Andrew: Hey, Gail, I want to try a new intro here with you. November, 2009, you were called into your boss’ office and your boss said what to you?
Gail: She said to me, “Due to the downturn of the economy, we have no work left and I’m sorry, I’m going to have to let you go. Thank you for your service.” I was with her for six years and I helped her business grow. Things were amazing, obviously, in like 2006, 2007. And then obviously I started seeing things go slower and slower. Less companies were hiring. I kind of knew things were going bad before everyone else. And then in 2009, that’s what she told me. But I wasn’t shocked.
Andrew: You know, you and I were both smiling as you were saying. I was smiling out of discomfort hearing this story of somebody who lost her job. Were you really just smiling as this happened? Was it that easy or were you frustrated, scared?
Gail: No. I wasn’t because she made the right business decision. So, I took the emotional piece out of it being a business person. I just knew it was the right thing. There was no work. There was no business at that point. So, I didn’t take it personally and she had to do what she had to do.
Andrew: Meanwhile, around the same time, your husband had another life changing effect too. What happened to your husband?
Gail: Yeah. At the same time, he had a business, actually a restaurant–he’s a chef–his own restaurant for five years and obviously during that time for restaurants it wasn’t a great time and his lease was up and he decided not to renew.
Andrew: Okay.
Gail: It was maybe two weeks before that. So, we were definitely at a crossroads at that point. But I would have to say that–and it sounds really cliché–that it was probably the best thing.
Andrew: Because you built this company that we’re about to talk about.
Gail: Right.
Andrew: And you were starting to give me revenue numbers. Was it revenue after a year or two years? What was the revenue number you gave me?
Gail: I would say it was about $1.3 million, $1.5 million in about a year in a half.
Andrew: Wow. I can see how that would be a really positive thing. Were you profitable on that money?
Gail: Yes, absolutely.
Andrew: You were? Making more money than you were at the previous company or not yet?
Gail: Not yet because I was putting money back in. So, I didn’t feel it as much. I was actually quite shocked that that happened, but the reason why I think I did so well was because I leveraged all the contacts that I had. What I did was everyone says you have to have a niche and you have to specialize.
Andrew: You know what? Let me give you the intro so that people understand where you’re coming from and then we’ll talk about why you’re about to say something that’s completely different from everyone else who says go niche.
All right. The woman who you’ve just been hearing from, her name is Gail Tolstoi-Miller. She is the founder of Consultnetworx, which is a national staffing and consulting firm. She is also the author of “Networking Karma,” which teaches people how to network. This interview is sponsored by ContentPromotion.com. Later on I’ll tell you why if you need somebody to promote your content to tap into influencers, you’ve got to check out ContentPromotion.com. I am Andrew Warner, founder of Mixergy.com, where I interview entrepreneurs like Gail about how they built their businesses.
Gail, this is an up story. It starts with a really tough situation. You then have to figure things out. Before you get into whether you decided to go niche or not, what were you thinking of doing after you lost your job? Where did the idea come from for this business that we’re about to find out about?
Gail: You know, I’m not a great planner. So, I’ve always worked in very entrepreneurial environments. I really didn’t come up with a business plan, I just went for it. I went with what I knew, the knowledge that I had.
Andrew: What you knew was staffing, helping companies hire people?
Gail: Exactly. And I’ve also worked on the corporate side as well.
Andrew: What’s the corporate side of staffing?
Gail: So, the corporate side of staffing is actually working for a particular organization and running their staffing. So, for, let’s say, Google, if I was a recruiter or director of staffing for Google, which I was not but I’m just giving that example.
Andrew: Okay. Staffing for a corporation means hiring on their behalf.
Gail: Exactly.
Andrew: So, basically, that’s what you knew. You said, “I could put this to work. I don’t need more than a cell phone, really, to make this happen,” and all the contacts you had before. You were starting to say, “I wasn’t go to go niche. I was going to go broad.” Why? Why not go focus on one area?
Gail: Because I wasn’t sure at the time from a hiring perspective. There was such a freeze on hiring that at that point, I decided I’m going to see where this falls. I had a broad experience anyway. Before that, I was just doing HR professionals, but before that, I was doing IT. I’m in New Jersey. So, I’m in the pharmaceutical hub. So, a lot of my clients were in the pharmaceutical industry and before that I did a lot of pharma recruiting. So, what I decided to do was recruit for all those different positions–clinical, regulatory, admin, finance.
Andrew: So, Gail, I understand how they would hire you. Frankly, there is no risk for them. They’re basically saying, “Gail, if you bring us someone who we hire, we’ll pay you a fee based on what we pay them.” So, no risk for them. For you, though, how do you go and you hire people? Do you remember the very first person that you place? Do you remember one of the first people you placed?
Gail: Yes.
Andrew: So, how’d you find that person?
Gail: I have such a huge database of contacts. Just my networking and my recruiting methods.
Andrew: I see. So, you were hired. What kind of company was this person for?
Gail: It was for a pharmaceutical company.
Andrew: Pharmaceutical company–the pharmaceutical company hires you, says, “We need to find someone in this position,” you go into your phone, whatever system, we’ll find out what it is in a moment, and you go through it and you find someone and you say, “I’ve got a position for you,” you put them in front of this pharmaceutical company and they eventually get hired.
