The Wall Street Talent Agent Redefining Recruiting: John Pierson on Risk, Grit & the Future of the Industry

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
Coming up on this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast.

John Pierson [00:00:03]:
Literally went out to a bar one night and was offered a job as an assistant trader with zero experience in finance whatsoever. It was just through a friend and that happened because I couldn't get an air traffic controller job called Dan Loeb. It was like 6:45 in the morning called third point. And he said, Dan here. And I said, hey Dan. I said, so this is John Pearson. I said, listen, you don't know me, but I'd really like to change that. And yeah, I'm going to get right to it.

John Pierson [00:00:30]:
I'm one of those, those talent people that you probably hang up on all the time. I just want one mandate in one week. 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.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:54]:
Admin is a massive waste of time. That's why there's Atlas. The AI. First recruitment platform built for modern agencies. Doesn't only track resumes and calls. It remembers everything. Every email, every interview, every conversation. Instantly searchable, always available.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:10]:
And now it's entering a whole new era. With Atlas 2.0, you can ask anything and it delivers. With MagicSearch, you speak and it listens. It finds the right candidates using real conversations, not simply looking for keywords. Atlas 2.0 also makes business development easier than ever. With opportunities you can track, manage and grow client relationships. Powered by generative AI and built right into your workflow need insights. Custom dashboards give you total visibility over your pipeline.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:35]:
And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported up to 41% EBITDA growth and an 85% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. 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 at recruit with atlas.com I am super excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter Pony Ask, because this is a story that I've actually been looking at sharing for a while. I've been looking for the right guest because here's the thing.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:10]:
The world of recruiting is changing. The world of recruiting is evolving. And as technology moves, as companies move, I'm starting to see more and more of the idea of the talent advisor. The search agent, the person walking somebody through the journey. Almost like what we see with Baseball, what we see with movie stars, what we see with all the other sports. The agent is the one making things happen, helping the career move, helping the career transitions. So that is why I'm super excited to have John here on the podcast today because he's been doing this for a while, but he's not been doing it in the sports world. He's been doing this in the world of Wall Street.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:53]:
So, John, welcome to the podcast.

John Pierson [00:02:55]:
Thank you, Benjamin. I appreciate you having me. I really do.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:58]:
Real quick before we do a deep dive in quick 30 second self introduction.

John Pierson [00:03:03]:
Sure. John Pearson, former Marine CEO of P2 Investments, which is a boutique talent advisory slash search agency based in New York City in Columbus Circle, and super happy to be here. Maybe detail why we're a little bit different. No offense to the title of the podcast, but we tend to not even use the word recruiter for what we do, but we do help people enhance their careers.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:25]:
That's awesome. So let's take a few steps back. How did you end up in this wonderful world of recruiting?

John Pierson [00:03:32]:
Sure. Spent the four years in the Marine Corps back in the 90s. Actually landed as an air traffic controller for the presidential helicopter squad. And I'm not sure if, if you knew that from my profiling and loved it. Great job, super stressful. But because it was stressful, we only worked five hours a day. When I got out of the Marine Corps, I finished school and then I moved to New York City just because my friends were like, come on out to New York, man. We're all having, you know.

John Pierson [00:03:59]:
So I wanted to be with my buddies. Literally went out to a bar one night and was offered a job as an assistant trader with zero experience in finance whatsoever. It was just through a friend. And that happened because I couldn't get an air traffic controller job. Which is funny because that's in the news now, all these aircraft incidents. Yeah, it's like they should have hired then and they should be hiring a lot more now. So when I came out of the Marines, it was all aviation and I wanted to get an opportunity with faa. They weren't hiring, so here I was, I think like a lot of recruiters didn't know what to do.

John Pierson [00:04:36]:
And I ended up, I guess I was trying to become a trader and I wasn't very good. I was quite bad, but I was good with people. So they offered me an opportunity to get involved in helping them acquire talent and that started it. I then went to a boutique retained search agency for a short period of time where I learned a lot about taking risks and really approaching anybody. And I think that is one of the best lessons I've ever learned in this career is risk taking. So that's kind of how I got into it. And I can go further a little bit later if you like.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:09]:
Okay, I gotta ask this. Like, you were at a bar.

John Pierson [00:05:12]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:13]:
In New York City. And you went to New York City. Cause your friends were like, hey, come to New York City. And you're like, you got a job as a trader at a bar or.

John Pierson [00:05:20]:
As an assistant firm to a trader.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:22]:
As an assistant to a trader at a bar.

John Pierson [00:05:25]:
And then I tried to trade and was bad. I, I just, I'm a people person. I'm a language person. I'm not very mathematical, quite frankly. So I thought being in air traffic controller, numbers, numbers, numbers, it would transition. It didn't transfer those skills. The skill sets are completely different. The only thing that I was a very good multitasker.

John Pierson [00:05:44]:
That's what air traffic controllers learned to do. But I wasn't good at conceptual math. And I'm not today either, by the way. But so, yeah, okay, so you like.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:54]:
Then got hired by a boutique firm. Talk about that.

John Pierson [00:05:57]:
I went into a boutique talent firm. I was at the trading firm for just a few months as a talent person. And then I realized there's a lot of people that do that out there. So I kind of, I kind of followed the, the opportunity path. And I landed through another person that I knew in business at a boutique talent agency that was retained specifically by major investment banks. Back in the 90s. Those were the days of like, Mary Meeker and like a lot of tombstones and mergers and acquisitions that you would see in the Wall Street Journal. And my mentor basically told me, hey, open the journal and start circling names in the investment banking industry.

John Pierson [00:06:37]:
And I circled like 10 names. And then he's like, now call every one of them. So there was no Google. There was no, I mean, we didn't have smartphones back then. So I had to learn how to do it the old fashioned way, you know. But the moral of the story was, have guts, right? Be bold, have courage, and don't be afraid to get knocked down. So I started calling these people, and I wasn't very good at all. But I learned you, you, you only want to take abuse and pain so long right before you learn how to, you know, I got to learn how to do this or I'm gonna get beat up.

John Pierson [00:07:08]:
Kind of like, I guess, amateur boxing. I was getting crushed, right? So, So I don't know I guess I had a natural ability to. To figure it out and to communicate, and I just kind of followed the opportunity set and. And I learned. I just learned so much from that first. About risk taking from that first mentor.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:26]:
Okay. I. I also want to ask this question. So you open the Wall Street Journal? I love the Wall Street Journal.

John Pierson [00:07:31]:
Sure.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:32]:
And you circled names.

