Stop Chasing Fees: Dominate Your Recruiting Niche

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
Are you still trying to grow your recruiting desk or business on your own? Join the Elite Recruiter Community and connect with recruiters who know your challenges. Members get unlimited access to replays from the AI Recruiting Summit, Finish the Year Strong, and all our past events, plus biweekly roundtables where we dive into sourcing, business development, and mindset. You'll also tap into our Billers Club for accountability and a split space to partner on roles. Join the number one growth environment for recruiters for just $49 per month. You'll be part of a tight-knit group that pushes you to grow, and you can cancel anytime. Visit the link in the show notes and click Join Now to get started and start mastering your craft today. Coming up on this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast.

Will Wegert [00:00:40]:
That when you're doing digital and face-to-face and direct outreach, I think all of them work 10 times better when you're doing the 3 in tandem instead of any of them by themselves. I can be the best real estate agent in the world, but if you're happy in your house right now, you ain't moving, right? And I think I, I look at recruiting the same way, that I can be the best recruiter in the world, but if you're gonna hire your best friend or you're not budget approved for an agency, you probably aren't going to use one. So my approach is, when I'm doing direct outreach, I want you to know that I'm the real estate agent you should call when it's time. Welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with host Benjamin Mena, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:30]:
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Benjamin Mena [00:02:39]:
Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive listener offer at recruitwithatlas.com. I am so excited about this episode. This is an episode that I've been looking forward to having. And actually, when I first asked this guest to sit down, he actually told me no. He said, no, not right now. Because here's the thing. He's like, I am so focused on the goal. I need to make that happen.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:01]:
And in the pregame, we had this conversation and one of the things that absolutely stood out, and I feel like this relates to so many of you, he knew that he had so much pent-up potential. Just waiting inside him, knowing that it has to come out, trying to figure out how to make it come out. And guess what? He hit that goal. He hit what he was shooting for. He shot me the message saying, let's do it, it's now the time to share. So, Will, I am so excited to have you on the podcast.

Will Wegert [00:03:32]:
Ben, I'm so thrilled. I'm honored to be here amongst giants and hope I can offer a little value to others as they look to grow their business.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:41]:
Awesome. So real quick, uh, quick 30-second self-introduction.

Will Wegert [00:03:45]:
Yeah, well, uh, for the few of you watching on video, I'm a dev recruiter. I recruit software engineers. And those listening, my hat says dev recruiter. I've been recruiting software engineers for 8 years. It's what I plan to do for another 20 years. I'm really, really niched in the Denver local market, so Denver, Boulder, we could say anywhere in Colorado. And I absolutely love what I do. I love the people I serve and I love winning.

Will Wegert [00:04:09]:
I love excellence. I love helping people.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:12]:
I gotta ask this, like, you know, from the outside and cause I've had multiple people tell me about you from the outside, it looks like you have everything figured out, but you, you said that you called this a, a 7-year overnight success story. Why?

Will Wegert [00:04:27]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:27]:
Yeah.

Will Wegert [00:04:28]:
Well, that goes back to a book I read, right? And we talk about those that have been successful over and over again. And I think the book, the example is Michael Jordan. And I, this one sticks, might be the wrong person, but if I'm recalling right, it was his neighbors that complained to his dad that he was up at 1 in the morning as a kid over and over and over again. And they couldn't sleep because basketball's hitting the pavement, right? Over and over. And all of a sudden, right, everybody's jealous of this guy and he's the best basketball player ever. I think that consistency, we can call it Atomic Habits, we can call it, it's the small things you do. But I deeply believe that success comes, you know, my numbers are a huge splash. I over-doubled my income.

Will Wegert [00:05:11]:
I went from, I had built over 700 twice. I hit 336. It was a terrible year internally, externally. I hit 500 last year by the skin of my teeth and I built 1,097,000 this year. But that didn't happen because of any major change. Well, we'll get into that. There were some major changes I made, but it was a lot of intentional things over the last 8 years that I think allowed the fundamentals to work. And I think it's going to work again, right? We'll see.

Will Wegert [00:05:37]:
It's a— it's one year being a million-dollar biller, but I think when you look back, it's what I did 8 years ago, 10 years ago, 12 years ago that's really made it happen.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:45]:
Let's jump in there. Like, how did you end up in this wonderful world of Misfit Toys recruiter?

Will Wegert [00:05:51]:
Yeah, well, like so many of us, uh, didn't dream of being a recruiter, but, um, I actually started my career in resume writing, which was a story in and of itself. Um, I ran a resume writing business for almost 5 years and that was because of a short story there. I had 5 jobs in 8 months. I was great at getting jobs and I hated having them. I decided, hey, I can help other people get jobs and kind of went off on my own. Look, I was very, very good at resume writing, probably top 5% in what we were charging and the quality we brought. I had some incredible mentors around me, folks who early stage, you know, I studied digital marketing. I studied around Dan Kennedy.

Will Wegert [00:06:26]:
I went to copywriting conferences, which was very contrarian in the resume world, right? Those folks mostly studied English, how to do spelling, how to grammar. I still can't do that yet. Had one of the most successful resume writing businesses out there. So I was in the career space. It's kind of a non-traditional path to recruiting. I kept hearing about recruiting and these big fees and the fulfilling nature of it. I could see that from a mile away. I, I think I loved resume writing.

Will Wegert [00:06:57]:
I love helping people make transitions in their careers, but that's what most of resume writing is. It's a true transition. I'm a recruiter. I want to be an accountant. That's a lot of emotional baggage to bear. And so I decided to put on my big boy pants and go get a real job. I joined somebody, a really cool firm., here locally, started in freight and logistics recruiting, quickly transitioned to software and, uh, it's been, uh, it's been a race and a story since.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:26]:
So one of the things that I know we, we spoke about before we hit the record button was it was really just like the copywriting, the attraction, like the attraction marketing. And did that help you? Like all those things that you were learning in those different places that recruiters don't even like go to.

Will Wegert [00:07:44]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:44]:
Do you think that really helped lay a foundation for you to get started in the recruiting world?

Will Wegert [00:07:49]:
Absolutely. And it was, you know, a blessing and a curse, but the, the company I joined, I was the 4th employee and no one had ever been a recruiter before. So most agencies, most recruiters that I talk to, right, they grew up in the big shops, the Robert Halfs of this world, and they know the fundamentals. None of us knew the fundamentals. We had LinkedIn and we had jobs and we were like, we need to put people in these jobs. And so. We all were kind of just doing what we knew and what I knew was attraction, right? What I knew was how do I pull people to me instead of how do I push myself on people? And within the first quarter, I was top biller at that firm and I haven't really looked back. I've been 1 or 2 most years, uh, you know, at both the 2 firms I've been at and learned from brilliant people along the way.

Will Wegert [00:08:36]:
But I do think that this idea of attraction is unique. I think it's a lot more fun, right? I mean, we talk a lot about referrals. This is kind of a core facet of what I believe. And when somebody tells me their business is built on referrals, man, I cringe a little bit because referrals is not a system. You cannot, you can't, if I ask you, how do you go get more? Well, that just means you're good at what you do and people like you. But when, you know, shit hits the fan, excuse me, how do you go do more of that? You can't. So you either need to do outbound and that's not fun. We all hate cold calls, right? I mean, I actually, come to like them now, but I wanted to do something that was duplicable, that was repeatable, that was a system.