Gail: Right. But they were a temp. So, they were on my payroll. So, the biggest obstacle, actually, is funding because if you’re doing $1.5 million in sales in temporary consulting work, you have to pay those employees. They’re on your payroll. I don’t 1099 them. So, I treat them as employees. So, where do I get the money to fund all that? I have to foot that bill, that payroll for at least 30-60 days until the client pays me. So, what I did was get a temporary funding company that funds your payroll on a weekly basis based on your invoices.
Andrew: Oh, I see. That’s high interest, isn’t it?
Gail: No. It’s really not that bad.
Andrew: Really?
Gail: Yeah.
Andrew: It’s like a factoring company?
Gail: Exactly. It’s a factoring company. What’s great is you don’t have to take out any loans and then the company pays the factoring company directly.
Andrew: What did this employee do?
Gail: Oh gosh, I think they were an HRAS person.
Andrew: What’s that?
Gail: They work with the HR systems.
Andrew: Software?
Gail: Yeah.
Andrew: Okay. And this big company can’t just put that person on their payroll and give you payment already?
Gail: No because actually the wave of the future–I believe what they say is 60 percent of the workforce is going to be temporary–because of the downturn in the economy, companies do not know what the landscape is going to be. So, they hire temps. I have temps with companies for two, three years.
Andrew: I see.
Gail: You think to yourself, “Couldn’t they just hire that person full time?” But they don’t want to take the risk.
Andrew: The risk of what?
Gail: The risk of firing them, benefits.
Andrew: I see. They just want one price to pay for the person and you go deal with all the headaches of hiring and firing.
Gail: Exactly. So, I bill them each week and then I pay the employee. I’m responsible for all the insurance and worker’s comp and all that fun stuff.
Andrew: Okay. Wow. That’s pretty fast recovery for a woman who had just been fired, whose husband had to start over fresh too. Is that because of your background? I read that you lost your father–this is kind of early in our conversation to bring it up–but I read you lost your father at 14.
Gail: Yeah. That was without a doubt a pivotal moment in my life. My life started after that. Before that, I was just a typical 14-year old in New Jersey suburbia, living my life. What’s the biggest problem I was going to have, what pair of jeans I was going to wear? So, at that time when that happened–and it happened all of a sudden, my father passed away of a heart attack, basically I came from home school and he was gone.
That really shook my world. I saw the world very differently at that point. As a 14-year old, I grew up really quickly. What it did to me is I realized what was most important. At that moment, after that I never felt the pain that I felt at that moment. So, what that did was it prepared me for future obstacles.
Andrew: But didn’t that send you into depression? You’re talking about 14, just as you’re becoming a teenager. You don’t have this person in your life at a point where you’re ready to blame the world for everything. Now you have a reason to blame the world. You just lost your dad.
Gail: What I did was I was looking for answers. When I went to college, I took courses on death and dying, philosophy. I questioned the world around me like, “Why?” also questioning why people were doing what they were doing and is this really important. Yes, I was in a depression. Also what’s important is that how people treatment at that moment is really how I acted in my business world.
So, I’ll give an example. This is crucial. No one ever discussed it with me afterwards. So, no one ever asked me, “Are you okay?” All I saw was my mother in a depression because it rocked her world. She never worked and she had to take care of three children. So, I went on and pretended nothing was wrong, but obviously I was in such severe pain.
Andrew: People didn’t bring it up because it was uncomfortable and because they didn’t want to make you unhappy bringing it up and it might be a little too personal. But you wanted them to bring it up, it sounds like.
Gail: Yes and no. My friends never brought it up. They’re 14 years old. I can’t expect that. But I kind of expected maybe the adults to reach out to me and say, “Let’s go out. How are you doing today?” I’ll never forget my guidance counselor a month later took me out of class. This would never happen. He took me in his car and we went driving around town. That was back in the day. Now that would never happen.
He asked me how I was doing a month after, I said, “I’m doing great.” But obviously I wasn’t, I just didn’t really want to talk about it. He said, “Yeah, you should be doing great after a month your father died. You should be over it.” At that moment, I said, “You know what? I just never want to discuss this.”
Andrew: Because they’re never going to understand.
Gail: Exactly. And for someone in that authority position not to understand being a child–and you’re supposed to trust adults–it skewed my viewing of asking for help. That stood with me throughout my entire life and it served me well because what happened was I decided I’m never going to rely on anyone to do anything for me because they’re not there for me.
Andrew: I had a similar situation where my mom was dependent on my dad who went to work and my mom stayed at home. I used to worry if my dad died, who’s going to take care of my mom, let alone take care of the kids. Who did it in your family?
Gail: Well, my mother two years later had to go back to work.
Andrew: She went back to work.
Gail: Yeah.
Andrew: Not even back to work. She wasn’t working before she started working.
Gail: Yeah. She was kind of lost. She took care of the family. My father at that point was an attorney. He had his own practice. He didn’t leave a lot of money because he had a heart attack a couple of years before and he was young and who’s going to cover him for life insurance. Definitely get life insurance, that’s the one thing I learned. So, what I learned from that is not to rely on someone else. After that, I was a workaholic, self-sufficient.
Andrew: What kind of work did you take on as a teenager?
Gail: I remember working in retail. When I went to college, I went to college full-time and worked full-time. So, I’ve always been very frenetic, always had my days very full and I’ve always taken a lot of ownership because, again, I never felt comfortable asking for help because I viewed help as a weakness.
Andrew: Interesting. Still to this day?
