How to Build a 7-Figure Recruiting Firm That Runs Without You — Inside the EOS System with Derek Pittak (Part 2: The Step-by-Step EOS Playbook)

Derek Pittak [00:00:00]:
You are now jumping into Part two of the EOS for Recruiting episode with Eric. If you have not listened to part one yet, go back and listen to part one before you dive into part two. Enjoy.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:10]:
Welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with your host Benjamin Mena, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership and placements.

Derek Pittak [00:00:28]:
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Derek Pittak [00:00:48]:
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Derek Pittak [00:01:17]:
No admin, no silos, no lost info, nothing but faster shortlists, better hires, and more time to focus on what actually drives revenue. Atlas is your personal AI partner for modern recruiting. Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive listener offer@reruitwithatlas.com so another part of the EOS process I know is you're going to laugh at this process. How often do you walk into a staffing or recruiting firm and there's no real processes?

Benjamin Mena [00:01:46]:
Yeah, every time. I'm joking, I'm joking a lot of times. And even like the process is there that the truth is every team has a process. What often happens is it's either outdated, meaning like they created some really exhaustive SOPs at one point point in time and nobody ever went back and updated them and nobody ever reads them or it's just in someone's head or in multiple people's heads. So there I think documentation is a problem and nobody wants to do it because they feel like it's just this exhaustive task. The exhaustive task is not in defining and drafting the process that usually can be done in an hour or less. The effort comes in training and maintaining. That's the thing is you need to become a training company.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:31]:
You should always be training Always be training. You've got to say something seven times for people to hear it and absorb it for the first time. Sometimes it's 15 times. Right. It's fascinating. My son is probably 500 times right. So inserting a little fun and jokes in here. But at the end of the day, like processes is the work that's not sexy, that's not fun, but it's everything that matters in a business.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:57]:
And if you have no process, you know, you could have the best amazing people in the world, but they're going to kind of drive you nuts. Because when you're trying to get your arms around it, you don't know who's doing what and it's not consistent. And your brand can take a hit, your reputation can take a hit. It is critical that teams get processed down.

Derek Pittak [00:03:14]:
Yeah, I mean, it was one of those things because I, you know, I've worked in recruiting firms, you know, I have my own recruiting firm. I talked to a lot of recruiting firms and I feel like so much of the knowledge is almost like this institutional knowledge that is transferred via you sitting next to me.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:29]:
Yeah. A hundred percent shadowing. Right. And I believe in it. I think it's critical. But are they training to what's in the process? And I'm not saying create a bunch of documents for document sake. Like, the document can be super simple. It could be a workflow graphic on one page.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:45]:
The work comes in like, do we actually do the things that are on the page? Right. So if you have a five step sales process, okay, seven step, whatever, it's two pages in length. It gives you enough to describe who, what, when, why, how, where. Okay, simple journalism rules. If it gives you that information. And as long as we understand that every time you're, you know, in the sales process, you check every box off along the way. Great. Do you care about every ounce of minutiae in an entrepreneurial company? I don't.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:19]:
Because that's going to drive you nuts. And you're not striving for perfection. You're striving to be like 80% good. Because a hundred percent is super unlikely. It's utopia. And so much changes. And oh, we just implemented a new system. We just inserted this automation tool.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:36]:
We just went with this AI chatbot. We just improved this, you know, change out this measurable whatever. Give me a million other reasons. Now you just said, okay, well, now we have to change the process. Every time you make a change, you have to update the process. So if you have a bible, you know, if you have a 75 page SOP on how to recruit in your business, you're toast. Nobody's updating that, right? And no one's reading it either, right? I hate to break the news to the person who put that together and they love it. Nobody's reading it.

Derek Pittak [00:05:05]:
Nowadays I host some summits and I try to have the summits like at least four times throughout the year. Maybe an extra on the side just because I understand the, you know, I think it was from like the Aerotech days or some other sales conferences where everybody starts running like low at about the 90 day mark. It looks like EOS. A huge part of it is traction and it's broken down into like 90 day blocks. Why is that?

