Mike Williams [00:15:42]:
People are coming in here, and I'm like, guys, everything on that board of 35 job orders is wide open. I'm going to tell you what I think that you should hit, but you can just go ahead and fill anything because I can't keep up with them. So that's one big part of it. Like, they're walking into a successful practice. That was every single time we hired someone. We were way understaffed. Like, very understaffed. We're only two and a half years into the business.

Mike Williams [00:16:06]:
We haven't caught up to the demand for our service. So that's the first thing. The second thing I'll mention is I learned this from a guy named Aaron Opalewski. Have you had Aaron on your podcast?

Benjamin Mena [00:16:17]:
He was. If you want a good laugh. He was, I think, the sixth or seventh episode that I had when nobody was listening to my podcast, like, I. I would. I was the only one down, like, listening to it to get to my 10 downloads a month. And I just had him on again. If you're gonna laugh at this. He was just, like, talking about, like, where his company is right now, and I was just like, wait, wait, hold on a second.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:38]:
Your first episode when it was just your company, this one company, you said that you wanted a portfolio of seven companies, and I'm like, oh, my God. You're like, you're right at seven. Like, this is what you've put in the work envisioned. And go, go. Yeah. Aaron's amazing.

Mike Williams [00:16:51]:
He's an amazing guy. I have no doubt whatever his vision is, next is probably seven more businesses, and I'm sure he'll have them. He's such a guy to look up to in this business, and I certainly do. So anyways, I learned this from him of how do you train people? And he calls it on the hip training, which is basically one of their core values is lead by example and what you want to do. And what we try to do is, like, have people very, very close to me while they're learning this business. So we'll actually put a headphone splitter into our cell phones, and they can hear everything that I'm saying, and they're on mute. And I just think that's, like, the way that you train agency recruiters in 2024. You can't just give them, like, a few procedures written down.

Mike Williams [00:17:34]:
Training videos are fine and nice. You can give them, like, you know, I learned from, like, Sig Ziggler training books and all that. Great. But it's hard to be an agency recruiter in 2024, and you need a big biller next to you showing you every single step of the way what to say, how to do it in order to be successful. So that's. That's how we do it.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:53]:
And how fast are you getting these, like, these new recruiters on the phone?

Mike Williams [00:17:57]:
The first week? Absolutely in the first week. Like, sometimes the first day, that's kind of the first hurdle that you have to climb is like, is there call hesitancy? Because I've talked about it before, I talk about a lot, but we're heavy, heavy, cold call. In our recruiting firm, we try to make 80 or 100 calls in a day. Do we get that many every day? No, if you're on biz dev, it's less than it's on recruiting. But do we get that many days?

Benjamin Mena [00:18:21]:
Yes.

Mike Williams [00:18:22]:
So it's a goal that we have every day. So, you know, if you figure that you're making a hundred calls, let's say on average, you're making 60 calls in a day. If you're someone who's afraid to make calls, it's not going to be the right career for you. So actually, it starts before day one. Because part of the interview process of everyone that we've hired is in the interview, you have to make a cold call in front of the office. So it starts early.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:47]:
That's, like, way better and more hardcore than the first dance for the placement that I had to do at Aerotech back in the day.

Mike Williams [00:18:53]:
That is embarrassing. Blazement dance. Oh, man, that's funny. Did you have a. Did you know you're gonna have to do it? Do they surprise you?

Benjamin Mena [00:19:02]:
It took me a while to get my first placement, so I saw it happening.

Mike Williams [00:19:06]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's funny.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:09]:
Okay, so now that you have these, like, these, you know, green rock stars that are growing, they're learning recruiting. How are you managing? Managing versus coaching versus mentorship with these individuals?

Mike Williams [00:19:23]:
It's a really good question. It's an everyday struggle. You know, the short answer this is judgment. Like, you just have to have good judgment as an executive or as a manager to know what the next best right thing for you is. And that's a hard thing to train. Like, there's really no way for me to articulate how to do that. You just have to have a nose for it when you come in in the morning of. Hmm.

Mike Williams [00:19:47]:
I haven't talked to Client C in quite a long time. Like, I need to call that guy, Bob, president of Client C. But you end up with competing priorities. Because every day when I come in, I have a team of recruiters that are all in their first or second year of this business. I could sit with every single one of them for the entire day. And that's important. I have a controller in our business. I could sit with him for the entire day.

Mike Williams [00:20:13]:
Anytime that he's here. I need to know about what's going on in QuickBooks. I have a lot of clients. I could go visit any single one of them in a given day. I might need to make the appointment with them, but I could talk to them on the phone. I have jobs to recruit for. I need to hire more people. So which one do you do? It's impossible for me to prescribe.

