Cold email is dying. Brian Abrams 4X'd his staffing firm by going old school: showing up where the decision makers actually are.

Want to actually make money with AI instead of just talking about it? Join me and Seb Sharp for The Recruiting Agents Workshop, August 25th and 26th. Two live build-along sessions, and you keep the recordings, templates, and a week of Slack access to Seb: https://the-recruiting-agents-workshop.heysummit.com/

And mark your calendar for the Finish The Year Strong 2026 Virtual Summit, September 28th through October 5th. Register free: https://recruiters-finish-the-year-strong.heysummit.com/

This episode is brought to you by Atlas, the CRM that actually understands context. Atlas captures every interview, client call, LinkedIn message, email, and WhatsApp automatically, then tells you the next action to take. Atlas customers are reporting 50 percent higher candidate response rates, 35 percent more new clients won, and 15 hours saved every week: https://recruitwithatlas.com/

While the staffing industry contracted and everyone else doubled down on AI outreach, Brian Abrams took PMO Partners the opposite direction. Real handshakes at industry conferences. The result: 4X revenue growth, with 30 to 40 percent of gross profit now coming from conference relationships. In this episode he lays out the entire four part playbook: how he picks his conference slate a year out, the pre-work almost nobody does including the exact no-pressure LinkedIn message he sends 30 days before every event, how he works the floor, the follow-up system that turned a 10 second booth conversation into his biggest client ever, and the story behind the legendary Run PMO shirts.

CHAPTERS:
0:00 The Recruiting Agents Workshop (Aug 25-26)
1:12 Preview: the channel everyone doubled down on was dead
1:39 Welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast
3:40 Meet Brian Abrams: no secrets, the entire playbook
4:44 Watching cold email die
5:26 The $20,000 booth bet
6:41 Growing while staffing shrank 6 percent
8:24 30 to 40 percent of gross profit from conferences
9:20 Brian's origin story in staffing
11:58 Founding PMO Partners and betting on the niche
14:43 Early conferences: solo with a cheap banner
16:29 The 2019 PMI event that changed everything
18:12 Justifying the first $40,000 check
19:59 The most expensive mistakes
22:58 The 10 second conversation that became his biggest client
25:09 Did niching unlock the growth? 100 percent
26:53 Part 1: The year-long conference slate
31:06 Booth vs. getting on stage
32:25 Part 2: The pre-work nobody does
34:22 Studying 1,500 names down to a shortlist of 300
36:41 Working the floor and pitching fellow exhibitors
38:02 Part 4: The follow-up system
41:53 The Run PMO shirt origin story
45:49 Detroit sneak peek: something 8 Mile themed
46:41 The AI bubble and the return to human
48:50 Tiny budget? Do these 3 things
50:40 What we should have gone deeper on
52:06 Quickfire: the cheapest thing that outperforms
54:33 The person who shaped it all
55:09 Beyond conferences: building the team
56:21 What he'd tell his solo-founder self
57:25 The question recruiters never ask him
59:21 How to connect with Brian
1:00:49 Final thoughts

Your clients are worn out by AI messages. The recruiters winning right now are the ones who remember how to talk to people in person. Atlas handles the low-value work that keeps you from billing so you can be in the room where it happens: https://recruitwithatlas.com/

Connect with Brian Abrams: https://www.linkedin.com/in/babramspmo/

Finish The Year Strong 2026 Virtual Summit: https://recruiters-finish-the-year-strong.heysummit.com/

The Recruiting Agents Workshop with Seb Sharp: https://the-recruiting-agents-workshop.heysummit.com/

Join the Elite Recruiter Community: https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community

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