How To Build A Million Dollar Biller. Danny Cahill.

Speaker A: The AI recruiting summit is coming back this year, 2026 and my God, things are starting to get crazy. We are seeing the change that we've been talking about for a few years now, but man, you do not want to miss a summit. Registration is free for all the live sessions. It is going to be kicking off July 13th all the way through the 20th. You do not want to miss as we are going to have tech tools, we are going to have operators, we are going to have recruiting engineers, we are going to have recruiters that are actually using tools to make a difference in their recruiting desk, talking about what they're doing. The world's changing fast. This is a chance to see what's happening behind the scenes with a lot of recruiters. You don't want to miss this. Get registered today. I'll see you there. This is part two of the interview with Danny Cahill. If you have not listened to part one yet, hit pause on this, go back to part one, download that and make sure you don't miss that part of the interview. I've been looking forward to this interview for five years now and I'm so glad it finally came together. But before we jump into part two, make sure to join the Q3 challenge in the elite recruiter community. The 100k quarter challenge or the 250k quarter challenge. This is your chance, your opportunity to go all in. Make this your year 2025. You own it now. Enjoy the rest of this interview.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with your host Benjamin Mena where we focus

Speaker A: on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership and placements. You know the resume never tells the full story. Candidates share what really matters during conversations, on calls and interviews, over email. Their motivations, salary expectations, plans to relocate. Most of that detail ends up buried in notes and forgotten. Atlas changes that. It's the AI first recruitment platform built to eliminate admin. It captures every conversation automatically and turns it into something you can use with MagicSearch. You can ask Atlas questions like who talked about wanting a four day week? Or who mentioned they're open to relocating next year. It searches across your entire database and pulls the answers instantly. No keyword guessing and no digging through old notes. You get insight from real conversations, not limited resume fields. Atlas also makes BD easier with opportunities you can track and grow client relationships. Powered by generative AI and built into your existing workflow. If you want visibility, smart dashboards give you a clear view of the pipeline across your Business. And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported over 40% EBITDA growth and over 80% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. It's built for agencies that want to grow without adding more manual work. Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive listener offer@reruitwithatlas.com I want to flip over to AI now, and I in saying this, I know that you're not anti AI.

Speaker B: Oh, no, no, I'm all in. Claude's my best friend. Are you kidding me? Yeah, we're tight.

Speaker A: So with everything that you've seen with your business, all your recruiters, the people that you mentor, where is AI actually moving the needle for a recruiter right now?

