The Million Dollar Comeback: How Rich Bradley Battled Cancer & Stayed a Top Recruiter

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
Coming up on this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast, I sat down with.

Rich Bradley [00:00:03]:
The owner of that company and said, look, I'd like to be part of our ownership here. He basically said, no, no, you can't be a partner. I looked in, I'm like, well, you know what, that's what that's telling me, right? I mean, the only way for me to grow is I'm going to have to leave. Pretty direct words. He was like, you don't have the balls for that. You won't leave.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:22]:
How did you first of all find out or realize that you ended up having cancer?

Rich Bradley [00:00:28]:
I had actually found out the year before and, and there was some, some life choices that I made to try to keep it in check. And then came back from the first trip to find out that those numbers had gotten a lot worse and now it needed to be addressed. Welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with your host, Benjamin Mena, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership, and sense.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:04]:
I'm excited about this episode of this podcast because life happens and life can happen fast. You could be having great years year after year, but things can change in an instant. And it's about how you get back up and keep on going is what makes the reality happen. And I'm so excited about this guest because like last year, like typically a million dollar biller just absolutely crushing it. And then last year only built about 500k. But listen to this. That was also with a few months of travel and after traveling for a few months, in came the health challenges, the health scares, and he had to completely rebuild and get back on the horse to keep on going. We're going to talk about that.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:46]:
Like some of the things that happened, but most importantly, what he has done to keep the business going, what he has done to keep the recruiting going, what he's done to keep going with the clients while overcoming the health challenges. So, Rich, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast. Definitely welcome today.

Rich Bradley [00:02:01]:
Thanks for having me. I appreciate that wonderful introduction. Made me feel really good.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:07]:
Well, before we start doing a deep dive in everything, real quick, 30 seconds, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Rich Bradley [00:02:13]:
It takes a lot longer than 30 seconds, but I'll do my best. That's how long you get with clients, right? You only get just a few seconds. Rich Bradley. I have been a recruiter now for 43 years. I started back in 82 and I've seen obviously all sorts of changes in our Industry and we can get into that a little bit later. But I do full time IT recruitment, predominantly in the Chicago area. But when I have a real loyal client, I turn into a boutique recruiter rather than just an IT recruiter. Whatever they need.

Rich Bradley [00:02:42]:
So I'm happy to help them. We're going to get into all the other details, but that's me in a quick nutshell.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:46]:
And you're also part of the Pinnacle Society, right?

Rich Bradley [00:02:49]:
I am part of that. I've been there 27 years now.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:52]:
Why did you decide to join the Pinnacle Society?

Rich Bradley [00:02:55]:
It goes back to when I first started. Extremely competitive, always have been competitive, and relatively quickly. I was the top recruiter in the company that I was working for for several years in a row, and no one else was at the level that I was at. And so I did some exploring and found out these great people in Pinnacle were doing a lot more than me, which then made me go, wait a minute, hold on. I thought I was the top of my game. So it made me decide to shoot for even higher numbers. Found out what the levels were, they had to be for that, and worked towards that, gained those numbers, applied and got accepted to Pinnacle. As I've gotten older, though, I will tell you, I don't have employees anymore.

Rich Bradley [00:03:36]:
I had a team up to about 35 people with a company. I had two partners and we had 35 recruiters. I still ran a desk and competing with your employees is not a healthy way to run a business. So I ended up deciding, you know what, I'm just going to do this on my own. So I went back to just me and when you're just you and who you're competing with, except last year's numbers. But it's just great to be still part of Pinnacle and learn from those people. And, you know, now it's all self induced, if you will, from that standpoint. But that is definitely one of the things that motivated me was the competition.

Rich Bradley [00:04:14]:
But then once I got into the society and started getting to know the people, they're like family now and they're always there. I mean, through my health challenges last year, a dozen or more people were constantly reaching out to me and checking in on me. And we basically do that for each other. If you're having a tough year, we're there for you. If you're sick, we're there for you. And it's just nice to have that type of community to be part of.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:36]:
That is awesome. You're part of the community. But how did you. Let me just take a Few steps back. How did you even end up in this wonderful world of recruiting?

Rich Bradley [00:04:44]:
Okay, I was 20, 21 at the time. I was managing a restaurant and this guy came in and we were talking. And as the manager of the restaurant, you know you're always trying to get your sales numbers up. And so I did the typical upsell. What do you mean, a small drink for 10 cents more you can have a large. And he liked that kind of sales pitch, if you will, to just try to upsell and said, hey, pay. You looking for a job? I said, nope, I'm happy here, here's my card. And said, if you're ever looking, give me a call.

Rich Bradley [00:05:16]:
A year or so went by and all of a sudden the company that owned our chain, Seven Eleven Southland Corporation, owned the chain. And the general manager came in and said, hey, dude, got bad news, we're shutting down. And my wife and I had just had a baby and any job I personally had ever gotten kind of had fallen into my lap because people would see me and then say, hey, you should come to work for me. That's what I ended up doing, right, was going from job to job. So in my late teens and early, early 2000. No, not 2000, early two twenties, there we go. And so in 82, they shut down. And I said, what are we going to do? And I pulled up this card and I said, oh, maybe I should give this guy a call.

Rich Bradley [00:06:01]:
Don't even know what he does, but I'll, I'll give him a call. I went in and talking about humbling, he introduced me to at the time, seven or eight different hiring managers. And they all said, yeah, no, yeah, no, he's not, he's not good. He's too young, too green. I had no degree, nothing. I'd run away from home at 14. So I finished high school while, you know, kind of going from job to job as well. And so it was very, very rough around the edges.

Rich Bradley [00:06:28]:
But he ended up putting me in front of one last hiring manager who basically was like, I'll show all you guys who turned this guy down. And he ended up hiring me. And 43 years later, I mean, there's a lot of stories in between there, but 43 years later, here I am, still here. Okay, A lot more long winded than you probably wanted.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:46]:
Answer wise, but okay, real quick. So for those listening to this, like you're saying that you've been recruiting for 43 years, I'm not going to lie. I've seen some 30 year olds that look older than You.

