Jeremy Weisz 15:44
Talk about implementing EOS. I mean, obviously, you had an expert who had done it, but you know, the team still has to implement and execute, and talk about how the implementation works.
Jeremy Jenson 15:56
Sure. So most of the time companies hire an EOS implementer, somebody pays anywhere from $6000 to $10,000 a day, to help you formally implement into your C suite and mid level management team, right? You know, that really wasn’t something that I was willing to invest in at the time. And so we self implemented. Again, like I said, Scott was familiar with it, because his company had been doing it for the previous four or five years. But I think one thing that was very, very important for Scott to have, as we still kept him with his Vistage coach, Christine spray, who is also a certified master EOS implementer. Right.
And so he always had that resource whenever he needed it, because his business coach was an EOS Certified Professional. And so when Scott, rolled it out and rolled it out in December of 2017, I remember we were sitting at our, at my dining room table in my house. And we had planned to be there. I think for seven hours. It was me, Scott and Casey, myself and my two VPS. And we ended up staying there for 10 hours. And during that we had to define several things. What was our mission? What was our vision? What were our values, our unique selling point, what’s our Y, right? What are our rocks? What are those strategic initiatives that we need to tackle over the next quarter over the next year?
What about over the next five and 10 years, we needed to provide clarity in that meeting. That way, the right hand could continue to talk to the left hand going forward. And it’s so funny as a headhunter. I see 100 million dollar companies, $500 million companies, completely misaligned mission, vision and values. Everyone’s got their own individual p&l, and they’re operating with a different culture and a different strategy. Right, you’ve got sales shitting, on operations, operations, blaming sales, right. And there’s no common annuity. There’s nobody working together. And that ultimately kills the culture. And then the bottom line,or some key pieces to the EOS format that you like, because I know there’s a lot of different pieces, like you mentioned the rocks and did level 10 meetings.
Jeremy Weisz 18:06
What are some of the key pieces that you go back and go, Wow, I can’t believe we live without this beforehand?
Jeremy Jenson 18:23
Yeah, definitely. So it certainly be those executive off site strategy sessions that we do once a quarter. My President Scott Kelly, who was hired as VP then later promoted them again, he’s the one that prepares the agenda for that, where we identify, discuss and solve issues in the company. We have our people analyzer, we determine are people in the right seats on the bus? Who are the culture killers, we need to get them off the bus, even if they’re a high revenue producer, that may be stunting the growth of those around them.
Right. And so, you know, really, I’ll say that it was a combination of all the tools and resources, but the one thing that we needed was that integrator, the individual that could hold myself accountable, and my VP accountable, who is the individual that manages that $7 million book of business, because we’re the rainmakers, dude, we are add, we don’t need to prepare for meetings. We just walk in, you give us a microphone, we execute, right? Scott was the planner. He’s the guy that could foresee the challenges and bottlenecks before they even happen. Right. Casey and I are the ones that wait till they happen. And then we just bust the wall down, right? But that’s not sustainable whenever you’re building a profitable business. And so it was the integrator that was key.
Jeremy Weisz 19:43
I’m sure there’s been some heated discussions throughout the course of the company when you put those two in almost no opposing things, but like, what are some conversations Jaron, you’re smiling at me? Yeah. You buttheads about, because you come and you’re like, don’t worry about it America. Like we got this, I don’t think we need to plan. Let’s just go go go. I mean, this is the visionary and integrator, right? The push pulls there. What are some things that you maybe buttheads on, but like, come out the other side, and it’s better?
Jeremy Jenson 20:19
Absolutely. So I’m gonna have to go back really far in the memory bank right now. Because I’ll say for the first two years, we butted heads a lot. And then a couple of things happen, you know, my president went through a divorce, I went through divorce, those are both very humbling experiences, where you’re forced to look in the mirror and say, you can make one of two decisions, you could point the finger at the other person and say them them them, or do you do what Scott and I did you look in the mirror and you say, how did I fail?