Gail: Yeah. I got a business coach. I realized that served me well up until this point because if you can’t ask for help, what happens in your business when you’re running a business is you’re not going to be able to ask for help from your employees. So, what happened is I started doing everything, complete control freak. You can’t do that if you want to take your business to the next level.
Andrew: What’s an example of something that was hard for you to give up until you got the coach?
Gail: A lot.
Andrew: A lot. You were doing everything.
Gail: I was doing a lot. It’s not trusting people, not trusting your employees and not empowering them. That’s not fair to your employees. It’s not fair to you. I’ll give you an example, like the recruiting. I have recruiters here, but I try to take on too much but there are other things I need to do in my business to grow it. So, that’s not going to serve me well. So, I need to trust them that they’re going to do it right. In the beginning I was doing a lot of administrative work. I shouldn’t be doing that.
Andrew: Like the books?
Gail: Yeah, like the books, reports–there are certain reports I have to look at, but just some of the mundane things that a CEO should not be doing with their company. That’s just really on me.
Andrew: That’s where the popular press let me down. I remember ready growing up about how Leona Helmsley or Harry Helmsley in New York would do the books themselves and they would write and sign every single check because they wanted to be aware of all the expenses because that’s how connected they wanted to be to their business.
That’s the popular press’ take on how business is built. That’s the kind of story they highlight that might even be a lie. I don’t know. But that was in my head and I thought, “I should do my books.” Every Sunday I would sit down and do my books so that I know every single expense because if it worked for billionaires then it should work for me too. Big mistake. And that’s not the way it works.
Gail: Well, I think there is a happy medium with that. I think you need to know what’s going on in your company because if you don’t–there are going to be things going on and you’re like, “Wow, what the heck is going on here?” So, I think you need to be aware as a CEO. But again, there’s minutiae that you should not be doing in your organization. It’s ridiculous. You can’t do it all.
Andrew: I want to find out about this coach. It was the second coach that you had. But first, let me tell everyone about my sponsor. It is ContentPromotion.com. They’ve got such a great domain name. Here’s what Content Promotion is about. It’s an experience I’ve had in the past where we created this great piece of content, Gail. You actually probably saw it as an interviewee. It was “How Not to Look Bad on Camera.” I could see you’re following all the steps. Did you see it?
Gail: Am I doing okay?
Andrew: You’re doing great. You have light in front you because if you had light behind you, you’d be too dark. You have the audio really clear. You’re definitely–I imagine you’re connected to an Ethernet cable, right? Your internet is super clear. So, we created this document for our own internal use to give out to our guests and then we said, “Let’s put it out for the world. But if we’re going to put it out in the world and really invest some money into designing or to but it up on our site, let’s get people to see it.”
So, then, Gail, we said, “How do we get people to see it?” If we email our list, that’s only so big. How do we go beyond? So a team of us here at Mixergy got together and we made a list of all the influencers and all the people I interviewed who might be interested to promote this, and we had this giant spreadsheet and we had about half a dozen people who were going to start emailing those influencers by saying, “Could you please help out by tweeting this, promoting it, etc.?”
We had this whole thing worked out and it took us a while and we got them. We got so many hits. It became our most shared piece of anything on the site because we emailed all those influencers, because we reached out and because we spent so much time on it.
Well, if someone is listening to me right now and they don’t have the time and they don’t have the connections to reach out to all those influencers but they still want something they create to go public, to go viral, to go big, to get the credibility that comes from having not just you tout it, but having someone who’s considered an influencer, someone who’s admired in your space. If you want them to start promoting it, if you want them to start mentioning it, you want them to start sharing it but you don’t have time to even find them and put together a list that we did, go to Content Promotion.com/Mixergy.
When you do, you’ll see that they’ve helped companies for years and they can help by doing it for you. They charge you per placement, which means you want something placed out there in the world, you want something promoted, they will do it for you and they’ll only charge you when you promote it.
All you have to do is go to ContentPromotion.com/Mixergy. If you attach a /Mixergy at the end, they’ll give you a 15 percent discount on your first campaign. They’re fantastic. Again, I’m grateful to them for sponsoring–ContentPromotion.com.com/Mixergy. What a great domain they got.
What was the problem with the first coach that you got, Gail?
Gail: I felt she wanted me to do things that were not authentic to myself.
Andrew: What do you mean?
Gail: Just to get a client. She wasn’t getting to the core of the issues that I was having. It was, “Okay, you need to grow your numbers.” “Okay, but I have a lot of these things I need to work on.” So, a lot of these old school business coaches, it’s like, “Okay, these are your goals and you need to do this.” Well, obviously there’s something going on that I’m not able to do that.
Andrew: Like what? What’s an example of something that you couldn’t do by just focusing on the goal, that you needed to work on your inner person, your inner entrepreneur first?
Gail: Well, there’s a lot.
Andrew: Like what? Give me an example of something. Let me visualize this.
Gail: Well, my problem is that I’m–well, for some reason I used to be more focused, but now as a business owner, I’m very ADHD in a sense, where I’ve got this idea, that idea. What happens is when you have so many ideas, like I’m up until 5:00 in the morning, it’s crazy, thinking about things and working. Obviously that’s anti-Tim Ferriss, but that’s what I was doing. What happens is when you do that, you’re not able to accomplish anything because you’re not focused on one thing. But there’s a reason why I wasn’t doing that. So, we need to get to the core of why–
Andrew: I see. So, just putting a metric on the one thing you need to do seems like the right answer, but you still will procrastinate or still find other issues that come up and you won’t hit your numbers until you understand why you’re finding those other distractions.