Rich Bradley [00:06:58]:
Well, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. I will tell you next week on the 6th is my 66th birthday. So. So it's a lot of years, like.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:08]:
Looking back at this, like, you know, you're rough around the edges, but what did that one last manager see that the other ones didn't, actually?

Rich Bradley [00:07:18]:
And we've had many. We had many, many conversations, and sadly, he's passed away a few years ago, which. Which just hurt my heart so much because he was just. Just a phenomenal guy. And I had mentioned I had two partners at that company. He was one of those, too. We decided to partner together once he had me up and going and trained and all that. Some of the things that he said were the fact that I'm relentless and persistent.

Rich Bradley [00:07:41]:
He goes, and a lot of other people would have said, forget it. I'm not talking to anybody else. I'm out of here. He liked just a number of the features I guess, that I presented as I was talking. You know, some people do the, oh, here, sell me this pencil. Or, you know, you know, some weird questions. And his were just, tell me who you are. Tell me your life story.

Rich Bradley [00:07:59]:
And I had shared, as I said, ran away from home at 14, and here's why. And, you know, went through all that story and then the different jobs that I had had and, you know, I went from job to job, but, you know, it was always trying to find a home. And he could sense that I was looking for a home, and he took me under his wing and. And again, he was just a phenomenal, phenomenal guy. Just so sad he's not with us anymore. So.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:24]:
So when you decided to go off on your own, did you originally do it with those two partners or did you, like, after you went off? I decided to join forces when I first started.

Rich Bradley [00:08:35]:
There was no IT back then. That was a long time ago. So I was placed in chemists, and I did that for a couple years. And I had a team of people that were still placing people in the chemistry laboratory industry. I then said, hey, IT man, that's the place to be. Let's do that. And no one was in it. So I said, well, let me start that up.

Rich Bradley [00:08:56]:
So I started up it and so I had a team of people in the. In the laboratory area, team people in the IT area. And I had built a pretty decent business between those two businesses. So I sat down with the owner of that company and said, look, I'd like to be part of. Part of ownership here. I mean, I think I'm. I've got something pretty well built and I was young and probably didn't say it as best as I could, but he basically said, yeah, no, I'm not giving this to any, you know, getting anybody in as partners. You know, this is going to be my kids business when it's time.

Rich Bradley [00:09:27]:
And no, no, you can't be a partner. I looked in, I'm like, well, you know what, that's what that's telling me, right? I mean, the only way for me to grow is I'm gonna have to leave. And you know, in, in not pretty direct words, he was like, ah, you don't have the balls for that. You're, you're, you're, you won't leave. So I left that meeting and went to my mentor and said, this is the meeting I just had and I gotta leave. I'm outta here. He just pissed me off really with that. And I'm not, you know, I'm not going to sit there and kind of deal with that from that standpoint.

Rich Bradley [00:10:01]:
And he said, hold on a second. And he went out and got the other senior manager like myself, and he pulled him into the office and said, hey, this meeting just happened. Here's what just happened. Rich is going to leave. What do you want to do? And I guess they had already been kind of talking about it. I didn't know this, but they're like, all right, we're all out of here. So we all left and started our own place. And we did that for a number of years.

Rich Bradley [00:10:24]:
And then as I said earlier, I'm, I realized, wait a minute, I'm, I'm not as good as the manager as I am the doer. So I ended up just doing this on my own.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:34]:
So he actually pretty much said like, you don't have the balls to do it.

Rich Bradley [00:10:37]:
Yeah, yeah, love that. And you know, maybe it was to motivate me, I don't know. But, but you know, he lost all three of us from that one meeting, I can tell you that.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:49]:
So I gotta ask, like, he said that he was gonna like give the company to his kids. Is that company even still around?

Rich Bradley [00:10:56]:
Oh, they're doing very well. Company's still there. I don't follow them. So I don't know if the kids are running it or not. That was another part of my life and I've just never looked back, to be honest with you. But they are still there. I know that they're still doing what they do, so obviously successful, which is great for them. I love plenty of business out here for all of us.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:14]:
So there really is. And I love, I just, I just love the fact that he sat down with you and had that conversation and literally completely changed the direction of your life.

Rich Bradley [00:11:22]:
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. It was a wake up call, like, well, and I could have stayed there. And frankly, I mean, I see some names of some people that are still there at the company and now they say partner after their name. So evidently he changed that too. And they were a really good company and I learned a lot from them. So I have no ill will towards them. It's just, I just went on a different trajectory and a different path, if you will.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:46]:
Well, you mentioned something a second ago. You realize that you weren't the best manager, you're a better doer. And I think that's one of the struggles that a lot of recruiters like run across. Like, how did you go about actually figuring that out?

Rich Bradley [00:11:59]:
Full Candicey here. I would train them and get them up and going. And I have several people that are still in the industry and whatnot, but, you know, basically most moved on and went somewhere else. And the feedback always was, you're not as good as a trainer as you are a doer. And so I'm going to go do this on my own. After the 8th, 10th, 12th person that did really well and left, I kind of got the hint. So. And if any of you are watching that, sorry, guys, I love that.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:29]:
Well, okay, so let's kind of talk about some of the things that you're doing. Like you're consistently typically a million dollar biller before you're like your health challenges and you know, the travel and everything to hit that kind of production numbers on a year after year basis. What are you actually doing behind the scenes?

Rich Bradley [00:12:46]:
Let's go back a little bit. In 82 when I started, you know, it was dark ages obviously for our industry. You know, these young people hear these stories and they're like, oh yeah, you walked uphill both ways to and from school. Okay, I get that. In the snow. Yeah, in the snow, of course. And minus degree weather. You know, got to make it all the way back.

