How I Built a $4M Recruitment Agency and Walked Away: Lessons, Offshoring, Burnout, and AI Insights with Gregory Fischer

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
Coming up on this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast.

Gregory Fischer [00:00:03]:
I want to be financially independent by the time I'm in my early 40s. I don't see that happening through earning a salary and commissions here. It's going to happen through either a big exit or building a business with passive income. And I see two ways to get there. And I think a lot of people hear, oh, you're in the offshore space. Like, are you worried about AI taking over? And no, I'm actually really excited about AI. I think what we see with AI today is it's showing up in two places. Welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with your host, Benjamin Mena, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game.

Gregory Fischer [00:00:43]:
We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership, and placements.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:52]:
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Benjamin Mena [00:01:12]:
With MagicSearch, you speak and it listens. It finds the right candidates using real conversations, not simply looking for keywords. Atlas 2.0 also makes business development easier than ever. With opportunities, you can track, manage and grow client relationships. Powered by generative AI and built right into your workflow need insights. Custom dashboards give you total visibility over your pipeline. And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported up to 41% EBITDA growth and an 85% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:41]:
No admin, no silos, no lost info, nothing but faster shortlists, better hires, and more time to focus on what actually drives revenue. Atlas is your personal AI partner for modern recruiting. Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive listener offer at recruit with atlas.com I'm excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast because here's the thing. Sometimes you have to make a decision that's best for you. Our guest today built a company from nothing to 4 million in gross margin with a $1.4 million EBITDA. 18 employees were offshore. Out of 40 employees built this company up.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:16]:
It was his baby. But he had to make the decision for himself and he ended up walking away from everything. And we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about some of the things that he wish he would have done. We're Going to talk about some of the lessons learned that you can take away as you build your own career. But here's also the cool thing. We're also going to talk about offshoring and AI and how it can actually make an impact if you do it properly in your business. So this is going to be an exciting episode, so stay tuned.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:44]:
I am excited to have Greg on the podcast. So real quick, Greg, 32nd self introduction.

Gregory Fischer [00:02:49]:
Yeah. So, as you mentioned, had a very successful run building AMI Network from scratch. I was the first recruiter hired all the way up to $4 million in EBITDA. Since then, I left and decided to start all over again doing it the way that I had wanted to from the get go. And that meant building completely offshore with my new agency, well oiled Machine. We recruit recruiters for recruitment firms.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:17]:
So technically, rect to rec then rect.

Gregory Fischer [00:03:19]:
To rec for offshore.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:21]:
Awesome. Love that. Okay, we're gonna have some fun with this episode. How did you even end up in this land of misfit toys? US recruiters.

Gregory Fischer [00:03:29]:
So I spent seven years in the fitness industry. For those of you in the US working for 24 Hour Fitness, that was my passion. That was my dream. That's where I wanted to be for life. I thought I would go from being a personal trainer to learning management to opening my studio and that would be it. Seven years in, realized one that it wasn't what it was cracked up to be, but I was still in it. And then I got fired, actually, a month after getting married, which was a lot of fun. Wanted to start my own gym, but I kept watching the bank account going down and down and down while I had a mortgage and realized I needed to do something.

Gregory Fischer [00:04:06]:
Started applying around for sales jobs, management jobs, and I ended up getting recruited by a recruiter to work in a really interesting sales leadership role. We were going through the interview process. I started talking to a second recruiter about another sales leadership role. Sounded really good. He's, you know, six figure salary, great team, tons of autonomy. I'm like, check, check, check, let's do this. And he's like, hey Greg, so there's one thing I should tell you before you go interview there. And I'm like, what's that? And he's like, well, they're a wholesale manufacturer.

Gregory Fischer [00:04:41]:
I'm like, okay, cool. Like I, I'm sure I can sell anything. I can lead a sales team. And he's like, of adult novelties. And I'm like, sex toys? He's like, yeah. And I'm like, no, I Don't think that's gonna work for me. Like, I'm sure it's a great job for somebody. It's not for me.

Gregory Fischer [00:04:58]:
And we had hit it off. He worked for Apple one and he was like, you know, why don't you come to the office? I have some other ideas, by the way, like A plus recruiter. And we go in and he's like, have you ever thought about being a recruiter? Of course this guy's getting commission for recruiting me. And I'm like, no. And we start talking and like he sells me on being a recruiter. And so I go through the interview process, get a job offer. Now I go back to, and I'm, it's a Thursday, I'm about to start. I go back to that first recruiter who is recruiting me for this other sales job and I'm like, hey, pull me out of the process.

Gregory Fischer [00:05:31]:
I got a job. And he's like, oh, congrats. Like out of curiosity, what job did you get? And I'm like, oh, I'm actually going to be a recruiter. He's like, wait, really? He's like, I need to hire a recruiter. And me and this guy Daniel had hit it off throughout the process and he's like, so if I bring you in tomorrow, on Friday to interview and I give you a great offer and you accept, you'll turn down that other job before you start Monday? And I'm like, yeah. And I, I go in. We're both in our late 20s at the time, like, you know, just everything, snowboarding, sports, very, very driven. Everything is just perfect.

Gregory Fischer [00:06:07]:
And so I end up taking the job, really just thinking that this is just a short term job to pay my mortgage while I go build my empire in the fitness industry. But here we are 11 years later and I'm still doing it off that.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:20]:
I gotta ask, the adult toy job, how much of a higher salary was it compared to the gym?

Gregory Fischer [00:06:28]:
It probably would have been, I don't know, like an extra 20% and that, I mean, at the time, like I was at the point where I had to borrow money from my dad to pay my mortgage. So it would have been a really good thing.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:40]:
I just think that's hilarious. So I, I can't get over that part. Anyways, so you ended up in this Wonderful World recruiting two job offers like literally within a 24 hour window, and you ended up turning down the other job because of the guy that you hit it off with, right?

Gregory Fischer [00:06:54]:
Yep, yep. That and Apple one I knew was a bigger Corporation. I felt like I was losing my soul working in the corporate world. So the opportunity to work in basically a startup environment also really appealed to me.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:08]:
Okay, was that the job that you took all the way up and grew the company?

Gregory Fischer [00:07:13]:
Yep. And eventually became owner of.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:14]:
All right, so let's talk about this. So, like, you hit it off with this guy, this is going to be the dream opportunity. You spent, like, 10 years there. Was it 10 years? Yep, 10 years there. Like, let's talk about this career journey. So, like, first few months, were you, like, working just the recruiting desk. Were you also doing sales? Let's talk about this.