Speaker B: Yeah, I've thought a lot about this. As you know, I have AI keynotes that I do. I've spent too much of my free time going to various lectures, conferences. I've seen way too many YouTubes, you know, and you got everything from, you know, Jeffrey Hinton, you know, the father of AI, saying it's going to be a jobs apocalypse to Goldman Sachs. Just last week in the New York Times said, uh, super overblown, that maybe what they said was interesting. They said 25% of jobs will be affected, but not replace. Just 25% of your hours of your work week will be freed up. That's what they're claiming with all of their money. And here's why they're thinking that because job growth is still outpacing the population growth. That's a really important thing for us. I think it's super early on. Uh, 90% of people don't use AI in the country. We don't realize that because we're in recruiting. Right. It's just like for years I would say to people, you know, uh, I talk about LinkedIn, they'd say, what's that? And I'd be like, what are you, a caveman? But we're recruiters, so we live in LinkedIn. People don't live in LinkedIn until they lose a job. If you look at some of the. If you get underneath AI a little bit, it's just early days, right? What I've seen so far is it is excellent generative AI is amateur hour, right? To me, if you're using it just for messaging and to do your LinkedIn post, not only do I think that is a waste of your time, but from a competitive point of view, I hope you do it. Because we're starting to get clients saying to us, oh, my God, you guys all sound the same. One guy even said to Bethany in my office a couple weeks ago, he said, you guys are all so body at this point. That's a term now. You're so body. They all look alike, they all sound alike. They're done in the same format. And people are being too lazy to even, you know, do a draft on Claude or chat and then customize it with Ben's voice. And of course, you know, you should, but you're trying to get things together and you're trying to put a, uh, sequence together, and it's just easier to do AI and the more you do that, the more you're going to sound like everybody else. And when you think about it, all it's really doing is synthesizing ideas that are already out there. It absolutely will not create any new energy. And I don't know about you, I'm sure, I mean, you're insightful. You can probably tell. I can tell the difference between an AI approach and an actual authentic human approach. I've tested this. You know, I've had three bestselling books. So I put the plot points and the theme of the book into Claude and said, write me a book. And it's nowhere near my book. It's very generic. It's very surface. Now, if all you're doing is writing an email, I guess it's okay. But here's what my whole career has been about long before I ever heard the words personal branding or having some sort of Internet Persona, I just did it naturally, right? This is where coming from a theater background helped me. I was just like, I'm going to create this Persona when I was on a desk. I'm this badass recruiter who will show you a good time on the phone, who's super confident, supercharged in energy. And you're going to want to be around somebody confident with energy, who can deliver, who's a smart guy. When I started speaking, I said, you know what? What served me well and as a recruiter was I was a funny person to talk to. I've always had that gift. So I'm going to use humor as a recruiter. I'm going to use humor when I speak. I'm not going to speak like everybody else. I'm going to use humor because people like to be entertained. I bring that into my LinkedIn posts. It's all part of what I am. So to whatever degree AI can help you with this brand or Persona, uh, I think it could be valuable. But we're so lazy on all the tools are meant to give you more and more quantity. But you're now seeming and sounding like everybody else. I think it's going to be very difficult to make yourself the guy in your niche or sector if you're just using AI. Uh, I think for a while now, whether it's two years, three years, four years, I think AI has kind of hit this sort of impasse bent. I think it had the initial thing where we all were like, oh, look what you can do with the generatively. And then what we use it for now is market research. You know, I mentioned the transcription stuff. So for us, like, if I have a good client intake call now, I'm throwing that into. Into Claude and saying, you know, create a market strategy for me. Tell me who I should call, tell me what I should say to them. Tell me what the value prop is. It's incredibly detailed stuff. It's a wonderful planning and market mapping tool. It's obviously got great sourcing capabilities. Although on the sourcing side, I said this to Jeff Kay the other day. It's like, how much faster do we need to find people? We're already at the sort of outer levels of speed. The problem isn't how fast we find candidates. The problem is we can't get them to do anything. We can't get through the noise of them getting so much AI slop. The more that it sort of becomes, uh, ubiquitous, the more noise it is, the more difficult it is to get through and to have some sort of true relevance. So I think we're at a sort of feeling right now. And I think right now, you know, the real threat of AI is not AI, it's HR using AI and thinking they don't need you because they too get caught up in the AI tools. And now, you know, they're still going to find, oh, my God. People are turning things down. They're not showing up for interviews. But it's that HR director who's sitting there today while you and I are talking, doing a demo with one of these AI tools and saying, oh, with this tool, we don't need to pay Ben fees anymore. We don't need as many people in our Talent act department. This is going to be great. That's the real competitor. I think in the near term, uh, I don't think it's. I don't think it's what AI is doing for us. I mean, if you think about it, you know, we. When the Internet came, everybody said, oh, my God, it's gonna replace real estate. Realtors or fitness instructors, they're as busy as can be. Right? When TV came, everybody said, nobody will go to a live theater. Nobody will go to live entertainment ever again. In reality, it's. It doesn't work out that way. The thing that I always feel like we don't remember is it's sort of a lack of imagination, not just among recruiters, but among Americans. All, ah, we can see are the jobs that are going to be lost because of what AI uh can do. We're not very good at imagining what jobs AI uh will create that we can't see right now. People think, oh, my God, AI is destroying jobs. That kind of happens every year. The American economy destroys and creates 25 million jobs a year. That happens every year. Every year. But we don't know about it because the one that's gone, the other one comes up. Now there's going to be an imbalance for a while where there'll be more destroyed than created. But over a period of time, more jobs will be created. What they are right now, nobody knows. That's the scary part. Unknown is always scary. Uh, but yeah, if you look back at the history of our business you mentioned, you know, monster LinkedIn, it's going to wipe out the recruiting industry. You know, at the end of the day, the business is predicated on two sort of pillars. One is the best companies want to hire the best people, and the second one is the best people are not actively looking. As long as those two things exist, it's going to be a very vibrant business to be in. And I don't have any concerns that the partners here who carry on after I'm gone are going to have much more success than I've ever had because I think it's just going to explode.

Speaker A: I want to switch gears a little bit. Pre told you something. What did Pre tell you?

Speaker B: Yeah, Pre was very nice. And, uh, we had Pre speak at my office a couple days ago, and he was saying, and I heard a guy on your podcast say this too. He was saying, look, everybody sees what Pre does. Pre does a ton on LinkedIn. He's savant about email marketing. He believes in images on LinkedIn and he does everything right. Like, he'll send out email marketing pieces. He does call hiring authorities. Um, but he lives a lot in LinkedIn, comments thoughtfully on people. There's some value to that. And you know, Pre Bill's a million dollars. But people in my office were like, but where do you get the content? Like, I go to, to create a LinkedIn post I don't know what to say. What am I going to say? And pre said, well, look, just. Just document what you do all day long and just report on what you're doing. He said, capture, not create. And then he was nice enough to say, we're not Danny. Danny creates and doesn't. Doesn't have to capture. Like, but he's a writer. Most of us are not writers. And I think. I think he was onto something. Like, it's so funny. When I first got into the business, I was like, I'm a writer. Always, uh, have been. So I have a strong sense of narrative and story. But I thought that would be lost in a business where I had to be on the phone all day long. And then email came back, and I was like, oh, I'm getting to use my writing skills a little bit. Email's a thing. That was cool. But now if you had the ability to. To think originally and express yourself, that's what's gonna create that Persona, that branding. You know, nothing was more painful to me than when somebody read One of my LinkedIn posts, one of my, uh, you know, one of my days when I was taking my wits out for a walk. And he was like, do you write those yourself? And I was like, oh, dude, you're killing me. Yes. Nothing is ever put online that I didn't write myself. But I do think to some degree, whether you're a writer writer, or whether you're just someone who's willing to put yourself out there and say, this is just how I feel about this. I would rather see my people use AI for research and market mapping and do your own messaging. I think generative AI is going to kill the branding and personal reputation. Like, Ben, you have a rep now. Uh, this podcast has been so successful. You're the podcast guy. Good for you. I've been doing podcasts longer than you have, and mine didn't stick. Yours did. You're the podcast guy. There's people in Pinnacle that have certain branding, right? And you've done it, You've made it. Everybody knows you in that way. The real test for you will be, uh, what do you do next when you get to a point where you don't want to keep doing them, or how do you grow that? And that'll come, right? But you've done it. You've reached that level of. You're identified as that. And for whatever reason, I've reached a certain level of identification, right? People think of me in a certain way when it comes to recruiting or training or Keynote presentations. That's going to be harder and harder to do if you give everything to AI because all it's going to do is synthesize what's already out there. That's what it's going to do for time.