Benjamin Mena [00:05:31]:
It's because most people can't focus for longer than 90 days. The wheels start coming off and in an entrepreneurial business, a lot of things change. Just had a conversation yesterday with a client about like, hey, we were working on this rock and then all of a sudden it kind of changed in the middle of it. Well, tell me why, right? Was it a valid reason or was it just because? So point being around all of that is, is the 90 day world is critical because we know that most people can like put their minds to something for 90 days. And if you have a one year goal, okay, of implementing an ATS, okay, it's real simple, elementary, and we're doing it at lingo, you know, moving to bullhorn. So one, that was a one year goal. Get on bullhorn, right? Implement, go live. I can plan 90 day increments, okay, and hopefully lead and guide and steer and help project, manage that thing to life.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:25]:
But guess what happens? Business life issues, priorities. Maybe a big cash flow problem hit you in the face, right? Maybe Covid happened and so you're allowing yourself the freedom to almost work in an agile environment where you're going to stay laser focused on this for 90 days to create the right level of focus and priorities for the team, for the company, for the individual. That's how we're going to become high executioners, right? Highly disciplined, laser focused on getting things done. Right? And then that next 90 days comes around, you reset and you say, okay, what are the right priorities for this particular quarter? Okay, well we got to have another bullhorn rock, right? Rock is just another word for priority, but we got to have another bullhorn rock to get us to the next stage so we don't miss our go live data at the end of the year. Okay, cool. What can we do in 90 days? There. Now this is also Not a fair example, because Bullhorn and other very large organizations that do this, that have really lengthy project life cycles are really good at planning projects for the most part. Right.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:31]:
We don't need to talk about the horrors of implementing an ATS on this podcast. But you know, stuff happens and guess what? Sometimes the schedule gets disrupted. So I had this great plan. All of a sudden, all of a sudden the project just got delayed two months because of whatever reason. Well, now your rock may shift and pivot that next quarter because of it. So instead of trying to like be hardcore laser focused and manage for something for 12 months from January to December 31st, well, now we're just going to plan it. 90 day chunks. Okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:01]:
And I'm going to agree with the team that you just told me that you're going to do this very specific thing within 90 days. Now, I'm going to hold you accountable to hitting it. So the 90 day world is to provide a level of, I don't want to say freedom, but a level of clarity on what is the right focus for that particular 90 day window.

Derek Pittak [00:08:19]:
I love that. But you opened up this new question for me. We have like the scorecard, the checklist, which I guess are to dos, but then you threw in this rock thing. Like, what the hell's the difference between these things? Yeah, like, you know, for somebody listening, like, I have a rock on my desk. Actually, I had one, now it's gone. I'm looking for it.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:35]:
I'm like, yeah, so that is a great question. I do oftentimes this will come up with new teams, implement beginning to implement EOs as they start to get confused when you're throwing a lot at them, right. You're asking them to start to implement, you know, a handful of tools in a very short period of time. And you know, at the end of the day, there are issues in every business and there's a time and a place that we ask teams to work on those issues called a level 10 meeting. That's part of the traction component, the meeting pulse. And from solving your issues right in a week to week basis, once you've solved it, you generally have created a to do or two or three to solve it. Okay, so an issue is I have a. I have something to share, FYI, letting you guys know that I'm doing something about my issue.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:26]:
Great. You get a question or two. Now we're going to give you a to do. You've got a true problem. And we're going to apply this issue solving track IDS methodology to Solving that issue. Cool. What ends up resulting is we just worked through something for 25 minutes. We got to the root cause, we shared our facts and experiences and now we decided on the best course of action which is going to result in a to do or two or three.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:48]:
And then you have like brainstorm issues that are just like, I've got an idea. What do you guys think? Let's throw it on the table. Good, bad or ugly? Let's go or not go. Okay, cool. So the result of all three of those common issues that I just gave you are these things called to dos. To dos in an EOS world are seven day action items. Okay. Super important priorities to solve.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:09]:
I got three to do's out of my weekly team meeting and I know that I've got a solve and do these to dos because next week my manager, my leader is going to ask me if I got those done or not done. So to DOS are seven day action items that arise from solving your issues. Okay. So issue to do.