Gregory Fischer [00:07:33]:
Yeah, first. First six months, it was just working as a 180 recruiter, just learning the ropes. And of course, I had the typical recruiter experience where my first two hires didn't work out. I'm like, this is crazy. Like, can I do this? Then, of course, things started to clip pretty quickly.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:50]:
And when did you start moving into, like, the sales side of the business?

Gregory Fischer [00:07:55]:
So it was kind of by accident. Six months in, I was on a call with a candidate, and she was like, hey, the job you have for me isn't what I'm looking for, but, yeah, I. I do really need to find something. We're really understaffed here. And I'm like, hey, like, I. I don't think I'm going to have the job for you, but maybe I can help you out and get a better staffing situation. Who do I need to talk to? And it kind of happened by accident. And then I go call my boss back, and I'm like, hey, Daniel, is it okay if I, like, do a sales pitch and try to get a client? And of course he's like, yes, let's do this.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:31]:
Okay, so let's talk about this. Like, the startup environment. Like, you know, when you guys were there, was there a dream of making this a big company or was like, hey, I'm just so busy. I need a partner. I need to hire a recruiter. Like, when did the trajectory really start to take off into you getting to the place where ownership was going to be an option?

Gregory Fischer [00:08:49]:
Yeah, so I think initially we were just young and hungry and having fun and doing ridiculous things like bringing super Soakers into the office and putting pictures of David Hasselhoff and a Speedo on each other's doors and just being ridiculous and having fun with it. But we did really want to grow. We had financial ambitions. After I started doing sales, he was doing sales. We started getting pretty busy and kind of just like, that Sales conversation. I was like, hey, like I've been in management, I don't want to recruit forever. Probably within about 10 months or so I was getting a little bit bored of just doing recruitment and I'm like, hey, can we start hiring a team? And so started hiring a few recruiters and we built up to about a million dollars fairly quickly with a couple of 180 recruiters, him and I. And I'd still had this dream of opening a gym.

Gregory Fischer [00:09:40]:
You know, a few years in, my heart was still set on like, how can I go open this gym? This is just a job to get me there. And I was having fun along the way and making better money than I'd ever made before. And so I actually go with two business partners and we go to start this gym and I'm the investor, I'm going to run the operations. They were world class personal trainers but had never managed a person in their life. But we thought we could do it. And I actually go back to one of the hardest conversations, scariest conversations. I go back to the owner and I go, hey Daniel, this has been my dream. This is what I want to do.

Gregory Fischer [00:10:16]:
I want to open this. My day job that pays my mortgage is working for you. So I'm still going to be the general manager of your agency. I'm going to do a great job. If I'm ever doing less than a great job, I want you to let me know. But early mornings and late nights, I'm going to be running this gym. And I have to give him a lot of credit because he supported me through it and said, hey, I want to be there for you. He came out for a grand opening, he would check in with me, he would give me advice and I mean I was starting work at 5, 6am I would work, do stuff to support the gym up until about 9am Then I jump into running the agency up until 5 or 6 and then I'd head back to the gym and work till 9pm again and did that for about a year.

Gregory Fischer [00:11:00]:
This gym ended up being a horrible idea. I could write a book about everything to do wrong and how to lose a lot of money and probably some years off my life in terms of sleep year in, my business partners were at each other's throat. One left shortly after the other business partner and I realized that this was just the wrong place to be. We made the decision to get out. Luckily we found somebody who actually paid us like $60,000 to take over the lease. That's a crazy story in its own right. But we get out of the gym and then now I go back to Daniel, the owner of the agency, and said, hey, you know, first of all, really appreciate you supporting me through this. Second, I want to be financially independent by the time I'm in my early 40s.

Gregory Fischer [00:11:43]:
I don't see that happening through earning a salary and commissions here. It's going to happen through either a big exit or building a business with passive income. And I see two ways to get there. One is that we rinse and repeat. I keep running the agency. I'll be dedicated here. I'll do a great job, make you a lot of money. I'm going to start another business, you know, on the nights and weekends and whatever that business does, when it does well, I'm going to end up leaving for that and we'll shake hands and walk away.

Gregory Fischer [00:12:10]:
Or option B is that you give me a large enough ownership stake in this business to be meaningful and to give me that path to an exit. And I run this business for you and it's your ticket to freedom. And very quickly he's like, I, I like option B. Let's do it.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:29]:
Okay, I want to take a few steps back. Okay. You had this dream to build a gym. Like, this was like part of like, I mean, if you're doing like, you know, years of work towards a gym, then opening a gym and then working full time recruiting while owning a gym, when you decided that it came crashing down and this, you had to exit, did you have any struggle with like some identity challenges and like, because this is something that you dreamt so hard for?

Gregory Fischer [00:12:57]:
Yeah, it's a good question. And it comes up again later. Yeah, yeah, I, I really struggled with that. And I had been, I think to be successful in business you kind of have to put your blinders on and just charge ahead without ever questioning yourself. And that's what I did. I mean, for years it was, I'm going to build this gym, we're going to scale it. And at some point, reality just smacked me in the face. And I realized that it wasn't sustainable for me to do both.

Gregory Fischer [00:13:25]:
My business partner was a good person, but a horrible operator. We were burning a lot of cash. Like I was burning the candle, both wicks. Like, I don't know how much longer I could have gone doing both and holding things together in my work life, my personal life, but I probably didn't have a while left. And I think that reality was there for a long, much longer than I realized. But once I accepted that reality, it became very Clear that it was one or the other and wasn't going to be the gym. And then in that moment, I started to reflect and say, I had always thought that my path to fulfillment and work was gym and health and fitness and getting people in shape. And I started to reflect in that moment and realized actually that that wasn't the case, that it was much more about the fulfillment came from another place, and fitness had been that vehicle, but the fulfillment came from building people up and developing them.

Gregory Fischer [00:14:16]:
That was so deeply meaningful. But I realized I could do that anywhere, right, as long as I'm in a leadership role. It came from strategy, it came from problem solving, it came from growth, it came from innovation. And, like, when I started to recognize those core ingredients, I'm like, it doesn't have to be fitness. Like, fitness is a vehicle for this, but it could be somewhere else.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:33]:
And I want to jump into this ownership conversation. Like, when you had that conversation with him about ownership, how big was the company by then?