John Pierson [00:07:33]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:34]:
Did you have to, like this, like, we're in the days of, like, zoom info. We're in the days of like, I can find just about anybody out there.

John Pierson [00:07:41]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:42]:
Did you just have to start cold calling into buildings trying to find these people?

John Pierson [00:07:47]:
Yeah. Yeah. I was a person with an aviation education, no experience whatsoever, and my boss wanted me to cold call some of the biggest names on Wall Street. Cole, call. Okay. Now the good. The good thing is it was the 90s, and the 90s were like the roaring 20s. You know, that was our 20s.

John Pierson [00:08:04]:
Everybody was making money. So it was a little easier than it may have been in a down market. But yeah, I mean, you know, I would call people and I would say, hey, could I get a referral for so and so I'm looking for this. And the person would say to me, well, everybody I know is happy. And I would say back, I don't want unhappy people. Right. So you just learn. You learn to circumnavigate and go over and under rebuttals.

John Pierson [00:08:27]:
And that's what I did. And it was the. I call it the. I think, you know, nowadays we're in. We're in the world of mathematical finance. Right. I know that sounds kind of funny because it's always been like that. But quantitative investing, Right.

John Pierson [00:08:38]:
So algorithms are very, very popular and very important. I think the most difficult algorithm to write and master is the complex algorithm of human communication and high level persuasion. So that's the art of what we do. Yeah, it's esoteric, it's nuanced, and you got to take a lot of risk.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:57]:
And is this where you started? I know we were chatting about this, like, offline in the pregame, like the art of the attack. Is this where you started learning the art of the attack?

John Pierson [00:09:06]:
Yeah, absolutely. That first boutique, 1998. 99. I learned the best thing I ever learned was just kick doors down and don't take. No, you just keep going. Perseverance. I mean, it was complete shotgun mentality, which is completely what we do not do today. But then I had no track record, so I said, we are the team of the future.

John Pierson [00:09:26]:
And I sold it and sold it and sold. I don't have to do that anymore because I'm old. So now we can say we are the, we're the team of a generation. We've been doing this. So 25, 20, almost 26 years I've been in this business. So yeah, you know, it kind of reminds me, I once asked a broker on Wall Street, I said, hey, I've got a little bit of money and could you tell me what to do with it? What should I do? What should I do? What kind of investing should I do? And I was expecting some really cool answer. And he says, do something. That was the answer.

John Pierson [00:09:55]:
Do something. Right? So it's the same concept, right? It's get off the porch and go get him. That also, it worked well with my personality. I'm, you know, former athlete, former Marine, you know, raised by a Vietnam combat veteran and a go getter mother. And, you know, so it worked well with the personality.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:12]:
Awesome. And so after working at this boutique firm, you jumped over to another firm. What spurred that change?

John Pierson [00:10:18]:
I thought I learned everything I could learn. And I wanted to move more into, into hedge funds, this nascent movement called hedge funds. Back at the turn of the century, the Y2K bubble came. Everyone got an absolute panic and nothing happened. You know, the bubble burst and I just wanted to get more into hedge funds and the landing spot, the next place, offered me an opportunity to really focus on investment professionals on the buy side. What I did learn at the boutique is to find a niche. A niche, Right, A niche and become an expert in it. It's served us very well over the years because the generalist has gone away.

John Pierson [00:10:52]:
People don't want a jack of all trades in finance they want. So I felt if I could get involved in just investment professionals at hedge funds, I would have a really good Runway. So that's exactly what I did. And then we started to see the merger between technology and investments throughout the hedge fund space as this massive asset growth occurred. So what I did was I opened my team up to building investment teams for global hedge funds and also technologists to complement those investment teams. So devs, engineers, architects that build trading systems, and also the most elite investment professionals on the planet.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:28]:
Okay, so I want to take a stop here. So you felt like you kind of maxed out what you've learned at that first boutique agency? And did you start seeing what the future looked like? Were you trying to gauge where the future might be, where the opportunity might be, or did you just think like, hey, this is cool, I want to go play in this space?

John Pierson [00:11:48]:
I was following the markets and watching the asset growth within the alternative asset space. Back then, we were talking about renegade traders that would spin out of banks, maybe 10, 15, maybe 20 people, was the predominant kind of culture. And look at a hedge fund, unlike today, where they're just somewhat so massive. So, yeah, I reached out to these people and then I realized the amount of money that they're making and how brilliant they were, and that completely intrigued me. I wanted to be around that, not just for the money, but to learn. And I just think, in my opinion, there's. There's nothing in finance like hedge funds and specifically investment and technology professionals. So I started to brand myself as a, as a PM agent, as a portfolio manager agent, a search agent, and I can tell you about that brand whenever you want.

John Pierson [00:12:39]:
But I also, I do have a story. When they sent me to that firm, I was on my way up the elevator in a skyscraper, and I was very early and I spilled some coffee on myself, right? So I ran back to my apartment and I didn't have another suit, but what I did have was pair of khakis and a blue blazer. So I put the blue blazer on, I put the pair of khakis on. I ran back to a very famous skyscraper in New York City. I went up to a certain floor in New York City and I interviewed at a certain talent search firm. And I get into the interview, and the interviewer, he's very nice and cordial, and about 15 minutes into the, into the meeting, he says, so why didn't you wear a suit? As if I was like some American cock. I don't know what he was thinking, but I understood kind of, you know, I got. It was loud and clear.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:26]:
So I said, listen, I said, if.

John Pierson [00:13:27]:
You want, I can go back to my home and change into a suit, which I couldn't because I didn't have any clean. But I said, I'll go back and change. But I tell you one thing, nobody that you interview today is going to be able to change into my skill set. Yeah. And. And he hired me on the spot, so. Yeah, so. So that's kind of like my zinger.

John Pierson [00:13:46]:
But. But it's, it's a true story. And that's kind of the mentality I've had my entire career. That mentality has put me through quite a bit of pain, a lot of pain when you take risks like that. But I would never go back and trade it because it's taught me so much and it's helped me propel myself.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:01]:
And you stayed There for a few years.

John Pierson [00:14:04]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:04]:
At that organization. Before we jump into like how you got pulled away, what was one of the biggest takeaways that you learned there for your career?

John Pierson [00:14:12]:
To be candidate centric. Right. Like I was starting to see this is a big talent firm. Right. Or recruiting firm, executive search consultancy, whatever name you want to use, they give you so many. And I was starting to see that it was very transactional. It was almost like is advertised selection is what they called it and they would work close to the money. It was too salesy for me.

