How To Find Your Real Driver. It Was Never Money

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
You have just got done listening to part 1 of this amazing interview with Michelle. Make sure to go over to download part 2 to finish the rest of this podcast interview. All right. I want to flip gears a little bit. About 7 months ago, I posted on LinkedIn. I was like, hey, who is the Windy Rhodes of recruiting? And then about a month ago, I got an email saying, Ben, I got the Windy Rhodes. You need to meet Michelle. And I was like, okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:25]:
I'm like, Well, first question, poor Michelle. First question I had was like, do you actually work with recruiters? Because, you know, I so often I get hit up by people that want to be on the show that have nothing to do with recruiting and don't understand our industry. She's like, yes, I used to be one. I'm like, let's chat. We'll have some fun. So Wendy, I mean, Michelle, I want to talk about high performance winners. Like you were one, you coach a lot of them. Like I want to get tactical when it comes to like the, the BD.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:51]:
Walk me through a top biller's morning and what it actually looks like.

Michelle Flynn [00:00:56]:
So I think, because when I was— I think about this one, when it comes to kind of absolutely completely cold outreach, I think that is, that's really challenging. I'm not necessarily going to say I have the winning answer to the opener when you're making a phone call. I think the biggest high performers are thinking really tactically. They're thinking really smart. They're thinking who are their clients. Um, if they've got current clients, they are expanding. And I see this a lot. You're like, hey, great, I've got a new client, I've done a deal with them, now I'll go and I'll find another new client and I'll do a deal with them.

Michelle Flynn [00:01:27]:
You're like, what are you doing with these relationships that you've already got? The people that you have, um, been recruiting for, the people that the business have been recruiting for, how are you expanding? How are you building that? Stop making your life more difficult by constantly having to knock on doors when you already have existing relationships. So I think the highest performers are really developing those relationships. Every conversation, if it's with a candidate, it's building the relationship with the candidate, but knowing that in the future they may actually also be a client, but also they have a network of people. The reason I didn't have to do any BD was I knew every .NET developer in London. They were my BD function because when the CTO said, oh, we're about to start start hiring, one of the devs would go, you've got to speak to Michelle. So I was getting inbound because everybody knew me. And I think the top performers are using AI in the right way to kind of remove the low-level repetitive work. But what they're not doing is using AI as an excuse to not then go and do anything else.

Michelle Flynn [00:02:31]:
They are out there, they are building relationships, they are building podcasts, They are talking about it. They are the people that are really thought leaders. So I used to run community events, and as much as I was the recruiter, I was actually not there talking about recruitment. I was bringing great speakers into an event where all of the technical people, I was giving out the beer and the pizza. So I was very popular because they wanted the beer and the pizza. So the top performers are just They're thinking out of the box and they are building relationships and they are becoming the go-to. And every single top performer that either I work with or that I see on LinkedIn and I'm reading their stories, you're like, they're doing the same things because it's very easy. And this is again, making the excuses of just like, oh, well, I'm just, I keep making the calls, but they're not working.

Michelle Flynn [00:03:24]:
Well, how good is your call? Who are you phoning? Are you phoning them at the right time of day? Are you just wasting that phone call? We all hear that where you listen to someone on a call and you're like, well, why didn't you ask them that question? Or why didn't you say that?

Benjamin Mena [00:03:38]:
Or—

Michelle Flynn [00:03:39]:
but yeah, the top performers are building relationships, but also they're being consistent. Consistency is really important. Otherwise, you get the highs and the lows.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:48]:
Do you see a difference between female top performers and men top performers?

Michelle Flynn [00:03:54]:
Oh, it's a hard one because to a certain extent, I would say no, because I think that anyone who is a high performer in recruitment has kind of got that inner just drive, and we would do it in different ways. So I had a male counterpart when I worked at Computer Futures. I did PC support, it was a high-volume market. I did perm. I had a male counterpart who did contract. Weirdly, we actually share the same birthday, which is odd, but we are so different, and yet we were both top of our game because of how we were building those relationships. And I think you've got to— you're playing to your strengths on things. He was really into football, so he'd be like chatting a lot of football with people all the time.

Michelle Flynn [00:04:35]:
And I wasn't into football, but our company did sponsor a football box, and I was trusted, so I would often be the one getting to host the football box, even though I didn't know a lot about football at that point. So I think that they may play to their strengths differently, but I think that inner drive of just nothing is getting in my way, when you know what motivates you. And I think often that's the challenge— people come into recruitment saying, oh, it's money. It's never money, it's always what the money brings. And if you don't know what that is— and I still talk to a lot of people who are like, I've got no idea why I'm doing recruitment, my mate told me that they're making sort of £40,000 to £60,000 in the first year, um, so I'll just go do that. And it's like, when you have got that inner intrinsic thing that you might not even know what it is, nothing is getting in your way. And I think we see that sort of, um, across genders, across ages. You sort of— people are going, how do we get the younger generation? How do we motivate them? And I'm just like, you need to understand what their driver is.

Michelle Flynn [00:05:38]:
If you don't understand that, then how do you think you're going to motivate them? So get to that, and you can suddenly just get people achieving break things, but a lot of them are going to have that inner thing anyway, and you can kind of see it. And that's that magic where you just watch them and you're like, you're just watching them go.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:55]:
Let's talk about maybe a little bit of a pre-ritual call. Like, picture this, a recruiter's about ready to call a Fortune 500 C-suite. What does the 30 seconds look like before they hit that connect button?

Michelle Flynn [00:06:07]:
So, what do they want to get out of the call? Why are you phoning? Why should this person speak to you and stand up? Don't sit down. The whole way, sort of, we talk about power posing and sort of, yeah, if you like, we see it again, you see like the top performers prancing around the office, they've got the headsets on, they're closing. When you're standing up, you're much more likely to take risk. You're much more likely to ask that cheeky question, go for that fee that you might not when you're sort of sat down because your body is just open. So yeah, I think they go in with an idea. They're not just making a call to hit a call stat. They're going in with a, what do I want to get out of this call? And it might not, it's generally often not a job. It's about what's the name I'm going to get or what's the interview slot that I'm going to get or whatever it might be.

Michelle Flynn [00:06:51]:
They go in with a plan.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:54]:
We hear about flow state and most of the time when you think of flow state, you think of like a coder sitting there in front of the computer for 8 hours, just like in the zone. But I think we don't underestimate how powerful that could be for a recruiter. Especially in a BD block. What does a flow state actually look like in a business development block? And then also, how do you know that you've lost a flow state?