Where did I go wrong? And so, you know, it was taking on that level of humility, being self aware, being coachable. I think that was very, very important for Scott and myself, to really learn how to see the other side of the table. Right? And, and pursue conversations with empathy and seek to understand by putting myself in another person’s shoes, right. And so I wouldn’t necessarily say that we’ve had too many disagreements, you know, since late 2019, because those quarterly strategy sessions really keep the pulse. Right? Maybe if let’s say there’s a spectrum and it’s in zero to 100, this way, and zero to 100, this way, in a quarter, you could probably get to about 15 to 20. And then that strategy session brings you back to recalibrate, right.
But if you can go a whole year, or sometimes companies don’t even do it at all, you can be 80% in opposite directions, that’s whenever it creates the blow ups and the irreparable damage. Right. And so I’ll say that, that it’s those quarterly strategy sessions that really reduce it, but, you know, maybe a disagreement. You had I remember when, when, when, you know, Casey came on as VP in May of 2016. Scott came on as VP in October of 2016. Well, guess what, in January of 2020, Scott was promoted to President Scott came after Casey, what the hell?
Jeremy Weisz 22:23
What what? Right? I sit down with Casey, I
Jeremy Jenson 22:28
Right? I sat down with Casey, I said, Casey. Do you want to be the president of the company? Do you want to be the backstop? Do you want to be an integrator? Do you want to be an operational process systems engineer? Accountability?
Jeremy Weisz 22:39
Right? Well, no, I just want to sell.
Jeremy Weisz 22:44
If you put it like that, Jeremy, yeah, no, I just
Jeremy Jenson 22:46
i want to generate revenue, I want to make a bunch of money. That’s what drives KC night. Right. And so it did require Scott and him sitting down to where we needed to illustrate. Hey, Casey, just because Scott is the President doesn’t diminish your role in any capacity.
Jeremy Weisz 23:03
If we were a train,
Jeremy Jenson 23:08
right? I Casey’s used this analogy before, let’s say encore search partners are the train.
Jeremy Weisz 23:13
Well,
Jeremy Jenson 23:16
Scott might be the engineer, right? Jeremy provides the tracks. And then it’s Casey that’s pouring the fuel into the train. Does that make sense? So it cannot operate without all three. And so when you realize, hey, I need to own my role. And my colleagues, right, my associates at the VP and C level, there’s a tremendous amount of mutual respect and admiration that we have for each other but not because of our technical competency, but because we know that it couldn’t operate without the other person. That was very, very important to remove that ego to keep us on the right track, you know, culture, maintaining culture.
Jeremy Weisz 24:04
And you mentioned culture killers, what are some culture killers in your organization?
Jeremy Jenson 24:10
You know, I think culture killers could be individuals that gossip. I think that that’s a massive culture killer. I think that, you know, most employees want to go to work and they want to do their job, they want to be paid fairly, they want to be treated with respect and they want to go home. And, you know, individuals that feed into spreading gossip or rumors or trying to, you know, create chaos in the organization are massive culture killers, even if they’re high performers from a revenue generation standpoint, right. So that’s number one. Another one could be, you know, thinking about ones that we’ve had in the past, you know, individuals that think that they’re better than their colleagues Right.
And when I say better, what I mean is more like entitlement or, you know, they’re not held to the same standard of excellence to the core values of what everyone else is. So they talk down to people, they diminish other people’s roles. I think that can be a massive culture killer, right. And so, you know, on previous podcasts, I’ve talked about, you know, one individual at the time that was generating revenue figures that we had really never seen before. And, you know, a 900k producer in one year in 2019. And there was a young associate in the firm, who was kind of rubbing me the wrong way. And she voiced some frustrations and didn’t want to entirely throw him under the bus. But frankly, it wasn’t something that I was okay with.
And ultimately, we had to manage that one individual out of your organization, but it’s so funny, Jeremy, that young associate that he was rubbing the wrong way. The next year, she built 1.2 million. The year after that she built 1.5 million numbers. I told you we’d never seen 900k before. Well, by removing that emotional and physical roadblock, she was able to completely outperform what he was doing. And that’s the young lady that grew into our Vice President of legal. And so by keeping someone who we all thought was a massively high
Jeremy Weisz 26:29
performer, we would have lost someone that I view as
Jeremy Jenson 26:34
my equal in the company, right. I mean, that’s, that would have been a very, very expensive decision to make. I’ll tell you that.
