Jeremy Weisz 10:22
I mean, it is tought that time I think of as a huge leap. Right? Six figure salary. I love to talk about the COO delegation, and that process from deciding to do it to doing it? Because that seems like it was also a big decision as well.
Jeremy Jenson 10:41
Yeah, definitely. So, you know, in 2015, I was in a group called visted, which I’m not sure if you’re familiar with it. But, you know, this is just a peer to peer Executive Advisory Group for mid level managers and C level executives. And, you know, I was in there with a young man. I’m venting about my business, man, you know, the recruiters are lazy, their work ethic is poor. They’re taking shortcuts. And he’s like, damn, Jeremy, you must be losing a lot of money. So what are you talking about? I made a half a million dollars last year. And so in having these conversations with Scott in an environment where he didn’t really have insight into a professional service firm, where they had those big individual tickets that yielded this massive amount of net income. He basically told me, he said to me, Jeremy, what if you actually implement implemented processes, systems and accountability? And I said, Oh, yeah, that sounds all fun and good, but I’m only good at sales. And he said, well, well, I can do it for you. And I said, well, well, Scott, you know, I don’t think I can afford you. And so, you know, it took a little bit of creativity in order to get him, you know, he needed that six figure base, because he had a young family at the time in a single income household. And, and he and we negotiated a percentage of top line revenue as a, as a VP, non producer, operations guy. But I knew that we were in an industry where sales would solve the bottom line, right. And I needed somebody that can help hold me accountable to achieving our business milestone goals, and implementing those processes systems and ultimately, accountability for the team. And so bringing Scott in in October of 2016. It was tough. It was tough for my internal people. They all had agency recruiting experience, Scott came from a from an IT consulting company. He didn’t have any recruiting industry experience. But what he knew was how to implement EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating system because he’d been doing it the previous five years at his current firm, going from 24 years old to 29 years old. And it was his personal goal as a kid to be a vice president by the time he was 30. And he’ll tell everyone to this day, he beat it by one month. And so we hired him as VP that was one of the big stipulations. But his title at the time was Sales and Operations Manager, you never would have thought that this guy would grow up into being the President of the largest privately held executive search firm in Houston, Texas. But he eats, sleep, and breathe and drank Gino Whitman’s KoolAid. I’ll tell you that EOS. And so Scott brought that toolbox with him. In 2016, we didn’t really touch the toolbox until December of 2017. Because it took them a full year to learn our culture to learn, you know, the way that we charge fees, who are our target clients, what were our unique selling points, what would be our rocks, and then he didn’t want to influence too much change overnight. Because we were kind of building rebuilding after an oil and gas downturn, right. And so in December of 17, Scott implemented EOS. And that’s what really forced our business to skyrocket. I mean, we went from 1 million to 2.6 million to 4.2 to 5.5. COVID was kind of a flat year because we lost revenue for a full quarter. But then last year, you know, we did nearly $12 million dollars in revenue and the goal this year is upwards of 14. And so in a professional service environment, like a public accounting firm, or a private equity firm or an investment banking firm, a $14 million business can yield some pretty profitable margins for sure.
Jeremy Weisz 14:50
It sounds like he came in and really did a lot of learning and listening and understanding and then he was ready to hit the ground running and he’s kind of I mean, you’re the visionary He type and he’s the integrator type. And that’s why they call the rocket fuel, right with Mark Winches and Gino Whitman.
Jeremy Jenson 15:07
Absolutely. And you know, it’s funny, because I think he had envisioned the whole timeline the entire time, but he never told me, right. And I don’t think that I would have had the guts to go out and buy a 250k CEO. Oh, because my business really couldn’t support it. So I got the guy that was 121 50 on day one. And he grew in to the guy that I’m proud to say, as my back to back in the company, for sure.
Jeremy Weisz 15:36
Talk about implementing EOS. I mean, obviously, you had an expert who had done it, but, you know, the team still has to implement and execute, talk about how the implementation work.
