How To Build A $1.9M Firm With Just 2 People

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
You guys are in for a treat with this episode. But before we start listening, if this is September 28th through October 5th and you are listening to this episode and you have not signed up for Finish the Year Strong, jump into the show notes, get registered, because this is the final big summit of the year. You do not want to miss it. We have so many amazing speakers to help you absolutely crush Q4. Whatever your challenges, we have somebody And a speaker that is hitting on that topic. Big billers, automation, AI, you name it, it is being presented all week. So make sure you get registered. I see you there.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:38]:
And if you are listening to this after October 5th, we're doing something a little different. A Firm Owners and Firm Leaders Summit kicking off in November. I'll have some information in the show notes. Going to start talking more about that soon, but man, you guys are in for an amazing treat. This is one of my favorite people, and this is a special episode. Enjoy.

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

Benjamin Mena [00:01:18]:
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Benjamin Mena [00:01:43]:
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Benjamin Mena [00:02:18]:
A 35% increase in new clients won, 15 hours saved every week, monthly billings jumping 85%, and agencies hitting 150% of their annual revenue target by building their business with Atlas. If you want more information, check out Recruit with Atlas. I'm excited about this interview for 2, 2 reasons. First of all, the first time I met this guest of this podcast, I thought he was gonna kick my ass. I swear to God, I was actually Scared when he walked up to me, but he was the nicest person in the world. And that's one of the things that I absolutely love about this guest. Secondly, he works a 2-man team. They average $1.5 million plus per year as a 2-person team, and they are absolutely happy with how they operate, how they work.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:05]:
And we're gonna go deeper into that. But Bodhi, welcome to the podcast.

Bodie Nowak [00:03:09]:
Hey, thanks for having me. I know we've known each other for a while and, and had a lot of interaction with others on this podcast, so it's, it's, it's fun to Finally get to sync up with you here and have a conversation.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:19]:
Yeah, you've been a hard one to lock down. I've been like, Bodie's on my list, Bodie's on my list.

Bodie Nowak [00:03:23]:
There's so many good folks. I was like, well, let's let a lot of folks go before, and I can jump in anytime here. So I appreciate you hosting it. Appreciate you having me. Appreciate all you've done for Pinnacle.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:33]:
Before we get rocking and rolling, how long have you been a Pinnacle member?

Bodie Nowak [00:03:37]:
I joined in, uh, 4 years ago. So it was 4 years ago, April. So just a little over 4 years. 2022 is when I joined.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:45]:
Well, we're going to get into that, but let me just take you back in time. 2009, right? Your entire billings for the year was $11,250. That's less than what most recruiters make with a single placement. And you were like a year and a half into your recruiting career with a wife at home, a kid in kindergarten. And you were on the draw. Most people would've actually quit, walked away from this chair. $11,000 for the year. Like, how do you pay your bills? Like, why did you not quit?

Bodie Nowak [00:04:21]:
No, it's a, it's an excellent question. And, and when I tell people the story, you know, they don't ever really ask that. Look, it wasn't that I wouldn't have quit. And I say that, you know, 'cause people think, well, he just endured it and stayed in it. We have to remember what the timing was. It was a recession and I come from a sales background. I was in recruiting because I had a sales background. There weren't any sales jobs out there, certainly not that, you know, were willing to pay anything close to maybe what I was even getting on a draw, which, which was about $3,200 after taxes for a, you know, a family of 3.

Bodie Nowak [00:04:57]:
It was meager and it hurt us, you know, financially throughout that year, but I remember, you know, we had an apartment and we had a garage and the master bedroom on the bottom and then everything was on the top. So the master bedroom was dark and cool down there. And I would sit at this makeshift desk all the time and I would look online and I would look for opportunities beyond what I was doing. And I applied for a lot of stuff and a lot of stuff just went unnoticed. I do remember the one time though, I did, I did get an interview. And I took an interview and it was one of these jobs. It was with Coca-Cola and it was for, you know, like a person that runs routes and stocks certain stores. The cap of this position was like $50K.

Bodie Nowak [00:05:42]:
And I remember going to the interview, they had messed up and said, hey, you know, you're supposed to interview on a different day. And I was like, no, I can't do that. I'm going to interview right now. I made them go get the guys that come interview me. Then they interviewed me. And they gave me the job, but I didn't take the job. You know, I told my wife at the time, I was like, I was like, this, this job is already capped. I was like, if we can hang on, just hang on until something switches.

Bodie Nowak [00:06:12]:
I was like, I was like, the potential of what we can do in this role that I have is insurmountable. And I was like, if I quit now, I don't know if I'll ever go back to it because then I'll get comfortable doing something else or something will happen and I just won't stay with it. I said, I've got to try. And at least endure where we are now, because if I don't, I think I'm going to shortside us. And so I didn't take that job with Coca-Cola, and that was the number one reason for it. And I can assure you that after that, I had regretted that decision too. It wasn't like, wow, you made a great decision and here's your new career with a lot of money. I sat in that same room probably multiple times that year because I was a little depressed, man.

Bodie Nowak [00:06:57]:
How do you earn and pretend to be a good father and husband if you can't earn? At least that's how I thought about it. Because I've always thought, hey, I'm an earner here. So it was tough, but I had to look for the long run in this deal. You know, I think, and sorry if I'm, if I'm long-winded here, but it was interesting to think about it all at once because I think the story that goes untold is that the long way is, is the shortcut. You know, the shortcut never gets you there, right? So people quit, I think, when things get hard because the thought of things being hard forever is unbearable, right? So, but it's a lie, right? Nothing's hard forever. You either quit, it gets easier, or you get harder. So no matter what, I think the hard way ends up— the hard always ends. And the only way you lose is if you quit before seeing it through.

Bodie Nowak [00:07:57]:
So I just tell myself, look, man, if it's a hard time, it's like, this is for now. It's not forever. And that's kind of the mentality I took, you know, through that process and why I didn't take that job at Coca-Cola.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:08]:
I know that there's somebody that's listening to this is going through a hard time. And now that this is raw and brought up, what would you say to that person right now?

Bodie Nowak [00:08:21]:
I would tell them to evaluate who they are in their life, who cares about them or around them, and try to visualize and understand, you know, who do you want to be as a person? It's not about what am I doing now? It's what motivation do I have? You have to really just understand overall, like, what kind of person do I want to be as a professional? And what am I trying to give here? Right? Not what am I trying to look for and take? I know you want a paycheck, you want to get paid, but if you can reach deep enough and find out your nucleus of your why and who you want to be and build upon purpose rather than policies or financial gain, I think you're going to end up learning more about yourself than you ever thought you would. And it's going to help at least drive your decisions forward in a positive manner, whether or not that gets you very far when you make those decisions. One step, one day, one step, one day. I think you just have to really dig deep and deal with some emotions because if you don't, they're going to burn you up.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:31]:
Well, we're going to take a few steps back for those that don't know who Bodhi is, can you give everybody a quick, like, 30-second self-introduction?

Bodie Nowak [00:09:40]:
Yeah, so I'm a Texas boy by birth and by heritage, a 6th generation out here. I grew up in Lubbock, Texas. Father was an architecture professor out there. Grandfather was a farmer. My other grandfather was a superintendent. So I kind of grew up blue collar, came out to Dallas Got through school at UNT with a film degree. Uh, I didn't do anything with that because I needed to go get a master's degree in California. Stayed here, got in sales.

Bodie Nowak [00:10:08]:
Turns out 18 years ago, I walked into a recruiting office, they hired me. And, um, as a professional now, I, I manage a firm, 3-person firm, a partnership called Blackwood Partners. We're construction recruiters. We recruit probably 80% in our local market out here in DFW. And that's kind of the, that's kind of the wrap-up from tip to tail, at least for a 30-second Intro.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:29]:
Well, I normally start how you ended up in this world of Misfit Toys, but I actually want to start a few farther back because I think this is important. Like you spent your summers working on the ranch and I did one summer working on an ostrich ranch. Ranch life is hard, especially in that.