Will Wegert [00:09:18]:
And I think the concept of an attraction-based system, a marketing system, an inbound system, it's warmer, it works better. It's the same reason why we like referrals. And I wanted to be able to create that, not just hope for it. Okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:31]:
And we're going to talk about this a lot more, like in the podcast later on. But your inner circle strategy, did you start day one with that, or was that something that developed over time?

Will Wegert [00:09:44]:
I would say, yeah, yes, I started day one with it, but not written out the way I have. I think the way I've written it out and designed it is more of a reflection on what I've actually been doing and trying to simplify it and visualize it and be able to repeat it for myself. And then be able to teach it to my team. So I think a lot of these principles are inherent in the attraction system. And it was, yes, it was things I was doing, but it wasn't the strategy I was following. And in fact, I think my down year going from $700K, 2 years in a row to $350K, hitting a 50% cut was because I got away from some of those fundamentals and COVID sort of taught me I should go away from it and I was wrong. I left the system that I had been working and when I came back to it, thank you Dana Cahill, it, uh, it over doubled my billings, or you could say quadrupled in a matter of 2 years.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:39]:
Now you just mentioned visualization, and for those that are listening, in the background it says the number 1 most recognized, respected, reliable, was it technology?

Will Wegert [00:10:51]:
Now it says technology. Yes. I've grown my team, so now I lead a technology team. So I've edited slightly, but it used to say software engineering, which is what I still focus on.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:01]:
And you wrote that down on a napkin how many years ago?

Will Wegert [00:11:04]:
I wrote that down on a napkin probably the first year I was in recruiting. I really fell in love with the Denver market. I really fell in love with software kind of by accident. We did mostly freight logistics recruiting and they kept saying these software engineers are hard to find and we don't really understand them. And I thought, well, weird people and quirky and it requires inbound. Sounds like me. So I went after it and kept pursuing that over and over and over again. Join the Slack channels, join the the meetups, figured out where the people I wanted to place hung out.

Will Wegert [00:11:34]:
And, uh, that came out of that. And I stare at that every day as a reminder of what I'm trying to do.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:39]:
A lot of recruiters, they sit at their office desk, bang out the calls, they shoot some LinkedIn messages, then they go home at the end of the day. Like, early on, you started going to these, like, these meetups and places and seeing these people talk about that.

Will Wegert [00:11:52]:
Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of my early-ish career, you know, was in a COVID time when I joined High Country. So a lot of it was digital, but I figured out that my audience, they hung out on Slack. There was a channel called Denver Devs. It's actually dead now, but there was 10,000 developers. There were no recruiters in there and it was just developers. And so I got into this channel and I just started adding value.

Will Wegert [00:12:16]:
I never once asked for anything. And then I would also start going to the meetups that, you know, when I could. And they'd say, you're that bald recruiter guy. You're the guy who adds value here, right? And so they, they knew who I was. They'd seen my face in Slack and I never sold them anything. And people love that. I mean, I, I actually, it's a kind of maybe analogy others don't use as often, but I think recruiters is a car salesman. And, you know, early on at TalentSolvers, one of the best pieces of advice I was ever given was Taylor Dorsett.

Will Wegert [00:12:49]:
He said, Will, He said, you're a car salesman, they hate you already. Pick up the phone, and if they hate you a little less, you know, if they still hate you when you hang up, you broke even. And if they hate you a little less, then you've won. And I've kind of taken that philosophy to Slack, to the meetups, to the way I approach recruiting, is they think I'm the scum of the earth, I'm a recruiter. And so when I can show a little bit of humanness, a little bit of humor, a little bit of I'm just a regular person trying to help you, then all of a sudden I walk on water, right? I mean, and that car salesman analogy works. We all hate them. But if I tell you, Ben, you know, this car salesman is actually trustworthy and I've been working with him for 12 years, whoa, you're going to, you're going to call that person, right? Like that, that's— nobody does that. And so when I think of myself as the scum of the earth and then trying to not be that, it makes the whole process a little easier and a little less daunting.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:42]:
Were you at least like walking into the meetups with the trucker dev hat, dev recruiter hat?

Will Wegert [00:13:46]:
Oh man, that's, that's new. I think, um, I do wear, if you look at my LinkedIn, I, I still go by Denver's Baldest Recruiter. I put that down maybe 6, 7 years ago and people seem to recall and nobody knows my name, but they're like, you're that bald recruiter guy. It hits every time. Uh, maybe I need to wear the hat less and they know I'm bald, but, um, I do get that comment, but I stick to my niche. I stick to my brand. I mean, I, Do I want to be known as the baldest recruiter guy? And it's too late, but it's memorable. So I ain't changing it, you know?

Benjamin Mena [00:14:16]:
So as you started like, you know, going to these things, as you started like chasing the business, you were really focused on the Denver market, but like the grass started to look a little greener on the other side of the state lines for you.

Will Wegert [00:14:29]:
Yeah. Yeah. So 2021, 2022. Probably the two best years in recruiting ever for many of us, right? I mean, clients were falling out of trees and probably more so for me. And I had some great years in recruiting there, but it wasn't intentional. It was a little bit intentional, but it felt like some luck, right? What I did last year, I think was very intentional. So venture capital, I mean, all the money's in New York and San Francisco, right? So I started having success there when we were all sitting at home and meetups were less available. It was very easy to chase the carrot out in San Francisco and New York.

Will Wegert [00:15:05]:
And I got distracted by it. You know, I'm as ADHD as most of us recruiters. I chased the squirrel and I saw opportunity and I spent a lot of time, a lot, lot of time going after those big fees and those big, big ideas. When I later looked at the data, it didn't work, right? When market tightened, when venture capital tightened and there was nobody hiring. I made a little bit of money still, and I looked at what was working and none of it was in San Francisco. None of it was in New York. And so I looked back at my original goal, right? I want to be the, the most respected in Colorado. And I was feeling this disconnect between what I thought I should be chasing, what all of the other recruiters were telling me was the, the biggest pool.

Will Wegert [00:15:47]:
And then I looked at what was working and there was a huge disconnect there. And that's when I reached out to Danny because I felt this, you know, internal tear of what I thought I should be doing versus what I was being told I should be doing and sent me on the right path.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:00]:
Yeah. Before we, we talk about, uh, having a conversation with Danny, what I want to talk about actually looking at the data. Yeah. So I, and I think this is important because a lot of recruiters don't have the data or don't look at the data or don't study the data. Like when you say you look at the data, what did that, what does that actually mean?

Will Wegert [00:16:18]:
Yeah. And There's so many trainers, Danny being one of them, that have every single piece of data tracked in Bullhorn. We're not that. It's there, but it's very loose. When I talk about tracking the data, I think what every recruiter listening can do is go look at the origination of their clients, right? So I found every placement I made over the last 5 years, and then I didn't find necessarily where I found that candidate. I think the candidates are a little bit more duplicable. I went to where the client came from and I tried to find where that, where I found them. How did they connect with me? Did they come to me? Did I reach out to them? Was it a cold call? Was it— and looked for themes.

