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Episode #246
Tess Sloane

From Recruiting To HR Consulting: The Community Building Approach To Getting Clients

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Summary

Did you know that you could build your business off of building relationships? This is achievable using the community building approach to getting clients. Having a community even before you launch so that once you do, you’ve already cultivated and fostered those relationships. Your bringing value without asking for anything. This is what Tess Sloane and her business partner, Alisha Adams did when they founded Eleven Eleven Talent. Join Michael Zipursky as he talks to Tess about her recruitment firm and how they are changing the game. Learn how they’re bringing recruiters together to build connection. Recruiting and headhunting are very competitive business. Everyone has their own black book that they keep to themselves. However, Tess makes everyone share their secrets so that everyone can get better. Also, learn more about meditation and her other company, Chapter Two | Meditation. Learn how to run a purpose-led business today!

I’m here with Tess Sloane. Tess, welcome.

How are you?

I’m doing very well. Thank you. Tess, you are the Co-founder of Eleven Eleven Talent Collective, an HR consulting firm and recruitment firm that helps clients increase employee tenure with emotional fit screening. We will get more into what all that means. You’ve worked with some very well-known organizations, Mark Anthony Group, Mountain Equipment Co-op, MEC, form, and a whole bunch of others. I would love to get started and have you share before you even started Eleven Eleven Talent. What were you doing? What was your educational background? How did you get to the space of talents and recruiting?

I was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia. In Australia, we finish high school, and then you go to university if you so choose. I did that for a year and was not finding my groove. I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do. Everybody around me was so clear. I had friends that were like, “I’m going to be a chiropractor. I’m going to be a lawyer. I’m going to be a doctor.” I remember being like, “I have no idea what I want to do.”

I was doing an Arts degree at the time, which is you do a bit of everything. It wasn’t helpful either. In Australia, in particular, when you are not clear, they encourage you to go abroad and take a gap year or do some traveling. Australia is great in the sense that they make it easy for you to get a visa in most countries in the world. I decided to come to Canada for a year and work and do some traveling and exploring. That was the plan. I arrived in Vancouver, and I needed to get a job. I went to a temp agency, a recruiting agency and I said, “Could you help me find a job?” They said, “We are looking for somebody here to help us with the front office. Would you do that?” I said, “I will take it. No problem.”

A couple of days into the job, I remember looking back and seeing all the recruiters and saying, “What are they doing? What job is that? That looks cool.” She’s like, “They recruiters.” I’m like, “I’m pretty sure I can do that.” They are on the phone all day. They are hustling. They are matching people with jobs. They are interviewing people. They are asking them about what their skills are and their strengths. They are pulling out their intrinsic motivators. I’m thinking, “This is what I do for fun. I love this. Is this a job? I didn’t know this was a job.”

Within a week, a recruiter had quit. They gave me her desk, and I never looked back from there essentially. I inadvertently found my profession. I started working in agency recruitment, which is very high stakes. You are representing another number of companies. You are going through a lot of interviews. You are trying to find the right match. You become good at understanding what the right questions are to ask to pull out the information you are looking for to make that match.

It can be a bit transactional at a high level, which is where I started to get. After a few years, I was like, “What happens after the candidate gets placed in that company?” I got curious about that part because I would have to wipe my hands off it and go back to the next. I would always wonder, “How did they do? Did they get promoted? Did they end up liking it?” I decided to go in-house, and at that time, Lululemon Athletica was doing their big expansion. They had headhunted me and reached out to come and head up their recruiting team here in Vancouver. I went over there and spent a few years learning and expanding, and cutting my teeth in global recruitment.

That was an exciting time. When I joined Lululemon, we were in two countries. By the time I left, they were nineteen, and we had grown the head office from 100 people to 1,000. As you can imagine, a lot of learning and development. I got to touch a lot of different pieces, build a team, lead a team, grow a team and understand that full cycle of what does it take to headhunt an individual, learn about what is motivating, what they are looking for, then see them through the whole cycle and how they do once they arrive.