Bodie Nowak [00:10:43]:
You know, then that's cool.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:44]:
Especially in that heat, that, the Southwest heat. But like how much of who you are at your desk right now is because of the kid that your granddad raised on those ranch days?

Bodie Nowak [00:10:55]:
You know, it's, it's a lot of it. You know, I think, you know, we, we learned, you know, I guess probably from, you know, worked at the farm sometimes down here, just randomly raise animals and stuff out here. But when we worked at the ranch, these were ranches, big, pretty big ranches. And so you're working with grown men, but you know, you're 13, 14, 15, 16. And I'll tell you what it is, man. For me, I work down there with people that did this for their entire life, right? I remember this Mexican family that I worked with down on one of the ranches when I was about 18 years old. Man, these people were salt of the earth, and they did this their whole life. And the labor-intensive of this, of that type of work is insane if you think about it forever.

Bodie Nowak [00:11:44]:
And so I just had an overwhelming admiration for these folks and what they did and how they supported their family and how just kind of frugal and efficient they were with their life. And, you know, they lived out there on the ranch and it was impressive, but it also gave me, you know, a sense of pride that I could go down there and work alongside these folks. And they took me in as somebody that was up to task and capable of that job. So, you know, I felt like I was in their world and they accepted me because I could come down there and do that work. So it's not different than you when you get into recruiting. You know, you look up to all these big folks that do this job when you first get into it and you're like, how can I be them? Do the work. Yeah. Come in and you do the work and then you listen and you learn and then you do the work better.

Bodie Nowak [00:12:32]:
And so that's what I did in recruiting. And I think it was the same way when I worked on the ranch. You just have to look up to the folks that have been in it and done it, but want them to accept you because you need them. At least when you start out, you certainly need them.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:45]:
Fast forwarding to you in college, one of the things that you spoke about with me during the pregame and also at the stage of the most recent Pinnacle Society conference is you got arrested.

Bodie Nowak [00:13:00]:
DWI.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:00]:
Or is it your second DWI?

Bodie Nowak [00:13:03]:
Second. Yes, sir. Yeah, that was an interesting event. Look, and I didn't elaborate on this a lot when we were at the event, and I don't really elaborate on, on very much with most folks I talked to outside of my family. But from about the age of 17 until 22, which was the time that I got my second DWI, I challenged rules and societal norms and had a few other run-ins with the law and got myself into trouble prior to that. Nothing heinous or anything like that. You know, I was a kid and, you know, I got I got in trouble, but this is when I forced the hand. And because I had been on probation for my first DWI, when I got my second one, they revoked your probation.

Bodie Nowak [00:13:50]:
So you do not get a chance to be bonded out of jail until you have a court date. That court date was going to be one month, you know, in the future from the day I got it. So I knew I was stuck there for a month and Long story short, they gave me an option to get out after I'd been in there for a month and go back onto probation for 2 years or stay in jail for 8 months. The 8 months had a caveat though. If you were to go into, which was a county jail, if you could get the warden to put you on a work duty, like you went out and weed-eated or you mopped floors or you worked in the kitchen, whatever it was, then they would commute your sentence. They would give you 2 days for each 1 day that you're in there and it was retrograded. So if I had been in there for 3 and a half months and I got to go on work duty, it would've all retrograded back and I would've got out in 4 months. And so I looked at the timeline.

Bodie Nowak [00:14:52]:
I had been at least smart enough to pay for my apartment and tuition and bills for a semester rather than just month by month. It's the way, you know, you got student assistance financially that made sense to do that. So I had about 4 months. I didn't have 8 months, otherwise I would've been in trouble and I'd get kicked outta my apartment and I would've just had to start all over. So I took a chance, man. I took a chance and I bet on the fact that I could convince the warden to let me have those work duties. And I wrote a letter every day for a month. So I was in there 2 months.

Bodie Nowak [00:15:29]:
Looking at an 8-month sentence, hoping I could get it to 4. And I remember the gentleman that walked over to me, one of the sheriff's deputies that monitors the system unit I was in, and he had a smile on his face because he knew I'd been writing those letters every month or every day that month. And he's like, you got one back. He just stood over there to watch me open it. And he's like, what'd they say? And I said, they're going to let me have it. And he was excited for me. And that's not, does it happen very often where the folks running the jail are excited about the people in the jail, but he knew what I was trying to do, man. And so I felt good about that.

Bodie Nowak [00:16:03]:
I got the work duty. I got out in 4 months. My dad had cleared me out of my semester classes. I was able to get back into college. And man, you want to talk about a fire and a hustle to get things done and get out of Dodge and go, you know, start a professional life after that. That motivation existed very firmly after that whole episode.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:23]:
You chose the jail route. You could have chosen a bit of a different route, right?

Bodie Nowak [00:16:28]:
Yeah, you could have chosen a different route. And it's interesting because when you get out, when you get out of jail and you had been in the system, you'd been on probation before, they make you talk to a psych— a psychologist or psychiatrist. They want to know, do you have, you know, addictive tendencies? You know, how are you going to reinstitute yourself into society? And they ask you a ton of questions about all kinds of stuff. Take you through about an hour interview. And I told the psychiatrist the same thing. And, and he was like, wait a minute. He was like, he's like, you could have got out after a month. He's like, and you chose to stay possibly for 8 months and then got out for 4.

Bodie Nowak [00:17:01]:
And I was like, yeah. He said, nobody does that. And I was like, okay. I was like, I did. For me, it wasn't, I don't, I didn't think of it like that then because I was like, man, I, I don't, I just bet on myself. I was like, I can't, I can't do this for 2 more years and under somebody else's control. I'm just not built that way. So I would've eaten 8 months if I'd have had to, and I would've been happier about that.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:25]:
So you pretty much like, this is pretty much the start of your adult life. You chose your own personal control over what something could have been way more comfortable.

Bodie Nowak [00:17:37]:
Yeah. Yeah, it would. Yeah. Right. I mean, not being in jail and being out of jail is way more comfortable than being in jail. So there, there's no doubt about that being the issue, but I think too, it's like I said, going back to the year that I billed $11,250, it's like sometimes you just can't look at the short side of an equation. You can't look at this being, hey, it's a shortcut to comfort. I'll choose control over comfort just about any time I can, if it makes sense.

Bodie Nowak [00:18:08]:
Right. And control to me is important, but control to me is It means that I get to have as much authority over my person, my being, my mind, and my actions as I can. And I've been able to be successful by doing so.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:25]:
So I want to get into 2009, but before we get there, I want to go back to 2008 when you actually started recruiting. For the listeners, how many placements did you make your first month?

Bodie Nowak [00:18:34]:
First month in recruiting? None. So the way we were structured when we came into recruiting was an MRI office. They want you to run a 360-degree recruiter desk. We actually had an internal trainer at the office I started at. So it was about, you know, 2 weeks of, of pretty heavy training. And then it was BD, get on the phone and go find a client, like barely understand how to, you know, market a, whatever you call it, impact player or NPC. And then, you know, put a list together. And man, we were in this archaic system called CAPS.

Bodie Nowak [00:19:06]:
I don't know if you've heard about it.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:08]:
We've heard of it.

