Grow, Build, and Scale Your Recruiting Firm with Jon Bartos

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
Few quick announcements before we jump into this awesome podcast. First of all, book of the month, 177 month old toughness, secrets of the world class by Steve Siebold. Secondly, the recruiting growth summit signup is about two weeks away. We're finalizing the spots for the speakers, getting things ready. I cannot wait for you guys to finish the year strong. On top of that, also look forward to AI week in recruiting. So that's coming down the pipeline, too. But let's jump into this amazing episode.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:35]:
I am super excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast. This is going to be all about growing your search firm. And I have John Bartos, who's a specialist in this. He has not only helped thousands of search firms grow, he has seen the ins and outs of what's working. He's seen the ins and outs of what's not working. And we're going to talk about how to grow. We're going to talk about how to. You could set yourself up to exit because you can't sit there.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:03]:
And if you decide to exit, you know, exit it five minutes from now. You have to start planning now. And we're also going to talk about performance analytics, which is, remember, what you track is what you can grow. And then we're just going to. There's a lot of things that is working in business development right now because 2024 is complete. Like, things have shifted so fast. So, John, I just want to say, welcome to the podcast.

Jonathan Bartos [00:01:28]:
Thanks, Benjamin. Excited to be here.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:30]:
So I'm going to let you give the quick introduction for yourself. I've been following you for a while. I've loved everything that you do when it comes to, like, training and teaching, search for owners, and also like, talking about how to scale. But let me let you give yourself the proper introduction.

Jonathan Bartos [00:01:44]:
No, I appreciate that. It was kind of crazy. I remember being 14 years in the industry. I had been with three different companies. I actually ran one company in Toronto for five years when I was 26 years old. And then I worked for two competitors. And I had three presidents in three years. And each president when I came in.

Jonathan Bartos [00:02:03]:
And my most recent role, before I got into recruiting, was a senior VP of sales and marketing. So president came to me, and one president after another always wanted to change the game, you know. So, long story short, I had an epiphany. You know, I said, I'm not going to do this anymore. So I went to my top recruiting firm, Bob Harrington. It was Stanford, Roses, oceans, believe it or not. I said, bob, another president. This is three presidents in three years.

Jonathan Bartos [00:02:30]:
I am not going to fire half my team, change directions and do all this stuff. What else you got for me? And Bob said, you know what John? If you actually work for somebody else, you're going to still have the same problem with other people. Have you thought of working for yourself? I said yes, but starting your own business is kind of tough. Then he says have you ever thought of owning your own search firm? And I said why would I be a sleazy recruiter? I don't want to do that. Besides they can't make that much money. I do fairly well and I can't afford a drop in income. So I said to Bob, I said hey Bob, okay, so how much money have you made? Its October and the number blew my mind. Bob Harrington was one of the top offices at SRA and the number was close to a seven figure number.

Jonathan Bartos [00:03:17]:
So I thought wait a minute, there may be something in this recruiting. There may be something there. So I jumped in, investigated recruiting and recruiting firms and just studied the top search firms and then I joined MRI network, bought a franchise, got the training and kind of got off. And that was my intro to recruiting. The interesting thing, I was already kind of an expert in my micro niche that I wanted to go into. So that wasnt a big deal. My whole background was sales and marketing. I grew up a farmer in middle of Michigan.

Jonathan Bartos [00:03:47]:
Right. So the hard work wasnt a big deal. You know when you pick rocks as a twelve year old for all summer long and throw them in a trailer making calls is not a big deal. Right? Not that big of a deal. So the interesting thing was my first year I wanted to make 90k. If I made ninety k I could pay the bills, maybe. My wife didnt work, two small kids and I ended up doing seven hundred fifty k. And then every year after that was over a million.

Jonathan Bartos [00:04:13]:
I came under a million about six years in. But then I was a million dollar producer on average for ten straight years until 2028 when it was the slowest economy we saw. And then I went under it a little bit. But the exciting thing about that was I jumped into this business and absolutely loved it. It was one of those things that I thought like the fish to water, it's exactly what you should be doing every single day. So after a couple of years in the business I started building the search firm and within three years we were a top ten Sc office within the MRI network. And it just kind of went from there. Then it became an investment for me and it was my goose that laid the golden eggs to buy other companies.

Jonathan Bartos [00:04:54]:
And it was, it just went kind of nuts from there. But yeah, it was. I would have never would have thought before Bob Harrington asked me, have you thought about being a recruiter? You know, would have never thought. Never thought.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:06]:
Wow. Okay, so like talk about introduction and we're going to jump into that in a few minutes. But like right now you have an investment firm called Starfish Partners where you guys invest in recruiting companies. You have a franchise recruiting company set up dimensional search. Can you talk about those two before we start doing a deep dive on you?

Jonathan Bartos [00:05:25]:
So most of us are familiar with Sanford Rose and Associates, Kay Basman, some of the most prestigious companies in the whole industry. Starfish Partners is really the private equity firm that owns Sanford Rose. K. Bassman. We bought nine, merged with nine search firms, if you will, direct recruiters, some of the best in the whole industry and largest in the industry. And then we also have in a part of our portfolio next level exchange, which is the global leader in training for recruiting and staffing firms. And dimensional search is a new brand of ours that we brought in the middle of last year. Sanford Rose has always been the actual organization.

Jonathan Bartos [00:06:05]:
We call it the country club for search for motors. Got all these services, but they have this incredible track record of grow, building and scaling existing search firms. The actual numbers are like 216% growth over five years if they join at 10 million in revenue as they scale, or join at 300,000 in revenue. So thats always been the creme de la creme of the industry to grow. But what we didnt have was this system where we take a business professional like me, I had no idea. I dont want to be a sleazy recruiter, me right to actually being in that business professional, helping them start their search firm, then helping them grow, build and scale. And that was the invention, if you will, of dimensional search. So so far this year we're at about 15 franchise joined, currently have 20, I think we have 20, roughly 20 with everybody together.

Jonathan Bartos [00:06:52]:
And our goal is to probably do 40 45 franchises this year and then every year bring new franchises on board. But here's how crazy this is. Our goal at dimensional search is to bring them up to a 300,000 400,000 run rate from a dollar volume perspective. And then we transfer them over to Stanford Rose associates and then they grow, build and scale. And then at the end of the day, starfish partners there to help them exit. So we have the whole lifecycle, somebody wants to make money on this thing, stay with us, we'll help you, out.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:23]:
Well, okay. So I got a question for you. Is it easier to start a search firm and grow it now than back when you bought an MRI franchise back then?

Jonathan Bartos [00:07:33]:
Yeah, I would say it's much harder today to start a search firm than it was then. And I don't want to say let's rephrase that. It's different. It's not harder. Okay. Let's go back to 1990, 919, 98, when I started. Let's talk about communication strategies at different generations in a workforce. Get a bunch of baby boomers in next gen, right? That's what you had back then.

Jonathan Bartos [00:07:55]:
So what do they do? They like to use the phone and they like to use email. Your two modes of communication were just those two. Benjamin, look at the day. I mean, you call somebody in a phone, they even set up your voicemail yet. You know, I don't know who it is. Nobody answered. There's no voicemail set up yet on this phone. You know, so.