Gregory Fischer [00:14:43]:
So we were still doing about a million dollars in direct hire revenue at the time, profiting a few hundred thousand dollars, and maybe had three employees. Okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:52]:
And he said yes. And did you guys get all that in writing?

Gregory Fischer [00:14:58]:
So we started working on an agreement, and we worked out some key terms. Like, we decided to do it through phantom equity, which we can dive into. What exactly that looks like. But essentially it's a path to having equity without having a big tax bill. But I get a percentage of the profits. If we sell someday, I get a percentage of that. And we started putting it in writing and working with lawyers, but we never actually signed it. And we continued to operate.

Gregory Fischer [00:15:27]:
Other things got in the way. We said, hey, we'll. We'll keep ironing this out. But there kept being other things. And I still have, like, a halfway written agreement in my inbox for those listening.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:36]:
How important is it to get that finalized, man?

Gregory Fischer [00:15:38]:
I don't think we want to skip ahead too far, but.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:41]:
Okay, how did you go from 1 to 4 million?

Gregory Fischer [00:15:45]:
Yeah. So there are a few ingredients to it. And I think we did some things right, we did some things wrong. We also got a bit lucky, but we were actually stuck at a million dollars for about four years. And we were in a place where one, I don't think we were particularly well niched to. We had no strategy for account management. And what that meant is, without fixing those issues, our only path to growth was being really good at sales. And that had just been our mindset, was we need to be really good at sales.

Gregory Fischer [00:16:15]:
And we were able to bring in enough clients to keep the business going there, but not enough to push for growth. And I didn't really have the time to do all of the sales needed to break through that. And the owner, he didn't want to invest in a US based salesperson. And so we landed on offshore actually as a path to that. And we thought, hey, you know, we can invest $1,000 a month, give or take a little bit to help us scale up. And at the time we already had a bit of a formula. We knew it's kind of what everybody does today. But if you rewind, I don't know, seven years ago or so, some of this stuff wasn't being done.

Gregory Fischer [00:16:50]:
But we knew that there were great clients out there who had jobs posted on indeed. And if we could find the companies that had the right openings, if we could drop the decision makers into a drip email campaign, that we would get sales calls. And so I just didn't have enough time to do that. And so we decided to go offshore. Our first, I don't know, five efforts to work with an agency to hire a freelancer went wrong. But eventually we figured it out and right away, once we got it right with the right person, the right processes, all of a sudden we started getting more clients and we said, wow, okay, this is a no brainer. We just need to keep investing in this. And so we slowly started building out an offshore team.

Gregory Fischer [00:17:36]:
Eventually did the same thing on the recruitment side as well and said, look, we can get more out of our recruiters if they don't need to source. So we started hiring sourcers and so we started getting more clients. Our recruiters increased their productivity from $300,000 a year to $400,000 a year. And we started to see some really good growth out of that. There are also a couple other things that worked out well. We got into the RPO space on, on a sale of a lifetime and that turned into a $1.5 million business line. And that then led to a contract staffing business line as well. But yeah, offshore, I would say was, was one of the biggest ingredients to that.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:11]:
You said that you guys screwed it up five times before getting it right? Yeah, I think most people typically quit like at 2 or 1. Like why did you guys, like, okay, cool. Like we, we screwed it up again, let's do this again. Like why didn't you guys quit on that?

Gregory Fischer [00:18:28]:
We were really driven to grow the business, I think. I, I don't know, I, I think a lot of people talk about what you want, being a motivator. For us, it was much more what we didn't want. And so I just. I hated doing the grind of sales. Like, I love closing sales, but I'm like, I don't like spending all my time prospecting. I don't like spending all my time making cold calls. And I'm like, the only way I can get out of this is if I can find somebody else to do this.

Gregory Fischer [00:18:55]:
And, like, similarly, we both wanted to earn more money than we. We currently were. And so I think we wanted to get out of our situation so badly that we're just like, we will solve this. And so we just kept banging away at it.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:08]:
Okay, awesome. So once you guys got this dialed in, you guys started growing some more. Like, what was happening in the business, like, around this time, with all this growth, you guys are exploding. Like, what was going on with you guys?

Gregory Fischer [00:19:22]:
Yeah. So I think we were quickly figuring out how to scale and how our roles needed to evolve. And so we had to recognize, you know, when you have a very small team, you can kind of have your hand in everything and quickly jump in and say, hey, let me take a look at what you're doing here. Let me take a look at your email. Let me listen to your call. But that doesn't scale very well because once you get to a team of 10, a team of 20, you just get stretched too thin. And so we were having to figure out how to develop SOPs, how to build out processes, how to track KPI, like, what KPIs to use. And, man, we loved nerding out the KPIs, especially for things like the offshore roles.

Gregory Fischer [00:19:59]:
That was a big unlock for us was to really have metrics behind that, which I think a lot of people miss. And a big, big piece was starting to build out a leadership team. And that happened both in the onshore side and the offshore side.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:12]:
With your offshore, was it all in one country? Was it in, like, different places across the globe?

Gregory Fischer [00:20:16]:
Yeah, we were spread across the globe. So we had 18 offshore team members. 12 of them were in the Philippines, including several members of our leadership team. But we also had team members in Europe and Latin America.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:27]:
Awesome. Now I know we. The hook of the story is you ended up walking away from all this. Like, let's start heading towards it. Like, what was happening? Like, how do we go from, like, this awesome growth to awesome opportunity to great numbers to leadership team and growing everything to. I gotta go.

Gregory Fischer [00:20:48]:
Yeah. So over the course of 10 years, I think if you few things Came up for me. Big one was we started to make more money. And as that happens, I think you end up in a place of luxury where you can start to think about other things in life besides just how can I pay the mortgage and put some money away for savings? And I started to really look at fulfillment and meaning because very quickly money only gets you so much. A nice house, nice car. And I remember started having not a crisis, but just a lot of questions about where was I finding meaning? And I actually didn't find it that much in our business itself, in what we did. I'd always been really detached from the clients and the candidates. And I wish I could say I was really passionate about it.

Gregory Fischer [00:21:34]:
I was actually really open with the team and said, look, like I don't get passion from this. I found it in our team. And because of that I was really dedicated. That was my entire source of meaning, was to be able to just build a great company for our team and to see them thrive. But at some point that that wasn't enough. And I'd gone through a lot of personal life transition. I left Los Angeles for Colorado, where I live now, got divorced, flipped my life upside down, and was gradually questioning everything. Where do I want to live? Who do I want to have as a partner? What do my friends want to look like? What kind of workouts do I want to do? Like, everything.