Focus on your strengths. Stop trying to push yourself in directions that you don't have that natural affinity for. Click To Tweet

When you look back to your time inside that recruiting firm or that’s temp agency, you rose up from doing some admin or whatever level work to recruiting, and then to getting headhunted by Lululemon, which I think most people will be familiar with. The global brand that it is now. What do you think you brought to the table from a mindset perspective, commitment, dedication or work ethic? What gave you an advantage to the point that a company like Lululemon wanted to headhunt you and bring you in? What separated you from the other recruiters that maybe didn’t have that same opportunity or interest in them?

I had a real willingness to try something new. I didn’t wait until I had the education or the experience behind me. I was putting my hand up, saying, “I can do this. Give me a shot. I have potential,” which is a loaded word because it’s so hard to assess. We tend to want to see results first but there is this whole sweet spot when we are hiring somebody. How do we assess their ability to have potential, drive, and ambition where they will figure it out?

I was willing to fail and try new things until I found where my sweet spot was. I had an inkling of what I was seeing from this job. These are all the things I enjoy doing. I also focused on what my strengths were. I didn’t spend a lot of time trying to push myself in directions where I wasn’t naturally strong or I didn’t have that natural affinity.

I want to get into the work that your company is doing now. Before we do that, what would you say are good powerful questions that you can use to identify, essentially to call somebody on their BS? If a consulting firm owner is reading now, joining and they want to build their team, bring in other contractors or full-time employees but they want to get great people.

What would you recommend if they were going to have that initial conversation? Maybe they can go a whole bunch of applications through different sources. Now, they need to start to try and vet those applicants. What is a tried and true? What are the first couple of questions that you might ask that you feel are powerful and able to identify like, “Is this a solid candidate worthwhile to go to that next step with?”

Whenever you are in the position of interviewing, and you are the interviewer, your first mandate is, “I have to create a setting where this person feels safe and comfortable so that they can express to me and answer the questions authentically and genuinely, and we both get what we need out of this.” Whatever you can do to create that safety for somebody because there is an imbalance of power that shouldn’t be there. You don’t get the best out of people when you play that up. It’s something that could be attractive for people to do. Automatically creating that safety, that comfort, that we are on the same ground. This is for you and me to get to know each other better.

Is that as simple as essentially saying what you said, like, “We are at the same?” How do you position that? I want to get into the details so that people can go, “I can use these exact words at work.” Something very similar to this.

What I will do is I will say, “Thanks so much for making the time now. Here’s the intention of the conversation is for me to understand if you are going to be a great fit for this role and for you to understand if our company and this role are going to meet your needs now.” Saying that off the bat. We’ve both got a stake in this, and I will also say, “I’m going to lead the interview and have questions. I’m going to leave fifteen minutes in the end for you, your agenda, and your questions.”

CSP 246 | Community Building

 

When I interview people, I encourage them to come up with their own questions as well. We are creating that dialogue and conversation, and it feels like the playing field is more equal. A big part of the recruiter’s job is to build rapport and trust quickly so that this person is safe to share with you what their strengths are, their opportunities are, and we can both assess, “Is this going to be a good fit?”

In terms of great questions, to be able to identify if somebody has, as you said, the potential is a hard word to figure out but either from a positive way, to go, “This person shines.” As well as, “Any red flags?” Questions that you tend to ask that you are trying to almost see like, “Will they take the bait?” How do you think about those? Any best practices there?

I don’t ask questions where I’m looking for them to mess it up. In every question that I ask, there are certain attributes that I’m listening for like, “How is their ability to handle ambiguity or what type of level of resilience does this person have?” Those are when we are asking more behavioral style questions, which are, “How would you behave in this certain situation?” We would give an example and say, “Walk me through what you would have done here.” One of the first questions I always ask, and I love to ask is, “What’s important to you now? What’s top of mind? You are interviewing with me.”

Normally, 9 times out of 10, that person is employed. They have a great job. I’m a head hunter. I’m looking at moving talent around. I will ask them, “What’s motivating you to make a change? What’s top of mind for you?” I let them speak because we have a lot of assumptions and biases around why somebody is making a move. Usually, we assume it’s money, title or status. It’s rarely those things. It gives me a good indication of where that person’s at and what’s underneath this conversation. “Why are they even here in front of me,” then I can start to paint a picture of the whole person. Not just this person in the context of the title, the job, the salary, etc.