John Pierson [00:14:34]:
And as, as I saw the market evolving, I felt there was a need for, for a new type of service and a new type of product which is bespoke. Again, very nuanced space that we're in. Very, very esoteric and we have to think beyond the commission. So what I wanted to do was start to create relationships two years from when someone's going to make a move. Two years. Right. Because you have to be candidate centric. You have to understand what they truly want.

John Pierson [00:15:00]:
We could churn and burn and make commissions and make lot, but those people are going to get upset because they're going to end up in places that weren't proper or appropriate for their career path and their progression. So what we do is we get to know them very, very well over a long period of time. No hurry whatsoever. And I don't want to get too far ahead because I know what part you're asking about here, but, but yeah, it was about being candidate centric. I learned things from those places about, you know, sales techniques and needs based selling and values based planning and how to project markets and how to study people and body language. I learned all those things, but I also learned what not to do, quite frankly. Not that they weren't great at what they did because their model is, is, it's, it's unquestionable. They've done incredibly well and I'm just some little guy.

John Pierson [00:15:45]:
But in life you want your personal and your professional integrity to align. And I felt like I didn't want to churn. I wanted to get to know these people because those people are going to become your clients. They don't stay candidates, they become clients. And they also have friends and brothers and sisters and cousins and schoolmates. My philosophy is everyone in this world is a marketer. They're either going to say things pro P2 investments John Pearson or against P2 investments John Pearson. So if you can do the right thing and your personal integrity and your professional integrity are aligned, you feel right because you're doing right and the results become much better.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:26]:
So you didn't quite jump into your own business yet. You got recruited away.

John Pierson [00:16:31]:
I did. I got poached, which is the only time I've ever been posted. So I felt so honored somebody wanted me at one point in my life. So that was great. All right, so I'm still waiting for the next one. No one, no one's coming. I don't know what's going on here. I'm just kidding.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:49]:
So what, what pulled you into this new opportunity?

John Pierson [00:16:53]:
So I ended up going to Robert Half. Right. And I'm happy to name them. I ended up going to Robert Half, and they, they were a large, a very, A very large firm. And it was the opportunity to launch a division, but they did not have as big as, you know, they're a Fortune 500 big business. But for some reason in, you know, roughly 20 years ago or a little bit more, they didn't have a unit on Wall street doing permanent placement. I don't like any of these terms because we try to stay away from recruiting terms. But so I did, I went there and I launched their forces division, permanent placement, and started to build a business there and, and learned how to hire and fire.

John Pierson [00:17:28]:
And I learned all about business building kind of on the job, right? Because I wasn't sure. I supervised a team of aircraft controllers for the President of the United States. But that has nothing to do with Wall Street. You know what I mean? This is like, there's nothing to do with Wall Street. So. So I was, you know, a captain in football and things like that. But that was in high school, Right. So I learned on the job, but I did it well.

John Pierson [00:17:49]:
And that was an invaluable experience that was very executive, very corporate, very formal. We had to answer to, you know, public company. So that was awesome.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:01]:
So you got the opportunity to build an entire division for Robert Half.

John Pierson [00:18:05]:
Sure.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:06]:
You got the chance to almost like, I would say, build a business without actually building a business with a little bit building a business. But you have like this giant arm behind you there to help you out.

John Pierson [00:18:19]:
Oh, sure. Exactly.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:20]:
Yeah.

John Pierson [00:18:20]:
It, it's what I relate to at a multi manager, multi strategy hedge fund now, where portfolio managers run a team, Right. But they have an enormous umbrella behind them. However, that umbrella also holds them accountable where they must stay within certain risk parameters and things of that nature, which felt the same thing. And I'm certainly not a portfolio manager running a team at a hedge fund, but it was the equivalent at a search firm, which Is funny because later in life, when I became an entrepreneur, I have had people rebut me and say, well, we want firms with offices all over the world and thousands and thousands. Well, I ran a big division for one of those firms, but I know for a fact that every team in those firms isn't more than like 10, 15 people. Right. So it's just a bunch of small businesses that are bricks that build a wall, which is called the big business. It's very similar to multi management hedge funds.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:15]:
I love that. And so what, what finally made you make the decision saying, like, I'm going to go do my own thing?

John Pierson [00:19:22]:
Sure, yeah. My timing wasn't the best because I, I launched in the summer of 2007, and we all know what happened in 2008 with the subprime mortgage crisis. However, it's funny is I had one of my best years in 2008, but it all happened in the very beginning. That's just the way it is in these markets. You can make a lot of money and do a lot of good things for a lot of good people, and then things can change overnight. I try to tell people that, and that's why we, we create these relationships. I'll come back in one second there. But, you know, one of the things that we hear all the time when we do an outreach is I'm not looking.

John Pierson [00:19:51]:
My answer is I don't care. I really don't. I prefer that they're not looking, quite frankly, because our philosophy is if they're looking, something's probably wrong, right? Maybe not, but by probability and statistics, if they're not looking. Look, there's a lot of people that aren't looking that aren't happy either. But the numbers are much more on the side of if you're not looking, things are going okay versus if you're looking, things are going okay. Right. So we try to get them early and cultivate those relationships and get to know them for, you know, for real. Let's say this, it was 2007, the summer of 2007, and what I realized, I was at work and I just realized I was just watching the way things were going.

John Pierson [00:20:26]:
It was a good year that year. Right. I don't want to sound arrogant, but I just thought, I can, I can do this better than then my bosses are doing this. That's how I felt. I'm sure a lot of entrepreneurs feel that way before they go out and do their thing. That's exactly how I felt, is I can do it the best way. My bosses are doing this. I went to Veselka Cafe, which is in the East Village on ninth Street.

John Pierson [00:20:43]:
It's a Ukrainian cafe. Ukrainian, yeah. And I had an old crappy laptop and I had a credit card with not much money on it, but I was waiting to get a nice commission. But I was between, and I decided, you know what, it's time. So I LLC'd in this cafe in the East Village on June 13, 2007. And yeah, it was the best move I've ever made in my professional career because I immediately felt, well, it's on me now, you know, like, there's no paycheck there. There's. There's nothing.

John Pierson [00:21:17]:
Shortly thereafter, for a long time, I guerrilla marketed to find some clients, and I ended up getting a two or three. And I tell you one thing about, about sales. The most important sale of any salesperson ever in the history of sales in life. It's not the biggest sale, it's the first sale. Because the first sale gives you the confidence, say, hey, if I can. You look for what the hedge funds used to say, the repeatable path of profitability, right? So you look for a repeatable path of profitability. You analyze what went right, what went wrong, and then you make the adjustments, right? So that's exactly what I did. And yeah, so that first client, like.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:55]:
You said, grow marketing, what did you do to get that first client? Client?

