The Top Biller Who Surfs 200 Days a Year

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
I've spent years talking to big billers and the thing that usually sets them apart is judgment. The gut feeling they bring to a moment of truth in a deal. The question that surfaces, the real objection, the reframe that regains control of a stalling process. The move they make when a candidate goes quiet. Normally that kind of instinct comes from years on the desk, and when you're running 15 live processes at once, you don't have time to engineer that level of thinking into every moment. So too much is left to chance. Until now. Millie analyzes every detail of your live deals and builds the exact strategy you need.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:34]:
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Tony O'Neill [00:01:07]:
Elite Recruiter Podcast Be impeccable with your word, don't take anything personally, don't make assumptions and always do your best. Most people will know this who's on the call, but 2/3 of all hires industry wide are bad hires. So what can I do differently that's going to help get my customer to batting.500? 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 [00:01:48]:
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Benjamin Mena [00:02:56]:
Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive listener offer@reruitwithatlas.com I am so excited about this episode. I have actually wanted this guest to be a guest for a long time and he finally hit me up and said it's time. That is one of my favorite things about some of my recruiting friends. They know that they want to come and make an impact. And here's the reason why I'm so excited about this guest. I have been following this guest story. He has been living the most amazing life.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:30]:
He's been able to surf 200 days per year. Lives in paradise. But years ago he started making me question, what is the definition of success? What is it that you really want? What is the life that you want to live? And he found a way, because of this thing called recruiting, to live a life that he wanted to live, to live a life on his own terms. At the end of the day, what do you want? What is your definition of success? Is it to be the $2 million biller? We've been having conversations about which person to talk to to join Pinnacle, so he's still billing great. But you need to sit down, hit the pause button, write down what your definition of success is. How do you live life on your terms? Because that is going to be your guiding principle. Tony, I am so excited to finally have you on the podcast, brother.

Tony O'Neill [00:04:34]:
Thank you for inviting me on your show, Benjamin. It's an honor.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:37]:
All right, quick 30 second self introduction before we start diving in.

Tony O'Neill [00:04:41]:
I helped build three finance startups tied to executive search technology. My background was in enterprise software sales, negotiating frameworks, and when I wrapped up my last startup and moved from San Francisco back to Indianapolis, I wanted to reverse engineer my life. Recruiting became the vehicle to design that life intentionally. Wow.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:11]:
That's awesome. So I'm ready to dive in. So for those listening, you gotta look up Tony. Go find him on LinkedIn. Hit that follow button. He looks younger than I look and I'm like in my 40s. Like early 40s. And maybe you were going to say something, Tony.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:30]:
Maybe it's because you're right now living in Paradise. You surf 200 days a year and you still run an executive search firm. When did you realize that this is the life that you wanted.

Tony O'Neill [00:05:43]:
It wasn't about surfing, it was about autonomy. And I wanted to be location independent at some point in my life. I wanted control over my calendar. And now living on the Pacific coast of the Guanacaste Peninsula in Costa Rica is the output of a decision I made 15 years ago. So our freedom really was engineered.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:09]:
And for those listening so often, we want everything to happen overnight between 1 and year 15. When did it start to become the reality that you've been designing and working towards?

Tony O'Neill [00:06:24]:
Yeah, so we have been down here now almost full time for seven years. And so we travel back and forth to Indianapolis for the spring. So we'll go back in May and June, we have a house there and then we'll go back in the fall. And I have a new obsession in my life of golfing and it's a lot easier to do when I'm back in Indianapolis where my friends and my family exist.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:49]:
So I gotta ask you, when you sat down and reverse engineer the life that you wanted, what were some of the non negotiables that you wrote down?

Tony O'Neill [00:06:59]:
Yeah, like I said, the most important was to be location independent. I knew that I didn't want to live through any more Midwest winters. I had a certain amount of income that I wanted to be able to generate. I wanted to make sure that my health was protected and, and I could live a healthy lifestyle year round. I wanted to own the outcomes and I wanted direct client relationships.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:24]:
What were you willing to give up to make all that happen?

Tony O'Neill [00:07:29]:
Income structure, expense accounts, equity, a team, a pretty comfortable lifestyle. I accepted slower build in exchange for depth and alignment of my own business.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:51]:
What did you stop doing first?

Tony O'Neill [00:07:53]:
I would say the first thing I stopped doing was believing that my path to success was selling for a corporation versus selling for myself and my own abilities and skill set.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:09]:
Let's rewind this tape. How did you even end up in this land of misfit toys? Recruiting?

Tony O'Neill [00:08:13]:
Well, I don't have a search background. I have an enterprise level sales software background where I was fortunate enough that the corporations I did work with invested into some significant sales training. And because of my personal passion, I'm an Eagle Scout. I'm a lifelong athlete. I've had an ultralight gear obsession and an obsession with traveling around the globe for many years. That was the pieces that I wanted to put together to align with my passion. That would then align with the reverse engineering of what was the right business opportunity for me, which was ultimately doing executive search.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:59]:
So you had the Sales background. Let me take a step back. Like, did you look at other business options or because you're selling within the, the recruiting space, you're like, hey, there's something here.

Tony O'Neill [00:09:11]:
The reality is I was pretty quick on what I wanted to do in that I had moved back from San Francisco to Indianapolis and I had just wrapped up with my last finance startup that I was involved with. And that's when I started architecting the reverse engineer of what the right opportunity would be. And, and because I had experience in executive search, or let me rephrase that, I thought I had experience in executive search, I wanted to combine, you know, really what was going to be my passion with what I thought the business that I should be involved with. And not having a search background, I will be honest, didn't take more than 72 hours to realize that I didn't have the skill set, the complete skill set to jump in to start an executive search firm.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:01]:
So what did you do to start building those pieces of the puzzle?

Tony O'Neill [00:10:06]:
The first was hitting the brick wall and then realizing, here's the area, here's the skills that I don't yet possess, which ultimately led to finding consultants and trainers.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:18]:
Pause on that. What was this brick wall? Because I want other people to know if they're hitting it first before you finish those errands.

Tony O'Neill [00:10:27]:
The brick wall was finding opportunities and searches to work on in combining with finding a talent pool that was large enough to have the right amount of people to be able to fill that role.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:40]:
Okay. And you hit that brick wall and then you're like, hey, I need help.