How big of an impact does salary have? Let me frame this for a moment. Take the consulting firm owner that wants to attract great talent to their organization but they don’t have the same budget for talent that, let’s say, Microsoft does or any larger, more established organization. Sometimes people will hesitate. They don’t even think that it’s possible for them to try and get that higher-level talent because they can’t pay what that person is likely earning now. What’s your experience showing you that? Is there an opportunity for someone with a smaller compensation budget to still be able to bring in great talent if they can’t match that? How do you think about that? What’s your experience been?

My experience has been so varied. I always encourage people to stay in possibility because Microsoft can offer you a big salary, a big base salary but you are also hanging off there maybe for the next three years. They own you from 9:00 to 6:00 PM. A lot of people that don’t work are willing to make sacrifices or compromise in other areas. It might be that they are willing to take a lower salary to work at home. Some of these bigger companies still or are asking people to come back into the office. A lot of people are not willing to do that anymore. They are willing to take cuts otherwhere in other places. It could also be around having flexible schedules or work days.

A lot of consulting businesses can be quite competitive with these bigger companies if they are working with individuals and giving them a cut-off their fee. They can get a higher percentage there, and we are seeing this in our own business. We have retained headhunting firms. That means we also are able to pay our freelancers upfront, which is something that they are getting higher margins.

They are getting paid quicker and have the flexibility that they need for their lives. A lot of the people that we employ are mothers, working parents, and people that are also starting their own business and wanting to top up on the side. We can get creative around how we do this. People are less drawn to working in the traditional structures now.

If you fight with your business partner, don't hang up the phone. Get back on the phone so that resentment isn't built. Click To Tweet

That a creative mindset is so powerful. Too often, people will put roadblocks in front of themselves, saying, “I can’t get that person or I can’t do this,” but what you’ve demonstrated very briefly here, and it’s powerful, is that there’s always opportunity. It depends on whether you are open to even exploring it. It’s a great reminder.

We have to remember they are humans. They are like us. You don’t know what’s going on with this person. They might have a sick parent at home who wants to stop working so long hours to be more available. People have so many different scenarios going on, and we have to open our minds up a little bit and say, “Why don’t I touch base and ask the question?”

Let’s dive into your company, Eleven Eleven Talent. Do you have a partner in the business, Alisha?

Alisha Adams, yes.

Why do you decide to have a partner in your business and not launch this yourself?

We both met at Lululemon. We were both working there, leading talent acquisition and recruiting functions. We both came up against a challenge. Alisha comes from a family of entrepreneurs. She had always wanted to open her own business and be an entrepreneur. She was very clear about that. She was at these companies to learn and gain experience. I never had that dream. I didn’t have that vision. I’m simply somebody who loves working. I love growing these businesses. I also am a mother. I have two sons. My sons were getting to school age around this time.

My big vision in life was I wanted to pick up my kids from school every day. I wanted to have a big career. I wanted to be at the school at 3:00 and pick them up. It sounds like, “That’s your big vision in life?” It is because I never had that. I was somebody who needed that. I made a decision when I was a kid like, “When I’m a mom, I’m going to pick up my kids from school.” I couldn’t figure out how to do that.

I remember looking around at these corporate companies and global brands I worked for. I would look up, and the women that were executives were there until 8:00 at night. I remember thinking, “No, this is not for me.” I didn’t want to compromise. I wanted to have a big career. I wanted to do both. When I met Alisha, I thought, “If I have my own business, then I could set my schedule then I could be at the school at 3:00. I could block out that time in my calendar every day.” I said, “I’m in. Let’s figure out how to do this,” and we built it over time together. That’s why I needed her. She was part of the whole story for me and helped me bring it to life.

CSP 246 | Community Building

 

What has been the hardest part for you about having a partner?

There are times, and we do see things differently. Sometimes we will look at a work problem and see them differently but because our values are the same, we share the same core values as individuals. When we have differences, we are always able to interpret them as positive because she looks at things through a lens that I don’t see and vice versa. One of us is always willing to like, “You seem to care about this way more than I. Let’s go this way.” It has always been quite even where we concede to each other.

If we have a strong opinion about it, we will get clear about it. Lululemon is famous or infamous for having these incredible personal development programs. They put their people through a landmark forum, which is an intense three-day workshop. We got so much out of that in terms of how to communicate clearly, clear any differences, not hold onto any resentment, and not take things personally. These things that we learned at our time at Lulu were foundational in how we run our business now. I credit a lot to it.

