The $5.3 Million Tax You're Paying Without Knowing It.

Ben [00:00:03]:
Let's get ready to rumble. I'm always curious, like, when people are jumping in, like, the first thing that they hear. So I'm trying to make sure it's not like, hey, I'm getting the chat ready to go again over and over and over. I always feel bad. Like, you know, I love it, you know, everybody that's either in the community or, uh, you know, went VIP for the replays. Both places you get the replays, but I think probably about 90% of them was like, I'm getting the chat ready.

Jay Venard [00:00:30]:
Yeah.

Ben [00:00:30]:
So I do apologize for that. So we'll give everybody a quick second to jump in. Just want to say a huge shout out to all the sponsors. Um, you know, Atlas, Creelate, Sourcewell, PinZ, SeekOut, and Signature Backoffice. You guys have helped put this together. Super excited about every single talk. You know, I, I've been saying this all year. 2026 is your year.

Ben [00:00:56]:
2026 is the year to go all in. And I am super excited to share with you guys the very, very, very, very, very, very, very first guest of the Elite Recruiter Podcast. Way back when, where I just like, hey, I got a dumb idea, Jay. Like, do you want to like hop on a podcast and have a conversation? I want to talk to somebody during COVID And 300-something episodes later, over 12,000 people have gone to summits, something like 6, almost 700,000 downloads. Uh, the community has about 135 people and Jay is one of them. The impact of recruiters that are so excited about growing, so excited about learning— what we're doing is we're trying to help bring every piece of information that you need to the table. And that's why these summits have come up, come forward. But here's the thing.

Ben [00:01:51]:
Early on, probably I think it was like before I even started the podcast, I started getting some coaching by Jay. Because here's the thing, like, I know I'm a good recruiter. I kind of suck at sales, and I'll be honest with that. But that what I just said, I kind of suck at sales, is a little voice that has been in the back of my head for many, many years and has probably cost me Millions upon millions of dollars. If I look at it over the course of my 20 years in recruiting, and it was like chatting with Jay really kind of helped, like, hey, maybe I don't suck at this. Maybe I need to rework this voice. And here's the thing, like that little voice in the back of our head is in every single one of us doing like every single day. What is that voice saying? So Jay, the floor is yours, brother.

Ben [00:02:37]:
Excited to have you here. This is your first summit talk, man.

Jay Venard [00:02:44]:
I, I don't even know where to start. Thanks for having me. And like Ben said, I think— well, I know I was his first podcast guest when we were just kind of having a good time. I've been on it 3 times, looking to kind of keep the record on that. But this is the first summit, and I am so pumped up about doing this. And, you know, when Ben and I were in the green room, I told him, I said, dude, I'm going to be honest with you. I am just as nervous right now as when I used to get on the mound and be listening to the national anthem getting ready to throw that first pitch. So I'm so happy to be here.

Jay Venard [00:03:26]:
I mean, so far the talks have been just out of this world. You know, I'm a little intimidated being bookended by Clark, who just Spoke and Diane Prince to follow. But my goal here is to provide as much value as possible, give you something really hard to think about. I'm just going to be honest with you. This talk today is going to punch a lot of you guys in the gut, and it's going to be something that was a huge gut punch for me recently when I realized how much money I was leaving on the table. So for for those of you and If you can just put in the chat whether or not you know who I am, you've heard me talk, you've seen my posts on LinkedIn, just drop it in the chat. I'm kind of curious. For those of you that don't know me, my name is Jay Venard.

Jay Venard [00:04:20]:
I own Ventec Search Group. We are a search firm that specializes in sales talent for the industrial automation industry. I started that company in 2017. I do Still work an active desk, and I do manage a team. In addition to that, I played professional baseball for eight years and made it up to the AA level. I was a pitcher, and a lot of what I learn and coach about mental mindset and peak performance comes to comes from that experience. And the other part of the experience that I like to impart on people who are new in the industry or struggling is that this is the second search firm that I. I started, had a search firm back in from '07 to '09.

Jay Venard [00:05:08]:
I was recruiting in residential construction when the housing market crashed. I was too young and too dumb to see it coming and pivot quick enough and went out of business. So, um, with all of that said, in addition to all of that, I do also, as Ben mentioned, I run a Very highly specialized coaching program. Um, it is a coaching program that is not a bunch of video courses that you're not going to watch. It is a coaching program that is going to teach you how to depress or suppress the bitch voice that we're going to talk about today and get to elite levels and become that 1% recruiter. So without further ado, I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. And we're just going to jump in and we're gonna rock and roll. We're gonna have some fun.

Jay Venard [00:06:03]:
This talk is probably going to talk about— take about 45 minutes. So I think I'll have some time to answer some questions afterwards. If everyone could just drop real quick, are you able to see my screen? Is everyone locked and loaded? Hopefully everyone's got an energy drink or some coffee because this is gonna be Uh, some high energy. So as you guys can see, we're going to talk about the million-dollar tax and killing the bitch voice. The bitch voice is the million-dollar tax. And where I like to start is with an audit, with the cold hard truth. For those of you guys that know me, have heard me on the podcast, who follow my LinkedIn, I don't pull any punches. I don't cut any corners.

Jay Venard [00:06:51]:
And I'm just gonna tell you like it is. Some people are gonna like it, some people aren't. I'm not for everyone. So what the audit is— the audit is the cold hard truth. It's the reality check. You are currently paying a tax that you don't even know about and you never signed up for. It's the financial gap, which is the distance between your current billings, which are here. And your actual potential, which is here.

Jay Venard [00:07:23]:
So the question is, how do you make that gap go from here to here? We're gonna talk about that in this talk here. Then we're gonna talk about the hidden invoice. This is the tax that's worth millions of dollars over the course of your career. Guys, the tax is real. I— hold on a second. I'm seeing people say that they can't see my screen.

Ben [00:07:49]:
Oh yeah, they can see you, but they can't see the screen that you're sharing.

Jay Venard [00:07:52]:
Okay.

Ben [00:07:54]:
And real quick, while he's pulling that up, real quick, drop a yes or a no if you've seen Jay or heard Jay before.

Jay Venard [00:08:06]:
All right.

Ben [00:08:08]:
All right.

Jay Venard [00:08:09]:
I think everyone should be able to see it now, right?

Ben [00:08:11]:
Yep, I can see it now.

Jay Venard [00:08:13]:
All right. Well, hey, technical difficulties. So Anyway, thanks for, thanks for letting me know. So, okay. Anyway, again, the audit, the cold hard truth. We're going to do a reality check. We're going to talk about the financial gap, which is the distance between your current billings and your actual potential. And then we're going to talk about the hidden invoice.

Jay Venard [00:08:33]:
This is the tax that's worth millions of dollars over the course of your career and probably something that you've never thought about or heard of. Because I'm just going to tell you guys, I ran the numbers on my career. And the tax is real. So let's talk about the enemy. The enemy is the bitch voice. Any of you guys who know me, you know I talk about the bitch voice and the boss voice. If you don't like that language, you can call it the angel and the devil. What the bitch voice does— the bitch voice is the one that talks the loudest and talks the most.

