825: The future of AI, tech jobs, and entrepreneurial RESILIENCE w/ Riece Keck

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Hey, what is up?

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Welcome to this episode of the Wontropner to entrepreneur podcast.

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As always, I'm your host, brian LoFromento, and we have got, quite simply, an incredible entrepreneur here today to really open your eyes to so many different facets of not only where the industry is with regards to AI and where it's going, but, on an even deeper level, what the heck it takes to be successful as an entrepreneur.

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This is someone who has extraordinarily high standards for himself, for his businesses, for all the projects and clients he's involved with, and I'm personally very excited to learn from him as well.

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His name is Reese Keck.

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Reese is the founder at MindHire, a professional search firm that specializes in connecting cutting edge companies with AI and machine learning talent.

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Reese has some really strong opinions about the huge impacts that we're all gonna face and that we're all gonna get to enjoy as part of the AI movement, so we're gonna go deep into that today.

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Prior to founding MindHire, reese founded Vault Recruiting at 27 years old, which this is such a cool success story.

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He grew it to $3 million in annual revenue and 15 employees before exiting via a merger in 2023.

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He's also earned his MBA from the Quantic School of Business.

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This is someone who, on a mindset level, strategy level, processes level, we're gonna learn a lot from.

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So I'm not gonna say anything else.

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Let's dive straight into my interview with Reese Keck.

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All right, reese, I am so excited that you're here with us today.

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Welcome to the show.

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Thanks for having me, Brian.

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I'm excited to be a happy maker.

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Heck, yeah, I tease listeners just a little bit about all your brilliant and all the things you're up to.

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But take us beyond the bio.

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Who the heck is Reese, and how did you end up here?

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Yeah, so I graduated college.

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Originally I graduated I didn't have a ton of direction on what I was going to do.

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I started as a financial analyst and then, about six months into my first real job quote unquote the firm I was working at got laid off.

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We took a bit of a downturn and so I was a little bit lost on like shoot, what comes next.

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So for anyone who knows anything about recruiting, the joke is that nobody got into it on purpose.

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We all fell into it, which I did too.

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I was referred in and I worked at a really large agency for about three and a half years, got promoted a few times, and it was a really great foundational experience.

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But I've always been an entrepreneur at heart and just being in that individual contributor and then manager role really wasn't really what I wanted to do.

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And I've always been very passionate about startups and technology, and so I decided to take a leap at 27 and found Vault Recruiting.

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So Vault Recruiting was a search firm that was built specifically for tech startups.

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I was living in San Francisco at the time, which is obviously the heart of the tech movement, and so got to work with a ton of really cool clients, some that are household names today.

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Openai, the company that made ChatGPT being one of them, and grew that for about three and a half four years before exiting, Pivoted a little bit in terms of focus and so launched a new brand called MindHire where, Brian, as you said, we're focused on placing machine learning and AI professionals and so happy to go to deeper.

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But overall, it's been a heck of a journey and I'm having a lot of fun.

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Yeah, I love that overview and I also love how you say that anyone who ended up in recruiting ended up there by mistake.

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I think it really speaks to the broader patterns within the world of entrepreneurship that none of us have a linear journey, and so I always pointed out to listeners that I love when guests such as yourself come on and they share that with us, because that's a reality.

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So for all of you entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs sitting out there thinking what you found today is the thing, Well, there's always natural pivots and transitions.

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So, Reese, I love that your story also includes those Gosh.

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There's two main directions I wanna go in today.

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Obviously, there's the AI component and the MindHire component, and then in the second half, I'd love for us to go deeper into your entrepreneurial mind, because you've so much wisdom and brilliance to share with us there.

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But first things first.

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Let's start with AI.

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It's all the rage.

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You already brought up OpenAI and ChatGPT.

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We've all heard about those on the consumer level.

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But I know that part of what MindHire is way ahead of the curve on and what you're way ahead of the curve on is AI is not going anywhere and it is going to be a major force in the world economy in our day-to-day lives.

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Talk to us about those building blocks of what is AI today and where the heck do you see it going?

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That made you feel so strongly to make moves already.

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Yeah, so at the consumer level, a lot of people are using AI for school, which is a.

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It's a whole separate discussion.

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They're using it for certain segmented tasks at work, but what we're also starting to see is the broad proliferation of AI in terms of actual workflows in companies.