Tony O'Neill [00:10:45]:
I knew pretty, pretty early on after thinking I was jumping both feet in first. And ultimately that led to my research of how to become an expert level sourcer. And I don't think we're still at that stage in executive searcher, any type of headhunting for that matter. I think we could find anyone. But at that time period, that led me to Tricia Tamkin and Jason Tebow, who then I hired as consultants to help build this set of skill set. Not just that set, actually, I realized I was missing a lot more of my skill set, which they helped me with. I also hired Peter Lefkowitz to also train me on other components of the skill set to do executive search. And that was ultimately the foundation.

Tony O'Neill [00:11:29]:
Besides my confidence and my belief, I had what it took to get the business off the ground.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:35]:
What you did versus the hiring Trisha, hiring Jason, those two have helped me a ton. So shout out to them. And then Peter Luckwitz is Just always fun to chat with. How long do you think it would have taken you to get to where you wanted to go more if you didn't hire those people and you said, hey, I'm going to figure it out myself.

Tony O'Neill [00:11:57]:
I would have walked away from it.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:01]:
They made that much of an impact?

Tony O'Neill [00:12:03]:
Priceless.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:05]:
Let's talk about that first year. What was that first year like after you've got the training, after you started working with them?

Tony O'Neill [00:12:13]:
It was business development, cold calls, reaching out to people, use voice messages to market candidates that I was speaking with. Getting a significant amount of no's. You always get a significant amount of no's in this business and believing that you can be successful with the skill set you've got even though you don't really have much experience. And that Benjamin, that was a very difficult part to call on companies and tell them what I could do and how I believed I could create value when I'd never made a placement in my entire life.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:50]:
How did you get your first client?

Tony O'Neill [00:12:52]:
I cold called the CEO of Shut Sports who makes football helmets and I had a candidate to market to him and I was very vague in my voicemail and his name was Robert Erb, still connected with him. And he called me back and I felt terrible after leaving that voice message and he called me back that was so vague, which then he told me he wasn't interested in that candidate but he needed a senior quality plastics engineer that could help retool the rotomolding or not the roto molding, the molding function for football helmets in St. Louis. And he gave me my first search.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:27]:
Let me take a step back. That's a sports niche. There's so many different things that you could have been doing. Did you start calling on sports companies or did you just run through a list of like whatever you could find at MPC and run with that?

Tony O'Neill [00:13:43]:
I decided at the very start that I was going to choose a niche and I had three options sitting in front of me. I had helped build three finance startups so I understood. Series A, Series B funding startups, they have a lot of capital burn and they want to burn it, they have to burn it. So that was going to be a great opportunity for me. Prior to helping these three startups, I worked in the early years with Monster.com and I was responsible for building out their enterprise healthcare channel. So I already knew that healthcare technology executives were some of the highest paid tech executives in healthcare. And so I put these three options in front of me. The outdoor sporting goods industry, finance startups and healthcare technology.

Tony O'Neill [00:14:29]:
And my mentors, they thought the total addressable market was going to be very big in startups in healthcare technology. But what I really wanted to do is I wanted to combine that passion of the outdoor in the sporting goods industry and use that as my platform to communicate and create my expertise in the niche.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:52]:
So you pretty much ignored your mentors?

Tony O'Neill [00:14:56]:
I wouldn't say ignored, but I trusted my gut instinct.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:01]:
So that's like one of those things. Like you're sitting there looking at these like two massive markets where you can, the money's there. How do you know, like nobody really talks about the outdoor space, but how do you know that a niche is big enough that you can go all in or figuring out if it's too small, if you're like, did you realize that or did you have to start banging your head against the wall and getting those no's?

Tony O'Neill [00:15:23]:
Benjamin, you don't really know what these highly specialized niches, if they're big enough. So you have to be almost obsessively confident that you can make it work at all costs as you build up your brand assets. And I invest in the consulting and the training and I develop a Persona that matches my industry. And I guess the Persona that was easy was more the brand that matches my industry. And what you do get is you have to have the ability to become top of mind. And so when you go in, if you're going to specialize in a very narrow, small niche, if you can own might be big enough and you got to believe that you can create value for those organizations. Especially in the industry that I operate in where these brands, they do not have trouble attracting talent. They are the most sought after brands on earth for people to work with and try to align their passions and to do something that has a bigger meaning in something that they care about.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:31]:
So you're not only competing with like every search firm out there, technically speaking, you're also competing against them. Just posting something on Instagram and people want to work there. You actually said something to me and I'm kind of curious about this. You told me that you built a brand and not a search firm. I want to know what that means. I also want to know when you made that decision.

Tony O'Neill [00:16:57]:
I can't say that I knew it from the start, but what I did know was this. The Patagonias, the North Face, the yeti coolers of the world, they're brands. They're not just companies and products. And so I thought the best way to align myself with the brands Was I have to become a brand and I have to look at everything I do as a direct representation of an outdoor industry sporting goods company. But I specialize in the executive search part of it, where they specialize in the product development and the marketing.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:35]:
So I want to unpack this a little bit because actually I didn't even think about this until you mentioned it because literally, Yeti Coors is just a piece of metal that you pour a drink into. You know, North Face is just some puffy jackets. Like any label could be on the front of it. How do you make your recruiting brand be as thought about and aligned like they are? And I know this is going to be a fast forward that we're going to have to jump back into everything,

Tony O'Neill [00:17:57]:
but so you have to live it and be able to speak it and talk it and actually have the curiosity and the knowledge and the passion and the enthusiasm. If you think about the brands in this industry or in all the subcategories, paddle sports, surfing, snow sports, they are catering to an enthusiast. And so from my perspective, I was already that enthusiast. I already cared about the product and what I was going to take. Whether I was going, I was going to travel to Asia or I was going to go on a surf trip, or I was going to hit single track in Brown County State park for four hours, I was already thinking about the product because I was living it and I needed to make sure that they knew I lived in also.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:41]:
So a recruiter listening to this and they hate their life, like recruiting on CPAs. What would you say to them? They're like, hey, this is, I don't know, man. Tony's got me inspired. I like all these things over here. Can I really create a search firm and create a business on that something I'm excited about?