Gregory Fischer [00:22:12]:
Eventually the question came back to work, and I had always had those blinders on and said, we're scaling this company. I'm in until we exit. But I started having, I remember this, this couple year and a half back now. But I started having nightmares and like fantasies. And it was the wildest thing. Like, I just, I'd be up at like three in the morning going, how can I go buy a little cabin in the woods somewhere for cash, Start a blog about sardines that can pay enough to get me by and I can get out of this thing. And like, the craziest thing is like, I wasn't even consciously contemplating at that point, but I started just like being up, tossing and turning, being late night on Zillow. And then I'm like, hold on, wait, where is this coming from? And so I started to look more closely and I realized that there was a very big disconnect when it came to myself and my business partner and like, what the purpose of the business was.

Gregory Fischer [00:23:12]:
And I realized for him this business meant two things and only two things. It meant money and freedom. But that came at the cost of people. And we had very Very, very different views about what people meant. And I think to him, it was more about dollar signs. And then I take it to freedom. And for me, there are people. And so I got to a point where I realized, Greg, you can either change your values, you can just kind of swallow them, you can in points where there's conflict, or you can leave.

Gregory Fischer [00:23:48]:
And, man, that was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I mean, I walked away from a third of the company. We had actually been in the process of finalizing a written agreement. Walked away from about a third of the company. Probably would have been seven figures in equity, but even harder than that. I mean, it felt like I was abandoning my kids in a lot of ways. And incredibly painful decision is the right decision. But I look back at that period every day now and just.

Gregory Fischer [00:24:22]:
Yeah, it was a real struggle.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:24]:
You mentioned that you really were not getting fulfillment with your recruiting career, but you were doing great on the outside. If somebody saw you, based on what you're telling me, everything looked great, but you just weren't getting that. But your team was the fulfillment. Now that the team was gone, what happened to that?

Gregory Fischer [00:24:42]:
Yeah, man, it was. It was a really surreal time for me because I was so burnt out. Like, I. I didn't realize how burnt out I had been. But it's like, you know, when you're living in a house divided, the house is either divided or somebody's holding it together. And I was the one that was holding it together. And I didn't realize how draining it was to kind of have these two leaders with different visions, teams in between. I'm trying to hold it together and still trying to push the company forward to grow.

Gregory Fischer [00:25:14]:
And I didn't realize how taxing that was. So when I got out, it just hit me, and I had. I had no motivation for anything. I was like, all I want to do is find a way to work as little as possible and just go hike with my dog all day. And that's all I cared about. And there was just no fire. And I'm like, I'm just gonna do the thing that allows me to work as little as possible and as draining as possible and involves as few people as possible. Cause I just, like, I was so taxed and I think still reeling from that decision and took some time off, took a few months to try to think about what I was doing, and then felt that the easiest path for that was to go start another agency in a space that I'd always enjoyed more than others, which was working with doing nonprofit executive search.

Gregory Fischer [00:26:03]:
And I thought, hey, you know, I'll just start a small solo agency. I think I can make my financial ends meet working 20 hours a week. I'm not going to be passionate about it, but I'm not going to hate it. And I can get a lot of time with my dog in the mountains. And I started going to work after a few months and started doing networking and outreach and had my website up. But every morning it was just drag. There was no motivation to do it other than the motivation to try to get done and go outside. And I was just like, man, maybe someday I'll want to build something else, But I can't imagine doing this for years on end and trying to force myself every day to work, just simply to not work.

Gregory Fischer [00:26:44]:
And at the same time, I started having conversations with peers who I'd known from different groups about Offshore. And they were coming to me saying, hey, you know, we tried hiring this rpo. It didn't work. I tried hiring a freelancer. It didn't work. And can you help me out with this? So I started doing a little bit of consulting. And I think the first moment where things started to click was I would try to go build my recruitment firm, and it was just a drag. And then I would have these conversations about offshoring, and I would just be lit up and, like, my friends in my business group would see that, my partner would see that, and they kept going like, hey, like, what about this Offshore thing? I'm like, ah, it's just like a little side thing.

Gregory Fischer [00:27:21]:
But that. That was the initial spark, and we can get into, like, what I'm building today and what's led to that and, like, the motivation I have for that now. But that was the transition point for me.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:31]:
Well, we'll talk about that in a minute. Yeah, this podcast thing, it's a little. It's a little hobby. Oh, man, I love when your episode goes live. It'll be like episode 200, like 70 something or so. Or 280.

Gregory Fischer [00:27:47]:
Oh, man, someday I would love to hear this story. Have you shared that story anywhere? Like how you got started?

Benjamin Mena [00:27:53]:
Yeah, totally. I shared multiple times. I was bored during COVID I was like, I just want to talk to a friend. And we hit record.

Gregory Fischer [00:28:01]:
Oh, man, I need to go back and listen to your first couple episodes. Be fun.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:04]:
Oh, they suck. You can skip that. They suck. The guests were good. I sucked anyways, so I want to go back to this. This burnout thing.

Gregory Fischer [00:28:16]:
Yeah, I.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:18]:
Because I think that's something. Like this Career, this job, it is hard. We are getting beat up. We are getting told no. There's so much self discipline. And I really wish I could find the right question to ask about burnout, but let's. Let's talk about burnout for a second. Like, you were able to walk away.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:36]:
If you were not able to walk away, how do you think you would have gotten through that, that burnout problem time?

Gregory Fischer [00:28:42]:
I think it's an interesting question because I. I was encountering this earlier, you know, during. During COVID or initially. We were in healthcare, but we weren't in the. The right part of healthcare. We weren't in travel nursing. And so our business initially took a hit, and we were, you know, we were going through a lot of tough times. Do we need to lay people off? How can we get clients? I remember going through 14 sales calls and only getting one yes.

Gregory Fischer [00:29:07]:
And going, like, what's going on? Like, are we just gonna crash and burn? And I was definitely facing a lot of burnout then. And that was the point where I first started looking for a why and really went through this just despair and going, I don't really care about what we do as a business right now. And so I couldn't really find the energy to go on other than, like, I need to pay a mortgage. And that. That only just would take me so far. And that's. That's where I really started to see the people part. And, like, I actually had to go look for that meaning, and I found it in the team.