John Pierson [00:21:58]:
I mean, I did a lot of things, but I grew a market in the sense that I sent them letters, I emailed them, I fedex them, I called them, I found out where they went to the gym, I found out what schools they went to, I volunteered. I did everything you could possibly think of, which is guerrilla marketing. A lot of people think that's it's spam and digital, but it's the concept, not the actual term. And yeah, I end up getting like three or four clients. And by December, we brought in over $250,000. By first six months, we brought in about 250K. So I knew it worked. I knew a lot was wrong and a lot of things needed to be fixed.

John Pierson [00:22:36]:
But every day from that day on, I've taken quite a bit of risk. I've met with billionaires, I've called billionaires, I've pitched billionaires. I've gotten hung up on for billionaires. I've had people tell me to go to hell, But I will never stop. I will never stop when I work. Let's go harder. Go home.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:54]:
So you had a great start of the year, 250k. Your first year in business, which is amazing.

John Pierson [00:23:00]:
Well, first half a year, yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:02]:
First half year, yeah. Which is amazing. And then you were going into 2008, which you said was absolutely great, and then the whole world fell apart in your world.

John Pierson [00:23:11]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:12]:
How did you survive that?

John Pierson [00:23:14]:
I made a lot of money. That number I'm going to. I'm going to leave. Leave out of here, but made a lot of money in the first quarter of 2008. But I remember I was on the treadmill at Chelsea Pierce over on the west side, and my girlfriend was in a dance class and. And I was watching the. The TV and the market was just. Just tanking.

John Pierson [00:23:31]:
Like the Great Recession was on, right? Like the big short movie. It's. It was for real. And thank God I had had a good year early in the year. So what we did then is I decided that it's going to be difficult for a while to make money because of this contraction in the markets. So I went on a kind of like a. A press tour. I just started doing a lot of press and giving my opinions because I figured, you know, listen, the money's not there.

John Pierson [00:23:52]:
We need to get exposure. So I started showing up around, I guess, world, but mostly New York, in a lot of different media outlets, mostly print. You have to adjust, right? You have to be malleable. You can't put your sail against the wind, right? You got to pull it down and then wait for the right wind, put it back up. And that's exactly what we did. So we did a lot of press. And I also looked internally. I built my team up.

John Pierson [00:24:13]:
It was a good time to pick off people that couldn't. You know, those were the days of GO shares. And I wrote a piece in Institutional Investor back then about GO shares, what GO shares were, which is funny, because a week before this happened or two weeks before this happened, I would call Business Development. Back then there was a few of them. Now they have armies. But I would call the biz Dev people and they would say, yeah, I don't got time to talk to you. And a week later, I'm not trying to sound like a week later, they're begging me to find them jobs. The point of that story isn't to sound like a big shot.

John Pierson [00:24:45]:
It's your personal and your professional integrity must align. And when they do, things happen so you don't burn bridges. And, you know, I understand time management and things like that, but, yeah, I mean, you know, you never know. It's like the parable of the Chinese farm. You never know. What's going to come around the corner? Because even since then, you know, we had, well before then, we had the bubble, we had nine, 11, we had the mortgage crisis, we've had the flash crash, we've had out of control inflation, we had the bank runs of svb, we've got the tariffs. It's always going to be something. So I think one big thing in this industry, including myself, that I also have to do is keep our egos in check.

John Pierson [00:25:21]:
Because the ego is not your amigo, as they say. The ego really, it really messes people up. So anyway, back on the treadmill, I saw the think tank. We went on our press junket and built the team at the internal team up a little bit. And then it started to come back about a year later, year and a half later. So we started to start to see opportunity again.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:41]:
When did you start really creating this talent advisor search model? Are those early days or is this something that just kind of like started evolving as the business kept on going?

John Pierson [00:25:51]:
It was an exact result of the great financial crisis, the great recession. I was saying we had, there were GO shares that they were putting out and that was IO, that's GO shares. An iou. I will pay you. If we, if we achieve our high water mark and the fund makes money, I'll pay you, but if it doesn't, you're going to get, you get nothing. That's a go share. And people were happy to get those back then because there was unemployment and then underemployment. PMs were becoming analysts, analysts were becoming junior analysts.

John Pierson [00:26:16]:
It was, it was a really bad situation. So because of that I realized we need to stay away from transactions. We don't want to be executive recruiters or search consultants or people officers or you know, things like that. We need to develop a holistic long term approach, which I did. And it's a four step process and it's called the agent approach. Would you like me to tell you about the agent approach?

Benjamin Mena [00:26:37]:
That was gonna be my next question.

John Pierson [00:26:38]:
Oh sure, sure. So the agent approach is quite, quite interesting. It's a four step process. But the important part of the process is, well, first of all, the objective is to find people that are not looking for opportunities. We want to develop relationships over the long term. Why is because there's better leverage. We can be more selective and we can truly get to know these people and see if we can help them. Right.

John Pierson [00:27:00]:
And if we can, we tell them, unlike a lot of people, they just ghost them. They just ghost them and they give Them, no feedback, we tell them. And we also try to refer them to somebody who may be able to help them if we can. But the four step process of the agent approach is one introduction. So on our first call, that's an introduction which is like think of a newspaper, you don't read the article, you just look at the headlines. So we just want to know what their headlines are. We tell them what our headlines are and we see if there's synergy and if there's synergy to move forward. If there is, we go to a second step.

John Pierson [00:27:29]:
In that second step, we collect information from them. It might be a resume, might be a bio, it might be a pitch deck, it might be a lot of things, right? And we also have a profile questionnaire that we have them complete. But the collaboration step is super important because we develop their story with them. We don't search for anybody, we search with everybody. Right? So they're on the team too. They're on the search team. It's not just us. We're not the only talent.

John Pierson [00:27:54]:
They're part of it. We develop a target list of clients that we should speak to on their behalf based on our active direct mandates, based on our open mandates, based on our opportunistic mandates. Those are three types of mandates. Okay, and that's step two. Step three is what we call confidential and anonymous representation. So what we do there is we tell their story, we don't send their resume, we don't send their profile, we don't send their ip. We don't do any of that. They come to us because they want protection and they want a, what we call window shop, the hedge fund job market.