Jay Venard [00:09:12]:
It's that saboteur, the internal voice that screams for comfort and safety. It's baked into our DNA. It's the voice that wants to keep you safe. It's the voice that wants to tell you that, hey, it's okay, you don't have to push too hard, you're, you're doing just fine. It's the excuse that tells you to skip the outbound calls. It's the voice that tells you It's a soft market. That's, that's why I'm not, you know, being successful. It's the bad candidates.

Jay Venard [00:09:44]:
It's the bad clients. That's the bitch voice. But guess what? It's you. You're the problem. It's letting the, the bitch voice tell you all of the reasons why you're being soft. When you start thinking about the boss voice, the boss voice, the one that's gonna come in and Smack the bitch voice to the side and say, no, it's not any of that. It's you. And this is what you need to do to get back on track and make sure you do what needs to be done and make sure you set a standard that gets you to the billing levels that you want to be.

Jay Venard [00:10:22]:
Because I think it's safe to say there's probably half the people on this call who know they're underperforming. You know that you could probably double your billings, but for whatever reason, you're holding yourself back and you don't know why. Well, I'm telling telling you right now, it's the bitch voice telling you that everything's okay. Oh, it's okay if you only build $250,000. Yeah, that might be okay, but if you kind of shifted the way you think, adding another 2, 3, 4 deals a year will significantly, significantly increase your legacy. And we'll talk about what that legacy means. The bitch voice is a lethal trap. It's the— it— in, in recruiting It's the voice that tells you that everything's okay.

Jay Venard [00:11:08]:
It's the one that keeps you safe. It's the one that's synonymous with being broke. So right now there's a lot of people sitting in here, and trust me, I've been in your seat before. I've let the bitch voice win. And I, and I know a lot of you guys right now probably are letting the, the bitch voice, uh, win in your own day-to-day. And, and, and here's the thing, I want to give credit where credit's due. I didn't make up the bitch voice and the boss voice. One of my favorite digital mentors, my favorite personal development person, Andy Frisella.

Jay Venard [00:11:39]:
He's got a, you know, podcast. A lot of you guys probably know him. I took it from him, but it's something that for over the course of the last 3 or 4 years I've lived by, and it has significantly, uh, changed the way that I think about the business and significantly increased not only my billings but my team's billings. Now we're going to talk about the tax. This is the part that's going to hurt because I could tell you right now, when I ran these numbers, it hurt. We're going to talk about the $5,329,291 tax. You're probably saying, damn, Jay, that's a really specific number. That's my number.

Jay Venard [00:12:21]:
And I want to let you guys know, you're just not— you're, you're not just missing deals, you're burning your retirement and your family's future. Just to be comfortable, just to buy 5 more minutes of time, just to do research instead of making that phone call that you know you need to do, just to convince yourself that cold calls don't work anymore. And so I want to kind of go through the math with you a little bit. If you look at the monthly leak, so in our company, the average fee is $30,000. If you miss 1 deal a month over the course of 12 months, that's an annual cost of $360,000 in lost fees. That's a real number. Now, for a lot of you there, you can reverse engineer these numbers however you want. Everyone in this talk or listening to this recording, you have lost deals in your process and a number of lost, lost deals that's costing you money.

Jay Venard [00:13:23]:
So for me, The loss for me over 10 years was $3.6 million, and you're basically financing your own failure. So you're probably looking at me, you're saying, Jay, your math isn't mathing. $5.3 million, but here in the yellow you're seeing $3.6 million. We're going to get to that because it's something that I just recently started thinking about that I think is going to be a total mind shift and something that nobody else in the industry is even talking about. And it's all about your career and your legacy. And the one thing that I can say right now is that your comfort is your most expensive liability. And I'm going to show you why. It's the reinvestment factor.

Jay Venard [00:14:16]:
I'm not a financial advisor, but I do invest my money. Money not earned is money that can't grow. So every missed deal is a missed compounding event. And so let's talk a little about it, a little bit about income and wealth. A $30,000 check is income. $30,000 invested is a legacy. So I picked 7% because I think 7% is a very conservative return on an investment. You know, if you're in the stock market or whatever.

Jay Venard [00:14:47]:
So I use that number. One missed deal per month for us. So again, $360,000 a year becomes $5.3 million over 10 years. So if you see the difference there between $3.6 and $5.3, I mean, we're getting pretty close to almost an additional $2 million just by investing that money that you're losing. And the reality of it is you're not just losing a commission. You're losing the ability for your money to work for you and your money to create a legacy, not only for yourself, but the things that you want to do for your family. And again, I can't stress this enough. Every missed deal compounds against you.

Jay Venard [00:15:31]:
So I want to let that sink in for a little bit. And I want everyone, as soon as we get done with this talk, or when you get done with all the talks for the day, I want you to go back to this and I want you to run this investment math. I want you to take an inventory of how many deals you probably leaked out of your system last year. Add those up, put it in there, reinvest it, come up with that number, and then take that number and just assume that you've done that every single year for your entire career, no matter how long you've been in it. And that's going to tell you how much money you've missed out because you have decided not to set a high standard. You've decided to let the bitch voice control your day. You haven't decided that you want to be an elite recruiter, and I think you'll start looking at the business much, much different. So now we're going to talk about the operator transformation.

Jay Venard [00:16:27]:
I like to refer to top-tier 1% recruiters as operators. These are the people that don't negotiate anything. They are in full control of their business. This is the shift that I'm hoping everyone here Goes from being a negotiator to an elite operator, and and basically the shift is this: the negotiators, the recruiters who come in and blame everyone but themselves, these are the ones that are working off feelings, whereas the elite operator, the one percent recruiting operator, they work off of a set of standards that are non-negotiable. No matter what. So the negotiator goes off feelings. If they're not having a good day, they shut it down early. They've got all kinds of excuses.

Jay Venard [00:17:18]:
It's the market, it's the candidates, it's the clients. The negotiator loves comfort. They're the ones that are, that are justifying that research is a critical part of the business rather than getting on the cold call or doing a cold call to move things forward. I'm not saying that research is not an important part of the business, but I also do believe that research should should be done at the end of your day, after hours, and on the weekend. So that's something that I believe in. The elite operator has very, very high standards that they don't compromise. This is the person that no matter what's going on in their day, in their market, with the candidates and the clients, they know that they're in full control of it. They have a precise Roadmap of how they operate their day.

Jay Venard [00:18:10]:
It's fully mapped out. They know exactly who they're going to talk to, when they're going to talk to, and they don't deviate that unless there is just an extreme emergency. They operate— the elite operator operates with extreme discipline. They also operate with zero negotiation. So you always have to remember, when the bitch voice is speaking really loud, you have to shut it up with that boss voice. Who's going to be here to say, "Hey, enough! You be quiet. It's time for me to take over," and that's when you're going to see things start shifting. So again, the elite operator has a strong foundation.

