He lost $500K in fees in six months. Then he went retained, wrote a book, and ran the launch like a search.
Finish The Year Strong kicks off September 28 through October 5. All live sessions are free. Replays and VIP available. Register here: https://recruiters-finish-the-year-strong.heysummit.com/
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Ryan Sheppard is an executive search consultant in Tokyo placing country managers and senior commercial leaders for US and European healthcare companies. After sixteen years in contingency, a run of fully mapped searches falling apart at final, roughly $500K in fees in about six months as he tells it, pushed him to retained. He hit his 2025 target by Valentine's Day and finished the year at 280% of goal.
Somewhere in the slow burn of his first retainers, he wrote Sell Yourself Like a CEO, and he ran the launch exactly like a search: 180 names, a scorecard on every one, the math worked backwards from twenty launch-day reviews, and an endorsement outreach that landed Marshall Goldsmith.
In this episode he breaks down pricing his first retainer at 40%, the sentence he now says to clients instead of promising the perfect candidate, why reference checks are his most underrated BD tool, and the no-banner gathering he has hosted for a decade called President's Drinks.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Finish The Year Strong and Firm Leaders Summit
01:43 Cold open
02:24 Atlas 04:17 A book is the new business card
05:08 Target by Valentine's Day, 280% for the year
06:25 The $100K fee that vanished at final
07:58 Why a headhunter with a full desk writes a book
11:03 Getting Marshall Goldsmith: the endorsement as a retained search
12:14 Why fees in Japan run 35 to 40%
15:09 Who Ryan is in 30 seconds
15:41 Born in Birmingham, raised outside Nagoya
17:00 Ministry, rejection, and recruiting
20:23 The May 2008 internship and the Lehman shock
23:27 The oncology search that froze at final
25:28 $500K in fees lost in six months
27:15 Value your time
28:34 Guarantee the steps, not the person
30:48 The nail that stands up gets hammered down
33:37 Running the book launch like a retained search
36:06 Launch day and the video review distribution
38:58 What the launch taught him about retained search
40:00 What the book gave him that he did not expect
42:07 If he had never written a page
44:15 What the book does for the desk now
46:27 Pricing the first retainer at 40%
48:15 Case studies from STAR in under an hour
50:07 Where AI makes a recruiter more valuable
52:12 Reference checks: the most underrated practice
53:39 The 25 minute reference check walkthrough
55:33 Quickfire: agreement structure, tech stack, Atomic Habits
57:18 What he would tell his younger self
59:23 President's Drinks
01:03:20 Atlas
If the low value work is what is keeping you from billing, Atlas does it for you. See it in action: https://recruitwithatlas.com/
Sell Yourself Like a CEO by Ryan Sheppard, available on Amazon Connect with Ryan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-sheppard-search-advisory/
Firm Leaders Summit, November 16 to 18: https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com
Elite Recruiter Community: https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community Newsletter: https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe
Listen on the podcast feed:
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-stop-losing-%24100k-fees-at-the-finish-line/id1547241660?i=1000788293500
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/70kE36szTIl2NVgxckvSWa?si=1IyRp_URQjKd_AUwJwKdtA