Will Wegert [00:16:57]:
I actually didn't— I can share with anybody how I broke it down, but I was just looking for general themes of where did this come from? So for me, one of the big things I tracked was how much was local, how much was not. And then I also looked at how much was digital marketing, how much was from my team referring it to me, how much was intentional outbound marketing. And I found Overwhelmingly so. The data told me that my money was coming from Colorado. And secondly, the biggest piece of my pie, as big as the next two combined, um, was digital marketing. The origination of the clients was what I was doing in digital. And up until that point, I hadn't been doing digital as intentionally. I'd been doing it for fun because I'd post something and I thought it was interesting.

Will Wegert [00:17:41]:
I, I grew up in that world. I studied copywriting and it's Uh, you know, I, I get a little dopamine hit when I get a like, so I was like, well, can I get a little more of those? But when I looked at the data, it said, that's what's working. That is where your clients are coming from. So I'm continually honing that, that if that's where my clients are coming from, I need to do more. Cause that's a system, right? And I think to outsiders it looks like referrals because a lot of that digital isn't coming from me picking up the phone and saying, can I, can I work your job? A lot of it is people saying, hey, we have a job for you now. But I traced those clients back and realized it was actually fairly systematic.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:19]:
So it's one of those things that sounds like for a while you were like kind of just trusting your gut. What I gotta ask, like, was it just like, were you frustrated one day and you're like, I just need to sit down and run these numbers?

Will Wegert [00:18:30]:
Yeah. I mean, if you wanna know the really raw truth of what happened is I had two really good years. I made a lot of money, I bought a big house, and we were struggling to pay the mortgage. And I went, I need to make more money and I don't know if the market is gonna pick up. And so Tom Erb, I'm, we have know a lot of trainers and I, I believe very little of what I do, uh, is my own idea. But Tom Erb shared this, I'm gonna butcher the quote, but he said something like, I think it was the big downturn in 2008. He's like, that's when we knew every other recruiter was slowing down. And so we knew that our opportunity to take over market share happens now.

Will Wegert [00:19:08]:
And he is like, we doubled our business, or we grew by 30% in the, when the time when every other recruiter in the world says we shrunk, they grew because they saw it as an opportunity. And so that mindset is when I went in, I said, yeah, it's bad out there. Recruiters are flying off the shelves, leaving the industry. I made a lot less and I don't think that's an excuse. I'm a recruiter for life. And so I have, and this won't be the last downturn I face. Um, so if I'm just riding the waves, then I'm in the wrong industry, right? I should go be internal., but knowing that this is the industry I've chosen and I love, I have to figure out how to take advantage of the downturn and pay my mortgage. So I looked, I knew there was an opportunity there and kind of found it and went heads down, I guess.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:50]:
And once you had all this data put together, is that when you went and had a conversation with Danny?

Will Wegert [00:19:56]:
Yep. Yep. And it was, I mean, Danny has, we'll try not to flood him here. He has a, I believe like an online chat, you know, it wasn't even a conversation. It's a ask Danny and he replies to some. If he thinks they're interesting, would be helpful. So, you know, I didn't know Danny personally. He's done some trainings and we're in a lot of his trainings regularly, but I went on the Ask Danny website and put my journal entry to self in there and he thought it was interesting and he posted it out to his audience.

Will Wegert [00:20:21]:
He's like, this is good. He gave me a brilliant answer, but that there was just this deep irreconciliation between the work I was doing and what I felt I should be doing and I think I needed somebody to kick me the way that my gut was telling me and the way that the data was telling me.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:37]:
And you know, just kind of digging into the thing with Danny, what was it like, and I got it in front of me, but like what did you exactly say to Danny that you got a bit of a buckhead kick in the back? Or a real answer.

Will Wegert [00:20:48]:
He, I basically said, here's the data, here's where my money's coming from, but I know there's more money in San Francisco. I should go there. Right. And he said, No way, you're an idiot, um, nicely.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:02]:
Um, well, did he actually say you're an idiot?

Will Wegert [00:21:03]:
Yeah, he probably would. And in the nicest way. Uh, yes. Uh, and, uh, he said you have this niche that nobody else owns. I mean, we look at Paraform and all of these. I mean, there are so many recruiters recruiting venture capital software engineers in San Francisco. I am one of 3, maybe 4 that really actually specialize in software in Denver, and actually of those 3, I just hired one of my competitors' top recruiter works for me now. She's crushing it.

Will Wegert [00:21:33]:
One is kind of went remote when COVID hit and is no longer the owner there. And the 4th is traveling and he's referring me his clients and I'm giving him a split. It's such a small, I mean, so anyone listening in, you know, in Chattanooga and Toledo and Cincinnati in a small market, I'm a big believer that these small markets you can own the whole thing, right? It's a small pie, but I'm the guy. I dreamed of being the guy when I wrote that on a napkin, but it's coming to me now where, I mean, I hired a new recruiter a couple months ago and he's working on a VP role and he's said he talked to 10 people and 8 of them are like, oh, you work with Will. They, it's a tiny market. Everybody knows me, you know? And I think again, that goes back to the strategy and intentionality, but I'd rather be a big piece of a small pie than a, Small piece of a big pie, that's for sure.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:23]:
What did you have to kill in your business to fully commit to Denver?

Will Wegert [00:22:28]:
Chasing squirrels. Um, I, so many, and chasing the idea. I think we see people online, we see people that say, hey, I build X million dollars or, you know, huge fees. And I had to become comfortable with who I wanted to be. I think so often I wanted to become what other people were and I'd see these organizations that built bigger, faster, more profit, bigger houses, cooler cars. And it's just not who I want to be. That's never, I mean, with, when I wrote this napkin, I wrote how big I wanted my team to be and, and it's a lot smaller than most people dream of. But I had to kill the idea that I was going to become Kohl's Filler Quantum.

Will Wegert [00:23:13]:
Right? Like they're the players out in San Francisco in my space and they're better at it than I am. And so I had to stop chasing this sexiness and I'm from farm town Ohio, right? I'm a farmer. I just want to be good, hard worker, well-respected, well-owned, you know, in my small space. And that's not sexy. That's not San Francisco. I've had to be okay with that. And it was some emotional toils to give that up. But again, I think there's also some arrival in being a, a bigger fish in a smaller pond a little bit.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:46]:
So like for those listening, like after you've killed that, like, you know, hey, I'm not gonna be coastal. Coastal's a cool, they're, they're pretty cool.

Will Wegert [00:23:53]:
I get it. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:53]:
Great people. They're great on social media too.

Will Wegert [00:23:56]:
Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:58]:
But you've now killed it. You've made the decision. Like you've the, the emotions out of it now. What changed when you fully committed to Denver?

Will Wegert [00:24:07]:
Well, my billings went from $501,000 or $336,000 to $501,000 to $1,097,000. So there's some things have changed, but it also made my life simpler, right? Again, as a person who's always unintentionally, I, I try to wrangle myself. What can I put in a chart? What can I put in a spreadsheet? What can I decide? What small decisions can I make today? What's the simple, and we can talk Atomic Habits that I think many of us have read, right? What are the small things that I can do today that are just 1% better? And so I just say no all the time. It's really hard. I mean, I will admit I have one client in San Francisco still. I will take a little bit of referrals, but I stopped pursuing anything outside of Colorado. Now, do I work remote? Yes, but that's remote through people who are here. This isn't— these are my people.