Michelle Flynn [00:07:18]:
Okay, so flow state is where you are at your most powerful. Like, you just lose track of time. And there's a great McKinsey study on it where you are 500% more motivated when you are in flow, 430% more innovative and creative, which is a massive thing because that's how you stand out from AI. So when someone gets into that state of flow, that's where you just— they don't want to be interrupted, they don't want to get into the banter, they're not interested in anything else that is going on beyond the task that they're doing. So if you get into that in a BD, you've got your list ready, you know who you're phoning, you know what you want to get out of the calls, and you were just like, right, I'm going into this, no one else come near me. And when I was at Computer Futures, I purposely said, don't sit me in the middle of the office. Sit me on the edge of the office because I don't want to be distracted. I will choose to come into like the banter, but when I'm in it, and you might call it power hour or people doing sprints, but when you get into that, it's like time just passes and you're just like, oh my God, I've just done 2 hours of BD and it feels like 5 minutes.

Michelle Flynn [00:08:20]:
And you've realized that you haven't even taken a sip of water because you have just been go, go, go. And when you can get into that in recruitment, That is really where the power happens, because that's where you're not allowing your phone to distract you, or you're not allowing anything in the office, or you're not allowing your email notifications. That we're distracted every 6 seconds by all these notifications. Remove all of that. Go, right, what is the one task I'm focusing on? It's kind of unitasking. Get into that. And then when you come out of it, when you come out of flow state, you need to go into the recovery phase. So the circle of flow, you've got the struggle.

Michelle Flynn [00:08:56]:
Ah, God, I've got to do some BD. Then you do the release, which is preparing to go into flow. And for some people like Tony Robbins, the sort of most amazing American coach, he bounces on a little sort of mini trampoline before he goes into his big stadiums full of people. So it might be about physically moving your body. You look at sort of people going into, again, sport, they're putting their music on, they've got their favorite track, they're playing Eye of a Tiger or whatever. They're about to go into whatever they're doing. They're sort of releasing their sort of— it's all neurochemicals. Then you go into this flow state.

Michelle Flynn [00:09:30]:
And how long someone can stay in flow, like an ADHDer, oh my goodness, they have got the flow superpower because give them something they want to be doing and they are going to go into flow for hours. Um, hyperfocus. But then when we come out of flow, we need the recovery phase. And that's just like, right, okay, go drink a water, a bit of fresh air. Laugh with a friend, whatever, and then we can go again. So when you master that cycle of flow and you plan that along with your time management to go, well, this is going to be my, my block of flow, then you're really using your days just as optimum. You're just not wasting time, or you're choosing when you're wasting your time. Go have the banter, go have lunch, do all of those things, but when you're working, actually work rather than just thinking that you are.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:19]:
How many flow cycles can a high performance or elite recruiter do per day in reality?

Michelle Flynn [00:10:27]:
Oh, so if you're looking at something like the Pomodoro technique, they suggest 25 minutes with a little 5-minute break. I do think it very much depends on different people. Definitely your ages. For females, as we get older and the joy of the sort of changing female hormone, then potentially we get more tired. So those things might work a bit differently. But I have seen people in their 20s just who are really in it, be in it almost all day. And they're the people that have the numbers of runners, if they're sort of running contract books, that the numbers are crazy that they're doing. Um, or people that are doing million-dollar deals on a, like a million-dollar fee, not a salary, is just crazy levels.

Michelle Flynn [00:11:07]:
So I think it's definitely down to the individual. Someone can go into a very long sort of cycle of flow and they might just be in one and that's When they come out of it, they're like, oh, I'm done, which is probably an ADHDer. They can go in it for a long period of time, but they will come out of that quite exhausted. Whereas someone like myself, I'm more likely to go into multiple flow states, but shorter with more breaks.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:34]:
Before we go into the part of the podcast, which I got excited about sitting down with you the most, you're known for breathwork.

Michelle Flynn [00:11:43]:
Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:44]:
Can you give us like a quick, like 90-second walkthrough of what it is, or maybe example how to do it? I know most of the listeners are probably in their car on a commute or working out right now. So like, what— walk us through, like, what is this?

Michelle Flynn [00:11:58]:
So what breathwork is, is it is regulating your nervous system. People think it's fluffy, they think it's just for yoga people. It's not. Um, more and more now high performers are talking about it, which really helps. But for me, I'm trained in the Oxygen Advantage, which is the science of your inhale and your exhale. So the first and most important thing is you close your mouth and you breathe through your nose. Your mouth is not a part of your respiratory system. Your nose does 30 different things that your mouth does not do.

Michelle Flynn [00:12:26]:
So firstly, if you were doing nothing else apart from between your calls, keeping your mouth closed, that alone can help. A really quick trick, if we're looking for something really quick and people are sort of driving and like, what can I do without sort of maybe closing my eyes, is your nostrils do different things. So your right nostril is the energizer nostril. So if at 3 in the afternoon you are tired, literally shut your left nostril and take some breaths in and out of your right nostril. And that is basically switching your nervous system, switching your energy levels on. If you are feeling stressed, you can do the reverse. Your left is your calm nostril. So you can literally just pick and choose which nostril you want to breathe through.

Michelle Flynn [00:13:09]:
My favorite— there are lots of breathing patterns. My favorite one, and the one that pretty much everyone agrees, sorry, is the, the most beneficial is called box breathing. It's also known as tactical breathing. So the sort of the Navy SEALs are doing this. And the idea, you can do this as you're about to go on a call to just prepare yourself. You can come off a call that maybe hasn't gone so well and you can calm yourself. You can do this before sleep, is that you visualize a box. And when I do breathwork, I do it to funky house music.

Michelle Flynn [00:13:39]:
So like Bill Withers' Lovely Day is a really nice track for a box because of the, the count. Um, and if anyone's interested, I've got like loads of tracks for all the different playlists depending on what music you like. But the idea is that you imagine a box and you breathe in for a count of 4, you hold in for a count of 4, you breathe out for a count of 4, you hold for 4. So all through the nose, in 4, hold 4, out 4, hold 4. And like, you can count as fast or as slow as you like because someone might go Oh well, 4 feels a bit uncomfortable. Well, then just count to 2 or count to 4 more quickly. But by what you're doing at that point, we're usually breathing 16 to 18 breaths a minute. It's too fast.