John Pierson [00:28:28]:
And we also protect our clients to make sure they're not exposed. So we are this conduit. What we do on step three, we anonymously don't tell our people who they are, but we have conversations on their behalf. Now look, there are certain people that you can't just leave out their name in their firm. You start talking about them a certain way, you know who they are. Because some of these people are high profile people. We have that conversation. Once the receiving fund says, yeah, we want to meet this person, we want to know this person, then we ask our candidate, I don't like that term, but our candidate, if we can send over the on paper information, right, they're going to say yes, because we won't have had the conversation otherwise without talking to them about it first.

John Pierson [00:29:09]:
We do this together and then we, we navigate what we call the highly nuanced process. It's literally like, I hate this analogy, but it's really like walking through a minefield. Right. And the nuances are so great. There's so many things that can go wrong. That's why a resume doesn't work anymore. You don't just give your resume to 90 recruiters calling from a certain geographical region, which I won't name, and have them sent all over the place. Your story needs to be told because your story is nuanced.

John Pierson [00:29:37]:
Everything's bespoke and customized. So they should have a bespoke and customized representative, a storyteller on their behalf. That's three. And then the fourth step is the final step. And that is, we want to talk to you if you're my candidate, Benjamin, from introduction today until you retire. Right. And we mean that. It sounds cheesy, but it's not.

John Pierson [00:29:57]:
Our candidates become our clients. Our candidates want to know what to pay their analysts, what to pay their technologists, what to pay their junior people when they become bigger people. Right. So we want to grab them in college and see them to retirement. I know it's a long time. I don't have that much time left. But that's been. That's been the.

John Pierson [00:30:13]:
The model. And hopefully, you know, I'll have a succession plan where the model will continue. But it's a different type of service. We don't go searching for applicants and submit them to hiring managers for employment. Functionally, does that happen? It does all the time. But what we do and the way we look at it is we talk and represent very smart investment and technology professionals, and we put them in front of other very smart investment in technology professionals, one side being the candidate, one side being the client. And they talk and see if there's synergy to move forward on either today or in the future. That's what we do.

John Pierson [00:30:53]:
And it seems to have worked out quite well.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:56]:
So just for the listeners, like when you're sitting there talking about this talent model, the people that you're working with, what's their typical target salaries?

John Pierson [00:31:04]:
Sure. You know, it's interesting. We're fishing in waters that are very crowded, you know, and I hate to use that term, but it's that analogy. But it's true. Right. One, we have a lot of external recruiters out there that are searching for people too. Right. And then also, I think our biggest competitors are actual clients.

John Pierson [00:31:23]:
Right. Because now, don't get me wrong, there are partners, and we're here to help them. But theoretically. Right. They have incredibly talented, smart internal recruiters called Business development professionals. And they have massive amount of people and they have a lot of money and they have a lot of resources and technologies and they've been in the space for a while too. So we gotta hunt and fish and all that stuff. Hate those terms.

John Pierson [00:31:46]:
But places where they're not necessarily doing it, but they're creative, they're all creative, even our external competitors. So, so what we try to do is we try to think of things. So look, they're hiring some people. It's like the MBA now. There's people getting hired out of high school into the hedge fund space. A lot of people don't realize that it'll become more common. I put somebody in front of a major fund a year ago and they were about to get interviewed because they liked the resume and then they said, so where do you go to college? And I looked at the resume and I don't know how I missed it. Really, really dumb on my part because I don't miss things like that.

John Pierson [00:32:17]:
But he didn't go to college. He was that smart, he didn't need college. So graduated like this is 12 years old, 13 years. It was crazy. You know, it's like, it's like movie stuff. But anyway, it's true. The salaries, I mean, you know, if you're pulling a student as a junior and getting a deal done before senior year, those deals are, they can be six figure deals for students, salary ranges for, for junior analysts. I'm just going to be very vague here.

John Pierson [00:32:39]:
It's between, let's say 150 and 500. Maybe seniors are 500 to maybe a million bucks. And you know, PMs are mostly seven figures, some eight figures. And there was a deal not long ago that was a hundred million dollar deal. That one hurt because I knew this person and talked to the person, the fund that gave the deal to him, but I didn't have ownership anymore. So it is what it is, it's part of the game. But that one hurt.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:05]:
So when you're sitting there, there's a lot of fish in your pond. Now there's a lot of people like fishing. Also when you're sitting there talking to these firms and talking to these candidates, how do you really differentiate? You walk through the B Swick model, but how do you actually make it that it's real, that this is like your talent partnership and not just another headhunter, not just another like recruiter.

John Pierson [00:33:25]:
Yeah, how do we establish that with a fund? Is that what you're saying?

Benjamin Mena [00:33:27]:
Or how do you establish it with either side like it sounds like you're different.

John Pierson [00:33:32]:
We have a track record and that tracker was established by, I hate to be kind of corny, but by one thing. Risk taking. Risk taking. All day, every day risk taking. And that risk taking helped us develop a 25 hedge fund client list. That's not the usual suspect. Do we have large multi managers? We do, but we also have iconic single managers. We also have certain funds that are dedicated to a particular region.

John Pierson [00:33:53]:
Right. We have Asian funds that are focusing on Asia. You know, our geographical regions, the United States, uk, Switzerland would probably be the only European areas. Super strong in almost all the centers in Asia and as well as the Arab Emirates is becoming a lot, a lot hotter now too. But I think the way we do it is we offer a diversified client set. Right. We know that not everybody wants to go to a POD or a multi manager. Not everybody wants to go to a single manager.

John Pierson [00:34:18]:
People need to have a choice when they're on the candidate side. So that's one thing that really helps us because we represent a lot of different great opportunities on the client side. That's just getting it done. That's just bringing the talent. It's like, you know, you get on the court and you play, you know, you hit 7, 8, 8, 3 points in a row, they're going to start watching you. And that's, and that's how you establish that. You just make it happen. You find in the best talent in the world.

John Pierson [00:34:40]:
One of our clients, they said to me, do you have mandates you'd like to share? And the person looked at me and said, yeah. I said, well, what's the mandate? And he says, idea flow. That's the mandate. Bring me idea flow. Bring me the best, smartest, brightest, all weather investment and technology professionals that you can find all day, every day and we'll hire them. So that's the market we're in.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:01]:
Love that you, you mentioned earlier about the storytelling process and resumes don't cut it anymore in the space. It's about telling the story. Like when you're sitting there working with a fund or a manager, how are you telling this story? Like, is it like, you know, phone conversations in person, meetings, Are you walking them through stuff? Like, what does that storytelling process look like?

John Pierson [00:35:22]:
They're super busy. You know, our clients are very, very busy. Our candidates are very, very busy. People don't really have time for in persons that often. We still do them, but they're not that often. They're once a month maybe, but almost daily on the telephone or by email. And then of course, we do a lot of zoom and a lot of Google Meet and things like that. WhatsApp, if they're allowed to.