Mike Williams [00:20:31]:
Like how you do it. You just, you know, you have to have good judgment.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:35]:
Love that. And when it comes to training your recruiters, you know, I think you're doing something that most not every recruiter gets to see in this industry where you're like, hey, let me just. Listen to me, hear me. But you also just sent, like you said, you sent your recruiter off to Dana Cahill. How important is training for your team?

Mike Williams [00:20:54]:
That's how you learn, you know, and they hear my way of doing things every single day. But one thing that you learn being in Pinnacle is that there's infinite numbers of permutations of ways to do this business, and everyone does it a little different. So there's the Danny Cahill method, the Mike Williams method, the Gail Audibert method, the Rich Rosen method. And we're all a little different. And, you know, none of them are right and none of them are wrong. So when I train these people, like they need to hear it not just from me, they need to hear all different ways. And, you know, something will resonate with them along the way. So that's super important.

Mike Williams [00:21:34]:
I think it's also just a great investment. I mean, I probably spent, I mean, certainly less than $5,000, maybe less than $3,000 in total to get him airplane tickets, a hotel. He's a young guy. He doesn't have to be staying at the Ritz Carlton, right? Like he's poop. He's days in or something like so hotel flights. And then, you know, the biggest chunk of it is paying for the tickets. But, you know, it wasn't 10 grand. It was some reasonable number.

Mike Williams [00:22:03]:
I mean, for a three thousand dollar investment, this guy's going to come in and he's going to close a deal. Deal. I almost guarantee you he's going to close a deal he wouldn't have closed had he not done this. Then what you three, four times the investment just on that one deal. He'll probably use that stuff for the rest of his career. So yeah, it's just a smart investment.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:19]:
I want to talk about business development because you said a few things and I know we've had this conversation before. You have more companies demanding your work, demanding your help getting jobs filled. Then you could fill. How do you do that?

Mike Williams [00:22:35]:
Yeah, so that's a topic we talk about a lot. So one reason for it is digital marketing. A lot of what I do, posting on LinkedIn does help, but it's not the only part of it. So I get messages from recruiters. Like they'll see a post that I write and they'll say, mike, I see that your company is growing. The biggest thing I'm struggling with is getting clients. How do I get clients? And I'll tell them I can give you tactics, but I honestly think you're asking the wrong question. Because the right question to ask is not how do I get clients, it's how do relationships work and how do I build strong relationships with people of influence in companies that are growing? That's how you want to think about this.

Mike Williams [00:23:18]:
So how do I get clients? Is a very self serving question. How do I create a relationship and add value to someone who is in a position of authority at a high company that's growing is a giving type of a way of thought process. So you have to start there. You have to understand that your goal as a salesperson is to help this company to do something that they need your help with or like to provide a service that you're good at providing. So if you start there, then you start to think like, how can I build that relationship? That's the core question. How can I build that relationship with that CEO, that vp? Well then you start to think, how do relationships really work? And it's a tricky thing. I can't just give you an answer of like, how did you fall in love with your wife? Because I want to meet someone and fall in love with them. Like there's no just answer.

Mike Williams [00:24:11]:
Like, oh, like walk up to a random person in a bar. Like that won't work. Yeah. So there's an alchemy to it. Right. There's like a certain mysteriousness of how relationships work. But at the core of a relationship is one person doing something for another person, one person helping another person. That's what you want to start to think about.

Mike Williams [00:24:34]:
How can I Help someone who's in a position of influence so many ways that you can do that, right? But that's the question that you want to start to answer then once you win their business, right? Because eventually, let's say the conclusion that you draw is, I'm going to send them an npc. I'm going to do it for a discounted rate for the first time. I'm going to study their business and learn what would be the most desirable thing that they would need. Next, I'm going to send them a very targeted message and say, I've been seeing your company grow. I read that you did an article in xyz. I saw your podcast. I was impressed. I figured out where you're at as a company.

Mike Williams [00:25:06]:
The next thing that you're going to need is outbound salespeople. I drew all of these conclusions based on the X number of hours of research I've done on you. Would you at least take a call with me? Maybe you do that right and maybe you win their business, then the relationship isn't over. We need to kind of remember that like the first placement that you do is the very beginning. Maybe you want to send them a thank you gift after you get them your first placement. Maybe you want to go out and visit them in person. Maybe you want to take them out to lunch. Maybe you want to, after you place someone, make sure that you call them at 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, six months that you're staying in touch with them.