Jay Venard [00:18:49]:
It's all about precision, discipline, and zero tolerance for discomfort. Zero negotiation. So you're probably looking at this slide. For those of you that don't know anything about baseball, I apologize. Everything I do. is rooted around baseball because that was my life until I was 27 years old. So I'm going to try to make this a little bit of an analogy. Just stick with me if you don't know anything about baseball.

Jay Venard [00:19:19]:
Sorry about that. So I like to call this the pro base, the pro ball reality, which is visible death, because when you're in the dugout, especially when you're in the minor leagues, there's no trying. The scoreboard never lies. There is only the highest standard. And if you negotiate with your training and in recruiting, if you negotiate with the dials you know you're supposed to make, if you negotiate with your focus, you're cut from the team. Like, if you do that in professional baseball, you're done. You get called in the office in front of all of your, your teammates. And when you walk out with that sad face, Everyone knows what happened, and no one wants to talk to you.

Jay Venard [00:20:03]:
It's lonely. But the cost of weakness is immediate. It's public, and it's final. That's how baseball operates. Now, the desk delusion, the invisible decay, is what happens in recruiting. So I think we can all agree in recruiting, the feedback loop is broken. You can be average, you can be lazy, and you can negotiate with your dials, and no one takes your jersey if you're solo. The only one you have to report to is the person looking back at you in the mirror.

Jay Venard [00:20:36]:
If you work for a company or you work on a team and you do have a manager, yes, you may be held accountable for this. But I've seen in a lot of recruiting firms, a lot of managers just let people coast through and be mediocre, and they don't do anything about it. So, you know, really, in a sense, you don't get fired. You just get mediocre. You don't lose your job, you just lose your legacy. You're the one that starts paying that $5.3 million tax in total silence. So when I look at those 2 realities, I look at the operator shift. And this is something that I kind of thought about, you know, when I looked at how I was going to take, you know, my mentality from baseball into recruiting.

Jay Venard [00:21:21]:
I realized— or actually, I should say, I treat the desk Just like the baseball field, but the stakes are higher because for the longest time no one was coming to cut me. And because I own my own company, no one's cutting me. I have to negotiate with the person that I look back in the mirror and I want to make sure every night when I go to sleep, I can look in the mirror and say, you know what? I gave it everything I had today. Now, does that mean you're going to win every single day? No. But if you win a majority of your days, if you win 80% of your days over the course of a year, you've won. I treat that like a scoreboard. So you have to think of this as being, if you're solo, your own scout, your own manager, you have to figure out a way to hold yourself accountable. And, you know, I stopped being a recruiter looking for a paycheck and I started becoming an operator hunting a standard.

Jay Venard [00:22:19]:
And honestly, I didn't really know what a high standard was until, you know, 3 or 4 years ago. And to be completely honest, I didn't realize how high of a standard some recruiters have until I met my buddy Brent Orsuga, who's here in, in the Phoenix area with us, who we have, um, quarterly meetups. Like, that dude is intense. He's one of the hardest workers I've ever seen. And I'm just going to be honest with you, he's the rabbit that I'm chasing. Because I see him doing things that I don't do, which means I need to raise my standard to get to the point of where he's at. So there are people out there that you can model or mentor. You just have to go out and find them.

Jay Venard [00:23:03]:
And then the thing about it is, man, like, as soon as you change your standard, your desk is going to change forever. This is the one thing that if you don't take anything else, you have to realize that you have to set a standard of non-negotiables that you do every single day, no matter what. On your desk that are going to get you to the next level. So the bottom line is this: a job is what you do to survive; a standard is what you do on the days you don't feel like working. It's who you become that makes you a winner. Because look, in the dugout when I was playing baseball, you get cut; at the desk, you just rot. And I want to ask you guys, which one of those is more dangerous? I want to let this slide sink in for a little bit. I want you guys to take a look at this.

Jay Venard [00:24:02]:
Which one are you? Be honest. Put it in the chat. You know, don't be afraid right now. If you know you're the negotiator, the bitch voice is telling you, don't you dare put that in the chat. But guess what? Change only starts when you're able to admit what you really are. The negotiator is someone who negotiates with the alarm. You know, you hit snooze 5 times before you get out of bed. As soon as you sit up, you say, oh man, I really don't want to go and make these phone calls or do BD or interview anyone.

Jay Venard [00:24:32]:
You're starting the day with a loss. So it's as easy as that. When the alarm goes off, Get your butt out of bed and look, I'm preaching to the choir here because I was always the guy who hit the snooze button 3, 4, or 5 times. I was that guy. I'm not that guy anymore because I decided that I was going to create a higher standard. The negotiator is the person that justifies researching to avoid dialing. I call that productive procrastination. You have to do the research.

Jay Venard [00:25:06]:
I get it, but you don't have to do it during your productive hours. It's the myth that you keep telling yourself. It's the myth that a lot of people in all of these Facebook communities talk— well, I have to do my research. Yeah, you do have to do your research on your own time, not during production hours. The negotiator is the person that hides behind the email because you're afraid of no. Look, guys, I'm just going to tell you right now, if you are the digital nomad right now who's deathly afraid of getting on the phone and thinks that you can run your business behind email, LinkedIn, LinkedIn DMs, and text messages, I call that digital communication. You will be replaced, or actually you've probably already been replaced by AI because listen, the one thing That AI cannot replace right now, and I'm not going to make any predictions on when it's going to happen. They cannot replace being on a phone call, being on a Zoom call, or being face-to-face influencing decisions and being able to see those little nuances in live conversation that allow you to know which direction to go.

Jay Venard [00:26:17]:
So I'm just telling you right now, if you are not willing to get off— get on the phone You should get out of this business because you are going to be replaced. I know that's harsh, but look, like I told you, this talk today is going to be a gut punch. And so again, the negotiator is the one that's going to pay the $5.3 million tax. They're going to do it in silence. They're going to do it in regret. So when we look at the operator, this is the person that has their day planned out the day before. You're not planning it, you know, right when your day is about to start. Now, if you're one of those people that wake up at 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning, yeah, you could probably plan your day, you know, that morning.

Jay Venard [00:26:55]:
Um, I'm not that guy. Um, I don't wake up that early. Um, so I do my planning, uh, the night before. The one non-negotiable that we have for our team between 9 and 11, it's, it's, it's a laser-targeted strike. It's non-negotiable execution on the phone, doing the thing that every single person who has ever been in recruiting— now I know there's Couple really weird people who enjoy cold calling, but I think it's safe to say that 99.5% of any salesperson, any recruiter, any of us on this call, we hate cold calling. I've been doing this for 22 years. I hate cold calling. I don't like it.

Jay Venard [00:27:39]:
I get nervous every single time I think about doing a cold call, but it has to be done. So stop negotiating. Stop letting the bitch voice say, no, no, no, we don't have to do that now. We'll wait and do it later this afternoon. Well, that's bullshit because no one ever gets to it later this afternoon. If your day is structured, you don't have time to get to it later in the afternoon. The other thing the operator does is they control the process or walks away. They own the room.