Tony O'Neill [00:19:05]:
It depends if they're willing to take the risk. My gut instinct would be stay in the niche you're already in and go deeper, go more narrow. What I built was out of thin air. And when I look at the ups and downs of doing that and not having the experience doing it, I'm not a savant, I'm not the smartest guy in the room. I have a tremendous amount of perseverance. And I would tell that individual, talk yourself out of it for two weeks, tell yourself all the reasons you shouldn't do it. And after those two weeks, you can't get your mind off it, then you're probably ready.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:42]:
So as you were sitting there building this business, you started off like 100% contingency. Right. Or did you start off like, doing retained like you are now?

Tony O'Neill [00:19:48]:
I was taught the contingency model.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:50]:
When did you switch and why did you switch?

Tony O'Neill [00:19:52]:
In all honesty, right, you have two models of search, and I'm not going to sit here and tell anyone that one is better than the other. I think really what it comes down to is, is your personal preference, and that is how deep do you want to go, how transactional do you want to go, how committed do you want to be? And ultimately, you know, in year three is when I started to evolve the business from a full contingency model into a retainer model.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:21]:
Okay. And let me take also another step back, because like we talked about this in the pregame, this is just like an incredible story of how one client can actually change your life. What the heck happened with yeti?

Tony O'Neill [00:20:33]:
There's a story behind this. And I was doing a search for a brand in the Northeast called Jetboil. They make high performance stoves. And on that search, I recruited a product development executive from Coleman Camping, and he met with my client. Jetboil interviewed one through the process. In the end, it wasn't right for him and it wasn't right for Jetboil. Three months later, he ends up at Yeti Coolers. I didn't place him there.

Tony O'Neill [00:21:06]:
Three months after that, after he got embedded, he went to the founders of Yeti Cooler. He said to the two brothers, he said, guys, I'm really happy that I'm here. I know we have to start building out my team. I know that we're going to use a search firm. And I want to be transparent that I did not have a good experience with the search firm that placed me here. That being said, I had that exposure to a guy named Tony o' Neill at Highline Outdoor Group, and you guys should meet him. And Roy and Ryan Cedars, the founders of yeti, said, sure, we'd love to meet Tony. And they invited me to come down to Austin, Texas.

Tony O'Neill [00:21:38]:
So I fly down, I meet them, I start doing searches for them and for the executive that was from Coleman. And in that first year, and a lot of people know this story, an equity sponsor surfaced from New York City and they came to Austin and they pitched Roy and Ryan on taking them to become a public company to do an IPO and to grow them to a billion dollars. And Roy and Ryan signed up for it. They said, we're in. And so that private equity firm went back to Austin and they said to Roy and Ryan, look, we're going to start out by building out your executive team that can handle the growth. And we've been working with a search firm in New York for the past 25 years that we have a great relationship. And they're called Korn Ferry. And Roy and Ryan said, no problem, use whoever.

Tony O'Neill [00:22:29]:
Whoever is is best for you all. But you should meet Tony o' Neal from Highline Outdoor Group. He's done really good work for us. And the private equity group said, okay, sure, we'll meet the guy. And so they invited me back to Austin and I flew down there. And 72 hours later, they pushed out Korn Ferry and they chose Highline Outdoor Group. And so at that starting point, over the next two years, I was personally responsible for placing 23 of the senior leaders and equity holding executives at Yeti Coolers during their biggest growth period. And to be honest, it was a lot of work.

Tony O'Neill [00:23:08]:
And I thought I was kind of working myself not to death, but I was. I was not having much. I did not have much of a life during that period. And I was getting paid handsomely for the work. But there was something else that was happening that I didn't realize at that moment while I was in the thick of it. And you think of any executive search, I'm going to talk to between 40, 50 or 60 individuals, they're not all going to be a fit, right? And yet he's not going to be a fit for all them. But some of those individuals really appreciated my approach and the methodology that I was using to recruit them. And so when the YETI projects wrapped up, these individuals started to call me up and say, tony, you know, we know what you were doing with the yeti.

Tony O'Neill [00:23:55]:
Do you think you can help us build out our team? And so what ultimately became not only a very equitable couple years of doing searches for Yeti Coolers, what I didn't realize what was happening was the greatest brand building and business development activity that I never imagined. And so my name then became synonymous with YETI and the industry that I operate in. And it started getting passed around in family offices, in other private equity offices, even in board meetings, which it led me to my name getting passed around in Columbia Sportswear's board meeting, where they invited me out to Portland. I met the Boyle family, I met Gert Boyle, who has since passed, and the rest of the family. And I've helped them build their teams out. And I've done similar projects now with what I've done with YETI for other brands in my industry. Where I go in, I start building out and Oftentimes in the outdoor and sporting goods industry, when these companies get to a certain size, they're product marketers. But if they're going to grow bigger and they're going to, they're going to get past that plateau of growth at that 40 or 50 or $100 million, where they're kind of stalling or they're just staying at.

Tony O'Neill [00:25:02]:
And then they want to build, they want to use brand leadership, which is the CPG model. And that's something else I'm known for doing, is being able to convert an outdoor industry brand to use data and analytics really to drive innovation.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:15]:
That Coleman executive that you worked with, that you didn't place, but he loved your process so good that he's like, yeah, the exec firm that worked with me sucked. I want to call this guy. What the hell did you do with him that made him do that?

Tony O'Neill [00:25:35]:
You know, I treated him like any individual I would treat with respect and transparency and a desire to create value, not just for him, but also for Jetboil.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:46]:
One or two things that you did to help create value, like, you got to give me a little more. I think this is so normal for you, but it's not normal for other recruiters that are so transactional that they need to hear this.

Tony O'Neill [00:26:02]:
Ultimately, it comes down to the individual that you're working with. What is their motivation? Right. And sometimes when you first ask what their motivation is, you might get maybe a templated answer. But as you spend time with them and you dig deeper into really what their objective is, not just their next role, that allows you to work with them in a different way and to understand truly what's going to be the right opportunity versus the wrong opportunity. And I think he felt that. And we're still in touch today.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:33]:
That's phenomenal. And when you start working with yeti, for those listening, did you technically have to do a different agreement for every search or did you get an agreement that covered everything?