Will Wegert [00:24:53]:
This is my network. And it's hard sometimes when somebody says, here's a $70,000 fee sitting there in San Francisco. There's, you know, these $300,000, $400,000 AI engineer roles in New York, and I could chase that and it would be cool to put up those deals. But you know what? My bread and butter is senior software engineer, lead software engineer, principal software engineer in Denver. And that's what feeds me over and over. So I think I have to constantly remind myself every time there is a rabbit hole that might be more interesting and more sexy, but saying no, gosh, that makes me damn good at my little niche.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:28]:
I gotta ask this, like, and we're gonna jump over to the next part in a second, but while you were sitting there wrangling with this New York or San Francisco idea, did you ever think about picking up and moving to that location?

Will Wegert [00:25:40]:
Was that part of your art? No. Farm town guy. That's too big for me. You know, we live in the suburbs, you know, I work near downtown, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it if I was, had no kids and wasn't married maybe, but I think it's just not in my blood, which is part of the reason why I think I love Colorado and Colorado. I mean, we ski, we hike, we bike, we're outside. It's this intersection of technology, which is where New York and San Francisco lives and breathes and kind of where my roots are from. Farm town, hard workers.

Will Wegert [00:26:12]:
We want to be outside. So this is the place for me. You know, I think that's in my gut and I think it resonates in the data too.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:18]:
Some of the things that you did, like really just like stood out and really caught my attention and You developed what you call like the 3 spokes or the inner circle model at a high level for those listening. And we're going to start walking through this. Yeah. What does all that mean? Like at a high level, can you explain it?

Will Wegert [00:26:34]:
Yeah, I think the Robert Half mentality that we talked about before, the, the big company mentality, direct outreach is how you build a business, right? I think so often that is how we are coached and I'm not against that. I'm actually very much for that., but that means pick up the phone, dial more, more emails, tell 'em you're out there. I think the problem with that is we think of the car salesman, or maybe a real estate agent is a better analogy. I can be the best real estate agent in the world, but if you're happy in your house right now, you ain't moving. Right? And I think I, I look at recruiting the same way that I can be the best recruiter in the world, but if you're gonna hire your best friend or You're not budget approved for an agency, you probably aren't going to use one. So my approach is when I'm doing direct outreach, I want you to know that I'm the real estate agent you should call when it's time. I'm not trying to sell you a house right now. You're not in the market for a house.

Will Wegert [00:27:30]:
And this is mostly client side I'm talking about, but that's the core spoke is the way I'm approaching that spoke is I want to be approachable and remembered in my outreach. And my goal is not to pick up a job order. My goal is not to get a new client. My goal is to be remembered for when they actually do need a recruiter, because everybody's going to need one at some point. And so as I process that, and I built in a lot of my digital marketing background, a lot of what works there, right? We can call it the referral, but systematizing the referral is they need to have met me face to face. So I need to figure out where these people are hanging out. I need to figure out who my people are. Where they're physically hanging out, I need to go hang out there.

Will Wegert [00:28:11]:
I don't love meetups. You know, I think they're as awkward as can be, but when you're going to the same ones consistently and all of a sudden you have friends there, quote unquote, it's a little less awkward. And so I'm committed like death to 2 specific meetups that is exactly, that hits my audience. I created one and I bolted onto the next. So that's the second spoke. So the first spoke is, uh, I'm getting out of order here, but we've got direct outreach, the traditional recruiting method. We've got face-to-face, being physically where the people are. And then I think digital, right? I think my approach in the three— I can get more into all of this, but the three spokes I think work really, really well together.

Will Wegert [00:28:50]:
The digital spoke is actually my goal in the direct outreach. So when I'm making a cold call, my goal is to connect on LinkedIn. If I connect on LinkedIn, it's a win because I'm gonna be Drip marketing on LinkedIn, and they're going to see me guaranteed. And then when I go to the face-to-faces, I'm also, it's going to be blasted out in CTO lunches that, hey, Will's sponsoring again, and they're going to see my name and they're going to see my little blurb. And then when I call them, they're going to even, you know, maybe there's 30 people at the meetup, but there's 300 that saw my name. So that's digital as well. Right. And so digital face-to-face and direct outreach, I think work It's the old adage, 1 1 3, right? I mean, I think 1 1 10 here, that when you're doing digital and face-to-face and direct outreach, I think all of them work 10 times better when you're doing the 3 in tandem instead of any of them by themselves.

Will Wegert [00:29:43]:
I mean, there's some really good digital coaches, Clark Wilcox, and I follow a lot of those folks. I love digital, but I think some of those folks get a little too stuck on digital being a method in and of itself. And I think some of the Robert Halfers types look at direct outreach being a solution in and of itself. And then there's the, oh, my network, go to the meetups. And that feels very, sometimes if that's all you're doing, you're just trying to bump shoulders with people, it doesn't feel very authentic. So by combining the three, I think I have enabled myself to be very authentic and just living where these people live.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:21]:
And then when they have the need, they call. So I know, like we were talking about this, one of these like meetups, you are the one in charge. You've created it. You cultivate it.

Will Wegert [00:30:33]:
Yep. Can you talk about that one? Yeah, of course. That's the Denver Tech Recruiters Meetup. So that was, look, I'm a big believer in learning and I'm a big believer that a lot of the learning happens when you share. So. I was getting burritos with a bunch of recruiting friends and there was all of a sudden 6 or 10 of us and we'd been doing it for a couple years and I said, this is a meetup now. And so I declared it a meetup and, you know, we've had, been running it formally for about 2 years now, probably combining with another recruiters meetup that is local, but it is a place where tech recruiters come to network, to learn. We're doing training sessions now.

Will Wegert [00:31:10]:
I've got one in mind that we'll probably do this year on how to level up our Boolean. I think Greg Fisher was on this pod. He actually introduced me. We did a training on how to utilize offshore. We're all trying to level up together, right? There's plenty of business for all of us. Um, and even the internal folks, right? And I think that meetup is authentic. It's not a— it works as a strategy, but I do it because I want to help people and I want to help recruiters be better and I want to learn from others. And so now I sit in the center of the recruiters meetup, which again, this goes contrary to everything we've ever learned.

Will Wegert [00:31:42]:
In recruiting is never work with recruiters, but guess who, you know, when every single time those internal folks are looking for a job, they call me and I've placed probably 4 or 5 of them, one at Zoom for free. And now they owe me, right? And I tell them that I'm like, look, I'm going to place you. I know all the jobs that are coming. I get a lot of the jobs before they ever go on the market. Cause a lot of these people know that I know everybody. And so they don't have to post it and get 1,000 applicants. And I'll tell you who's good and who's not and who's looking and why they're looking and what areas it, I just sit in the market. And those are the two pieces of my audience, I believe, tech recruiters and CTOs.