Gail: Exactly.
Andrew: Why you’re afraid to finish it.
Gail: We all know what we need to do logically, but there are things that get in the way. Sometimes you don’t know what that is until you dig deeper within yourself. I think that’s a problem with a lot of leaders, that they don’t really dig deep. You could hit your numbers and it’s not all about numbers. You could exceed your numbers and do $100 million a year, but you might be leading your team by fear. Is that really success?
Andrew: If the results are there, I think so. But it doesn’t seem like it’s a good long-term way to maintain results.
Gail: Right. So, maybe that leader needs to look within themselves to see, “Okay, why am I managing this way?” Maybe there are other ways that are just as effective that will empower my employees.
Andrew: So, you hired a second coach who helped you go more deep. What’s something that you were able to do because you went in more deep?
Gail: Well, the whole trust thing. That’s what came out of it.
Andrew: Ah, trusting the team that you’ve hired.
Gail: Exactly, trusting and letting go of control. Where does that come from? That came from the death of my father. So, we don’t realize that our past, we need to look at that because it carries with you into your everyday life and you just don’t realize it. It’s subconscious.
Andrew: I see. Dismissing all that by just saying, “Just hit your numbers,” is kind of like that high school coach or high school teacher who said, “All right, your father is dead. It’s been a month. You must be okay,” dismissing that. You have to go in and really understand it and not be so surface.
Gail: Oh, yeah. Maybe some people don’t want to deal with their issues, but I was ready to do that because I really wanted to be the best leader I could be and run my company the best I can. I think it’s a long life process that you need to go through as a leader. There’s always room for improvement. I think a lot of leaders, they become complacent. They rest on their laurels, “Oh yeah, I’m successful,” but there are always other things you need to look at.
Working with a lot of Fortune 500 companies and working with HR, I could write a book and I probably will be, like “HR Gone Wild,” like “Corporate America Gone Wild,” with what’s going on in organizations. CEOs need to take more responsibility of their corporate culture and what’s going on and I do believe it comes from the top.
Andrew: All right. I see how you’re building this up. I see how you’re building yourself up. Your first customer came because you worked your network. What happened to get the next set of customers? Was it all from your network?
Gail: Yeah. I didn’t do any sales.
Andrew: What’s your process? Were you just picking up the phone and calling people?
Gail: Yes. You know what’s huge for me? Especially as a recruiter and everyone should know this if you’re a looking for a job is LinkedIn is huge.
Andrew: What were you doing on LinkedIn in the beginning of your business?
Gail: Well, I already had a huge network on LinkedIn. So, just reaching out to everyone on my LinkedIn, what I did was a I started–this is key for networking. I do want to tell the audience that I was really bad at networking. That’s why I wrote the book. I am horrible. I am naturally an introvert. I avoided every networking event. If I did, I would gravitate towards one or two people. So, what I did is I did things that felt comfortable for me as an introvert.
Andrew: Like what? What did you do as an introvert to network?
Gail: So, this is what I did. Since my target is HR professionals, I started an HR New Jersey LinkedIn group. I have about 2,000 members. And then what I do is I have meetings and we all meet in New Jersey and I have speakers come in and we meet and it’s a great way to network and build your business at the same time because you’re the leader and people remember who you are. So, it’s a no-nonsense way of building your business.
Andrew: Isn’t it hard to lead when you’re so introverted? You’re forced to tell people what to do. You’re forced to tell them when to show up. You’re forced to guide them during the session.
Gail: No because it’s behind the scenes. I’m not in their face.
Andrew: I see.
Gail: So, I’m a recruiter, but yet it’s one on one. I’m good at that. As a recruiter, you’re not supposed to talk a lot. You’re supposed to let the person speak. So, that’s always worked for me and I would suggest that people do that as forming your own groups and target the people that you want to do business with.
Andrew: Get the people you want to business with into a group so they get to talk to each other and then organize in person events so they get to see each other and they’ll all know naturally, “This is the person who organized the event.” What happens at the event?
Gail: Oh, you just network. I also have speakers from different companies talking about different topics ranging from recruiting, benefits, whatever is of interest to them. It’s very interactive. It’s been very effective.
Andrew: By interactive you mean with the speakers?
Gail: Yes, with the audience, audience and speakers.
Andrew: I see. It kind of feels to me like having a speaker is a way of elevating the event so it’s not just a networking event and it feels more important, but once you have a speaker, you also want the speaker to be done fast so that everyone gets to the secret reason why they’re there, which is to get to know each other and to drink and to talk and to eat.
Gail: Exactly. It’s very structured. So, the first hour we have dinner, networking and then another hour is the speakers and then the last hour is networking again.
Andrew: So, that’s how you got the clients. How’d you get the candidates?
Gail: Candidates is definitely easier.
Andrew: What’s your process for getting candidates?
Gail: Well, definitely I have my own applicant tracking system. So, I have a lot of candidates in there. Referral. LinkedIn is huge. So, I reach out to candidates on LinkedIn. We do Boolean searches on Google and on the internet. A lot of it is just word of mouth.
Andrew: Boolean search just means your limiting your search, more advanced search.
Gail: Exactly.
Andrew: Like if I were going to search for startup and San Francisco and founder.
Gail: Or you can use quotes–if you want two words together, you put quotes around it. But I think LinkedIn has been a great resource for me because I do the searches on there and I reach out to those people.