Tony O'Neill [00:26:43]:
Yeah. So in that 72 hour period between when I met the private equity group, then we signed the deal, we did it on a whiteboard. And that was also the evolution of me transitioning the business into a retainer model. Because the contingency was not going to be the right solution for yeti. They needed someone that would be committed and that would get each one of these roles to the finish line.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:07]:
So you worked it out with a potential client and that was your, your shift technically into more retained on a

Tony O'Neill [00:27:16]:
whiteboard with a PE for in yeti's headquarters. It was Literally the contract became a photograph of the whiteboard which I then translated into the legal agreements.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:30]:
I freaking love that you always hear about those napkin stories and now this is a whiteboard story. So I want to ask this question especially for those that are listening and I truly believe to win in the future you have to provide something different than just ABC search. So do you think like retained is harder than contingency recruiting?

Tony O'Neill [00:27:56]:
It is harder and I can explain why. My belief structure is, is that it is more difficult is when I operate or when I was operating in the first three years on contingent agreements, I was responsible for putting resumes and short write ups in front of my customers and then trying to handle as much of the process as they would allow. And the beauty of contingency is, and I think Steve Finkel does a really good job in one of his books that talks about the difference between an A search, a B search and a C search. And when you're operating contingency you can take all levels of searches and you know that you're going to put your most time into an A search, a little bit less time into a B search and you're going to see what happens with a C search. So in contingency what's easier is you can walk away. And you can walk away the search is bad. If it's a C level search and you're, you're not finding the right candidate because it's probably, maybe they don't exist or take any of those searches on a contingent basis. If you're not getting feedback from your customer and you can't, you can't do good work without feedback, plain and simple, you can just get lucky.

Tony O'Neill [00:29:11]:
But you can walk away from a customer or company that's misbehaving. And if you submit a candidate and you don't hear back, you've put a ton. You put all this time and effort and energy to get someone prepped up and excited about a job and then that company goes on and maybe they hire internally or maybe they cancel the search or maybe another recruiter surfaces the candidate a candidate faster that they want. You've now put the time, effort and energy into something but you've not been compensated for it.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:43]:
You talk a lot about value when it comes to like working as retained search. What's the real value that a client is paying for?

Tony O'Neill [00:29:53]:
Process, control, objective clarity, risk reduction, partnership and precision.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:03]:
And if you're sitting there for somebody listening and I know you've been retained for a while now, but if you're sitting There, like making this shift and want to move over to retained, but a client starts to push back, like, how would you frame that back to them? Like, no, this is the value that you're going to get.

Tony O'Neill [00:30:21]:
Yeah. So, as you know, Benjamin, I've listened to a lot of your guests and some of your guests operate contingent and they kill it. They do great. They love it. You have other guests that they'll do a combination hybrid. They'll do a retained search or contingent based on what the. What the customer wants. And if you're going to evolve into a retainer model, you know, the two most basic things that you've got to understand is one, can you fill the search? Is it a quality search? Is what they're asking for real estate from a compensation, from a geography, from a skill set, from an experience, from a relocation, you have to know a lot more upfront.

Tony O'Neill [00:31:03]:
And then ultimately it's your job to either sell them the retainer or keep it, as I do, which I have to sell it. And I commit to only doing retained searches. I do not take contingent searches. Even if I have the candidate in my inbox and I've just spoken with them, I'm not going to give them that candidate on a continuous basis because I can't control the process, so I can't control the experience that candidate's going to have and I can't control the experience that my customer is going to have. And of course it would be great to get lucky. But what I. What I know for fact is if I operate on a contingent basis and I try to make that placement with one person, it's just luck. And I'd rather spend my time on my customers that commit to me because I fully commit to them, I'm going to get them across the finish line.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:56]:
I know recruiting has had a lot of up and ups and downs, and you said in 2024 that your niche was hit pretty hard. What did that feel like? And did you panic during that?

Tony O'Neill [00:32:09]:
Yes, briefly. But panic only lasts if you don't pivot. So I did two things, Benjamin. I reached out to every one of my past clients and I asked them, how could we improve? What can we do to be better partners? The second thing, I. Every single one of them, every one of them, I reached out that I had done searches for and asked them. No one wants to ask that question is what I found. Because they, Some of them were very surprised I asked them. And the second thing I did was I had some more time than I normally have on my hands.

Tony O'Neill [00:32:43]:
So I leaned into, I have an assessment background. One of the startups I helped build, we created the technology platform to administer cognitive, behavioral and 360 degree executive assessments. And essentially as a technology that kept the process in their ATS. But I had experience working with IO PhDs. Those are industrial organizational psychologists that specialize in studying the workforce. And so what I did is I leaned into going and getting a few certifications. I got certified in the disc, certified in the predictive index. And what I began doing was sharing that information with my customers.

Tony O'Neill [00:33:24]:
And one of my customers came back to me and they said, look, Tony, we're getting ready to have our senior leadership off site retreat. Would you be willing to do the DISC assessment with our, with all 18 of the leaders and come out and present the findings? And I said, absolutely. And I had to quickly learn. One, how do you even do that? Two, use this experience that, you know, I've just been certified in. But what I was able to do is I called One of the PhDs I worked with and he said, hey, call this guy who actually lives in Indianapolis also, and his name is John Quals. And John and I put together an entire plan to do the DISC assessment for the entire senior leadership team and then travel to their off site in a cabin meeting and present to them some of the challenges that they have in communication. Because most challenges inside organizations aren't really. They're almost always communication style.

Tony O'Neill [00:34:18]:
And the disk is really good at helping people understand that we might all be saying the same thing. It just sounds different.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:26]:
So it was almost like a light bulb moment where they kind of called you like, so, like you're laughing about this.

Tony O'Neill [00:34:34]:
Yeah, I had the time. And if you're going to do this, if you're going to be an executive search consultant, when you have these dips and you will, this is the time you sharpen the axe. You got to get sharper. And you read books and you listen to podcasts, you get certified in assessments. What else can you do to create value for your customer while also building your brand? So you're always, we have to always be learning and we have to keep innovating too if we want to stay relevant.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:03]:
You grew this into almost an auxiliary part of your business.