Mike Williams [00:25:40]:
What do we usually do as recruiters? We play someone we're on to the next thing, we never talk to them again. We place someone at a company, we get their fee, we call them back again. You need anyone else you got, hey, check out this resume. Check out this new contract. Can I charge you for this? Can I get that out of you? We need to really focus on being less self serving and more focused on relationship based helping people and adding value. And that's how we get clients here.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:06]:
Talk about a breakdown you just shared. How to reframe the thoughts that I would say probably a good 70, 80% of recruiters have.

Mike Williams [00:26:14]:
It's a mindset. It's truly a mindset. I think that when people say what's working for you on Biz Dev, they're not looking for mindset, they're looking for tactics. But I'll give you another example. So one of my young recruiters here made a very insightful comment that I strongly disagreed with. But we actually ended up coming to an agreement. And what he said was Mike. What frustrates me so much about this business is when you get someone on the phone, you make a certain amount of cold calls.

Mike Williams [00:26:41]:
It's hard. You finally get them on the phone, they could say anything. And then I have to figure out what to say back. So there's no way for me to script like, you know, I don't know what to say back. And I said to him, that is someday what you're going to love about this business. That's what makes you a great recruiter, is when you know how to answer these questions, you know how to answer them, not based on having a script in front of you, or else everyone could do it. You know how to answer them because you have a certain mindset, a certain belief pattern and a certain expertise into your niche. So, you know, that's really where it starts in recruiting is mindset over process.

Mike Williams [00:27:20]:
I'm a big believer in that. And you want to just every single day when you come in here, even if you are short for the month, just had a fall off, just lost someone to a counteroffer, it's not about you, it's about them. We're here to help them. We're here to add value. If you do that, the money will follow. When you make that mental breakthrough, that's how you start becoming a top biller. I love that.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:41]:
But you also just mentioned one thing. Process. How process are you?

Mike Williams [00:27:47]:
Great question. Because what we're doing here is something called the Netflix culture. Have you heard of the Netflix culture? So I'm a big believer in the Netflix culture. For people who don't know, there's a great book called no Rules Rules and there was a famous slide deck that was intentionally leaked by the founder of Netflix talking about what they believe as a company. And the foundational premise is that most companies are over process oriented. They have a saying in it that if you idiot proof a process, only an idiot will want to work in that process. Kind of harsh, but I think there's some truth to it. So what we believe is counterintuitive.

Mike Williams [00:28:28]:
What we believe is if you hire great people, they will not want to follow a process. They will want to trailblaze, they'll want to do things their own way. And you have to trust them in order to really be successful. And I think that you need those a player type people in order to really have a successful recruitment firm. And I remember being in a recruiting firm, being told what to do, how to do it, and I very reflexively didn't want to do it. And I didn't do it. And I remember having a conversation with my boss's boss after, you know, disagreeing on multiple things. I can't remember if it was not putting information into the system or oh, I know what it was.

Mike Williams [00:29:07]:
They wanted me calling on accountants and I was calling on engineers, which I end up starting my own business calling on engineers. And they said, mike, we know that you're not going to do it because we've told you multiple times to stop. Here's where we're at. If you fail for like a few months in a row and don't bill, you will be fired. But we're not going to fire you now. We're going to give you a chance to succeed. Well, I became president's club recruiter in my first year. Five years of president's club in a row.

Mike Williams [00:29:32]:
I was the only engineering recruiter in the company. Had they forced me into a box of a process, I probably would have quit. So I think the same thing with our people. I can't be overly process oriented or else top, you know, billing type personalities will reflexively say no. Basically. With that said, we do have to have some processes in our business because we're going from just me to six people over the course of like 18 months. So like we need to have a commission plan, we need to have a payroll, you know, system. We need to have clear expectations of if this company pays us on a Monday and payroll gets paid on Tuesday, there's not enough time for that money to clear in our bank account.

Mike Williams [00:30:14]:
And I'm not going to front you the money. You'll get it the next time. Little things like that like do need to be codified so that way there's no questions. So I would say, you know, I'm very anti process but you need to have some basic ones in order to operate a business.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:30]:
What was your biggest lessons going from zero to one. So just yourself to one employee and now one employee to five.

Mike Williams [00:30:38]:
Zero to one is just terrifying. It's just really scary. So zero to one, a lot of the fear comes in before you do it because you'll have never have started a business. You, if you're like me, have to move across the country because there's a non compete. You may end up having to defend a non compete even though you moved across the country because that's just kind of how corporate, you know, things work. They're kind of nasty that way. Right? But that's a terrifying thing. You will have to budget for it.