Michelle Flynn [00:14:23]:
When we breathe quickly, our heart rate speeds up, everything speeds up. Um, we want to slow it down. So by box breathing, you are slowing your breathing down to the more natural rate, which is somewhere between 6 and 10 breaths a minute.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:38]:
Can you show that for like 15 seconds real quick?

Michelle Flynn [00:14:41]:
You want to do it?

Benjamin Mena [00:14:42]:
Yeah, go ahead. Let's go.

Michelle Flynn [00:14:43]:
Okay, so get comfy, sit up. You need, um, your spine to be straight. So more than anything, your lungs are open. So your lungs, they're just like balloons, so they're not muscles. We need to allow them to get filled with air. Do you feel comfortable to close your eyes? You want to do this? This is going to make great snippet content. Michelle puts Ben to sleep. Sorry about that.

Michelle Flynn [00:15:07]:
Um, so yeah, exactly. Just for a moment, even become aware of you are breathing just through the nose if you are able to do so. Just even being aware of the breath can be enough to calm us down. But I'm going to count you around 2 rounds of the box. So here we go. In, 2, 3, 4, hold, 2, 3, 4, out, 2, 3, 4, hold, 2, 3, 4. In, 2, 3, 4, hold, 2, 3, 4, out, 2, 3, 4, hold, 2, 3, 4. Now just go back to your normal breath.

Michelle Flynn [00:15:59]:
Maybe just take one nice big deep breath in through your nose and a big old sigh out of the mouth.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:08]:
Ah.

Michelle Flynn [00:16:09]:
Give your fingers and toes a little wiggle. And whenever you are ready, feel free to stay there for the next 20 minutes. I'll just sit and wait till you, uh, come round again. Are you awake?

Benjamin Mena [00:16:25]:
What was the rest of the podcast?

Michelle Flynn [00:16:30]:
How do you feel?

Benjamin Mena [00:16:31]:
More relaxed. I think that's probably not good for a podcast.

Michelle Flynn [00:16:38]:
It's really relaxing, isn't it?

Benjamin Mena [00:16:39]:
Oh my God. Like, I could have caught up and like got to like 4 or 5 or 6 hours of sleep off that.

Michelle Flynn [00:16:48]:
But the good thing with it is that you can do it deep relaxation. Or when I'm teaching like at a conference, I don't want people to fall asleep. I want them to have a little bit of a dance party. So, um, I will play maybe Insomnia by Faithless or something really high energy. And you can do the box, but to a high energy track. So you'll come out of it calm, but energized. But often, and I don't know if you've noticed this, people say they feel the lights are brighter. They feel like the fog has been removed a little bit just to help you go, right.

Michelle Flynn [00:17:19]:
What's the problem I need to solve now? So 1, 2 rounds of the box. If you're trying to sleep, do that when you're in bed, and the chances are you'll get about 5 rounds and you'll be asleep, and you will have much increased sleep quality.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:33]:
I think I might try that tonight instead of melatonin.

Michelle Flynn [00:17:36]:
Give it a go. I've got a little video I recorded actually, and it's me down by the beach doing counting around the box but with the sound of the waves. So I'll send you the little YouTube link and you can try that because it's really nice when you've just got And that's the thing. You can do this with any sounds that you like. It's completely a personal thing. When you've got the tools to breathwork, whether it's the different nostrils, whether it's the high-energy Wim Hof type breathing patterns, whether it's the really calming, you can just pick and choose like a buffet. What do you want? Just depending what you need. And what I do first thing in the morning will be different to what I do last thing at night, but it's amazing.

Michelle Flynn [00:18:15]:
So yeah, you've had a little taster. One day we'll get to do the high-energy party stuff and then you'll be— it's the amazing thing because in recruitment you talked a lot about people maybe drinking a lot and other things they might be doing. This means you don't have to do that because you can feel that good just through breathwork.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:29]:
So I want to flip gears. Yes, we've talked about the foundations, the sleep, eating, the routines. We've talked about high performance. We've talked about things to do before a cold call. We've talked about the breathwork. But in reality, none of that matters if you were heading towards the wrong place.

Michelle Flynn [00:18:51]:
Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:52]:
Like, so, so often many of us have gotten into this business with an idea or a goal, or we, most of us landed in this land of misfit toys because it was like the opportunity that landed on our lap. We didn't plan for this. And with not planning for anything, like you also Didn't have goals. So the goal so often is like, I want to become a million-dollar biller because Rich Rosen does that in his sleep. Or I want to have this $100 million exit because I saw so-and-so just have that on LinkedIn. So often we are chasing success that isn't ours. When you were doing this, when you were in the zone, when you were like locking in these 20 placements a month, Is that what put you in the hospital?

Michelle Flynn [00:19:37]:
Yes, probably. Well, yes and no. Probably, I think what happens is what I wanted to achieve changed throughout my ages. And I think often it feels like such big questions, isn't it? Sort of goals, purpose, motivation. And when you're not sure where it is, or when you get so locked on to what it is, it can be hard. And that was probably I didn't realize what my purpose was until I actually retrained and started actually reflecting on myself. I just thought it was all about money and financial security, which absolutely, that was a key extrinsic driver, but that wasn't really what was motivating me. And I was so locked on to this thing that I didn't even realize was driving me.

Michelle Flynn [00:20:18]:
And I think that's where we were talking about sort of, are men and women different? It's like when you have that intrinsic driver, Yeah. that purpose, it just becomes so much bigger, which the downside of that is absolutely right. You can push so hard that you then end up ill. Um, so it's really positive to have that because it is the thing that keeps you going, but it can be to the detriment of the rest of your life if you become so single-minded. And I see this often, like, people in relationships where one partner is so driven on, like, climbing this mountain, and I mean metaphorically, but actually they've climbed the wrong mountain. They wanted to be doing this over here, and they've worked so hard building that. So that's why pausing and stopping and reflecting and going, what do I actually want? And this might be from a 1-month, 3-month, 6-month goals, or this might be from the much bigger question of what's your purpose. The more you understand yourself about that, then the more it's easier to keep going and be motivated.

Michelle Flynn [00:21:18]:
The downside is that then you, you go too far and you end up unwell. So that's— that comes back to that balance piece again.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:26]:
For those listening, how do you actually go about finding your purpose and not just a LinkedIn one?