Jay Venard [00:28:07]:
Here's the thing: I am seeing too many people in the Facebook communities and people post on LinkedIn about deals falling off and candidates that do this and clients that ghost them and all of that. Every time I see that, I cringe because it is the absolute easiest thing to solve. You have to control the process, but you cannot control the process if you're trying to only communicate over email, you know, LinkedIn DMs, text messages. We have a rule here at my company: you are allowed to have 3 digital Communications, and the fourth one should always be a phone call. I'm not saying they're always going to answer, but if you say, "Hey, let's jump on the let's jump on a call about this one," it will be easier. That's what we do because if you think about it, I think everyone here has had the 27-string email that over the course of a day and a half that could have easily been taken care of on a three-minute phone call. So. Pick up the phone and control the process.

Jay Venard [00:29:19]:
When I say control the process, you have to control your clients. You have to control your candidates, and you have to be able to walk away from both regardless of how good you think this client is or how good you think the candidate is. If they're not willing to work your process, you need to walk away because over my 22 years, when a client or a candidate thought that they could control the process, something bad always happened either in the middle of the deal, the end of the deal, or after the person started. And I know a lot of people are like, well, you can't control people. Well, yes you can. And the way that you control people is by influence, and you create that influence by controlling the process with their best interest in mind, not the commission that you're trying to, trying to get. Because if you control the process with their best interests in mind, they're going to let you lead. If you try to control the process without their best interests in mind, they're going to smell the commission breath.

Jay Venard [00:30:20]:
They're going to know that you're trying to talk them into, well, you know, the, the fake takeaway. Well, you know, my, my client is interviewing with 5 other companies. Well, they know most of the time that that's bullshit. So just be honest. That will help you control the process. Um, as I said, you know, a minute ago, you got to use the phone. To exert influence, every top 1% recruiter is on the phone pretty much all day. I mean, I think Rich Rosen told me one time he spends five, sometimes seven hours on the phone.

Jay Venard [00:30:54]:
That guy's an animal, so I'm not necessarily sure a lot of us should be comparing ourselves to him. But it's a standard that we can look up to and try to get to. So you always have to remember, we don't necessarily need to compare ourselves to others, but we can see what others are doing who are super, super successful and try to get to that point and then figure out what your comfort level is to that point of excellence for you and set that standard. And then last but not least, the, the 1% recruiting operator, they very rarely encourage the bitch voice. So like I said, when we started, Most people have the bitch voice talking 80% of the time, and I know before I heard this analogy, that was me. It's all right here. And for me, it really kicked in when I was on my weight loss journey. It was always telling me, ah, don't, don't go walk those 10,000 steps.

Jay Venard [00:31:50]:
Don't go. Yeah, you don't need to go to the gym. This, this, this game you're watching on TV is really comfortable. And I programmed myself to every single time that happened, I would immediately jump up. Get dressed, go to the gym, and now it just comes natural to me. So now for me, the boss voice talks 80% of the time. Before, the bitch voice talked 80% of the time. Once you can get that shift, that's when you're going to own your desk.

Jay Venard [00:32:17]:
That's when you're going to own your business. That's when you're going to own your life. It's when you're going to own your standard. That's when you're going to start owning your bank account. So you have to decide, do you want to continue being the negotiator and paying the tax, or do you want to become the 1% recruiting operator, that kills the voice and absolutely crushes your career. Because look, the mirror doesn't lie, and neither does your bank account. Your bank account is your biggest scoreboard, and if you don't like that scoreboard, you might want to do something about it. Don't know why my next slide isn't going.

Jay Venard [00:33:00]:
There we go. So one of the things I want everyone to kind of consider or think about is the volume standard. I know in the first talk, um, yesterday Mike Williams talked about, you know, call volume and calls they do. Um, every top recruiter that I know has a minimum standard for themselves. It's different for everyone. Um, but what the volume standard is, is it starts with Having a specific KPI, and guess what? That's a dirty word for a lot of people here. If you don't have your own KPIs, even if you're solo, how are you measuring yourself? How do you know if you're doing what you're supposed to be doing? It's the scoreboard, and the scoreboard never lies. So the one thing that I look at when it comes to the discussion of volume and KPIs is the quality lie I hear all the time.

Jay Venard [00:33:54]:
Quality over quantity, quality over quantity, and quality over quantity is the excuse losers use to justify a low activity lifestyle. Quality over quantity is the bitch voice keeping you comfortable. It's the mask for your fear of getting on the phone. Now listen, I'm not saying that quality is not important, but you have to have enough quantity. To have the quality. Think about it this way. Let's take Steph Curry. Let's take LeBron.

Jay Venard [00:34:26]:
Let's take Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant. Do you think when they are practicing free throws that they step on the free throw line and they shoot 10 flawless free throws, make all 10 of them, form is perfect, everything's perfect? Do you think they quit? Because they're— shit. First 10, ultimate quality. I'm done. No, they don't do that. They still shoot the 90 others. And the reason why they do that is because they know that quantity will eventually make quality. So you might be that person right now who only make— let's just say you only make 50 calls a day and you're saying, well, You know, if I just make 10 quality ones, they're good.

Jay Venard [00:35:15]:
Okay, well, how are you ever going to get to those 10 quality ones if you're only making 10 a day, or if you're only making 10 a week? So it's just something to think about. It's the quality lie. That's the bitch voice trying to keep you comfortable, saying, hey, don't worry about it, don't get on the phone, it's all good. Then we look at the math of mastery. Quality is not a choice, it's, it's a byproduct of volume. The more you do, the more reps you put in, the better you're going to get. It's the one thing where if you are new to recruiting and you're on this call, you have to literally— you should be reaching out with such a high volume of activity, almost like with reckless abandon. I hesitate to say this, but I'm going to say it anyway.

Jay Venard [00:36:05]:
If you're new to the industry, you should go back to the old school method that recruiters like me who came up in the early 2000s and some the late '90s, maybe I don't even know when it stopped, where basically we were handed a script and a phone, go make 100 calls a day and with no training. And what happened is because we had so much quantity that eventually the quality came. It takes time in recruiting. It takes a minimum of 3 to 4 months before you get good. But I'm going to tell you this right now. The new recruiter who's making 20 live contacts a day— I'm sorry, 20 phone calls a day, which means probably 2 to 3 live contacts a day— is going to get destroyed by the recruiter who's coming in and making 80 phone calls a day and having 8 to 15 live conversations a day. All of that activity is going to compound. And the one who's got the most quantity is going to destroy the person who has decided to just be comfortable and say, eh, 10's enough.

Jay Venard [00:37:13]:
So again, think about the 120-minute war. That's what we talk about. It is a war. Cold calling sucks. It's mentally draining. Block it out 9 AM to 11. Do it first thing. Create what I call a dark zone.