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So you know, for example, the companies that we work with are not necessarily just AI companies specifically that are creating, you know, these like foundational models or these AI products.

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They're companies that are working on incorporating AI into a core part of their business, that aren't even necessarily technology companies.

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You know, when you have any sort of company that has a lot of data or a lot of information, they can leverage that data using insights, through AI, in order to save money, save time, etc.

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And so, like you said, you know it's not going away, it's going to be a very I think it's going to be a very foundational part of our society.

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You know, I would say probably the last, the last structural shift that we had like this was smartphones, and then the last structural shift for that, I think, was the internet.

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So, you know, it's going to continue to evolve in ways that nobody right now can foresee, but and of course, it is a little bit scary just in terms of thinking about what some of the ramifications for those might be.

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But overall, I'm much more excited than I am nervous.

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I'll put it that way.

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Yeah, I think what's super interesting about your business, mind Hire, is that you know we all talk about these algorithms and how they're always learning and getting better, but what we forget is that it's humans behind all of that.

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And so I think Mind Hire is fascinating because you're connecting the real life humans, the talent behind it, with these emerging companies.

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With that in mind, what are those traits of that talent?

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Because I think these are the people I think we all share.

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This vision is that these are the people that are going to change the world in how they build and train and deploy and integrate these machines.

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With the way that we all do business, with the way you pointed out education, it's going to shake up that industry.

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So what is the world of AI and machine learning talent?

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What does that even look like today and how are you facilitating a better world tomorrow through those recruiting practices?

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Yeah, I mean there's huge demand for it.

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There are a lot of really strong universities that are producing some really excellent machine learning graduates.

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I can tell you this one company I'm working with in Boston and the news just actually hit today we just raised our series B, but I'm consulting with them on a fractional basis right now and what we're focused on is improving healthcare through AI and automation, and so one use case what Code of Metrics does this company I'm consulting with is?

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We're focused on doing autonomous medical coding using machine learning AI.

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So typically, for example, you will have doctors spending about 30% of their time on the computer, which is called coding cases, which is essentially medical codes for insurance reimbursements.

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It's very manual, it's very difficult and anything they don't do there's a team of coders on the back end that has to do it, and when you think about healthcare, there are 15,000 different things you can get done in terms of treatment or diagnosis, etc.

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And so being able to take all of that data and not eliminate coders coders are overworked, it's a very manual part and very error prone part of the process but being able to just improve that with machine learning, which is what we're currently doing, is an extremely exciting thing.

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And that's just one of 100 use cases, so it's just incremental progress along the boring parts almost of society is going to be just as structurally important as the cutting edge of what ChatGPT and these other AI models.

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Yeah, I like hearing your perspectives on this because, even though you're an expert in the field race, you also openly admit that nobody knows the direction in the magnitude of which this is moving, which leads me to ask the question.

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I'm super interesting to hear the landscape of your world, which is how is talent even being developed, because there's going to be things six months from now.

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I mean, I look at mid-journey as an example.

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Everyone wants to talk about ChatGPT, but what mid-journey is doing is mind blowing to me.

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Six months ago, it couldn't do 30% of what it does today.

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With that in mind, and people are going to want to get into the world of AI and machine learning, how are people even developing those skills to be competitive in that space?

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Yeah, there's a couple of ways that people are getting into it.

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I would say probably there's two primary paths.

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So one of those is you have your traditional software engineers, who they tend to be more like back end focused than front end focused, front end being more like what, the, what the user sees, and then back end being the back end logic.

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And then oftentimes there will be a transition into incorporating a machine learning component into the product, for example, which the software engineers will get exposure to.

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So that's one way that I've seen.

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The other way is going the well, oftentimes at minimum a master's, but more commonly the PhD route.

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So a lot of folks are going straight from PhD, from a PhD in computer science, and they're often having a specialization in national language processing or computer vision and then going straight to research from there.

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Yeah, so many different routes to get there and I imagine this is going to be an ever-evolving landscape of that talent as well.

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With that in mind, for people, I know that the job market in particular has been tough the past few years.

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Fortunately, as an entrepreneur, I don't understand all the intricacies of it, but, reese, I will say that I know that you do and I know that you have seen firsthand for a lot of people within your industry, but also beyond that, just how difficult it is, because you've worked in recruiting for so long.