John Pierson [00:35:41]:
It just depends on the region or the firm. But yeah, every channel of communication you could think of, we try to be. And I think it's very important. We don't want to be a reactive recruiting force or reactive talent agency. We want to be a proactive talent agency and a career advisory. And what that means is, yes, we have a lot of mandates, a lot of direct mandates that we go and fill all the time. But the way we drive the business isn't through the client, isn't through the hedge fund mandate. It's through the individual, the candidate's mandate.

John Pierson [00:36:07]:
It's a reverse model, right? We want to know what does this individual, that individual, that individual, what do they want? What do they want next year? What do they want in three years, what do they want in five years? And let's get to know you, right? We really want to know. And then when things come across, we know who to alert, what to. We don't do it in a pushy way. We don't do it a lot. It's every once in a while, right? Because we don't want to inundate people. And if you do inundate them and then they know your shotgun. We don't want a block of ice, we want a sculpture. We want precision.

John Pierson [00:36:35]:
So we've learned to be precise in our discernment. We've learned to be precise in the way that we present clients and the way we present candidates. That's what I said earlier, is the high level communication and persuasion is the most complex algorithm in the world. And I say that all the time because it's true. We could talk about AI all day long, right? We could talk about droids, make them a robot, all that. There's nothing more nuanced than a human being.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:59]:
Love that. So as you're walking through these people from like start all the way to retirement, I gotta ask you, like, how are you even keeping track of all this information and all like this entire like lifeline of all these people? Is it like your system? How are you guys getting that set up?

John Pierson [00:37:15]:
Yeah, we have AI that does a lot of that. But yeah, I mean, I'll give the company a plug. We use recruiter flow, which is, you know, an ATS and a CRM. It jibes very well with AI and it's got contact out in it, which is, you know, similar to rocket reach. And we have a lot of really, really good software. And we have a lot of really good people too. My firm's less than 10 people but we have well over a hundred years of experience because I hate to say that we're older but we are. But we've been doing it for quite a while together too.

John Pierson [00:37:40]:
We've been doing it together for quite a while.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:42]:
What does your team look like? Meaning how is your team set up?

John Pierson [00:37:46]:
Sure. We have four talent professionals and it's almost like a pod. Right. And I did it on purpose. So you have four portfolio managers. They're not performing, they're talent professionals or what you may call recruiters. And then we have four analysts which aren't investment analysts, they're search analysts. So we have an eight person team.

John Pierson [00:38:03]:
Right. And then we have a clerical person and then we have a part time clerical person too. But here's the thing, we all work on searches I think are important difference. We don't do individual searches. We all work on the same search and we all get paid on every search. Yeah, everyone gets paid on every search. Yeah, that's how we do it.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:20]:
Is that something that you started off with or is this something that you evolved to?

John Pierson [00:38:23]:
This particular exact model has been in place for five years. Yeah, ever since we rebranded. P2 Investments in 10X Partners is the same company we rebranded five years ago because we used to do marketing and some other functions and we wanted to shake that and we didn't want that name. We wanted a name where we're just doing investment teams. We've done investment teams the whole time but we only do hedge fund investment teams which is another differentiator for my team. That's all we do with the investment teams. Also the technologists, just for the investment team.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:54]:
Oh and I'm also kind of curious about this. You cold called Dan Bob, right?

John Pierson [00:38:58]:
I did, yeah. That's something.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:00]:
Talk about that.

John Pierson [00:39:01]:
Okay. When I opened the firm at the veselka Cafe in 2007 I think it was later that year or maybe it may have been the spring of the next year. 08 before, before everything hit. I called Dan Loeb. It was like 6:45 in the morning. I don't know why I even tried but I believe that most great investors are up around 4 something 5 o' clock latest and they prepare and you know, I don't know if God was on my side or what but Dan answered the phone, I called third point and he said Dan here. And I said hey Dan. I said so this is John Pearson.

John Pierson [00:39:35]:
I said listen, you don't know me, but I'd really like to change that. And yeah, I'm going to get right to it. I'm one of those, those talent people that you probably hang up on all the time. I just want one mandate in one week. If I fill it, hire me. If I don't, never talk to me again. That was my pitch in 10 seconds or like 15 seconds. And I knew it had to be fast.

John Pierson [00:39:53]:
So he said, there's like two seconds of silence. It's probably the longest two seconds I've ever, I've ever had in my life. Right. And he said, find me a pre mba, private equity weenie. Weenie. I don't. So I guess I meant a junior person. Right.

John Pierson [00:40:06]:
I guess that's a dance, you know, colorful. So I, I already had him. And I didn't tell Dan that though. But I already had him because I was doing a search for something similar for somebody else for like the last two weeks. So I already had him, but I didn't send him right away because then Dan would know I already had him. So I wait, I waited about two days and then I sent them and I sent him a message and I said, I'm sorry it took so long. Right? Two days. He ended up hiring this guy.

John Pierson [00:40:30]:
This guy became an absolute superstar. And Dan hired me. So not, not to work for a third point, but to be an external person working on town. And that person ended up staying with dan for about 12 years and did quite a bit. Yeah, that person's a pretty big person now, but we'll leave that name out.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:45]:
That's awesome.

John Pierson [00:40:45]:
You gotta take risk because you know when you take risk, if you trip and you fall down on your face, the way I see it is you're in the push up position. Right? I know, Again, a little bit cheesy, but it's true. You just get stronger.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:56]:
We covered a lot and I want to jump over just for time's sake to the quickfire questions. They don't need to be quick answers. But before we jump there, sure. We talked about a lot. Is there anything else that you want to go deeper in that I should have asked you a question on?

John Pierson [00:41:09]:
I don't think so, Benjamin. I think you've been pretty, pretty comprehensive. I'll tell a few people about you for sure.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:15]:
So quick fire questions, they don't need to be quick answers. It's just kind of like a little bit of a separation in the podcast and I'm going to kind of like mix them up a little bit. So typically my first Question is, like, what advice would you give to the new recruiter? Which I was going to ask you, like, what advice would you give to a new person that joined your firm? But I want to switch it to. You've talked about risk taking probably about seven or eight times in our conversation. What advice would you give for people to do more risk taking?

John Pierson [00:41:42]:
Well, you have to have a good support system, right? Because you're going to get beat up, there's going to be pain involved. But you have to understand that. It's just like when you're four years old and you climb the ladder and you get on a high dive and you go to the end of the high dive and you should I jump? And you're this little kid. It's scary, right? But when you look back, there's already people behind you. So now you gotta jump. Right? It's the same thing, but once you hit that water, you feel great. So you just, you gotta jump in. You gotta be bold, be courageous.