Jeremy Jenson 15:48
Sure. So most of the time companies hire an EOS implementer somebody pay anywhere from 6000 to $10,000 a day, to help you formally implemented into your C suite and mid level management team, right. You know, that really wasn’t something that I was willing to invest in at the time. And so we self implemented. Again, like I said, Scott was familiar with it, because his company had been doing it for the previous four or five years. But I think one thing that was very, very important for Scott to have is we still kept him with his Vistage coach, Christine Spray, who is also a certified master EOS implementer. Right. And so he always had that resource whenever he needed, needed it, because his business coach was an EOS Certified Professional. And so when Scott rolled it out, and rolled it out in December of 2017, I remember we were sitting at our, at my dining room table in my house. And we had planned to be there. I think for seven hours. It was me, Scott, and Casey, myself and my two VPS. And we ended up staying there for 10 hours. And during that we had to define several things. What was our mission? What were what was our vision? What were our values, our unique selling point? What’s our Y, right? What are our rocks? What are those strategic initiatives that we need to tackle over the next quarter over the next year? What about over the next five and 10 years, we needed to provide clarity in that meeting? That way, the right hand can continue to talk to the left hand going forward. And it’s so funny as a headhunter. I see 100 million dollar companies, $500 million companies, completely misaligned mission, vision and values. Everyone’s got their own individual p&l, and they’re operating with a different culture a different strategy, right? You’ve got sales, shitting, on operations, operations, blaming sales, right? And there’s no continuity. There’s nobody working together. And that ultimately kills the culture and then the bottom line.
Jeremy Weisz 17:58
What are some key pieces to the EOS format that you like, because I know there’s a lot of different pieces, like you mentioned the rocks, and there’s level 10 meetings, what are some of the key pieces that you go back to the wow, I can’t believe we live without this beforehand?
Jeremy Jenson 18:15
Yeah, definitely. So it certainly be those executive off site strategy sessions that we do once a quarter. My President Scott Kelly, who was hired as VP then later promoted them promoted again, he’s the one that prepares the agenda for that, where we identified discuss and solve issues in the company. We have our people analyzer, we determined are people in the right seats on the bus? Who are the culture killers, we need to get them off the bus, even if they’re a high revenue producer, that may be stunting the growth of those around them. Right. And so, you know, really, I’ll say that it was a combination of all the tools and resources, but the one thing that we needed was that integrator, the individual that could hold myself accountable, and my VP accountable, who is the individual that manages that $7 million book of business, because we’re the rainmakers do and we are add, we don’t need to prepare for meetings. We just walk in, you give us the microphone, we execute, right? Scott was the planner. He’s the guy that could foresee the challenges and bottlenecks before they even happen. Right. Casey and I are the ones that wait till they happen. And then we just bust the wall down, right? But that’s not sustainable whenever you’re building a profitable business. And so it was the integrator that was key.
Jeremy Weisz 19:35
I’m sure there’s been some heated discussions throughout the course of the company when you put those two in almost no opposing things, but like, what are some conversations, Jeremy you’re smiling at me, you buttheads about because you come in, you’re like, don’t worry about it. Like we got this. I don’t think we’re going to play and let’s just go go go. I mean, this is the visionary and integrator, right? The push pull there. What are some things that you maybe buttheads on, but like, come out the other side, and it’s better?