Bodie Nowak [00:19:08]:
It was ridiculous. And so, you know, you got this list that's ill-formatted and who knows who you're gonna get and you're calling through. So it took a while, but in the first 3 months, I gained a few clients. I made my first placement as a 360-degree desk recruiter in my first 3 months. And, and then, and I don't know how much it was, you know, it was maybe a $20,000, $22,000 fee, but in 7 months I was already up to $100,000. And I don't know if that was, that's probably about 4 placements, right? So 4 placements in 7 months. When I first started out, and that put us right up against like November-ish 2008, and then everything just hit the floor. The recession really took hold of construction, and then you had the 2009.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:55]:
I wanted to lay that groundwork because like you didn't come in and start struggling. You came in and you were seeing success. You were making placements. You were coming in as a rookie, actually, you know, Doing what you were supposed to do, that all of a sudden shit hit the fan.

Bodie Nowak [00:20:12]:
Yeah, literally, that's what it felt like. And it did. And I'll tell you, as a— gosh, how old I've been, 32-ish back then in that timeframe. I can't remember exactly. I didn't know enough about economic disparity because we had never really felt that, Ben, you know, at my age, you know, I, knew my parents had talked about, you know, the recession of the '70s. And of course my grandparents, you know, were part of the Depression. You know, they were alive at that era. We had never experienced anything like that.

Bodie Nowak [00:20:42]:
So when it came, it was almost surreal. You're like, no way, no way. And then it was like, yeah, it's here. And everybody was affected by it. It was surprising and it came outta nowhere from a young 30-year-old.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:00]:
My very first year in recruiting, I was a construction management headhunter doing great. Things were rocking and rolling. Then the market shifted. Everybody got fired. Our industry died. But I worked at a big enough company where they literally just picked me up and moved me to another industry.

Bodie Nowak [00:21:13]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:16]:
And it sounds like you didn't have that at a smaller office, but I want to stay in 2009 for a moment. And I don't want to talk about the entire year. I want you to think back on One of those days during that year, what time were you waking up on average there?

Bodie Nowak [00:21:31]:
Waking up in the morning?

Benjamin Mena [00:21:32]:
Waking up in the morning.

Bodie Nowak [00:21:33]:
Yeah. You know, I had a young kid, so I've always been a morning person too. I've always gotten up. I don't get up later than 6:30 ever. And so I was probably getting up around 6, 6:30, preparing for the day, whatever Sarah and I, my wife, had to do for that day, take the kid to school or pick them up or forget what our schedule was back then, but that was it. I was always in the office around 7:30. So I liked to get up and be active in the morning. I don't sleep in.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:09]:
But also like the conversations that you were having with your wife those days, like what did that look like?

Bodie Nowak [00:22:14]:
Yeah, well, difficult. So Sarah's almost 9 years younger than me. So she was young. You know, back then, if I was 32, then, you know, she was 23 and she was working, but we had young kids. So I think she worked part-time or she flipped some jobs or something. She trusted me, Ben, and I thank her for it. I don't know if I would've always trusted me, but, you know, it certainly was an emotional benefit to me because I had that belief system in my house that made what I was doing or trying to do validated, at least in some sense, because had there been a distrust or blame, we probably would've ended a relationship.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:06]:
Like she supported you through those hard times.

Bodie Nowak [00:23:09]:
Full support.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:10]:
When you, when you got to work, like what, like what were you doing at your desk?

Bodie Nowak [00:23:14]:
Hurt us how? It was redundancy. I mean, I would come in, my boss at the time, I mean, he'd been in the business for a while, but he hadn't been on a desk in a long time. I think he was a little bit shortsighted and, and, and maybe not as strategic as I would've liked to have been looking back on it. So it was like, okay, well, we are not in general contractors. Do we go after electrical contractors? Do we go after big mechanical contractors? try to spur off and into the market, which it, if you look back on it, made zero sense because everything around the construction market as a whole, the whole circle of the, of the industry was in despair. So we should have gone to a, a whole new market and we did it for like 10 months. We did it and we had a couple other divisions in-house. One was biotech pharmaceutical, one was med device.

Bodie Nowak [00:24:09]:
The guy behind me did chemical, uh, engineers in downstream refining because he had been a chemical engineer in downstream refining. And he was one of the folks that ended up being the catalyst to what I ended up doing to transition out of construction.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:25]:
Let's talk about that in a second. But like you said that from the pinnacle stage that not earning for 12 months was the best mentor that you ever had.

Bodie Nowak [00:24:33]:
Yeah, it is. Because everything that you're trying to do from either a business development standpoint, And occasionally, you know, I would get a job, but, you know, they were picky. They didn't have a time to hire. So they wanted all of this, they wanted all of these things to be aligned so perfectly that they could hire somebody and then pay us a fee. And of course they'd beat you down on fees. So I didn't place anybody, but I worked really hard on Man, my sourcing became top-notch because I would just dig and dig. And, you know, of course I was able to generate all this information in my database. From a business development standpoint though, man, I really understood how to go and research companies because I would look at, you know, started in Texas, but I ended up looking at companies in California and Washington and in the Northeast and all different kinds of construction companies and really understanding how not only were they constructed from a dynamic perspective, from a personnel top to bottom, but also I started looking at how do they manage budget up through the company to gross revenues and then profitability.

Bodie Nowak [00:25:43]:
And I really started to understand how companies, not just construction companies, work from a profit and loss perspective because I did the research and I thought, man, if somebody's making money, then they have to, or going to have to need people. And so I thought, There's no reason to follow necessarily the news. It's, it's, can you go follow the money? Because if you can follow the money, then you're gonna find opportunity to use our resources and the tools that we have as recruiters to help companies continue to succeed and earn. And I think that right there taught me so much about this business that I was then able to transition and, and apply that into What I've done going forward over the course of my career since then.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:30]:
What was the phone call, the moment that it was just like, okay, let's start looking at a different industry?

Bodie Nowak [00:26:35]:
So the gentleman, his name is Reed Rogers, and he was a PhD chemical engineer. He had a bachelor's degree in nuclear engineering. Smart dude, worked for British Petroleum for 25 years as a chemical engineer in downstream refining. He retired and then he kind of retired into recruiting, which I've seen a lot of folks do, right? And he was really good at it, right? He was the top biller when I came into the business and, um, he placed chemical engineers with downstream refiners. So he knew everything about it, knew all the folks in it, worked out well for him. I previously, before I came to recruiting, I worked for 2 years at an investment house. It was kind of a weird deal. It ended up being a kind of a shady deal.

Bodie Nowak [00:27:19]:
I didn't know when I was there, but it was oil and gas investments. So we were selling direct placement investments into existing or wells that we were going to go drill, oil wells, small shallow oil wells. And so we were promoters, right? We were promoting accredited investors into these oil packages that we would market, promote, and then go. So it was one call close. It was heavy hardcore sales. And I did really well at it. My stepfather that I grew up with from the time, you know, well, around 11 or 12, my mom remarried. He was an oil and gas man.

Bodie Nowak [00:27:53]:
And so I had seen the upstream side of oil and gas, you know, where folks were drilling and exploring and doing all that stuff. And Reed told my boss, Hal, he's like, Hal, he was like, Bodie knows a few things about the upstream market. And he could see that market was improving because he was on the downstream side of it in the manufacturing or the gasoline production side of it. And he's like, you ought to let him go try to promote himself into that business. And so I was like, hell yeah, let's do that. That sounds freaking fun. One, because I like that business. My stepdad was a heavy sales guy and it was always exciting and dramatic.

Bodie Nowak [00:28:32]:
And then I was like, yeah, let's go do that. So we did, man. And we jumped into that industry. And at the time, man, gas prices, natural gas prices were skyrocketing. We were out here in Dallas. They were drilling in the Barnett Shale. It's called Chesapeake's down here. You got these gas wells out in the middle Dallas and Texas has always been big in that.

Bodie Nowak [00:28:50]:
So I got in there and I realized, man, people need engineers and geoscientists and they need them everywhere.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:58]:
And fast forward, like 2013, you billed how much?

