Building a Monster

The alarm went off.

Time to go.

I was both nervous and excited on this particular morning.

Thursday, August 20th, 2015 I stepped into a new career in recruiting at Management Recruiters of Coeur d'Alene (MR Cd'A).

Coming off an emotional day the day before saying goodbye to my coworkers at North Idaho College after 7.5 years, it was a quick turn around.?

But I needed to get going as fast as possible.

The move out of higher education was necessary but risky. There were no guarantees of success…..or money.

Getting my MBA revived the ambition that I had in my younger years to be successful in life.

The goal was to be able to provide for my family. At the time, that was my ex fiancé, her son, and my daughter, Kiwi.

Money was tight and I was tired of it. 8.5 years in a respectable career should have yielded more comfort. Instead, I was struggling to pay the bills and having to do gymnastics to pay for my daughter to do any extra curriculars. I wanted the question to be "what do you want to do?" versus "how are we going to pay for this?" when it came to Kiwi doing anything in her life.

I had a vision of owning a house with a boat and a BMW parked out front.

Above all else, I wanted comfort. The key was finding the vehicle to earn the money I wanted. Recruiting seemed to be just that.

August through December I trained and learned.

Management Recruiters is an independent franchise office of the MRINetwork which is an international company. Because of this structure, they offered a plethora of resources. By the time 2015 was over I had participated in the TRACS on boarding rookie training program, a Rookie Race, had read, and taken part in anything else I could get my hands on to learn.

Understanding the content is one thing. Applying it is another. No matter how much I studied and hyped myself up it still didn't prepare me for cold calling.

I knew that the freedom I yearned for was on the other side of these calls.

When I started at MR Coeur d'Alene, the owner of the company gave me the option to recruit in one of two industries; Consulting Engineering or Banking.

The reason MR Cd'A was in those two professions was that the owner of my company was a Consulting Engineer by profession before starting his recruiting company. In the middle of his career, he contracted and beat non-Hodgkins lymphoma. This experience helped him realize he wanted to be around home more for his wife and daughters. Recruiting gave him that opportunity, so he started Management Recruiters in 2003.

The owner chose banking as the other industry because of how much money he had paid banks over the years. His goal? Take as much money back from the banks as he could.

I liked the idea of being a "bandito" and taking from the banks too. So, I chose to specialize in banking.

Needless to say, as I progressed through training making ends meet financially was a struggle. That continued into the beginning of 2016 as well.

Pressure was on for me to produce.

At the end of every year, MR Coeur d'Alene has a tradition; take time to reflect on the previous year’s accomplishments and find areas for improvement. In the form of a presentation, each employee takes these experiences, makes a plan to move forward for the next year, and presents this plan to the rest of the office.

Since 2016, this exercise is something I’ve done every year as a Recruiter. It’s therapeutic but also a good way to hold yourself accountable to your goals for the future.

Being that I only had 4 months to reflect on at the end of 2015, it was more about moving forward into 2016.

At the time when I was trying to find inspiration for my presentation, Chuck Pagano was the Head Coach of the Indianapolis Colts in the National Football League (NFL). He held this role from 2012 until 2017.

No matter what level of Football, taking over as head coach is a big task. Chuck assumed a 2 - 14 team from the year before.

Not only did he have to assess what the organization already had and who/what to keep. He also had to bring in new people, install a new culture, teach the playbook, and implement new ways of operations. All the while going through a season and trying to win games.

As I looked for ideas for my 2016 presentation, I was reminded of a post-game speech I saw from Chuck in 2012 to his team after a win. "We're building us a monster." he said in reference to their 2012 goals. The visual was perfect.

Year 1 of a new era of coaching has often been referred to as the "zero year" because of all the rightsizing and changes that happen. Once there's been a full year of the changes, that's truly where you can see what kind of team they're going to be under the coaching staff.

That was the approach I was taking to recruiting. Like Chuck, my goal was to learn and establish myself all while winning games (also known as making placements). These parallels in situations gave me the idea to come up with an annual mantra that encompassed my goals. Hence how my first recruiting campaign in 2016 was dubbed “Build A Monster.”

Aside from selling t-shirts in high school, I had never truly been in a sales capacity in my career. I needed to learn the banking industry, recruiting, AND refine my sales skills.

10,000 dials.

The number of calls I needed to be proficient in all things recruiting, according to my manager.

So I started pounding the phone.

Texas was my original territory. And it was tough sledding to start.? I just wasn't connecting with the market or getting solid traction.

In 2016, my boss had me shift to Northern California (defined in our office as Bakersfield to the Oregon Border) and immediately felt more comfortable.

Not sure if it was because my dad is from the San Francisco/Bay Area, the market was more in line with my personality, or if the market was more robust in general. Regardless, I started to generate more activity.

Even still, I wasn't turning this motion into placements. To keep getting better, I enrolled in another couple of Rookie Races thinking the competition with others in the Network would help me. I took a Rookie Reinforcement class and met with a mentor weekly.

The progress was slow. And it was clear from the beginning that this was a 'sink or swim' environment being that my manager was not a good teacher.

I was having to learn through trial and error and coaching my manager to coach me. That was a daunting task because I didn't know what I didn't know.

Then one day, my manager simply said "Alex....all you're trying to do is convince people to talk to each other." THAT was the "ah ha" moment I needed. "I can do that. That's easy." I thought.

By March, seven months into my new career, I made my first placement. The victory gave me the confidence that I could be a good Recruiter.

There was a lot of pressure at home and not much support or belief that this was the right decision for me and my career. My dad even went as far as to reach out my cousin, Rad, in his typical fearful manner wondering if I was doing the right thing.

Once the money started coming in.....that provided some reassurance that I was in fact capable.

Throughout my life I've always had a chip on my shoulder and prided myself in proving people wrong. But it was also hard not having the support from some of your closest people.

The rest of the year, I was able to make a total of 6.5 placements for $182,725 in billings.

Commission was coming in and for the first time in my adult life, I was able to buy Christmas presents without stress and enjoy the holidays. Seeing Kiwi open her gifts and being present for the moment told me that I was on to something big for my life.

It took a year and 4 months but it was clear......

?

I Built A Monster

- Alex de Golia

Al Ki (al - KAI) Consultants