Is there anything, even looking back at the benefit of hindsight that you go, “If I were talking to somebody who’s looking to get into business with a partner, I would 100% suggest recommend that they do X?” Is there any big lesson learned in the world of running a business with a partner? I’m coming from a place where my cousin Sam is my Cofounder at Consulting Success. We’ve built-in wrap-up around businesses over the years together. I know that there’s a bit of a big question but what comes to mind for you in terms of like, “Focus on this or do this?”

Sit down and come up with your operating principles at the start and do this when things are good. Ask the question, “What will we do when things are bad? What will we hold each other accountable for our way of being? Our ways of being, ‘Are we clear at the moment.’ If one of us says something that doesn’t land for the other, we don’t hang up the phone and go over it in our head or create a story. We stay on the phone or get back on the phone. We have a rule. You have five minutes to clear this.”

We get back on and be like, “They didn’t land for me. Can we do a take two on that because that didn’t sit right or whatever it is?” We do it at the moment so that we are never holding on to anything. We are not building that resentment. We have another operating principle around clearing at the moment. We have one around being direct. Not taking things personally, and we have one called Prosecco, which is, we have these Prosecco moments. Once a week, we go have a drink together, and we don’t talk shop. We talk about our kids. We have a laugh. We have a glass of Prosecco, and we are in the moment.

You both worked at Lululemon. When you decided to go out and start this business together, where are your first few clients come from?

We built this business slowly. We built it while we worked at our corporate jobs. We started it as a side hustle and by building community. We would put on recruitment conferences in Vancouver, where we would bring the talent acquisition community together. We put on speakers for them. We built the community. We started to say like, “We are here. We care about the industry. We want to bring everyone together,” and we were networking in that sense.

Recruiting and headhunting are very interesting nuanced roles. You have a black book that you keep to yourself because it's so competitive. Click To Tweet

After a while, as we were building up the business, people knew us. When we opened, they knew us. One of our first clients was Native Shoes. Lululemon is now a client. We have some great relationships but we spent years cultivating and fostering those and bringing them value without asking for anything.

You are running those initial events. You still had your corporate jobs. You are hosting events but it sounds like you weren’t actively pitching for business. It was more about relationship building.

It was relationship building. We saw a gap in the market where there were a lot of HR conferences but nobody was doing conferences for recruiters. Recruiting and headhunting is a very interesting, nuanced role because you have this black book, and you go to keep it to yourself because it’s so competitive. Lulu recruiters against Amazon against Nike. You are all going for the same talent essentially across the globe.

What we did is we said, “We want to turn this on its head. Once a year, we are going to come together. Everyone is going to open their black books and tell their secrets and stories. How are you getting talent?” The one we all had was we all needed to bring top talent to Vancouver, which was a bit of a problem at the time.

People took to this because, essentially, people want to connect. The impetus was like, “Let’s come together and lift the collective. We will all get better from this.” We put those conferences on for two and a half years without being open as an agency. That was because we were still figuring out what our business, our model, and our key differentiator were. It was important to start building community straight away and bringing them value. Not just community for community sites but bringing value. We wanted them to go back to their jobs the next day and be better.

Fast forward, you are running these events. You decide, “We are now going to go full-time into our business.” Those first few clients that you then call up, the people that had come to your events say, “We’ve now opened up shop like officially.” Walk me through that transition point at what do you do to launch things?

We had a conference. Our last conference was at the Roundhouse in Yaletown. We had 300 people, and we announced it then we were going to be open. This is an important part of our story. Alisha and I are both moms. We have families. We couldn’t quit our jobs and start out a business. A lot of people are like, “Go all in. You’ve got to do it,” but we had mortgages. We had to build this slowly, and nobody talks about that a lot. That’s very conscious risk-taking. We are going to take a risk. We are going all-in in our business but it’s going to take us three years to get to that point.

We had a number in our head where we had to make from the conferences enough money. Our corporate jobs are paying us essentially. Once we got to that point, then we could go all-in. We had a very conservative approach to this. I want people to think about that because you don’t have to burn the boats and go all-in. You can do this over time but you do need to have patience.