John Pierson [00:42:08]:
And you can't be typical in this industry. You can't be typical. Never, ever be typical. You know, it's the same thing. When I went to the interview and they asked me about why I didn't wear a suit, and I said, nobody else here interviewing is gonna be able to change into my skill set. I mean, I'm not saying be arrogant, Right. And I'm not saying be conceited or cocky, which, you know, I've teetered on the borderline there. But believe in yourself and overcome imposter syndrome.

John Pierson [00:42:30]:
You only do that if you have a good support system. So you need to surround yourself with winners. And good people love that.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:36]:
And this is for kind of like the experienced recruiters out there. And I think one of the most important things as we moved into this AI era is the focus on the candidate side. So what advice would you give to people thinking about more of a talent model, a talent advisor search model, like, to be more candidate focused?

John Pierson [00:42:55]:
What advice would I give them?

Benjamin Mena [00:42:56]:
Yeah, what advice to maybe start moving into something like what you have.

John Pierson [00:43:00]:
Yeah. Okay. So you just have to be sincere. You have to sincerely want to know what it is they truly want. Right. And you got to know your clients, too. Like, I know what my clients want for the most part. Sure.

John Pierson [00:43:13]:
On occasion, they're going to say, you know, hey, listen, I want a long, short equity analyst that's focusing on Brazil emerging markets or something. Right. And that's more specific. Right. But predominantly, I do a lot of research on my clients where their portfolio positions are. Right. It's public stuff. So a lot of it, I try to be anticipatory and I would ask them to do this.

John Pierson [00:43:30]:
It's all about research. Be well read, get up before the sun comes up. Always get up before the sun comes up. I also have a trick. I, I email people either in the middle of the night, late at night, or early 4:35 in the morning. So when they get to work or when they're on the way to work and they look at their cell phones, you're the top email, right. You're not 16 down, you're gonna get red. So things like that.

John Pierson [00:43:53]:
There's a ton of tricks. I don't wanna give them all out because I don't want people to start competing against me. But yeah, stuff like that.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:00]:
What is a book that's had a huge impact on you?

John Pierson [00:44:04]:
The man who Saw the Market by Greg Zuckerman.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:06]:
Why?

John Pierson [00:44:07]:
It's about Jim Simons, who I consider the greatest of all time when it comes to hedge fund investing. It's all about his journey from being, you know, one of the greatest math guys ever, to turning it and monetizing it and just building an awesome investment machine. Plus, I like Greg. I know Greg, he's a good guy.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:27]:
You've mentioned a few times about the math. The most complex algorithm in the world. The complex algorithm of human communication.

John Pierson [00:44:33]:
That's right. And high level persuasion.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:36]:
And high level persuasion. Where did you really start learning how to hone that and where can you advise other people to get better at that?

John Pierson [00:44:43]:
I learned that in the first six months in the business where I was a clear, concise communicator because of my air traffic control training. Right. And I was taught to be very precise, very precise with what you said and what you meant. But when I got to the boutique that I started out in the beginning, the retained boutique, and I had to go and call those people that I circled in the Wall Street Journal. You're jumping in the D pad. Right. So I learned how to communicate and you learn from listening to people. Also, I speak to probably close to 2,000 professionals a year.

John Pierson [00:45:19]:
I don't know what the split is. Probably close to even 60, 70% investment and 30% tech. Right. And you learn the cadence, you learn what a pause means, you learn the power of silence, you learn all those techniques in communicating and how to listen and what to listen for. And it teaches you how to discern. That's it really, just experience.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:38]:
Is there a tech tool that you absolutely love? Do you have a favorite tech tool?

John Pierson [00:45:43]:
Oh, That's a good question. Well, I mean, listen, you know, these AI agents, I like all of them, right? They make everything easier. But ChatGPT is big. Yeah, I like ChatGPT. I also like Recruiter Flow, which is my ATS CRM. It helps extract a lot of information in a very easy and organized manner. I am very disorganized.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:01]:
I love that you admitted that you're not the most organized, but you're doing this in depth into people's lives and you're very successful at it. While still. I know some people that are just perfect with everything. I know some people that aren't perfect with everything. But you're showing that you could still win at a high level, which I absolutely love. So you talked recently about a huge deal that you just lost out on. But, like, outside of that, has there been a challenge that you've had to work through in your career?

John Pierson [00:46:28]:
So I will divulge something to you that I had no plan on doing, but I am 100% service connected. Disabled United States Marine with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That's been incredibly challenging to overcome. To overcome some of that, it's much better now. But in the beginning it was difficult after the Marine Corps. And then another thing is I had somebody in 09, 2010 try to do some Internet piracy, some IP, and that was tough overcoming that too. But it's like anything in life, whether it's your career or whether it's your life. Right.

John Pierson [00:47:01]:
We are the sum of our, of our experiences. I've made a lot of mistakes. I've done some good things too, and I wouldn't trade any of it because it's all worked out real well.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:11]:
So if you can go back in time, we'll say back to when you were in that cafe with everything that you know now and everything that you've done and your ups and downs. If you got a chance to sit down with yourself, like after you click yes on the LLC and talk to yourself, what advice would you give yourself?

John Pierson [00:47:26]:
There will be times when you're going to need to hold your tongue, you know, and sleep on it. Think about it a little bit further before reacting. When I was younger, I was much more reactive versus responsive. So I think, yeah, I just think maturing and trying to think things through sometimes because there's going to be a lot of challenging situations. If you're in this market, if you're in the hedge fund talent space, there is a ton of ego, there's a ton of ignorance, there's a ton of arrogance and Those things aren't nice and they're not fun and they don't feel good when you deal with them a lot. Right. One person. Okay.

John Pierson [00:47:59]:
When you've had four of them in a day that are just challenging, it becomes a little bit more difficult on the fifth one to not be reactive. Right. But that's life. That is life. And again, as I've said throughout this conversation, your personal and professional integrity and core values and spirit must align. Right. I'd rather make less money and do the right thing and be good to people than be a jerk and be rich as can be. Yeah.

John Pierson [00:48:27]:
Also the people around you. I'd rather be with the right person in a cardboard box than be on the beach of Waikiki with the wrong person.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:37]:
So you've built a successful global firm, talent firm. You've made tons of high level placements, you've worked with big firms, billionaires, and all this stuff. Like, what motivates you to keep on going?