Tony O'Neill [00:35:07]:
Yeah. Over the last couple of years, it's well over six figures that I have earned adding the assessment solutions into my offering and also my searches.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:19]:
And I found this really interesting. So you actually offer this as like an add on package to your executive search, but you also did something really interesting. You gave them an option with the add on an extended guarantee. So out of curiosity, like all these clients that you're talking with, are they buying the assessment or are they buying the extended guarantee?

Tony O'Neill [00:35:42]:
They're buying both and they're getting both. So what I started to do is I went and I found contracts from other search firms that were readily available from Heidrick and Struggles, Korn Ferry, Russell Reynolds. I started looking at them and I looking at their guarantees and their terms and first off, their fees are much higher than people realize. And if you're unfamiliar with what they charge and maintenance fees that they charge, I suggest anyone listening to go do that same exercise that I did. But what I also found was a few of those firms were offering a behavioral assessment which then increased the their warranty on the candidate. So I didn't invent this. So I decided all right, now I've got this, I've got these certifications, I know how to administer these assessments. I had to teach myself how to sell the assessment and I began offering is that they my customers invest in a data driven science backed assessment that will help them have a better chance of making the right hire.

Tony O'Neill [00:36:48]:
And I think most people will know this who's on the call. But 2/3 of all hires industry wide are bad hires. So what can I do differently that's going to help get my customer to batting 500? Right, a baseball player that bats 500, that's incredible. So if I can get my customers using data in science to make their hire batting 500 a 50% chance versus 2/3 of a chance that they're going to make the wrong hire, well there's a lot of value in that. And when you really understand how to use the assessment and you can get someone who is a 6 out of 10 or a 7 out of 10 and you can keep increasing that, now you're increasing the value and they have a better chance of making the right hire. And so I decided to then create that in my proposals. Before I start a search, I offer as an option to invest in the assessment and not only will we use this and you have to again you have to understand how to articulate what the based on which assessment you're going to use, how you're going to give them an advantage, but then also I increase my warranty period. And they feel like number one they're making a more educated decision on who they want to interview and potentially take to the end and get across the finish line.

Tony O'Neill [00:38:03]:
But two, they also feel like they're more protected from the Guarantee. And I mean, let's be honest though, about candidate warranties. And that is, once that candidate starts, it doesn't matter if you're contingent or retained. You've got no control on how they're onboarded. You have no control over the workload that they're given. You have no control over how they treat that person when they arrive in the organization. So candidate warranties and guarantees, they're really not there, really should be. The customer should own that.

Tony O'Neill [00:38:39]:
But in our industry, like many things, there are ways that companies have been doing things for years and the way that search consultants have been presenting their agreements. But the one thing that you've got to understand when a customer is talking about a warranty is everything that you choose who you hire, you choose how you onboard. And I have no control over that. And I want to guarantee what I can control. So when you know that it's not that you take that you all of a sudden have control over it, but you're using data and science to help make that a better possibility. It's the right individual.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:13]:
I absolutely love this. And I also love that, like you found a way to go find the contracts for a lot of those other large organizations, realizing that you didn't have to reinvent the wheel. This is already being pitched. So picture this. I'm a $500,000 a year recruiter. I listen to this, I'm like, okay, this sounds good. I want to try implementing this. What should I start doing tomorrow to start making changes?

Tony O'Neill [00:39:39]:
Do your research into pre hire assessments, get certified, learn to sell it, build it into your proposal, price it higher than you think you should. Tie it to reduced risk and offer an extended warranty.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:57]:
Love it. So switching gears a little bit, I know that you also work a lot with AI because we've been chatting over the years. I found one of the things that was super interesting is you're always chasing the strategic insights from the conversations. What are you looking for and what are you missing that you needed the AI to find for you?

Tony O'Neill [00:40:18]:
I'll give you a real time example. So you interviewed Steven Finkel about debriefing the candidate. His new book, I have it actually sitting right here next to me and I'm reading his book, but kind of at a snail pace. There's a lot of significant content in that book. So I wanted to give myself a jump start. I found the transcript to your podcast, or I had the transcript made from an audio file. Then I pushed into software that I use to edit podcasts called descript. Once I got into Descript.

Tony O'Neill [00:40:52]:
I could label the speaker so I could split out what you said and what Steven Finkel said. Then I was able to create my own debriefing cue card based on how I prompt the LLM. So now on my desktop I've got a PDF that goes through all the stages of debriefing. At least that he shared on the podcast. There's more in the book. And now I use that as my card. After individuals go and interview, I start taking them through this card in the process. So it sped up my time to be able to implement a strategy that we actually learned about on your podcast.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:27]:
I didn't even do that. I need to go back and do that now. Crap, that's awesome. All right, check notes of homework I need to do. After talking with Tony, I knew this is going to be an awesome episode. Mostly for me. If you guys are listening out there, this one's for me. But guys, okay, I'm 100% switching gears, guys.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:47]:
And you do not look your age at all. Like I, I know people your age and my God, I think you're about, you look about 25 years younger. What the hell are you doing differently?

Tony O'Neill [00:42:04]:
Well, Benjamin, thank you. That's very, that's very complimentary of you. I'm 48 and over the past seven years I really wanted to start optimizing my total health. I began really caring about what I was putting into my body when I was racing mountain bikes after college. And I only took that so far. And as I have moved down here and I have a wife that also is very optimized and cares very much about her health, I've implemented a few things that I think definitely help. You know, this is not appearance based stuff. This is really about trying to have the whole body health because we have, we have our physical health and we have our mental health and really they're two, they go hand in hand.

Tony O'Neill [00:42:52]:
But they're different ways that you can approach each and every. We both know that executive search consultants work a lot. They spend a lot of time in this seat right here talking and working and grinding and trying to find solutions to their problems or their clients problems. So for me, I guess I have a few things that there's probably a decent amount in your audience who do some of this. But I believe that hitting my sauna at least five days a week, I cold plunge, I surf, like we said, quite frequently. I wake up pretty early. I'm up at about 4:45am I start every morning by drinking electrolytes and then doing body movements. Out in my garden, we use a red light panel my wife and I do almost every evening.