Gregory Fischer [00:29:42]:
Like, I found so much inspiration and energy in helping them grow and watching them build careers and shedding that corporate skin and that mask that a lot of people put on and just, like, learning how to be able to be themselves in the workplace. So I found. I found deep fulfillment there, and that helped me carry me through that period. And so, yeah, the same thing has kind of happened here as well for me. And it's. I think it's having a. Why to me is it can just be like a burning fire. And if that fire burns strong enough, that can carry you through pretty much anything.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:15]:
Like, you were having people call you up saying, hey, I need some help doing X, Y, Z, while you were literally, like, dragging yourself to the computer to make calls and emails. And I'll just give you this, like, nonprofit sounds awesome, but the second year around D.C. it's not awesome. It's all politics. So I understand why you're like, this is great. No, it's not.

Gregory Fischer [00:30:35]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:35]:
Yeah. And I'm a recruiter sitting in A chair, Listening to this podcast, you know, I. I'm like, how do I go and find something in this recruiting world that brings me fulfillment, brings me joy, lights my spark again that I had early on? What advice would you give to that person?

Gregory Fischer [00:30:53]:
That's a great question. It's. You have to look for a bigger why beyond money and freedom. And maybe that is the candidates that you work with, maybe it's the clients you serve. Maybe there's even something beyond that. Maybe it's your family or some sort of impact that you hope to be able to make through your business, but it's continuing to look for that why? And I would suggest if there's not a deeper why there, at some point it's going to just become a grind.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:22]:
I want to jump over to how to successfully do offshoring. When I first tried it for my recruiting desk, it went horrible. I think I spent like $7,000 on nothing, on just more work for me. But the problem is, I know that's a common theme. So how do you actually make it work?

Gregory Fischer [00:31:43]:
Yeah, and I think there's a lot of. A lot of correlations between AI and offshore. I think offshoring sprung up in the last five, 10 years, and I think AI is going through this now. So I think for me, it really starts off with being intentional and getting clear on what's the bottleneck of my business today. Which for smaller agencies, the. Usually what you look at is that getting clients, or is it getting candidates for my clients? And then from there, whichever it is, then being able to dive in to understand what is the bottleneck there. Let's say it's on the recruitment side. Is it sourcing, or do I have an abundance of candidates? And is it getting on the phone and doing screening, for instance, that I think is so often missed? And people are like, I'm really busy.

Gregory Fischer [00:32:25]:
I just need an admin to help me out with stuff. And that's kind of a recipe for failure. And imagine it's so interesting to take our own work and apply it to that ourselves, because so often we don't. But if you had a client go to you and say, hey, I just need a person to help me out with things. You're like, cool, so tell me about what skill sets you're looking for. I don't know. They need to be able to do a lot. Maybe you get lucky and you get a great hire, maybe you don't.

Gregory Fischer [00:32:51]:
But I think so often we make that mistake and we're just looking for an easy button and we're just like offshore. Somebody said it works, I'm going to do that. But yeah, it starts with really being intentional. And then from there, once you're clear on what the bottleneck is and what function you need within your business, then you can go out and be really intentional about hiring and figure out what experience do I need, what skill set do I need, what personality, temperament is going to be good for this, what should compensation look like? And in my mind, 90% of offshore roles should have some sort of incentive plan. And if you can't find something to incentivize, I would question it if it's the right role or not. Especially early on, it should be really production oriented. But that's the starting point. And then once you're clear on that, then you can go out and identify that person.

Gregory Fischer [00:33:37]:
And then from there it's building out solid systems for training. And I think a big mistake a lot of folks make is just throwing somebody in there. In my mind, there should be SOPs if you want somebody to source. For instance, what does sourcing look like at each step of the process? So you have very clear training and then very clear management. What KPIs are the roles held accountable to, how are you doing, quality control, what do monthly performance reviews look like? And I think to make a long answer short, it's just treat your offshore team like your onshore team.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:08]:
When people think about offshoring, are they typically already set up and ready to have somebody, or do you have to go back and be like, you need to do a little more preparation?

Gregory Fischer [00:34:19]:
Yeah, great question. Probably half of the conversations I have with agency owners, they're not ready. And a few things that typically aren't, there is one they're not clear in the process. So I'll have had a conversation the other day with somebody who said, I want to hire somebody offshore to help you get more clients, somebody to go out and sell. And I'm like, great, this can work really well. We had two people in our business who were generating about an appointment a week each. And then I said, tell me what your sales process is. And they kind of looked at me with a blank stare and they're like, well, I get a lot of referrals right now.

Gregory Fischer [00:34:54]:
And then I was like, well, how do you expect to hire somebody and manage somebody to do a process that you even figured out for yourself? And so I actually recommended that person to a sales coach to go figure out how to have a strong sales process. But I think that's the first piece is you have to get really clear on whatever process it is that you want them to do. And then the second piece is bandwidth. And just like hiring an onshore employee, you're going to need to invest, I don't know, five to ten hours a week in training, development, coaching, feedback for the first eight weeks or so. And if an agency owner isn't there, I actually had an agency owner that I brought in and then we ended up actually putting the engagement on pause because he just didn't have the time to invest and it would have been a recipe for failure.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:37]:
How much does it actually cost to hire?

Gregory Fischer [00:35:41]:
Yeah. So depends quite a bit on the role. If we're talking about the first tier of admin roles, which is usually either a sourcer or a lead generation specialist who's doing top of funnel work like finding emails and contacts to reach out to, you're typically looking at $800 a month to $1,500 a month. If you want that next tier of employee up who's either, who's going to be getting on the phone with candidates and doing initial screening calls and maybe handing them off to a recruiter, maybe even take them all the way to offer or doing cold calls to set sales appointments. So that second tier employee, which is more commonly based in Latin America is, you're probably looking at somewhere around $1,800 to to could be as high as $3,500 for a really high level performer.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:30]:
So those are the numbers. That's what it costs. Which sounds good. Like it sounds like a no brainer. But at the same time, I also know this isn't like a, there's no easy button here. I can't just. What's that? That old Kinko's commercial. I could hit that easy button and like, boom, it's done.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:46]:
Was it Kinko's or Office Max or something? But like in your mind, if things work out perfectly, what is the actual opportunity to do this?