Derek Pittak [00:10:28]:
So like moving into a new ATS isn't an issue.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:33]:
So that's a great question. And it, yes, can start as. Let's just say it started as an issue are ATS software isn't doing it for us anymore. I don't like it. I put it on the issues list. Should we move to new ats? That's a pretty big hairy conversation and decision. So I'm going to park that on my long term issues list. So there's a difference between short term issues that we're going to solve week to week and long term issues that we're going to talk about maybe once a quarter because they require more time, more brain power, more output.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:04]:
Right. So yeah, it could start as an issue a thousand percent and then what happens from it? In this case, I parked it on my long term issues list. I now have my quarterly planning session or quarterly strategy session with my leadership team and we decided in that meeting that we are going to move atss. So now what do I do with it? Well, now it's become a rock. It has become a 90 day priority, right. To make a decision and select the right ats. And then what happens from there? If we decide and we select another rock's gonna ensue from it and then eventually a year long goal is gonna be created to get on there. So I'm blending a lot of things together.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:40]:
But there is a thing that we call compartmentalization in EOS and compartmentalizing Your long term 12 month priorities are goals. Your 90 day priorities are rocks. Right. Your 7 day action items are to DOS and everything else in your business is an issue. And right. The short term and long term compartmentalization there of weekly short term. Right. Not weekly big hairy, but on long term.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:06]:
So that's how we try to simplify it for teams to show them like team, this isn't overly difficult. What compartment doesn't fix in. But many times, Ben, to your point, yes, they do start off as issues and now we have different choices in how we solve them.

Derek Pittak [00:12:21]:
I love that. I got a question before we like jump over to another part of the podcast.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:26]:
Sure.

Derek Pittak [00:12:26]:
The vision thing. Like vision. Let's talk about like what you guys do with a vision.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:32]:
Yeah. So the vision component, right, consists of eight questions. Just it. That's it. No 50 page strategic plan, no McKinsey consultants coming in to put something together that you'll never look at again because it's so overwhelming. But it is really answering eight simple questions and then sharing that message consistently. Remember, seven times. Right.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:55]:
So every quarter we share it, every new hire hears it. Sometimes you go over it in the interview process and there's just various other times where maybe you have issues in your business, right. Where you are, you're pulling it up to look at it. But it is really your vision and plan for the company. And EOS uses a term called the Vision Traction Organizer or VTO for short. And it's a simple two page document or online in several softwares now that have been built to help teams really enhance their EOS experience. But it is a two page plan, right. That answers number one, where the heck, you know, who are we as a company? Right.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:34]:
What are our core values? Like why? What is our guiding principles here at Lingo Staffing? And so you answer that with what are our core values? We put them on there. You define what's the name and what's the definition. So it's crystal clear as to what it means to be a good family member, good cultural fit at our organization. The next question is what do you want to be? What's your purpose? Right? And so purpose, passion or cause? Right. Pick one you love and then what's your niche or your niche? What do you want to be laser focused on? And you're trying to create guardrails because we know that most entrepreneurial teams, especially visionaries, get really excited about all these other things and they're getting, they're a light industrial staff and you're like, hey, I got this opportunity to get into health care. Let's tack that on, you're like, wait a minute, is it admin? Like, or is it clinical? And they're like, yeah, it's clinical. Okay, cool, let's do that. No, that's a horrible idea.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:24]:
Super distracting. We don't know how to do this. We know nothing about per diem nursing. We know nothing about credentialing. Like, it would be a really bad idea for us to all of a sudden go into medical staffing. So, like, don't do it. Or we should get into peo. Well, I don't know anything about a peo, so why would we do that right now? Let's park that and think about that next year.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:43]:
Or start an offshoot company, but keep it out of mind. So you're creating like your reason for being, your why, and then your what? And then your third question on the VTO is like, where are we going? Right? So like your 10 year target. And sometimes people can't think that big, so they come up with a five year target or a core target to really help guide. Like every decision you make, every single quarter, every issue you solve needs to align with your reason for being your core focus, right? And your 10 year target. So this is aligned to who we are to make this decision and does it align with where we're going? So we're deciding by implementing Bullhorn and making that decision that that's going to help us get to our 10 year target faster. Right? For example. So we're making decisions with these things in mind and that's how we use it as a practical tool. And then you've got your like, well, how do I do it? How do I get there? Well, you've got to have a marketing strategy, right? You got to know what your target market looks like, your ideal client profile, and you got to know what the message is that you put into the market, right? So what are, what are we good at? What are our uniques? Right? What's our proven process? What's our guarantee? You put all that together and then all of a sudden your marketing strategy comes to life through that, right? Your actual strategy, not the simple strategy we put together, comes to life through that.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:52]:
And then, okay, cool. That's the first half. Now you got your three year picture. So to get to 10 years, right, to be $150 million staffing company, we're 40 million. How do we do that? Well, let's plot three years in advance and say by this date we need to be here. Revenue, profit, measurables. And we need to accomplish these five to 15 things to help us get there. Okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:12]:
And from there, if we've done that, the leadership team's all on the same page, they're seeing the same organization. And now you can create clarity and build a really crisp, clear one year plan from it. Okay? So one year from now, we need to be here. Revenue, profit, measurables. And then here's the five goals that we're going to work on to help us achieve this three year picture. And then you just take that one year plan, you break it down to rocks. Okay? Your, what is our quarterly plan? You do the same thing, just breaking it down more granular. And then the last question on the VTO is what are issues issues? And you put your long term issues there and you're like, why would I put my issues list on our, like, strategy? And I sarcastically say it's because you got to put it somewhere, right? You got to get these big things out of your head and park it somewhere.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:55]:
So those big long term, hairy issues, like should we implement an ats, you're saying we don't have time for that right now. We can't focus on that. So go put that on our plan so we can talk about it at the right time and not forget it. Makes sense.