John Pierson [00:48:49]:
Oh, yeah, it's not the money, really. It's, it's fun, you know, it's fun even, Even with all the things I just told you about, with the, with the ego and things like that. I mean, to continue to learn, you know, as I just told you about this industry having all this ego and error, they also have brilliance. Right. And they also are overwhelmingly intriguing. So to continue to learn. I'm a learner. I love to learn.

John Pierson [00:49:10]:
People used to ask me when I was a young man, what do you look for in a woman? And you know, there's certain men that have men kind of answers. And my answer was always somebody that can teach me things. Someone that I can teach things. Right. That's the fascinating part of this industry. There's never, no matter what, if the market's going up or down, the market for knowledge will never go down. It's always there. So that's it.

John Pierson [00:49:32]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:33]:
This has been an awesome conversation and I'm so glad that we connected on LinkedIn and started going and telling the story. But I want to kind of wrap it up with this last question.

John Pierson [00:49:43]:
Sure.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:43]:
You've been highly successful. You've been in the news, you've been absolutely crushing it. What question during our conversation do you wish I asked you? And what would that be? That answer?

John Pierson [00:49:55]:
What question? During our. That's a tough one. I see why you ask it last. Let's see here. You know, it's, it's, it's funny. I don't want to be a teacher's pet, but I think you asked a lot of really good questions, trying to think of something that may come to mind. So you're saying something that I would have wished you would have asked me, correct?

Benjamin Mena [00:50:11]:
Yeah, it's something that during our conversation, might have popped in your head real quick. And it was like he didn't go that direction or he didn't go deeper in that, or I wish he asked a secondary or a third level question into that. Did you have any of those during our conversation?

John Pierson [00:50:25]:
Yeah. I don't want to disappoint you, but I did not feel like that. I didn't have that feeling. Is that bad?

Benjamin Mena [00:50:33]:
Gonna go do some more homework?

John Pierson [00:50:36]:
Is that what you said?

Benjamin Mena [00:50:37]:
I got more homework to go deeper on everything.

John Pierson [00:50:38]:
So, I mean, we covered it quite a bit, I think. You know, we.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:42]:
We did, we did, we did. No, this is. This has been an awesome conversation. So I just wanted to say thank you for sitting down. It was a Wall Street Journal post that I got tagged on that. I read that story originally. I was just like, okay, I need to do a conversation around this. And I'm so glad that walked into the door of the conversation that I'm having with you today.

John Pierson [00:51:00]:
You just helped me answer. You just helped me think of something for the last question. Okay, so that Wall Street Journal article, that was a frustrating thing to read because if you look at what I've written, the quotes, the media, the business model, the things that I've done for 25 years, well, more precisely 19 when it comes to the agent model and the agent approach, I've developed the agent approach for 19 years and branded for about 17 years. So to. To read the article as if somebody is trying to be an agent for portfolio managers, and it's groundbreaking and new, that was frustrating for me because that's. That's not accurate. It's not accurate. Yeah, yeah.

John Pierson [00:51:42]:
What are you going to do? I had my tantrum over it and, you know, you need to move on.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:47]:
I'm a human.

John Pierson [00:51:47]:
I'm a human. It's like Charles Barkley says about his relationship with Michael Jordan. I have an ego too.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:54]:
Absolutely. Well, two last questions. First of all, if somebody wants to follow you, how do they go about doing that?

John Pierson [00:52:01]:
I'd recommend on LinkedIn. I'm not big on X. Right. I should. I should definitely get on X and increase that audience between my LinkedIn page and I have a group on LinkedIn also called Hedge Fund Jobs and News. And then there's the company page too, for P2 investments. All those together is about 20,000 people right now. But I don't spend a lot of time working on followers.

John Pierson [00:52:22]:
I probably should, but. Yeah, I appreciate that question. When you asked me the last question, that's the answer. Ask me how people follow me or tell them to follow me.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:30]:
Yeah, yeah. I'll also have your LinkedIn profile in the show notes so they can easily scroll down and click on it. So we've covered a lot. Is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners before I let you go?

John Pierson [00:52:40]:
Yeah. March 1st, our new website, it says the fall, but March 1st it's done. I know for a fact March 1st to Teams will be launching on March 1st, 2026.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:51]:
Awesome. And what is a P2Teams.com? Is that like a. What is that? Are you guys. So My company is AI.

John Pierson [00:52:57]:
My company is P2 Investments. That's the name of the company and it's too long. We like a shorter name for the domain. So my email is jp2teams.com and the website will be p2teams.com.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:09]:
Yeah. Awesome. Well, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on. Like I said, it's just I truly see, as the AI starts evolving and as industries start evolving, we're going to see more of like this superstar in so many different fields, whether it's like recruiting, whether it's sales, whether it's like, you know, software engineers to investment portfolios. And I think that model of the contingency in and out recruiter isn't going to be as successful. So I've been looking for a way to share this talent idea so we can go deeper, caring about the people. So thank you for coming on, sharing it today with the listeners.

John Pierson [00:53:48]:
Yeah, you're welcome. Last thing is proactive talent search. Proactive recruiting, not reactive. Don't react to mandates. You want to stock your shelves, have them stocked at all times. Don't want to wait till a client tells you what they need. Get to know them really well. Thank you so much, Benjamin.

John Pierson [00:54:02]:
It's a pleasure to meet you and I hope we can stay in touch.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:05]:
Absolutely. And for the listeners, guys, I want you to absolutely keep crushing it. Put the work in. Remember what we do right now for the rest of the year, what we do sets you up for 2026. You cannot have the best 2026 if you just shut it down right now. So go all in, make it happen. I'll see you guys later. Admin is a massive waste of time.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:25]:
That's why there's Atlas, the AI first recruitment platform built for modern agencies. Doesn't only track resumes and calls. It remembers everything. Every email, every interview, every conversation. Instantly searchable, always available. And now it's entering a whole new era. With Atlas 2.0, you can ask anything and it delivers. With MagicSearch, you speak and it listens.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:44]:
It finds the right candidates using real conversations, not simply looking for keywords. Atlas 2.0 also makes business development easier than ever with opportunities you can track, manage and grow client relationships. Powered by generative AI and built right into your workflow need insights. Custom dashboards give you total visibility over your pipeline. And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported up to 41% EBITDA growth and an 85% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. No admin, no silos, no lost info. Nothing but faster shortlist, better hires, and more time to focus on what actually drives revenue.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:18]:
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 at recruit with atlas.com thanks for listening to this episode.

John Pierson [00:55:30]:
Of the Elite Recruiter Podcast with Benjamin. If you enjoyed, hit, subscribe and leave a rating.