Will Wegert [00:32:15]:
Those are, if I know most of those people, I'm going to be doing well for a long, long time. Your relationships are your recurring revenue. And I believe that those are the two areas that I play. And so Denver Tech Recruiters are, I created it because I wanted to have those relationships.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:30]:
Help them. You hear this so often, especially like, you know, when your agency, like, Oh, these internal recruiters, they're the bad guys.

Will Wegert [00:32:36]:
You don't want to ever talk to them. Yeah, I, I don't get that. And look, I know I've really made it with a client. No, I know I've often made it with a client if I'm talking directly with a hiring manager, but I also believe that it's a process. And when these hiring managers say, hey, we need help on this role, they're going to go to the internal recruiting team. If they don't know somebody and the internal recruiter team better know me, um, because then I'm going to get the call. And look, my biggest client this year, uh, by revenue, I worked almost exclusively with the internal recruiter. We had good rapport.

Will Wegert [00:33:14]:
She made sure I met every hiring manager that I was recruiting for, but she's a badass and she knows what she's doing. She did half the work for me because she had such good information from her hiring managers, I didn't need to go get it separately. And again, that runs contrary to what I think we're taught, but I'm not, I'm not that worried about it. Like these internal recruiting teams are often very good. And if you position yourself as a partner to them instead of an enemy to them, it's sometimes easier to go downstream, you know? You also like you sponsor the CTO lunches also, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:50]:
So CTO lunches. Yeah, go ahead. So like when you're like, I know we talked about this like in the pregame, but like when you call CTOs now, you almost like, you said that you're not really calling them for the business.

Will Wegert [00:33:58]:
You're like, hey, are you coming to lunch? Yeah. And I do it with recruiters as well. If I want a new client, I plan on it's going to take 1 to 2 years to get that client. And my calls are, I find everybody that could be a decision maker in that company. And usually that's CTOs or anyone in HR recruiting team, more on the recruiting side and CTOs, VPs of engineering, directors of engineering. And I call them. So this is the direct outreach and I'll say, hey, something. I mean, it changes every time I, but something like, hey, I'm going to be at the lunch.

Will Wegert [00:34:29]:
Are you going to be there? How have things been? And I start that call. Actually, this goes into the tiny niche idea. I start that call with, oh, hey, this is Will Wieghardt. And I wait and usually they say, oh, hey, who again? And my tone, it's not about the words I say, but the tone is, oh, Will. I sponsor CTO lunches as if they should know me, but half the people already do. They're like, oh yeah, you. That's how small and tight my niche is, is they either know me or they feel like they should. So then in that voicemail or when I am able to connect, I'm inviting them to lunch.

Will Wegert [00:35:01]:
That builds rapport. I'm asking them to connect on LinkedIn as my actual takeaway when, you know, I get hung up on or door shut as much as the next guy. But when I can invite them to the lunch or when I could be very passive, I've been recruiting devs for 8 years. I plan to recruit devs for 20 years. I actually don't need your business. Uh, we're not really even taking on new clients, but I know there will come a time when you have a role that is so hard to fill, you're gonna need somebody. I just hope I'm the first person you call. That's it.

Will Wegert [00:35:30]:
It's, it's the real estate method. It's, you might move houses someday. I'm the best house mover around. Call me when you're around. Oh, by the way, I'll see you at lunch and I'm probably buying.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:40]:
I'm going to be honest with you. I really believe that 2026 is your year. I truly believe in you. I truly believe with everything in my heart that this is the year that you can own it. This is the year that you can hit your dreams. And to help you do that, we are kicking off a summit called This Is Your Year. You are elite. You were born to be elite.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:04]:
You were born to be the best. You were born to be the greatest, and I'm pulling together some of the industry's best speakers to help you get there. Going to be kicking off April 27th. You do not want to miss this. Make sure to run to the show notes, get registered. All the live sessions are free. I'm bringing in Mike Williams, Brianna Rooney, Mark Whitby. We have an entire week of stacked speakers that are going to help you achieve your dreams.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:32]:
This is going to be the industry event that you do not want to miss. I believe in you. I believe in you so much that I'm pulling the best to help you achieve your dreams. 2026 is your year. These lunches, and for those like listening, like I know a lot of recruiters are afraid to like do something in person or host something or like that stuff. Are you like, do you just hang out, get to know everybody? Are you like, is there a strategy of like these lunches? Like, how do you get the most out of it?

Will Wegert [00:37:01]:
Or is this all about this long-term relationship building? Well, I had been to a ton of meetups and a few of those meetups were overwhelmed with recruiters, right? And can you imagine being a CTO and there's 4, 5, 6 recruiters? They just, they all want your business. You know it. That's uncomfortable. So my intentionality is to find the meetups that no other recruiters are at and just keep going. Because if I think any person hears this or I post about doing it, so I've seen lots of my competitors. They'll go to CTO lunches, you know, they sponsor it once and then they never go again. And so my strategy is actually to do nothing, be the most authentic, caring, helpful person I can. I give resume advice if they ask, I share what's going on in the market.

Will Wegert [00:37:43]:
Um, I share salary ideas and I just, I just chat. I intentionally do not sell. If I sell there, then I'm the, I'm that guy, right? I tell them who I am, Colorado's buldest dev recruiter. When you need me, I'm around., and then we hang out and I do it at least 4 times a year at the CTO lunches. I think I did 6 or 9 last year and they call when they're ready. Uh, I try to connect with them all on LinkedIn. I guess that's my secondary strategy, right? It's the same as my calls. And then when I see an opportunity, right? I mean, this is the trust bank that we've all talked about a thousand times.

Will Wegert [00:38:15]:
Um, when they've seen me around or they've seen me digitally over and over and over and over and over again, then when I have a job that I want to work on, If it's budget approved, I can probably get it. You know, hey Ben, how you been? How's business? You still doing well? Hey, that role, favor to ask, using agencies? Can I have a shot? And that's also, I mean, we'll talk about contrarian. I think people talk about the arrival point. Maybe I'll get there someday. Maybe I'm still too junior, but the arrival point being retained. I'm the opposite. I'm like, give me the contingent business. Give me a shot.

Will Wegert [00:38:47]:
I will compete against 7 people. I know I'm the best out there. And I know that they'll kick everybody else out once I show you who I am. So I just want one shot at your toughest role. And I don't care if it's the lowest fee, like for the first one, I'll do anything for the first one. My fees are high. You know what, once we're locked in and I'll tell 'em that, I was like, you don't know me from Adam. You've seen me around maybe, but you don't know if I'm actually good.

Will Wegert [00:39:07]:
Let me prove it to you. I'll match anybody. I'll compete with anybody. I'll beat them. And then I'm gonna ask for exclusivity.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:16]:
And I usually do. So I want to take a step back to the digital, like you talk about everything is intentional there. You post there. You don't post for your other recruiting buddies.

Will Wegert [00:39:28]:
Like what's the kind of stuff that is pulling these CTOs into your digital world? Yeah, I have a pretty direct strategy I use with digital. I believe that people like to work with people that they like, right? So I think A third of what I do is, we can call it humor or human. It's a picture of me that is silly. It's my kid. It's my new dog. It's skiing or something. It's a joke, right? It's something that drives engagement. People like to work with people that they like.