Andrew: You reach out to them directly or you use LinkedIn’s InMail system?
Gail: I use both. I connect with them. I also use the InMail. And then referrals is key. So, if that person is not interested, I always ask for a referral. So, now I’m going to put myself out of business. It’s not really a secret.
Andrew: No, it’s not.
Gail: It’s not, but recruiters don’t take the time to do it.
Andrew: When someone says no, they don’t take the time to say, “Who else should I be talking to?”
Gail: Yeah. You have to dig really deep. You have to know how to navigate and you have to know where to go where other people are not going.
Andrew: I see. I see on different message boards that people are getting hit by recruiters all the time, I guess developers more than anyone else that I’ve seen. What do you to get people to pay attention to you when they are being approached by so many people today?
Gail: Honestly–and I hate to put down my profession–but a lot of them are not professional and they don’t listen. So, I take time and my staff takes the time to really understand what they’re looking for. It’s simple communication and a lot of recruiters don’t do that.
Andrew: What’s the process? So, just interviewing was simple communication, but you can see I was testing something new at the beginning of this interview. I’m trying constantly to use what I’ve learned from storytelling to bring it into the interview and create a structure that will create a memorable story. It’s simple, but underneath there’s a process that I keep developing and sharpening. What’s your process for getting to know the candidates and building relationships with them?
Gail: Well, we have certain questions that we ask. We have a list of questions. After a while, you don’t even need it because you already know what you need to ask.
Andrew: You know your list of questions.
Gail: Exactly. I’ll give you an example of certain questions that I think are really important to ask if you want to build a strong staff. It’s simple. I’m not into like, “Okay, if you were a pencil, if you were an animal, which animal would you be?” I know a lot of companies like to ask those questions and I get it. I like to ask, “What are your accomplishments?” If you can’t speak to your accomplishments, then why should I hire you?
Andrew: What else?
Gail: I do a lot of behavioral-based interviewing, meaning, “If you were in this situation, what did you do in the past? Tell me how you did that.” Let’s say someone needs to work in a fast-paced environment. Tell me a time that you worked in a frenetic environment and describe the project and how did you handle that.
Andrew: Why do you want to know about a time? Why not say, “How do you handle tough, frenetic environments?” Why do ask about a time they were in a frenetic environment?
Gail: Because I want them to actually describe a particular event, that it was very frenetic and very stressful and then I want them to explain it to me.
Andrew: Why is that helpful to have this specific event?
Gail: Because then you learn a lot about previous behavior and how they’re going to work in the future.
Andrew: I use that phrase also, “Tell me about a time when…”
Gail: Then it’s more specific.
Andrew: Right.
Gail: If you’re too general, then they’re going to give you general statements. So, I want specifics and I think that’s really important to do that. Another question I like for sales people is, “What’s more important, being number one or money?”
Andrew: What do you look for there?
Gail: I prefer being number one because money can come and go, but being number one you always take with you.
Andrew: You want them to say that they want number one?
Gail: It depends how they answer it. If they’re just like, “All I care about is money,” but if they explain it in such a way. It depends how they explain it, but I do prefer the number one because typically if you are number one, the money will follow and you want someone who’s in sales who’s driven by being the best, not just by money. You could be driven by money and not be the best.
Andrew: You know, before we started this interview, I asked you, “What’s your number one goal for doing the interview?” There’s a reason for that. In the past, I used to do what a lot of new interviewers do, which is I started out by saying, “Don’t worry. This is a safe place. I’m on your side,” etc. The problem with that is you then come across as really weak. Nobody wants a weak interviewer with this go nowhere hour that they’re now forced to sit through.
By asking, “What’s your number one goal?” I can understand what your mission is and through that let you know this is going to be a safe environment where I care about their goal. When people see that I care about their goal, they relax and they let me guide the interview. Do you have anything like that that you do at the beginning of your conversations to setup the scene to make it comfortable to people?
Gail: Yeah. Usually I just ask them, “Tell me a little bit about yourself.” I know that’s so generic, but you get a lot out of that person. I don’t like to talk too much on the interview because if you talk too much as the interviewer, you may prod them in such a way by giving them the answer, like they answer the way that you think they should answer.
Andrew: You just go right into it, “Tell me about yourself,” and then your questions?
Gail: Yeah. And then if I need to prod them, I will if I have extra questions. But what happens is you get a lot when you don’t talk a lot as a recruiter. You learn about their communication skills, the articulation. Sometimes you get more information than they normally would give another recruiter because they’re just asking the question. This way, they can go off into different tangents and you get to also see, “Are they talking too much? Are they talking too little? Do they have substance?”
Sometimes you get information about how they work in a particular corporate culture. That to me is probably the biggest important factor that you need to find out from a candidate, their personality and how they work within an organization. I know it’s cliché, but corporate culture is key.
Andrew: So, how do you find out about that?
Gail: You ask questions regarding that.
Andrew: About culture?
Gail: Yeah.
Andrew: What’s a question you can ask about culture to find out if somebody actually cares about it and what their opinions are on it?
Gail: Well, they should care.
Andrew: So, how do I find out if they care? I can’t say, “Do you care about corporate culture?” Everyone is going to say, “Sure.”
Gail: Right. I don’t ask it directly. I don’t say, “What kind of corporate culture do you like working in?” Sometimes I feel like the answers are canned. I ask them, “Tell me, with all the companies that you worked for, what did you like about it? What didn’t you like about it? Give me some examples and why.” That brings out a lot in a person. They’ll say, “Well, I worked for a boss and he was a micromanager. I worked for this organization. It was too large. There was too much process. This one was more entrepreneurial.” So, you get a lot and there are a lot of different directions they can go into.