Jay Venard [00:37:28]:
Uh, no emails, no LinkedIn scrolling. No research. If you can't stop looking at your cell phone, turn your cell phone off, put it in a different room, do whatever you need to do. Because from 9 to 11, first thing in the day, if you're not on the phone, you're not working, you're just pretending. So again, volume is the thing that reveals the truth. Lack of activity reveals your ultimate weakness. Let's talk about control. A lot of people will say— real quick, guys, can you see my screen still? I actually hit a button.

Jay Venard [00:38:14]:
I'm not sure it's still—

Ben [00:38:16]:
Yep, I can see your screen still.

Jay Venard [00:38:17]:
Okay, cool. Sorry about that. Okay, so the control standard. A lot of people will say you can't control people. Well, when I came up in the business, We were told that control was basically beating people over the head and making them do what you wanted to do. And again, I started in the recruiting business in 2002. That was how we were trained. But probably people who are coming from an MRI network, they're going to tell you the same thing.

Jay Venard [00:38:43]:
Control was basically strong-arming people and quite honestly lying to people to get what you want. That doesn't work anymore. The control comes when you are trying to control the process by doing things that are in the best interest of both the client and the candidate. And I will say that there's a spectator sin. If you're not controlling the process, you aren't a recruiter. You're just spectator. You're a witness. Spectators and witnesses don't get paid.

Jay Venard [00:39:16]:
The elite recruiters, the operators, those are the ones that get paid. When you go to a professional sport, you are paying to see those highly, highly paid people on the field because they're the ones controlling the process of their game. So I want everyone to think of a hard close mandate. And when I was creating this deck, I was like, you know what, the hard close, a lot of people aren't going to like that. And I get it, but there's a way to hard close people without them knowing you're hard closing them. And again, it's all about doing what's in their best interest and closing them on everything you do, because ambiguity is the enemy of the deal. I would suggest that you never hang up without a definitive yes or no and a locked-in next step. If you are living your life with a bunch of maybes, that is a slow death.

Jay Venard [00:40:11]:
And so let me give you an example. So, you know, if you're talking to a client and they're like, yeah, send your search agreement over. And you're like, okay, perfect. I'll get it over to you. How long do you— how long do you need to review it before I can expect it back signed? Well, you know, we're going to need a couple days. Okay. When you say a couple days, does that mean 24 hours, 48 hours? Well, we can have it back to you in 48 hours. Okay, cool.

Jay Venard [00:40:38]:
Hey, I know things come up. If I don't see it in 48 hours, is it okay if I call and just check up to make sure there aren't any questions? Almost 100% of the time they're going to say yes. So you have to be able to push and ask the things and lock people down, tie them down with commitments. Because what ends up happening— and this happens on the candidate side too, you know— when a candidate says, yeah, I'll get your resume, uh, my resume to you. Okay, when can I expect it? I'll get it to you by the end of the day today. Okay, if I don't see it by the end of the day today, is it all right if I call and follow up with you, or text you and follow up with Yeah, that's fine. Okay, cool. So it's a tie-down.

Jay Venard [00:41:17]:
You're locking them in. What it also does too is it buys you— I don't know what the word I'm looking for is, but it buys you time. It gives you the ability to kind of say if a client or a candidate starts getting off track, hey, Mr. and Mrs. Client, hey, Mr. and Mrs. Candidate, I just wanna address the elephant in the room here. You know, been a couple times where, you know, you said that you were gonna do something for me, and this seems to kind of be, you know, a pattern where I'm not getting what I'm asking for.

Jay Venard [00:41:53]:
You know, is there something that I can do to make your job easier and make sure, you know, that we keep the process moving along quickly? And you see how I kind of put it toward them? Is there something that I can do to help you? So again, the hard close mandate is just making sure you get a yes or no on everything you do. This is going to significantly eliminate things blowing up at the end. And the one, the one thing that I suggest, especially on the candidate side, every single time that you talk to a candidate who is in your process, in the interview process, every single time you talk to that candidate, you should be asking them, Has anything changed with your search process? Has anything changed? That is actually a hard close because they're there now. They have to tell you, no, nothing's changed. Okay, so you're not interviewing with any other companies, and it's okay. And I always go, and it's okay if you are, but I need to know who you're interviewing with because if we get to a point where my client is your number one destination, but another client's moving much quicker, I need to know if I need to speed up my client and get them to move faster. And so that usually, again, frames it to where it's their best interest, not mine. So again, close the loop, hard close, get a yes, get a no.

Jay Venard [00:43:18]:
And then the power of the walkaway. This is especially, uh, critical for clients. If a client will commit to a time timeline or a process, kill the search. It's going to blow up on you anyway. It's going to be a big headache for you. Your time is your most important inventory. You can never get time back. So don't let a disorganized client burn your most valuable asset.

Jay Venard [00:43:41]:
And if you're sitting here thinking, I can't fire a client, if you're thinking that, that means a couple of things. That means that you are Letting the bitch voice talk. It also means that you don't have enough in your pipeline to be able to walk away from a client, and both of those are big, big problems. And it means that you're not controlling your desk and controlling the process, because if you were, you would be able to walk away from that 20% fee client who is the biggest headache and work with the clients who are paying you the 25 to 30%. Engage search fee with money down. Those are the ones that you got to work— those are the ones you want to work with, and you got to get rid of the ones who don't value your time. So again, control the process or be the product. All right, so let's talk a little bit about influence.

Jay Venard [00:44:43]:
So we talked a little bit earlier I know there's a lot of people on this call who are in that digital hiding spot. You want to do everything online— email, text, LinkedIn DMs. Email, LinkedIn DMs— that's where deals go to die. So if you're trying to manage your business that way, you're going to get replaced by AI, and you're just making this job way harder. than it should be because this is a full-contact communication business. And the people who know how to communicate effectively and influence decisions, I will argue this could be a digital clip from 5 years or whatever. I believe that those recruiters are never going to get replaced. I think that those recruiters who know how to have influence in conversations are going to be the ones that survive.

Jay Venard [00:45:37]:
They're going to be the ones who, you know, when AI takes over, we're going to get less searches. But because of the critical nature of the ones that AI can't handle, our fees are going to go significantly higher. That's just one of my predictions. I don't have a crystal ball, so I don't know. So I always talk about the voice-first policy. Influence happens in the nuance of a voice and in the tension of silence. You can only do that on the phone, on a Zoom, or in person. So here's the requirement.

Jay Venard [00:46:11]:
Critical decisions happen on phone or Zoom and in person, no exceptions. I keep saying in person, and you'll see I even left it out on the requirement. I just started going to trade shows to see people in person, and I will tell you that there's a lot of people right now saying, I can't go to a trade show, it costs too much. It's the one thing about recruiters. Recruiters, we are so cheap. We don't like spending money, but I'm gonna tell you right now, even if a trade show costs you $5,000 for 3 or 4 days, it is 100% worth it. Ever since I started going to trade shows and meeting people face to face, I always, always, always walk out with multiple job orders and close at least one deal. I'm just saying, close at least one deal.