Gregory Fischer [00:36:56]:
I mean, it's tremendous. So when, when I think of actual results that I've seen, we talked about that original role that we were hiring for to go generate new clients for us, that role would be generating 700 prospects a month, like really hot prospects and typically four sales appointments and one new client a month. On the recruitment side, I've seen offshore recruiters come in and produce 90%, 100% of what onshore recruiters are doing. You can get pre, in most roles the same results as your onshore team, but you're typically talking about anywhere from 25% to 50% of the cost. I think where a lot of people, the big unlock that we saw in our agency wasn't so much, hey, we're cutting costs back by eliminating the need for employees. For us, it was more about these are all the things that we had never even dreamed of doing because we didn't have the time or money, but now we can. And it allowed us to come up with some crazy projects that we never even would have thought of.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:03]:
What were some of those crazy projects that you guys were able to unlock?

Gregory Fischer [00:38:06]:
Okay, so we did some work in physician recruitment, which is really hard. It's a really high volume game. And we would do things like go into the state database to where you would go to verify a license for a physician. And instead of entering name in some states you could just hit enter and it would pull up the name of every licensed physician in the state. We're talking like 10,000 names. And we would have somebody one by one go through and find the email and the phone number and built these just wild databases. And I think we were probably in our best year. We added 150,000 contacts to our ATS.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:52]:
That so reminds me like I talk about cybersecurity issues and like, you know, data management issues, but I've been on databases where I just type in the like the letter A and everybody if the last name A pops up and you're just like copy paste, copy paste, pace, cut the pace. So you mean I actually could have been recruiting on all that time?

Gregory Fischer [00:39:09]:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:12]:
Okay, so pass the opportunity. Like what things should not actually be offshored, what roles like and when shouldn't I even be thinking about this?

Gregory Fischer [00:39:21]:
Yeah. So big ones are if you don't have a clear process to offshore, if you don't have the time to invest in training, those are two reasons why you shouldn't. As far as some other roles, it's very important to be mindful on the client facing side. It absolutely can happen. But I think where things start to break down is if this role needs to interface directly with C Suite. In the US a lot of offshore employees, there's going to be little subtleties when it comes to communication that are missed. And so that can be a challenging. Same thing with C Suite recruitment, which by the way, I've seen both of these things work.

Gregory Fischer [00:39:55]:
But a lot I would be really want to dive into the nuances of tell me exactly who these people are communicating with, what communication style is needed. Yeah, probably half the time when the role interfaces live with C Suite, I'll say no. This role probably doesn't make sense to Offshore.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:11]:
What's one of the challenges that you see with like recruiters when they actually start doing this or when they've been doing this for years?

Gregory Fischer [00:40:16]:
Offshoring.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:17]:
Yeah.

Gregory Fischer [00:40:19]:
Yeah. I think for me a big one is just not investing in their team. And I think like I, you know, we, we would put so much into the training side, the skill development side. We would do monthly workshops on different things. Like we had massive libraries to reference. And the other part of that investment was bringing them into our team. And so, you know, we would, our weekly meetings, they were in on our monthly reviews where we would break down our company's financials. Our Offshore team was in on.

Gregory Fischer [00:40:49]:
We would have an like, we would have a team member of the month from our offshore department. We would our like annual virtual Christmas party our Offshore team is participating in. But I think a lot of recruiters treat Offshore employees like second class citizens and then they're surprised when they're not as invested in their company.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:08]:
Why do you think that a lot of companies treat offshore like second class?

Gregory Fischer [00:41:14]:
I think this is getting a little bit more philosophical, but when I look at myself, I think especially here in the US but a lot of the western world, we have very high self esteem, but maybe a little bit too high at times. And I think in some ways we think we're probably a little bit better than the rest of the world. And that's just not true. But we tend to carry this degree of arrogance where we think, hey, we're special here, we're different, we do things better than everywhere else. And when you have that attitude for other people, of course you're going to see them as being less capable, but it's kind of ridiculous when you think about it though. There are billion dollar companies in every single country. There are executives in every single country who can run circles around me. There are salespeople in every single country who can run circles around me.

Gregory Fischer [00:41:58]:
And it exists. But I held that attitude initially and it wasn't until I had some incredible Offshore employees who outperformed me at some work. And we got to sit down and talk about their family and their kids and their life and reading mystery novels and like them them cracking jokes at my expense before I really got to just recognize like people are people anywhere and people are incredibly capable when you treat them as equals and bring them into your house.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:22]:
I think you definitely hit a point there with like the exceptionalism that we have, like especially in like where we're having this Conversation. But, yeah, man, like, they really are your team.

Gregory Fischer [00:42:33]:
And I was actually going to add to that. I think the other thing, which is actually makes me sad to think about, but in a lot of countries that have been dominated, like, by the U.S. like, I look at the Philippines, for one, the reverse is also true, where there's a lot of idolization of the US And I think everybody in the world knows we're not perfect, but there's a lot of idolization. And I think what a lot of people miss is recognizing how are these people viewing me. And one of the most common issues that I see specifically with the Philippines is this kind of deferential treatment where you're like, okay, Benjamin, so what I need is for you to go out and source a CPA who's been doing this for 10 years. And I'm like, great. Do you understand exactly what I'm looking for? And they nod their head and say yes. And really, this person missed half of what I said because I gave really unclear instructions.

Gregory Fischer [00:43:24]:
But what was missed here is on the other side of the equation, there's this person who they look up to who's running this company, and they go, I didn't understand this, but this person is brilliant and runs this business, and I have so much respect for them. So if I didn't understand it, that's my fault. It's not theirs. They explained it perfectly. I just didn't get it. But I don't want to show them that I'm a bad employee and don't understand. So I'm just going to nod my head and say yes and do my best and hope it works. And you see this constant cycle where somebody gives instructions.

Gregory Fischer [00:43:58]:
The offshore employee goes and does the work. They come back, the work isn't what they looked for, and we assume incompetence when really there's just a gap in communication.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:08]:
I didn't even think about that. But it's something that, like, I know every time I travel to France, there's a huge gap in communication, especially since I don't know the language. So if you. If it's one of those things that I. I didn't even think about. But now that I've, like, traveled a bunch more, I'm like, oh, yeah, I had no clue what the person was saying. I caught one word. We.