Jonathan Bartos [00:08:15]:
So now with the different generations in a workforce, we got to use multiple, as we know, technologies because we've got to hit the technology that that individual prefers in order to communicate. So it's harder to get people on the phone today. But once you get that strategy and understand that strategy, it's virtually the same. It's still a volume based business. And the reason people are not being successful is because they're not having conversations. The reason people are not, as a senior recruiter, seeing a bunch of success is, you know, when a recession hits, when economy slows down a little bit, they've got to go get new business. Well, without conversations, new business doesn't happen. And that's the crux of the whole industry today, is conversations.

Jonathan Bartos [00:08:55]:
They're driving all the search for motors down there, out here, listening. Your number one issue is conversations are decreasing, not increasing. And that's what needs to be changed. Okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:06]:
And we're gonna. We're. David, like, let's roll into that. Like, growing your search firm. Like, you need to have more conversations. Like how it's 2024. Like, how do you get those more conversations to start growing?

Jonathan Bartos [00:09:15]:
Yeah, great conversation. And a phenomenal topic, by the way. So if you take a look at the evolution of what we just went through, if you're in this business ten years, you saw the evolution. You saw it as well. If you're in this business 20 years, you really saw the evolution of technology. So, I mean, that the main focus today has to be all the activities that lead up to conversation. Now, when we have a new search firm that starts with us. I'll let them know.

Jonathan Bartos [00:09:42]:
I need to see 15 to 20 conversations on a daily basis. We break them up, but I try to keep it simple when I do, because our goal is to get enough energy level to start any business. I dont care if you have a print shop youre starting, you start a print shop or in the middle of a town someplace, youve still got to go around everywhere to introduce who you are. Give them a free pad of paper, some pens maybe, I dont know. But its that energy level to start a business. Well, if youre out there trying to start a business today, you need that same energy level. And the only way youre going to get that energy level today is using the different technologies that are out there. But you gotta use all technology.

Jonathan Bartos [00:10:13]:
So it's a series of technology cadences that have to go out and everything from obviously LinkedIn being the number one tool that seems to be getting a response, but even all the social media, Facebook, Instagram, emails, voicemail drops and video. And we're seeing obviously, with all the trends and if you read the magazine videos where everybody's going to, but there's such a high volume that needs to be done of that technology cadences. Most people don't realize the volume. They need to have 15 to 20 conversations a day. Because the bottom line is, without conversations, nothing happens. Here's the craziest thing. Once I get a new office up to those conversations, success happens. It does.

Jonathan Bartos [00:10:55]:
You don't have those conversations, Benjamin. It's like, imagine you're in an airplane taking off, all right, the plane is loaded with luggage, this completely loaded, and you're going to China. So you got a bunch of people on a plane. That plane has to go full speed for a long time to get off the ground. And once it hits critical mass, the planes off the ground, same exact thing. In our business, people typically today aren't seeing the critical mass of the activity, you know, the energy level, if you will, to get the business off the ground. And that's what typically has to be worked on. And here's a crazy thing.

Jonathan Bartos [00:11:28]:
Most individual recruiters, executive search consultants, don't even measure what they're doing. And I think if you don't measure it, you can't manage it. So this sucks. I mean, this economy is bad, you know, and we make general statements without really going in deep to seeing what the real problem is. Most of the time it's volume.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:47]:
So before we start measuring, I want to go back to this. Like, how did you guys, what kind of data do you guys figure out that a new recruiting firm needs to have 15 conversations per day?

Jonathan Bartos [00:12:00]:
Yeah. So it used to be four hour phone day. You know, that was a big deal. You know, one of the best consultants in the world came up with a four hour phone day back in the mid nineties, if you will. And if you were on the phone 4 hours a day, you know, that was enough energy to get the business off the ground. But, you know, everybody's different. You have, you have some people who say, okay, I'll have an hour and a half conversation with my, my best friend. Their phone time is 4 hours a day.

Jonathan Bartos [00:12:24]:
And really, they didn't get a lot done. That happened. Grandma. We could talk to grandma all day long. Grandma. Hey, mom. So the idea being is if we take that out, all right, and look at where the rubber hits the road, and I think if you look at enasmo search firms today, how many conversations are your people really having? It's less than 50. It's less than 50.

Jonathan Bartos [00:12:46]:
So the idea was, okay, does ten make, make the number happen? Well, ten would probably equate to roughly two, two and a half hours of phone time when I go back, that if we're doing business conversations, so it just, 15 typically is a number. If you hit 20, it's phenomenal. Typically that breaks down to the one to two business development conversations on a daily basis. And we'll go into models in a little bit because I think there's new models out there that are just killing it. Almost every search firm owner whos scratching her head, wondering what to do, needs to look at the new models that are out there. But more importantly, two conversations, one to two conversations with business development conversations, and roughly 1450, whatever the number is, with candidate conversations. And thats what we try to get folks to hit, especially if theyre trying to get off the ground. If weve got existing accounts, though.

Jonathan Bartos [00:13:40]:
Benjamin. Okay, let's say Avon is my major account. You know, I could put sales reps on all day long, you know, John, we need another three in Indianapolis. Cool. All right, so that's easy. It's when you don't have those existing accounts or when those existing accounts shut down because economic reasons change happened, that's when we got to go back to the energy levels.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:00]:
So real quick. So the breakdown of the 15, is that all like 15 on like the BD side, or is that like a combination of both the BD one, two.

Jonathan Bartos [00:14:06]:
Bds in 1412 to 14 on the candidate side?

Benjamin Mena [00:14:12]:
So you're also making sure that you are doing enough work on the front end to be able to get those conversations.

Jonathan Bartos [00:14:17]:
Yeah. And so usually any conversation like this, you work backwards. This is what you do. How many searches do we have? They're exclusive. Do you have any engaged searches? Blah, blah, blah. We can, it's a whole different topic there. Then what? You work backwards to see they have more searches or more candidates, and then you start putting the plan together on how to write the ship, if you will. You know, so it's one of these things where it's a fluid in motion based on what's happening currently.

Jonathan Bartos [00:14:42]:
But if you're new or you're tenured and you are struggling because accounts are shutting down on you, and that's what happens in recession, you know, the four or five accounts, that was your honey hole, if you will, they start giving you business. Right. So then we've got to get the business development engine. And it's, it's not like riding a bike. Here's what I mean by that. Riding a bike. I can get on there tomorrow. I haven't rode a bike in two years.

Jonathan Bartos [00:15:07]:
I'm just as good. You're not just as good doing business development if you haven't done it in two years. Oh, I don't want to do it. Oh, my gosh, I'm nervous. Can you breakfast this morning? Cause I gotta do business development call. Yeah. Gotta do it. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:20]:
So how long, if you gotta like, hop on the bike again, how long does it typically take to get that BD engine back running again?