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With that in mind, what are some of those ways to stand out in today's marketplace?

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Because I have a sneaky suspicion it's my job as the host of this show to also bring those parallels to entrepreneurs, and what we're really talking about is building that personal brand and standing out in a hyper competitive marketplace, which applies to the job market as well as the entrepreneurial market.

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So what are your insights and tips and strategies there?

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Yeah, so in terms of general job searching, I would say if you're going to start your job search.

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I'm not one of those people that says online applications are a useless black hole that you'll never get hired from.

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It is more difficult to do that, particularly for certain types of roles.

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I mean especially remote roles.

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You're often getting hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants for a single role.

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Your odds there of getting a resume review are pretty minimal.

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So the first thing that I say to you is start with your own network.

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Those can be people that you've either worked with in the past, that you've had some sort of professional relationship with, even if they were at other companies.

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Go on LinkedIn, look at your first degree connections.

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Go down the list to everyone that you feel you have some sort of you know, some sort of relationship with.

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You know, as long as it doesn't have to be something deep, but as long as you know them in some way and reach out to them directly.

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You know, look at where they're currently working.

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See if there's anything relevant that that is, that that company is hiring for that you can be introduced to the second route, and this is a little bit more niche that you're probably not going to hear from as many other job search experts, but I strongly recommend two tools in your job search.

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So the first one is going to be LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and then the second one is going to be Apollo.

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Apollo is used for contact finding, email finding.

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So what I would do is take a excuse me, create a list of and look at your, your own background whether that be you know sales, marketing, engineering, what have you and think about the types of companies that would most benefit from your skill set.

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So let's say, for example, that you're a software engineer that's worked in education technology, at tech.

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Create a list of at tech companies and use sales navigator to find hiring managers and then reach out to them directly, whether or not there has been a job posted.

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And oftentimes companies will do what's called opportunistic hiring, where if someone just happens to present themselves, that's a fantastic fit, they will hire them in order to shore up the team.

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Now, only do that, like I said, if you have a lot of relevance to the company.

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So if you, if you've worked in at tech and you reach out to, you know a construction company, even if they hire software engineers, your experience isn't going to be as relevant.

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But if you're very intentional about your outreach, you can find opportunities that aren't necessarily posted online.

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Yeah, All right, Reese, you went there.

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You said that word I've been looking for from you, which is intentionality, and we can see your line of thinking, how strategic that you are.

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So I'm I'm so excited to go here with you, because listeners know we always ask our guests what's your zone of genius?

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And, Reese, I love your answer on so many levels.

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You wrote what I found to be the greatest driver of my success is the ability to be strategic about how I'm approaching different components of a business, whether that be sales operations, whatever it may be, creating solid and tested SOPs to consistently deliver on those goals and measure those results.

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Reese, most people, they don't feel that way.

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Most people are if it's not broken, don't fix it, Whereas you are always looking to raise that bar for yourself, for your companies, for your clients.

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Talk to us about that strategic approach to things, because a lot of people just want to keep things humming.

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We always picture if the wheels in motion, let that wheel keep on rolling.

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Where does that mindset come from for you?

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Yeah, you know, I think that part of that mindset for me just comes from a continuous desire for improvement.

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I'm never just really satisfied with things being the status quo and you know there's always, you know there's always two things to think about, like can this save the company money or can this make?

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Can I do something that makes the company more money?

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Oftentimes from an operational perspective, you know, if lowered, lowered, lowered costs to execute or lowered time to execute, rather, equals lower cost, if you have revenue driving people and their time is taken up with some sort of administrative tasks that can be automated with technology, to an extent, freeing up the revenue generator's time makes you more money.

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So what I'd like to do when I was with Vault and we were, you know, larger, it was a more complex machine that was running I would like to review all of our operational processes quarterly just to think, ok, what has changed?

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You know, what are we seeing happening on a day-to-day basis that can be improved?

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I would have talks with each of the folks on our staff during our one-on-ones in order to figure out, like, what is trouble you want on a day-to-day basis?

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What can I do to make it better?

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And then, if that feedback is consistent across several people, then that's immediately something that can be worked on.

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Would be one example.

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Yeah, listeners, this is a real life example.

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You're getting into the mind of Reese right now, who has grown multiple successful businesses.

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That's such those.

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Those are clear two questions to at least be the springboard to action and improvement, which is can this make the company more money or can this save the company money?