Bodie Nowak [00:29:03]:
2013 was a turning year for me. So I'd previous 3 years done around $300,000 on average. I did $685,000 in 2013. So 2 things happened that year. One, I basically built the structure that I have now with the same positions I have now and with my business partner that I have now. So I hired a recruiting administrative, uh, person cuz I just, there was so much for me to go do. Uh, there, there was so many, I couldn't go take enough clients and, and recruit enough just on my own. I was like, well, let me get the administrative part out of here.

Bodie Nowak [00:29:39]:
And so I added that seat and I hired this girl named Sarah. Well, at the time my boss brought me this guy. He's like, hey man, you want to talk to this guy? You might want to hire him. I was like, I can't hire him. I just, I just hired an admin. I don't have enough time to do that. And he's like, no, no, no. He's like, talk to him.

Bodie Nowak [00:29:52]:
So I did. Long story short, I met Daniel, who's my business partner. And I met him in April of 2013. We hired him that year too. And so those were 2 huge things about my ability to build what I did. But It also gave Daniel a platform to come in and jump into a pretty hot seat. And with his work ethic, man, he accelerated, was one of the top rookies of the year in MRI. So we were trying to catch lightning in a bottle and it started that year.

Bodie Nowak [00:30:25]:
And it was, uh, it was a pretty fun year to, to be in the business.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:29]:
And then next year you guys did, what is it, over 800?

Bodie Nowak [00:30:32]:
So I did, I did right at 800 myself. Daniel, with his first full year in recruiting, he did like $420,000. He'd only, it was like a year and a half into recruiting. And we had brought a guy from one of another seat in our business and brought him over and he did like, he did like $300,000. And we had the admin. And so we ended up 3 of us and an admin, we built $1.5 million in 2014. I did $800,000 of it. And that was at the time, you know, at that point in my career, it was so, biggest year I'd had to date.

Bodie Nowak [00:31:02]:
And it was fun too.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:05]:
Fast forward to the end of that year. What happened?

Bodie Nowak [00:31:08]:
Yeah. So just when you think you have control, you're like, yes, like best ever, $800K. Yes. And then, so in November, I remember it was the day before Thanksgiving because, you know, we're at the house, family's over and And OPEC, right? The big oil conglomerate, you know, that produce oil out of the Middle East exporting countries. They notified the world that they were going to increase production at levels that were unheard of. And the aim was to lower the price of oil so low that the American operators couldn't function at a profitable level. And they said, we're going to do it until as long as it takes. for us to gain control back of that market.

Bodie Nowak [00:31:57]:
And I knew right then that this wasn't a 3 to 6 month swing. This was an endurance run and they had the ability to do it because they'd done it before. They did it in the '70s and '80s and they were going to do it again here. And I thought, damn, I was like, it's going to kill everything that we've worked to build here. And I don't know feasibly how we're going to endure that. And so it was a mind shift that started then, but we didn't know enough then. But over the course of 2015, we realized what we were dealing with and then really had to make some tough decisions beyond that.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:34]:
Walk me through those, that tough decision. Because like, you know, there's a lot of people that are listening that they're trying to hold onto something. You're talking about a tough decision that also I mean, your identity was attached to it because you just like literally had 2 of the best years of your life.

Bodie Nowak [00:32:50]:
Yeah. And at the scale it was moving in, and here's the, I guess this is part of the big thing. And again, it goes in with what the difficulty was in transitioning, but I started it in 2010 and by 2010 to 2014, in those 5 years, it wasn't just the financial gain that was impressive and what I enjoyed about the business. It was that I had connected with a pretty tight-knit group of industry professionals and a pretty tight niche in the market. I mean, I was only dealing with like, you know, maybe 8,000 to 10,000 group of professionals, right? It was not a big industry, particularly these technical folks in engineering and geoscientists. But they liked me, man. Like, and they respected me. And one thing that I know that they did is because whenever I started in the industry, I didn't know anything.

Bodie Nowak [00:33:39]:
These people taught me, man. They taught me things that I didn't know, and they taught me how to go identify certain aspects of this market and really help build a network that if I had a job and called the person, that it made sense, right? This fluidity into what we do and what really drives the attraction of our services is that kind of nuanced ability to connect the right folks. Well, when you get to the point where You're seeing that scale and then it goes down and you're thinking, oh shit, I've gotta change. I have to go do something else. Well then everything that you've built for beyond financially, the persona that you have built within an industry of professionals, you have to say, I gotta walk away from that. I gotta leave that. That hurts, man. That's like walking away from your friends at the end of college and be like, I'm never gonna see you again.

Bodie Nowak [00:34:28]:
Right? Like, I've gotta go somewhere else that you don't exist in. It's like, That's how I felt. And so, yeah, it was a depressing thought. And 2015, you know, we worked through that year, but I billed probably 800. Well, I billed, no, I billed like half that, like 400 that year, but I did most of it in the first half of the year. So by the end of the year, billings were depleted. Cash in was depleted. We had to do something different.

Bodie Nowak [00:34:55]:
And then it became an ego struggle. Will your ego allow you to basically toss everything that you've worked for over 5 years into a drawer, lock the key, and go and look at building something from scratch? Right. Took about 3 months to get over that hump mentally. And I say mentally, my ego to get over that.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:19]:
How did you make that decision to lock it up, throw the keys in and lock it up versus just grinding still?

Bodie Nowak [00:35:25]:
Yep. I was lucky that Daniel and I had built a pretty solid relationship by then. And he still, though, he was looking at me for guidance. The other individual that was on our team phased out in 2015. So it was just he and I. The position that we had had, our admin position, we let it go. She wanted out and wanted to go make some more money. And she actually got a job in construction, as a matter of fact.

Bodie Nowak [00:35:52]:
So it was just he and I. And I said, look, man, we talked about it a lot. And I said, I said, it's going to be tough. I said, but it's one of those times again. Remember I was like, I was like, look, we could stay and grind. I was like, but this is the short thing because this is what we're most comfortable in doing. I said, but look, I said, construction at the time, right? So this is 2014. Construction started coming out of the cellar in about 2013.

Bodie Nowak [00:36:16]:
So I looked at that industry and I said, man, there's opportunity here. And I said, 2, there can't be a ton of badass construction recruiters in construction that we're gonna have to compete with, right? So I thought, well, let's look at it. And we went to a, we went to an MRI event and it was like a big United conference out in Chicago. And there was this, this office there and I knew these boys pretty well and they were a construction recruiting team. They're out of, uh, Las Cruces, New Mexico. And I remember one of them telling me at the time, He said, man, he said, Texas is hard. And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, dude, if you don't have the same area code as the folks you're calling on out in Texas, like Dallas, so if they're trying to, like where we were, he's like, they don't want to talk to you. He's like, they're very protective of that, at least that they were then.

Bodie Nowak [00:37:07]:
And I thought, well, I have a Dallas area code. So does Daniel. And I said, I'm a Texas boy too. And so Daniel and I said, look, man, I said, I think we've got an advantage here. I think we've got an advantage to play our hand in the local market. I said, look, we've got the grind, we've got the hustle, we've got the motivation and the poise to go out here and do this. We just have to take our ego out of it so that we're not just upset every day that nobody knows us, nobody cares about us, and some people don't believe that we can do what we say we can do. We're just gonna have to go convince him that we can and do it real fast so that we don't go broke while we're doing it.

Bodie Nowak [00:37:48]:
So that's what we did. 2016, we put that foot forward and we, man, we just went out and just pressed contracts all over the city, anywhere we could. You know, we, we still had some integrity with our terms because we didn't want to get caught up in a bunch of crappy opportunities if they were interested in having us work for them. And I think he and I built about 800 that year collectively. So about 400 apiece in the first year that we started. And that was a huge— I didn't, I didn't, when we first started, there's no way I would've said, I'm gonna, we're gonna build 800, uh, in, in one year. But we did it, man. That's what started what is our business now.