Rich Bradley [00:13:03]:
But what ended up happening back then is there were certain battles you had to win or you didn't make any money. When I first started, it was just switching from applicant paid to company paid. So the first battle you would get from a company is, hey, you know, I see you have such and such job. And then you would say, well, the fee is going to be X whatever, right? What? No, no, the candidate pays that. No, no, you pay you pay that. So that was the first battle, just getting them, not we, are you willing to pay me a fee? But them understanding they have to pay a fee. So that was the first hurdle way back then. Second hurdle was there was no Internet, there was no fax machines.

Rich Bradley [00:13:50]:
I mean, you had to get really good at getting a phone send out. Here's such and such candidate. Okay, I've told you enough. Let's set up an interview. I want to see the resume first. Mail that to me. And then, so four, five, six, seven days would go by before they even ever had the physical, you know, piece of paper in their hand. So you had one of two choices.

Rich Bradley [00:14:09]:
Get really good at convincing them to see this person without resume in hand, or be willing to drive to their office and say, okay, here's the resume. And I didn't like doing the, you know, okay, here's the resume. So I got really good at trying to talk them into seeing the candidate now that the Internet's here and email's so, you know, easy to get stuff. Honestly, it's a lost art even for me. I mean, I easily succumbed to. All right, fine, I'll just send it to you. Okay, you got it. Now let's talk about it.

Rich Bradley [00:14:38]:
But, you know, there was a lot of battles you had to be really good at or you weren't going to make any money back then.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:45]:
So you mentioned. It's kind of like, you know, the theme of talking with you offline and talking with you in this conversation. The theme, it sounds like one of your secrets is the phone.

Rich Bradley [00:14:54]:
Absolutely. You gotta be able to be willing to be on the phone. Yes. Now we've got, you know, do searches in LinkedIn. I'm pointing to my screen. Sorry, but searches in LinkedIn searches here do this, you know, use different tools and whatnot. But this is still a context sport. That's what I tell anybody that I'm helping, mentoring, training, whatever.

Rich Bradley [00:15:13]:
It's a context sport. You have to be on the phone, you have to be talking to people. It's so easy to get lost in the rabbit holes in, you know, oh, oh, this person works at this company. What's going on over there? Oh, what do they do? That kind of research needs to be done. Not during phone prime phone time. That needs to be done evenings, weekends, nights, whatever.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:31]:
So two questions on this. First of all, do you still hold like, you know, what, 40 years in the business, do you still hold yourself to KPIs?

Rich Bradley [00:15:39]:
I have metrics numbers all over the place. So yes, now they've changed over the years, and I allow myself certain grace on some things. With our usage of teams videos, kind of like this, I've allowed my phone call numbers to go down. I'm still having conversations, but I'm having more and more conversations like this with candidates and clients. So I just, you know, I got my phone keeping track of how many dials and how many calls and how much time. But then I also have teams. You know, how many times was I on teams? How long did those calls last? So. So yes, it answers your question.

Rich Bradley [00:16:15]:
Yes, but the numbers have changed. Instead of saying, hey, you're supposed to do 60 to 80 calls a day now, it may be, you know, 25 to 40 calls, but then another 15 to 20, you know, teams kind of conversations. So their numbers are still there, but they just are in different formats. Now.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:32]:
All this time in, like, why do you still hold yourself to metrics?

Rich Bradley [00:16:35]:
This is going to go back to why I almost didn't come to work in this industry, but I. Have you. Have you ever seen the people at the newspaper or that are taming a newspaper, like at a. At a grocery store or they knock on your door? Here's today's free newspaper. Are you going to sign up for this? I did that. That was one of my jobs, and I was really good at that. I was always top salesman. I would get done in like an hour and a half, two hours what everybody else would take them all day to do.

Rich Bradley [00:17:03]:
And back then, being young, I would do my number, double my number, and then say, all right, I'm done for the day. And then I would go to the bowling alley and go bowl or go play pinball or do whatever, you know, you do at 20 years old back then that were, you know, things that you couldn't do during the, you know, you weren't supposed to do during the day. You're supposed to be working. Right? So I learned real quickly I didn't have kind of the motivation, if you will, to just, you know, see how far I could go. It was just, okay, I'm double everybody else. I'm done. And so one of the things that my mentor kind of helped me with when I got into this business was how to get past that and how to push through it. And a lot of it was numbers and keeping track of my numbers and then going from trying to beat everybody else, but then turning it into being beating my own numbers, if you will.

Rich Bradley [00:17:52]:
So for me, numbers are paramount. I mean, I've got numbers over here on the side of my desk. I've got numbers on my planner that I keep all day. I'm still old school. I write every day what I'm going to do. I don't just have it in the computer. So, you know, that also kind of, you know, is my way of. Okay, I wrote down these 40 things for today.

Rich Bradley [00:18:12]:
I have to do them because I don't want to just move them all to tomorrow. I want to make sure that they're done.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:16]:
And this is a question that I feel like probably isn't for Pinnacle Society members listening to this podcast, but for people that aren't part of Pinnacle. When you say planning, this isn't like the top three things that you're going to do today. What is planning actually mean mean to you as a recruiter?

Rich Bradley [00:18:34]:
First, planning is having the big picture. What am I trying to get accomplished? What am I trying to get done each day, and what's my goal from that standpoint? And then what do I need to do to make that happen? So every day has 10 to 15 already in process kind of things on my planner. I'm back to doing a lot of business development. So it's anywhere from 10 to 20 of those calls every day that I'm. I'm checking in with people. And then, you know, the remaining time is, okay, I've got these jobs open. Let's go do some recruiting and trying to find people for those jobs. So it's a healthy mix between the three active business, business development, and then, all right, I gotta fill the jobs that I do have.