Tony O'Neill [00:43:45]:
We really believe that getting sun into our eyes and our skin at the right times of day, when the waves from the sun are not going to be damaging to us. Clean fuel is about what we put in our bodies, right? It's the food and how clean can we eat. Meditation has been a practice that's been part of my life for about 20 years. I go so far as one of my. One of my formulations is 1.8 grams of clean protein per kilo of my body weight. That has been very, very helpful in keeping myself physically fit for my daily activities, which we know that I surf, I got body movements, I play pickleball, I lift weights. I have in front of us, you can't see it, but in my garden I've got a golf simulator, an outdoor golf simulator that I work on my swing while I'm down here. And something that I learned early in racing mountain bikes from a friend, and he always said this, he goes, tony, if you want good coming out of your body, you got to put good going into your body.

Tony O'Neill [00:44:46]:
And that always resonated with me.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:48]:
How have you seen taking care of your physical health translate directly into recruiting performance?

Tony O'Neill [00:44:56]:
Energy equals clarity. Clarity equals better discovery, faster processing, better decisions.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:05]:
And how are the waves where you're at?

Tony O'Neill [00:45:07]:
About 15 seconds in between them, Pretty clean in the mornings. Building up as we get closer to our. To the season where the waves have a little bit more power. So they're about chest to head high right now, but we're going into. Maybe some days we get double overhead.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:22]:
Did I ever tell you that I went to high school in Cocoa Beach?

Tony O'Neill [00:45:25]:
No.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:26]:
Yeah.

Tony O'Neill [00:45:30]:
Did you learn to surf?

Benjamin Mena [00:45:31]:
Heck, yeah.

Tony O'Neill [00:45:33]:
There's a direct flight from Amsterdam to here. And I know you can get to Amsterdam fairly easily from where you're at.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:39]:
I definitely could. If you want a good laugh. Like, every teacher knew Kelly Slater.

Tony O'Neill [00:45:43]:
Every teacher that you had knew him.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:45]:
Oh, yeah, everybody knew him. Everybody knew him. And like, the one thing. And sorry, guys, we're going off topic. The one thing that because I played sports in high school, every time somebody, another athlete would get like A, a B or a C or an F, the teachers would be like, you know, Kelly Slater got straight A's. And like, you think of surf culture, but he. Excellence across the board.

Tony O'Neill [00:46:11]:
He is excellence across the board. Right. He is another person that believes that you got to put good in your body to get good out. And now at this stage in his life, he's a businessman, he's got several very successful businesses. I've reached out to him about his businesses before with some ideas and some thoughts. He's responded back to me and I know he's got, he's got, got a little bit of connection to the part of Costa Rica that I'm in. So at some point I hope that I'm, I'm in the lineup and I see, I see him destroying one of our beach break waves down here.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:42]:
Anyway, sorry guys for the tangent. Surf tangent. But anyways, back, back to focusing on recruiting, looking at your life. Because here's the thing, like you literally redesigned your life, you reverse engineered, you want to live life on your own terms. But one thing that you kind of told me, the freedom that you have can only come about from discipline. What are the non negotiables that you do every day to be able to enjoy this life that you want on your own terms?

Tony O'Neill [00:47:16]:
Break a sweat every day. Get as much sunlight into your eyes as you can ground. Take your bare feet, put them in the earth every day. Focus your work blocks. Clean fuel in your body in the evenings, wind down, Eliminate high frequency blue lights. Eliminate as much world news coming to your feeds as possible.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:41]:
Those work blocks, what do they look like for you?

Tony O'Neill [00:47:44]:
10 to 3, 30?

Benjamin Mena [00:47:46]:
And that's it.

Tony O'Neill [00:47:47]:
That is when I spend the time with my clients, with my candidates and the hours around that time if I'm, you know, once I've broken my sweat and I've started my day the way I shared, that's when the organization, that's when the administrative work and everything else takes place. But I reserve that time block. In selling we used to call this terminology, we actually called it prime selling time. And we would put notes on our office doors and it would say do not disturb through these times. It's our prime selling time. And so I've always kept that with me, that here's the time where my most high value activities take place. And I try to stay as consistent as possible with that.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:29]:
You have your own business, you don't have a boss, you don't have somebody else telling you what to do. But you are still to this day disciplined with those prime time selling hours.

Tony O'Neill [00:48:39]:
It's not easy, it's easy to get distracted. It's easy when you work for yourself and you have a couch behind you that you could take a nap on or you can do a million other things. But I really, I want to do this for another 15 years, Benjamin. And to do that I've got to stay disciplined so I can continue to create value for my customers and also the individuals that I choose to work with.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:05]:
For those listening that are thinking about what success means to them, like you, you are living the dream. What's your advice to people about figuring out what they actually want?

Tony O'Neill [00:49:16]:
Well, we're all different, but I think energy, our internal and physical energy, is the multiplier and you've got to protect that.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:25]:
And then you also said something super important, especially with how the world is working right now. You know, at the time of this recording, the news is in your face non stop. And I'm sure by the time this comes out, the news will be in your face even more. I believe knowing things is important, but how has that helped your clarity in your business? By controlling what comes in.

Tony O'Neill [00:49:45]:
If the news I'm reading or digesting is not helping my psychology, my personal psychology, it's not helping me do a better job for my customers and it's not helping me do a better job for the individuals that I evaluate and I take through my process. That's how I try to filter out what's going on in the algorithms that we're being fed. And it seems like these algorithms are made to get us kind of riled up and to make our nervous systems heightened. And it's really hard to now get out of that. I've heard this term before called the algorithm cage. And I think you have to, you have to. If social media is your jam, that doesn't mean you can't have any. But delete that app off your phone and put it on your phone.

Tony O'Neill [00:50:30]:
When you're like, I'm gonna spend 10 minutes, or I've got one certain time of day, I'm gonna do it and then get off it. I find that certain apps on my phone we'll take for an example LinkedIn. You can't get, it's on my phone. But I have to go through three steps to even get to LinkedIn. So I'm not, I'm not going through that feed, I'm not looking at it while I'm on my telephone, unless I have to get in there. And even my mail is a hidden app on my phone. So I don't just pick up my phone and click mail. I've got to pick up my phone, unlock the phone.