Bodie Nowak [00:38:25]:
2016 to now is the business that we've built. And so, um, that was the inaugural year. Um, and it was, it was hard, man, but, um, it was just he and I. We ended up hiring our admin back, I think close to the end of that year. But we did all the data. We did everything, man. We pulled it together and it was just hustle, hustle.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:43]:
I want to start talking about that BD in a bit, but I got some more questions I want to go deeper on. Like one of the things that you've said, like on stage that, and I'm going to read this, motivation is complete garbage.

Bodie Nowak [00:38:55]:
Yeah. Mel Robbins said that, but I agree 100% with her because It's never there when you need it. Right. And she goes on to say this in that same clip that I showed on there too. It's a life skill to be able to do what you need to do when you need to do it. And I've always found that to be exceptionally true because I don't get up every morning and want to do the things that I do. Anybody that's a parent, been, right? We know that there's times that you're like, how many diapers have we changed in our lives? Do we want to do that? Never. I wanted to change zero of those, but I did it anyway.

Bodie Nowak [00:39:36]:
So I was not motivated to do that. I think it's a cliché perspective, but in business, man, it's like, get up and do the job. Because if you don't, do you feel better about yourself because you didn't get up and do it? I don't. I feel better when I get up, make myself do the things that I don't want to do because I don't know. I'm geared by accomplishment, but accomplishment is, hey man, I sent one contract today. I had one good conversation today. You know, I'm not, I don't look at accomplishment by like, I have to be the top construction recruiter in all of the USA and the biggest biller. I mean, great.

Bodie Nowak [00:40:12]:
That'd be great. But we start looking at things long-term and forget that we have to accomplish things short-term. I think then we get misguided by what motivation really is.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:21]:
Another thing that you said that really stuck out was, uh, You said that earning is both a responsibility and a privilege.

Bodie Nowak [00:40:28]:
Yeah. My grandfather used to tell us, man, he's like, if you've got your health, you're good. And his basic point was, is that you have the opportunity as a healthy individual that has a fair amount of intellect to get up and do whatever you want to do. And I wanted to be, not necessarily I want to earn, but I wanted to be somebody that was significant in other people's lives. And even if it was just my parents and taking some of the load off of them of worrying about, is he going to do what we think he should do as an adult? And then when I, because even when I was younger, but yeah, you mean you get the opportunity to get up and earn and go try to produce and create value That people, are they going to be willing to pay for your services? There's something intoxicating in that for me. And I think that's where the privilege side comes from it. But secondly, it's like, look, you know, you don't get by in this world unless you're capable of earning. And at what level is almost your choice.

Bodie Nowak [00:41:35]:
I know other things dictate terms on that, but that's a sidebar discussion for another time. I've always felt like Other people would look at, look down on me if I didn't get up and go earn and be a responsible adult, a productive citizen, you know, in my community. That's what I try to raise my kids to be. I don't care about how much school they've gone through and what they know. If you're not a productive citizen in your community, I think you missed the boat.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:01]:
I got one more thing that you said from Sage, or 2 more things that you said from Sage, that heroism is quiet. And, you know, that's We watch all these movies of these heroes that are loud, but when it comes down to real life, you said it's quiet. Like, what does that look like for a recruiter on a Tuesday morning where they need to show up and still be a hero?

Bodie Nowak [00:42:21]:
I have on my LinkedIn, you know, I always put quotes on there. I don't ever put like, hey, I'm a construction recruiter under my name. But the quote I have on there right now, it says, it's the effort made when no one is looking. That's the difference between average and outstanding. And that's for me. And I've— other people have quoted very similar things to that. But it's— heroes aren't necessarily being heroes because they— other people think they should be. It's their innate desire to step in and do the things that need to be done, in some cases at the protection or betterment of others.

Bodie Nowak [00:42:59]:
I don't care if anybody sees it, right? I don't care what the people see because it's, it's the quiet times when it's you, your mind, your desire, your lack of motivation? And can you, are you willing to step in and do the tough things that you don't want to do to get to that next step, to get to where you want to be? Because I assure you that everybody that posts how well they're doing on LinkedIn has had those moments. And it's how do you act in those moments that define a person? People always try to tell me too, they say, hey man, tough times build character. And I think it's a fallacy. Now, ourselves up until about 20 years old, maybe not because our brain's still forming, right? Tough times as adults expose your character, right? You've learned who you are and who you're going to be up until that point. And I've seen a lot of people that talk a tough game that when they're put into a tough situation, don't handle it well or cave, and that character is then exposed. The people that have high character and/or tough character are willing to sit in a dark room and pine away when nobody cares or nobody asks them if they're okay until they get to the point where they succeed at something. I'm telling you, man, there's, there's heroism in that, at least from my perspective.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:16]:
I want to flip gears a little bit and go into BD because like one of your strategies that you've said, like that you lay paper everywhere.

Bodie Nowak [00:44:22]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:22]:
What the hell does that even mean?

Bodie Nowak [00:44:28]:
It's kind of a crude way to say that. We're a contingent model. And, you know, I've had conversations with a lot of folks that are in like, you know, heavily retained models, which I respect. Nothing wrong with them. In a contingent model, it's not about, for me, let's see if I can frame this up for you. It's more about being a broker Than it is about having a one-on-one focused relationship recruiting persona. Now, I'm not opposed to doing that, and I've done it with a lot of my clients, but when you're trying to infiltrate a market, the long-term, the length of sale on retained is too long for me or for us, particularly when we came into construction. We want to earn quickly.

Bodie Nowak [00:45:19]:
The best way to do that is to make sure that companies know who we are and what we do, and that we charge them no money on the front end to look at talent, which means that then we act as a broker. And our job is to say, hey, look, man, I've got this person and I'm giving you an opportunity to look at them because you're a client of mine. We have a contract with you. And so I'm going to show them to you and I may show them to 7 others. What do you want to do with it? So that's, that's kind of the nucleus of the model. So the more contingent contracts that we go out and put into offices around town means that we have the opportunity to introduce a candidate. And then we go to the candidate market and we just start flooding this market with the, not necessarily opportunities, but hey, we work for this type of company, this type of company, this type. So we just profile all of our companies.

Bodie Nowak [00:46:16]:
And then we say, and we just start shoving it out, you know, into, in, in marketing campaigns and in, in call campaigns. And we find folks that are open and interested working. They, you gotta sift through a bunch of people that are okay. But when you get a good one and you send it to 10 companies that all could use that person, I guarantee you, you're gonna get 7 interviews out of that one person because what you then understand is leverage. And you can't use leverage like that if you hadn't set the base plan for the leverage, which having the contracts so you can go out there and do it quickly and with some sense of authority to say, hey, this is how we operate. You know, we have it, you know, other people are going to look at it and you know, we're going to earn on it. What do you want to do with it? And it's pretty intense, man, when the market's hot of how companies will react to that, even knowing that you're going to shove that into 6 other companies. They'll play your game because they want that person.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:14]:
The initial conversations that you're having with these companies, are you walking in with like a most placeable candidate? Are you just like, hey, I am the go-to person in the industry, let's get an agreement and then maybe I'll send you somebody down the road? Or are you like actively trying to work on a role?

Bodie Nowak [00:47:30]:
It's all of the above. So from— if we do MPC, MPC campaigning is always going to be part of what we do because it's exposure, it's advertising, it's marketing, it's our name in front of the industry. It's repetitive, right? Repetitive, redundant. Next time they think of somebody, maybe they think of us. Or they see this guy on paper and they're like, I have to talk to them right now. So we say, sure. Sometimes we send them to companies that don't even know we have an agreement with them because it's a different person. We're like, look, hey man, we have agreement.