Derek Pittak [00:17:08]:
Makes sense. And I feel like this almost puts, I feel like this almost does a few different things. Like first of all, it puts guardrails on the ADHD visionary.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:17]:
Yeah, yeah.

Derek Pittak [00:17:19]:
For those listening, he just rolled his eyes. But also, how often do you start working with a company and they have this idea, this goal and vision, but it's not really put together, I would.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:32]:
Say, you know, and again, we know, you know, EOS Worldwide has done a ton of, you know, research on this over, over the years, you know, 20 plus years of data at this point. But they know that most of the time it's in someone's head, right? That vision and plan, it's in the leadership team's head and commonly in the owner, the visionary said, and now you're just trying to extract it to create transparency and clarity. Because again, so think go back to the beginning of our discussion about why I left the government. I was just this cog in the wheel of whatever we were doing and not seeing any improvements, how this actually fit into the grand vision and plan. So if we use that example and fast forward to creating this thing called a bto, you're extracting all these ideas because the head of sales might want this, but the owner wants that. The owner, who is a sales guy, thinks that sales should be Done this way. The head of sales thinks it should be done that way. Right? So it creates a lot of clarity and alignment for the leadership team.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:32]:
And now you can impart that wonderful vision and plan to the entire organization and say, hey, recruiting team, hey, sales team. Hey, back office team. This is how you guys all fit in this grander vision and plan. We need every single one of you to help us get from 40 to 150, right? And here's exactly how we're going to do it, and here's exactly how you're going to play a part. So if I've got a company goal of launching Bullhorn by the end of the year, guess what? I'm going to tell them how each one of them are going to play a part in it, whether that be through requirements, gathering, workflowing and workshopping what the new tools should look like, testing, right? Being a trainer potentially for building, process for it, et cetera, et cetera. Now I'm bringing them into it so they feel like, wow, we're actually doing something to help this organization get to where it wants to go versus just put another person in a seat, get another person out billing, make another sale for a job order.

Derek Pittak [00:19:32]:
Do you see eos different with staffing versus retained search or like direct search or direct placement?

Benjamin Mena [00:19:39]:
The tools. Know what becomes interesting when you start dealing with permanent placement organizations or direct hire or search firms is that sometimes they're created and look a lot like a partnership. So if you think of like an accounting firm or a law firm, right. They're siloed into managing partners, into partners who have their own book of business. And they're supposed to be the relationship person, the salesperson, the delivery person for their book of business. And sometimes search firms can look very similar to that. So it becomes a little nuanced on how you build the accountability chart around. You know, what does this leadership team look like? Is it a bunch of, you know, people who are sale the knops for their particular book of business? Right.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:20]:
Maybe it's it. Maybe it's accounting finance, maybe it's healthcare, right? And you've got like three main verticals for your search firm. And the head of each one of those verticals is really like the integrator for each particular vertical and responsible for the whole thing. So I think the accountability chart can be different, right? This isn't black and white, but the tools remain the same, right? The tools are the tools. The L10s, the rocks, the scorecards, all that stuff is applied the same. It's just the vernacular might be different, what's important might be different, but none of that changes.