CSP 246 | Community Building

 

When we opened, we reached out to everybody that had come to our conferences and let them know we’ve opened up as a recruiting agency. Why you ask, is there another recruiting agency? Does the world need another one? Yes, and here’s why. Here’s why we are different. Here’s how we are doing things differently. During this time, we had been watching other agencies and figuring out where the gaps were. As internal recruiters, being on the inside, we had experience working with agencies that were horrible. We wanted to address all of those issues.

Walk me through a little bit because there are lots of HR consultancies, a lot of recruitment consultancies or recruiting firms. How did you decide what to focus on that would be that point of differentiation and competitive advantage so that when you said to people, “We are here. We are now ready to take on business,” they cared? They say like, “We are already good. We work with somebody currently.” What was the secret sauce there?

We were clear about that because we knew for sure that the world doesn’t need another recruiting agency. There were 300 in Canada, and so we were like, “What’s the difference? What’s the edge?” When we worked as internal recruiters, which was the bulk of our career like if we hired somebody and it didn’t go right, we had to answer to the CEO or the founder. We had to get it right. We had to figure out, “What is the difference between headhunting somebody to start at Lululemon and this person succeeding or this person bombing because we had both experiences.”

We had to figure that out quickly. When we opened, we said, “These are our pillars.” We immediately set up a global team, and we opened a few years ago. We have recruiters in our key markets, which are Vancouver, Toronto, LA, New York, and Sydney, Australia. We base all of our recruiting on data and metrics. When you are engaged in a search with us, every Friday, we send you a report.

It’s the data and metrics from your specific report because we knew for sure when we worked with agencies, sometimes, we would not hear from them for months. We are like, “What are you doing? We paid you $20,000, where are you?” That felt like a real gap. We developed strong recruiting metrics and data, and we feed that to our clients on a weekly basis.

The other one was DE&I. When we opened years ago, we saw DE&I recruitment as a real opportunity. We hired a consultant who worked with us closely through each step of our recruiting process. This was a few years ago before this was even on-trend or something people were talking about. We are engaged with a new DE&I consultant now because it has been a few years since we had done that. She’s doing a complete audit of our process.

It’s one thing to say we are diverse but we put in the work in this where we are all developing, learning, and hiring professionals to ensure that our process is at the forefront of DE&I recruitment. It’s a global team, data metrics, DE&I, and then we are starting to share our results. We have high retention rates in our placements, and we are starting to feed that data out as well.

You are very clear on what you were bringing to the table that was different from the standard of that recruitment firm. How do you communicate that? Was that on one call? Was it a call and a follow-up email? There’s a lot of information in that. I would imagine that the potential buyer and client on the other end could not digest all that in one quick goal. Maybe they could correct me if I’m wrong but I’m wondering. How did you continue to push those areas of advantage differentiation so that the marketplace like understood what made you different compared to everybody else?

Be purpose-led. Be unafraid to attract the clients you want and repel the ones that are not meant for you. Click To Tweet

We talk about it constantly. We have a podcast. We talk about it. It’s in all of our email communication to our clients. It’s in our pitch deck. It’s in our newsletter. It’s on our social media. We have robust social media on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, and we are constantly talking about it. Especially because these are our competitive advantages and proving to be successful.

Take me to now from a marketing perspective. What are you all doing now? You can even take me back to pre-COVID times. I’m wondering. It sounds like initially, the events and the conferences were big. You are doing social or active on social media channels. Is there anything else that you would say, “We do this or these things, and they contribute to being able to attract great clients for our business?”

We are very purpose-led in the sense that we communicate what we are purposeful around. For the last few years, when COVID hit, we got even clearer on this so that we are unafraid to attract our clients and repel the ones not meant for us. We don’t want to play in the middle. We don’t want to be for everybody but if diversity recruiting is important to you, we are the firm to work with. We created a contribution philosophy where we are going after the gender pay gap structural inequality, so women in leadership positions.

We are doing a lot of education around that. We are contributing to organizations monetarily through that. We are talking at a lot of events around that and getting on the radar of companies who are like-minded, purposeful, and want to make an impact greater than your revenue for that month. That’s what we are after and what we are talking about. It’s an interesting place to be as a business when you are good with repelling clients that are not meant for you.