Speaker A: I'm going to switch gears a little bit. The next section I want to jump into in a second is all about mentorship.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But before we do that, I think there's a myth in recruiting.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Or it's a myth in probably, like, high performance. Anything, but especially, like, high performance recruiters. Ah. That you have to have no life to be successful in recruiting.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Here's the thing. Like, you've done plays, you've written books, you golfing, you're hitting the gym. Like, can you make the case for listeners out there, especially firm owners, that it's okay to have passions outside of recruiting?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah. I mean, look, I'm. I'm. I love the business. It's given me so much. I'm super passionate about it. If all I had to do was recruiting, I would have quit years ago. I don't think there's any question about it. I just have too many other interests and life's too short. Like, I think that's the thing. It's like, whenever something big has happened in my life, like when I had that back injury in the gym and I couldn't walk for, like, six weeks, and it was scary, and people thought I might be unable to walk for the rest of my life. And it turned out I was able to rehab. But for that period of time, people would say to me, boy, that's really got to give you perspective, huh? No, screw that. No, I already had perspective. I've had perspective my whole life. When I was, like, 18, I was like, it's not hard. Mind, body, spirit, um, there's only the three things. And you only get, whatever, 75, 85 years. I'm putting the pedal down. People are afraid of burning out. I look forward to burning out. My goal is to burn out, because if you burn out, that means at least for a while, you were on fire. And I'm going to be on fire the whole time. And if I'm going to be in the gym, then I'm going to try to do my damnedest. And if I'm going to sit down and say, while everybody else is going to a, uh, party this afternoon, um, I'm going to sit in my room with my laptop and I'm going to try to write a chapter in this book. I've been talking about Ben. I have so many friends who, you know, were in the New York Off Off Broadway and off Broadway scenes, uh, in the 80s and 90s when I was doing it, um, who were writing their quote, first play. Ten years later, they're still teaching English and still writing their first play. Um, they never finished it because something happened. Right. And they can all, we can always justify it. But I had perspective right from the start. It's like tomorrow's promise to no one. Uh, if this thing gets this ride gets cut short, I want to make sure I get it done. So it was never hard for me to say, you know, if I'm on an airplane and there's a baby crying next to me, make a choice, you're going to blame the baby for not riding. You got a four hour flight, right? And I tune the baby out and I ride it. To me, perspective has always been there. It's a short ride and I'm going to get as much out of it, uh, as, as I can. Now I'm probably the worst person to ask about this. You know, Oscar Wilde said, moderation is a fatal thing. The key to success is excess. And I bought into that. There's a balance. So when I started mentoring, I thought there's either gonna be these wacko, control freak, intense people like me. Right? Like people. The joke about me here is Danny's so intense, he grinds your teeth. So I thought when I started mentoring these million dollar billers, they were all gonna be like me, but they're not. They, several of them stop working at 4 o' clock every day because they're going to be dad or mom at home. They. So many of them in Pinnacle as you know, have nonprofits that they've started or that they, they fund and they spend time with. A lot of them are into physical fitness, but most of them are truly dedicated to their families and their children. It is absolutely, you're 100% right, this idea that the reason why I'm not a top biller is because all those guys are obsessive and they have no lives and, you know, they die sad, lonely people. No, they die happy, rich people who've helped a lot of people and seen a lot of things, experienced a lot of things and had amazing lives. So I just don't give my junior recruiters that out. Money's especially the one that cracks me up. I've had junior people who aren't working hard that I pushed and they'll say, I'm just not into money. Dude, you Know, like. Like, I. I don't want to be obsessed with money like people like you are. And I'm like, oh, I'm not obsessed with money because I have it. It's the people like you that don't have money that are obsessed with money. You're the one worrying about, can I afford to do this weekend? When a weekend comes, all I decide is, do I want to do it or not? Because I know I have the money, right? So, ironically, the people that are kind of not about money spend their lives worrying about it. I tell these people, go get some, and then we'll talk.