Rich Bradley [00:19:17]:
So it fluctuates depending on the day. If I got two hot jobs, that gets more of my attention. If I've got, you know, no hot jobs, then the business development needs to be a little bit more highlighted from that standpoint. So. Okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:29]:
And it kind of just jumps into, like, what we talked about at the very beginning of this podcast. Like, you know, you had some amazing trips. Like, where did you travel to last year?

Rich Bradley [00:19:37]:
Well, I hit 65, and my wife had asked, where? What do you want to do? I said, I want to go to Australia. And she said, okay, you plan it. We'll go. So I planned to Australia. We were there for a week and a half. We just went to Sydney. I mean, not the whole Australia, but Sydney. And then on our way home, I had some people say, oh, jet lag is bad.

Rich Bradley [00:19:56]:
So we stopped at Hawaii, and we spent a week there. And we're Disney vacation club members. So, you know, it was nice because they have a resort there. And so we get to Stay there. So that was nearly a month of travel time between those two trips. Came home, and our youngest daughter was graduating college last year, and we decided to take her on a really nice trip because she had had a trip in high school that got canceled because of COVID to Spain. And I said, well, let me plan a trip. And they were both like, that'd be great.

Rich Bradley [00:20:29]:
So we did a trip to Spain. We did a cruise around Spain, hitting Portugal and some other areas ending in England. We had friends that we knew from England, and they had us stay there for a week or so. And during that trip was the Olympics were going on, and my daughter has been on the rowing team all of her high school and college years. And I was able to get tickets to a rowing event. And that was her little surprise, if you will. And so we went to the Olympic. Had to go to Paris to get to the Olympics.

Rich Bradley [00:21:01]:
So it was. It was a long trip. So we came back from that trip pretty wiped after just coming back from another trip, fairly wiped from the. From the other travel during that trip.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:12]:
Were you still recruiting or you just take time off?

Rich Bradley [00:21:14]:
I was in process business. I was working on that. I wasn't really doing new business. So I came back to a pretty empty desk. When I came back, the other things had gone through, and we had had the start of the year that I wanted about half, you know, half a million from that standpoint, which was nice. A little shy of half a million. The rest of it I did the second half of the year, but then with the health issues, the year really suffered from that on.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:39]:
And like, let's. Let's talk about that. Like, how did you first of all find out or realize that you ended up having cancer?

Rich Bradley [00:21:47]:
I had actually found out the year before, and. And there was some. Some life choices that I made to try to keep it in check. And then came back from the first trip to find out that those numbers had gotten a lot worse. And it. Now it needed to be addressed. And so I said, all right, can it wait about six weeks or so? And the doctor's like, if that's what you want to do, sure. Okay.

Rich Bradley [00:22:13]:
Because I didn't want to miss this trip. This trip was, you know, too important for me to go with my wife and my daughter. So we went on the trip, and then I came back, and then I'm like, all right, do what you got to do. I'm like, I'm yours. So that was. That was hopefully good. I mean, I'll know in April if I'm A hundred percent good. But for right now, all signs are that I'm better.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:33]:
So that's awesome. And like, you, you weren't able to really with, you know, treatment and chemo and all that stuff. You weren't able to work at all or barely anything.

Rich Bradley [00:22:42]:
Yeah, it was challenging, and I did have some in process things still to do. What took the biggest hit all year was the business development calls. I've done this long enough that I have companies calling and, hey, I need this or I need that. So new business like that certainly got put into my plan, but there was no new, new business development. There was no, you know, hey, you moved this company to that company. Can I help you at that company? I mean, so there wasn't the. Wasn't the kind of business development relationship calls that I was used to doing every day that, you know, certainly proved out. Oh, those are important.

Rich Bradley [00:23:20]:
Those need to be done. I am not a recruiter who does MPC calls. I hate, hey, do you want to buy fish? Do you want to buy a fish? Do you want to buy a fish? You know, and then, oh, yeah, I do want to buy fish. Oh, okay. Well, it was my fish that you want. Yeah, I'm not that kind of person. I'm all about trying to just develop relationships and, and get to know people and have conversations and. So what's this year look like for you? You know, so I've got already 8, 10, 12 places that, you know, I already know.

Rich Bradley [00:23:48]:
Okay, in, you know, late in February, call this company because they're going to need this in March, call this place. And so I've got that starting to get built up again. But you don't do that for nearly a year and your business doesn't. Doesn't happen.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:03]:
The Elite Recruiter podcast has multiple summits coming up that you need to make sure that you are registered for. We have the AI Recruiting Summit 2025 coming up, and on top of that, finish the year strong. These two summits are going to help you move the needle, help you achieve your goals, help you achieve your dreams, and make 2025 the year that you started out and you want it to be. Make sure you get registered and also stay tuned. Got something cooking for you guys. Working on another project that you guys are going to absolutely love. All right, see you guys at the summits and see you guys soon. You dealt with a very scary health challenge that, you know, I'm praying that everything's going to go good and this episode might.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:40]:
Might go live, like after that time period for Those that are listening. But, you know, I think for the past few years there's been a lot of recruiters outside of Pinnacle that have challenges and struggles. So think about this. You've been in the business forever. You're almost having to restart your desk. There's a lot of other people that are dealing with that too. What's some of the best pieces of advice that you would give as somebody that's like drawing the line in the sand, saying like, I gotta get going again.

Rich Bradley [00:25:08]:
Positivity. I mean, that's the number one. You have to, you have to be super up and going, you know, who wants to have, oh, I had a horrible year, will you? You know, I mean, no one wants to hear those kind of calls. No one wants to hear, oh, woe is me. For me, it's, I could be retired. I mean, I'm 66 or will be next week. Money in the bank. I don't have to do this.

Rich Bradley [00:25:29]:
I do it because I love doing it. And if I'm going to do it, I'm going to be. I was disappointed with a $500,000 a year. I mean, that was very disappointing to me because I know it wasn't up to my standards of what I could and should do. If I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it at the level I know I should do it. But again, as I said, I still love it. I love helping my candidates, I love helping my clients, putting them together, letting them hopefully, you know, have nice long term relationships. I love those calls.