Mike Williams [00:31:08]:
I think that's probably the biggest thing most people think about, hey, I'd love to start a business someday. And then maybe they're proactive and say, well, I need to have a certain amount of money in order to start that business. If you were like me, I said, I'm gonna have six months of personal expenses lined up, saved in the bank in case I don't make any money for six months and then I'll start the business. That took time. I mean, it just took time to save money. I was 20 something years old and I, I didn't have a lot of money. I didn't have six months of expenses. So, you know, that's the hardest part is just like getting all of the framework set up to go from 0 to 1.

Mike Williams [00:31:42]:
Going from 1 to 5 is harder because when you go from 0 to 1, it's just you and you're in total control. It's up to you. If you're going to work 70 hours a week in order to get a fee because you know you need to make money that month because you haven't made anything yet. When you go from one to five, you have to start actually being a manager and training people and teaching people. And you don't win every argument. You lose a lot of arguments and you have a lot of arguments and you have to have office space. Yeah, there's just a, you know, you have to have a health insurance plan or you should like we, we do 401k. You have to have CPA.

Mike Williams [00:32:19]:
You have to build out a business basically. And it goes back to the question that you asked earlier, like, how do you balance growing your desk, training people, running the business? That's really hard. And you have to figure out how to do that. And it becomes additional layers of complexity on the business. Every additional person that you hire and you also. The last point I'll say about this is when you're in this zero to five people range that I'm in now, you're steering the ship. You don't have managers underneath you to really delegate down to. You also have, if you're like me, like kind of what you could afford was people who are right out of college.

Mike Williams [00:32:55]:
You can't hire a million dollar biller and pay them, you know, guarantee, you know, if you want to do that today, it's like a guarantee, 100 and something that, you know, 150,000 guaranteed and make certain amount on top of that because if they're billing 500,000, say, right. Like they're probably taking home a couple hundred already. So that they're going to leave for a 40,000 draw from you and start over? Probably not. You're going to have to advance them some money. Do you have $100,000 to give them six months into your business? No. So you end up hiring people right out of school who can afford to work on a draw. So all of that said, right, there's no one to delegate to. It's just you.

Mike Williams [00:33:33]:
And you know, now you have four or five mouths to feed. And it's scary because you have told these people, like, come in, you're going to learn, you're going to grow, you're going to have this amazing opportunity. We're going to be the biggest recruiting firm in Charlotte. You're going to be one of the first five. All you gotta do is trust me, believe in me, and make these cold calls. Well, I don't want to break that promise to anyone. And that is something that keeps you up at night. And like, that's what keeps you staying late at work.

Mike Williams [00:33:59]:
That's what makes you, you know, just really driven to succeed is like, I can't let these guys down. And so that's the harder part is like, you have people that rely on you. Once you get up to five or six employees.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:12]:
I love how much you care about keeping your promises.

Mike Williams [00:34:14]:
Thank you. It's important to me, you know, these people trust you to come work for you. And I did learn to not oversell it too much over time, because the first one or two, you're like, I really want to get this person in here. And then you start to see too, like, the challenges people have. I'm very, very fortunate that the first guy that I hired, he made $107,000 in his first year with me. And I can tell the next people in there that he did it. You can do it. The second person that I hired, she made 80 or 90, I think, in her first 12 months.

Mike Williams [00:34:45]:
So she was like, right in there. And I got a couple more guys right behind them that are in month six and months two that I think will be right around that six figure mark as well. So we have some proof positive that, like, I can tell these people that. But it's a bit. I mean, I take it as a kind of like an honor when people are going to come and work in your business, Especially when you're tiny and you've only been around for two months. And no, I think it'd be kind of heartbreaking if they come in and they do everything they said they would do and then you Failed them.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:13]:
For anybody listening, that's looking at hiring their first recruiter or their second recruiter, what advice would you have give them? If you could pick one piece of.

Mike Williams [00:35:21]:
Advice, it's really, really great. If you can nail the first one, if you can get a 10 out of 10 on your first one, that's fantastic because then you can start to build around there. That's not really advice because it's impossible to like, you just kind of luck at the draw. I learned this also from Mark Whitby. Those who have tried and gave up growing a recruitment firm are often times the one that just got unlucky with their first or second hire. They make a hire, it doesn't work out. No fault of their own. This is a tough business.

Mike Williams [00:35:55]:
Not for everyone, the guy or the gal, just, you know, they wash out in a few months. The hiring manager says, man, I just spent all this time training, developing. I lost $35,000, you know, on that whole endeavor. And by the way, my clients who need me haven't had as much of me because I've been focusing on training this person. I just have to do this myself forever. On, don't do that. That's my advice. Like, if that happens to you, this is the cost of entry for growing a business.