Jonathan Bartos [00:15:27]:
Well, really, realistically, if you have the right scripts and you have the right cadences, you can get it rock and roll into 30 days. But its a habit thing, and unfortunately, habits, they say take 90 days or whatever the days are, you really start seeing results after 90 days of the activity that needs to be there. Its about 90 days. However, if you can never get to the activity levels that need to be there for success, Davey, that plane never gets off the ground, and that's the problem. And as I said before, most search rental owners don't measure this, so they have no idea.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:00]:
All right, so let's talk about measuring. Like, you know, you pretty much what you track becomes what you focus on, and what you focus on grows. Like, how are you, like, what kind of, first of all, what kind of data should we be tracking? What kind of measurements should we be tracking? Like as a search firm owner or a recruiter listening to this that works at an agency, like, what do we need to track?

Jonathan Bartos [00:16:19]:
Yeah. So if I'm an individual biller. All right. And it really depends on your seniority level, because if I'm brand new, I'm tracking, tracking activities, you know, energy level. If I'm senior, I'm tracking ratios. Big difference between the two. So if I'm too new, I don't have an idea what to track. Right? I look at my written, like, my job order to placement ratio, how many jobs I get, how many placements.

Jonathan Bartos [00:16:42]:
I don't have enough. I have no idea what it is. How about my recruiting conversations to candidates interested? You know, we call that submit ratio. I mean, so we don't know enough to do ratios. So initially, I look at, okay, how many cadences and messages am I sending out to hiring managers on a daily basis? What kind of response rate are we getting? And then we start tweaking from there. We also take a look at what medium is seeing results, because, believe it or not, marketplaces are different. Here's an example. We were doing 200 linemen a month for pike electric five, six years ago.

Jonathan Bartos [00:17:15]:
They needed to put a ton of them on. Hurricanes were going on way, way, way in the southeast Florida, so they needed to put all these linemen in. Well, you're not using LinkedIn for alignment. You're not. You're not using Instagram for alignment. So you had to figure out the medium, you know what I mean? That's going to attract these individuals to start having those conversations. It was all Facebook, by the way, Facebook ads and Facebook groups and all those things. So a lot of that depends on your marketplace, on what medium needs to be used the most.

Jonathan Bartos [00:17:45]:
For business professionals, it's typically LinkedIn and a combination of getting the right information and putting those cadences together. The number we're looking at, typically, is using cadences. You do 100 reach out, about 100 reach outs a day. Benjamin, here's the great news. This is for everybody. I want everybody to hear this, because this is probably one of the most important epiphanies that I've had over the last couple of years. You've got to have 15 to 20 conversations today for your business to be successful. You can do it or somebody else can do it, but it still has to be done.

Jonathan Bartos [00:18:21]:
And that's a senior recruiter. That's a junior recruiter, all of that.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:26]:
And how should recruiters be tracking this? Like an Excel spreadsheet? Their systems. What do you think is the best way to track it?

Jonathan Bartos [00:18:33]:
Track all of this is like. I mean, there's like a softball you just threw me, right? So rpm Dash USA.com dot yeah, it's, it's the world's leading recruiting and staffing performance analytics system that actually walks you through all of this stuff. And it tracks for using PCR software. So using some of the different ATS solutions, that tracks it automatically for you just by using your tool. But what it does is give you dashboards based on what you're tracking. So if you're new, you're not going to have 75 analytics you're tracking, you're going to have like three. Let's hit these three first and then we'll add analytics as you go on. Nobody can pay attention to more than five anyways.

Jonathan Bartos [00:19:08]:
Really. So if you're looking at that, you're looking at conversations you're tracking, you're tracking your effort out. My cadences that are, how many cadences am I sending out? You know, what kind of messages am I getting in, what kind of response rate I'm getting there? And then it's how we getting a hold of folks from a business development and certainly from a recruiting side. And then the goal is every single day, get better and better and better. And as you get better, the RPM dashboard turns colors. You know, just like a stoplight, you know, red is a bad deal. You gotta. That means you're below 80%, yellow is you're between 81 hundred green.

Jonathan Bartos [00:19:42]:
When everything turns green and your dashboard turns green, you're not going to cover at all. So it's color chromatic to help help do that. But thank you for that softball, Benjamin. I appreciate that.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:52]:
I had to ask because, you know, some people are tracking notion, some are tracking in spreadsheets, some are tracking Google sheets. And then like, you know, you talk to the person, that's like, I was tracking it for a week and then I just stopped tracking it because every. It's just like, I know you got to find out what works for you. But it sounds like the RPM dashboard has a lot of the backend analytics of recruiting success.

Jonathan Bartos [00:20:11]:
Yeah, and it's on your phone as well. It's on PC. But here's the problem, all right, if there's no coaching attached to it, meaning nobody's looking at it to give you improvement, you know, performance improvement, nothing sticky, nothing works. I mean, Mike Gianta find this out. He was using for years and years the RPM dashboard for all those to students on there. And the problem is that there's not coaching attached to it. Like, hey, this is what you, what it's telling you. What do we do from here, you know, and jointly work together to see improvement.

Jonathan Bartos [00:20:39]:
If that doesn't happen, it's not sticky. That's, that's why it's so tough to be. Okay. I just spent all day working. I'm beat. I got beat up today. Now I gotta enter. What? I gotta put something.

Jonathan Bartos [00:20:49]:
What? In a spreadsheet. I'll do it tomorrow. It's over. It's over. Never.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:54]:
And then tomorrow turns into next week, next year, and you're almost back in the same spot as you were the year before.

Jonathan Bartos [00:20:59]:
Yeah. Yeah. Darn. Nothing changed. I put a lot of stuff on his spreadsheet for a little while, but nothing changed. Darn.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:05]:
So, okay, so like, we've talked about the performance metrics, we've talked about activity, which, you know, we can't go anywhere without the activity part. What other things can you do to grow your search firm?

Jonathan Bartos [00:21:16]:
Okay, let's, let's stick with analytics for just a heads up. So if I'm a search firm owner, I'm looking at, or a senior recruiter, somebody's been out there a lot. I'm looking at ratios and you got to look at the five major ratios. You got to look at your job order to placement ratio that says how good your quality of searches youre taking. And by the way, thats the number one ratio that we can change immediately to change your revenue immediately. So lets say every ten jobs I take, I make one placement. Well, number one, it tells me youre a contingent, non exclusive recruiter. Were taking those things.

Jonathan Bartos [00:21:46]:
By the way, the figures in the industry show you that you have about an 18% chance of filling those things when you take a non exclusive contingent deal. So that one ratio, job order to placement rate, how many jobs I actually take searches I take? Search assignment, placement ratio, how many of those I take to how many I fill tells me what quality recruiter I am. So that one ratio I have a path I can take. Okay, how do I add more value? How do I get engaged searches? How do you get exclusive? How do you get mutually committed where the clients equally as committed to me as making that search happen, and therefore you'll see your revenue blossom. Just buy that one and the other one, the quality measurements to take a look at. Obviously your send out, the placement ratio really measures three things now. One measures, did you take a search? Do you know what your client's looking for? Did you set expectations? No, I'm not going to send you twelve candidates, mister client. I'm sending you three.