Speaker A: Jumping into mentorship. You have a successful business yourself. You're busy enough. Why the hell are you even mentor at all?

Speaker B: Oh, it's so satisfying, Ben. It's so much fun. I really enjoy it. I got to tell you. I mean, it's almost embarrassing how sentimental I am, but I guess, uh, I'm a dad's kid. When I saw that Will Weigert was on your podcast, it just. I have to tell you, I was. I don't think I've ever been as happy all year because I was like this kid a year and a half ago, didn't know what he was doing and what's going on. He was a good recruiter, but not a great recruiter. He wanted to be a great recruiter, and I just fell in love with him. And he's been a joy to mentor. And then to see. Look at this. Will not only did a million bucks. Not only is managing a group of people, but he's. He's sharing and teaching on, um, Ben's podcast. Hell, yeah. It's just much more rewarding than anything else I do. Uh, what happens to the people that I mentor? Seeing people make changes and having the courage to make changes, Especially a lot of the people I mentor are successful people already, and either they're having a problem and need help finding what's wrong, or they want to go to either another level. That's just intoxicating for me in a way. Nothing else is, by the way. You know, I. It just doesn't. The last time I had a book, the first time I had a book published, my publisher said, hey, the books hated the bookstores today. So do yourself a favor, go to the bookstore, walk in and see it on the counter. Because all our authors say that's like, a highlight of their life. And I was like, okay, so that night I went to Barnes and Nobles, and I walked in, and there's my book in the new. The New fiction shelf. And all I thought was, big deal. Look at this place. There's a lot of books. The one thing this place didn't need was another book. What a complete waste of time and energy on my part. So I, uh, just don't get the same rush from. From anything I do myself when I mentor and I see people who take their issues to heart and are willing to subject themselves to me and my accountability, and I will push them hard, and then good things happen. You know, it's a uniquely American thing because a lot of people say, well, when are you going to retire? And it's like, I just find the question offensive. That's a uniquely American thing that when somebody gets at my point, where you have a certain level of wisdom and forged in the trenches and you have a certain level of knowledge, it's only in America that you're supposed to put that away and go chase golf balls in Florida in plaid pants. In other cultures that I've been to all around the world, there's the opposite of ageism. There's this guy's been around so we could learn from him. So as long as it gives me this rush that I'm getting, um, and I have something to offer, then, yeah, I'm all in the day. I have nothing to offer these people, then, yeah, I'll find a mentor.

Speaker A: Some of these people, like, uh, when you sit down with them, like, what's the biggest thing missing? Is it, like, accountability?

Speaker B: For a lot of them, it's accountability. Think about the class. There's a protected class in our business, Ben. The protected class is the superstar. Once upon a time, the owner goes, oh, she's great. She built 800,000 three years in a row. She's good. And if she starts to struggle, they're human beings, right? If the owners will say to me, you know, when she started to struggle, I pushed back at her a little bit, and I said, you know, you haven't been in the office much this quarter, or you're not making the calls or whatever it is that she stopped doing. Because most of them, it's not rocket science. Most of them stop doing the things they used to do, right? Or they're doing things that no longer serve them, or they're in a niche that's dying. But there's either owners that treat them like a protected class and say, she'll figure it out, or when they do push back. People being human. The recruiter goes, hey, I've made you so much money. Leave me alone. How dare you treat me this way, after all I've done for this company. And the owner backs off and goes, holy shit, I pissed her off. We don't want to lose first. He's our top biller. I don't play that way. That's just going to work with me. Uh, I don't care who you think you are. I don't care what you've done or how long you've done it. It's disappearing. It's going away. You're scared out of your mind. You're not a protected class when you become someone I mentor. So if you can deal with me trying to fix you, then let's work together. If not, bye. I'm too old and too rich to mess around. Like, uh, I'm not playing that game. And to their great credit, most of them go, yeah, I need help, and I'm happy to buy in. And a lot of them figured out on their own. It's not like I have magic. I. And, look, it's not about me. It's that whole idea of, you know, when the. When the student is ready, the teacher appears. Right? I usually probably don't tell them anything their owner hasn't been telling them for years. It's just that I'm coming in from the outside. I've got this reputation, and, uh, they feel like they better own it, because I'm going to demand that.

Speaker A: In all these mentorship conversations that you have, have you seen this good to great gap that people are missing in themselves?