Tony O'Neill [00:50:59]:
It's got a face ID for my mail. And the mail icon doesn't even sit on the phone, it's hidden, it's a hidden icon. And, and so these are some small steps that I use to protect myself from constantly feeling like I have to engage into screen time and I'm not perfect at it. I struggle with it. And so I found certain blocks and roadblocks to put in place to slow that down, which ultimately slows down this essence of news that's coming at you from every direction that really has very little bearing on your specific role as being a search consultant and taking care of your customers and the individuals that you're taking through a process.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:36]:
With the way the algorithm works and the way that recruiters spend time on the different places being stuck in the algorithm, how much money do you think they're losing?

Tony O'Neill [00:51:45]:
It's probably hard to measure. We know that the value of one vice president or CMO search, we know what that value is. That's, that's a six figure plus value. And if you're not focused on building your brand, putting out good content, connecting with customers, letting people know what you do and staying in touch with them, that's the risk.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:08]:
We've talked about a lot before we jump over to the quick fire questions. Is there anything that you want to go deeper on or is there a question that I should have asked you?

Tony O'Neill [00:52:15]:
You know, I would say that other individuals out there that are either running their own, we'll say niche within a search firm or it's their own search firm like mine. If you run or want to be a high performance search firm, you've got to own the client relationship and delegating delivery cost can create customer attrition. If you're going to do this and you're going to be a high performance firm, you've got to own the relationship with your customer and you've got to love your customer. And I have found that because of my model that I operate on retainers, my customers, my job is to take care of them through every step and make sure they have a good experience. And that limits my frustration. Not saying you can't get frustrated with the customer, but I know that they're committed to me and I'm committed to them. And so owning the customer and being the one that owns that relationship I think is the most critical part of running a search firm.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:14]:
When you realize that, did you have to learn that the hard way?

Tony O'Neill [00:53:17]:
Yeah, that's part of my, Part of the. When I went and asked my customers when I could do better is when I started to learn more about that. And as I engage with them and they work with me directly on searches and they don't work with anyone else, my searches are Growing in size and frequency. And honestly, I really enjoy my customers because they've committed with me too. And so when a search is over and I tell this to them, sometimes it feels lonely because I've spent so much time in our weekly standing meetings meeting with them just like this. And we had these relationships and that's one of the challenges of doing searches. We're a paid for fee for service. But I really, I appreciate that time I have with my customers.

Tony O'Neill [00:54:03]:
I'm never going to take that for granted.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:06]:
I love it. So jumping to quickfire questions, you know very well that they don't need to be quick answers. But if a recruiter is listening to this and they like they're looking five years out from now because they know it takes time to work towards this. They want to live life on their own terms, what do they need to start doing differently tomorrow?

Tony O'Neill [00:54:25]:
Specialize tomorrow, Protect your energy, stop mixing the models, choose your model and be really, really good at it and committed to it and build your brand, which sometimes a day, a daily activity, sometimes it's a couple times per week. But learn about brand building and become your brand.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:43]:
Do you think you would be as impactful without focusing on the brand time?

Tony O'Neill [00:54:48]:
Not at all. I mean, let me rephrase that. I could be impactful, but I wouldn't have the business I have today because

Benjamin Mena [00:54:53]:
I feel like only maybe 1% of recruiters out there have actually spent time building their own personal brand or company brand.

Tony O'Neill [00:54:59]:
They should if they want to keep doing this and have successful year after year. And that's why when you heard me say earlier, I want to do this for another 15 years and I can only do this if I have customers and I'm only going to have customers if people know who I am.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:14]:
This is a new question that somebody I just interviewed last week that has been pounding me for about two months to start asking. This is for Luke. Tony, you are going to be the first. What does your contracts look like?

Tony O'Neill [00:55:25]:
I try to keep them no more than two pages. They're pretty structured. It's an evolution of things I've learned over the years and it articulates what each payment is going to be based on what we project the total compensation being for the individual. I'm at the much higher end of the scale from a fee percentage. My fee is based on total value provided, which is the total compensation package of an individual. And I think that other than the basics which are in most people's agreements and some of the legal terms, that's the structure.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:01]:
Do you have a book that's had a huge impact on your career.

Tony O'Neill [00:56:03]:
I do. I have two. And I've thought about this because I knew this was a question that you ask everyone. And the first book that I would recommend, if individuals out there haven't read it, it's a very, very, very powerful book. And the author, his name is Alan Weiss. He's a management consultant who lives in Connecticut. He drives a Rolls Royce. Pretty animated guy.

Tony O'Neill [00:56:27]:
But what this book called the million, it's called Million Dollar Consulting. And that book teaches that you are not selling time, you're selling outcomes. And outcomes as it relates to my search process is it's not about the hire, it's not the person, it's not the title, it's not the butt in a seat. It is what does that person do that impacts the organization in a positive way? And so what he, the author, Allen, he forces you to stop thinking like a vendor and start thinking like an advisor. And the value, it's not an hours, it's the impact. And if you help a company avoid making a $5 million just using that example mistake, your invoice has nothing to do with your calendar. So it sharpens how you diagnose problems, you position your expertise. And price is based on value created, it's not effort expended.

Tony O'Neill [00:57:34]:
And so for recruiters and consultants, that shift changes. It changes a mindset. And it's the difference between, I think, asking for work or being retained for your judgment.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:47]:
That's good. Running off to go buy that book right now.

Tony O'Neill [00:57:51]:
I got one more. I got one more. So that, that's the, that's the, that is, that's the sharpening of the business mind. But I think you got to sharpen your heart in your mind, which are one. And that book is. I'm gonna hold it up. So if anybody's watching, it's called the Four Agreements. Don Miguel Ruiz in this book, I've read it several times now and it tunes up kind of like my inner operating system.

Tony O'Neill [00:58:18]:
Or it's going to tune up your inner operating system. And it's four tenants. This is the four Agreements. So if you're not going to read it, here's what they are. It's be impeccable with your word, don't take anything personally, don't make assumptions, and always do your best. And that's simple. It's simple on paper, but at times it can be hard on hardened practice. And I think it cleans up emotional noise.

Tony O'Neill [00:58:46]:
You start or you begin to stop reacting and you Stop over personalizing. You communicate, I think, more cleanly. You operate with more integrity and less ego. And for me, it's less about spirituality and probably more about sovereignty.

Benjamin Mena [00:59:04]:
Right.