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I actually think that, on a weekly basis, those are essential questions for us to ask ourselves, because there's always something that we can make better, and if we can make it better in one of those two fields, our business tangibly moves forward.

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Tangibly, meaning, this is the stuff that hits your balance sheet in your income statement.

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So I love those perspectives from you, reese, and along those lines, I'm so intrigued and amazed and impressed by the company that you grew and the fact that you did it at such a young age, in your twenties.

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I love young entrepreneurial stories.

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Walk us through vault recruiting, because I know that starting a business is one thing, but riding those inflection points and transitioning and pivoting along the way is super important.

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Walk us through what some of those inflection points were, because people are going to hear that number $3 million in annual revenue and think it happened overnight.

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It didn't.

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So give us the reality of it.

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No, no.

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So the reality is is that it was not easy at all.

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It is, you know, it was a lot of hours in the beginning, and recruiting as a business in general is, is, you know, for people who know the industry, they know it's a very tough industry to succeed in.

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So, to give some context, so I started the business in March of 2019.

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And I started on my own, really put in the grind, for the first, probably six to nine months.

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After right about nine months, we started getting some real traction and I think we had probably 12 or 15 clients we were actively working with.

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We had, you know, probably 10 or 12 more that we were in active talks with.

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And then we all know what happened in March of 2020.

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And so that was it almost put the business back to zero in the sense of and this is the other thing too and think about, you know, the embedded, solid solution that we had for recruiters went or for tech companies.

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When companies stop hiring, the first thing that they're going to do is let the recruiters go right, and so that was a really tough period.

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We struggled and we made it through and we started even though we were built for tech companies.

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We even looked at some companies that were not necessarily in the tech industry, which is how we survived.

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So healthcare, for example we worked with a few healthcare companies and then, starting around early 2021, the pendulum flipped completely in the other direction and companies started hiring much more.

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You had your PPP loans that came out, you had interest rates that were cut to almost zero, and so companies were growing like crazy and, frankly, probably you're responsible for a period of about a year and a half, and so a lot of the growth from vault came starting at the beginning of 2021.

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We started hiring in a in a man, not recklessly ourselves, but pretty quickly, just so that we could meet the demand that we were bringing in, and times were good then and it was a lot of fun, and then the market turned again.

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So it's been like you said at the beginning.

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It's not a linear journey by any means.

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There are a lot of ups, there are a lot of downs, but at the end of the day, I would trade it for the world.

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Yes, amen to that.

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You are so preaching to the choir here, and it makes me so happy to hear you so openly share the reality of running a business.

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Reese, it's something that I don't talk about all the time either, and that's why I love being joined by fellow entrepreneurs here is that I've experienced my own downturns.

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2020, I think, for a lot of us, was a big reset button and in many ways, when people hear us on these podcasts or on YouTube videos or anywhere, talk about, yeah, I had to reset, I had to start from scratch, they think, ah, there's no way my journey so much harder.

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All of our journeys are hard and they are always hard.

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There's always challenges that we're facing, which, I mean, I've always told people one of the ingredients of being a successful entrepreneur is you have to be a little bit delusional.

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You have to believe this, even when you shouldn't or can't see them.

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So I think that's important.

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But obviously then mental resilience plays into it and, reese, I know that this is something that you chalk so much of your success up to and something that you're so intentional about keeping in your arsenal.

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Is that mental resilience?

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Talk to us about that, because this is the real stuff that I don't think listeners get everywhere, so I wanna hear your perspectives on it.

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Yeah, you know, I think there's.

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I mean, there's a couple of things for mental resilience For anyone who's thinking about, you know, starting their own business.

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I'll just tell you right now it's not easy and there are going to be things that come up that you never even would have thought of.

00:20:16.913 --> 00:20:18.789
I can give one example.

00:20:18.789 --> 00:20:33.029
So we signed on and the Vault model, by the way, we did talent consulting for startups, and so if a company needed to hire at scale, they didn't want to pay the large fees that you traditionally pay recruiting for them.

00:20:33.029 --> 00:20:41.273
So we would place one recruiter or multiple recruiters into a company and they would handle all of the recruiting on a project basis for, you know, six, 12 months, et cetera.

00:20:41.273 --> 00:20:49.606
So we worked with one startup that needed to bring on four senior technical recruiters.