Speaker B: I usually find there's some sort of wound. You know, I'm not a psychologist, but I certainly know how to read people. And usually there's been something, right? Some. And it could be something as awful as true trauma, or it could just be as simple as sibling rivalry that went awry, and they're the middle child and they didn't get enough attention. But I spent so much of my time mentoring, reminding them how good they are, reminding them that, you know, I had a woman that I mentored who'd been in the business 22 years and fell into a deep slump. And she said, I just think I. I was never that good. To be honest, I think I was just lucky. I was like, okay, hold on. You can look into a placement. You can even luck into a good quarter. You don't luck into 22 years, Jeeves. Are you kidding me? But that's how far it can get. You know, they can. Here's the thing, right? I've only been around. The only comparison I can make is I've been Around professional actors. And professional actors are the most generous, joyous people to be around. They also can go so low, they can get so down on themselves. And, and they're, you know, they're in a, uh, rejection business. You know, you go to audition nine times, you're not going to get the role eight times. And it's a tough business in that way. I found the same thing with recruiters. They can be so joyous and so bullion and they're so vibrant, but then they get kicked a little bit and then the whole scaffolding falls and they think that they never were any good. And somebody has to remind them that you can put this back together. And remember, a lot of them are saying to me what they're concerned about, but they're not telling their spouses. Uh, I find this, this isn't a sexist thing. It's just my experience the women recruiters tend to be very open with their spouses about their pipelines and how they make money and the fact that they're in a slump, whereas a lot of the guys tend to withhold from their families. And they're always saying, oh, I got this, we're fine. But do you really need to buy that? Do you really need to buy that? And all of a sudden, they're Donald Trump in the casinos in Atlantic City, walking around the table saying, shut that guy off. So the spouse gets scared. They sort of reinforce that by saying, I'm not going to say anything. I'll make a placement tomorrow. Then they don't make a placement. They freak out. Um, so I tend to be the person they can unload on. And one of the things I make them do once we recover is share with your spouse. I. You don't have to get to the point where your spouse is going over your hot sheet like I do, but your spouse should know how you're doing. Whether it's a good month, whether it's a bad month, whether we need to cut back, whether we're flush and we can spend some money. Your spouse should know. And so that's part of the mentoring is I really push significant other communication.

Speaker A: Like actually m talking about that. Like, when you're mentoring a high achiever, what does that actually look like? Is it like live calls? Zoom? Like, how do these conversations typically go?

Speaker B: It's totally up to them. I have the full bow. Is like high country. I flew to high country and I did my intake and due diligence in person when I started mentoring high country people. And I've done that with a bunch of Pinnacle people, Danny Sarge, you know, I go to their office, I do an intake, and then they must come to my office. This is the sort of ultimate mentoring. Then they come to my office. They work here. They usually stay two or three days. I see them in action, I tape their calls, I listen to their calls, and then we say out a plan, a goal to meet it, and then how to do it. And I learned more about them. You know, I tell them, you know, all this talk about machine learning, I've been machine learning for 40 years. The more I get to know someone I mentor, the more I know about their strengths, their weaknesses, where we need to put emphasis. So normally the first year is pretty intense. Where you're going to my office, I'm coming to yours. I want to see your work environment. Um, then we're talking every single week. I'm on all your deals, but there's a middle of the road thing where, like, someone like Will, it's a monthly call. There's an accountability piece where metrics are sent to me. The call is often about training issues, but it could be just, let's go over your pipeline and see if there's a closing situation. I can help you with other people, Ben, have been with me 25 years, and I'm on an as needed basis. I'm their primary care mentor, where they just check in once in a while and we just talk things out. And of course, the pricing structure reflects all that. So it all depends on what people need. Some people think they need more than they really do because they just like the cachet of having a personal mentor. You know, people like the people like Will and Morgan and Nate in Monty's office, I mean, these are super motivated people. They don't need as much handholding as other people do.

Speaker A: I, uh, went on a morning run, like Sunrise run with Nate, and my God, he's grown so much.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a monster. I love Nate. Yeah, he's a monster.

Speaker A: What's been one of your favorite, like, transformations that you've seen from your mentorship?

Speaker B: There's so many. Like, put out a fire. Those are exciting. Like when somebody's about to lose a deal and we save it, you know, uh, when they call me, those are fun, but in the long term, boy, I mean, it's hard to beat when I think of someone like Danny Sarge. When I first started mentoring Danny Sarge, he saw my office and he said, okay, here's the deal. Uh, I don't want this the last thing I want to do is be managing 30 people. And he's like, from what I can see, I like the business, but I'm not into it like, you are. Like, I do it for money. He's like, here's what I want. I want to retire at 55 so that I can ski all the time. So show me how to do that and let's go from there. And there we go. So now it's okay. You don't need to have an office. You need to be in a home office. We need to reduce costs and increase profits. You don't need to hire recruiters. You need to maximize revenue. And there were some skill sets that needed to change, and he did, and he went at it. And of course, he's super gifted and super smart guy. And, yeah, he's been skiing now for three or four years. He absolutely did it just like we set out in the beginning. So that's immensely satisfying that someone like him had a specific goal, he met it. He's got all the money in the world and all the time in the world and is on top of that like a great human being. I mean, it's hard to beat stories like that. And I've got, fortunately, a dozen of those.

Speaker A: Before we jump over to the Quickfire questions, I know we've covered a lot, but at the same time, I feel like I haven't covered anything with you. Is there anything that you want to go deeper on, or is there a question that I should have asked you?