Jay Venard [00:47:03]:
From me being at the trade show. So my average fee is $30,000. That trade show might have cost me $5,000. Look, I'm not good at math, but I think that's a 6-to-1 return on investment. So I'm just telling you right now, especially in the age of AI, you got to get out. You got to start meeting people face to face. And especially if you work a local area. If you work a local area, you should be meeting your people in person.

Jay Venard [00:47:29]:
And if you don't work a local area and you work national, if the search is big enough, You should definitely be going out and meeting the people in person, getting a feel for their environment, and that's where the real connection happens. So stop behind— stop hiding behind your keyboard. Start getting on the phone. Start talking to people in person. Start scheduling Zoom calls and, you know, get belly to belly with people. That's where the real action happens. The 1% Recruiter Protocol. This is the system that I created that kills the $5.3 million tax.

Jay Venard [00:48:10]:
It's 3 pillars, zero negotiation. Um, pillar 1 again is that volume standard, the industrial-scale math of a $30,000 fee or whatever your average fee is. You have to do this math. You have to do it. In the next day, like tonight, you have to take action with all of the for everyone on here. You have to take action on all of these talks because if you don't take action, all you're doing is wasting time. So you have to take action. Okay, figure out what the industrial scale math is for you.

Jay Venard [00:48:49]:
You have to get to a point where you can say. We meet, we move more dirt than the competition is willing to touch. 9 AM to 11 AM is the dark zone. No distractions, no excuses. Then we move on to pillar 2, the control framework. Total dominance of the search process. You're in control. You're the professional.

Jay Venard [00:49:10]:
You're the consultant. You are the expert, not them. If they were the expert, they wouldn't have signed the search agreement. They wouldn't be 90 days into a search with no, no good candidates. So you have to remember, you are the one that should be dominating the whole search process. So one of the things here that we work on really, really hard— we don't check in with people. We find other ways to say we're checking in, but we do it by leading. We check in with more of like a suggestion, and we make sure that that suggestion is kind of framed into their best interest.

Jay Venard [00:49:47]:
Um, so the one thing that I can tell you is that if you don't want to control the deal, you are the product, and you have to hard close every interaction if you don't want to be the product. And then last but not least, pillar 3, the most important thing. When I played baseball, I got up to the AA level, which was the top 1% of all minor league players. We were a phone call away from from, from the big leagues. And at that level, everyone has about the same amount of talent. Of course, there's the 5% exceptions, people like Ohtani and people like that. I can say that in recruiting, it's the same. Everyone here, with the exception, you know, of the elite 5%, we all have the same capabilities.

Jay Venard [00:50:35]:
We all have the same, you know, strengths and weaknesses. We all have the same opportunity. But in baseball, they said 80% of the game is right here. And I will tell you right now, in recruiting, it might be 90% of the game that is right here. Because especially if you're working for yourself, this business is hard. It's hard as fuck. Sorry for my language, but I'm just being real with you. It is a mental roller coaster.

Jay Venard [00:51:10]:
From day to day, year to year. Case in point, 2024 at Ventec Search Group was our worst year in company history. We've been around since 2017. 2025— before I get to 2025, but we didn't feel sorry for ourselves. We didn't let the bitch voice say, oh, it was the market, it was this, it was that. We just said, hey, put in the rearview. Let's attack 2025. 2025 for us, we had a record year, company worst, company best, and followed that up with the record Q1 of 2026.

Jay Venard [00:51:47]:
So again, it's just the way you frame things. It's the mindset that you have. It's all about being in a peak performance state and saying, I'm a badass and I know I'm a badass and you're going to follow my process because I know what I'm doing and I'm going to make sure that I do it. In your best interest. And that's how you get to that mindset where you're able to create that professional-grade mental toughness. Because when the 1% recruiter operator speaks, the negotiators shut up. They listen to you. They let you take the lead.

Jay Venard [00:52:24]:
But you have to be confident enough up here to know that you are the badass in the room. Because if you weren't, They wouldn't be—they wouldn't have a need to use a recruiter. And so we don't negotiate with our own weakness. We set a high standard. All right, I'm wrapping up. I want to call to arms, guys. I want everyone to draw a line in the sand. Your line in the sand is going to be different than mine and everybody else's.

Jay Venard [00:52:59]:
You have to decide what your line in the sand is, and you have to make that the non-negotiable. You have to make that the new standard. I don't know if you've got a whiteboard in your office, at home, right in front of you. Whatever you do, I want you to write on a whiteboard. I would love it if people would take a picture of it and send it to me in a LinkedIn DM. I want to, I want to see the new standard. Write it. The new standard.

Jay Venard [00:53:25]:
What is the new standard? And then once you set the new standard, how are you going to get there? What are you going to do? That's the line in the sand that I want everyone to draw after this talk today, because you're either paying the tax or you're killing the bitch voice. When you leave today, you have to make the, you have to make the commitment that you're going to go from the 80% of the bitch voice talking to 80% boss voice talking. Once that shift happens, and it's not going to happen overnight, it's going to, it's always going to be a work in progress. But if you work on it, just like anything else, it's going to come to fruition. And then what I want everyone else to think about is the one deal that you're losing this year is going to turn into one deal, 2 deals, 3 deals that you lose the next year, and so on and so forth. I want everyone to build a multi-million dollar legacy and not slide into irrelevance. And I think that if you can eliminate a lot of the leakage in your business by killing the bitch voice and channeling the boss voice and setting an extremely high standard, you are going to add hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, to your recruiting career. So let's just let that sink in for a minute.

Jay Venard [00:54:55]:
Millions of dollars to your career. Too many recruiters think about one more deal this year. We're not thinking about one more deal this year. We're thinking about multiple deals that I'm not going to let leak over the course of 10 years, which is going to account for millions of dollars. So switch that mindset today and stop thinking about the one deal this year and think about how many deals That you're going to, to get over the course of your career because you're taking action on this specific talk today. So again, I want everyone here, I want you to stop the bleeding. You can either keep paying the $5.3 million tax or you can implement the 1% Recruiting Operator Protocol today. And if you do that, You will kill the voice.

Jay Venard [00:55:48]:
If you don't, you will keep financing your own failure. So my question to everyone today: Are you gonna kill the voice? And if you are, I want you to drop it in the comments so I can see it. And then we are going to sign off with this: Stop the bleeding, kill the voice, reclaim your. Legacy and your family's legacy. Um, that QR code right there, um, will give you access to the 1% Recruiter Protocol. It's going to take you to the Peak Performance Recruiting website. It's going to tell you everything that we do in our program. If it's not for you, cool.

Jay Venard [00:56:31]:
What I would encourage you to do is subscribe to the 1% Recruiter newsletter that we are just about to launch. And then if that's not for you, then I want every single person on this call to connect with me on LinkedIn. That's the reason why I put the screenshot of my profile there. My last name is Vannard. It's spelled weird. You know, I just want to make sure that everyone knows what it looks like. And look, your legacy is waiting. The longer you wait to reclaim it, the more harm you're doing to your bank account, which ultimately affects your legacy.

