Michelle Masterson has spent 14 years talking to search firm owners all day, every day. She runs sales and business development for Next Level Exchange and the Sanford Rose Associates network, and works on the corporate development side of Starfish Partners, the parent company that acquires search firms. Ask her how many of the owners she talked to this month could survive getting hit by a bus, and she gives you a number. In her conversations, roughly 8 in 10 firms are not bus-proof. Remove the owner and there is no business.
This episode runs through the three pain points she hears from almost every owner right now: business development, getting off the desk, and building something you could one day sell. Her 14-day, four-to-seven-touch outreach sequence. Why the phone is the pattern interrupt again. Why “I just want to catch up” is the worst opening line in the industry. What “treat your business like a client” actually means. Why culture will not keep your top biller and what a pathway to partnership looks like at a small firm. Why, in the conversations she has, only about 1 in 20 owners who want to sell are anywhere close to ready, and what a buyer needs to see before taking the meeting.
She also makes the case for hiring an SDR before your next recruiter, walks through how she onboarded her own offshore SDR, and names the most expensive hiring mistake she sees: keeping someone too long.
Firm Leaders Summit, November 16 to 18. Three free days on hiring, training, BD, and growth, built for the people running the firm. Register here: https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com
This episode is sponsored 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. It ranks candidates for your open roles, turns BD into a shortlist of who to chase and why, and builds your pipeline dashboards when you ask. Perm or contract, it covers both, and the new MCP and API plug it straight into Claude, ChatGPT, and the rest of your stack. https://recruitwithatlas.com/
Thinking about offshore support like Michelle’s SDR? Greg Fischer at Well Oiled Machine hires proven offshore recruiters and sourcers for agencies, you pay them directly, and he tells you no if you are not ready. Tell him The Elite Recruiter sent you. https://www.welloiledmachine.co/
Links
🎙 Michelle Masterson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellemastersondallas/
🌐 Sanford Rose Associates: https://joinsranetwork.com/
📅 Firm Leaders Summit (Nov 16 to 18): https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com
⚡ Atlas: https://recruitwithatlas.com/
🌎 Well Oiled Machine: https://www.welloiledmachine.co/
🤝 Elite Recruiter Community: https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community
📬 Newsletter: https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe
📖 Book: The Peaceable Kingdom by Stan Richards
Chapters
00:00 Cold open
03:28 Why this conversation, and the three pillars
04:04 The bus test: 8 in 10 firms are not bus-proof
06:55 Who is Michelle
07:44 Eight hours a day on the phone
08:43 What the bullpen taught her that remote never will
10:02 “Then I guess I’m going into sales”
11:05 Why one person should not run both sides of the desk
13:46 Where firms stall when they hire recruiters
15:58 How many firms actually have a training program
17:17 The three pain points every owner has right now
20:51 Is your firm actually different?
22:26 The 4 AM workout rule for working on the business
24:36 The questions she asks owners to diagnose a firm
25:32 Live diagnostic: $1.1M, four people, no training
28:11 Why the phone is the pattern interrupt again
29:12 Her 14-day, four-to-seven-touch outreach sequence
30:33 The numbers to watch Monday morning
32:16 What an SDR looks like inside a recruiting firm
33:57 SDR or another recruiter?
34:37 In-house or offshore
35:43 The first 90 days: a clean 200-name list and a script
36:51 The one question before buying any tool
40:19 It’s 6 PM Friday. What does “work on the business” mean?
42:22 Treat your business like a client
44:43 Is culture enough to keep a top biller?
47:24 Partner track, profit share, equity
48:31 Replacing the bullpen for remote hires
50:42 Diversifying revenue for a perm-only firm
51:47 The two lists: what drains you, what fills you
53:08 What blows up a sale
55:08 Only 1 in 20 owners are exit-ready
57:06 The renovation rooms, and which one to fix first
59:31 Is sellable even the right goal?
1:00:47 Selling the firm to your own team
1:02:06 The buy side: what a firm needs before the meeting happens
1:04:25 Investments that actually move the needle
1:05:49 Be open to feedback
1:07:30 Quickfire: the book, the tool, what’s working in BD
1:09:10 What stopped working
1:09:29 The most expensive hiring mistake
1:11:13 The question nobody asks her
1:12:27 How to connect with Michelle