Jeremy Weisz 26:43
Jeremy, I want to talk about the gossip. You know, like, like you said, these are tough. At the time, sometimes they seemed tough. I mean, maybe torn is a better, better statement like these are high producers, you know, they do well on the company. So if there’s a piece there, sometimes it’s tough to make the decision. How do you approach someone you know, they’re a good person, but they are exhibiting one of those behaviors like gossiping. How do you approach it with
Jeremy Jenson 27:19
without gossip? toxicity? Yeah, chaos. Yeah,
Jeremy Weisz 27:23
I’m sure because someone listening, I think it’s experiencing, I mean, in some way, this, I love to hear how you handle it.
Jeremy Jenson 27:31
Yeah, I think it’s very important to tie the coaching conversation to one of your core values.
Jeremy Weisz 27:38
And, you know, if, if you can’t
Jeremy Jenson 27:41
tie the coaching conversation to a core value, then you should probably add a value to the wall, right? And so when you look at, you know, our, our why, right? It’s best to close deals, and to make money, right? That’s our way. Sounds very, very simple. But that’s why we all come to work each and every day. And so there may be, you know, an opportunity to coach and say, hey, look, what you’re doing is not contributing to our why it’s actually pulling away from it. It’s distracting from it, let’s have a conversation.
What’s driving that gossip? Let me see if I can solve that problem as an Executive leader, right. But number two, you know, when you look at our core values of excellence, meticulous coachable, professionalism, gratitude, and, and competitive, right. You know, I think it’s very important to tie specific core values to that, to that coaching opportunity as well, right. And core values shouldn’t just be something that’s on the website or on the wall. You know, we talk about our core values. In every single level 10 meeting every single Monday at 2pm.
We talked about our values, every single one on one coaching session, we talked about our core values, in the interview process, they’re outlined in the offer letter, you are committing to these values, just like their KPIs. Right to hit as a sales professional, right. And so you know what another thing that I’m very proud of is the value in always hitting those homes while most companies give out your awards to the President’s Club and the Circle of Excellence and, and the Gold members and Platinum members of revenue figures. We give out bonuses, and we give out accolades and awards for our core value champions. And so creating a culture around having that shared mission, vision and values is imperative to long term growth and success, which ultimately drives profitability.
Jeremy Weisz 29:48
What is the frequency and how do you run the one on one coaching session?
Jeremy Jenson 29:53
Sure. So for new employees, our CEO and president meets with them About once a week for the first 90 days just to make sure that you know that number one, they’ve got the right tools and resources to be successful, you’d be surprised how many people start jobs. And they don’t even bring it up until the second month for like, oh, I don’t, I don’t even have that login, right. So it’s important to keep a very, very close pulse on him for at least the first few weeks, right.
And then after that, some of the cadence it goes to once every two weeks for individuals that we call run a full desk, right? So that means they handle client relationships and candidate relationships. And then for individuals that are non producers, or individuals that just handle the candidate recruiting side, they can potentially go to every three weeks, right? And so that’s kind of the cadence of what we do with our one on ones. But with that being said, a little bit over a year ago, I posted into the EO group WhatsApp needs in Leeds. And I said, Man, you know, I’ve been watching the show billions. And
I think I need a windy wind. Right? Are you familiar with the show? So she’s basically like the company therapist. But she’s so valuable to the executive team that Bobby AXE Axelrod, the owner of the firm, gives her a $25 million bonus at the end of the year. That’s the value that she creates, to maintaining the mindset in maximizing performance of their most valuable asset, which is their people right there a hedge fund in New York, that manages over 15 billion AUM but uh, but I needed a windy and so we ended up hiring in April of 2020, to an individual named Matt Todd Marathi, who is a licensed clinician and performance and mindset coach to kind of come in every Tuesday and Thursday, and have those 45 minute sessions with our employees that they can book just like we’re in a therapist office, right, but it’s their performance and mindset coach.