Mike Williams [00:36:24]:
You will have setbacks. You will invest money into people who don't work out at times. And if you truly want that type of business that will grow, you're going to have to endure those setbacks. It's also the only way for you to ever get out of the hamster wheel of filling every one of your own deals, being on call and working 50, 60, and 70 hours and going on vacation and having a client say, this guy's thinking about quitting and he's in his guarantee period. Can you talk to him and see if he would stick around? Like, I don't know about you, but even if I'm on a nice vacation, like, if it's a 30 or $40,000 fall off, I'll probably take that call. I don't want to. When I'm 40 years, I'm 34, I don't want to be doing that. When I have, you know, I have one daughter at home when I have, you know, when she gets older and God willing, if we have more kids and I'm at one of their dance recitals and that call comes in, like, I want to delegate that call down someday.

Mike Williams [00:37:17]:
So I will take the pain of, you know, hiring people and having it not work out.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:22]:
Love that.

Mike Williams [00:37:23]:
One last Thing I'll tell you about, you know, I would recommend for people on advice of doing this. You have to trust your people. You absolutely have to give them a little bit responsibility that they're not ready for. You have to let them talk to your clients. You have to bring them to client visits with you, even if they're 22 years old, just out of college. I've never talked to a client before. And you're afraid of what they might say. Coach them up, tell them, hey, I'm going to lead this meeting.

Mike Williams [00:37:47]:
You know, just kind of be here as silent partner. It's a little scary when you're new. You're like, this is a big client for me. I don't want my, you know, reputation tarnished or whatever. First of all, it won't be. Your clients get it like it's a young kid. You're doing them a favor. But trust your people, Give them a little bit of additional responsibility.

Mike Williams [00:38:05]:
They will see that you trust them, and in turn, they will trust you more and you will build rapport in your relationship with them where you really have a strong bond that they enjoy working for you.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:17]:
I just had a conversation about an hour ago with Tom Kasich and he talked about the leader and the influence and the impact that you have with your people and what really goes from an organization to that, from like one to a hundred million. It's having those relationships and creating the environment and creating the place where people want to run through a wall for you.

Mike Williams [00:38:37]:
Yeah, I completely agree with that. I mean, that's the type of place I would have always wanted to work in, you know, so I imagine that's the type of place my employees would like to work in.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:48]:
Yeah. Tom Koznick. Sorry, Koznick. Not kiss o. But okay, so we're about ready to jump over to the Pinnacle pointers. But before we do, is there anything else that you want to talk about? Building, scaling, growing a team, or tactical things that you're doing on business development that's working well.

Mike Williams [00:39:04]:
It's a tie ribbon on the growing a company part. It's very hard. Yeah. So anyone who's doing it, if you're enduring a hard time, it's not just you. This is not like something that is an easy thing to do. If it was, everyone would be doing it. To try to balance your own desk, hiring people, growing a team, family stuff, if you have one. Whatever your outside of life work is, it's very difficult.

Mike Williams [00:39:27]:
But, you know, where else are you going to go and, you know, have that high of an impact and hopefully make that amount of money. So nowhere really. So if you're about that life, then you're doing it. But yeah, that was the only other thing I would say.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:41]:
All right, we're going to jump over to the pinnacle pointers and I know you've answered some of these a few months ago, but we're going to re ask them. You're in a different place. And at the same time, there's also a lot of recruiters that are going to listen to us. Let's do it. What advice would you give to a recruiter that's just getting started in our industry this year?

Mike Williams [00:39:57]:
If you're a recruiter just starting off this year, I think know that you're going to be up against probably the hardest thing that you've ever done, but that it will be more worth it than anything you've ever done too. Know that if you fail, if that's the right word, that's okay. If you come in and after six months you decide it's not for you, that is okay. Don't build this up too much in your head. This job is not for everyone. No job is for everyone. So I want to just kind of take the pressure off of people first because it is a high pressure job and the last thing I would ever want to see is someone like really beat themselves up over something that's not their fault. So that's what I would tell people.

Mike Williams [00:40:40]:
First off, it may or may not work out for you. And by the way, that's okay. There's a million other careers that you could do. Now if you are starting off and you're feeling like, hey, I'm liking making these calls, this is good. I think that this career is for me. Now, what should I do? I would say spend as much time as humanly possible on the phones. There's so many tools today. There's automation, there's LinkedIn, there's digital marketing.

Mike Williams [00:41:05]:
There's a countless amount of things that will distract you from the core foundation of this job, which is being on the phone, talking to people and building relationships. So nothing trumps that if you have two different things to do and one of them is make a call, and the other one is update the database, make the call. So that's what I would say.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:27]:
Awesome. And same question. But first, somebody that's been around the block 5, 10, 20 years, like other recruiters that have seen you in the industry, want to grow, want to succeed, but they're just not seeing that level of success. What Advice would you have for them?