Gregory Fischer [00:44:31]:
Yeah. Yeah. So I actually like to do a lot of training with clients initially on how to bridge those cultural gaps with the client and the employees and set expectations to the employees and say, if you don't understand Something you have to speak up and this person's going to get things wrong. They're not perfect. Like your boss is not perfect. You have to point out when something doesn't make sense and then same thing to the owner of the agency who's hiring an offshore employee. I'll usually do coaching and say in your weekly reviews, in your monthly reviews, give feedback and say hey Sam. Or whatever the offshore employee's name is.

Gregory Fischer [00:45:03]:
Like here's how you're doing and giving me feedback and questioning me and like making it kind of like a team effort to say we're going to close this communication gap. But it usually takes active effort to do it.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:15]:
Okay, I got one last question on this before we jump over to the quickfire questions I'm going to ask you about AI and offshoring and the quickfire how do I actually go find an awesome offshore team member?

Gregory Fischer [00:45:24]:
Yeah, it's a great question. In my experience, I think where most people make a mistake is they hire an RPO who claims they'll do everything for them but they're not embedded in the actual business or they go onto a platform like upwork or onlinejobs Ph which you're getting a freelancer, which if I was hiring a recruiter in the US I would not be looking for a freelancer. Also typically where you want to go if you're doing it yourself is a local job board in most countries. Latam, India, the Philippines, South Africa, indeed has its own local version of the platform that you can use to post a job ad on. My biggest advice though is make it a salary job. If you're offering a part time job or an hourly job, somebody's not going to take it seriously. They're going to be working three jobs and they're not going to be as dedicated. But indeed's a great place to start.

Gregory Fischer [00:46:13]:
In the Philippines, jobstreet is a great local board. In Mexico, OCC is a great board as well.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:22]:
And you mentioned something about incentives, like what's a proper incentive to add to the salary to depends a bit on the role.

Gregory Fischer [00:46:28]:
I typically like to see this is pretty broad but anywhere between 30% and a hundred percent of the salary in incentives. If it's more administrative like a sourcer, it's probably going to be closely to 30% of total comp. Whereas if somebody is in more of like a recruitment role or sales role, I probably want them to aim for doubling their salary in incentives and then typically I want to incentivize whatever behavior is fairly. They have some degree of Control over. Maybe if it's a sourcer, I'll commission submittals because that's kind of closer to their action of doing the sourcing and then maybe give a second incentive if there's a placement made.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:07]:
And just to get this clear for people listening. So when you're talking about incentives, you're talking about a base salary and then incentives on top of that, right? You're not talking about a, I'm going to go find somebody offshore, make it a hundred percent commission. And here's the commission structure.

Gregory Fischer [00:47:20]:
No, and again, it sounds kind of crazy, but like, if you said that was your comp plan in the US I'd be like, good luck. Maybe one in 20 people will work out, but for the most part it's going to fail. Same thing as offshore. Offer a salary, offer commission, and give vacation as well.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:34]:
Real quick. Like, what do you mean vacation? Like, we're in the U.S. like, what's that?

Gregory Fischer [00:47:39]:
Or paid vacation is like, really? Really? Yeah, I mean, hey, like, awesome. You can do in person, together. It's one of the reasons I like hiring in Mexico is because you can actually get together and see your offshore team. But yeah, paid vacation.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:51]:
It is mostly just like, I went to France recently in the month of August and everybody was on holiday and I'm like, what is a holiday? What is this vacation? What are you guys doing? Come on. Work, work, guys, work. Anyways, so we, we covered a lot. We covered you starting a business or starting as a number of recruiters, getting equity, growing this as an owner and then walking away. We've talked about offshoring. Before we jump over to the next part of the podcast, is there anything else that you want to go deeper on that I probably should have asked you about on those things?

Gregory Fischer [00:48:20]:
You've asked some really good questions.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:21]:
So quick fire questions do not need to be quick answers. Okay. You have somebody that reaches out to you on LinkedIn because you're posting a lot. You're commenting on a lot of people's posts and they're actually thoughtful comments. You have a brand new recruiter that hit you up and it's just like, hey, you've seen a lot, you've helped companies grow, you've talked to a lot of recruiters. What's the number one piece of advice that you would give me to have a successful career in this space?

Gregory Fischer [00:48:43]:
I would say get crystal clear on your niche. And arguably, whatever you think that your quote unquote niche is, it's probably not niched enough.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:54]:
Do you see that a lot so.

Gregory Fischer [00:48:56]:
Often I think like in my old practice we said we are a healthcare recruitment firm in major metro areas in California and we thought being niched meant knowing a bit about the market. But when we did a search, maybe 1 in 20 searches overlapped with each other and it was kind of wild for us to see all these recruiters who I think were way behind us in a lot of ways when it came to the talent of our team and processes. But they'd outperform us because they were working in a 20 mile radius with like just healthcare nonprofits and they would just blow us out of the water and be like, how is this possible? But they had candidate concentration. And I think if, if you would not be excited to get on the phone with a candidate when you didn't have an opening, then like, you know you're well niched. When you see somebody with a great LinkedIn profile and you're like, I don't have an opening for this person today, but I know I will because every year I get opening x 5 times. And we just didn't have that. And I think most recruiters don't have that.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:57]:
Favorite book that's had a huge impact on your career.

Gregory Fischer [00:50:00]:
Yeah, I'm going to give two. I feel like they almost have to go together. A Wild Life, which is the story of Doug Tompkins who had this wild career of kind of on one end he was obsessed with the mountains and climbing and just a total dirtbag. And on the other end, built this billion dollar clothing company, made half a billion dollars, and then left to invest in protecting Patagonia. And I would also add in Let My People Go Surfing by Yvonne Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia. What both of these founders had that inspired me is purpose. And it was purpose beyond just making money. They oriented their business life, their professional life, all of their skills to actually making a greater impact in the world.

Gregory Fischer [00:50:45]:
And it's totally reframed the way that I look at business today.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:48]:
Favorite tech tool.

Gregory Fischer [00:50:49]:
So this, this is a fun one. Slack. And I think we, we all have these issues with trying to get feedback from hiring managers, trying to get movement and you know, usually it's call or email or text. People respond faster on Slack than anything else. So the number one hack, and I actually got it from one of my clients is every time I start an engagement, I get my client on Slack and the response time is like a fraction of what it would otherwise would have been.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:18]:
Awesome. AI versus offshoring. What are your thoughts?