Speaker B: The only thing I would say is I would like to challenge the people that listen to this. And here's what I mean by that. You know, when I was coming up pretty good at saying, well, I don't understand, why do we do it this way? Why don't we, as I mentioned earlier, call people at work and recruit them? Why don't we work nationally? It seemed crazy to me that we had to work locally. Well, the reason for it was because the phone bill was the biggest expense. But I was like, so what? And why can't we place vice presidents? And a big change in my career was when I was brought, uh, in to train some of the top executive search firms, you know, the big boys. And I saw how they worked and I said, oh, I can sell against them. So I came up with this idea of the performance based retainer where I would get on the phone after somebody had been talking to Korn, Ferry or Russell Reynolds, and I would say, look, I'm not going to gouge you. Like, they do they get a third of their fee when they sign the contract? A third 30 days later and a third 30 days after that? I'm going to charge you the same amount. A third. You got to pay me a third, um, up front because I need to make sure you're serious and that you got skin in the game. And then I don't get another dime until I deliver. And what I'm going to give you is because I came from a contingency world, I'm going to give you the same search firm level service at contingency speed. This thing will be filled in a month. While Korn Ferry still is trying to figure out who's going to work on the project, that kind of stuff. Right? I mean, I looked at every step in the process and I would challenge your listeners to do this with AI. This is the time to do it. People are doing this with workflow and saying, what prompts do we need stuff? Uh, no, I'm saying, why do we price it this way? The whole world is a subscription based model. Right there. There's HBO and HBO Max, and then there's this, uh, phone service and phone service plus could there be a suite of, uh, services that you get for certain amount of money? And could we bill monthly as a subscription service? And could we have ad hoc a la carte things that you can, that you can pick for different pricing? Because I think at some point we're going to have to change the pricing model for the business. But that's just getting into that dark room and saying, why do we do it this way? Uh, another example would be when I started, and maybe when you started, it was a pretty stubborn thing. Your owner would tell you, you tell that candidate after the interview, call me right away. You're going to call me right away and I need to talk to the company, so call me right away. Okay. I never understood that I would do it and then the candidate would say, okay, yeah, uh, I just got out. You told me to call you. I'd say, how'd it go? And they said, I don't know, I just got out. And then I'd call the company the way I was supposed to, and I'd say, how'd it go? And they'd go, I don't know. He just left. And I was like, why do I do this? So I started telling people, look, when you get out of the interview, unlike, um, every other recruiter that tells you to call me right after the interview, go home, think m about it, talk to your spouse, talk to some friends, look at their website. I don't know, take a day or two, but then call me with a decision. And I stopped having turndowns because I questioned, and I don't hear people questioning. So I would challenge your recruiter to say, you know, whenever we think of the changes in the recruiting industry over the last 30 years, they're all technological, but what about the infrastructure? What about the bones of it? What about the sales DNA? Somebody out there will listen to this and get an idea and change the way we work. And that would be a tremendous legacy for your podcast.

Speaker A: Be a fun interview.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, it would.

Speaker A: Jumping to the quick fire questions, they don't need to be quick answers. And this first question, I feel like you've probably gotten this question many, many times over the course of your career. Somebody calls you up and saying they're backed against the wall and they need to make a placement today, what would

Speaker B: you tell them they had to do it today? That's a very different answer than if they had to do it in two weeks. So, uh, today I want you to take every candidate that you've sent out over the last year where the feedback initially was good, but then it went dark, or they said, we can't, the timing's wrong, or for whatever reason, it fizzled, and really think about the ones that seem to fizzle for no reason that you can really remember, it just sort of died. And call every one of those candidates, and I promise you, if there's 70 of them, you're going to find three of them were hired by that company without your knowledge. So you got three fees out there. And now we got to talk about how we're going to go to the company and demand that you get paid because you were screwed. I do this every time somebody says, I have to make a placement immediately or otherwise I'm going to kill myself. And two things happen. One, we usually find a deal, and on average, by the way, we get paid on 50% of the fee on those deals. And, but more importantly, I've just reignited the fire in your belly. You're pissed. You were wronged, somebody screwed you. And that's what I need you to do. Come back to yourself. So that's how I would answer. What about Dewey's? From now, call everybody you've ever placed, um, in your whole career as if you were going to die tomorrow and you were saying goodbye to everybody you've ever known. Call every candidate, every client, people that are friendly to you that will take your call. That, like you and just check in with them. And then at the end, just go, hey, while I got you, you looking to hire anybody? And you will get a search.

Speaker A: I'm going to try something new, and you're not going to know who the guest is. Okay, but what if you could ask a future guest one question? What would it be that they have to answer?