Michelle Flynn [00:21:34]:
Yeah, it's hard. And we've got anyone who hasn't read sort of Simon Sinek's Start with Why, it's a brilliant book, but it can be really intimidating, can't it, when sort of someone says to you, What's your purpose? Or if you've ever been in an interview and you're like, oh God, I don't know. So the first thing when I'm talking to people, it's like, right, what actually motivates you? And in the recruitment world, most of the things that you will hear to start with are going to be money, a nice home, the latest Rolex, money to pay for private schooling for my children, or whatever it is. And you go, okay, these are all great. Um, but then you start to dig deeper into why, because these are extrinsic external motivators. And absolutely important. I really loved all of those. But when you go, well, why do you want the money? Oh, okay, well, I want that because, um, I, I want freedom in the future, or, um, because I want to appear successful, or I want to appear attractive.

Michelle Flynn [00:22:26]:
Or you start to get— actually, the more you dig into those with the sort of the 7 levels of why, you start to get into what are your intrinsic, your internal ones, which are actually what you feel. So money motivates me because I ultimately want to feel free. Having the money to go to the gym motivates me not because I care about an influencer photo of myself in the gym. I'm never posting those unless I put a load of filters on them. But it's about what that gives me, which is like, if I look at my overall purpose now, and I'm 50 now, this is very different to when I was in my 20s, but I want to be healthy so I can enjoy my freedom. That's my purpose. And we kind of go, yes, it changes with age, but it's really— I think sometimes it feels bad for your purpose to meet the almost selfish. It feels like purpose should be like David Attenborough, I want to save the planet.

Michelle Flynn [00:23:25]:
But I, unfortunately, I've never met him. I would love to. But I wonder if when you dig deep, He actually wants to save the planet because he wants to know that his grandchildren will be okay. And it just so happens that the rest of us benefit from that. I think this highest ideal that in the UK we have OBEs and MBEs, where it's like this, these people that have done amazing things for other people, which is fantastic. And one of the greatest ways to improve your own levels of happiness is to do an act of kindness for someone else, but it's actually also okay to go, my purpose is I really want to be a good dad. Because when we get something that is our motivator, instead of us having to be pushed to do something, we're actually just pulled. I am pulled to exercise because my purpose to be healthy is so strong for me, having had obviously big health scares.

Michelle Flynn [00:24:15]:
So I think particularly in midlife as well, we, we get to that point where it was like, in your 20s it's about earning money and it is about the Rolex and the nice car, and that's great. It's about building your success. I get all of that. In your 30s, it may change. You might potentially have a partner or children, and maybe it becomes a bit more about money for stability. And then when you get into your 40s, you may have achieved what you wanted to financially, and then it maybe becomes about legacy. So I think when we start to dig into what are the real drivers, but we separate the external from the internal, then we can really dig in and find what actually matters. And that, when I know that with my clients, when I leave them a voice note on a Monday morning, if I refer to that, I'm going to get much more from them that day rather than just saying, make more calls.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:04]:
Have you seen great recruiters not motivated by money? Hmm.

Michelle Flynn [00:25:11]:
I think they would like to say that they're not, but I think they probably are. But not money. So, I wasn't motivated by money for maybe what would have been the traditional fancy car, nice watches, designer handbags. When I got my company car and it was brand new Mercedes, like, I loved it. I'm not saying I don't like those things, but for me, money is about experiences, and I love to travel, and that's what the money— so I think that when I do my values exercise with recruiters, um, I've done this with probably over 5,000 recruiters, and never once ever have I had money come up as one of the final core values ever. Now you might get hard work, achievement, financial security. You might get freedom, adventure, different things that money gives you. And I think this is maybe a change of sort of generations, is that when I started in recruitment, they were just like, just make more money.

Michelle Flynn [00:26:06]:
Whereas now we want to go, well, what do you want that money for? Because that's how you can really drive people. So, and for some people, the $100 million exit What's that for? Well, I want to be seen to be successful, or I want to prove to my family that sort of I'm, I've achieved something. It's never necessarily about looking at the money. And pretty much every founder that has exited that I've spoken to the day after exit, they're like, oh, now what? So that's why it's really important to kind of know why you're doing it. So yeah, check out Start with Why by Simon Sinek if you're a bit kind of lost, but he talks about the golden circle. Which is we talk a lot about what we do. So we do recruitment. How do you do it? LinkedIn.

Michelle Flynn [00:26:52]:
But what's the why? And I think the why is the thing that really differentiates people, A, from working with you as a supplier. Like, I think if you asked any of the clients that I worked with when I was running my recruitment business, they would very much see that my why was about building amazing teams and having an easy life because I had all the clients on exclusive. The benefit of that was I also then made loads of money. So the hope is if you're being successful in recruitment, you're going to make money. It's just about what's driving you for this success.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:25]:
I know a lot of times we talk about the founder and the purpose of why and then driven, but if you think about almost every single agency, it's filled up with lots of recruiters and only one or two, maybe most of the time one or two founders.

Michelle Flynn [00:27:38]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:39]:
I'm an agency recruiter. I've never sat down and listened to or figured out why I'm doing this or purpose or any of that nature. I landed in this land of misfit toys. Like, how do I, one, figure out my purpose? And then also like, how do I backtrack that into how I can be successful in this recruiting chair?

Michelle Flynn [00:27:59]:
Yeah. So if I asked you, what does motivate you?

Benjamin Mena [00:28:05]:
For me, it's like spending time with my kid. And also traveling since I'm here sitting here in France compared with the US. Like those are the big things for me, but I was also, I was always the oddball recruiter.

Michelle Flynn [00:28:20]:
What does that mean?

Benjamin Mena [00:28:22]:
When I was filling positions, I, most of the time I knew that there was a level of, I chose national security and GovCon because if I didn't fill the right positions and the right people in those seats, I'd have friends that would die. I got great at that because of that. But like, I never really gave a shit about the, uh, or crap about the charts and the money at the end of the day. Like money helps, money pays for things, but, but that was me. Like, if when they tried giving me like, like, hey, what about this bonus or Rolex? I'm like, I don't give a shit.

Michelle Flynn [00:28:57]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:59]:
Yeah.