Jonathan Bartos [00:22:36]:
Which one of the losers do you want me to send you? That already weeded out. So that measures those things to. But your marketing skills is really measured by your marketing presentations. You know, your marketing presentations with a hiring manager to how many searches you actually get from that call. Not five. I mean, was it a successful call or was it not? And then the recruiting presentations to candidates interested shows you how good you are. Yes, picking the right candidates. But also is everybody buying? When I'm selling, does everybody wanna say, coach, put me in the game or not? So, and those are all major areas to improve to just by improving your quality, you can make a significant increase in your billings by end of year.

Jonathan Bartos [00:23:20]:
You could do the same volume, just increase the quality of what you're doing and see a three to four times increase in revenue by changing quality. So all of those things are real important to take a look at. Im a search firm owner. Im looking at PDA baby per desk average. And if you take a look at that, this is such an important metric because this tells me how profitable I am. We kind of know what search firm owners make. I mean, search firm owner will be 35% EBITDA, a profit, if you will, from a search firm. That's if they have more than three people now, it's them just themselves.

Jonathan Bartos [00:23:54]:
All bets are off because whatever they produce, they make. So it's kind of a different deal. So when you search for a motor, the things to look at is per desk average, what kind of revenue going per individual that's actually doing the production. And then you got to look at your EBITDA, earnings before taxes, interest, depreciation, amortization, and really understand that and then find out, Houston, we have a problem going on.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:19]:
So the numbers is one of the most important things that you need to be looking at as a search firm owner, if you have more than three people working for you, correct?

Jonathan Bartos [00:24:29]:
Yeah. Well, I'd say it's the most important thing you can look at whatever you are. I mean, when you're a search for more, with more than three people, there's more things to look at, you know, just to, just to make sure that you're in sync. The issue that everybody struggles with, and this is human nature is, you know, once somebody's on board, they stay with you for a long period of time. They certainly hit a comfort zone. And comfort zones are great, you guys, but nothing ever grows there, you know, it's one of these things, nothing grows. So people have to be striving if they really want to achieve something different. And being uncomfortable is part of life, you know, if you think another thing is nothing worthwhile is easy.

Jonathan Bartos [00:25:10]:
Everything worthwhile takes hard work. This is one of the deals this takes hard work to do.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:16]:
If one of your team members is stuck in a comfort zone level, how do you get them out of that?

Jonathan Bartos [00:25:23]:
Well, number one, they gotta want to get out of that because you can't get them out of it, or they don't want to get out of it. And then you have to almost go to Akita theory, kick them in the ass theory, and that never works. Well, I'm gonna go work for Bill. This sucks working for you, John. So if you think about that, it's a goal oriented, set goals, and then look at the activity levels that will achieve what they need to do, or the ratios that need to be changed. So, I mean, it's really a scene when I look at senior recruiters or senior offices and they want to make a difference in the end result. It really sucks. What's going well, what's not going well, and then we narrow it down to what needs to change, and then we focus on those things that need to change.

Jonathan Bartos [00:26:00]:
Analytics will tell you, though. I sat down with Lucas, grew CIO, this is probably ten years ago, and I looked at all of the recruiters through the RPM dashboard. They gave me the numbers, I downloaded everything, and I sat with the CIO, the president, and we talked about every single recruiter in their whole firm. I never knew who they were. I just read the numbers and they would say, time after time, I can't believe how well you know our people and you never met them. Don't need to know. I see what's going on with the numbers. So it's.

Jonathan Bartos [00:26:31]:
It's really kind of that important or. Seth.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:33]:
So that also goes into another question I have, like, how do you find a good recruiter?

Jonathan Bartos [00:26:38]:
Yeah, it's a great question. So I'll go through an exercise that we're doing right now, and this will probably one of the programs that we're strongly suggesting is that of the sales development Rep. And go back to what I said earlier. To be successful, you gotta hit the 15 to 20 conversations. You don't have to do it, but somebody does for the business to be successful. So when you look at your, let's say you got 30 recruiters that work in your organization, they're senior recruiters. If you're not happy with the performance, start looking at activity levels. Now, nobody wants to micromanage anybody, obviously, but if they're not seeing that kind of activity, one of the things that they can do is bring somebody on board that will do that activity for them.

Jonathan Bartos [00:27:17]:
Because if you think about it, how can I make more money? I'm a million dollar bill or million, let's say you're a $3 million biller. How do I take and increase that if I'm at that level? Well, I know that when I'm on a phone with a client, it's probably worth $3,000 an hour. I know that when I'm sending emails and text messages, that's probably worth $10 an hour. So all I need to do is figure out how do I spend more time doing the $3,000 an hour jobs during the day and less time on the $10 an hour jobs. But I can always outsource. I mean, you think about that. You know, Ford came up with a long time ago that somebody else sticks on the one of the tires, somebody else puts a fender on, somebody welds it, you know, and there's a delineation of duties to make sure it's the most efficient system there possibly is. It's everywhere.

Jonathan Bartos [00:28:06]:
Why didn't we do this in a recruiting industry? I have no idea. Every other industry did. Right, but we haven't. So why wouldn't we have somebody who's super good, who understands how to make $150 a day, send the cadences out, and they cost me $8 an hour to get me on the phone, you know, with 25 conversations a day. Five. Business development, what does that do to my revenue? Well, it's going to be an equal amount of increase based on the amount of conversations I increase. And it's an exact number. There really isn't.

Jonathan Bartos [00:28:33]:
Plus you're not good at what you're doing. But typically it'll be an exact number increase based on the increase of those conversations.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:41]:
Okay, so real quick, you're talking about you have a team of 30 recruiters.

Jonathan Bartos [00:28:44]:
Yep.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:45]:
One way to increase the billings for the recruiters, the company is to find somebody that's focused 100% just on the bd and the sales.

Jonathan Bartos [00:28:53]:
Yeah, I would say BD. I'd say the one, the one area. Let's talk about the industry. Now here's what it changed to. When I started in the industry, there was recruiting and there was business development and then there's role called research that came in. Right. And that came in sometime in the nineties. You know, the people have researchers that do that.

Jonathan Bartos [00:29:11]:
The other role that, that overtook b two b selling, it's a number one hire everywhere right now in the United States is the appointment center, and that's called the sales development route. So now you have four roles that we can use for a business model to bring into a recruiting firm. You have the research role, recruiting role, business development role. You could say project management. We could add roles if you want to, but not, you know, that's just another role we throw in there. The most important role right now that everybody's screwing up on is the appointment setting rule. How to get people on the phone and creating that as a separate role and hiring folks who are phenomenal at that would be mission critical for a company to achieve potential today, unless you got people who are willing to do that. I just haven't met them.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:54]:
Where do you find this appointment setter?