Derek Pittak [00:20:56]:
The Recruiter Sales and Business Development Summit is coming back. It is kicking off January 26, 2026. It is going to be the best, biggest, most focused conference for recruiters to help them grow with business development in the sales. Remember, with all the summits, the live sessions are free. If you want to go for the replays, you got two options. You can go VIP on the summit platform, or you can join the community and have access to all the summits. But this is a summit that you do not want to miss. If you want 2026 to be the absolute best year possible, be there, be ready to learn, and be ready to crush it.

Derek Pittak [00:21:30]:
I'll see you there. When does EOS not work? Or when should a company not even look at doing eos?

Benjamin Mena [00:21:38]:
Well, I would say, you know, the stock answer is that it works really well for organizations that are, you know, 10 to 250 employees. And so again, remember, our target market is entrepreneurial companies. And so, you know, you're thinking, why wouldn't I do this for a $10,000, you know, regional bank that's publicly traded? A couple of reasons, right? They've already kind of figured it out. They have these tools already in place. Do they do them well? Maybe, maybe not. But EOS is gaining traction, not to play on the word too much with larger organizations that might be a thousand or five thousand people, but it works really, really well for smaller organizations. Going into an organization that's two people, that's kind of hard to implement. EOs, you could take a couple tools and put them to play a thousand percent and they'll do wonders for your company.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:25]:
But like the full tool set at a startup type of organization, there's so much chaos in a startup and it's kind of gotta be that way. So it really is difficult in that mode for a period of time. So once you start to get to 10 plus employees, you really can start using these tools. You have a semblance of a leadership team. Maybe there's two or three of you, and then I think you can scale from there. So that's the target market for who it works for. You know, owners are frustrated, right? They have people issues, they're not getting anywhere, they're not growing, there's no profit, right? They're angry, frustrated, whatever it might be. They just want to live a better life and not work 80 hours a week pulling their hair out.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:04]:
So those are like, right, fit organizations. When doesn't it Work. It doesn't not necessarily work for a two person company. My smallest client had three people. It worked well in Cascade five years later. They're doing awesome now, but they didn't use the full tool set. They only used a few tools that really mattered and worked for them. But when doesn't it work well is when you have a really weak integrator, right? The person charged with running the day to day business.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:30]:
It doesn't work well with teams that are lying to themselves. It doesn't work well when the leadership team isn't highly accountable, doesn't trust each other, never gets things done. Like rock completion is always horrible. They never hit their financial goals. Like that's when it doesn't work. And usually if we can pull it back far enough, it's usually a bunch of people issues. Right. You don't have the right people in the right seats at that level to actually know and do what they need to do.

Derek Pittak [00:23:56]:
Like we're talking about all these concepts, these toolbox processes, like components, like if somebody wanted to actually implement this, like how long does it typically take to implement?

Benjamin Mena [00:24:09]:
What we tell prospective clients is that it takes 24 months. The process is built. The EOS process is built to take 24 months and that would be five sessions a year. Right. And there's time in between where there's coaching conversations, there's help you need to do with your client and all that kind of stuff. But what you're ultimately looking at and working with someone is saying a two year journey. That's what we like a mental commitment to this two year process. And look, sometimes you know, it's not for them and they quit three sessions later or they got everything they needed in 18 months and you graduate them and they're good to go.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:47]:
So some can go faster and they pick it up so much faster and then they're good, they want to graduate and do it on their own. And then some clients stay on for life. And you've been working with the same company for five years and they love the fact that you come in and bring that value to them every quarter to help them work through their issues and they'll help them build a great plan for the next quarter or the next year.