Jeremy Jenson 20:12
Absolutely. So I’m gonna have to go back really far in the memory bank right now. Because I’ll say for the first two years, we butted butted heads on a lot. And then a couple things happen. You know, my president went through a divorce, I went through divorce, those are both very humbling experiences where you’re forced to look in the mirror and say, you can make one of two decisions, you can point the finger at the other person and say them them them, or do you do what Scott and I did you look in the mirror and you say, how did I fail? Where did I go wrong? And so, you know, was taking on that level of humility, being self aware, being coachable. I think that was very, very important. First, Scott and myself to really learn how to see the other side of the table. Right and, and pursue conversations with empathy and seek to understand by putting myself in the other person’s shoes, right. And so I wouldn’t necessarily say that, that we’ve had too many disagreements, you know, since late 2019, because those quarterly strategy sessions really keep the pulse. Right? Maybe if let’s say there’s a spectrum and it’s in zero to 100, this way, and zero to 100, this way, in a quarter, you could probably get to about 15 to 20. And then that that strategy session brings you back recalibrates, right. But if you could go a whole year, or sometimes companies don’t even do it at all, you could be 80% in opposite directions, that’s whenever it creates the blow ups and the irreparable damage. Right. And so I’ll say that, that it’s those quarterly strategy sessions that really reduce it, but, you know, maybe a disagreement. You know, I remember when, when, when your MO Casey came on as VP in May of 2016. Scott came on as VP in October of 2016. Well, guess what, in January of 2020, Scott was promoted to President Scott came after Casey, what the hell? What what? Right? I sit down with Casey, I said, Casey, do you want to be the president to the company? Do you want to be the backstop? Do you want to be the integrator? Do you want to be operational process systems? Accountability? Right? Well, no, I just want to sell.
Jeremy Weisz 22:36
If you put it like that, Jeremy.
Jeremy Jenson 22:37
Yeah, no, I just want to generate revenue, I want to make a bunch of money. That’s what drives Casey night. Right. And so it did require myself Scott and him sitting down to where we needed to illustrate. Hey, Casey, just because Scott is the President doesn’t diminish your role in any capacity. If we were a train, right? I cases used this analogy before, let’s say encore search partners is the train. Well, Scott might be the engineer, right? Jeremy provides the tracks. And then it’s Casey that’s pouring the fuel into the train. Does that make sense? So it cannot operate without all all three. And so when you realize, hey, I need to own my role. And my colleagues, right, my associates at the VP and sea level, there’s a tremendous amount of mutual respect and admiration that we have for another but but not because of our technical competency, but because we know that it couldn’t operate without the other person. That was very, very important to remove that ego. To keep us on the right track.
Jeremy Weisz 23:53
Yeah. Culture, maintaining culture. And you mentioned culture killers, what are some culture killers in your organization?
Jeremy Jenson 24:05
You know, I think culture healers can be individuals that gossip. I think that that’s a massive culture killer. I think that, you know, most employees want to go to work and they want to do their job, they want to be paid fairly, they want to be treated with respect and they want to go home. And, you know, individuals that feed into spreading gossip or rumors or trying to, you know, create chaos in the organization are massive culture killers, even if they’re high performers from a revenue generation standpoint. Right. So that’s number one. Another one could be, you know, thinking about ones that we’ve had in the past, you know, individuals that think that they’re better than their colleagues right. And when I say better, what I mean is more like entitled mentor, you know, they’re not held to the same standard of excellence to the core values of what everyone else is. So they talk down to people, they diminish other people’s roles. I think that can be a massive culture killer, right. And so, you know, on previous podcasts I’ve talked about, you know, one individual at the time that was generating revenue figures that we had really never seen before. And, you know, a 900k, producer in one year in 2019. And there was a young associate in the firm, that he was kind of rubbing the wrong way. And she voiced some frustrations didn’t want to entirely throw him under the bus. But frankly, it wasn’t something that I was okay with. And ultimately, we had to manage that that one individual out of your organization, but it’s so funny, Jeremy, that young associate that he was rubbing the wrong way. Then next year, she built 1.2 million. The year after that she built 1.5 million. Remember, I told you we’d never seen 900k before? Well, by removing that emotional and physical roadblock, she was able to completely outperform what he was doing. And that’s the young lady that grew into our Vice President of legal. And so by keeping someone who we all thought was a massively high performer, we would have lost someone that I view as my equal in the company, right. I mean, that’s, that would have been a very, very expensive decision to make. I’ll tell you that.
Jeremy Weisz 26:36
Jeremy, I want to talk about the gossip. You know, like, like you said, these are tough. At the time, sometimes they seem tough. I mean, maybe torn is the better, better a statement like, these are high producers? You know, they do well on the company. So if there’s a piece there, sometimes it’s it’s tough to make the decision. How do you approach someone you know, they’re good person, but they are exhibiting one of those behaviors like gossiping? How do you approach it with.