Tell me more about that. Was that an easy decision for you or was that something that you struggle with? It sounds like you were and still are intentionally not trying to get certain business, and therefore, for some, that would be a scary decision because it sounds like, “There’s a potential market that we are not going to go after. If we only narrow in, if we only focus on this one thing, are we going to lose other opportunities that could come our way when a company needs a good recruiter?” You are like, “We don’t do that. We focus on these, as you said, more purpose-led high-growth businesses,” is what your website says. Was that an easy decision or is that something that evolved over time?

It evolved over time and was a process because, like any new business, there was a time where we would take anything and everything. We learned the hard way. We learned that we don’t want to work for unethical businesses. We learned that we are a retained search firm and had a cool client that was like the coolest company of the moment, and they refused to pay a retainer. We took it on anyway because we thought, “We will do it. We will succeed, then we will get paid. Everything will be fine. They need us to prove ourselves.”

It was a nightmare, and we will never do it again. It was one of the last times where we drew a line in the sand and we were like, “No more. This is our craft. We have been doing this for several years. How dare they not pay us? This is our model and what we are saying.” We had to develop in ourselves also that sense of worthiness. That’s a big part of business and how clients receive you. We had to develop that in ourselves, so much of being an entrepreneur is your own self-development.

That’s an evolution. That’s a process. I’m seeing that again now. I mentioned this too. I founded a new business, Chapter Two Meditation. We are bringing meditation and mindfulness into businesses and companies. Now, there’s this opening where companies are receptive to this idea of mindful performance. How do we support the whole human being, from mental health to stress, anxiety, burnout, and meditation, on the cutting edge of being able to address these issues? I’m back now at square one in this new business, coming up against a lot of this old stuff where I have to catch myself and say, “What am I feeding there? How do we structure this? What are the clients I want to work with in this space?”

CSP 246 | Community Building
Gender stereotype – Female leadership in a small business meeting

 

You are in a unique place in terms of the work that you do because one of the greatest challenges that consultants and many people in business have, especially in this professional services space, is prospecting. It’s outreaching to getting in front of new prospective clients you want to build a relationship with. You almost have to do that on two fronts. You have to do that, one, to attract the client that would-be buyers of your services, recruiting or meditation in their organization.

Also, you have to do that to other executives or leaders that you want to headhunt to bring in for those clients. Is there anything that you learned in how you reach out to somebody with that you don’t yet have a relationship with yet that you find allows them to lower their guard and tends to get you a higher level of response? Often, people would reach out with like, “Here’s what we do.” It’s very one-sided and doesn’t seem to get a good response from people. What have you learned about that initial outreach to somebody you don’t yet have a relationship with yet?

Can everybody answer this question because I want to hear everyone else’s answer? I’m still learning but what I’m finding works best is getting a warm lead or an introduction. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable to ask somebody like, “Could you introduce me to so-and-so?” Those ones are the best. When you have a referral, somebody says, “We worked with Tess at Eleven Eleven. I would love to introduce you. I can see you during hiring.”

Those are such a good entry because it’s warmer. It’s better than going in the cold but sometimes, we do go in the cold. If we do that, we’ve always researched their business and decided this is a perfect fit for us. We want to work with them. We will share a bit about that why and try to add them some value or we see that, “The business is going through this. Here’s an article I found on it or I would love to discuss this further.” Give them something to think about and then follow up.

You are not doing the pray and spray approach or here’s 50, 100 or 200 people all at one time with the exact same message. You spend a bit of time doing your homework or research to understand what’s going on in their world and then making your initial touch point very customized and, hopefully, very relevant to them. Is that correct?

Yes.

It makes a huge difference. I want to shift for a moment to your pricing strategy because you said that you are very intentional with how you engage with clients. You got burned once where you have this amazing, from a public perspective, company that’s very well-known or whatever it might be, the latest one, and you did not move forward or you engage them without your standard approach to pricing, which is a retainer model. Can you talk a little bit about what your current structure is for pricing? I’m also very interested to know how it has changed or evolved over time?

We started as a retained search firm. We still are to this day. We’ve made exceptions in that, and retained search firm means we take 20% off the annual base salary, which is standard in the industry. Fifty percent of that is due upfront, 50% upon closing. What we come up against in the industry is a lot of recruitment agencies are contingent, which means they work for free until they make that placement. What we observe in that model is that it motivates sloppy shitty behavior.