Tony O'Neill [00:59:05]:
You become steadier and steady. People make better decisions.

Benjamin Mena [00:59:10]:
You want a good laugh? Literally, last night when I was on Audible, that popped up in my recommended section.

Tony O'Neill [00:59:17]:
That's quite coincidental.

Benjamin Mena [00:59:19]:
I was like, you pulled it up. I was like, wait, I saw that in my options when I popped on yesterday. You know, I'm always seeing what's on Audible to when I'm not running with Gabe. Love that. All right. Favorite tech tool that you love right now.

Tony O'Neill [00:59:33]:
Tech tools are tech tools. There doesn't seem to be a ton of differentiation. Everyone seems to be doing a pretty good job. So as you heard me talk about earlier, I love using descript, which is actually a video editing tool that transcribes audio. So that's what I use for my strategic extraction and building out strategies based on conversations. And my solar generator. I have 2635 watt panels on the roof, two big batteries, and anytime power goes off, power doesn't go off here. And it keeps me using the resources in this small country minimally.

Tony O'Neill [01:00:07]:
And takes my $850 electric bill and drops it to 180.

Benjamin Mena [01:00:13]:
Give you one of those generators, man, this is. This is going to. This has been just the most amazing episode, and I've been looking forward to chatting with you for a long time because I truly believe that, like, people need to, like, figure out what they want and what their definition of success is. I got one more question for you and your puppy. Who is that?

Tony O'Neill [01:00:38]:
This is Sophie.

Benjamin Mena [01:00:39]:
Hey, Sophie. Sophie, what is the key to Tony's success? Is it all those kisses? Sophie?

Tony O'Neill [01:00:47]:
There's no one key, Benjamin. It is constant belief that the most important thing is creating value for your customer and the individual that you work with. And I think you have to take care of your body and your mind to be able to create the value and be sharp enough to be clear and concise and precise, to do a good job in a very sophisticated business that we operate in, in reality.

Benjamin Mena [01:01:16]:
I got a few more questions. Tony. You've. You've studied this craft. You've had some of those amazing mentors. You listen to a lot of, like, podcast episodes. What's a question that you wish would get asked but never does? What's that? Would be that question. What would be that answer?

Tony O'Neill [01:01:35]:
It's not the question anybody asks, and we've talked quite a bit about it, and no one asks. How do you protect your energy for the long term in this profession because this is a hard, hard profession. The people that we see on your show that are earning and billing these large amounts of. Generating these large amounts of revenue, it's not easy. This is not for the faint at heart. And you've got to be committed. And so to do that, you've got to maintain your energy levels to do it day in and day out.

Benjamin Mena [01:02:11]:
And for those that are just listening, like I said, he's 48 and looks 25. Well, anyways, Tony, like, like I said, like, I'm glad that you told me no a few times about coming on the podcast because it was about the right time, it was about the right message. Somebody out there needs to hear this, especially with everything that's going on. If somebody wants to follow you in the future and see what you're doing with your brand, how do they go about following you?

Tony O'Neill [01:02:39]:
Yeah, so they can find me on LinkedIn very easily. You can find me on YouTube very easily. I have a podcast. And I think those three areas will get. Will get you pretty attuned to at least what's going on, or at least what's going on in my mind, in my business.

Benjamin Mena [01:02:55]:
And before I let you go, is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners?

Tony O'Neill [01:02:59]:
We've talked about freedom. We've talked about operating and running a business on your own terms. Freedom requires discipline, health, fuels, clarity. Own your client relationships, build your brand, not just revenue, and that will give you a path to operate on your own terms.

Benjamin Mena [01:03:21]:
And in reality, how many of us are in this career for that one reason? Because this, we saw a path, we saw a dream, we saw a vision of somebody else doing this, living their life on their terms, hitting their goals, doing what they want to do. And like, how this vehicle of recruiting can create that kind of freedom. But I think Tony said it best, and there's so many books out there that have said it the best, but I think Tony said it best. The freedom that you want requires discipline to do the things day in and day out, to enjoy the life that you want to live, to figure out what your definition of success is. It's 2026. I truly believe that this is your year. I believe in you. Make it happen.

Benjamin Mena [01:04:11]:
I've spent years talking to big billers, and the thing that usually sets them apart is judgment. The gut feeling they bring to a moment of truth in a deal. The question that surfaces, the real objection, the reframe that regains control of a stalling process. The move they make when a candidate goes quiet. Normally that kind of instinct comes from years on the desk, and when you're running 15 live processes at once, you don't have time to engineer that level of thinking into every moment, so too much is left to chance. Until now. Millie analyzes every detail of your live deals and builds the exact strategy you need. Powered by a curated knowledge base from elite recruiters.

Benjamin Mena [01:04:48]:
It's encoded intuition, the judgment and gut feel of big billers translated into real time guidance you can use for every single process. Before every call. You get sharp contextual preparation so you can lead from the first minute. In your inbox. High caliber emails are already drafted. Testing, commitment, checking, fit keeping momentum. Users save an hour a day on email alone and the way they control calls changes completely. If you've been looking for that AI edge that every top biller is using, try Millie for free today.

Benjamin Mena [01:05:16]:
You know the resume never tells the full story. Candidates share what really matters during conversations, on calls and interviews over email. Their motivations, salary expectations, plans to relocate. Most of that detail ends up buried in notes and forgotten. Atlas changes that. It's the AI first recruitment platform built to eliminate admin. It captures every conversation automatically and turns it into something you can use with MagicSearch. You can ask Atlas questions like who talked about wanting a four day week? Or who mentioned they're open to relocating next year? It searches across your entire database and pulls the answers instantly.

Benjamin Mena [01:05:50]:
No keyword guessing and and no digging through old notes. You get insight from real conversations, not limited resume fields. Atlas also makes BD easier with opportunities you can track and grow client relationships. Powered by generative AI and built into your existing workflow. If you want visibility, smart dashboards give you a clear view of the pipeline across your business. And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported over 40% EBITDA growth and over 80% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. It's built for agencies that want to grow without adding more manual work.

Benjamin Mena [01:06:24]:
Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive listener offer at recruit with

Tony O'Neill [01:06:31]:
atlas.com thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed hit, subscribe and leave a rating.