Mike Williams [00:41:40]:
So I would say if they're asking that question, first off, that's already a really great thing because the temptation is after five years, 10 years, 15 years, you think that you know it all and you don't. No one does. A common trait of high performing executive is constant learning and development. So if they're asking that question to me or to anyone, I would say you're already further along than most people. So give yourself a pat on the back. You're doing great. I would say that this industry is something that has a high propensity for imposter syndrome. We lose one deal and we think that we don't know how to recruit anyone.

Mike Williams [00:42:18]:
It's not true. Your mind will play tricks on, you know, if you're a fan of Tony Robbins, which I am, like, he talks a lot about the state that you're in and sometimes you want to take yourself into a state of, you know, your highest efficiency. So remember a time that you closed a great deal. Remember a time that you won that client. Remember a time that you were triumphant in your career history. Right? And keep that top of mind rather than keeping top of mind. These have been a last tough couple months. Nobody wants to buy from a desperate salesperson.

Mike Williams [00:42:49]:
I promise you that for some reason in sales, the rich get richer. You go into that meeting and you're like, I can take your business or not. I have got a lot of other clients. Maybe we could squeeze you in. They go, I want that guy. You go into the client, you know, and you're like, we're really desperate. We don't have any business. Or you're going to be our top priority.

Mike Williams [00:43:06]:
I've never closed a deal before, but I really think I could do something for you. They're like, who else that we got? Right? So, you know, getting yourself in that positive mindset is going to be huge for people who have been in this business for a long time.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:18]:
Yeah, I've asked this before, but love to hear it again. Has there been a book that's had a huge impact in your career?

Mike Williams [00:43:23]:
There have been many. So our company is named after a book. So our company is called Carnegie Search and there's a great book by Dale Carnegie called How to Win Friends and Influence People. Have you read that book? Great book. Something I read when I was right out of college, looking for a job, struggling to find a job. Read that book. Light switch moment went off for me that, hey, the same way that you've learned all of these things in school, you can learn how to do relationship building. That's really what that book is all about.

Mike Williams [00:43:56]:
There's a great concept, another book called who not how, and if you make the right people, basically, that you can kind of unlock anything in your life. So, Dale Carnegie, how to Win friends and Influence People, what does the Pinnacle.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:09]:
Society mean to you?

Mike Williams [00:44:11]:
To me, it represented the Mount Elysium, if that's what it's called. I think that's what it's called. The highest. The apex. Pinnacle, as you say. Right. The Mount Everest of all of the recruiting industry. And I believe that's what it is.

Mike Williams [00:44:26]:
I believe that it's the best and brightest and strongest recruiters in the entire world. I believe it's a elite, you know, consortium of top recruiters. I believe it's a highly exclusive group, which in today's day and age maybe isn't the nicest thing in the world. But it needs to be. Because if you're saying we are the pinnacle, we are the best of the best of the best, then by definition, not everyone can get in. Only the very best of the very best of the very best can get in. So, you know, that's what it represents to me. Now, as someone who has been to a Pinnacle Society conference before and is a recent Pinnacle Society inductee, I can tell you it actually, once you get in, means something different and highly unexpected.

Mike Williams [00:45:11]:
And what that is is it's really a brotherhood and sisterhood. When you go to a Pinnacle Conference, what you're going to see when you walk in is people giving each other hugs, people saying, how have you been? How have your kids? How's your business? How's your grandpa, who. Or your dad who is sick? I've been thinking about them. People love each other. Simply put, they love each other. In a Pinnacle Society, they help each other. I had a very hard question about commission scheme that we were doing. We messed up someone's commission in our company.

Mike Williams [00:45:39]:
We were embarrassed about it. We had to go back and do a payroll correction. The person was cool about it, but obviously not happy. They got underpaid. Right? That sucks. I sent a message in. Me and my controller, who is a cpa, spent hours and hours and hours trying to automate commissions in a correct way, and we could not figure it out. I sent a message to a guy who I know in Pinnacle.

Mike Williams [00:46:00]:
I said, how does your company do this? He sent me his automated commission plan that he probably paid thousands and thousands of dollars for a CPA firm to do it. Just gave it to me for free. That's what Pinnacle Society means to me, is the best recruiters helping others to push this industry of recruiting forward and make it better every single day.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:20]:
How do you, throughout your time in recruiting, want to give back to the industry?