Andrew: I see.
Gail: I find that’s been very successful asking that type of question.
Andrew: So, the first batch of customers came to you because you worked your network. You made your phone calls. The next batch it seems like came to you because you were working the LinkedIn process of creating groups and creating your own live events. What else? What’s the next big leap that you took to grow the business?
Gail: Well, I started another company called Speednetworx, which is a B2B speed networking event. How that got started was, as I told you before, I was never good at networking. I hated networking. One night I went to a speed networking and I had an aha moment. It sounds very transactional. It’s like speed dating. Basically every three minutes, you meet another person.
But what happened at that event, I felt very comfortable because I was forced to meet people that I typically would have never met if I was just at a general networking event. You walk in that room and it’s so many people and it’s like, “Wow, where do I start?” You’re forced. By the time I was done that evening, I felt so revived, so good about myself.
Andrew: There are a second sneeze. It always comes in pairs for me.
Gail: So, what happened after that evening, I said, “I can do this better.” That evening, they had someone selling. They had a sponsor. I had to sit through 15 minutes of that person saying, “This is our service.” It was a payroll company. I’m thinking, “This is just brutal.” So, I decided to start my own company and it’s been very synergistic with my other firm, Consultnetworx. So, I do B2B, niche, so I’ve had like pharmaceutical speed networking, job speed networking and it’s been a lot of fun.
Andrew: I saw that Speednetworx doesn’t have its own website, right?
Gail: It’s on the Consultnetworx site.
Andrew: Yeah. Is it a standalone business then?
Gail: It’s a division of Consultnetworx.
Andrew: Okay. Have you done this in a while? It doesn’t look like it.
Gail: No. I haven’t done it in probably three months. Usually it’s invitations. I just send out invitations. It’s just been a little crazy lately. Definitely we’re going to be doing more events.
Andrew: There’s not that much money from it from what I can tell.
Gail: No. I do it because number one, I want to help people with their network. I just think it’s a great synergy with Consultnetworx because a lot of times I get candidates from that speed networking.
Andrew: I see. Where else do you get good candidates?
Gail: Again, the referrals. I don’t use Monster. There’s nothing against Monster, but why should a client use me if they use Monster. I don’t go on CareerBuilder. Again, it’s just really hustling. If my client, let’s say, is a pharmaceutical company, obviously I’m going to try to get people from another pharmaceutical company. So, it’s like pure headhunting and that’s what I do.
Andrew: I worked for a headhunter in college.
Gail: Did you?
Andrew: Yeah. I was really good at calling into companies and saying, “Who sells whatever?” It was all Wall Street jobs. So, I would call in and say–I’m trying to think of what we were asking for. I can’t even remember at this point. But they would tell me. They would just give me this full list of everyone in their office without any concern for it. The other thing that I would do is I would call up and sometimes just ask them if I could have a copy of their book, the employee directory and people would often do it because they don’t care. Not everyone cares to protect the company. Do you guys do any of that?
Gail: That’s old school.
Andrew: You don’t need it anymore because of LinkedIn?
Gail: Exactly or other avenues as well. So, you have to dig deep and do a lot of research and you really could get to the person.
Andrew: What other avenues are there?
Gail: ZipRecruiter, Indeed.
Andrew: For figuring out who works at a company?
Gail: No, getting more candidates.
Andrew: Just to get more candidates, I see. But you’re not now being so proactive that you want to know everyone who does this at the company and then calling every one of them and understanding which one of them is a good fit. That just doesn’t work that way anymore.
Gail: Exactly. But there’s a lot that you can learn on LinkedIn. Also directories, sometimes I’ll go–I shouldn’t be saying this–but like networking groups, sometimes they list the members, like BNI and I’ll just navigate through there and get their contact information.
Andrew: I bet someone in our audience could even build you a scraper that would do that if you want, just pull in all the data from all the BNI networks, all the BNI meetings.
Gail: Exactly. That’s just one way of doing it.
Andrew: I see.
Gail: And also, at the networking event, I’m a firm believer in no job titles. I know a lot of people are like, “Okay, this person is the CEO and they work for such and such a company,” I do not do that because what happens is that person gets bombarded and a firm believer that everyone is equal and true networking is about helping others and cultivating relationships.
So, if there’s a janitor in the room, that janitor is never going to be approached, but maybe that janitor has a family of CEOs. So, I’m not a title snob. I’m not snobbish that way. I think more people need to approach networking. On the nametags, what I do also to spice it up a little bit, to break the ice, I make everyone list something on their nametag that is like a hobby or something that’s quirky about them and that starts a lot of conversation.
Andrew: All right. The business is going great. You’re actually adding to it. Then 2003, something comes up that changes everything for you. What happened in 2003?
Gail: Oh, you mean 2013.
Andrew: ’13, excuse me. I missed the one.
Gail: Okay. That’s okay. So, 2013 I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Andrew: Wow.
Gail: So, another obstacle. That was a game changer for me too because that made me really look at my organization and say, “Okay, I’m really relied upon.”
Andrew: Hang on. Before we get to the organization, are you telling me that you get diagnosed with breast cancer and immediately you think, “Here’s how it’s going to help my organization.” You don’t say, “I could be dying here. I could lose my breast here. I could lose something here. I could lose time.” You don’t go into any of that?
