By Brian Mitchell, CEO & Managing Partner.
I have a pair of denim jeans that I purchased from L.L.Bean for 30 bucks in 2007. They are not the most comfortable pair of pants I own and not nearly the most stylish, but I love these jeans. They are a special reminder to me…I’ll come back to this point.
Out of college, I had rapidly built a successfully rising career over 12 years in the telecom business, leading increasingly larger teams, teams of teams, and business units. For a variety of reasons, I elected to take an alternative career path in executive search. Without any previous formal experience or training as a recruiter, I launched GM Ryan, a boutique executive search firm. I quickly found I had some natural ability and that my previous business expertise as a commercial operator was a distinct advantage as I represented companies, candidates, and myself. But it was difficult. It was actually very difficult. I had conducted considerable due diligence before launching and had built what I thought was a solid business plan, but I still didn’t know what I didn’t know…and I didn’t know that! There is truly no way to replicate the experience of starting your own business other than doing so. I made a lot of errors and assumptions. I invested (often pissed away) a lot of money and had some weary moments. I had previously been an executive in a publicly traded company with hundreds of reports and support personnel at my disposal, and now I was an evangelizing individual contributor doing literally ‘everything’ to grow my business, a business nobody had ever heard of, and in a competitive environment. Did the world really need another recruiter? Who put the Ikea desks together? I did. Who generated the clients? I did. Who identified the candidates? I did. Who made the nuanced decisions around process and CRM and every other detail? I did. And who paid the bills? Yes, you get it. It was difficult and exhilarating at the same time, but my income was nowhere near what it had been previously and I had questions including questioning my decision to choose this path. With three young kids, a mortgage, a radical career change, etc., I had a lot on my mind.
After a couple of previous “learning experiences” (aka bad hires), I hired an assistant who was instrumental in helping me systematize internal processes. She helped me harness our foundation for leveraging strengths and minimizing weaknesses, for driving efficiencies in process engineering, for keeping track of data which would drive accountability and predictability in everything we did as a firm. We hired some additional people, some of whom worked out well and some were more “learning experiences”. It’s ironic, but the most successful recruitment firms in the world have no better than a 50/50 chance of success when hiring new recruiters who enjoy sustained success past two+ years of tenure. Given I bootstrapped the business, I paid everyone out of my own funds or the new revenue generation I personally produced. I also spent an incredible amount of my time onboarding/training, it was painful to accept that half of our hires wouldn’t work out and losses – time and money – were part of the investment process.
What does this have to do with my cheap yet cherished LL Bean jeans? I promise, I’m getting there. I was about 18 months in and other recruitment firm owners whom I had met and respected were telling me I was succeeding, but it didn’t feel like success. I believed in the quality of my service, but it felt like complex labor, mixed with uncertainty, and only splashes of progress. I didn’t realize that those splashes of progress as well as setbacks were all foundational building blocks. At that seasonal moment, I was running out of money. I was in a tough spot.
I really needed some new jeans so as I was shopping online and seeing the ones I wanted were all around $100 bucks. However, I was in “need” mode, not “want” mode. Think of your freshman year of college eating ramen noodles so you had enough to go out to the dive bar on Fridays for cheap drafts, frugality (or was that wisdom? I digress.). Well, I bought a single pair of LL Bean jeans for the equivalent of 3 ten-dollar bills. I had what I needed.
Well, I grinded it out and 15+ years later, GM Ryan has expanded, diversified, has generated well into 8-figures in revenue, and what I’m most proud of – has a solid reputation. We still have our challenges and macro-economic factors remain a factor in our industry, but now my kids want for nothing and I can now buy whatever jeans I want. Still, my LL Bean jeans will always be my favorite.
I do not share this story to brag, rather quite the opposite. I was in a humbling season of life and I’ve had others. I’ve had a lot of conversations with people in recent months and some people are going through challenges. We all endure stormy seasons in our lives, be it personal, professional, financial, or otherwise, but if we keep grinding and stay humble, we typically get through them to much brighter days. Keep your head up and keep going or you’ll stay where you are. Oh, and if you want my pair of LL Bean jeans, they’re priceless and not for sale.