Mike Williams [00:46:26]:
I want to make this industry have a better reputation. I think that we have a poor reputation generally. I would say we fit somewhere in between, like, car salesmen and I don't know what else. Do people hate realtors or nothing? Or dentists. People don't want to go to dentist. People don't like us. And there's a reason for it. It's because there's too many recruiters who are after a quick buck.

Mike Williams [00:46:52]:
And so it ties in with everything we've just talked about today. Having a mindset of giving, overtaking, and trying to bring in people who I think have that core philosophy in their heart but don't know about recruiting and saying, hey, you seem like that type of genuine person who's not only ambitious, but loyal, hardworking, money motivated. I think that based on what you're showing me, as in your personality, you would fit well into this industry, and you would also help, you know, improve the reputation of our company and in some small way, the recruiting industry as a whole. That's what I would like our legacy to be.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:31]:
You were president at president's club five times in a row before you start your own company. You know, we had a great conversation a few months back or whenever it was of you, your first year in your own company, you've just been freaking crushing it. It's been a lot of hard work. It's been lots of late nights. It's been like, learning things that other recruiters are not learning. But to the core of everything, what do you think has been a major part of your own personal success?

Mike Williams [00:47:55]:
That is a great question I think everyone should ask themselves. Everyone has success in something. So, you know, I'm not here to try to brag or anything. And I guess my first response to your question would just be to say thank you for saying that. That was a really nice flattering thing to hear. But I think that everyone has had success in something, and it's an important exercise to do a postmortem of, like, why was I successful in a given thing? And a lot of it comes down to just, like, who are you as a person? Like, how are you raised? Like, why are you driven towards certain goals, certain things? Like, some people want to have a family. Some people want to be career oriented. Some people want to go hike Mount Everest.

Mike Williams [00:48:39]:
They want to vacation in the French Riviera. Like you're drawn to something, right? Why? Why are you drawn to that? Why do you want to go do the Tour de France? Why do you want to go do a marathon? It means something to you. I don't know what it is, but it means something important to you. It's probably tied to your values. It's probably tied to the, you know, relationship you had with your parents, probably tied to how you see yourself as a person. So that's why people have success or people chase goals because they have a certain DNA inside of them, and it's important to them to do whatever the given thing is that they do.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:16]:
So, real quick, were you making fun of me? Me being like a marathoner and the French Riviera, loving the Tour de France?

Mike Williams [00:49:23]:
No, I probably just thought of it because I was looking at you or talking.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:29]:
I was like, wait, Mike, you're calling me out here, buddy?

Mike Williams [00:49:32]:
I hope people don't think I'm busting your chops too much. Me and Ben are buddies, so we all do this stuff.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:37]:
It's all good.

Mike Williams [00:49:39]:
Well, and. Okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:40]:
And gonna ask this question twice. The first qu. It's gonna be looking back at your recruiting career. If you had the chance to go back and give yourself advice, what would you give it? And the second question is, after you've already hired your first person, you've had in the process of hiring your second person, with everything that you know now about building a team and managing and leading and mentoring, what advice would you give yourself at that point in time, too?

Mike Williams [00:50:03]:
Yeah, there's. So there's a great quote that I'm gonna reference here that is kind of a evasive way of answering this question. But I just. I love it because I saw an interview with the CEO of Nvidia. His name is Jensen Huang. I think his last name. Anyways, he's a brilliant entrepreneur, and he was asked this question. I love the way he answered it, which was that if he was given that opportunity to sit down with former life Jensen and have a conversation and tell him what it will be like to start this business, he would not have that conversation.

Mike Williams [00:50:38]:
Because if he could impart to former self what it will be like and how hard it will be, he wouldn't have started the business. So it will be incredibly hard. And it's actually a huge advantage to have blissful ignorance. Right. It's really good because if you understand all of the challenges you're going to be faced with, you might just say, I'll do something Easier. So that's how I'd answer that question is like, I actually think that it's better to just go into this, hold your nose and jump. Hope for the best. You don't want to know everything.

Mike Williams [00:51:14]:
You can't know everything. I think that kind of life is structured that way on purpose. And even if I could. Right. So let's take it through that exercise. Let's say I did sit down with my former self and want to say something. Nothing I could say that would make that person understand, really, what it's like to walk a mile in those shoes. You could scare them out of doing it, but you couldn't, you know, actually make them walk the walk.

Mike Williams [00:51:37]:
And you would be cheating them out of a life experience if you did that. So I think that, yeah, you just have to go into it, you know, hope for the best.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:47]:
Awesome. Well, Mike, I just want to say thank you so much. It's been, once again, an amazing conversation, talking about growing, scaling, being a building manager while at the same time scaling an organization, you know, pretty much juggling these two plates at the same time, requiring a hundred percent of you. Is there anything else that you would love to share with the listeners?