Derek Pittak [00:25:07]:
So what is it like to work with an implementer? Because I feel like this is just kind of like in the same situation where you brought in an implementer. This is kind of hard to pull off by yourself.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:19]:
It's extremely hard. But there are teams that do it and do it well and we call Those self implementing companies. So for every eos, every company that works with an EOS implementer, let's say the number of self implementing companies is 10x that number if there are 850 certified EOS implementers like myself, right? And let's say we're working with 20,000 companies, right, helping them implement EOS. Multiply that 20,000 times 10 for the amount of companies out there doing it on their own. And what generally happens is they're using subsets of the tools, or maybe they had somebody, a buddy, some consultant, they knew that knew enough about EOS that could teach them components, or they just picked and chose like, hey, I want to learn how to run an effective meeting. So we're going to run L10s and we're going to do rocks. That happens for sure. But how do you work with an EOS implementer? Right.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:12]:
Is more about, we serve three purposes. Teacher, facilitator, coach, and teaching all the EOS concepts and how to practically implement them in your business. Remember, the implementer's job isn't to actually do the implementation. It's the team's job to take all that wisdom, knowledge, tool set and actually put it to work in their business. We work with the leadership teams to. Right, it's like train the trainer type of concept. Because if I do all the work for you, if I teach you the tools and then they say, well, hey, can you actually do this for us? Can you teach our teams level tens? Can you help our teams assign rocks? And yeah, I can certainly help you do that and implement at a lower level for you, but you're creating dependency. And we teach independence, right? We're teaching you to really buy into these concepts so that you ultimately do want to graduate, you ultimately do want to run this on your own.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:06]:
So how do I work with the team? Five sessions a year in the room, roll up our sleeves. I'm teaching tools, right? Facilitating the session, right? That's like 15% of the work is facilitation. But ultimately you're there to guide a common answer and get them to where they need to be and help them solve their issues and build an amazing action plan that they can walk out of the room with a great vision plan for the quarter, for the year. And you're doing that. Like I said, there's a foundational series that you do up front that's a lot of hard work in the first 60 days and then it's every quarter thereafter for about two years, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter.

Derek Pittak [00:27:41]:
Awesome. I know we covered a Ton today. And before we jump over to the next part of the podcast, is there anything that you want to go deeper on within EOS that I didn't know to ask about?

Benjamin Mena [00:27:52]:
No. And I love no. I love the free flowing concept because we kind of jumped around the entire model. There's a very specific pitch that I have for this, but we jumped around and covered really everything in some way, shape or form. So I'm good with it being very informal that way. And I think anything at this point might be diminishing returns for the listeners.

Derek Pittak [00:28:15]:
Well, so the next part is the quick fire questions and they don't need to be quick answers, so.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:19]:
Sure.

Derek Pittak [00:28:20]:
It's just a podcast separator. So I love that you are, you've been in the staffing world, completely separate from the staffing world. You, you're hiring recruiters, you're working with new recruiters. If you have a recruiter, let's say next week, walks into your office and with everything, you know, sits down and asks you the question like, how can I have this successful career here? What piece of advice would you give.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:41]:
Them if anybody did ask that question, I'd applaud them. Number one for, you know, being courageous enough to ask and curious enough. And usually if somebody's asking that question, they probably have a high motor and, you know, kind of a get shit done attitude. So I love that and I wish more people would ask a question like it. My next question would be, how much money do you want to make? Because usually recruiters and salespeople want to make money, right? They're commission based roles for the most part. Not every organization is designed that way, but for the most part there is. So like, okay, well, how much money do you want to make and do you really want to work at it? Because generally it's not a, it's not something you can just kind of sit around and get lucky. Like, you've gotta get to work.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:24]:
And so on the sales side, it's like, are you willing to roll up your sleeves and do more than the minimum? So if our minimum requirement is for you to do a hundred calls a week, are you gonna do 150? Are you gonna do 200? Are you gonna stop at 97? And so my very real next question is like, what do you wanna make and how hard do you wanna work? Because I'm gonna share the good, bad and the ugly about the reality of it. And sales sucks because you get told no so many freaking times. And so you gotta build thick skin like, can you take Criticism. Can you take feedback? So I try to be very open with teams on both the sales and recruitment side when I get to talk to them about, like, again, I really try to scare people off if I'm involved in the interview process to head those things off, to say, like, okay, if you come here and I really scared you, like, that means you typically want to work and you're ready to work.

Derek Pittak [00:30:12]:
Love that. Second question is, we're going to change this to firm owners. You're at a conference, a firm owner recognizes you. Like, hey, you're the staffing EOS guy. You know, I know you can't narrow everything down to one piece of advice, but we're thinking about implementing eos. If you could narrow it down to one piece of advice, Bear, what would it be?