Michelle Flynn [00:29:00]:
But that's why then when you start to sit and sort of question what energizes you. And I think particularly when someone becomes a parent, often their purpose just changes from, I thought I wanted all of this, but actually what I just want is security for my kids or time with my kids, or— which is why you have to keep considering it, because the fact that it isn't just, well, that's your purpose for all of your life. Like, for some people, I always use just David Attenborough as the example, for some people That may well have been his purpose for all of his life. But for most of us, that's not the case. As we change, um, that changes. Or also, as we reach a certain level of financial security, like, it's okay for me now to kind of go, well, money's not a priority for me. It's like, well, that's because I also had a very successful recruitment career, so I have been sensible with money, so that no longer has to be the priority. But also, one thing, if people are uncertain, When you get them doing the values exercise and they're thinking coming into it going, it's going to be money, and then when you start to narrow it down, narrow it down— because what I do is I give people like 100 words and I make them like, uh, cross ones out to really make those decisions— and you get to the final 3.

Michelle Flynn [00:30:13]:
And these can be hard because if one of your values is hard work and the other one is family, your own values can be opposing to each other. And that can be really difficult. Or if you've got adventure in family and you're like, okay, well, if I've got really small kids, can I take them on adventures? They're probably not going to want to kind of be able to go up Mount Everest or whatever. So the more that you can reflect on yourself and go, what energizes you? What motivates you? What are you striving for? It doesn't have to be what is considered the social norm to be awarded for good things for other people. It's just The more you understand yourself. And I think the big challenge that we have when we go back to time is we don't ever give ourselves time to stop and think. We scroll on a phone or we're working really hard. Whereas if you pause and you reflect and you start to ask yourself some of the bigger questions, like, what do you want someone to say about you at your 80th birthday party? For example, I'll let you answer that question.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:12]:
At least right now, it's, uh, 2 things. Great dad. Uh, great family and the impact that I was able to leave on an entire industry.

Michelle Flynn [00:31:22]:
Okay. And are you doing the things now in your life that means that there is a very strong chance that is some— what someone would say about you at your birthday?

Benjamin Mena [00:31:32]:
I get the chance because of the time zone differences. I get to spend like most of the day with my kid.

Michelle Flynn [00:31:39]:
Perfect.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:41]:
Look what the podcast has done so far. We've had over, was it 14,000 people show up to summits just from a little rinky-dinky podcast that nobody listened to for a good 100 episodes. And I was just like, you know, that little voice told me to keep on going when I probably should have quit. Okay.

Michelle Flynn [00:31:59]:
So there's your driver. You wanted to have an impact on the industry. You wanted to make legacy. So even when things were hard and no one was listening and you were like, just, talking to yourself and no one wanted to be on your podcast because they didn't know who you were, you just kept going because you had this inner intrinsic motivation to just have self-belief in yourself that it would work. And that's the consistency. You kept turning up, and now you run these— you have these summits and you have guests who are like, yes please, I want to come on your podcast, because you kept that inner belief. And you may well not have known that. And I think often we don't know it because we're either not having conversations about it, we're not reflecting, we're not journaling, whatever someone works for someone to get those ideas out of their sort of their subconscious.

Michelle Flynn [00:32:46]:
But you look at that and you go, you've created a life that means you can be a better parent because you live in a time zone that means that you can do that. And you have kept going with the podcast. That means that you will absolutely be making a difference to thousands and thousands of people in the recruitment world. So even if you didn't know it, you were climbing the right mountain.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:07]:
For those that definitely don't know it, is that why you also typically do like a bit of a life audit?

Michelle Flynn [00:33:14]:
Yep, definitely. So I've got— this is what I do. I had a little copy here. When people come to me, most people will tend to come to me either themselves or because their bosses sent them to me, and they want to— they're like, work's the problem. And it's rarely work. It's the things that impact work. And then yes, I can get into the detail with them about sort of what market they're doing or all of those things. But actually it's more about the foundations and what it's got here.

Michelle Flynn [00:33:39]:
It's got 4 parts in it. So you've got the practical parts of your life, and this is on my website so anyone can go and try this. Wheel of Life is quite a standard coaching tool, but I— it wasn't wide enough for me. I had too many things I wanted to review in this. But often In the practical section, one of them says routine. And when we audit our life and we basically fill in the diagram of our own life, we realize that if we made one change— so for example, if we put some routine in, or if we knew what our values were, or our purpose, that's on here, or we slept better— that it would have this knock-on effect. So like we talked about earlier with what's the first thing that I think people should change, generally it's sleep. But actually, for lots of people, when they do this, they're like, ah, if I had a better routine, then I would get more sleep, or I would exercise, or I would see my friends, or I would be better at work because I'd got more sleep and seen my friends.

Michelle Flynn [00:34:34]:
So it's a really good way when you're just a bit overwhelmed and a bit in the weeds of, I don't know where to start. I don't want to go and read another self-help book. I don't— I haven't got time to do any of this stuff. You're like, This, you're talking minutes. And whenever I do this at events, it's just amazing because I love the interaction of people all doing it together. And we do lots of hand raising of like, put your hand up if this is what you're experiencing. But it's also really lovely that when you compare it, I've got one of my clients and he, um, he, he scores it with numbers rather than necessarily on the diagram, and he totals his scores. And when we first started working together, his overall total was 100.

Michelle Flynn [00:35:14]:
And now it's at 150. So in the time we've worked together, he has improved overall by that. And to be able to look in recruitment, we want the KPIs. What's the data? How many calls are you making? What's your ratios? How are you going to get a deal? How many CVs do you need? This is your personal KPIs to go, what do you need to do in your life to move that score to a higher score? And there'll be dips with that. He went through a phase in the middle. He lives in Dubai and being in Dubai has not been a great place to be. So there was a dip in his scores, understandably, but now the scores have gone up again. And that's another reason to do it regularly, because if you do it once a month, once every 3 months, you're just going, okay, am I still moving in the right direction, or have actually I forgotten that I used to do this and this really worked for me, but oh, I've forgotten? And we see that a lot, don't we? We're really busy and we build great habits, and then we fall out of the habits.

Michelle Flynn [00:36:11]:
So, you're like, this keeps you on track with that.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:14]:
What is one of the most transformational, you don't have to give names or anything, like the most dramatic transformations that you've seen a recruiter go through?

Michelle Flynn [00:36:23]:
Talking about business or personal?

Benjamin Mena [00:36:27]:
Give me one of each.