Mike Williams [00:52:08]:
Hey, I just want to say thank you for having me. I want to say thank you for doing another podcast with me, because you and I did one not long ago. I always enjoy our conversations, and I think that you're doing something that is very good for the industry, and I've learned so much from watching your podcast. Man, I love it. I'm kind of really glad that we have become friends here over the time of getting to know each other from being on your podcast and keep doing what you're doing, because I think that it's an awesome thing for the recruiting sector.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:34]:
Well, thank you for saying that. And before I let you go, if anybody wants to follow you, how do they go about doing that?

Mike Williams [00:52:39]:
Please follow me. LinkedIn. Type in mike Williams Recruiter. It will come up. If you Google Mike Williams Recruiter, it should be one of the first things that come up. If you type in Mike Williams, Engineering Recruiter, it will definitely come up. And I post frequently on there, so, yeah, you'll be seeing my thoughts and feelings if you do follow me.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:58]:
Oh, before I let you go, you think about your posts like they're, like, thought about. Can you talk about that real quick?

Mike Williams [00:53:04]:
Yeah. So I would say for anyone who either is flirting with the idea of posting on LinkedIn or is afraid to, but has heard about that, it's a good thing to do, just know that it does, in fact work and can be a huge, huge thing for, you know, growing your business. I do think about my posts very often. I try to make them be a little bit different than what you normally see coming up. I think you have to stand out from the noise if you're going to do that. And I think that the biggest thing about posting is that it does help build relationships with your clients and with your prospects. We were just talking about what's the most important thing on business development, and it's about building a relationship. Well, if you're posting on LinkedIn a picture of you in your new office, say, or you're posting, I saw a post you did lately that was awesome.

Mike Williams [00:53:49]:
Ben, that was your son with a shark outfit on. And I love that post. And every time I think of you, I think of that post. By the way, it's so funny, like, how these digital relationships are formed and you and me are going to meet in person in Atlanta in a couple months, but we've never met. But, like, I feel like I kind of know your family because I saw your post and, like, I saw your son being cute in a shark outfit and I saw your post of, like, made me laugh. It was like, the recruiting industry is very dangerous. We could have a shark attack. It just made me feel like, Ben.

Mike Williams [00:54:22]:
Like, I know Ben. Like, he's that dad who, like, has a cute son and, like, is so proud of him and wants to post him and, like, has this now he's probably developing this goofy dad sense of humor that I'm developing too. It's like, just something that happens when you love your kids too much. Like, I don't know why it happens, but it does. Can you imagine trying to relay all that to a client and a client visit? You can't. You can't tell. There's no way, like, there's no way to do an MPC call and have them feel that level of closeness with you. But if they follow you on LinkedIn, they will.

Mike Williams [00:54:56]:
So that's why I post. That's why I think through my posts is I want my clients to know me as a person. And you know what? I'm probably losing clients or prospects who get to know me and I'm not their cup of tea. That's okay. I'm winning so many more that do identify with what I'm doing that would not have even known I existed if I wasn't posting. So that's my philosophy on the digital marketing side.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:23]:
Well, Mike, this has been an incredible interview. I'm so excited to meet you at the Pinnacle Society. Coming up, the only question I have before I let you go. Why should recruiters want to join the Pinnacle Society?

Mike Williams [00:55:35]:
If you're asking that question, I think the first thing you should do is check out some of Danny Cahill's content. I think you should join his According to Danny training videos because he talks not only about Pinnacle, he talks about being a great recruiter. If you follow Danny, then you would know about Pinnacle and why it's as important as it is. So people who ask that probably don't know Danny Cahill and what he does. And I truly believe that he is the best recruiter of all time. So that's my, you know, tangential way of answering that question. But if you want my answer for it, what other way would there be to do this career other than to try to be the very best at do you want to be the best, or do you want to be mediocre? If your answer is you want to be mediocre, then don't try to join Pinnacle. But I would be willing to bet most people get into sales because they're competitive and they want to win.

Mike Williams [00:56:22]:
Well, if you want to win, do you want to, you know, sort of win, or do you want to be the best top 80 recruiters in the world? That's where I want it to be. So that's why it was my lifelong goal to join Pinnacle. And if that's what you aspire to be as well, then you probably do want to join Pinnacle.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:38]:
Awesome. Well, Mike, I just want to say thank you, like always. Incredible conversation. You know, if you're listening to this, whatever you're doing now for the rest of this year is going to lay the foundation for 2025. So keep building, guys.