Rich Bradley [00:25:56]:
I love those calls back from the client. Oh my gosh, we love this guy. Oh my gosh, I love this company. I just had a couple calls like that this morning where you placed me here 10 years ago, you know, 15, 20 years ago, you know, I'm still here. Those, those are what feeds me. You know, the money's nice. Don't get me wrong, I'm never going to do this for free. But, you know, that's not the reason to do this for me anymore now.

Rich Bradley [00:26:18]:
Which then takes away from what you were just saying. How do I, you know, have that conversation with, you know, maybe younger people? That's something that's really important to me. I, I go to different associations and, you know, speak to younger people and try to have kind of a Q and A session with people and ask me whatever you want to ask. I mean, I'm happy to help, but I really do like helping people learn this business. As I said, my management style was, watch me, you know, I'M not going to sit there and listen to your calls and you know, oh, don't say this, don't say that. The mentor guy, he was awesome at that. That was not my skill. My skill was watch me, listen to my calls and then go do what I do and you're going to make a lot of money.

Rich Bradley [00:26:57]:
There was only a couple people that, that really resonated really well with them. Most everybody else is the other way, you know, well, listen to my call, tell me what I said wrong, tell me how to do something better. Unfortunately was not my style. So everybody has to learn what they're good at and what they're not good at. Right. So I'm really good at what I do. I'm not as good at that. So.

Rich Bradley [00:27:19]:
And that's why my partner and I really worked well with each other. He was fantastic a bit. So he dealt with that. He dealt with their personal problems. He was really good at them coming in and sitting down in their office and just, you know, telling them where their life issues were. And he cared. He really genuinely cared. I mean, he would interview somebody once and he knew where they went to school and why they took, the classes they took.

Rich Bradley [00:27:38]:
And you know, I mean, that was just him. He was just so empathetic with people and so wonderful and kind always. I try to be that, but I'm nowhere close to as good as he is. So anyway, sorry. Went down a rabbit hole. Told you you can't go down rabbit holes.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:55]:
Rabbit holes are always the best when it comes to these.

Rich Bradley [00:27:58]:
Yeah, well, for these maybe.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:59]:
Yeah, yeah, definitely for these.

Rich Bradley [00:28:01]:
So I don't know. Did I answer your question? I guess let's start from there.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:03]:
I was going to take it one step further. I can, you know, with you having to rebuild the desk to the goals that you want to hit, are you having to like almost like double your BD numbers, your BD metrics, pumping, priming the pump a lot more.

Rich Bradley [00:28:16]:
And double is probably not the right word because I didn't do any last year. Obviously I was, I was, you know, filling the roles that I have, but then having fun or in the case of being in the hospital, not having fun. But for people who are old enough to remember, one of my great speakers that I would always listen to is Zig Ziglar. And one of Zig's is many, but one of the ones that I remember the best was he would come into his speaking thing and he would have one of these old fashioned water pumps that you would see like now maybe in a National park maybe or somewhere like that where they don't really have running water, right. And he would say, when we used to use these, you know, I mean, you know, you would have to really pump it a million times and as hard as you could and as, and pump, pump, pump, pump, pump. And then once the water would start to come out of this water faucet, you know, once the water was flowing, then you could slow down to a nice steady pace, right? But as soon as you stop, the water is going to go back down. And the only way to get it started again is you have to go back to that hard pumping and fast pumping again. So that one really resonated with me in terms of, you know, when you're at zero, when there's no water flowing, you've got to work your butt off to get the water start flowing again.

Rich Bradley [00:29:24]:
And then once it's flowing, then you can not ease off. As in like don't work, but not have to be as strenuous at it. Well, right now the water spigot was off for me and I gotta like, you know, pump as hard as I can and get things going. And so that's what we're doing here. And you know, I started in late December, which is probably the worst time, but it worked. I mean I was, I'm getting companies wanting to talk about 20, 25 and then, you know, January going into this month and then next month. That'll, you know, I'm pretty sure that by March, April time period I should be able to go back to the steady flow rather than the kill myself flow. So.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:04]:
Well, awesome. And you know, it's incredible like you know, what you've done year after year and even with a challenging year, what you were still able to accomplish. But like we talked a lot about your story, like how you got into it, like you know, the health challenges and overcoming. Before we jump over to the quickfire pinnacle questions, is there anything else that you want to like recap or share about your story?

Rich Bradley [00:30:26]:
My story, I would say. And this kind of goes back to kind of what we would tell kind of the junior people or whatever. Stay on the phone, have numbers, you know, have your KPIs so that you're motivating yourself from that standpoint. Seek out other people that are like minded that are going to help you, but also seek out people that are like minded in a positive way. I mean there's nothing worse than sitting next to Debbie Downer type of a person. Or I made a mistake a second ago and I Said, you know, probably the worst time in December. I've always had my best months in December. So I actually don't think December is a bad time to make placements.

Rich Bradley [00:31:00]:
It just proved to be a bad time to try to get the people for the new development because everybody was either too busy or already gone on their Christmas holiday or whatnot. So that's what I meant by bad time. But for me, December is a great time periods to make money. I always had some of my best months then, as are Januarys people, you know, usually we're coming back from, you know, taking some time off, so then they weren't making money. And again, I, you know, I worked hard during December and January's were good for me as well from that standpoint. So sit next to people, work, talk to people that are going to be positive influences rather than negative influences. You use training, talk about Zig Ziglar. My mentor would always say, oh, you know, you should read such and such book.

Rich Bradley [00:31:42]:
And you know, his style was, if you really were interested, you're going to go buy the book and you're going to go read it. If you didn't go buy it, well, then you didn't take his suggestion. And one of his first suggestions to me was right behind me here, How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Betker. And certainly old school, you know, and whatnot. But he was so right. And you talk about KPIs and numbers. This guy, you know, this was in the 20s, so this was a long 40s. I mean, it was a long time ago written book.