Speaker B: You know, I think it'd be really interesting for those, especially for the people, not everybody that you've had on, but for a lot of the people that throw out big numbers, like 3 million, 5 million, 10 million. I would like to know how responsible you are for that number. In other words, are you rainmaking? Are you managing people that you're taking the credit for their placements? I see a lot of that, right? I see a lot of. Well, my group does 3 million. Okay, but you just said you were a $3 million producer, so I, in mentoring, I have to break that out. And so my question would be, why do you do that? Why do you need to do that? When my people first started going to Pinnacle, they were like, boss, like, I bill 600,000 and I'm a chump. But you actually do bill 600,000, and there are all your jobs and all your placements. And we've had this issue, as, you know, Pinnacle for a long time. It's like, if you're managing a group of people, are those your buildings or not? And the reason why I get upset about it is because it's misleading. For a junior person who's killing themselves and saying, you know, I built 600, uh, and I suck. No, you don't. No, you don't. It's one of the things I learned when I'm on the road. It's like, everybody talks about these big numbers, but then I go to these search firms who give me their numbers, and there's people billing 120, 140, 160. And I mean, that's not a good number, obviously, and they need to improve or leave the business. But if you're billing 250 or 275, that's a really solid direct hire recruiter making a decent living. And they don't need to be misled into thinking that they're somehow, you know, these worthless, plebeian people who haven't figured it out. Does that make sense?

Speaker A: Makes perfect sense.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I'm going to be doing this, like a forward question for the next guest, uh, for a little while.

Speaker B: I'm going to get some emails. I could tell from that one.

Speaker A: That's all right, what is the most overrated recruiting advice still being sold out there?

Speaker B: I got to go back to this idea of if you live in LinkedIn, you no longer have to make cold calls. That LinkedIn pushes this, right? The idea of you should connect with someone and then wait two or three days and then say, thanks for connecting. Here's my pitch. While you're doing that, somebody else is talking to that person, connecting directly, either through a phone call or DMing them. But you are kidding yourself if you think that selling is the bottom line. Yeah, that's, uh, where I get pretty preachy here. It's like, I hear these people, young people here. I'll hear them calling their friends during breaks, and I'm like, and yet you tell me people your age don't talk on the phone, but I see you doing it all day long. The reality is, I do think there's something to be said for if you're under 40, you have been raised where your constant connectivity and you're given to texting as the basic way. So you do need more phone skills than I used to use or need or to have to teach, but you still have to do it. That is nice to say. You shouldn't be on the phone. Used to be a social media savant, and that's what's going to get you leads. I challenge, and I'm, um, sure I'm going to get bad emails about this too. But pinnacle, people that I've mentored who tell me I've got a big LinkedIn presence, and I say, okay, show me the direct. I understand. Don't get me wrong, I understand the indirect. I understand the idea of do it myself, of a presence in your niche and getting to be known as a thought leader. But that's soft stuff that, uh, you don't get credit for that. That's business that might come to you six months from now. Because you reached out to me and I'm like, oh, yeah, that's Ben. I recognize him. He comments on my stuff. He likes my stuff. He said something smart the other day. They might take your call because of that. Nobody's seeing Ben make a thoughtful comment and then responding, hey, Ben, call me. I'm looking for a controller. Nobody can show me that, but I can show you all kinds of job orders. We got, uh, where somebody referred us to somebody and we said, hey, Ben, you and I have a mutual relationship with Matt Walsh, and he thought you and I should talk. I can show you a lot of job orders from that.

Speaker A: What is one Sentence that you would give to a rookie starting on Monday

Speaker B: for rookie starting Monday, and we're going to get real honest. I would say to them, look, don't tell me you love the business. Three days from now, you're not going to. You're not going to like it. A month from now. I want you to get to the point where three months from now you say, I wish I didn't suck at this because I think I could be good at it. That's your goal for the first three months, to get to the point where you say, I wish I didn't suck at this because I think I could be good at it. And then right around month four or five, I want you to be able to say to yourself, honestly, I can't believe these people on this team that I hear on these zoom calls and in the bullpen are making more money than me because I think I'm smart, better, faster. I just haven't done it yet. That's where a good place to be in five months, right around nine months, when the money starts to flow, when you can start to actually see a reward, that's when you should start to feel, I think I got this, and I think I could be good at this. And then I promise you, if you follow that way, three years from now, you'll be saying, I wish I'd found this sooner because it'll cross over from a job I do for money to a calling I can't give up. That's the goal. I tell all new people that don't come to me and tell me you love the business. Nobody could love the business in the beginning because you know, you have so much to learn. It's so overwhelming. There's so much pressure. Talk to me once you've established yourself,

Speaker A: most of the top billers that you've sat with, at what point in time does it become a calling for them, even if they don't realize it has?