Jay Venard [00:57:09]:
So I want everyone to go out and get it. I think we've got some time, Ben. If we've got time left, if anyone's got any questions, I would definitely love to open it up to any questions that people might have.

Ben [00:57:22]:
So drop the questions in the Q&A box because I might lose it in a second. Was first time hearing Jay speak for most of you guys. Was it worth it listening to him, taking a break and hearing, hearing Jay today?

Jay Venard [00:57:45]:
While you guys are doing that, I'm going to stop my screen share in about 10 seconds. So if you need to scan that QR code, go ahead.

Ben [00:58:02]:
100%. Most compelling and resonating summit so far. Let me just—

Jay Venard [00:58:06]:
Love it.

Ben [00:58:10]:
Let me just pop back in here again. I think it's one of those talks where it's like you're not going to have a lot of the Q&A. I did one recently too, and I was just like, did anybody like the talk?

Jay Venard [00:58:22]:
Yeah, no, I kind of knew there probably wouldn't be a bunch of questions. I mean, like I said from the beginning, I mean, This was meant to be a wake-up call and a gut punch because when I did the math, that was my holy shit moment. And I hope it's going to be a holy shit moment for a lot of others and makes you change the way that you do your business. And, you know, Ben, you said it when me and you used to work together back in 2019. We killed your bitch voice on the sales end. And I mean, you've done some amazing things since then. So it could be one simple shift for someone out there.

Ben [00:59:01]:
Uh, somebody did ask a question. Anything that you wish you knew when you were just getting started, something that people might not expect?

Jay Venard [00:59:10]:
Um, yeah, um, I wish I knew how hard this business was going to be. Um, I think that too many people, um, glamorize and glorify how easy it is to make big money. in this business. Um, but it's not easy. Uh, my, my, the— when I started in the business— now keep in mind, when I started in the business, $40,000 salary, um, was pretty good. The owner of my— the owner of the company I work for said this is the easiest way to make a 6-figure income and the hardest way to make $40,000. And so the choice is yours. And really, the choice just depends on Do you want to do the work? Are you willing to put in the time that it takes to be an elite recruiter? Are you willing to make the phone calls? Are you willing to pick up the phone, or are you going to continue to listen to the people on the internet who say never make a cold call again? Because listen, I'm just going to call those people out.

Jay Venard [01:00:14]:
It's bullshit. You have to make— you have to make cold calls in this business. If you want to be successful, if you want to make this business less hard, you have to pick up the phone.

Ben [01:00:29]:
I was actually going to say that line once you got done, that this is like the hardest $50K, $60K job you will ever have, but it could be the easiest $200K, $300K, $400K, $500K job ever. It's just The thing that people don't understand with a lot of the podcast stories is like many times it's years of work coming into the highlight.

Jay Venard [01:00:54]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, I use that analogy all the time. You know, Ventec is 2017, so we're 9 years old. And it's that whole thing. It's like the overnight 10-year success. Dude, we struck— there were years we struggled. There were years we did great.

Jay Venard [01:01:13]:
But the bottom line is you have to keep pushing through. You, you can't, you can't give up. That's the one thing too, is like, you cannot give up. Honestly, when my company went out of business in, in '09 in residential construction, I actually wish that I would have pushed through and kept going. Yeah, it would have been really hard years after that, but instead I chose to go out of business because I was like, this, I don't, I don't want to deal with this. This is hard. If I would have stayed in it, I would have been in that industry now for what, 20-some years? I I will guarantee you that me personally, just in residential construction, I probably would've been billing $1.5 million, if not more, myself. Because just in the 9 months in that industry before the market crashed, we were already killing it.

Jay Venard [01:02:06]:
We were already getting $40,000 fees back then. I can't imagine what it would be now.

Ben [01:02:14]:
Somebody asked, how do you manage your time with candidate outreach and BD?

Jay Venard [01:02:19]:
Yeah, so I think the one thing about BD, you have to do it first, first thing in the morning, because it's the hardest and it's the easy one to justify pushing off. And so it has to be what— and again, whatever time you start, whatever time zones you work in, my suggestion would be to start making those calls at 9 AM. You know, sometimes, yeah, you could probably get a hold of some people at 8 AM if you want to kind of be that early bird, but it has to be a 2-hour block. You have to decide how many phone calls that you're willing to make, and it's not necessarily the amount of phone calls, but you should know about how many phone calls it takes to get around 10 live conversations in that 2-hour block. So for us, um, We, we've been running the numbers for a while. We have about an 18% pickup rate on business development cold calls. So if you think about it, we have to make 100 phone calls to do 18 live conversations. So you just have to figure out what works for you.

Jay Venard [01:03:24]:
And then the rest of the day, you know, you have to segment the way that you want to work because everyone works a little bit different. I always recommend, you know, trying to hit candidates on their lunch break or around lunchtime, and then toward the end of the day when typically things start slowing down. One of the things that we do here, one of the things that I teach with my team, is I tell them to pick 3 jobs for that specific day and only work those 3 jobs, but work them, work them a lot. You know, a lot of recruiters bounce back and forth between 10 jobs. They make 1 call here, 5 calls there, 7 calls here. I just don't think that's effective. I think that if you pick out 3 jobs and you're making 30 or 40 candidate calls per day on each job, or whatever it is, 25. I think that's the most effective way to do it.

Jay Venard [01:04:16]:
But again, your results are going to vary. There are a lot of other people that do it different ways, but I think if you structure it like that, you're going to find that it makes it a lot easier to get it all done in the course of a day.

Ben [01:04:30]:
All right, actually, we got a few more questions coming in. If you guys see me like looking at different ways, Looking at the questions and also getting the last session replays up for the VIP and up for the community. So always multitasking. Sorry, Jay.

Jay Venard [01:04:42]:
No, it's all good. It's all good. And you know what, if we, if we get cut short, anyone, you can send me your question in a LinkedIn DM. I'll answer it.

Ben [01:04:51]:
How do you find this high number of people to call? I find it hard to find numbers to get this volume.

Jay Venard [01:04:57]:
That's the bitch voice talking. It's not hard to find numbers. I'm sorry, it's not. So number one, depending on the market you're in, um, you first have to map your market. And what that means, guys, you're gonna have to spend money on tools. So, you know, whether it's Clay, we have that. Whether it's ZoomInfo, we don't have that, but we have Apollo. Uh, Clay finds phone numbers and emails.

Jay Venard [01:05:26]:
Our new ATS finds phone numbers and emails. In today's day and age, even just using the internet, you should have no problem finding phone numbers and especially emails. Now, cell phone numbers, those are going to be hit or miss. But look, at the end of the day, and this goes to the, the belly-to-belly, you know, phone warfare— I don't know how new you are into the industry, the person that asked that question, But when I came up in the industry, every one of our phone calls, we called a switchboard where an operator answered, and we would ask for them. If they weren't there, we knew like they were a salesperson or something, we would ask for their cell phone number. So look, I know receptionists in today's day and age and in a lot of industries don't exist anymore, but if you have a company phone number, call it. Ask for the person, try to go through their directory. A lot of times now people have their work phone numbers forwarded to their cell phones.