Rich Bradley [00:32:12]:
Right. But you know, he talked about how he was able to make money in insurance when he started and he was horrible at it. And all the concepts and philosophies and whatnot that he did. This book was kind of my bible from a okay, if he can do it, I can do it kind of a thing. So. Because I had a horrible start. When I started, I went six months without making a single placement. And once.

Rich Bradley [00:32:33]:
And he wouldn't let me quit. And then. So, all right, I have to tell this story now because this. I hope you hope you have time, everybody. But I'd been here six months while I was still doing this job I was still doing. I thought, well, okay, maybe this is a business for me. But, you know, I was selling Tupperware at nights. I was going to college at nights as well to try to get a degree.

Rich Bradley [00:32:56]:
And I was still trying to interview for what I thought were restaurant management jobs. I finally got a job Offer from Winchell's Donuts. If you've ever remember the commercial, you know, gotta get up and make the donuts. That was Winchell's. And the offer for me at the time was like, 40 some odd thousand dollars, which was phenomenal. I thought, oh, my God, you know, that's a lot of money. Remember, this is 1982. So a lot of money in 1982.

Rich Bradley [00:33:21]:
And the only negative was you had to get up at 2 in the morning, get to the donut shop, start making the donuts. That's when they used to make the donuts in the shop instead of having them imported in every day. But I was like, okay, I got a job. I can afford the diaper money, and I can, you know, kind of breathe again. I went in to say, hey, I found another job. I'm out of here. And he goes, you're making a mistake. You can be really good at this.

Rich Bradley [00:33:45]:
I'm like, nuts. I haven't made a dime. What are you talking about? He goes, I'm. I'm telling you, you can't do what you got to do. But I wouldn't. Okay, okay, whatever. I go to my desk and, you know, like, you see people do. I have put all my stuff in this box, and I'm, like, walking out the door.

Rich Bradley [00:34:02]:
And as I walked around the corner, I remembered I had forgotten something. So I went to turn around, and we used to sit in islands. Six to eight people, islands. And ours was eight at the time. As I was about to come around the corner, I heard one of the guys go, oh, thank God, we're finally rid of that. He said, you know what? And, you know, back and forth. All of them were just totally roasting me. And it just pissed me off.

Rich Bradley [00:34:28]:
And so I came back around the corner, I put my box back on the desk and said, I'll see you guys Monday. And I left. And I ended up turning that job down. I gave away all the rest of my Tupperware business to somebody else. It was weird timing. Like, all my classes had just finished, and I had just taken my final for those classes. And I said, all right, I'm going to give this my 100%. I'm going to show those guys that I can do this.

Rich Bradley [00:34:55]:
Come in on Monday. This is the kicker to this story. Come in Monday. Jim, my mentor, sees me and he goes, what are you doing here? I'm like, you told me to come back. I didn't think you were going to. And I'm like, dude, I already turned on the other job, I'm like, I gotta do this. And so I found out later and he admitted to me that I was just yanking your chain. I wanted to make sure you were committed.

Rich Bradley [00:35:19]:
But I ended up making two placements that week. That week from things I turned up on Monday and I had the offers happen by Friday. And I've never looked back. Never looked back.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:32]:
So is it because you decided to go all in again?

Rich Bradley [00:35:36]:
I'm competitive, and don't tell me I can't do something. I'm gonna prove you wrong. And an abusive stepfather who. That was his means of demeaning and belittling people. And it was like, yeah, you know, I'm in this business and those people are all long gone. So anyway, I love it.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:55]:
Just like a conversation and a thread completely changes somebody's life.

Rich Bradley [00:35:59]:
But, oh, yeah, I mean, I still vividly. I mean, there's a few things in the 40 some odd years of doing this business that, you know, stand out in my mind. That one is vivid in my mind of, oh, no, guys, I'm going to show you.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:10]:
And it's the power of mentally capturing that conversation and reliving it over and over is such a motivating factor.

Rich Bradley [00:36:17]:
Oh, absolutely. So in answer to your question, what motivates you and what. I have little things like that I'll kind of go back on and remind myself on. But again, as I said, the biggest thing for me, though, is I love knowing that I'm helping people in their careers and their lives. And so that's my biggest motivation these days. I got three daughters. They're all doing well in life. My wife and I are happy what we're doing, but it's just so nice to know, in other words, what am I going to do? Sit on the sofa and watch Netflix and movies all day or go out and golf all day, or you might as well do something productive for humanity from that standpoint.

Rich Bradley [00:36:55]:
So.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:55]:
Well, you said you like to do, like, talk and, you know, almost like mentor other recruiters out there. Like, you know, when you're sitting there looking at your career, like, what is one of the things that you like to do or want to do to give back?

Rich Bradley [00:37:05]:
I regularly go back to. I mean, I live in Florida now, but I go back once a year to speak at Issa. We twice a year have Pinnacle meetings. And there's always. I can't help it being people more junior, younger than me. So, you know, helping and talking to those people and have some of those people from Pinnacle that reach out fairly regularly. And hey, Rich, how would you do this? Or what about that? And I mean, so between those people reaching out and, you know, Pinnacle people and the Issa people, I'm constantly hoping that hopefully helping people and hoping that they do well from that standpoint.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:40]:
So what would you say to a recruiter that's, you know, been in the game for a while? We'll say 5, 10, 20, 25 years. And sitting down with you, like, hey, like you have just like a different level of success. It's something that I want to get to. What advice would you give me?