And so, you know, after learning our culture, seeing some common issues that people were facing, whether it be, you know, impostor syndrome, or, or, you know, having a lack of empathy for their colleagues, she ended up developing curriculum around having small group breakout sessions, to do like eight to 10 person focus groups where they can all increase their emotional intelligence, their self awareness, their executive presence, so it’s kind of like a hodgepodge of like having a therapist and Toastmasters and a business coach, and you know, it’s pretty awesome, man.
Jeremy Weisz 32:52
I love it. Thanks for sharing that. That’s huge. Um, I want to talk about the police chief.
Jeremy Weisz 32:58
And what happened, Elise cheated.
Jeremy Jenson 33:02
My good friend, John Nichols.
Jeremy Weisz 33:04
You know, talking about Jason Smith going from LAPD fighting, gangs literally fighting gangs to the agency on our side. I want to hear the police chief’s story.
Jeremy Jenson 33:15
Yeah, so. So the funny thing about the police chief is people hit me up every day. Hey, Jeremy, I’m looking for a job. And because of the nature of what we do, I mean, we’re like, you know, purple squirrel hunters, companies tell us they need a left-handed female certified financial planner in Northern California, who went to a public college that grew up with single parents. Okay, we got it. You know what I’m saying? Like, the most rare of rare things, that’s what we specialize in. So people that are typically looking for a job.
I mean, maybe they don’t fit one of our clients, exact parameters, right. But I’d had my ex wife, her, and her college roommates husband give me a ring. He was the chief of police for Southwestern Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. And he said, Jeremy, I need to make a change. Right. You know, and we have some changes in leadership. I don’t like where the direction of the seminary is going. I want to go into corporate America. So John, we don’t like you know, companies pay me big fees, because they need someone doing the exact same job at the company across the street and they want to steal that intellectual capital. Okay. Literally that afternoon, I got a call from one of my clients, the Senior Vice President of Human Resources for a 1500 person, private equity owned oil and gas service company. And he says, Jeremy, I need a field HR manager in Lubbock,
Jeremy Weisz 34:51
Texas. Okay, well, what do you want?
Jeremy Jenson 34:55
He goes, I don’t want anyone with HR experience. He said, they have a mindset where they want to protect the employees. But when this is all filled with services, man, right? These guys are a little rough around the edges, they get their hands dirty sometimes, you know, he said I want someone that is skilled with investigations, that has strong attention to detail on filling out reports, right? Somebody that knows how to handle themselves around a blue collar workforce, and still be comfortable presenting to executive leadership. So I said, Zack, what do you think about a police officer? Right? He fills out reports he does investigations, and even a police chief.
Well, that guy does presentations to the media, to public officials. And he says, Absolutely, I would hire that you’re a genius. Jeremy, how did you come up with the Oh, no, it was just the guy called me that morning. Yeah, you’re a genius. You’re right. That’s what he said. Yeah. So anyways, I told him, I said, Hey, my buddy, I think is a good fit. And you know, it’s funny, because he interviewed four people for the role. And, my buddy ended up getting the job. So it wasn’t like I was forced feeding in one candidate, right. But I just thought that that was such an amazing star-aligned moment where I could create meaningful change in somebody’s life, who thought that they were never going to be able to leave this niche industry.
And here he is four or five years later, climbing the corporate ladder in this oilfield service company. And he’s just started as a field HR manager, you know, anybody but he moved his wife and four kids from Fort Worth all the way to Lubbock. Right, he had to be pretty sure that that deal was gonna stick for sure.
Jeremy Weisz 36:51
Thanks for sharing that. That’s awesome. I’d love to hear what ideal clients are, because you serve both. I mean, you probably have a lot of people contacting you, like, I want to find an amazing job. But you have companies, you know, contacting you. And then who’s an ideal client? For you? And then we’ll talk about maybe Honeywell for a second. Because you serve a lot of different fields. Because I know your army you serve financial energy, legal engineering, manufacturing, industrial technology, talk about ideal clients.
