“If I get a suit, can I start on Monday?”
I guess Roger liked my answer, he said yes. I went with my Mom to Mervyn’s and bought a gray corduroy suit. You know, the kind with the brown patches on the elbows. Then we went to Goodwill and bought another suit that was slightly too big, but it was a suit.
I was 17, although as far as General Employment knew, I was 18. I knew that if I had told them I was 17, I would not get the job. I started work that next Monday. It was a glorious day. I walked in looking like a 17-year-old punk, with long hair and a cheap suit. But I was so naive. . .1 was thinking that I looked great. Howland gave me a look that I mistook for admiration and I said, “Not bad for a day’ s notice, huh Roger?” I swear I said that. I remember it like it was yesterday.
Roger asked me if I wanted to recruit accountants or computer programmers. I guess I thought about it too long for his liking and he said, “Never mind, just sit over there, Joe. You’ll place accountants.”
Well, it was a small office and everybody sort of helped out everybody else and so even if you worked accounting you still looked at all the jobs that came through. Anyway, one day I’m sittin’ there and a job comes in for an MIS Manager. I told Roger I have the perfect guy for this job order. Roger says, “Great Joe, let me see the resume.” I gave him the resume. Roger says, “Joe, this guy is a General Manager.” Yeah, I said, he’d be great for the
Miscellaneous Manager job. “Joe!” he said in disgust, “MIS Manager stands for Manager of Information Systems, not Miscellaneous Manager!” Like I said, if I can do it, you can do it.
I proceeded to find everyway possible to fail in the recruiting business. I tried to quit twice but was talked out of it by Mike Hopper the first time and Dennis Billingsley
the second. Both thought I could have some potential in the business, even when I didn’t have faith in myself.
When I tried to quit on Dennis we were having lunch on Pine Street. Me, a slice of Round Table Pizza and Dennis, a homemade sandwich. Roger had sent me to work for Dennis Billingsley in the San Francisco office of General Employment.
I said to Dennis, “Listen, I want to tell you something important. It’s nothing personal but I’m not making enough money to make ends meet and I’m going to resign. I really appreciate everything you have done for me, trying to help me be successful, protecting me from Sam.” (Sam Davis was Dennis’s boss and the Regional VP. Sam thought an 18 year old who was dumb enough to drop outta high school, had no chance of ever amounting to anything. It was a good thing he didn’t know how young I really was!) Sam asked Dennis every chance he got, often in front of the other managers, “When are you going to fire that loser Pelayo?”
When I told Dennis I was going to quit, he got VERY silent. It was not like Dennis to be silent. He is one of the most outgoing and friendly characters I have ever known. Walking down the street with him, all kinds of people would say, “Hi, Dennis!” and he would say “Hi” back. And if he didn’t know them he would still say “Hi” to them. It seemed like he knew everyone in town.
Dennis was always in a good, playful mood. Sometimes in the office he would boldly shout at someone, “WHAT’ S GOING ON’. Mr. or Mrs. stating the person’s last name.
His loud voice would carry a hint of suspicious humor, which would cause the person to come and sit down next to Dennis for a brief chit-chat before Sam Davis would walk by with his patented, get-back-to-work look. People loved Dennis, still do. He works for me now as my Vice President of Recruiting.
Anyways, back to the lunch on Pine Street. Dennis got quiet and it was very uncomfortable. I asked him if he was OK. He just sat there. “Dennis, are you OK?” A minute passed, another… seemed like forever. I seriously wondered if he was okay. Was he going to throw up? Was he going to get sick? Then he got up, walked 10 feet away from me and threw his uneaten sandwich on the ground as forcefully as he could. He would not look my way. “Dennis, what’s wrong?” I kept asking. Finally he sat down, steaming angry. He composed himself and in a tone of controlled rage said, “1 CANNOT BELIEVE, JOSEPH, WITH ALL THE TIME I’VE PUT INTO YOU, YOU’RE GOING TO
I was scared. I had never seen him like that. I said. “Okay, I’ll give it another 6 months.”
He said, “OK.”
I would work under Dennis’s tutelage for two more years before I would move on. This time when I resigned, Dennis let me go. I guess he knew I’d be OK, that my wings were strong enough. He also liked the fact that I was not giving up on being a headhunter. He had told me many times, “You have great potential in this business.” I was just switching to a smaller firm, one with fewer rules.
I went to work at Ryals and Associates, a firm of 25 recruiters in Oakland, California. Bobby Ryals and Iris Brody-Lopez were the owners, two wonderful women. But, what really sold me on the firm was one of the best salesman in the world and another great manager, a Texan named Paul Austin.
Paul built up the expectation of me so high that when I started work at Ryals, the people started saying things to me like, “So you’re the new superstar Paul Austin has been bragging about.” I felt like I had to live up to my “reputation.”