Rich Bradley [00:37:55]:
Let's look at your numbers. It's always the small numbers. Small numbers are the, always the challenge, the problem. How many calls do you make? How much time are you on the phone? What's your goals to, you know, number of job orders a month? What's your goals to? How many PCs or send outs do you have a month? Phone screens and interviews. What's your ratios? I was very numbers driven and I had a trainer one time, you know, say to me, what are your numbers? I told him my numbers, he goes, oh, those are good, but what's your senate to placement ratio? What's your job order fill the placement ratio? And I said, these numbers that were high, they were low in comparison to other people in our company, but they were high. Or I said, I mean, he goes, oh my God, really? I mean, and I'm like, why? What should they be? He goes, three, maybe four, you know, somewhere in that range, right? And I'm like, mine were like 8 and 12. I'm like, oh, I need to fix that. And so then I went and started, what do I need to address and how do I need to address this or fix this so that it's, you know, these numbers are there.

Rich Bradley [00:38:59]:
And now my send up to placement ratio is anywhere from three, three to four every year for the last 20 some odd years.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:07]:
How are you keeping track of all these numbers in these KPIs? Is it all within your ATS, or is there a way that you go about doing that?

Rich Bradley [00:39:13]:
As I said before, I'm very old school. I have learned to use Excel. I do use Excel. So my numbers are in there. Like the applicant tracking system that I have, you know, gives me some of the numbers. My phone System I use RingCentral, gives me other numbers. And it's just watching those numbers and I know when those numbers aren't where they need to be, it's not anymore where I can say, okay, you're supposed to be on the phone 3 hours and 30 minutes and, you know, you're an hour less than that. Oh, my God, the wheels are falling off.

Rich Bradley [00:39:40]:
Right. I give myself a little more grace now, but right now, during this time where I'm really, you know, going wild and crazy with the pump, if you will. Right now, no grace, I mean, no, you need to be on the phone. And there are plenty of times where, you know, like If I had 40 calls on my planner and I threw eight, 37 of them. No, I had to finish those last three. Even if it's after 5 o', clock, you got to make those calls kind of a thing, you know, there's plenty of time some other time when things are nice and you're just doing the steady, slow flow. I can get to those tomorrow. But now is not that time.

Rich Bradley [00:40:13]:
Just this call with you. I mean, I had a certain number of calls that I was going to do before I talked to you, and so I wasn't as early as I would have liked. I mean, I was to the very second of getting that last call in because I was like, well, I know the rest of my afternoon is going to be talking and having conversations with you, so, nope, these calls have to be done before I'm done. So it's just my own. I kind of went back to the days of, you know, I would go to the bowling alley or whatnot and be what I called myself, lazy. And, you know, once you give yourself those numbers and hold yourself to that standard, it's just like working out, you know, I mean, you know, you could go into workout and you do five minutes on a bike and barely pushing it, and you pick up some dumbbells and you, you know, do three or four chest presses and then you, you know, then you're like, oh, I worked out today. Okay. Did you? Okay, sure.

Rich Bradley [00:41:06]:
You know, you moved your body a little bit, but did you really work out? I'm the same with my weight training. You got to have goals. You have to have. This is what I want to do today and what I'm going to accomplish, push and kind of go from there. So I just am very metrics driven for any of those kinds of things, because I know if I don't, it would be really easy for me to watch movies on Netflix or be out golfing all day or not doing the things that make you productive from that standpoint.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:31]:
So I'm curious about this. Like, you know, you've been a top biller. You've had a ton of success. If you had the chance with everything that you Know to go sit down with yourself. We'll say within your first year for your recruiting career, what advice would you tell yourself?

Rich Bradley [00:41:44]:
There'd be a ton of advice that I would give on the desk itself, but on the personal side, it'd be two things. I have three daughters. As I said, my first two were younger in my career and they didn't get as much attention as I would have liked. Looking back, my third one certainly got more of the attention, and good for her. Sad that I wasn't able to do that with my first two. So, one, make sure you remember family is important. Just as important as, if not more so than, than the job. The other one would be, I've drilled this into my three daughters and hopefully they got this down.

Rich Bradley [00:42:15]:
But, you know, save more than you spend, basically. You know, make sure you have a certain percentage. I told them 20%. Every money that comes in, put 20% away and then do whatever you got with the remaining 80%. I wish I had done that a lot earlier in my. My life and my career. We're getting money put away now, but I know it could be a lot more had I listened to that advice or taken that advice, I guess I should say from my older self. So those are two.

Rich Bradley [00:42:42]:
On the personal side, family and save more than you spend. On the work side. I do regret not being as good as my mentor in terms of helping other people and listening to their calls. A lot of times when you train new people, the hiring manager would be like, oh, here. Here's a really good person here. You call them, you talk to them. And that was never my mentality. Mine was, no, I found this guy.

Rich Bradley [00:43:06]:
You go find your. You go find your own person again. It's not a great relationship building. I mean, I trained a lot of good people. There's some good people in this industry that are still doing this job, but, you know, it's not a way to. To, you know, like I, as I said with Jim, I mean, oh, my God, I would have stood in front of a moving car for him, you know, and there's no one's going to do that for me, so. But I think I've trained them and they've got some good experience, so hopefully they at least realize that they have a good career because of kind of the things that I did teach them. So we'll see.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:35]:
Well, talking about careers and teaching and stuff like that, you know, and being part of Pinnacle and all these other organizations, I'm sure you get a lot of questions from recruiters by, do this, how to do that? How to do this? Is there a question that you wish they would actually ask you? And what would be that? Answer.

Rich Bradley [00:43:51]:
The questions I get are, what's your secret? How do you do it?

Benjamin Mena [00:43:55]:
What do you wish they would ask you?

Rich Bradley [00:43:57]:
Well, I was gonna say, I mean, what I wish they would ask me is things that they really want an answer to, right? I mean, people don't want to hear, you have to work hard. They want to hear there's a shortcut, there's an easy way. They want to hear, they think there's one secret. And there is not one secret. You know, I mean, I shared a couple just a few minutes ago. Be on the phone. Have your goal work your goal, right? If you got it, if it's on there, do it. People just don't do that or they think they do that, you know, just like they think they're working out.