Will Wegert [00:39:58]:
So be likable. That's a portion. But if I'm just funny, ain't nobody calling, right? That's, uh, I'm not making money by clicks, but you have to get the clicks, right? So being human, being relatable is a third of my approach. Second piece is I have to put on my professional pants every once in a while and share market knowledge. So I see people on the digital side do a little bit too much of this. There's one recruiter that comes to mind that all he ever shares is salary information and nobody pays enough. I'm like, it's actually good information, but I've seen it 1,000 times. You gotta mix it up.

Will Wegert [00:40:26]:
But that's the kind of— I share market data, salary information, who's moving, what, how the market feels, what's going on with AI, the questions that candidates and clients are asking me regularly. I'm posting about it because I want to be a source of information within my specialty area. Why are people moving here? So about a third of what I do is much more professional and just value dropping, right? So we've got a third of personalization, a third of dropping value. And then the last third is, uh, I follow a lot of, you know, more LinkedIn influencers, if you will, but you can call it controversy, hype, poll, whatever beats the algorithm. If you're very likable, And you have really good insight and nobody's reading it, that ain't working either. So you have to crack the algorithm. And so the LinkedIn algorithm is always changing. I don't pretend to know it exceptionally well, but I do track what works.

Will Wegert [00:41:17]:
And I look at my posts and I go, this one had 4,000 hits and this one had 1. How do I do more 4,000? And so you have to have some in there that's intentionally algorithm beating. Um, and so that's the other third is that, look, some of the stuff that, you know, I try not to make. The craziest takes, but sometimes the most controversial stuff is the stuff that hits the best and creates a conversation, right? Because if somebody's going to comment or dialogue or like or disagree, that's when the algorithm is going, oh, people are engaging with this stuff. So I don't want to be all controversy. Nobody likes that guy either. That's all, you know, always down on everything. But every once in a while, a little bit of against the grain helps.

Will Wegert [00:41:54]:
So that's kind of my, my digital strategy, if you will. Third, market knowledge or value. A third algorithm controversy hype and a third human funny. And, uh, I guess the other piece with digital, I mean, that's, I'm really big on LinkedIn. My market sits there. Um, I built a lot on Slack. I've been a lot of the private Slack channels, so I call that digital as well. Whatever your niche is, go find where they are.

Will Wegert [00:42:16]:
I mean, maybe that's a meetup, maybe that's a Slack channel, maybe that's a Discord, maybe that's a Facebook group. Just go hang out where they are and don't sell. As soon as you start selling, they're gonna start blocking, right? That's why recruiters aren't allowed in a lot of these things. And so I just started answering questions, right? It's in the Slack channels. It's how does this work with recruiters? How could I get in with this recruiter? What's the one they complain about us all the time? And when I started offering the other side of how it works and how they think, then I started to become a resource. And then that gave me data to put into digital, and that gave me conversation points to talk about in face-to-face. And that gave me conversation points when I'm doing the direct outreach that I can say, ooh, I know you think this.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:55]:
Because I'm watching what they type in Slack.

Will Wegert [00:42:58]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:58]:
I want to take a little bit of a different route before we jump over to the questions. You've gone from being the most recognized dev recruiter in the Colorado area to now having a firm and a team. How have you been able to manage the combination of growing your team, taking care of your team, working with your team, but also still billing good numbers?

Will Wegert [00:43:25]:
Hmm. Call me in a year and see if I still did it. Uh, my team has grown a lot this year. I think the one thing I'm telling myself, I mean, this is a journey that I am on and I wouldn't say I've arrived yet, but it's be the example. That's what I constantly remind myself. It's constantly what my leaders and coaches have consistently said is The team that I have the pleasure of working with, each of them are top recruiters from another firm. I'm good at what they do. They're also great at what they do.

Will Wegert [00:43:56]:
They need some help sometimes, and I'm available all the time, open door policy. But I think the main thing they need is they need to watch me lead from the trenches, make the calls, go to the meetups, do the thing. And then when they have specifics, how do I close this deal? This candidate is getting weird. They'll come to me. So that's hard, right? I think I want to get in the weeds a lot, but that is, that's what I'm telling myself as I've built the team now. And I've had a lot of help along the way. I mean, I had the best leader, I think, in Colorado in recruiting. He knows his stuff and he's there for me.

Will Wegert [00:44:29]:
And so I think that helps, but it's a great question and one that I hope to listen in on, on others' answers. Cause it's, it's an area where I still learning and growing for sure.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:40]:
What is, uh, if anybody their desk is running a little dry.

Will Wegert [00:44:44]:
What's the marketing strategy that you're recommending at this moment? Yeah, it's such a good question because it hits really, really home to some things I've been coaching folks, not even on my specific team. There's about 25 of us at the firm and, and my team is, uh, 6. As a person who can chase the squirrels or go down many rabbit holes and listen to, I mean, all people listening to podcasts, right? We're always getting new ideas and then there's this idea and that idea. I try to simplify. So the most simple version of marketing, and I go back to this regularly when my desk is getting dry, your relationships are your recurring revenue. I love that, that quote, right? And so in this world, we use Bullhorn. It's super simple. I go to the clients tab and I start looking at people by letters.

Will Wegert [00:45:26]:
I call it ABC marketing, right? 26 letters, 52 weeks. Theoretically, I want to call in the first 2 weeks of January every single relationship I have whose name starts with A. And 2 weeks later, every single relationship I have whose name starts with B, they better get a call from me. And those calls are very— again, it's, it's not— it's, how you been? What's going on? Do you still like your job? How can I help you in your career? That's kind of the whole call. And usually it's, it's a voicemail or it spins off into a 20-minute call where they're telling me what hurts, what's good, what's bad, who's moving, um, what managers are terrible, what companies are reaching out to them. And I get a lot of— sometimes I get a candidate, sometimes I get a job order, sometimes it's just a a touchpoint. I'm there, you know, in 3 years when they need me. But I think that is the simplest way.

Will Wegert [00:46:13]:
If I'm giving any advice, and I am giving this advice, you know, one of our rookie recruiters who's really an up-and-comer, I said, Grant, go look at your, uh, go look at your data. Who's your people? And he's, you know, he's only been recruiting side, but he has 25 people that are in his client side, and he hasn't connected with half of them in 2 years. Grant, call them. That's it. No strategy. Call them. Call your A's, call your B's, put them on recurring, on a recurring drip. It's such a simple way to stick with the people that stick with you.

Will Wegert [00:46:42]:
You just got to be remembered. You got to be the person they call when it's time. ABC marketing.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:48]:
ABC marketing.

Will Wegert [00:46:48]:
Love that.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:48]:
And before we jump over to the quickfire questions, uh, in the pregame, you said this one thing that just like stuck with me and you said it again earlier, probably at the very beginning. You say no to a lot. Like, how did you get to that point where you realize what was good to say yes to versus the things that you had to say no to?

Will Wegert [00:47:13]:
Yeah, I think that goes back to the data. I think that the data, I think it's the intersection of the data and you can call it your gut or joy. You know, I, I think if data says, you know, all of your business comes from X and you hate doing X, well, don't do that. But I think when I'm looking at what to say no to, I, I, I, I think recruiting is a terrible job. It's a fantastic career. So that choice, you know, and, and when I was struggling to pay my mortgage, that choice had to be a long-term choice. I know I say it to every candidate, I say it to every client, I will be here for 20 years. And so with that decision.