Michelle Flynn [00:36:29]:
Business, this is one of my regulars that I work with, and his average fee was usually around the sort of the $15K, $20K mark. And, um, was it 4 weeks ago he had a starter and he did $105K fee. So that was amazing to watch that journey. I've been working with him for a year and we've been working on lots of stuff, not necessarily— we hadn't at the beginning, we weren't talking about how he gets to a higher fee, we were just generally talking about how he kept being high performing. So for me that was amazing, and watching him on that journey of like Oh, is the guy gonna start? Um, was brilliant. Um, so I've seen that quite a bit. I've got some clients that are trying to get to the 6-figure fee mark. They do the hedge fund market, so it's a very large fee space.

Michelle Flynn [00:37:17]:
On a personal point of view, it was Mental Health Awareness Week recently in the UK, and every year I go into a company and I do a talk on that. And a girl came up to me the other week and she said, um, just to let you know, since you were in last year, I had made one comment, you know, the way you just, you make comments, I make them all the time, and I had said, it's never too late to change. And since that point, she's lost 6 stone. I hadn't spoken to her in that year, it wasn't, I wasn't coaching her in that year, it was that one comment that just made her go, you're right, it's not. So it's amazing to see personal and professional things happening. People who are single and who want to find love, and then watching them find love and get married and wonderful things. But the point is, they're all completely linked to each other. So because I'm a sort of health and a performance coach, I get to have all of these conversations rather than just how do you make more calls? It's like, no, all of these things really have an impact on the others.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:17]:
I just literally looked up at the time and I'm like, oh my God. So we're gonna, we're gonna mix it up. We're gonna— I got a few more questions. I was gonna jump in, but I'm gonna kind of add them to the quickfire questions. And they don't need to be quick answers. But before We jump into that. Is there anything else that we should have gone deeper on?

Michelle Flynn [00:38:36]:
Okay, so I got something to show you. This— I don't make this. I don't— I'm not advertised by this. There are many different brands of this, but I have talked a lot about people breathing through their nose rather than their mouth. So for anyone on here who snores, or who wakes up with a dry mouth, and don't worry, I won't put you on the spot asking if that is you. Um, but many people might do that. Or people who don't get good sleep quality, because we talked about getting the best quality of sleep, no matter how much sleep, tape your mouth. This is a brand I use because it has a hole in the middle.

Michelle Flynn [00:39:13]:
So when it goes around your mouth, you're not going to be worried about suffocating. There are brands that go—

Benjamin Mena [00:39:19]:
I've seen those on Instagram.

Michelle Flynn [00:39:20]:
I know. I'm just like, that is not for me. For some people, great. Not for me. I like the ones with the holes in, but there are lots of different ones. You can make your own. You can literally stick like medical tape. You don't have to buy them.

Michelle Flynn [00:39:32]:
But I would say if you haven't tried mouth taping and if you are a snorer or you wake up with a dry mouth, both would suggest that you are mouth breathing. Or if your sleep quality is not good, tape your mouth. One of my guys, his sleep score was 40 most nights. One night of mouth taping, it went to 98.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:49]:
Wow.

Michelle Flynn [00:39:51]:
Um, so that is one thing that I Every event that I'm at, it's at the end, it's always the most popular. Everyone comes up and they're like, I need the mouth tape. Or you get the people who say it's for my friend, and I'm like, it's for you, you just don't want to admit it. But that's fine. But yes, I would highly recommend for anyone who is trying to improve their sleep quality, because I've talked a lot about the importance of sleep, try taping your mouth.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:14]:
I'm gonna— I might get one just because I don't think I've ever seen the 90s on a sleep score. Ever.

Michelle Flynn [00:40:21]:
There's the challenge. When you invite me back for a second chat, you can feed back and let me know what your score was, or put it out on LinkedIn so I can, uh, have a look and see. Maybe that's the thing. Maybe anyone who's listening to this, try taping your mouth, which sounds so dodgy, doesn't it? Um, but try taping your mouth and then put out on LinkedIn that you've listened to the podcast, and then put your before and after sleep scores and tell me whether it's like— it's not sexy, let's be honest, But as far as I'm concerned, neither is snoring. So, yeah, why mouth taping?

Benjamin Mena [00:40:53]:
So, you said this in the pregame, like almost every recruiter has 2 fears, the fear of failing and the fear of succeeding. Like everybody understands the first one. Why is the fear of succeeding one that actually traps most people?

Michelle Flynn [00:41:10]:
It's absolutely the reason that I never grew my recruitment business beyond being a solo with the support of the lady who had worked with me for years, because I knew it would work. I backed myself and I was like, oh, then I might have to have staff and have proper like HR processes and salaries, and then I might need an office. And I talk a lot to people about this where they're like, oh, do I just stay as a solo? Do I scale? What do I do? So as much as the fear of failure can impact us, often the fear that if it actually works and the life change that comes with that and the responsibility that comes with that can also stop people growing. And I'm seeing it in businesses actually quite a lot as we're sort of bringing up fear is that people are in that point where they either start to act in a space of fear, they start to cut back everything, reduce all the costs, and that's good. Don't have any costs that you shouldn't have, but they're like, oh no, I won't invest in anything. No L&D, no nothing. Or you've got the people who at that point go, I'm going to be aspirational. I'm going to take the risk.

Michelle Flynn [00:42:16]:
I'm going to step forward. I'm going to invest. And you're, it's really interesting to watch the different behaviors of people depending how they're feeling. But yeah, I think that actually when you've got recruiters that are potentially quite confident generally as a characteristic, often the worry about, well, what if I end up with this big thing. And we talk— I talk quite a lot about, um, the— in England there's the Beatles, and there was a guy that was in the Beatles referred to as the 5th Beatle who basically got kicked out, left, and got replaced. And the whole kind of joke was like, oh my God, never be the 5th Beatle, that would be terrible. And then someone sort of said, but what if he's really glad he's the 5th Beatle? What if he would not have wanted that life that came obviously the money and the fame, but also the stress and the travel and the pressure. Maybe he's glad that he wasn't that.