Rich Bradley [00:44:29]:
You have to, you know, push yourself. You can't just ride the wave, if you will. So I would say it's gotta be a passion in my mind again. And this is what works for me. I mean, other people have different. I have plenty of Pinnacle friends. That clock hits five, they're done for the day. It doesn't even go to five.

Rich Bradley [00:44:48]:
They're done at three weekends. I don't spend any time on the weekends doing anything. And they make a shit ton of money, right? So clearly I don't have the answer because you want to talk to them. I mean, you know, there's people that do this part time and make just as much money as me. What am I doing wrong? Right? But this is what works for me, that gets me to where I want to be. So long as I'm somewhere between 750 and a million dollars, I feel like I've done what I should be doing at that level. Below that, I didn't work as hard as I could. Above that, I've had years above that too.

Rich Bradley [00:45:24]:
Those are gravy, great years. But so long as I'm in this general range, I feel good about what I'm doing. So in answer to that question, what would be a good question? Know what your heart really wants to know and then ask that. Right? That's kind of where I would go with it. If you really want to know what my secret is, if you really want to know what that person does as part time, as secret is, then you've got to put your money where your mouth is, right? Do it. So does that answer that question? Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:52]:
No, that's perfect. Well, let Me just kind of, you know, if anybody listening to this wants to follow you, how do they go about doing that?

Rich Bradley [00:45:59]:
Teambradley.com, richembradley.com, that's my email. My website's teambradley.com I don't have podcasts. I mean, for me, it's LinkedIn. It's. I'm on the. I am LinkedIn Rich Bradley. So feel free to connect with me. I'm.

Rich Bradley [00:46:14]:
I'm happy to answer people's questions. I'm here as long as you're willing to take my advice the way I give it. I'm being pretty straightforward with you. I mean, you know, if you're not willing to work hard, then I don't think you'll make money. That's my personal philosophy. Others have other philosophies. That's mine. You got to work to do it.

Rich Bradley [00:46:31]:
And then the other one to keep in mind that I have learned. And I know you said this is probably going to air certainly after this, but in two weeks, we're going to have the super bowl, right? You know, Kansas City against Philadelphia. When you read the articles now about Kansas City, and everybody's like, oh, I want Philadelphia to win. You know, I'm sick of Kansas City. You know, that's how it is in our industry, too. I would sit next to people, and if you had a really good month, it was fine the first when you had a really good month, the second time, well, okay, what's he doing? You start having good months, one after another after another. Human nature. People are going to try to bring you down.

Rich Bradley [00:47:08]:
They want to keep you at their level. And that's why I said that in the beginning. Hang around people that you want to be like. Don't hang around people that you maybe are like. That's why I go back to the pinnacle. That's why I love being part of Pinnacle, is I get to hang around 79 other people that are at this kind of work level and success level, and no one ever is resentful. There's people that are doing one and a quarter, $2 million, and we're just as happy for that person as the person who's making $500,000. All right? I mean, because we're all at this level, and it's just.

Rich Bradley [00:47:47]:
It's just so nice because I spent years and years being the guy who did it really well, and then people wanted to see you fail kind of a thing. So it's not. It's not fun to be in that kind of Environment, man.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:59]:
I feel like you're taking me back to my agency days or. It just felt like that constantly.

Rich Bradley [00:48:02]:
You did it right. Isn't that. Isn't that how it was? I mean, you know, people want you to succeed for, you know, once or twice is okay, but you start doing it consistently, and it's like, how are they doing that? How are they cheater? What are they doing? That's. That. That is making this not fair.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:19]:
If you wanted to get laugh, they actually carved away my district and gave my biggest clients away to a whole other office.

Rich Bradley [00:48:26]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:27]:
And then they're like, well, why aren't you succeeding? I'm like, I'm so top of the board. What the hell's your problem?

Rich Bradley [00:48:33]:
Yeah, Yeah. I mean, anyway, in it. We were in it, and it was like, all right, fine. You know, you guys take that half of this business. I'll just do this half of the business. And I still was doing well, and. Well, what's he doing? How is it. So it's just an unhealthy way to live.

Rich Bradley [00:48:48]:
You know, look for positives that. I said this before. Be positive about yourself. Hang around positive people. Hang around people that are the level you want to be. So there you go. That's my piece of advice to people about that. I worked my way to a real answer for that I feel good about.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:04]:
That's awesome. I think that's a great way to end this because, like, we've talked about, you know, pumping the puppy, and we're talking about, you know, what it takes to become a top biller. We talked about also, like, getting up from the struggles that, like, whatever you're having, because everybody has struggles, how do you get back up? How do you get yourself around a group of people that you want to be like? And how do you keep on going?

Rich Bradley [00:49:27]:
So I have one more. Can I share one more story? Go ahead. All right, this is another Zig Ziglar story. He would always share this. He and his wife would go to cook a ham, and the wife would always cut the end of the ham off, put it in the oven, and let it cook. He finally said, why cook cut the end of the ham off? And she goes, I don't know. That's what my mom always did. So let's call Mom.

Rich Bradley [00:49:48]:
Called Mom. Why you cut the end of the ham off? I don't know. It's the way my mom did. Well, let's call Grandma. Called Grandma. Why'd you cut the end of the ham off? That's how big my pot was. So people do things over and over and over again without realizing the why they do it. And our business is the exact same as that.

Rich Bradley [00:50:07]:
I mean, you know, I'm giving advice, you're doing your podcast, you're constantly giving advice, but you got to figure out what works for you and do it your way, not just because other people said this is the way to do it. So that was my last piece of advice there. So.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:22]:
And that's a perfect way to end it. So now go crush 2025. Thank you.

Rich Bradley [00:50:26]:
Yes, thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit subscribe and leave a rating.