Benjamin Mena [00:30:30]:
Maybe advice or a question. But are you ready for change? Are you ready to disrupt your organization? Because any change is a disruption. I've worked with good clients. I've worked with bad clients. I think we all have. I've worked with clients just for the money or it wasn't the best relationship. It was very transactional. It didn't feel the best.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:51]:
But we got the work done. And I really want to work with companies that really love this work and they want to do it. And so for me, I would say, like, that's great. Let's talk. But are you ready for change? You can usually see when they are and when they aren't. There's a lot of lip service, but the proof's in the pudding pretty quickly if they're willing to start to make changes. Because what you find is often excuses like, oh, we can't hire this person because I can't let this person. Because we can't do that yet.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:22]:
Because there's a lot of excuses versus you gotta start somewhere. So take one of the seven things and do something with one. So I always ask, are you ready for change? Because it's gonna be painful, and the team you have now might not be the team you have in two years. Is that okay? And if that's not, let's not waste our time. But if it is, let's talk.

Derek Pittak [00:31:44]:
Has there been a book that's had a huge impact on your career outside of Traction?

Benjamin Mena [00:31:48]:
I'll probably go way off the deep end here and just say, you know, the Bible obviously has had a profound impact on my life and still does, but I won't get spiritual with you right now, but it's just a book filled with a ton of wisdom. But I'd say in A more practical sense for what you're looking for. I think the book Radical Candor is wonderful by Kim Scott and Facebook executive and all this. And it's just about how to have a really hard conversation. Right. Because what ultimately happens is a lot of stuff doesn't happen in business because lack of trust. This goes back to Patrick Lencioni's teaching and he's written amazing books. Five Dysfunctions of a Team is one of them.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:26]:
And I, you know, teach it every annual session with a client. But you know, this idea that you can challenge personally, right. And you can still love on that person basically. So you can like show that you care and challenge them directly. And that's like a tough thing to learn how to do is you can be a real big giant, you know what to somebody to try and get the most out of them. But that only works for a small period of time. Right. It's not a long term solution of just beating on somebody in a negative way.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:57]:
But if you can show this person that I really do care about you and I care about your success, but I'm also gonna be very direct with you when things aren't working or with what I need you to do or whatever. So Radical Candor is a great book. There's another book really quick called who not how, written by Dan Sullivan. Great book. Stop trying to figure out how and find the who's right. You don't have to be the expert in everything. Find the who that is the person that knows it. Anyways, I'll keep going.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:25]:
So I'll stop.

Derek Pittak [00:33:26]:
Favorite tech tool that you love at the moment.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:28]:
You know, I'm starting to get into the Super Grok is pretty cool. You know, it's got a PhD level in every single topic you ask. So that's been pretty cool. Our company did just implement a software called Ringover. It's a, it's a phone system. Right. But it integrates with the ats, does some really cool stuff. Obviously we do automation, but we are implementing as soon as we get on Bullhorn next month we're implementing their product called Amplify, which is AI and really starts to take over a lot of the recruitment processes.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:57]:
So we haven't done it yet, but seeing demos, super excited about getting the company on that platform.

Derek Pittak [00:34:02]:
Awesome. So you didn't have a recruiting background, but you ended up now in the executive seat of multiple like two recruiting companies. You've now helped implement EOS at 40 different recruiting companies. If you could literally go back in time and have a cup of Coffee with yourself. One month into that first job, like the first job in the staffing world, this chaotic world, what would you sit down and tell yourself?

Benjamin Mena [00:34:28]:
I would tell myself, let me just see if I can pull this off for you. But, you know, there's. I ask first. I have a sticky note above my computer here that reminds me to ask more questions than make more statements and be more curious. And that leads into really diving into understanding at the desk level sooner in my career. So if I had spent more time really understanding the how to's of recruiting, sales and recruiting and sat at the level, if you think about, like, the undercover CEO or whatever the hell that show used to be of, like, do the work I would have done that at the beginning of my staffing career, actually go out on sales drops, do sales myself, recruit the people that. That's the one thing I probably, you know, I don't have a lot I don't regret. I don't think it's healthy to do that.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:18]:
Made mistakes, sure. Learn lessons, sure. But that's one thing I would go back and tell myself to do.