Bodie Nowak [00:47:54]:
We're going to send you the whole thing now. You look at it, tell us what you want to do. But I'll tell you, man, like the way Daniel and I work, because we get so much information. So if I'm on a call with a person and they're saying, hey, yeah, I'm talking to this company, this company, that guy talked to this company over here, but that, that, that thing didn't move forward. And it's a company that I don't have. When I get off of that call, I will call the person who I think is the hiring manager for that role the next call. And I will tell them on the phone, I know that you're recruiting for this position. And if they ask me why, I was like, because you interviewed so-and-so and I just talked to him.

Bodie Nowak [00:48:30]:
What that does right then is tells them this dude's in tune and in the know, and he's aggressive because he wasn't afraid to pick up the phone and call me because he knows I might have a need. Now, that doesn't always get me the deal. But we act on information firsthand, secondhand information in real time. We don't wait. I'm not going to put it on a call list tomorrow. I'm going to go call this person right now and tell them I want, I want to know what they're recruiting for and I want that because I can help them. So that's another way, right? So those 2 things we do very well.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:01]:
And I just looked up and you want to get a laugh? We're like 51 minutes in and I'm like, man, I got so much I want to cover with you. So we're going to, we're going to jump around. Okay. So, uh, your, your guys' best year, what is it? 1.9?

Bodie Nowak [00:49:15]:
Yeah. 1.95. We almost, we almost got to $2 million, man. We were a little bit depressed by that, but it was just, yeah, same me and Daniel.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:21]:
Okay. 1.9. And you guys, it's just 2 of you guys. I actually know a company that is probably like close to 15 that hit that number.

Bodie Nowak [00:49:34]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:34]:
You know, there's other companies trying to hit these numbers, trying to build, like they're dying, killing themselves, trying to build a 20-person firm. It's just you two and your, is it your niece? It was.

Bodie Nowak [00:49:44]:
Yeah. My niece Zoe, she works for us now. She's in our recruiting assistant role.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:48]:
Make the case on why maybe scaling isn't worth it. And it, like, you are deliberately staying small.

Bodie Nowak [00:49:55]:
So for a couple of reasons for me. One, when I was with Parkwood International was the company that I started with and that I worked with for 15 years. And then we bought our division from Parkwood and created Blackwood. So when I was with Parkwood, when I started oil and gas, we brought people in and tried to train them and build them into oil and gas. And we did well with one person, not so well with another person. One person left, we replaced them with an okay person. And so Then when we were in construction, we tried to do that as well. But all of those times that we did that, even when I had Daniel, all of that training, tutoring, mentoring, it fell on me.

Bodie Nowak [00:50:37]:
And so, you know, and then what was I left with at the end when we bought it was just me and Daniel. So I had had enough of wanting to try to train and build others. And I think It was a bit limited on how my firm wanted to recruit and how they wanted to put them into our system. They were pretty rigid about they need to do this and this and this. And I was like, but why don't I just hire somebody to just do this and we pay them less and create a different comp structure? And they didn't wanna listen to that crap. So I got tired of it. Secondly, Daniel is an operational beast. And I say that if you knew him, if you could see him work, it's, it's, it's an impressive scenario.

Bodie Nowak [00:51:16]:
He's very— he's a private person, but he loves the commerce of business. And this dude, when he came in and started recruiting, if you went on guest, he was throwing down like 99 calls, 101 calls, 6 hours of talk time. And he doesn't ever want to take off. He doesn't like taking vacations. He just wants— and he's anxious, but he wants to just stay on the desk. So he's an operational phenomenon, which great for us, right? So he's also not one that plays well with everybody else. And I don't know that I am either. He thinks we should scale.

Bodie Nowak [00:51:51]:
I think we do just fine. And I think if he had endured a lot of the, what I will say, failures of trying to build other desks in our system, he would probably have the same opinion as I do because he sees what it could be, the good. And I'm not saying I don't, but I also know the time and effort that it's taken me to create Zero track record of anybody that's still with us in those roles. So with the numbers we're putting up, it's like, my objective is how can we be more efficient? Now we have AI and it does all these things for us more efficiently. And I'm like, okay, great. We can employ this. And I think do $2 billion, $3 billion plus. We might have to put some assistant roles in place from a personnel perspective, but I don't think that we need to hire a bunch of recruiters and Go through that whole, I don't know, for me as a, as a hassle.

Bodie Nowak [00:52:41]:
I just, I don't, I don't see any, I don't see any enjoyment in it, man. That's, I guess, is my point. Long story short.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:48]:
So one thing that's interesting about you and Daniel is the relationship that you guys have. You guys split 50/50 on everything, no matter who touched it, how it got touched. Like, when did you guys decide that? And what was that actual conversation like?

Bodie Nowak [00:53:02]:
Yeah. So this was an interesting deal because it wasn't just when we bought the business. So we had been with Parkwood International. We started construction in 2016, and it was at the end of 2019. We were doing so much split work with each other because we knew if we weren't close enough in the dig, you know, the, the niche, that everything that we touched would be almost exclusively relevant to the other person's activity. We thought, okay, that makes sense. We're bigger if we have, you know, if we have crossover. And it got to the point where the competition of, you know, him earning and me earning got in the way of us looking at a broader picture on how we could go do more if we weren't worried about who touched this and who touched that.

Bodie Nowak [00:53:55]:
Because, you know, sometimes, you know, it'd be like, Like we do now. Like he'll bring a person in, submit them, they'll go through an interview, he'll debrief once. And then after that, for whatever reason, like I'll end up transferring over to the candidate, take them through the next 2 interviews, the closing process, and close them. Like, but it's just this natural order of who do we think is the best voice? So in 2019, early 2020, right before COVID really hit, I told him, I said, man, I said, what do you think about this opportunity? What do you think about us partnering 50/50? And he said, he immediately slapped his hand on the table and he was like, I've been thinking the same thing. And I was like, okay, good. Like, this is not just a, you know, a push and pull discussion. We both agree that we're getting in our own way and should we do this? Then we did it. So we did it.

Bodie Nowak [00:54:44]:
We made the decision 2020 to do that. And then of course COVID hit and COVID was tough. I think though, because we had made the decision to work together and be 50/50 at that point in time, I think it helped us get through COVID because We were then having conversations about every single client interaction that either one of us was having and every single candidate interaction that one of us was having so that we had 2 voices. And sometimes the dominant voice, either his or mine, isn't the right answer to whatever the situation we're dealing with. So we had this calibration of accountability that helped us. And then look, '21, '22, we've built more, built more. And then '23 or '22 is when we did almost $2 million. And I don't think we would've done that had we not partnered.

Bodie Nowak [00:55:27]:
So it made obvious sense, of course, to then look at owning the business and carrying that over into a higher profitability structure, which is not giving away 50% of your fees. Right.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:38]:
I'm going to jump ahead a little bit on some questions I definitely want to go deeper on, but just due to time, if, uh, 2009 happened again tomorrow, But you're now like, I don't know how old you are.

Bodie Nowak [00:55:52]:
I'm 50 years old, but I also have a leap year baby. So I'm really 12 and a half.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:56]:
I say 12 and a half, you're youngin'. But you now have 2 kids at home and like, what would you do if you hit that wall, that economic wall again that you've hit twice? Could you survive it?