Jeremy Jenson 27:12
Yeah, gossip? toxicity? Yeah, chaos?
Jeremy Weisz 27:15
Yeah, I’m sure because someone listening, I think it’s experiencing, I mean, in some level this, um, I love to hear how you handle it.
Jeremy Jenson 27:23
Yeah, I think it’s very important to tie the coaching conversation to one of your core values. And, you know, if, if you can’t tie the coaching conversation to a core value, then you should probably add a value to the wall, right? And so when you look at, you know, our, our why, right? It’s to be the best is to close deals, and to make money, right? That’s our why. Sounds very, very simple. But that’s why we all come to work each and every day. And so there may be, you know, an opportunity to coach and say, hey, look, what you’re doing is not contributing to our why it’s actually pulling away from it. It’s distracting from it, let’s have a conversation. What’s driving that gossip? Let me see if I can solve that problem as an Executive leader, right. But number two, you know, when you look at our core values of excellence, meticulous coachable, professionalism, gratitude, and competitive, right. You know, I think it’s very important to tie specific core values to that, that to that coaching opportunity, as well, right. And core values shouldn’t just be something that’s on the website or on the wall. You know, we talk about our core values, in every single level 10 meeting every single Monday at 2pm. We talked about our values, every single one on one coaching session, we talked about our core values, in the interview process, they’re outlined in the offer letter, you are committing to these values, just like their KPIs. Right to hit as a sales professional, right. And so you know, what another thing that I’m very proud of is the values in always hitting those home while most companies give out into the year awards, to the President’s Club and the Circle of Excellence and, and the Gold members and Platinum members of revenue figures. We give out bonuses, and we give out accolades and awards for our core value champions. And so creating creating a culture around having that shared mission, vision and values is imperative to long term growth and success, which ultimately drives profitability.
Jeremy Weisz 29:41
What is the frequency and how do you run the one on one coaching sessions?
Jeremy Jenson 29:47
Sure. So for new employees, our CEO and president he meets with them about once a week for the first 90 days just to make sure that you know, the number one they You’ve got the right tools and resources to be successful, you’d be surprised that how many people start jobs. And they don’t even bring it up until the second month for like, oh, I don’t, I don’t even have that login, right. So it’s important to keep a very, very close pulse on them for at least the first few weeks, right. And then after that, some of the cadence that goes to once every two weeks for individuals that we call run a full desk, right, so that means they handle client relationships and candidate relationships. And then for individuals that are non producers, or individuals that just handle the candidate recruiting side, they can potentially go to every three weeks, right? And so that’s kind of the cadence of what we do with our one on ones. But with that being said, a little bit over a year ago, I posted into the EO group WhatsApp needs and leads. And I said, Man, you know, I’ve been watching the show billions. And I think I need a windy, I want a windy for the company. Right? Are you familiar with the show? So she’s basically like the company therapist. But she’s so valuable to the executive team that Bobby Axelrod, the owner of the firm gives her a $25 million bonus at the end of the year. That’s the value that she creates, to maintaining the mindset and maximizing performance of their most valuable asset, which is there are people right there a hedge fund in New York, that manages over 15 billion AUM but uh, but I needed a windy and so we ended up hiring in April of 2022, an individual named Matt Todd Marathi, who is a licensed clinician and performance and mindset coach to kind of come in every Tuesday and Thursday, and have those 45 minute sessions with our employees that they can book just like we’re in a therapist office, right, but it’s their performance and mindset coach. And so, you know, after learning our culture, seeing some common issues that people were facing, whether it be, you know, imposter syndrome or, or, you know, having a lack of empathy for their colleagues, she ended up developing curriculum around having small group breakout sessions, to do like eight to 10 person focus groups where they can all increase their emotional intelligence, their self awareness, their executive presence, so it’s kind of like a hodgepodge of like having a therapist and Toastmasters and a business coach, and, uh, you know, it’s pretty awesome, man.