Leading Executive Recruiters Book Excerpt Part II
Paul was a patient teacher and he taught me, and others, even when we didn’t want to hear it. It’s a very rare trait, I think. Anyone can coach someone to greatness if the coachee wants to be coached, but what I watched Paul do, was coach people when they didn’t want his coaching. If you wouldn’t listen to him he would go at you from another angle and then another. He stayed after people for their benefit not his. Eventually the person would get it, get a huge, “Ahh-Ha!” and thank him.
In the executive recruiting business it takes a long time to reach a payoff. You put in the pipeline and months or years later you get a result. I had some good success in late 1988, the year I started at Ryals. Funny, how a taste of success motivates. I think if you could just spoon-feed a taste of success to the masses, well who knows. Up to that time I had put stuff in the pipeline and then, even though I thought I was working, I was really looking at the other end of the pipeline to see what might come out. In 1988 1 accidentally worked hard enough, long enough, to see the results. A light went off and I realized the hard work did pay off.
This new firm offered a lot of freedom. For whatever reason instead of running full bore down the streets of San Francisco at 8:29 a.m., desperate to make the 8:30 meeting, sweating up my suit on a last-minute dash from the bus stop. I got to work at 7:30. Most days I made more than 100 calls. I had set a goal to make $100K in 1989. Come December I went in to see the accountant.
“Jill, I need you to print out a copy of the Produce Exchange invoice,” I said.
“Not now Joe, I’m doing payroll.”
“Jill, I need your help. Remember when I told you in January I was going to make $ 100K this year, remember that was my goal? This client says I can pick up a check today. I have done the math. If you print this invoice I will go get this check and my commission will put me over $100k.”
“Really, Joe… wow that’s great! I’ll do it, Congratulations!” she said.
So I drove my 1975 orange Honda Accord out to the Produce Exchange in San Ramon, California, and picked up the check. In 1989, at age 21 had I made $100K in personal income with nothing but a G.E.D and a Degree from the School of Hard Knocks, Pretty good, huh?
Then I quit my job. Mom and Dad weren’t thrilled with that. I finally had a good career going for myself and then, I quit saying I wanted to start my own company. At a parentteacher conference years earlier Mom had been asked, “Mrs. Pelayo, do you know your son has a behavior problem?” She said she wasn’t aware of it. She had never seen me behaving ever!
I don’t recommend anyone start a new business unless they are willing to give 2-3 years of their life to it. I remember distinctly this one day when I was first starting my company, Joseph Michaels, Inc., in 1990. Gerald Craig, my new employee and I just gave it our all. (How ya been, G!) 7 in the morning ’till 7 at night, then we called it a day.
Well, after taking the elevator down and saying goodbye to Gerald, I went down to Costco and Office Depot and bought some business machines, furniture, pictures, a coffee maker and other stuff we needed in the office. Then it was back to work. I hung the pictures that night, set up the business machines and got ready for the next day. I put a few more hours in and before I knew it, it was 3 0’clock in the morning.
You get these rushes of energy all the time when you’re first starting up a business. And so it was for three years. I worked, I ate and I slept. That’s what most business owners do to become successful.
One time in 1991, my mom and my sister came to the office with a birthday cake for me because I had told them I didn’t have time to go out for my birthday. I guess I wasn’t the only one in the family who didn’t take “no” for an answer! So they show up with a cake at the front desk and the receptionist calls me and tells me they are here. I told her to ask them to just leave it, can you believe it! Just leave the cake at the front desk! Well, I can’t remember if the receptionist or someone else talked some sense into me and I went and greeted them. My mom and sister and the whole company went into the conference room. I ate my cake as fast as I could. They sang Happy Birthday and then I said, “Thanks for coming but I gotta get back to work.”
I didn’t mean to be rude but when you are starting a business you have to devote yourself to it like a monk. I started mailing newsletters to my clients. Called it “The Network,” we mailed 25,000 copies of the last paper issue of the newsletter. Now we have a larger mailing list but on email. Anyway, each time we mailed nothing happened. We wondered why we had spent the money, then the next day a phone call, the next day we got two phone calls.. .etc, etc, etc. It was a good strategy. For whatever reason, none of my competitors did much direct mail at the time.
I had to get some P.R. for Joseph Michaels so I had Gerald nominate us for some awards and in some cases I nominated us myself. I know that’s not very humble but it’s better to be rich than humble. The Bible is often misquoted; people say, “Money is evil.” But that’s not what the Bible says. It says, “The LOVE of money is evil.” It’s OK to like it a lot!
Abraham Lincoln said, “Good things come to those who wait but only the things left by those who hustle.”
And I began speaking. I spoke to the Institute of Management Accountants and I hired a photographer to take a picture of me speaking for “The Network.” I worked all the time. I smiled and dialed, and I worked my network.
You’re reading an excerpt of a leading Executive Recruiter’s book, Work Your Network! By Joe Pelayo.
Hiring? To contact an Executive Recruiter at Joseph Michaels International Visit: www.Josephmichaels.com