00:20:49.606 --> 00:20:58.933
Each of those senior recruiters, if I, if from memory I think, made about 160 grand each, plus benefits, plus etc.

00:20:58.933 --> 00:21:02.486
And we hadn't had 30 payment terms with them meeting.

00:21:02.486 --> 00:21:16.153
So I had to pay my recruiters every week, but from my first invoice I wasn't going to get paid for 30 days on it, and so overnight I had blown up my payroll costs to about 120 grand a month when I had like 30k in the bank.

00:21:16.153 --> 00:21:27.273
So I had one week of payroll and when I tell you that one kept me up at night for a couple of nights in a row, that was, you know, it was a struggling from success thing for sure.

00:21:27.273 --> 00:21:34.059
But you have to be resilient if you're going to do this In terms of things you can actually do to build mental resilience.

00:21:35.625 --> 00:21:42.285
You know, of course you have your basics, like you know self care, trying not to get too.

00:21:42.285 --> 00:21:43.608
You know don't turn to.

00:21:43.608 --> 00:21:45.255
You know drinking too much to.

00:21:45.255 --> 00:21:48.164
You know, turn off the stress, what have you?

00:21:48.164 --> 00:22:00.384
You know exercise is important, eating healthy is important, but I think really what is the most important thing is to detach from the outcome and focus on the inputs that you can control.

00:22:01.186 --> 00:22:07.628
So you know, in recruiting, one placement might be $30, $40,000, but things will go wrong all the time.

00:22:07.628 --> 00:22:12.835
You know you might have someone who you think is going to get that placement and you think you have that big paycheck coming.

00:22:12.835 --> 00:22:17.657
All of a sudden, at the last minute, the client puts the roll and hold or makes an internal hire or something along those lines.

00:22:17.657 --> 00:22:27.489
It happens all the time and if you are 100% focused on that number and it falls through, it's really challenging to deal with.

00:22:27.489 --> 00:22:38.765
So the things that you need to do is just focus on did I do all of the right things and did I do everything that I control correctly and over a long enough time span?

00:22:38.765 --> 00:22:44.644
If you control your inputs, then the outputs will will average out to an overall successful outcome.

00:22:45.467 --> 00:22:47.093
Dang really well, cedri.

00:22:47.093 --> 00:22:52.701
So I've heard this talked about in so many different ways, but I don't think anyone's articulated the way that I just heard you do it.

00:22:52.701 --> 00:23:08.060
Maybe it's the the childhood, the teenage you know, learning VBA and CSS and PHP that you're speaking to it more in those technical terms of controlling your inputs and really being detached from those outputs because ideally, they should take care of themselves when you have the correct inputs.

00:23:08.060 --> 00:23:19.367
But I think that it's an even bigger and more important topic that all of us entrepreneurs need to talk about and need to embrace, which is, I'd say it's probably counter to the stuff that the Gary V's of the world are throwing out.

00:23:19.367 --> 00:23:23.325
There is, you're actually saying, be detached from it, and I think about it constantly.

00:23:23.424 --> 00:23:26.189
I'm a very easily excitable person.

00:23:26.189 --> 00:23:28.990
I know that you also, because you're passionate about what you do.

00:23:28.990 --> 00:23:35.453
You can also get very easily excitable about businesses, about projects, about impacts that you can make, about technology, of course.

00:23:35.453 --> 00:23:39.970
But with all of that in mind, a core part of your story is those transitions.

00:23:39.970 --> 00:23:48.684
You've said it a few times in today's conversation is not being married not only to the outcome, but not even being married to the ideas of always being willing to pivot.

00:23:48.684 --> 00:23:50.972
Talk to us about that detachment.

00:23:50.972 --> 00:23:56.053
I mean you, I saw, I've seen you write about it, talking about passionately dispassionate.

00:23:56.053 --> 00:23:58.460
I'd love for you to talk about that here on the air.

00:23:59.403 --> 00:23:59.743
That was.

00:23:59.743 --> 00:24:02.042
That was actually the, the phrase that I was going to bring up.

00:24:02.042 --> 00:24:03.335
I didn't know if you'd seen that before.

00:24:03.335 --> 00:24:03.770
Yeah, so the.

00:24:03.912 --> 00:24:08.962
The term passionate, passionately dispassionate, is a term that I've heard, which I didn't.