Jonathan Bartos [00:29:56]:
Yeah, so I think most of the appointment setters, I have four that work for me right now. I've got three of them in the Philippines. I got one in Medellin, Colombia. I'm in a process now where I'm going to bring every dimensional search office, if they want one, a sales development route. Most of them are from Philippines, Pakistan. I'll put them through a training process. But the mission critical skill set they need, if you will want to hear this, is they got to speak English and understand English and write English and communicate effectively, but they have to head a role where they've made over 100 dials a day and no technology. Okay? So think of me now, all right? I've been in the business 25 years, right? Do I want to do the appointment setting activity, send all the cadences out, do the technology, and then try to get on the phone with folks.

Jonathan Bartos [00:30:45]:
Number one, do I not want to do it? I suck at it. I suck. You know who's great at it? These people who are out there. I've got a gentleman who works for me, Dave Bautista, who will get me two to three appointments with new logos every single day. And here's a crazy difference. Crazy difference. You ready? So instead of getting a business development manager, hiring manager on the phone, right, I get them on the phone. I got 10 seconds to make it happen, right? So I.

Jonathan Bartos [00:31:10]:
Within 10 seconds, I got to get them interested, establish credibility, and then finally relax into a conversation. So right away, it's not now I've got appointments set. I'm talking to the president of the matter. I have a structured call I can take them through. I'm more prepared, it's more professional. I can do a gap analysis. Where are you now? Where you gonna be? And have a comfortable conversation and end with twice as good result as I just got somebody on the phone and I gotta quickly call and talk to them. They get them interested.

Jonathan Bartos [00:31:38]:
Cause I got em on the phone. Holy shit. Get a soaked. So if you think about it, it's not only a better selling process, it is gonna be the future of where our whole industry is gonna go. It really is.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:49]:
And they're pretty much just setting up the appointments for you.

Jonathan Bartos [00:31:52]:
Yeah, well, they're doing all the cadences too. I mean, I give them what to say and all the technology tools, but their role is, baby, it's volume. You need the energy level, you know, and it was kind of crazy. We did the same exercise in everything. We're doing it selling franchises, we're doing it on the, on the cert side of the business, selling retained searches. You need the volume. You need to at bats. The more at batch you get with a hiring manager, the better you are.

Jonathan Bartos [00:32:20]:
I have three calls. You're going to screw up a few of them. That's cool. But every time you get better and better and better until, wow, I'm not bad, you know, taking somebody through a sales process where you are, where do you want to be? Understand, you know, reason why they go forward. If I could show you a way to solve that problem, would it make sense for us to work together? Cool. Let me show you how we work. You know, so, so it's just a better process all the way around. And that's called hiring an SDR.

Jonathan Bartos [00:32:44]:
And at Sanford Rose, we have the best training program for sdrs. And we hire them. Our teams, anybody in the Sanford Rose network, we do it for them. We hire them. There's a whole hiring team that recruits your people for you. So that's the number one hire in the whole industry today? Yeah, it's crazy.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:02]:
Do these sdrs have to do their own research, or is there a research person that's kind of feeding everything into the SDR's machine?

Jonathan Bartos [00:33:09]:
Yeah, it's depending on the office. It's both. I mean, so, like, Dave Bautista does all the research as well, and Dave.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:15]:
He'S a beast, by the way.

Jonathan Bartos [00:33:16]:
Say that again?

Benjamin Mena [00:33:17]:
I said he's a beast, by the way.

Jonathan Bartos [00:33:19]:
Oh, I'm telling you, I've never seen anybody like him. So now we're gonna, we're hiring ten or more. If we get 15, we're gonna hire 15. He's the one not only interviewing them, he's the one training them. You know, I'm telling you, it's crazy. But think about that, all right? I'm an owner of a business. You know, I own a search firm for a long period of time. I don't want to do that activity.

Jonathan Bartos [00:33:38]:
Yes, I'll do it. It kind of sucks. But then I feel like I'm selling like, visa credit cards or something. Stop being a captain of industry. Most people did to come and do this to sell credit cards. So this is a way now just using the right business model. Use the. Now.

Jonathan Bartos [00:33:53]:
Here's the crazy thing now. Hey, I'm struggling finding candidates. Well, instead of an SDR, they're called recruiting development route. Same thing. So if you have a senior recruiter who's not getting enough at bats conversations on a daily basis, you could throw one of these in place as well. Eight to $12 an hour, kind of where they're at currently. That's today's date. But can help that senior recruiter get more effective in making replacements.

Jonathan Bartos [00:34:19]:
And it is eight to $12 an hour. They could work half time, they could do full time, all those things. So it's really revolutionizing the business because most people don't like doing appointment setting. They're not good at it. And we have somebody else do that, that they're bred to do that. They went off a call center from Cintas and in the Philippines, they're used to making about 150 phone calls and using the technology now they can help you have conversations.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:44]:
Okay, so real quick, so looking. Looking at your business. So this. This sounds like a must have, which I'm going to go get one myself. Secondly, should you, if you have a search firm, should you kind of get them for general use of the search firm, or should you get them as like a. Once a recruiter hits this x amount of billing, I'm now going to provide this additional resource to you. Is it like, do you set it up as a goal, or do you just tack it onto your business no matter what?

Jonathan Bartos [00:35:12]:
No, I think you got to have the ability to manage them. The problem. What's the flying ointment here? Okay, this is too good to be true. No, it's not too good to be true. Trust me. You have to hire the right people. You have to manage them, all right? You have to train them. And that's why all these.

Jonathan Bartos [00:35:29]:
We went to India for so long to find recruiters to help us recruit and all that kind of. Why was it a failure? Because we did a shitty job training them. We did even a worse job managing them. We can't manage them. We got a recruiting because we're not good managers, I think. I don't know. It was just crazy. So you still have to hire.

Jonathan Bartos [00:35:47]:
Right. Train right. Manage. Right. And if you don't have that, somebody has to be, you know, or it'll be a failure again. It'll be a failure. It's like a recruiter joining you today. If they're not micromanaged and they get conditioned to do the business in the first 90 days, they never do.

Jonathan Bartos [00:36:04]:
It's the same process. So even though they're overseas, they're in Philippines, they're in Mexico, they're in Pakistan, Medellin, Colombia, you still have to manage daily. All of my sdrs are on our team, meeting at 830. All of them. They show up, they're part of the team. And then now I have. Well, Victor's been with me since 2016. I've had Jay Alambro from the Philippines with me for ten years for a long time.

Jonathan Bartos [00:36:29]:
So they become a permanent fixture part of your organization and an important part of your organization. This is no short term fixed. This is really a long term business model change. But here's the one thing that I'll tell the owners and the recruiters out there. This freed up 50% of my time. So I could run three companies. I couldn't do it. Without it.

Jonathan Bartos [00:36:48]:
I couldn't do it.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:48]:
How do you track them activity?

Jonathan Bartos [00:36:51]:
And obviously they use ringcentrals, what our technology we use. So we see the kind of activity they're doing. Also, we get copies on emails going out, and I have them use my personal LinkedIn account. So. So, Benjamin, the LinkedIn email you got from Dave Bautista was from him. It wasn't from me. I have no idea what he's saying. So hopefully he represented me properly.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:11]:
All right, so before we jump into something else, is there anything else that you want to talk about, the sdRs? Because this is kind of, I hate to say this is forward thinking in an industry that I feel like is always 20 years behind everybody else.