Jay Venard [01:06:29]:
The other thing too is if you are doing email outreach, pay attention to the return emails that are coming in or the out-of-office replies. Most people have their cell number in their signature line. Take those, put them in your database. Cell phone numbers are like— I tell my team all the time, cell phone numbers are like gold bars. That's the gold. I honestly tell people this when they come to work at my company. There's very little that's going to get you fired except for not putting a cell number in the system and tagging it as cell number verified. So they're really easy to find.

Jay Venard [01:07:08]:
You just have to probably spend a little bit of money or do a little bit of A little bit more research after hours and on the weekend.

Ben [01:07:20]:
Uh, somebody said, with the BD, are you targeting open positions or working through a list of businesses in your industry to make an introduction? What's your opening line?

Jay Venard [01:07:30]:
Yeah, so I have a couple theories on that. Um, I don't think chasing job ads is that effective. I know that people do win business from that, and I'm not saying I've never won business for it, but our percentage is very low. I actually have an automation running through Clay that finds all of those and runs an automated sequence because it's, it's kind of like a loss leader. You're, you're the 37th recruiter in that day. That is chasing that job lead because every freaking trainer in the industry is teaching you that. What— why, why do you— why do you want to be one of many? What we do here, and it's the one— I think 80% of every deal that I've ever closed in my whole 22-year career has been from an MPC marketing call. It's the only marketing that we do here.

Jay Venard [01:08:32]:
I, I don't allow people to do general calls saying, hey, here's who we are, here's what we do, do you need help? No, we don't do that. And I also just run the job ad leads automated. But when we do the MPC calls— and you know what, Mike Williams, um, covered this in his first talk— you, number one, it has to be a true MPC that they can't find on their own. They have to have Really strong accomplishments. They have to have a really strong job history. They're not job hoppers. And then you make the phone call, you get the per— and it can be done on email too, because the— and quite honestly, I actually learned this process from Rich Rosen. He sends an email about an NPC and then calls the next day with the same thing.

Jay Venard [01:09:18]:
We, we do the same thing, but, but it's that call saying, This candidate is exceptional because of this, this, and this. Now, what you could do, and I think Mike talked about it on the first session yesterday, if you see a job ad and you have NPCs, and you should be always building an NPC bench, you should take that direct NPC, make the phone call. Hey, Mr. and Ms. Client, I saw the ad for blah, blah, blah. And Mike, I don't know if my timing is right, but I just recruited a candidate that would be a perfect fit for this position. Would, would it be okay for me to tell you a little bit about what this person does and how it matches your job description exactly? If they say no to that, that just means they're just not gonna use a recruiter. But more times than not, they will 100% say, yeah, I'd like to hear about them.

Ben [01:10:14]:
I know you've covered this like once or twice, but just to recap it again, like what tool do you use to get phone numbers?

Jay Venard [01:10:19]:
So we use a number of different things. Uh, Clay, we use, um, Apollo, and we use our, um, our internal ATS.

Ben [01:10:35]:
Somebody asked, how do you structure comp for your team? Is it salary plus commission or 100% commission? And is there any ramp-up period?

Jay Venard [01:10:41]:
Um, yeah, we do, uh, base salary on a draw plus commission. And yes, there is a ramp-up time. Um, I, my belief is that it's going to take someone 3 to 4 months. Now it really depends too. I hire people as 360 recruiters, so people that come in are going to do BD and recruiting. What we do, I, I always put them on the recruiting side first. I throw them a couple of jobs to work on so they can get a quick win. Um, a lot of times that happens in month 2, but sometimes it It doesn't.

Jay Venard [01:11:15]:
And so what we do here is we just do for the first 2 months, you get your base salary. It's not on a draw, but after the second month, that's when the draw kicks in, and then we pay commission on top of that.

Ben [01:11:32]:
And then when, when do you do planning and research to get numbers for your call?

Jay Venard [01:11:38]:
So I've got an internal— I'm going to make it sound way more important than it is— operations team. But I actually— and actually, I'm going to put a plug out because I think Rayhan— when does Rayhan talk?

Ben [01:11:57]:
So he's actually talking on the bonus day on May 4th, the very last session.

Jay Venard [01:12:03]:
Okay. So any of you guys that don't know Rayhan, make sure you're on his call. I hired a— what he calls a GTM engineer. A year ago, August, and I brought that guy in as more of like my ops manager. So he's responsible for kind of running the enrichment on all of our market mapping. And so again, he takes care of all that. He does it in, again, Clay Apollo, our internal database, and gets that information that way. And I kind of got a little sidetracked, so I hope I answered.

Jay Venard [01:12:36]:
Yeah, no, that's fine. the question you actually asked, but he's, he's, he's the one I got my person from. And honestly, that is something that depending on where you're at in your career or how much you're billing, that is a task that you should not be doing. You should not be doing that kind of research.

Ben [01:12:58]:
Uh, somebody said, so every call from 9 to 11 should be an MPC call? That's a ton of prep work.

Jay Venard [01:13:05]:
I wish, I wish I had that person live. I'll say, why is it a ton of prep work? That's the bitch voice talking. Um, because when you get an MPC, you create the script. So you already have the script created. And then every day you look and say, okay, let's just say you've only decided that you're going to make 20 calls a day. So at the end of your day, you create your list of 20 people. If you've got got, uh, any one of the modern ATSs— I mean, shit, even if you have one of the old ATSs, you can easily pull 20 hiring managers. But, but you— if you have to know your market.

Jay Venard [01:13:43]:
Like, for me, it's easy. We only place, uh, salespeople from individual contributors to chief revenue officers. So if I've got an individual contributor MPC, I'm only reaching out to chief revenue officers, and vice presidents of sales, I can pull that up in my ATS in front. I'm gonna say 5 seconds, but it's probably 2 seconds with some natural language search. But you know, even if I've got a rockstar CRO, who are you gonna call for that? You're gonna— the only person you can call is a CEO. So you just have to know who the person is that would be the top hiring manager of that person. So it's really not a lot of prep work. at all if you have the right tools, if you have the right ATS.

Ben [01:14:31]:
Awesome. We have wrapped up all the questions. Jay, good job. I knew it would be awesome, but congrats on rocking out the first summit. Make sure that you connect with Jay or follow Jay on LinkedIn, and we'll give you guys a quick break before we get set up for the very last talk of day 2 of This Is Your Year. And remember, every single speaker speaking, if anybody has made an impact, feel free to share it personally on LinkedIn or even make it publicly post. You know, talk about what Clark was doing, like get into branding, put that out there. But the goal is for every one of these speakers, figure out who you need, who you need to listen to to help you move the needle in 2026, because it is absolutely going to be your year.

Jay Venard [01:15:13]:
I'll see you guys in about 15 minutes. Appreciate you guys. Love you guys.