Gail: For like a split second.
Andrew: A split second? That’s the way you work? How do you do that for a split second?
Gail: I have some kind of mechanism in me. I don’t know what it is.
Andrew: The mechanism is to block stuff out, right?
Gail: I don’t know if it’s to block stuff up. What I did, actually, “How am I going to deal with this?” I treated it almost like a business. “Okay, I need to find out the best doctors. I need to get more information.” I dug deep. I used my recruiting skills. It really did help me because there were things that I really don’t want to get into that you rely on these doctors, the top doctors in New York City and you take their word for it and then you find out they were wrong. So, I really took control of that. But the first thing I thought about were my children because I have two boys, but I didn’t think about death.
Andrew: You didn’t think about death at all?
Gail: No.
Andrew: I thought about that this morning. I woke up sometime around 3:00–no, I know exactly what time it was for some reason, 1:15 and I said, “I better get a will.” I was talking to another guy who I interviewed over drinks the other day and he told me he’s got a will and he’s got this and that. I said, “What does happen to me if my kid dies? What does happen to him?” I mean.
Gail: You have to will the second that your kid is born.
Andrew: Right.
Gail: And life insurance, I learned that the hard way with my father. More so than paying a bill, your mortgage, seriously, because you know that’s going to happen. It’s inevitable. People don’t want to talk about it, but I’m actually kind of obsessed with that because you know it’s going to happen.
Andrew: So, this morning I emailed my accountant and said, “Who am I talking to, to set this up? Let’s make it happen.” I didn’t get a response yet from Jamie. Oh wait, Jamie is on it. Jamie responded right away. Let’s find out. Did Jamie get anyone in San Francisco? No. That’s the problem. I have my accountants in New York because that’s where I started my first company. So, they don’t know anyone in San Francisco. I’ll reach out to an interviewee and find out who I should get to know. But I thought about death. You didn’t think about death when you actually had cancer?
Gail: When I had it, when I was going through it, that moment? No. The first thing I thought about, again, were my children and then, “How am I going to deal with this? I need to get on this right now. This can’t affect my business. What am I going to do?” So, my mother had cancer, actually, in 2009. That was during when we lost our business. So, I kind of dealt with it then. I just felt optimistic, like, “I’m going to get through this.” I just kept moving forward.
Andrew: I see.
Gail: So, my treatment plan was a little more aggressive than I thought. That’s when things got a little crazy for me. I had surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. The chemotherapy–brutal. Not the most difficult thing emotionally, but physically, without a doubt, it just knocked my socks off.
Andrew: What would happen? You’d just not have any energy or more pain?
Gail: Horrible pain, very sick. But I worked. I would go to the office.
Andrew: I saw that on your website. People couldn’t believe you were getting chemo and you working through chemo.
Gail: I didn’t tell most of my clients because I felt that they would judge me and they would fire me. That’s my own insecurity, again, not trusting people doing the right thing. I decided to keep it a secret at the moment. Obviously it’s out now and I’m telling everyone. But I decided to keep it a secret and I didn’t want my employees to be impacted by it either.
Andrew: They didn’t know either?
Gail: No. They knew. Actually, my internal employees in my office knew, but none of the consultants out at the client sites had any idea.
Andrew: I get it. If you’re keeping it from your clients, you can’t tell that people will work for your clients.
Gail: Yeah. I didn’t take care of myself enough. I didn’t rest enough. That I regret. But I will tell you that it forced me again, though something happened that wasn’t great that was an obstacle, I always feel that you have to find the silver lining in that and learn something from it. What I learned is, again, to control and delegate. Now, what I am still working on is trying to setup my company that if I need to be out for a month or two months or three months, this business can run without me.
Andrew: What did you do so the business keeps running without you even for three months?
Gail: I’m still working on it. It’s still not perfect.
Andrew: What’s your process for doing it?
Gail: So, the first thing was to delegate. What can I take off my plate?
Andrew: What’s an example of something you took off your plate?
Gail: A lot of my recruiting that I was doing myself.
Andrew: So, you were doing your own recruiting. You hired new recruiters and you said, “You start making these calls.”
Gail: Yeah. They’re recruiting too, but I was taking on more of the difficult positions, so I gave them more of the recruiting aspects as well.
Andrew: I see. Okay.
Gail: Now, I have a VP of marketing in my organization. So, I would try to control that.
Andrew: How would you control the marketing? I get it. I’m smiling because I’ve gone through all this.
Gail: Yeah. It’s like everything.
Andrew: What was your thing to control the marketing?
Gail: Of course I need to do the strategic aspect. But I would start going on Twitter and being entrenched in that, just everything, the intricacies and doing the research, where my VP of recruiting is very knowledgeable. She could do the research herself. Why am I spending time doing this in recruiting? So, when you do all that and you’re doing so many different things, then it all adds up and then what are you doing?
So, it’s teaching me to be more focused on the things that are more important where I want to take my company to the next level. It also made me realize that I need to cross-train employees. So, if they’re out sick, people know what to do and back them up as well. So, I’m in the process of creating a new process within my organization and making it more detailed.
Andrew: What’s your process? When you say create a new process, what do you mean, new documentation, new systems?
Gail: A new workflow. I already had the systems in place. But it’s just doing a workflow and knowing exactly what to do, more templates. So, if I had a new employee come into my organization, they know exactly what to do and when to do it. That’s another thing. In my 25-30 years of working–I started when I was 5–I was always thrown to the wolves. I never went through a training program. I just got trained on the job.