Will Wegert [00:47:51]:
Anchoring in everything I do, that means that I have to be really good and I can't ride the waves. I'm not a serial entrepreneur. I'm not going to go start a different business tomorrow. I'm not going to change. I have to be committed. And if I'm going to have to be committed, then I have to be excellent. If I have to be excellent, I have to have a target to aim at. And so I think a lot of folks, myself included, are chasing different targets.

Will Wegert [00:48:13]:
They've got one target over here, one target over there, and depending on what hour they're in, it makes the day, the week, the month scatterbrained, and that makes the billings low, right? And so, I don't know, I think you have to keep the future in mind, keep the long-term in mind. It's so cliché, but if you're not thinking about the long-term, you're gonna say yes to whatever lands on your lap. But if you're thinking that this is a career for you, if you're thinking this is where you're gonna be and these are the people you're gonna continue to serve for the rest of your career, it becomes really, really obvious what to say no to.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:44]:
I love it. So before we jump over to the quickfire questions, is there anything else that you want to go deeper on, or is there a question that I should have asked you that I didn't?

Will Wegert [00:48:52]:
No, yours is great.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:53]:
This is, I think, I think that, uh, you've got 7 years of recruiting in, uh, in an hour. Awesome. And so quickfire questions don't need to be quick answers. Okay.

Will Wegert [00:49:04]:
Okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:05]:
So picture this, you got a recruiter, like, you know, I've seen you on another podcast, like you post, you actually work with other recruiters in your community, but let's just say if somebody sit down, this is like in your office, they're part of a different team. They see the success that you've had. They see that you've been dialed in and they're like, hey, how do I go from average to elite?

Will Wegert [00:49:24]:
What would you, what would you say to that? Yeah, it's a lot of what we talked about. It's niche more and say no more often. I think having a niche, defining a niche, so track the data, the data will give you the niche. The niche will tell you what to say no to and then go hard on the things you're exceptional at, right? I mean, for as much as I say referrals are not a system, referrals are a system in the sense that if you're really, really good, if you're the best at what you do, the referrals are going to come. Is that a strategy that's duplicable? No. But if I think you want to go from good to elite, how I think I went from pretty good numbers to what many would define as elite numbers, it's because I said no more. And I said no more because I knew my niche and I knew my niche because I looked at the data. Awesome.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:07]:
Has there been a book that's had a huge impact on your success?

Will Wegert [00:50:10]:
I'm going to pull one you've probably never heard of and I'm going to say it and then everybody's going to buy it and then that's going to hurt me because it was a booklet written in 1964 by Robert Gunning called Take the Fog Out of Writing. It's literally a booklet. I mean, it's only available on eBay, only used now. I have it. It's like one of my most cherished possessions. My dad bought it for me when I was probably 15, um, Take the Fog Out of Writing. There's two of them. There's another one called Take the Fog Out of Business Writing.

Will Wegert [00:50:35]:
I don't think it's as good. That's a yellow book. You want the blue book. It is so good in this idea of how to write simply, how to write smaller, how to write in more impactful ways, how to say the same thing with less. And I've approached that in my digital— that's how I approach digital. That's how I approach— digital is also our in-mails, right? The way I write my in-mails is A lot of the roots come from that book. So I'd say that one is just phenomenal. And the other one I really, really like, Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon.

Will Wegert [00:51:06]:
It's mostly pictures. Maybe I'm a simpleton. I like less. Um, but it, you know, just really talks about this idea. And I'm going to again butcher the quote, but something like thieves steal from one, artists steal from 100. The concept of nothing is original. And so I think especially when you're approaching the digital side, I don't come up with a lot of myself. I'm stealing from no one, but I'm compiling.

Will Wegert [00:51:29]:
I can see that these things are getting traction. I'm gonna go do something like that, right? So I'm not copying posts, but I am following theories that I can see as a thread within posts and in inmails. So I, I think that challenges this idea that you have to be an entrepreneur, you have to be original. I think go follow the people you wanna be like and You know, take 10% from this person, 20% here, 3% there.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:53]:
That's Steal Like an Artist, Dawson Cleon.

Will Wegert [00:51:56]:
Great book. Do you have a favorite tech tool? Yes. Again, I'll share one I think people don't use a lot. It's kind of a, a weird little quirk. It's an auto-script tool. It's called Briskine. It's a Chrome extension. And, uh, you hit Ctrl+Space and all of your templates pop up.

Will Wegert [00:52:12]:
Um, you can use it in InMail, you can use it in LinkedIn, you can use it on Gmail. I mean, I find myself writing the same emails. I mean, one of it, it's probably a 2,000-word answer. I get reached out to by junior recruit— uh, sorry, junior developers all the time. Fresh out of my career. Can you help? Control space, type junior, and it pops up and I write this very personal message that gives them overwhelming amounts of advice on what to do. And they just are like, wow, this is amazing. I can't help them.

Will Wegert [00:52:39]:
I'm never going to place a junior dev. You got to work for about 5 years before anybody's gonna pay me a fee for you. So how do I find that intersection of being kind and helpful in the market and supporting these people? And it's all the emails we write over and over again. So that's my one. Another little trick that I'll add I think everybody knows of and nobody uses— LinkedIn videos. If you're connected with someone on LinkedIn, you can send them a video. And so I don't leave a lot of voicemails anymore, or if I'm connected, I'm catching up with somebody, I'll just send a video, right? It's Hey Ben, how you been? Saw you landed a new job. Congrats.

Will Wegert [00:53:11]:
Hope to see you at lunch. But when it's video in a world of AI where everything's automated, everything is, you know, it's all personalized, but none of it is personalized. You can't personalize the video of this bald guy, uh, you know, sending you a note. So those are probably my two biggest tools. And I'm going to add a third because I created it, uh, resume headers. Actually, now as of a week ago, I'm a SaaS founder. It's tool to instantly add headers onto your resumes. I think we lose a lot of money by not putting headers on our resumes, and I'll be the first to admit I don't do it because it takes a long time.

Will Wegert [00:53:44]:
And with Resumes Headers, it takes about 3 seconds or less. So is this something that you hired devs or did you buy code? Yeah, no, this is actually— it's interesting. Neither. Partnered with some devs. I was at a meetup and these folks were talking about a product that they had built, and I said, that's basically exactly the same product I want to build for a different industry. I had tried to hire devs to do this years ago and they said hundreds of thousands of dollars. Apparently there's a lot of complexity in it. And so they just rebranded their tool.

Will Wegert [00:54:11]:
We worked on it together and I mean, it took a little bit, but yeah, I mean, you can check it out at resumeheaders.com and it's an easy drag and drop. I actually don't earn anything from it. It's more me trying to be a SaaS founder and understand my audience, right? How it works to run through the product development lifecycle, what the sales side looks like. It's just a way for me to know my audience a little better.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:32]:
Um, so that one's, uh, my shameless plug for v3. I had to ask because I think I spent like 4 hours 2 nights ago in Colby Code sitting there constantly like, do this, it's broken, take a picture of our skirt, can you help me out again?