Jonathan Bartos [00:37:21]:
Well, I mean, it has changed. So you're really a business owner now, because people, all right, let's say you buy a domino's pizza franchise, right? They're going to teach you how to make the pizza, clean the oven, they're going to teach you how to do the dishes, work with customers, all that kind of stuff. And if you really think about that, not everybody's good at every single skill set, which is why express personnel, by the way, one of the largest staffing firm franchises. When you buy a franchise, you have to hire two recruiters and you have to be the business development manager. So what do we do in the permanent placement world? I'm going to do everything. I'm going to clean the toilet, I'm going to plan, I'm going to send all my emails out, I'm going to try to do business development, I'm going to do my recruiting. It just doesn't make any sense because we're not all good. If you do the disc profile and this is crazy, I look at the disc very often, people are so different and certain people are great to be great, phenomenal recruiters.

Jonathan Bartos [00:38:16]:
Some people are phenomenal at the business development. But finding one person great at all of these things doesn't happen. It doesn't happen and that's the problem. So if you realize if we're going to fit the right personalities with the right role, you're going to put the team together. But again, if you're a business owner, you're not doing this. Leaving your vice president of engineering at Microsoft to own a search firm, to do Visa credit card calls all day. You're not. Your goal is to have conversations and place people.

Jonathan Bartos [00:38:46]:
So you have to put the right people in the right place that makes sense for them. That's how you build a business.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:52]:
So now let's walk towards exiting a certain.

Jonathan Bartos [00:38:55]:
Yeah, oh but big time.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:57]:
Maybe you're done with it, maybe you're not done with recruiting, but you want to build a business to sell. First of all, how soon should you start thinking about that process before your actual exit?

Jonathan Bartos [00:39:09]:
Yeah, great question by the way. Great question. And I sold my first firm, I started 99 sold in 2012 and then I sold global people. I started that 2015 and sold it may of last year. And it's interesting and I get a chance to talk to search firm firm owners. 50% of my day is talking to search firm owners and it always goes to how are we going to exit? How are we going to exit this thing? And the first thing I ask is let's talk about it. How much do you want to have make from your search firm? And they'll say 5 million or 2 million or whatever the number is. And then we start working backwards.

Jonathan Bartos [00:39:44]:
And heres the deal with search firms. And search firms are typically going for permanent placement search firms three to five times EBITDA, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization. Thats profit, lets say profit. After all that stuff, the bigger you get though, the bigger it can get. I just saw corn ferry at a 15 times multiple of EBITDA but thats because the marketplace screwed up right now. Klein Hirsch sold and this is eight years ago but they had 18 million in profit and they sold for six, six times multiple of that profit, which is great. So figure youre going to be three to five times of your profit and then it may go to six or seven. Dependent size marketplace reward size.

Jonathan Bartos [00:40:27]:
It does. The marketplace also rewards consistency. Thats why permanent placement recruiting industry doesnt. There's not a lot of acquisitions that go on. Why? Because it's too volatile. Recession hits, they lose half their revenue. Marketplace doesn't like that. That gives it a lower value by doing that.

Jonathan Bartos [00:40:45]:
So if I'm a search firm owner, one of the major principles that we have to get over to make your even firm worth three to five times EBItDA is the bus test. The bus test says, okay, Benjamin, if you get hit by a bus tomorrow, what happens to your firm? If the answer is I don't have a firm, Houston, we have a problem. If it says, well, we'll probably lose half the revenue. Okay, there goes half your value then in your firm. So the bus test says that when you want to sell your firm, you want no risk, zero risk. So you need to start working on your firm where you're not the entire part of the organization. And the more reoccurring revenue you have in that firm. Let's say you're doing contracts.

Jonathan Bartos [00:41:28]:
Let's say you're doing engineering. You do a lot of perm placement engineering, but you got half your business in contract. Well, that contract portion of your business is going to work probably seven to nine times earnings. Foreign interest, taxes, depreciates. So it gives it double, not quite double, but almost double the value of the organization. So the more reoccurring revenue you have, the more successful it's going to be. So there's many search firms I'm working with today where they're the majority breadwinner, you know, they're bringing in the revenue. We're putting plans together right now is how do we make you not the only person doing business development and how we're going to grow building scale.

Jonathan Bartos [00:42:06]:
But if you need to hit 5 million, you know, and you want to go buy your island in Fiji, we got to start working backwards right now. And we need five to ten years to make that happen. It doesn't happen in one. And Benjamin, I can't tell you how many 80 year olds I'm working with who want to sell their firm today. Big firms, $4 million firm, $6 million. And they can't, they can't sell it. The reason they can't sell it for anything, what it's worth is because they're the majority relationship holder and the majority biller. And that's the problem with these things that are going on.

Jonathan Bartos [00:42:39]:
So the exercise we put them through really is, okay, what do we need to do? And typically, we'll look at putting people in the right places or move people up and transfer skills over. But it's typically you're going to hire, you're going to have to hire some people, take some money out of the profit to bring people on board, to have an exit that makes any sense. And there's many ways to skin the cat. My first deal when I sold Jonathan Scott International was a little over like a four times EBITDA, but it got half upfront, half over three years, with a big carrot at the end. So they'll put deals together for you to make sure that they lower the risk, because that's what you want to do. You want to lower the risk. When somebody's buying, somebody's paying a couple million bucks for your firm, you want to lower the risk, so they're going to actually get their money's worth. Not half your business leaves when the owner wants to go play on his new yacht or whatever.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:27]:
So you've bought and invested in a bunch of firms with starfish and everything. What stands out for those firms that you've invested in compared to all the other ones that you've spoken with?

Jonathan Bartos [00:43:41]:
Yeah. So if you look at the firms that are knocking the COVID off the ball, and I'll even look at our portfolio firms that we have. Kay Bastman. Oh, just an unbelievable, well ran firm. There's seven secrets to grow and build a search firm with not hitting an artificial ceiling. Realistically, there's so many people who want to learn how to grow, building, scale a search firm, but they just don't know what they don't know. But there's seven things that have to happen for you not to hit. A firm will hit a million dollars and not get bigger.

Jonathan Bartos [00:44:10]:
Half a million dollars. A firm will hit 5 million, not be able to get bigger. Well, if you look at our two firms that are not going to cover off the ball and have for a long time, it's direct recruiters and they're like 23 million and 7 million in contract. And then Kay Bastman has been the leader, one of the largest privately held search firms. And they, through Jeff K. Believe it or not, Jeff K. Really is the thought leader in this whole industry. He really is.

Jonathan Bartos [00:44:35]:
He's the one who actually came up with a concept on how to continually grow, build and scale. He did a webinar last month on the proven model to growing a search firm. And they talked about the seven different aspects to continue to grow building scale. And what we do when we bring a search firm owner in is we kind of take them through a consulting process. We teach them the seven things, and then it's up to them if they want to work with us or not in some capacity to help them do that. We'll help them do that blueprint to build their house, if you will. And then they could determine if they want to work with us to help going forward, to help grow, build, and scale their firm. And we're working with firms that are 10 million today, 5 million a day, helping the grow building scale.