00:24:09.230 --> 00:24:09.992
I didn't coin it.

00:24:10.192 --> 00:24:25.755
Somebody told me that they had heard it and that it applied to me, so I've I've taken it over, but the idea between that behind that is that you need, you need to be well, you don't have to enjoy what you do, which is a probably a separate talk topic of discussion.

00:24:26.237 --> 00:24:37.347
But it is good to be passionate about the things that you're doing, whether that's your own business that you're doing, or you know, if you have a job, some project that you're working on, right and be and be excited about it.

00:24:37.347 --> 00:24:38.892
There's nothing wrong with being excited about it.

00:24:38.892 --> 00:25:05.272
But the, the, the downturn can be that if you become too irrationally excited about a thing, whatever that thing might be, and you know that thing may end up not being the right fit, the right strategic option, right, and so if you allow your bias to of being overly excited about that particular thing, you might try to force it when it's really not the right thing.

00:25:05.272 --> 00:25:12.237
So, be passionate about what you're doing, but if it turns out to no longer be feasible, you have to, you have to kill it with that second thought.

00:25:13.199 --> 00:25:14.181
Yeah, I love that.

00:25:14.181 --> 00:25:19.101
It does sound so counter to so much of what we talk about in the world of entrepreneurship.

00:25:19.101 --> 00:25:25.855
You're very willing to just throw things out the window when and if they don't work, and I think that that's really powerful.

00:25:25.855 --> 00:25:27.121
And I also think it's.

00:25:27.121 --> 00:25:36.559
It's especially difficult for us as entrepreneurs because you use the word passion, and I think it's such an appropriate qualifier here is that all of us entrepreneurs are deeply passionate people.

00:25:36.559 --> 00:25:41.955
Our businesses are our babies and we start taking that on as our core identity.

00:25:41.955 --> 00:25:43.601
It really becomes something that's part of us.

00:25:43.601 --> 00:25:50.364
But you're saying no, the the how that you get there, the outcomes that you're getting, those are things we need to be detached from.

00:25:50.364 --> 00:25:51.190
So I love that.

00:25:51.256 --> 00:26:01.509
I also want to pick into I knew we'd be running out of time here today this is only the tip of the iceberg of all your business brilliance, but I do want to ask you about your visionary, your vision and your strategy.

00:26:01.509 --> 00:26:07.031
I want to tie those two things together, because I always tell people it's no mistake when someone is successful and Reese.

00:26:07.031 --> 00:26:19.074
Growing a business to $3 million in annual revenue does not happen by mistake, and so, with that in mind, you obviously are great at being a visionary and thinking about things and then tying strategy to it.

00:26:19.074 --> 00:26:24.275
With your current business, for example with Mind Hire, how far out are you looking?

00:26:24.275 --> 00:26:28.192
What is that roadmap You've shared with us a big win that you have with that company in Boston.

00:26:28.192 --> 00:26:31.221
But how far out does Reese look when he goes to sleep at night?

00:26:33.346 --> 00:26:43.855
So in in the immediate, you know the the longer term vision is to become a differentiated player specifically for machine learning, ai and data roles.

00:26:43.855 --> 00:26:53.772
There are a lot of recruitment firms on the market right now that do general technology recruitment, but they don't specialize in specifically the really cutting edge stuff.

00:26:53.772 --> 00:26:57.548
There are a few smaller shops that do, but the large ones do not.

00:26:57.688 --> 00:27:05.433
at this point and so the vision is to become the premier search firm for cutting edge tech roles.

00:27:05.433 --> 00:27:10.021
How long that will take hard to say.

00:27:10.021 --> 00:27:16.182
There are some brilliant businesses that are now household names, at least in their own specific niche that have happened in the last five years.

00:27:16.182 --> 00:27:21.194
We were one of in our specific niche.

00:27:21.194 --> 00:27:29.878
We were probably number I would say four or five in terms of the well-known companies and the startup RPO market.

00:27:29.960 --> 00:27:38.105
So if it takes me another five years to get there, I will happily do that, but generally that's what I'm thinking at this point is about a three to five year term.

00:27:38.836 --> 00:27:46.704
Yeah, I love those insights and along those lines, this is going to be me showing that I know nothing about the recruiting industry and how the mechanics of your industry works.