Will Wegert [00:54:46]:
Literally for 4 hours. Yeah, yeah. I, uh, I'll get there someday, but I, you know, as much as I work with devs, I'm like, let the experts do that. Um, I don't, I haven't even started vibe coding. You know, again, call me in a couple years, I probably will.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:57]:
But no, in reality, I just went to Fiverr last night. I'm like, I need it. Love it.

Will Wegert [00:55:04]:
Love it. You know, what is—

Benjamin Mena [00:55:05]:
I mean, we've talked through a lot of the different challenges and you had to walk through, but if you could go back in time with everything that you've done now and have a conversation with yourself when you, you joined High Country, what would you tell yourself?

Will Wegert [00:55:19]:
I tell myself to stick to the niche. I think that the, the walk in the desert year for me was absolutely when I got away from that. And track the data. I mean, I know I'm saying the same things, but I hope it sticks and resonates with listeners because that just— I went with my gut, chased the squirrel. I filed the next thing and it, and it hit me so hard in my pocket and in my mortgage. And I wish I could have skipped that year and I needed to learn the hard way. That, you know, I need to be committed like death to what I do and what I love and the people that I serve. And I think that means being willing to be unsexy, we'll say, right? I think un— it isn't always the best or the coolest, but I think consistency matters more than flashiness, right? I mean, I can't tell you how many recruiting friends that I've been jealous of, right? A couple software engineering friends that became recruiters and did twice what I did.

Will Wegert [00:56:15]:
During the good years and none of them are in business anymore, right? It's that drip, stick with it. Don't stop. Pick your niche, drip, drip, stick with it. So I wish I had told myself that, or I wish I could go back in time and tell myself that because I think I would have got where I got a lot faster.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:30]:
Love that. Well, you've gotten a chance to talk to a lot of recruiters in your office, outside of your office, in the meetup that you've created. You've been on other podcasts. I know recruiters are reaching out to you like you're consistently had these wins, and I'm sure most of the questions are like, of course, like, what's your BD script? What's the way to do something? Like, how do you like go into more detail of your, your inner circle model? But like all these questions that you get, you ever just like sit there and wish like, and I wish that, I wish the recruiters would just ask me this? Like, nobody ever asked me this question.

Will Wegert [00:57:01]:
Like, what would that be? What question would that be? I wish they were thinking more long-term. I don't know if that's a direct question, but I think all of the questions that you just addressed and the things people do ask me are so tactical. Right. I think that in the end, I think fundamentally the reason I'm good at what I do is because I actually care about my audience. I actually care about this market. I actually believe Denver is the best place to build a tech company, and I really like software engineers, and so I want to help them. And so the script becomes easy when you're authentically caring about your audience. And so I wish people were thinking less tactical, how do I chase the next fee? And I wish people were thinking a little bit more long-term in how do I serve this, this market? And I think again, it's the same layer.

Will Wegert [00:57:47]:
I think a lot of people don't know exactly what market they're serving because they're tactical and they're chasing fees. And a lot of people don't know, then they don't care about their market because it's all about how do we bill? And then it doesn't work. I think that the irony in this whole thing is it only works because it's authentic, because I really care. And then when I care, I start realizing that, oh, there's this Slack group that people are in. Oh, there's the CTO lunches that. And then when I go, it only works because it's, I'm really trying to add value to these people. So I wish they were asking, how do I, I think that maybe that's my own way of thinking out loud to say, I wish they were asking, how do I better serve my market instead of how do I better do the tactics? Because I bumble the tactics. I'm not the best on the phone all the time, but people can hear the genuineness in it.

Benjamin Mena [00:58:31]:
And that's what I think really works. I got one more question for you.

Will Wegert [00:58:35]:
Yep.

Benjamin Mena [00:58:35]:
And I know you were kind of at a little bit of a breaking point when you reached out to Danny in, in that chat thing. Mm-hmm. If you had the chance to sit down with Danny today, and I'm sure you, you have bigger goals now and you know, the mountain has moved, but what would you tell Danny?

Will Wegert [00:58:53]:
Well, I've had the pleasure of actually talking to him since, so, uh, what I have told him is a big, huge thanks. I mean, not only did that conversation set the direction for me, but he continued to encourage me to do the small things. I mean, I don't know if you can read it back here, but one of the things I wrote is that, did you make 20 marketing calls today? If I can sum up, you know, a year now of knowing Danny since that, that was instigated, that's his advice is did you do the small things today? And I think that's part of what changed. I mean, I knew my market, I was doing digital, I was doing face-to-face, and then Did I do the direct outreach? Did I make calls? Right? And so that accountability, I mean, I owe the world to him on him holding my feet to the fire saying, Will, you can be who you want to be, but you're not doing the work that needs to be done to do it because you're relying on people liking you instead of a formula. And the formula is you need to be in front of people, call 'em, be in, go to the meetups and do the digital. And so it's that accountability that I owe so much to and A lot of inspiration, a lot of, he's coached the best of the best and honored to have been pointed in the right direction by, by the best of the best.

Benjamin Mena [01:00:04]:
Awesome. If anybody wants to follow you, how do they go about doing that?

Will Wegert [01:00:07]:
Yep. I live on LinkedIn. I mean, I think that's, uh, I'll accept the connection request. Tell me where it came from. Probably I'm, I'm pretty ruthless about only having software engineers in my network. But if you say, hey, I heard you on Ben's podcast, I'll probably accept. And, um, I have a website, don't have a lot of blogs out. I have about, about 100 blogs that are written.

Will Wegert [01:00:25]:
I'm working on hiring somebody to help me do those, but willwieger.com.

Benjamin Mena [01:00:28]:
I'm gonna start putting more content out there as well. And I know we covered a lot. Mm-hmm.

Will Wegert [01:00:34]:
Before I let you go, is there anything else that you wanna share with the listeners? Find your niche, stick to it.

Benjamin Mena [01:00:40]:
You might have your own 7-year overnight success story. Absolutely love that. And Well, I'm just so glad that like we had the chance to sit down and talk. I remember like when I first reached out to you, you're like, hey, this sounds cool, like awesome, but no, I like, we're not sitting down. I'm focused on a goal. Maybe I'll reach out to you at the end of the year. And literally it was like January 1st, you shot a message to me, said I did it. I got what I wanted to get done.

Benjamin Mena [01:01:09]:
Let's sit down and chat. So excited that you are fresh off this This goal that you've been looking forward to for so long, you achieved it. Now I know it was a bigger goal for you. Yeah. But these are the fun episodes where it's just, you're so fresh off the heat. You're still in the hunt. You're still like, this is exactly what I did to go from point A to point B.

Will Wegert [01:01:29]:
So thank you so much for sharing with the listeners. This is an honor.

Benjamin Mena [01:01:33]:
Thank you so much for having me, Ben. So for you guys listening, 2026 is your year. And I know there's so many good conversations in all these episodes. Take something from this one, even if it's just the ABC marketing. You have 26 weeks, or you have 26 letters in the alphabet and 52 weeks. Start with A. So go crush it, guys. Make it your year.

Benjamin Mena [01:01:58]:
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Will Wegert [01:02:58]:
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.