Jonathan Bartos [00:45:13]:
But the reasons we picked up the firms that we did, to answer your question, the long answer to a shorter question, it should have been, is they had the models already in place. Dri Kay Bastman had all seven things. So they were ready to continue to grow, build and scale. And there's other things we do, too, as well. Don't forget, we have Sra. We have the country club for search firm owners. You can use a pool, the golf club, the whirlpool, the wine tasting, the food. There's many services we offer.

Jonathan Bartos [00:45:42]:
We also offer all those services to the firms we acquire to help them to continue to grow building scale.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:47]:
Well, we've covered a lot, and I feel like, honestly, we could literally just keep on talking for hours. John, before we jump over to the quickfire questions, is there anything else that you want to share about literally anything that we've already covered?

Jonathan Bartos [00:46:01]:
Yeah, I would say for somebody to achieve their vision, and realistically, everybody can achieve whatever their life goals are through this business. I cannot believe my life today. I would have never imagined when I bought a search firm, what my life could be like today. Shit. I live on a vineyard. I have a half mile on the Ohio river. Life is phenomenal. But how did that happen? And I want to say, if I'm everybody else out there and they want to achieve their vision, not mine, you achieve your vision.

Jonathan Bartos [00:46:27]:
Most people don't know what they don't know. And it's learning the things. Anybody can do it, but most, you know, search for motor gets to $5 million. He just doesn't know what they don't know. To keep growing, building and scaling, they have to learn that. Which is why we put in consulting programs to help people understand that. I would ask everybody to continue to learn, establish whatever that crazy goal that they got. They want to buy their island in Fiji, right next to Tony Robbins, whatever.

Jonathan Bartos [00:46:51]:
Whatever it is, they can do that. But just then learn all the things that they need to do to understand, to get where they need to go. And the resources are out there. They're out there to do that.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:04]:
We're jumping over to the quick fire questions now. What advice, based on everything that, you know, would you give to a recruiter that's actually just getting started in this industry in 2024?

Jonathan Bartos [00:47:14]:
Yeah. Be willing to do the energy level to get the business off the ground. There's a conditioning process that happens. So when I started in the business, I ran sales organizations and companies. So I haven't made a bunch of phone calls before. Maybe back when I started right out of college I did, but other than that, I didn't. There's a conditioning process that goes through that. You got to condition yourself to do the volume.

Jonathan Bartos [00:47:38]:
Let's say if we all went out to do a marathon today, we're going to run 30, 30 miles, you know, let's go. You know, I would die, you know, but in ten weeks, I'd probably be good, right. So there's a conditioning process to slowly get better and better and better. And unfortunately, the people who fail in this business are unwilling to go through that conditioning process. Just be willing to do it. Be willing to do it. Be willing to do the things you need to do to be successful, which is going to include things that you're not comfortable with.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:05]:
And it's kind of same question, but for somebody that's, you know, had their own firm or a recruiter that's been in the game for 510, 1520 years, what advice would you give to them to see success?

Jonathan Bartos [00:48:15]:
Yeah, and a lot of them have a lifestyle business, which is cool. You know, in a search firm, it's shocking how much money you can bring home. If you got a successful search firm, life is great. I would say, if you're not achieving the goals and vision you'd like to achieve, get with people who can share with you the data, the intellectual property on how to make that happen and work with them. I mean, there's phenomenal coaches in the industry. Work with them to help you get there, because the number one problem with growth at search firms is they don't know what they don't know. That's the problem. Learn it.

Jonathan Bartos [00:48:48]:
Just learn it. And then you can make a decision if you want to do it or not.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:51]:
Do you have a favorite book that's had a huge impact on your career?

Jonathan Bartos [00:48:55]:
Yeah, so many books. But one of the great question by the way, one of the books I follow closely is gap selling right now. And it's kind of, I switched all of my selling over to gap selling. And it's really a consultative selling methodology. It's really simple. It's understand exactly where they are currently. I do this with all my hiring managers, by the way, my new companies. I understand exactly where that.

Jonathan Bartos [00:49:19]:
And then I understand where they want to be, where they want to be from a hiring perspective, time to fill, quality of candidates. And I do the same thing with search for motors as well when I take them through a process. And then that gap is, is the conversation, right? Why aren't you there? What's holding you back, do you think? And then a pre close, you know, if I can show you a way to get there, would it make sense for us to explore further? That was a pre close, by the way, but real simple way. But that simple methodology allows you to become more of a consultant. It tells you the business problems. As long as your conversation focuses on the business problems and not you. My firm leaves tall buildings in a single bound. We're the biggest, we're the best.

Jonathan Bartos [00:49:57]:
That's bullshit. Believe it or not, they show up on throw up. As long as you can focus on that gap in them, you got them. That's it. You'll see success more often. But the gap selling is really cool.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:10]:
Well, that rolls into my next question. You've been successful your entire career. You've sold search firms. You invested in search firms. You now have a vineyard, too. And I love wine. That's a whole other story. Why, like, driving it? You're like, why are you successful?

Jonathan Bartos [00:50:29]:
Yeah, why am I successful? I would probably say I'm willing to do the things that I need to do to be successful. So you got to know what to do. Want to do it, but willing to do it. I'm willing to do it, but I think one of the traits I just always learning, when I came to it blew my mind when I started working with Jeff Kay and the team at SrA. Karen Schmidt, Jan Czerny. Wow. I mean, those are the. I have learned more in the last two years.

Jonathan Bartos [00:50:59]:
If I would have known what I know now. Back when I started my Jonathan Scott international in 1998, right. Man, it would be a monster company today, you know, kind of thing. But it's, the thing is you got to continually learn. And the problem people get, we start doing, being successful. Let's say we make seven figures a year. A lot of people make seven figures a year in this business. They do.

Jonathan Bartos [00:51:20]:
We think our ego takes over and our learning stops. We always got to be inquisitive and learn and understand. Keep going, keep building. And that's really, really important. So when I say I help buy firms, I'm really the head of the spear in buying firms. Starfish Partners has such an incredible team behind me and Nick Turner, Jeff. Karen Schmidt, Dan Charney. I work with Michelle Masterson, whos just unbelievable.

Jonathan Bartos [00:51:47]:
If you have a team of superstars around you, you can create miracles.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:51]:
So you also mentioned something earlier in the podcast about the $10 an hour task versus the $3,000 an hour task. How did you get to the point where you figured out that you needed to start separating those and how did you separate those?

Jonathan Bartos [00:52:04]:
Yeah, and I think its, this goes way, way back. Okay, so whats your million dollar biller? All right, how do we get more? Because you already, you get so busy. The secrets of a million. Listen, one of your topics we were going to chat about is, okay, what's the secret of a million dollar biller? Well, number one, they do the volume. Number two, they're market master. So they have a marketplace that they dominate. They're not doing all things to all people. I have not seen generalists Bill a lot, and they may do 500, 700, but I haven't seen them really move the needle, if you will.