Jeremy Weisz 32:45
I love it. Thanks for sharing that. That’s huge. Um, I want to talk about the police chief. And what happened.
Jeremy Jenson 32:54
It’s my good friend, John Nichols.
Jeremy Weisz 32:57
You know, I talked about Jason Smith going from LAPD fighting gangs literally fighting gangs to agency on our side. I want to hear the police chief story. Yeah, so.
Jeremy Jenson 33:09
So the funny thing about the police chief is people hit me up everyday. Hey, Jeremy, I’m looking for a job. And because of the nature of what we do, I mean, we’re like, you know, purple squirrel hunters, companies tell us they need a left handed female certified financial planner in Northern California that went to a public college that grew up with a single parent. Okay, we got it. You know what I’m saying? Like the most rare rare things, that’s what we specialize in. So people that are typically looking for a job, maybe they don’t fit one of our clients, exact parameters, right. But I’d had my ex wife, her, her college roommates husband gave me a ring. He was the chief of police for Southwestern Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. And he said, Jeremy, I’m I need to make a change. Right. You know, we have some changes in leadership. I don’t like the way the direction of the seminary is going. I want to go into corporate America. So John, we don’t like you know, companies pay me big fees, because they need someone doing the exact same job at the company across the street and they want to steal that intellectual capital. Okay. Literally that afternoon, I get a call from one of my clients, the Senior Vice President of Human Resources for a 1500 person, private equity owned oil and gas service company. And he says, Jeremy, I need a field HR manager in Lubbock, Texas. Okay, well, what do you want? He goes, I don’t want anyone with HR experience. He said, they have a mindset where they want to protect the employees. But when this is all filled services, man, right, these guys are a little rough. around the edges, they get their hands dirty sometimes, you know, and he said, I want someone that is skilled with investigations, that has strong attention to detail on filling out reports, right? Somebody that knows how to handle themselves around a blue collar workforce, and still be comfortable presenting to executive leadership. So I said, Zack, what do you think about a police officer? Right? He fills out reports he does investigations, and even a police chief. Well, that guy does presentations to the media, to public officials. And he says, Absolutely, I would hire that.
Jeremy Weisz 35:42
You’re a genius. Jeremy, how did you come up with that?
Jeremy Jenson 35:45
I don’t know. It was just the guy called me that morning. Yeah, you’re a genius. You’re right. That’s what he said. Yeah. So anyways, I told him, I said, Hey, my buddy, I think is a good fit. And you know, it’s funny, because he interviewed four people for the role. And, and my buddy ended up getting the job. So it wasn’t like I was forced feeding him one candidate, right. But I just thought that that was such an amazing stars align moment where I can create meaningful change in somebody’s life, who thought that they were never going to be able to leave this niche industry. And here he is four or five years later, climbing the corporate ladder in this oilfield service company. And he’s just started as a field HR manager, you know, and anybody moved his wife and four kids from Fort Worth all the way to Lubbock. Right, he had to be pretty sure that that deal was going to stick for sure.
Jeremy Weisz 36:42
Thanks for sharing that. That’s awesome. I’d love to hear about ideal, who are ideal clients, because you serve both. I mean, you probably have a lot of people contacting us, like, I want to find an amazing job. But you have companies, you know, contacting you, and then who’s an ideal client for you? And and then we’ll talk about maybe Honeywell for a second. Because you serve a lot of different fields. Because I know your army you serve financial energy, legal engineering, manufacturing, industrial technology, talk about ideal clients.