Bodie Nowak [00:56:11]:
I don't know. That's a good question. And, and, and Because now I have more to lose, right? I think you take back to me, just me, when I made a decision to stay in jail, you know who that affected? Just me. Now, my parents might've been affected by it from an emotional standpoint, but they weren't affected by it financially, at least not at that time. Just me is a different story than my kids, my wife, a home that we own, credit that we've built, you know, over the years. Anything that we can lose from a financial perspective? And how does that impact the emotions of the folks that I've said I'll protect them from these things? It would be, it'd be tough, man. It'd be tough. And I don't know what the answer is.

Bodie Nowak [00:56:58]:
It would be, how does the economy crash? Because then what are the opportunities outside of what I'm doing in this economy? And is it sustainable to be a recruiter at all? Or do I have to go find something else to do and reinvent myself outside of the industry that I've spent almost 2 decades in? So I think that's where your emotional fortitude just has to step in and start calling some shots, you know, where your gut and your instinct are the things that are going to take over. Your intellect and your physical capabilities, if they're intact, at least give you a fighting chance, whatever that chance might be. So you got to hunker down and you got to take things head on. Like what Sharon Hulst will tell you all the time, be the buffalo. And the reason that she says that is because the buffalo is the only animal that will walk into the rain because they know that's the shortest path to get through the storm. So you got to be the buffalo. That's what Sharon would tell you.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:53]:
Last question before we jump over to the quickfire questions. 10 years from now, what does Bodie look like at 60? And I don't, right? Not your firm, Yeah. What do you actually look like then?

Bodie Nowak [00:58:03]:
I had my youngest when I was 40, so when I'm 60, he'll be 20. So I look at things in the stages of my children's growth and where they might be. One, I want to be healthy. I do like to live life beyond what the doctors tell you to sometimes. I probably overindulge on certain occasions, but I work out, I run, I go to the gym. I'm active. I want to be able to have my physical health and my physical being intact and be able to go do the things that I want to do. Travel's one, and be around for my kids that are, you know, still young and active adults and maybe have even gotten married or, you know, have young kids.

Bodie Nowak [00:58:47]:
If I could have grandkids, I want to be able to have those things. And I don't know if I'll have those by then, but I'd like to see, you know, everybody progress through life and be able to enjoy that with them as long as I can until I'm 85, 90. Whatever. So first and foremost, I want to be healthy, you know, 2, I'd like to be at a decent financial perspective from a personal, personal space. We just bought a new house, you know, so we leveraged ourselves a little bit more through the lean years of construction, you know, recruiting, you know, we've, we've gained and then we've had to eat savings and we've gained and we've ate savings. So we, I don't think are as well as we'd like to be financially. So the next 10 years are going to be a big part of trying to set myself up so when I'm 70, I don't have to work and I don't have a mortgage to pay for, and I've got some decent options as to how I might fade out of this business and retire.

Benjamin Mena [00:59:47]:
Before we jump over to the quickfire questions, is there anything else that I should have asked you, or we should have gone deeper on?

Bodie Nowak [00:59:53]:
You know me, Ben. I think we could sit here and talk for 3 hours and it seemed like, it seemed like 30 minutes, you know?

Benjamin Mena [00:59:59]:
So it'd be like a Joe Rogan style.

Bodie Nowak [01:00:01]:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So no, I mean, there's other things, there's tons of other things I would gladly discuss with you right now, but you know, for the sake of time, I'm happy to move into whatever you'd like to move into.

Benjamin Mena [01:00:13]:
You're part of the Pinnacle Society. You get hit up by recruiters probably like looking up to you, your buildings and the things that you've done. If a recruiter hits you up and asked you like, hey, how do I go from average where I'm at to pinnacle elite? What would you actually tell them?

Bodie Nowak [01:00:29]:
I think you have to evaluate, you have to evaluate a lot of things. First and foremost, what's your business model? Is your industry, is your niche making somebody else, making other individuals a million, billion and a half a year? Are other people doing it? And if that's the case, then that's good. Okay. So one, you know, it's, it's, it, you're capable of doing it. Secondly, I would ask them how they're working within that framework of that niche and, and are there things that they can improve on in that niche? But ultimately I'd be like, I'd really want to know if you like doing this business or not. I've met people that have entered this business that have done it really well. And I'm like, great, you're good at this business. I remember I met this one person one time.

Bodie Nowak [01:01:14]:
She was a rookie at one of our MRI events and she got Rookie of the Year. And I said, I said, great. I said, what's the next step? And she's like, well, she's like, I really, I really am big on work-life balance. I'm like, oh, cool. I won't see you at this event next year. And you know what? I didn't see her at that event that next year, but I told that to her face and she got pretty pissed at me for saying it. And I was like, look, I said, recruiting is, it's not an 8 to 5 job. It's just not.

Bodie Nowak [01:01:38]:
And if you're gonna see, if you're gonna look at it that way, and people can do it that way, and I know you've interviewed some that, that do, they didn't start that way. That's not how they got to that point. It's an endurance run, man. And sometimes it's, it's, you know, me doing things I get to do for my family in the middle of the day that I gotta sit down and, you know, source from 9:30 to 11, or get up and go to the gym early because I've gotta plan my, I gotta plan a lunch meeting with a client. It's like all these things that have to happen. It's like, You have to give up comfort to control how you're going to succeed in this business. And I think people oftentimes look for comfort first. So I would think I would then tell them, you have to look for ways to make yourself more uncomfortable if you plan on earning more.

Bodie Nowak [01:02:27]:
That'd be the short answer.

Benjamin Mena [01:02:29]:
You told me back in 2013 that you got the opportunity to spend 3 days with Danny Cahill. And you said that those 3 days lit a fire in you that you did not have before. What the hell did Danny Cahill say that just hit that flame?

Bodie Nowak [01:02:46]:
Danny, to me, and he's always resonated with me because it kind of, they kind of has that old school recruiter kind of strategy philosophy, but he's not that old school recruiter. Like we work, you know, the gentleman I work for is, you know, he's probably 82 now. Right. And he didn't start, he was in recruiting for not even as long as Danny, but it's this old rigid way of doing things. Danny is not, he understands that side in that time of the business, but he's also evolved through that business. And he, he is an extraordinary communicator. I liked his, I like his tact. I like the way that he drives a pretty emphatic message.

Bodie Nowak [01:03:30]:
And, and it's usually a face A meet things head-on mentality. And I adhere to that. I'm a very meet things head-on mentality. I've always been that. I'm just a fighter. And others fight or flight, I like to fight. And it's not been always the best trait because it gets me in trouble sometimes too. But sitting there and listening to him talk to people, instruct people, and we had live interaction with him on stage.

Bodie Nowak [01:03:58]:
I mean, it was like full-on workshop with 80 of us and Danny. And so you just got a really ingrained understanding of one, the passion this dude has for the business was insatiable, man. And I was like, how palatable it was really lit me up because if you don't love what you're doing, and man, nobody loves this business every day. If they do, they're a liar. But you gotta love something about it. And then for me, it's the, You know, it's solutions, you know, creating solutions for people. And Danny's all about solutions, selling, and also showing you when it's time to move on and not waste your time. So there's a thousand things I could tell you about it, Ben, because he's a great person and he's a— he was an excellent trainer and having 3 days intimately with him in that setting was something that I think really inspired me.

Bodie Nowak [01:04:52]:
And it was in the year that I had a huge transformable year too. So, um, I took a lot of things back and then employed them in my desk and I did really well. And I think he's always been a big part of that, you know, throughout my years and just listening to him in general.

Benjamin Mena [01:05:06]:
If you had the chance right now to ask him one question, what would that question be?

Bodie Nowak [01:05:13]:
Where do you get those? Where do you get those tight shirts?

Benjamin Mena [01:05:16]:
I'll ask him tomorrow for you.