So, I assumed, “Okay, everyone should just know how to do that.” So, when I started hiring employees, I was doing that. I would spend one day with them and say, “Okay, do your job,” and I’d expect results in like a day. Okay. Maybe that worked for me, but I can’t expect it to work for other people.
So, I was recruiting for other companies doing an amazing job, but I can’t do it for my own company? What the heck is wrong with me? I was getting really pissed at myself. I realized it was the onboarding system that I was doing, the lack of it.
Andrew: I see.
Gail: So, I created an onboarding program. I spent between two and three weeks with the person before they even start talking to a client.
Andrew: That’s a lot of time from you to go do this.
Gail: But it’s an investment.
Andrew: Yeah. It’s worth it. I have to do more of that too.
Gail: It makes a huge difference. The retention, making them feel more welcome, they understand your goals, your values.
Andrew: And they feel like they’ve accomplished something every day–maybe not every single day, but they feel like they’re accomplished something early on. That sets them up for success.
Gail: Exactly. There’s direction. You’re not just throwing them out and assuming, “Just because I know it, you should know it.” That’s not fair.
Andrew: So, where’s the revenue now?
Gail: The revenue now is at a good place. I’ve definitely grown, but I want to get it to a higher place.
Andrew: I have the number. Can I just say what the number is according to my records here?
Gail: I didn’t give it out?
Andrew: You didn’t? How’s my team getting this? Here’s what my team put together for me. They said $3 million annual.
Gail: Okay.
Andrew: Is it more than that?
Gail: It’s around that.
Andrew: That doesn’t seem crazy, right? But that also accounts for the fact that you’ve got all these temps in different offices.
Gail: Correct. That’s where I’m making most of my money.
Andrew: Yeah. So, your net margins must be pretty low.
Gail: It ranges from client to client because we are on vendor management. I don’t know if you know what a vendor manager is. Some of the large Fortune 500 companies, they have one company that manages all the suppliers and then they have a contract in place and they dictate the margin. But you get all the jobs. So, you work on it, which is great. But the margins tend to be lower. Then when you get the other clients that don’t have it, then you make up for it by charging higher margins.
Andrew: It seems like bottom line doesn’t end up with more than 10 percent of the top line in a business like yours.
Gail: A little bit more.
Andrew: A little more.
Gail: Yeah, it’s more.
Andrew: Okay. So then the business is going well and you decided to write a book. The book I’ve got here. I only have the cover here on my screen, “Networking Karma.”
Gail: Correct.
Andrew: And what was the reason for writing the book?
Gail: I wrote the book for myself.
Andrew: What do you mean?
Gail: Well, in a sense, I wanted to share my experiences with everyone else because I know people feel the same way that I do. There are plenty of networking books out there, but there’s no book that teaches you how to work on yourself first. I have a lot of experts that contribute to the book, ranging from visualization to how to dress, honing your pitch, storytelling, that’s one thing.
Andrew: That’s part of networking?
Gail: Yeah. You have to learn how to story tell and engage people. So, it’s not just the actual networking itself, it’s the other things, communication. So, the book goes into that but then it also teaches people how to setup their own speed networking event themselves as well.
Andrew: I see. So, you get really deep into the mechanics of it, right down to how to setup your own networking event and into the depth of the person’s mind, how to understand why you’re not doing this, how to be more of yourself at an event.
Gail: Right. It goes back to the coaching. It goes back to saying, “You need to do this.” We all know what we need to do. But the fact is then everybody would be amazing successful. It’s logic. But we’re not doing it. So, this really digs a little bit deeper into that. It really helps people from that particular level and then giving practical advice. And then it also goes into Facebook and social media a little bit and how to leverage that as well.
Andrew: All right. Where do we find out about the book, Amazon?
Gail: Amazon and I also have a website, NetworkingKarmaBook.com.
Andrew: Let me go to that site right now, NetworkingKarmaBook.com. I’m going to mess with the layout of my videos soon and one of the designs that we have will allow people to see my hands and the whole broad office. I don’t know that I’m going to like that so much because I type on the computer so much when we’re talking. It might be a little distracting.
Gail: That’s okay. It makes it real. What’s wrong with that?
Andrew: All right. People get to see my typing. Imagine a guest will say something and I’m researching them right there.
Gail: That’s different.
Andrew: Let’s see what happens. I’m going to try it though.
Gail: Is it also going to be below your waist too?
Andrew: No. I didn’t think of that and for a second I considered it but then I’m like, “No, I don’t want that.”
Gail: Yeah, because then you can’t wear your pajama bottoms.
Andrew: I’m always in jeans, even when I’m at home, but it’s weird if I have my hands down in my crotch typing. People won’t know what I was doing while I was talking to my guest.
Gail: That would be a problem.
Andrew: All right. I do see the website. I do see the book. Your business’ website is Consultnetworx.com.
Gail: Correct.
Andrew: Super. Thanks for being on here.
Gail: Thank you so much.
Andrew: You bet. And our sponsor is ContentPromotion.com/Mixergy. Check them out if you need somebody to promote your content. Frankly, write them down just in case someone you know is going to need them. They’ll give you 15 percent off if you go to ContentPromotion.com/Mixergy.
Thanks, Gail. Thanks everyone for being a part of Mixergy.
Gail: Thank you.