Derek Pittak [00:35:24]:
Love that. So I know that you've been around the staffing world now. People know you. People, like, ask you questions, but I'm sure you get the questions, like, how do you implement eos, of course, like, what do I do? Like, blah, blah, blah. What about this? Like what the scorecard? Like all these questions that you get from recruiters, salespeople, firm owners. Is there a question that you wish they would actually ask you, but they never do?

Benjamin Mena [00:35:47]:
I think you stole it a little bit with the previous question about a new hire coming in. But what. My answer, I can't articulate the question as much as the answer I would give. And the answer I would give is, how do I do all this? How do I solve all this? How do I get from A to Z or A to B? I heard something really profound probably six, eight weeks ago, listening to a podcast on a morning run. And it was, it was a spiritual podcast and the articulation of business or sports or anything in life. To be successful, you have to fall in love with the process. So think about it in a sports analogy. If you want to become the best free throw shooter in the NBA, you've got to shoot a thousand free throws a day.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:31]:
So you're falling in love with the process of doing the thing that's going to make you great. And so what I wish they would ask is, how. How can I do this? And for whatever, whatever specific category that they're asking that question. To me it's simply just, you know, again, fall in love with the process and actually do it. Because if you don't love it, you won't do it. Right. And if you don't love it, you shouldn't do it and you're not going to be successful long term. So it's really understanding.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:59]:
And then you know, okay, so how do I do this? But I really think about sales, about recruiting. It is just like love the process and do it even for long term recruiters or long term sales, successful salespeople, so new people. It's about fall in love with the process, do the process. It will work, I promise you. For enhanced and advanced people, it's improve the process. So it works even better for you. I'll hear. Well, I'm an amazing recruiter.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:27]:
It takes me less interviews to subs, less subs to placements. Cool, great. Then why, why aren't you doing more? Why aren't you doing more? Well, I'm making 120 a year or 150 a year. I'm cool. Okay, why aren't you doing more? Like do you want to make 250 a year? Because you could, if you put in the same output as a new person who's learning, you'd make 250 a year. Isn't that appealing to you? So like really starting to get people to think that way because I hear that all the time, well, their metrics need to be different or they're measurable. So the KPIs. Why? Well, because it takes them less.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:59]:
I don't care. They have the same and their output's going to be higher, way higher. So to me I think it's fall in love with the process and then enhance the process. So I know that doesn't exactly answer your question, but I'm trying to find a way to weave that in because it's been like my thing lately is to impart that on people is the importance is falling in love. And if you don't, it's not going to be happening for you.

Derek Pittak [00:38:19]:
I love this. Well, I got two questions before I let you go, Derek. First of all, if somebody wants to follow you, how do they go about doing that?

Benjamin Mena [00:38:27]:
Probably the biggest thing for me would be LinkedIn. I try to be fairly active, you know, post a couple of times a week, you know, like share all that fun stuff. But I'd say LinkedIn is probably the number one thing. I do have an EOS website, they can certainly find me there too. Those would be the two best places to find me.

Derek Pittak [00:38:41]:
And before I let you go, is there anything else you want to share with the listeners?

Benjamin Mena [00:38:45]:
I'm kind of spent and mentally exhausted right now, but yeah, Ben, this has been great. I hope you you can see it. I don't know if the video will be shown and it's more just audio, but I hope people can see or feel like the passion I have around not just staffing but eos in general and really just wanting to help people, like put good out in the world and help them and great things come back to everybody.

Derek Pittak [00:39:07]:
Well, Derek, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on. I found it absolutely incredible when you told me the story that you ended up in this space because you fired a client and they lost $5 million in revenue, which is just. I loved how that was the gateway. But one of the reasons why I actually reached out and wanted to have this conversation is because staffing, recruiting is just chaos. We're dealing with people. Most of the time, it's chaos behind the scenes. But I've seen through these interviews a few organizations that implemented eos and they've had exponential growth, 5 to 25 million, 500k to 3 million. I've watched the growth happen behind the scenes and so I wanted to get a chance for people to understand what it looks like and how it could be implemented.

Derek Pittak [00:39:54]:
So, Derek, thank you so much for sharing and for the listeners, we are coming close to the tail end of 2025. Put everything in for the rest of the year. This is your chance to crush your goals. But the most important thing this last quarter does, it sets you up for the entire 2026. So make your dreams happen. Work hard. Let's grow together.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:13]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoy, hit, subscribe and leave a rating.