Gregory Fischer [00:51:24]:
Oh, this is such a fun One. And I think a lot of people hear, oh, you're in the offshore space, like, are you worried about AI taking over? And no, I'm actually really excited about AI. I think what we see with AI today is it's showing up in two places. So one is just fully augmenting recruiters and salespeople. And I think we're having an AI agent that can actually get on a phone with a candidate, do a sales call. I think we're a long ways away from those being successful now. The places where it's being, it's really interesting is on the automation end. So if we look at something like clay or some of these sourcing tools, what I see today is that they're about 70%, right? Meaning if you're say, going to have an automation go source, they'll grab 70% of the available candidate pool.

Gregory Fischer [00:52:12]:
And within that, maybe 70% of the candidates that it polls will actually be accurate. Where Offshore comes in is they can fill the gaps. So rather than you having to go through and sift through everybody that it sourced or to try to go find the 30% that these automations are missing, having an Offshore employee who can work with the AI, to me, that that's the way of the future.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:34]:
So I see you active online a lot on LinkedIn. I see you chatting with recruiters, I see you talking with recruiters. I see you've been on multiple podcasts. You probably get a lot of questions from recruiters, especially now, like, how do I successfully find that person for offshoring? Or how do I make that business development actually work, that client acquisition engine, offshore work? Or just like, how do I make more money in the recruiting chair? But here's the thing, like, all these questions that you get, do you ever just wish that there was a question that they, that they would ask you, but they never do.

Gregory Fischer [00:53:07]:
I think for me, specific to Offshore at least, is what do I need to be doing to be successful? I think everybody thinks about the model, like, who should I hire, what agency should I use, what platform? It's very external. And it's very rare that I see recruiters or owners asking, like, what is my role in ensuring that this works out? I would also argue that's the same thing with AI too, is that it's very. People are like, what AI tool should I use? And very rarely do they say, what do I need to do to make sure that this tool actually is successful for this offshore employee?

Benjamin Mena [00:53:45]:
I want to ask this question again, and we'll make this the last Question for the recruiter out there that's struggling to find meaning in what they're doing. The grind has been beating them up. They're burnt out, they're hurting. What advice would you give to that person?

Gregory Fischer [00:54:02]:
I would say to take time to really look deep inside. These answers don't necessarily come overnight. They come over a lot of reflection. For me, often that's a lot of walks in the woods. Where I've often been led to these answers is by looking at what lights me up, what energizes me even when I'm tired. What are the things that get me out of bed in the morning that I just can't wait to go do? And also, what are the things that upset me, that fired me up, that make me want to change? And following those tracks, at least for myself, are often what would have led to me finding meaning.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:45]:
I think you just hit on something. I think a lot of people underestimate the things that fire you up and kind of get you like that anger. Motivation can get so much done.

Gregory Fischer [00:54:55]:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I found that for myself in the offshore space. Like one of the things that has fired me up is when I talk to a lot of agencies or hear a lot of talk out there about, yeah, offshore people aren't capable, they're incompetent, they're not as smart, and they use terms like resources. Like, I mean, could you imagine like if I was like, hey, you're a good resource like that in so many ways. I see a lot of us in the western world treating offshore employees. Yeah. Like second class citizens, like less than people. And that to me is just so wrong.

Gregory Fischer [00:55:35]:
And yeah, that gets me really fired up. And that's where a lot of my LinkedIn posts come from. A lot of the conversations I have, like a lot of my goals to grow this business. Yeah, I want to do well financially, but a lot of it comes from wanting to be able to change that perspective.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:49]:
Two questions and I'll let you go. First of all, if somebody wants to follow you, how do they go about doing that?

Gregory Fischer [00:55:54]:
Yep. So you can always check out our website, welloilmachine.co. but I'm really active on LinkedIn and.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:03]:
You know, you've wynn helped build from almost like scratch to. To an organization up to like the million dollar barrier. And then you found a way to push past that million dollar barrier up to a $4 million gross margin with an incredible EBITDA, an offshore team and onshore team. You walked away from all of that to go find yourself and Then start building a brand new company. Is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners before I let you go?

Gregory Fischer [00:56:30]:
Yeah, you can hear. I have a lot of, a lot of passion for Offshore. I don't think it's the answer for everybody. I actually don't think it's the answer for a lot of people depending on the stage of your business and your vision. But for those who are curious, maybe you've tried it and it didn't work. Maybe you're thinking of trying it for the first time. I love having conversations and being able to be really honest about where it can work well, where it can't work well. And so if you're interested in having that conversation, reach out to me on LinkedIn and I'd love to chat.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:00]:
Awesome. Well, Greg, I just want to say thank you for coming on. I got so excited when you reached out. I know I put you on a few month hold because I was taking a break from recording for a bit, but I think the two parts of this conversation, one part is I failed horribly at doing Offshore, so I didn't never want to touch it again. But I think that you really walk through the first part of the conversation where I've talked to a lot of recruiters where they've helped build this organization and they're, they turn around like, what do I do next? What opportunities do I have? Do I walk away from it all or do I stay on until it maybe sells one day? This is just one of those conversations where people get to see the choices and where a choice can lead you. And that's why I was excited to have you, Greg. So for the recruiters out there, we are coming towards the tail end of 2025. So few months left before it's done.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:50]:
Put everything in, put it all on the line and just absolutely crush it. Because here's the thing, whatever you do right now between the end of the year, you are setting yourself up for making 2026 the absolute best year ever. So keep crushing it, guys. Admin is a massive waste of time. That's why there's Atlas, the AI. First recruitment platform built for modern agencies. It doesn't only track resumes and calls, it remembers everything. Every email, every interview, every conversation, instantly searchable, always available.

Benjamin Mena [00:58:19]:
And now it's entering a whole new era. With Atlas 2.0, you can ask anything and it delivers. With MagicSearch, you speak and it listens. It finds the right candidates using real conversations, not simply looking for keywords. Atlas 2.0 also makes business development easier than ever. With opportunities, you can track, manage and grow client relationships powered by generative AI and built right into your workflow. Need insights? Custom dashboards give you total visibility over your pipeline. And that's not theory.

Benjamin Mena [00:58:45]:
Atlas customers have reported up to 41% EBITDA growth and an 85% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. No admin, no silos, no lost info, Nothing but faster shortlists, better hires, and more time to focus on what actually drives revenue. Atlas is your personal AI partner for modern recruiting. Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive Listener offer@reruitwithatlas.com thanks for listening.

Gregory Fischer [00:59:10]:
To this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit, subscribe and leave a rating.