00:27:46.704 --> 00:27:56.919
But I would imagine that there's that two pronged approach of obviously you are the matchmaker there You're always looking for the talent and obviously you're looking for the clients who are looking to hire that talent.

00:27:56.919 --> 00:27:59.087
What's your strategic approach to that?

00:27:59.087 --> 00:28:04.075
Is it two pronged at the same time or is it you find a client and then you go out there and hungrily find that talent?

00:28:05.178 --> 00:28:05.679
Yeah.

00:28:05.679 --> 00:28:11.314
So it's an age old question in terms of how you structure your recruiting firms.

00:28:11.314 --> 00:28:18.403
So some recruiting firms they do what's called 360, which is people are responsible for both the client and doing the candidate generation.

00:28:18.403 --> 00:28:26.205
There are other schools of thought that think one person should just focus on sales and then one person should just focus on recruiting.

00:28:26.205 --> 00:28:37.921
There's no 100% right answer, although I do generally tend to bias towards what's called that split desk model, which is some people are focused on sales, some people are focused on recruiting.

00:28:39.304 --> 00:28:44.323
In general, the company that, or the person who pays your bills, is the client.

00:28:44.323 --> 00:28:50.042
So you need to have a client before you can go and recruit for a specific role for them.

00:28:50.042 --> 00:29:01.685
For example, now there is a way where, if you interview just enough candidates, and particularly folks who are already at the leadership level already, that you build a relationship with those people and they then give you business.

00:29:01.685 --> 00:29:07.698
But generally you need to client first and then from there it's sales and delivery is the best way to think about it.

00:29:07.698 --> 00:29:09.964
So you make the sale, you then deliver on what you sold.

00:29:10.634 --> 00:29:16.904
Yeah, I love hearing the way you think about your business and other businesses, Reese, because there's hidden business lessons in all of these.

00:29:16.904 --> 00:29:21.547
One thing that you said it's such a quick sentence which is your customer is the one who's paying you.

00:29:21.547 --> 00:29:23.355
It's something that took me a long time to learn.

00:29:23.355 --> 00:29:25.124
Started my first business when I was 19.

00:29:25.124 --> 00:29:26.128
It was a soccer blog.

00:29:26.349 --> 00:29:42.280
I thought my readers were the customers, but who I actually needed to serve were my sponsors, my advertisers, and I think that's such an important business lesson for all of us to remember is the people we service the people that we serve on a paying basis, and the way that we're going to grow both sides of those in the longterm.

00:29:42.280 --> 00:29:44.511
So, Reese, you have been such a wealth of knowledge.

00:29:44.511 --> 00:29:54.265
I have no idea where you're going to take this last question, which is why I'm so excited to ask you it, but we've got so many entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs listening at all different stages of business.

00:29:54.265 --> 00:30:01.442
What's that one takeaway, what's the one action that you hope everyone walks away from today's episode and says you know what Reese pushed me?

00:30:01.442 --> 00:30:04.959
I'm going to either think about this or I'm going to do this to move my business forward.

00:30:06.344 --> 00:30:20.549
You know, I think that if you haven't started a business yet, the easiest way to do it is with your existing skill set, and that can be starting as freelancing and then selling those services to other businesses, selling to.

00:30:20.549 --> 00:30:24.903
But I will say one thing selling to businesses is far easier than it is selling to consumers.

00:30:24.903 --> 00:30:33.935
Once you have the motion down, but find what you know and where the demand is and where those things intersect, that's your business.

00:30:33.935 --> 00:30:54.440
From there I would recommend starting small, start on the side if you can, provided that it doesn't start, you know, overlap with any sort of issues, with your day job, and make sure you validate that demand before you go all in, before you quit your job and, you know, dive straight into the deep end.

00:30:54.440 --> 00:31:08.151
Make small, intentional steps and make sure that everything you're doing is validated along the way and then, once you have that momentum and you have the ability to take it full time, that's when you quit your job and go all in.

00:31:08.633 --> 00:31:10.942
And then from there, then it's a matter of you know.

00:31:11.284 --> 00:31:12.449
You can then take it one of two ways.

00:31:12.449 --> 00:31:17.979
You can then work for yourself, be a one man show, which is a business.

00:31:18.239 --> 00:31:18.358
It's.

00:31:18.358 --> 00:31:31.003
It's a lot like consulting and being able to work with different clients and being able to manage your schedule, which is a really appealing route, or you can then build that team and hire more of you.