Michelle Flynn [00:43:10]:
And I think it's an interesting thing when people are deciding between staying as a solo or scaling. Some people were just always born to scale. They're like, give me the investment as soon as I can have it, I want to go large. Whereas you get a lot of other people that just sit on this tipping point, or they get to 3, 4, 5 staff, but, oh, do I go any further? Because that now means A bigger office and bigger responsibilities. So yeah, I think we have to know it's not just about failing that puts us off. It is often the reverse.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:40]:
So, a lot of recruiters probably started off in a big office. I know I did, like fresh out of college, young, dumb. Here's, here's your 75, uh, you know, blocks that you need to fill out for your call list. Balls flinging across the room, hitting you in the side of the head while you're on a call. But so often, especially during post-COVID times, you got the solo recruiters, you have agency recruiters that are by themselves. Like, is loneliness in this industry a real thing?

Michelle Flynn [00:44:08]:
It's huge. Huge. Half the time, any solo that works with me, it's because of the fact that they're completely lonely and they just want someone to brainstorm ideas off and hold them accountable. And we see sort of a lot with recruitment networks. And people joining recruitment networks just to not feel on their own. And when I started in recruitment, the idea of being around other recruiters and telling them your war stories and telling them the highs and the lows, you're just like, you wouldn't do that. Um, whereas now, um, I'm at an event this week, 2 days, where they're going to have sort of hundreds of recruiters together all just brainstorming. And I think a lot of that is because of the fact, um, that they are feeling a bit lonely and particularly the solos or people who are working at home, not having that sort of moment over making a cup of tea or going for a lunch with someone.

Michelle Flynn [00:44:56]:
Um, it's why co-working spaces are so popular, just because people want to go and feel part of something. So it's massive. I hear it a lot, um, whenever I'm doing workshops with solos, it comes up a lot. And I then try and buddy people up. I've got some guys who are in Dubai, and I'm getting them to— I've introduced them And it's like, right, you guys need to sort of work together once a week in an office or go and play padel tennis or whatever, just so that you feel some connection with people. So if you're listening to this and you're one of those people, it's like, find the other recruiters that are located near you. Okay, it might— you might want different markets, you might not want people that work in the same space, but actually maybe you can start sharing. And if you're working in the tech space and someone else is working in the admin space, but your tech client needs some admin, Maybe you can actually start job sharing with each other.

Michelle Flynn [00:45:45]:
No responsibility of employing anybody else, but just starting to build networks and relationships. And I'm sure you find it kind of with the summits where it's that people coming together to share ideas to make the industry better. But yeah, like I moved to the area that I live 4 years ago. I didn't know a single person apart from my husband. I was like, this is going to be terrible. So I just went and built communities because that's what I do. And I was like, I just have to be part of something, even just to be able to sort of eye contact with someone when you pop into the coffee shop or whatever. So loneliness is massive.

Michelle Flynn [00:46:17]:
Loneliness is one of the biggest causes of depression. And both in this industry and beyond this industry, the homeworking is— it's got a lot of positives, but it does also have those negatives if you don't— if you're not fortunate enough to have a big community of people around you. And that doesn't have to be work, even if you're working on your own, but then you finish work and you go and you play a sport, that's a team sport, or whatever is your thing, then at least you're connecting with people because, um, we need that as humans. And some people are introverted and they like smaller groups, and other people are extroverted and they like bigger groups. So, it's like finding your tribe.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:56]:
You've trained 5,000 recruiters. You've been a recruiter yourself. You were a top biller. If you could fix one thing in our industry, What is it? And like, what would be the lever that you would press?

Michelle Flynn [00:47:13]:
I would press the get shit done lever. I would press the stop putting stuff off, stop making excuses, stop pretending that you're doing what you need to do in the smartest way, And just actually use your time in the right way to get the stuff done. And then you can tweak into the, well, what's the, how do you open up an email on LinkedIn so someone will read it? Or what's the algorithm? Or what's the opening line on a beat? All of that. That's like your detail. But fundamentally, if you're not actually getting stuff done, and I work with one guy and it's so funny because sometimes just the whole session is about He's having a bit of a bumpy down moment because he's just stopped doing anything. I'm like, oh, there's the solution, get some stuff done. So yeah, I think it's like, be honest with yourself about actually how hard you're working because we can very easily tell ourselves we're working very hard and we may not be, or not working smartly, should we say.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:19]:
How often do you see people where they think that they're working And they're thinking that the thinking working is counting as work, but they're not actually doing something that is work.

Michelle Flynn [00:48:28]:
Oh God, all the time, all the time. Because there's a thing called the Eisenhower box, which has got urgent and not urgent across the top and important and not important. And it's about how you prioritize your to-do list, basically. So the not urgent, not important box, lots of people spend quite a lot of time doing that. Because either it's easy, it's a bit mind-numbing so they can do it without having to think. Maybe it's a bit what they enjoy. And you're like, that's not ever going to drive your business forward. You want to look at what's urgent and important, and that's where you want to prioritize like your tasks.

Michelle Flynn [00:49:06]:
And then you go, okay, well, let's look at the stuff that's urgent and not important. Can you delegate that to somebody else? What's important but not urgent? Maybe that's something that you're doing. So telling candidates they're a no. It's important, it's not urgent. Maybe you tell them that at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, maybe that's your admin time. But I think it's very, very easy when we're really looking at what people are doing. And again, when I send my little voice notes, it's like, what is the one most important thing you do today? Because often we're like, oh well, if I do all of this like fancy fluffy stuff, you're like, that's not the one most important thing. Do that after you've done what you really need to.

Michelle Flynn [00:49:45]:
But I think definitely a lot of people are not using their time wisely. And I think particularly with the world of AI, oh my goodness, I see so much of like, oh, I've spent 8 hours today sort of playing around with AI. And you're like, okay, really? It's, it's good. I mean, we should be using it, and I'm absolutely benefiting, all of that stuff. I'm a big fan of AI, but it can get to the point where it's actually taking us away from really What is going to— if ultimately, if AI ends up being able to do everything, then why are you needed? So you need to still be showing the person side, the creative side, the innovative side, all of those things that AI isn't. Let AI do its magic so that you've got more time to do yours. My worry is people then take this extra time and they fill it with more scrolling instead of more work that's going to drive the business.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:36]:
Do you think AI is actually costing more recruiters money right now?