Bodie Nowak [01:05:19]:
If Danny would've been at the pinnacle where I was at, where I was presenting, I would've worn a tight polo shirt underneath there and taken my— I would've taken my coat off in mid-presentation and laid it right in front of Danny. I'd be like, this is an ode to you, my friend.

Benjamin Mena [01:05:36]:
Now I'm debating about actually asking him since I'm interviewing him tomorrow. Bodhi asked, where do you get these tight shirts? Well, jumping, jumping forward, what does the Pinnacle Society mean to you?

Bodie Nowak [01:05:50]:
One, it means, at least on the surface level, accomplishment. As we've grown up in this business, you know, I think if you're in it and understand the business at least well enough, you've always kind of heard and know who the Pinnacle Society was and is. And so I've always wanted to strive to be a better professional, not just from a financial perspective, but from a knowledge perspective and an intuitive perspective. And I think too, we gain so much information and knowledge, you could call it wisdom, in what we do. At some point, if you've had success in this business, I've always believed that It's worth probably giving it back at some point, you know, and at least helping somebody that might need your help regardless of whether they work for you or work for somebody you know. And so I think Pinnacle is that to me. I mean, it's not a group that when you walk in that room and you know what I'm talking about, there's huge, hugely successful people in that room. And There's so little ego in that room.

Bodie Nowak [01:07:03]:
Don't get me wrong. I mean, we're all going to banter back and forth and there are egos in that room and there should be because if there weren't, I'd be concerned about that. And sometimes I might be one of them, but what there's not is arrogance. There's not conceit. There's not, uh, I'm better than you type of persona. And everybody in there would give you anything if you asked for it. And I think that's the most impressive thing to me is that Highly successful people, at least in the Pinnacle Society, are some of the most giving and, you know, just admirable people I've met. And to be a part of that to me is something that I wouldn't give back.

Bodie Nowak [01:07:40]:
I think it's something that I've earned and they let me in, you know, it's like I didn't, they had to vote on it, right? You don't just get to come in and say, hey, I want to be a part of it and they let you in. So it's a big, big, big deal.

Benjamin Mena [01:07:50]:
We've gone deep on a lot of things. I got one more question and I'm going to let you go.

Bodie Nowak [01:07:55]:
Okay.

Benjamin Mena [01:07:56]:
You've talked to a lot of recruiters. You've had personal stories. You've walked through so many different things. I'm sure you've gotten questions about what's your BD strategy? Like, how do you guys work together? Like, what's the secret to actually a great partnership? How do you build $1.95 million as a 2-person team? But through all those questions that you've probably gotten, is it ever, you ever just wish a recruiter to just be like, I wish you would ask this, but they never do.

Bodie Nowak [01:08:21]:
Yeah. You know, I think if I want to understand a person and I've got long enough to talk to them, I think there's times when we're, when we're younger that, you know, you, you kind of figure out who you are as a person along the way. And, you know, like, I think maybe sometimes people miss, like, you know, when did you know that you weren't necessarily just geared to be an employee or, you know, and then you don't know that when you're young, but I think some people kind of figure those things out when they're, they're young, particularly if, you know, you, you want to go earn and whether you're not old enough to have a job or you're just maybe starting the old enough job to have 15 or 16, like when did it start to resonate to you that you thought you could successfully build something that was yours? Nobody asks that question.

Benjamin Mena [01:09:09]:
For you, what was that exact moment?

Bodie Nowak [01:09:15]:
So as a youth, you know, as a rat, 10, 11. I was always wanting— parents wouldn't give you any money, right? You wanted to go be able to at least have $5 and go ride your bicycle down to the convenience store and buy something, you know, in summer. So, you know, you'd vie for chores around the house and, you know, pulling weeds or whatever that might look like that they'd actually give you some money for rather than just making you do. So, you know, when I was younger, I would go kind of advance that to some other folks, you know, in and around our neighborhood. We grew up in Lubbock, Texas, so there's Texas Tech University out there. And I remember when I was around 12, summer I was 12, some people had their address painted on their curb, right? You know, the numbers are on the curb, and then some people had it with the Texas Tech symbol on that curb. So I got my mom to buy me the stencils and the spray paint that I could use, and I just went door to door the summer I was 12 and asked people if I could spray paint their curb, whether they wanted the Tex-Tec or not, I could do it. And, you know, there was 2 sides of the curbs.

Bodie Nowak [01:10:22]:
Most driveways were in the front and I charged $5 for one and $10 for 2. And if they wanted the Tex-Tec, I charged them $12. So the summer I was 12, I made like $1,200, man, as a 12-year-old, just because I was I got some paint and went and walked around the neighborhood and asked people if they wanted me to paint their driveway. And I think some felt obligated and some people were actually like, hell yeah, let's do it. Either way, when you're 12 and you make $1,200 in the summertime in 1989, bro, you're balling, dude. And so I was like, okay. I was like, this makes a whole lot of sense. And now, Then I got 15 and I got a job making, gosh, what was the minimum wage back then? Like $3.75 an hour.

Bodie Nowak [01:11:13]:
I was like, yeah, that's not going to be the way I'm going to live my life. So I think I knew then, right? I'm glad I got to go through working and earning the more traditional route because it certainly helps whenever you get to the point where you have more control over the earning power. The control and, and the, and what you, what it yielded for me was what I enjoyed.

Benjamin Mena [01:11:36]:
Yeah. You just took me back to like pushing that lawnmower as a little kid around the neighborhood or just like, well, I mean, I wasn't old enough to get a job, but it was just like, why would I?

Bodie Nowak [01:11:46]:
Yeah. Yeah. Why? Yeah. Have you had, like I said, you got your health? Like my granddad would say, it's like, well, get to it.

Benjamin Mena [01:11:55]:
Bodhi, this has been an awesome conversation for those that want to either follow you or connect with you, how do they go about doing that?

Bodie Nowak [01:12:02]:
So I'm on LinkedIn, easy to find. There is really only one Bodie Nowak out there. So if you just type my name in, I'm the only one that comes up. And I try to promote as much as I can on there with the time that I have. Obviously, blackwoodpartnersllc.com is my professional network and my email is bodie@blackwoodpartnersllc.com. So anybody wants to reach out, talk, chat, needs advice, wants help, I'm more than happy to have those conversations.

Benjamin Mena [01:12:29]:
Anything else you want to share with the listeners before I let you go?

Bodie Nowak [01:12:32]:
No, it's been great, man. I knew it would be sitting down and chatting with you. I appreciate it and everything you do and happy you had me on here.

Benjamin Mena [01:12:40]:
This has been an awesome conversation. I've actually been looking forward to this for a while. I think I asked you last year, maybe once or twice, but I remember like the first time meeting you, I thought you were going to literally kill me. I was like, he's going to murder me right now. And then you just gave me a big hug.

Bodie Nowak [01:12:58]:
Yeah, man. I'm just a big old teddy bear.

Benjamin Mena [01:13:03]:
But I know somebody out there needed to hear this, hear your story.

Bodie Nowak [01:13:07]:
So hopefully it resonates with somebody. I appreciate it.

Benjamin Mena [01:13:11]:
2026 is your year, you guys. Make it happen.

Bodie Nowak [01:13:13]:
Let's do it, man.

Benjamin Mena [01:13:16]:
Atlas is a CRMx, a CRM that actually understands context. It captures everything you say, hear, read, and write. Every interview, Client call, LinkedIn message, email, and WhatsApp automatically. Not because you spent the time entering it. It's because Atlas is always listening. Then it goes one step further and tells you the next action to take. So when you need to fill a role, People Search ranks the best candidates and tells you why. No digging required.

Benjamin Mena [01:13:40]:
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Benjamin Mena [01:14:27]:
If you want some more information, check out Recruit with Atlas.

Bodie Nowak [01:14:31]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit subscribe and leave a rating.