Speaker B: For me, um, it's pretty obvious when somebody's really down that I've mentored and they've been really successful, and they go, I just don't think I can do this anymore. I think I tried early on when they tell me that to say, yes, you can. You have to. Let's try this instead. When I go, okay, sold. You can't do this anymore. Okay, so let's figure out what you can do. Let's figure out your choices. So you're making this up. You're 42. You've been doing this for 15 years. What could you do instead. So we're going to quit tomorrow. We know that you're done, so you're going to quit. All right, so what are you going to do? You could do Kalanak, right? But you've been averaging $312,000 over the last four years. You're probably going to make 100. But cool thing of it is you don't have to do any bd. They're going to give you the job. So that's kind of fun. So you could do talent act. Okay. Big reduction in pay, but okay. If you're going to keep sucking in a slump, it's probably not a decrease in pay because you're not even going to make 100 the way you're going. So, okay, we could do talent act. Other than that, what could you do? I suppose you could sell something else because you're really a salesperson. What else could you sell? And they go, I don't know. Yeah, okay, so you could sell something else. Okay, so you could do talent act for less money. You could sell something else. We don't know what. But there's going to be a ramp up no matter what you're selling. So you wouldn't make any money doing that for a while, if you're going to make it at all. Yeah, that's it. It's like the vice president say, being a great recruiter, it prepares you for nothing. So you have almost no options. What do you think about that? And that's usually the cold water in the face moment where I know that if they were to quit and I've had it happen probably three times, maybe three times in that scenario, they've quit. And they've always come back. They always come back. Sometimes when the market gets better, sometimes, you know, when they've had enough therapy, um, but they always come back. And I believe that. I believe if you're meant to do this business, it will haunt you. If you stop doing it, it will haunt you until you get back to yourself. Because look, at the end of the day, there isn't anything like it. You get the power and adrenaline of being a player and making real good money and having a certain status. But you also get the energy and adrenaline, uh, rush of talking to these C level people about mission critical positions. You've impacted these companies. And then on the other side, that social worker in you, you have a direct and profound impact on how these candidates spend their lives. I mean, what is a, uh, life? But a bunch of days added up and you as a recruiter, impact how they're spending their days. If it wasn't for the fact that we make so much money, it'd be considered noble work. So of course it's hard to replace. Of course it is.

Speaker A: This is going to be my last question for you.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: And mostly, I'm cutting myself off, or I feel like we'd go for another hour. I just looked up at the time. You've probably got every question in the book over the last 40 years.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: How do I fix this counteroffer? How do I fix this deal? How do I become a better recruiter? How do, like, blah, blah, blah? Do you ever wish that there's a question that somebody would ask you, but nobody ever does? What would be that question?

Speaker B: I guess it has. And you're kind of like the very growth of podcasters, so I give you credit for asking a question that cuts to the bone. I was always surprised that when, you know, people would see the list of accomplishments that I've had or the amount of different things I've done. People always have said, you know, how do you find the time to do this? But nobody ever asked me, to what degree were you able to do that because you never had children? Nobody ever asked, what's that answer? I've been blessed with, um, step kids with women that I've been in love with. There's times when I think, oh, thank God I wasn't their actual father, because I already live and die by how they feel every day. And then there's other days when I think I would have crushed it.

Speaker A: Have all those recruiters over the years been your kids?

Speaker B: Yeah, I guess that's the bottom line, Ben. Yep. Unruly, uh, ungrateful, wonderful kids that you've watched grow. Yeah. Yep. Been a ride, dude.

Speaker A: In reality. Got two last questions, Danny.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: If anybody wants to follow you or connect with you that hasn't already done so, how do they go about doing that?

Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, the training company is called Cordon to Danny. You can certainly reach out and according to Danny, certainly link in with me. Joanne Cathero runs the training company. Runs my life, actually, completely, but specifically the training company. And, yeah, I'm always happy if there's people that want to talk about coaching or any of our. Any of our products or services. Happy to do that, too.

Speaker A: We're talking about being one of your kids.

Speaker B: Yeah. There's always room for more in the family.

Speaker A: Before we let you go, is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners?

Speaker B: I think it's amazing to me when I look back, I didn't want to be a recruiter. I don't think anybody does. Nobody grows up and says, I want to be a recruiter. You know, you end up a recruiter. And I hope that changes over time. I hope the business gets to a point where when kids are going to those guidance counselors in high school, they say, so how does somebody become a recruiter? Uh, that's I think when we'll know that we've gotten there and that, uh, everything has come full circle and whatever mission I've had has been complete.

Speaker A: Well, Danny, like I said at the very beginning, I've known about you for years. I've actually looked forward to this sitting down with you for a long time. But I also know the impact that you've had on many people's lives in our industry. I know the billing numbers that have changed because of spending time with you or learning something from you. So thank you for the opportunity to sit down. And for the listeners out there, 2026 is your year. I believe in you. Danny believes in you.

Speaker B: Hell yeah.

Speaker A: Make it happen. You know the resume never tells the full story. Candidates share what really matters during conversations, on calls and interviews, over email. Their motivations, salary expectations, plans to relocate. Most of that detail ends up buried in notes and forgotten. Atlas changes that. It's the AI first recruitment platform built to eliminate admin. It captures every conversation automatically and turns it into something you can use with MagicSearch. You can ask Atlas questions like who talked about wanting a four day week? Or who mentioned they're open to relocating next year. It searches across your entire database and pulls the answers instantly. No keyword guessing and no digging through old notes. You get insight from real conversations, not limited resume fields. Atlas also makes BD easier with opportunities you can track and grow client relationships powered by generative AI and built into your existing workflow. If you want visibility, smart dashboards give you a clear view of the pipeline across your business. And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported over 40% EBITDA growth and over 80% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. It's built for agencies that want to grow without adding more manual work. Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive Listener offer@reruitwithatlas.com thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter

Speaker B: Podcast with Benjamin Mena.

Speaker A: If you enjoy hit, subscribe and leave a rating.