Jeremy Jenson 37:16
Yeah. So if you ask myself, or one of my two VPS, we would give a different answer. Right? So I’ve got a, I’ve got an executive VP that runs our wealth management group, right? So think about Wealth Advisors. I’ve got another VP, she runs our law firm recruiting practice. So any law firm that’s growing, the group that I manage, and the group that I’m personally responsible for driving revenue for is our energy, industrial and manufacturing group. And so that’s going to be companies that are, you know, one of two things, right? Maybe they’re a mid middle market or enterprise level company that that makes something right. Do they make plastics? Do they make consumer packaged goods, right, food products, chemicals, somebody that makes something in industrial manufacture? And then we also recruit for a lot of private equity funded, energy, industrial and technology companies as well, right? Because, you know, as I mentioned, when you’re the best direct hire recruiting firm in Houston, probably the world but you know, I don’t have those awards yet. You know, we’re typically not going to be the cheapest option on the block, right? There’s people that work from home, in their boxers with no overhead that can charge fee is probably half as mine, right. So when you’re working with the top firm, much like companies work with EY, PwC, Deloitte, those companies are way more expensive than a solo, you know, CPA working out of his house, right. But the point that I’m trying to make is we recruit for private equity funded companies and venture capital funded companies, because it’s about speed and accuracy to grow and increase the enterprise value of their business. And they don’t have as much emotional tie to that recruiting fee, because it’s not coming out of the entrepreneurs pocket. Does that make sense? And so it’s middle market and enterprise level companies that have recruiting agency budgets of seven figures plus, and then of course, it’s private equity and venture capital, industrial energy manufacturing and technology companies. And so if someone is a degreed engineer, right, it could be the title engineer could be supply chain manufacturing operations. It can be a technical salesperson that needs to be an engineer. We are the best resource in the entire injury or industry for those positions.
Jeremy Weisz 39:47
And this kind of relates to Honeywell, what do you do with them?
Jeremy Jenson 39:52
Yeah, so Honeywell? Is is my largest enterprise client to seven figure account for for us. And you know, the way that we got in was I worked with an individual when I was 22, 23 years old, I was working at an HR consulting company and inside sales, she liked me I liked her like professional air, you know, like best friends, as she knew that I was the smart guys. But whenever I went and started my own firm, she kind of followed my trajectory on LinkedIn and, and was proud of me and one day they were bitching on their HR call about they couldn’t get this field cybersecurity engineer position build in Northern California, they needed to have a CISSP certification, they needed to travel 90% They needed to be able to lift 100 pounds over their head, there was all these variables that they needed and all the recruiting agencies that they use could not close the deal. So you have this you know, 2829 year old HR generalist, raise your hand on the on the call and say a friend of mine owns an agency. I trust him. I think that he could close the deal. And they let this little tiny recruiting firm in the door at Honeywell International. Actually, it was Honeywell process solutions, a subsidiary of Honeywell performance materials, a subsidiary of Honeywell International on my recruiting agreement, my paper right after I closed the deal, I sent them an invoice I said what the hell is this people at corporate are like, this isn’t an approved vendor. And so that they had to get me in the vendor list after the fact they hired my candidate. But we found someone we found someone within two weeks. And it was because we don’t post the job on zip recruiter or monster or career builder or indeed or LinkedIn and wait for applicants. Our clients can post the jobs. You come to us when you want us to build a very definitive project of 20 to 50 people that are qualified in the whole in the whole United States. And we cold call cold email, cold text message. Cold Facebook message. We call their mom we call their dad we call their ex wife. How much does it pay? Oh, it pays 140 Oh, yeah, call him. He needs to increase his child. So that’s what we’re headhunters.
Jeremy Weisz 42:35
Yeah, private investigator of finding I love it.
Jeremy Jenson 42:39
I love it. I love that we do this. I feel like we may be the only ones to do it this way. I don’t even post the jobs. Other agencies want to talk about AI. Right? Artificial Intelligence and, and lead scoring for resumes and drip marketing. We have aI it’s called actual intelligence. We don’t lean artificial intelligence. That’s our competitive advantage.
Jeremy Weisz 43:09
Jeremy, I want to be the first one to thank you. And before we end, I want to just point people to check out encoresearch.com to learn more, and check them out what they’re doing. And Jeremy, thank you so much.
Jeremy Jenson 43:23
Thanks for having me on. I have a lot of fun.
Outro 43:25
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