So much of being an entrepreneur is your own self-development. Click To Tweet

It motivates the idea of a recruiter as a used car salesman because they are throwing stuff at you and hoping something sticks, so they get paid. We wanted to remove that energy and that whole mindset out of the equation, and you are hiring professionals. We are then going to hire the best recruiters in your market to do the search, and then we are going to provide you with top talent. When you hire a search firm, your biggest concern is, “I don’t have the time to do this.” Recruiting is so high volume and tedious. Nobody wants to do it.

That’s why you hire a search firm. We present you with, “Here are the top three candidates on the market,” or if you are not working in that model, you might as well have been doing it yourself. It’s not have been at anyone’s time. We believe in this model, more so from a mindset perspective. You are going to get better quality, and it’s going to make the best use of your time. Our pricing is flat. It sometimes fluctuates if we have different scenarios. During COVID, we found that in 2020, a lot of companies press pause on hiring. We had to come up with something to address that.

We moved to a flat fee model where we knew budgets were constraints but some people needed to pivot roles. It was like, “We need to let go of these roles and hire somebody in eCom or digital to adapt to the new environment.” We created some custom programming during that time, but now, we are back to our normal business. The biggest takeaway for me, my biggest learning around fees, around pricing, is you’ve got to get behind it. You’ve got to believe it. You’ve got to see the value in it before you go out there and say what your pricing is.

Is there a minimum level of salary? Let’s say if the person’s salary is $100,000 base, so your company’s fee would be $20,000. $10,000 of that paid upfront, $10,000 successful hire of that person or engagement of that person. With that model, is there a base ever of that? If somebody was going to look for a position of a $50,000 person, would you even take that? Is there a minimum in terms of when you say yes or no to a client because the value of that for you is only 20%? It’s what I was getting at.

Not really, but our expertise and what we are hired for is executive search. Usually, director level and above, so you are not going to see those salaries there but sometimes we are working deep within one company on their executive board. They have something come up at that level that they want us to take care of. We do it.

The focus as being very clear on executive levels. That’s going to almost always be a six-figure salary and beyond. Makes sense. A couple of questions here before we wrap up. I know you said you have recruiters in different markets around the world. Anything about building your team and expanding and bringing people on, is that the model that you’ve selected? Now, for you to grow as it is about adding more recruiters once they start reaching capacity? How do you think about expanding, scaling, and growing your company?

We started a few years ago, and our goal was to untether our workforce. We love this idea of a remote workforce pre-COVID, and we are sticking to that because it allows us to live our lives the way we want to live them. We have a lot of freedom and flexibility, and we want that for all people too. We have recruiters across the globe, then we have a core HQ team, which we keep as lean as possible. There are 4 or 5 of us. When it comes to scaling and growing, with the recruiting team, we will expand that because that allows us to be impactful, dangerous, and strong on the recruiting side. That’s where we would see the most value in the scale.

That’s also where your revenue generation is coming from. You would only add more recruiters if you knew that you would be able to generate more revenue and, therefore, more profit and net income.

Recruiting is so high volume and tedious that nobody wants to do it. That's why you need to hire search firms. Click To Tweet

Our core HQ team keeps lean and has highly skilled individuals that are real generalists and are able to touch and do a lot of things. I would say when it comes to recruiting remotely or hiring your team remotely, communication is key. We have weekly and daily communication touch points, so we are all on the same page or working towards the same thing. That means, for us, we can hire the best talent wherever they are in the world.

You have two sons, running two businesses. Talk to me about meditation. How do you fit it in? What is your schedule for meditation? How much time do you spend on it? How do you think about it or bring it into your life so that it has a real impact on you?

I’m passionate about talking and teaching meditation in a way that brings it from something out there where we visualize like, “You have to be on a cliff in this perfect Instagrammable moment,” which nobody has time for or you have to go to an ashram for three months in India. No. How do we bring meditation into our day-to-day lives? For me, daily, that might look like if I wake up before my kids, I might sit in meditation for 10 to 15 minutes.

I go on a walk every day. That sometimes is my meditation. While I’m doing that walk, I leave my phone at home. I leave my AirPods at home and just breathe. I get in contact with my breath. Meditation is a conscious connection with your breath. Whenever you are breathing intentionally and deeply, that is meditation. Sometimes meditation is in between Zoom calls. I will close my eyes, take three diaphragmatic breaths, and then I’m ready for my next call.