Jonathan Bartos [00:52:33]:
So from a million dollar Biller perspective, what can I do to get to 2 million at a million, or what can I get to 5 million if I'm doing a million? 2 million. So the idea is what you're using your time for. If I can change my dollar per hour to $5,000 versus $2,000, what would I have to do in order to do that? And at some point in time, the light goes off, I got to stop doing the bullshit activities. I can pay somebody to do that and then freeze my time up because they're not making any more time, free my time up to do more of those high value add activities. And it came up to me, believe it or not, in like, the year 2000 is when I started putting this stuff together, you know, so people who do the things that I didn't want to do or weren't good at or somebody else was better at it, you know, because if you're doing all things, not everything you're going to do is going to be that as good as you could be if you want.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:21]:
Like, you know, we all, we're also an industry of semi control freaks where you're trying to control the process even though you deal with people like, how do you start letting go of some of those things?

Jonathan Bartos [00:53:30]:
Yeah, I would work with a coach because a lot. Now you're talking psychology now, coach. Who's got a psychology degree you work with? Yeah. No, it's. I think what you have to do is realize what's most important to you. And then the reason why a lot of people try to do something and don't is because they don't set expectations. They don't hire right. They don't manage right.

Jonathan Bartos [00:53:50]:
They don't train right. And that's why all of this has to come together. None of this is easy, but it's. None of it's hard. So it's a matter of understanding what, like I said before, people usually don't know what they don't know. Well, do they know how to bring on an SDR and train them? Right? No. Do they know how to manage them? Probably not. Do they know how to hire them? No, probably not.

Jonathan Bartos [00:54:10]:
So you got to learn that stuff to understand what's there. Once you've learned that stuff, then you can take off and do it right and not have it a problem.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:18]:
And you mentioned this a few minutes ago, with everything that you know now, which your hands in mini pots learning like a phenomenal amount of data in our industry, if you had the chance to sit down with yourself, have a cup of coffee with yourself back at the day when you had your first search firm, what advice would you give yourself?

Jonathan Bartos [00:54:36]:
Yeah, I would have partnered with the right people. And I'm saying nothing negative about MRI network. MRI, MRI network was phenomenal. To help somebody get up to speed. No clue how to grow a building scale. And it would have been getting with the right people who really understood where I needed to go as a vision. I didn't get into the business to be a loan recruiter. I got into the business to grow, build and scale and build a firm, you know, so that was my vision.

Jonathan Bartos [00:55:01]:
That was my goal. What I would have done is found the people who grow, building, scaled, who are really good at it and partnered with, you know, because the prop. The problem is, again, I didn't know what I didn't know. I didn't know what I didn't know up to two years ago. And then I went through the process with Mister K walking me through exactly how you continuously grow a search firm with no ceilings. Didn't know that, you know, so you gotta learn, you know. And then me, I was stuck in the MRI way talking to MRI owners. Yes.

Jonathan Bartos [00:55:28]:
So that would be one of the biggest things I would have changed is sought out to people who understood and then learned. And life would have been good still. I mean, you know, life's been good, but if I would have had to do it all over again, that would have been kind of cool. That would have been cool.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:44]:
So one of the things that I've seen with a lot of, like, uh, you know, recruiters that have been in the industry, they, like, MRI had an incredible training program. Like, absolutely incredible. I know Sanford Rose has an incredible training program, but there are so many people that have gotten into the industry over the last, well, say five to ten years, that maybe all the training that they got is literally two weeks on the phone at a firm at a large place that hires them right out of college, or they just fell into recruiting. Where can they go get more information to become either a top biller or a firm or own a firm that grows.

Jonathan Bartos [00:56:24]:
Yeah. So let's go free. Cheap. All right. Next level exchange. I mean, there's videos of the top billers in the world on next level exchange. Jeff K. When he started next level, he wanted to get the top billers to share information on what made him a million dollar, 3 million, $5 million biller and how they built an office.

Jonathan Bartos [00:56:43]:
So you have video after video. NLE is Netflix for recruiters. It really is. It's very, very cool. But within NLE, there's also foundational training, which is a incredible training for somebody starting out in the industry. It just, it's incredible. And it's very inexpensive. If you go through that training, it's, I don't know, $100, a couple hundred bucks a month or something like that.

Jonathan Bartos [00:57:04]:
But it's, it's inexpensive to get the kind of training that you're actually looking for. If you're looking to get really, really good and you want to coach, there's lots of great coaches out there. But you could either look at dimensional search or Sanford Rose associates. Why? You get a one on one coach that works with you two, they'll put you in the right training programs. Not only a foundational training program through next level academy, you've got a whole PhD in running and growing, not only a desk, but a whole firm. There's like 36 courses there that you could take and get better and better and better at it. And then having somebody hold you accountable is real important. It's lonely out there.

Jonathan Bartos [00:57:44]:
We're trying to make it happen. And if you don't have somebody who's a coach who's actually pulling you to where you need to go more pulling than pushing, but pulling you to where you need to go. You will really achieve your potential. Now let me just say this. You guys were put here for a reason. It wasn't to be average. You have been given gifts and a direction in life and we're not going to get too religious on everybody, but your potential is unbelievable, much more than what it is today. I would look at avenues to come closer to that and I think through some of these training programs, continuous learning, you will get that and life will be better off.

Jonathan Bartos [00:58:23]:
And you love this industry. I love this industry. I can imagine doing anything else. Youll get that way by on that path to achieve that vision. So get that idea what that vision is, what you want, then have somebody help you certainly achieve that stuff. Awesome.

Benjamin Mena [00:58:37]:
Well, John, for the listeners, how can they follow you?

Jonathan Bartos [00:58:40]:
LinkedIn. Get on LinkedIn. I got a new podcast coming out which will come out next month. Its grow, build and scale grow buildingscale.com dot. I dont have a page yet for it, but itll be up here fairly shortly. And then probably the best, get me on Facebook. You know John Bartowitz on Facebook? I'm the guy with the glasses. I need glasses today.

Jonathan Bartos [00:58:57]:
I can't see anything.

Benjamin Mena [00:58:59]:
Well, awesome. Well, John, before I let you go, is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners?

Jonathan Bartos [00:59:04]:
No. I think this is one of the greatest industries in the world. If you do it right and are willing to be conditioned to do the business, continually seek improvement, to achieve whatever vision you want to, you'll have the greatest career in the world.

Benjamin Mena [00:59:17]:
Awesome, man. Thank you so much for coming on, John. Weve talked about so many things from growing and scaling your business, the analytics that you need to track for your success, for the success for your team, ways to track it, and then most importantly, how to exit all that work that youve done for so many years. How do you set yourself up to financially benefit so you can go buy, as you said, the iota, the Fiji, or a chateau over in France or even a, a vineyard next door to where you're at?

Jonathan Bartos [00:59:47]:
Absolutely. I love that. Neighbors.

Benjamin Mena [00:59:51]:
But for the listeners, I want 2024 to be your best year yet. Keep crushing it, guys. Thank you.