Jeremy Jenson 37:25
Yeah. So if you ask myself, or one of my two VPS, we would give a different answer, right? So I’ve got, I’ve got an executive VP that runs our wealth management group, right? So think about Wealth Advisors. I’ve got another VP, she runs our law firm recruiting practice. So any law firm that’s growing, the group that I manage, and the group that I’m personally responsible for driving revenue for is our energy, industrial and manufacturing group. And so that’s going to be companies that are, you know, one of two things, right? Maybe they’re a mid middle market or enterprise level company that makes something right.
Do they make plastics? Do they make consumer packaged goods, right, food products, chemicals, somebody that makes something in industrial manufacture? And then we also recruit for a lot of private equity funded, energy, industrial and technology companies as well, right? Because, you know, as I mentioned, when you’re the best direct hire recruiting firm in Houston, probably the world but you know, that doesn’t have those awards yet. You know, we’re typically not going to be the cheapest option on the block, right? There’s people that work from home, in their boxers with no overhead that can charge a fee that is probably half as mine, right? So when you’re working with the top firm, much like companies work with EY, PwC, Deloitte, those companies are way more expensive than a solo, you know, CPA working out of his house, right.
But the point that I’m trying to make is we recruit for private equity funded companies and venture capital funded companies, because it’s about speed and accuracy to grow and increase the enterprise value of their business. And they don’t have as much emotional tie to that recruiting fee, because it’s not coming out of the entrepreneurs pocket. Does that make sense? And so it’s middle market and enterprise level companies that have recruiting agency budgets of seven figures plus, and then of course, it’s private equity and venture capital, industrial energy manufacturing and technology companies. And so if someone is a degreed engineer, right, it could be the title engineer could be supply chain manufacturing operations. It could be a technical salesperson that needs to be an engineer. We are the best resource in the entire injury or industry for those positions.
Jeremy Weisz 39:56
And this kind of relates to Honeywell. What do you do with them?
Jeremy Jenson 40:01
Yeah. So well it is my largest enterprise client to seven figure accounts for us. And, you know, the way that we got in was I worked with an individual when I was 20 to 23 years old. I was working at an HR consulting company and inside sales, she liked me. I liked her, like professional hair, you know, like best friends. And she knew that I was the smart guy. But whenever I went and started my own firm, she kind of followed my trajectory on LinkedIn and, and was proud of me and one day they were bitching on their HR call about they couldn’t get this field cybersecurity engineer position built in Northern California, they needed to have a CISSP certification, they needed to travel 90% They needed to be able to lift 100 pounds over their head, there was all these variables that they needed in all the recruiting agencies that they use could not close the deal.
So you have this you know, 2829 year old HR generalist, raise your hand on the call and say a friend of mine owns an agency. I trust him. I think that he could close the deal. And they let this little tiny recruiting firm in the door at Honeywell International. Actually, it was Honeywell process solutions, a subsidiary of Honeywell performance materials, a subsidiary of Honeywell International on my recruiting agreement, my paper, right? After I closed the deal, I sent them an invoice. I said what the hell are these people at the corporation like? This isn’t an approved vendor. And so that they had to get me on the vendor list after the fact they hired my candidate.
But we found someone within two weeks. And it was because we don’t post the job on zip recruiter or monster or career builder or indeed or LinkedIn and wait for applicants. Our clients can post the jobs. You come to us when you want us to build a very definitive project of 20 to 50 people that are qualified in the whole United States. And we cold call cold email, cold text message, cold Facebook message. We call their mom, we call their dad, we call their ex wife. How much does it pay? Oh, it pays 140 Oh, yeah, call him. He needs to raise his child. So that’s why we’re headhunters. Yeah, private investigator.
Jeremy Jenson 42:47
I love it. I love that we do this. I feel like we may be the only ones to do it this way. I don’t even post jobs. Other agencies want to talk about AI. Right? Artificial Intelligence and in lead scoring for resumes and drip marketing. We have AI. It’s called actual intelligence. We don’t learn artificial intelligence. That’s our competitive advantage.
Jeremy Weisz 43:17
Jeremy, I want to be the first one to thank you. And before we end, I want to just point people to check out encore search.com To learn more, and check them out what they’re doing. And Jeremy, thank you so much.
Jeremy Jenson 43:32
Thanks for having me on. I had a lot of fun.