There’s a lot of quality research around how this autonomy of our nervous systems is directly linked to high performance. Not just in our careers but every aspect of our lives. I came to meditation at a very painful time chapter in my life. I discovered it then, and it was transformative for me in the way that it helped me get back on my feet. Navigating the situation I was in, and parents kept working, doing all of these things, so I then went and became a certified meditation teacher. I was passionate about bringing this to people before a rock bottom moment. It’s so much easier to learn to meditate before things are hard.

Is there anything, and feel free to say no, and we can move on but is there anything you can share about that time of what you were going through, what you were experiencing so that others can have a bit of context of how it helped you that time?

I was going through a separation in my marriage. That time of my life was devastating on so many levels. I have two children. Nobody gets married thinking that it’s not going to work out. It’s a time where all of your core beliefs are brought into question. You have to reckon with yourself and also hold a mirror up to yourself, ask yourself some tough questions, and go within. You don’t have to do this. You could go on the run from it and numb it out, party and drink or whatever. We all have our coping mechanisms.

At this point in my life, I decided I had to face this head-on, and I needed tools to support me in navigating this. That’s when I turned to meditation. I had grown up with a mother who meditated every day, so I was familiar with the practice but hadn’t done it myself. What I noticed was that meditation got me through this hard time. Simultaneously, it unlocked for me my next level of performance, which I wasn’t expecting to happen. My business quadrupled that year.

You really have to see the value in your pricing before you go out and say what your pricing is. Click To Tweet

I noticed how I was showing up as a parent, as a friend. The relationship I have with the father of my children is something I’m so proud of. We are still such a unit and a family. Through meditation and mindfulness, I learned how to manage myself and my own emotions, hold more space for others and focus. Meditation improves our brain and our ability to focus. People say to me, “How do you do it all?” I feel like I have so much time and flexibility. I only do things that matter to me, and that’s Chapter Two Meditation, Eleven Eleven, my children, and my family. It’s easy.

One final question before we wrap up here. In the last six months or so, what would you say is a book that you’ve either read or listened to? It can be fiction, nonfiction, to something that has resonated with you that you’ve enjoyed that you might recommend to others?

I’m reading now. I have a few books on the go but the one I want to share is called The Daily Stoic. It is by Ryan Holiday. You read a page a day, and it’s dated. For every day, you read that paragraph and get it on Amazon. It will be at your house tomorrow. Its philosophy. It will give you the stoic philosophy and a modern-day interpretation of it. It’s the same principles as meditation and mindfulness but learning how to not go into our habitual behaviors like getting angry or when we are driving, honking.

It teaches us to pause in those moments and go within and be like, “What’s going on for me now?” The more people that we have operating in that way, the better our world is. The more successful we all are. The healthier communities we have, healthier people, healthier kids, and it’s the work of a lifetime going in, exploring, and evolving. I highly recommend that book, and it’s so easy to read.

Tess, thank you so much for coming on here and spending some time with us and sharing a bit of your story. We will have all of your company and links set up so people can learn more about you and your company and everything that you have going on. Check you out on social platforms as well. If there was one place that you might suggest if people do want to learn more about the work that you are doing, what would be the one link or social platform that you would suggest them connecting with you on?

I would say my Instagram is @ChapterTwo_Meditation, and you will get around up of Eleven Eleven, Chapter Two, and my kid’s pictures, who are adorable. Bit of insight.

Thanks again, Tess.

Thank you so much.

 

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About Tess Sloane

CSP 246 | Community BuildingTess Sloane is the Co-Founder of Eleven Eleven Talent Collective, and the Founder of Chapter Two Meditation.

Tess is a firm believer in the philosophy of transformation, with concrete examples throughout her 16+ years in the HR industry. She has catalyzed purpose-led paths for people and worked for global brands renown for their transformative People Practices.
Using her technical background and instinct as a true north star, her approach blends eastern and western philosophies, finding harmony between tried and true tactics and progressive, forward thinking innovation.

With a passion for neuroanatomy and mindfulness she is able to harness the intersection of the brain + mind body connection to produce life changing results.

Tess is a certified meditation teacher, a regular speaker at Universities, Women Events and HR Conferences on the conversation of remaining deeply connected to your purpose and the continued development of your whole self.

 

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