00:31:31.003 --> 00:31:41.926
So, instead of you consulting, you hire more consultants and then you hire sales people to sell those engagements and then from there, there's really no limit on what you can do, provided that the market can support it.

00:31:41.926 --> 00:31:49.650
So, whichever route you choose, there are a ton of advantages to it, and so I fully encourage you to try gosh.

00:31:49.690 --> 00:32:08.108
Reese, I feel like that is such unconventional business advice, but I feel like that's the real stuff right there, because at the root of so much with what you shared with us here today is thinking about the other side, thinking about the actual customers, the people that we serve, as the important thing, because, as entrepreneurs, we can go down deep, deep holes.

00:32:08.108 --> 00:32:13.570
You called it out right there Don't go down a hole until you know that there's a demand for what it is that you're doing.

00:32:13.570 --> 00:32:15.439
That is powerful advice, gosh.

00:32:15.439 --> 00:32:23.467
If people only listened to this one episode, we could probably see six months to 18 months of mindless work before they have that market validation.

00:32:23.467 --> 00:32:29.371
So I love how much of an emphasis you put on that external feedback, the real, tangible metrics that we get back.

00:32:29.371 --> 00:32:31.440
So, reese, you're a brilliant business mind.

00:32:31.559 --> 00:32:36.220
I'm so fascinated to follow along your journey from here, what you're doing with Mind Hire.

00:32:36.220 --> 00:32:40.570
You also are public about your thoughts on LinkedIn, which is how we originally came across your work.

00:32:40.570 --> 00:32:42.768
I love seeing you talk about AI.

00:32:42.768 --> 00:32:47.265
So drop those links on us for listeners that want to follow along and go deeper into your work.

00:32:47.265 --> 00:32:48.710
Where the heck should they go from here?

00:32:49.619 --> 00:32:50.342
Yeah, absolutely.

00:32:50.342 --> 00:32:58.691
So I would say the, probably the two platforms on which I'm most active are, which you can find the most about me would be the website, which is mindhireai.

00:32:58.691 --> 00:33:03.836
Or, if you look me up on LinkedIn, it's LinkedIn, I think.

00:33:03.836 --> 00:33:05.923
Just search my name, Reese Keck, and I should come up.

00:33:05.923 --> 00:33:11.483
I also have a X slash Twitter, which is AI underscore headhunter not as active there.

00:33:11.483 --> 00:33:16.124
That's something that I need to work on, but but those three mediums would be the best way to get in touch.

00:33:16.664 --> 00:33:18.470
Yes, listeners, you already know the drill.

00:33:18.470 --> 00:33:24.104
We are making it as easy as possible for you to find those links, so scroll down wherever it is that you're tuning into today's episode.

00:33:24.104 --> 00:33:26.796
You'll find a link to the Mind Hire website.

00:33:26.796 --> 00:33:32.311
You'll also find a link to Reese's personal LinkedIn you can just click through right there, as well as his Twitter account X.

00:33:32.311 --> 00:33:34.066
It still feels so weird calling it X.

00:33:34.145 --> 00:33:34.467
I know.

00:33:34.508 --> 00:33:42.932
Yeah, but, reese, honestly, thank you so much for coming on and sharing all of this wisdom with us here today on the Wontropner to Entrepreneur podcast.

00:33:43.599 --> 00:33:45.124
Thank you so much for having me.

00:33:45.230 --> 00:33:52.069
It's great to be here hey, it's Brian here, and thanks for tuning in to yet another episode of the Wontropner to Entrepreneur podcast.

00:33:52.069 --> 00:33:56.050
If you haven't checked us out online, there's so much good stuff there.

00:33:56.050 --> 00:34:05.267
Check out the show's website and all the show notes that we talked about in today's episode at the Wontropner showcom, and I just want to give a shout out to our amazing guests.

00:34:05.267 --> 00:34:13.980
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00:34:14.099 --> 00:34:16.083
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00:34:16.083 --> 00:34:17.688
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00:34:17.688 --> 00:34:21.181
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00:34:21.181 --> 00:34:32.141
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00:34:32.141 --> 00:34:40.655
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00:34:40.655 --> 00:34:41.960
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00:34:41.960 --> 00:34:46.590
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00:34:46.590 --> 00:34:47.992
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00:34:47.992 --> 00:34:57.420
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