Michelle Flynn [00:50:43]:
Um, I might go with a— I'm going to sit on the fence with this, 50/50. Certainly there are absolutely people that I see that are wasting too much time on it. They're investing too much money into different platforms. Use the right platforms, use the ones that have been recommended or that you've tried. Again, absolutely all for that, but there does become a point when it's a distraction. It's a lot easier to talk to ChatGPT or Claude or whatever you're using as opposed to doing the things that might feel a little bit uncomfortable. BD, as an example, it's like, oh, I'll just go in and I'll try and find another BD list. And you've got BD list after BD list, you haven't actually contacted any of them, or you've put them into an email automation, which is just— now here we go, we've got 28 points of automation.

Michelle Flynn [00:51:27]:
Well, why don't you actually go to an event where that person's going to be, host an event, um, and invite that person? A lot of the in-person events are very popular depending on obviously your geography that you're working in. But why not look at those things that are going to make you stand out from what everybody else is doing? Because it's just— and I heard this term the other day, AI slop. And we all know it. We read a LinkedIn post, we get an email, and then you get an automated email and you're just like, ah, not interested. So I think it's very interesting times around that at the moment. I don't know where that's going to pan out.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:03]:
This will be my last question just because I looked up and like, oh my God, look, looking at the time. Like, you've trained 5,000 recruiters. You, you have recruiters probably every week telling you some of their biggest secrets that they probably aren't telling another soul.

Michelle Flynn [00:52:20]:
Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:21]:
But then you have recruiters that are probably asking you like, hey, what do I do for BD? Like, what do I do for this? How do I, how do I become a high-performing recruiter that's like billing $1 million to $2 million or $3 million a year?

Michelle Flynn [00:52:31]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:32]:
Across all those questions, do you ever just like wish like, behind the scenes that these recruiters would just ask this one question, but they just never do?

Michelle Flynn [00:52:41]:
It's a really hard one with that because my job is the job to ask the questions. So, my job is to be curious with them. So, when it's like, what would I ask? I think it's that kind of, I'd like them to ask, maybe asking themselves, but verbalizing it to me is, Who am I without my job? Because there's so much of this. As soon as you meet someone, you're just like, what do you do? That's like the standard networking. Hey, I'm Michelle, what do you do? It becomes this like title of this— well, we must be a certain type of person because of this. And in the recruitment world, obviously, um, lots of different titles that we can use around that. But it's just like, actually, for someone to think about who actually am I without my job Which comes into what we've talked about, about purpose and values, and you just kindly sort of sharing yours about being a great parent and having a sort of an impact on an industry. You're like, that's beyond the day job of like closing deals.

Michelle Flynn [00:53:43]:
So I think when people start to ask those questions, you really start to get into the deep— what truly motivates you, but also what's going to really make you happy. Because it's very rare that the first session or 2— I've had it a couple of times, but it's rare that someone will come to me and kind of go, I want to be happy. How, how am I— how do I find happiness? But what's interesting is, as we get through the coaching sort of relationship together, eventually we get to that point, which is, I'm just not very happy. How do I find that? How do I create the life that I want to live? So Yeah, I guess if people were to sort of take it away from the job, um, because the job happens. Like, the happier we are, the healthier we are, more motivated we are, the job happens. Um, and we can tweak all of that to make sure that the BD is happening and the time's happening in the right way. But it is that thing, what do you want them to say on your 80th birthday? Because we all know that no one's going to say, oh, that I want them to say they made loads of deals. Like, That's just a nice to have.

Michelle Flynn [00:54:49]:
That's the thing that gives us the money to give us the choice of freedom or adventure or whatever. But yeah, I think that's where I would go. It's a really hard question because I just ask so many questions and they don't really ask me questions because yeah, I'd start there. I think.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:04]:
We covered a lot.

Michelle Flynn [00:55:06]:
I know we really did.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:08]:
And I feel like any of these topics, we probably could have spent like an easy 45 minutes to an hour just on one of these places. And we went to 20 different places. For those, anybody listening, if they want to connect with you or follow you, how do they go about doing that?

Michelle Flynn [00:55:25]:
So LinkedIn is the best place. I'm all over LinkedIn. It's Michelle Flynn. It's the picture with me and lots of books. That would be, I've got a website, Michelle Flynn Coaching. I do a bit on Instagram, but to be honest, I work in the recruitment world. So I spend my life in LinkedIn. I respond to all my direct messages.

Michelle Flynn [00:55:43]:
So, um, do that, but go onto the website and do the life audit. And if when you look at it, you go, oh, I've got some questions, message me. Happy to answer any questions that come out off the back of that. But yes, I think that my hope for this is that people have just taken the time to reflect not just on the business, but on themselves out of the business.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:06]:
I just want to say thank you so much for coming on. And we'll definitely be in touch for maybe a future event in the future, but it's so often we end up in this land of misfit toys. We see the goals. I remember like my first job as a recruiter and they wanted to get rid of me, but I had a friend that was making 6 figures as a recruiter straight out of college. And I'm like, oh my God, talk about the dream back when 6 figures actually was.

Michelle Flynn [00:56:35]:
something.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:36]:
Yeah. 20-something years ago. But it's just so often we get in the minutia of day after day, placement after placement, interview after interview, reach out after reach out, that I feel like so often we start to lose ourselves. We lose our motivation. We lose our why. We lose our spark. So often that spark that so many brand new recruiters have year 1, 6 months in, it dies from year 3 to sometimes year 17.

Michelle Flynn [00:57:09]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:11]:
How can you get that spark back? How can you make an impact? And how do you make 2026 your year? Go crush it. You know, the resume never tells the full story. Candidates share what really matters during conversations on calls and interviews over email, their motivations, salary expectations, plans to relocate, Most of that detail ends up buried in notes and forgotten. Atlas changes that. It's the AI-first recruitment platform built to eliminate admin. It captures every conversation automatically and turns it into something you can use. With Magic Search, you can ask Atlas questions like, who talked about wanting a 4-day week? Or, who mentioned they're open to relocating next year? It searches across your entire database and pulls the answers instantly. No keyword guessing and no digging through old notes.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:53]:
You get insight from real conversations, not limited resume fields. Atlas also makes BD easier. With opportunities, you can track and grow client relationships powered by generative AI and built into your existing workflow. If you want visibility, Weyek smart dashboards give you a clear view of the pipeline across your business. And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported over 40% EBITDA growth and over 80% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. It's built for agencies that want to grow without adding more manual work. Don't miss the future.

Benjamin Mena [00:58:25]:
recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive listener offer at recruitwithatlas.com. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit subscribe and leave a rating.