[Podcast] Kortney Harmon Keynote | Take The Stage – Moving Beyond Transactions: Growing by Nurturing Existing Client Relationships

Kortney Harmon [00:00:00]:
What’s up listeners? You’re tuned in to another can’t miss episode of the Full Desk Experience podcast. I am thrilled to be joining you today as a special guest alongside the one and only Brad Bialy, who is truly one of the best in the business. It’s an honor to be here with Brad for this insightful conversation. And as someone who has been immersed in the staffing and recruiting world, I was excited for this opportunity to really tackle one of the biggest challenges our industry is facing right now, and that is sales. During this conversation with Brad, we went beyond just discussing how to land new logos and new clients. Instead, we really dove into why staffing firms need to shift their focus to account expansion, nurturing and really focusing on existing relationships. It’s about understanding where you should be spending your most valuable resource, your time for the maximum impact. So we broke down practical strategies for you to identify your key accounts, strengthen those bonds and really drive consistent growth from partners who are already trusted resources of your services.

Kortney Harmon [00:01:09]:
We had an amazing discussion that I believe that will resonate with firms looking to level up their sales approach.

Kortney Harmon [00:01:16]:
So get ready to take notes. Staffing and recruiting superstars dive into this engaging conversation with myself and Brad Baily.

Kortney Harmon [00:01:24]:
I hope you enjoy hi, I’m Kortney Harmon, director of industry relations at Crelate. Over the past decade, I’ve trained thousands of frontline recruiters and I’ve worked with hundreds of business owners and executives to help their firms and agencies grow. This is the full desk experience, a crelate original podcast where we will be talking about growth blockers across your people, processes and technologies. Welcome to another episode of the full Desk experience.

Brad Bialy [00:02:02]:
Hey, it’s Brad Bialy and welcome back to another episode of Take the stage. This week I’m joined by Kortney Harmon, director of industry relations at Crelate. Kortney is a staffing and recruiting expert with over 15 years experience who has worked with hundreds of owners, executives and operations leaders as a consultant, including leading a services network of over 260 offices, Kortney has trained over 1000 recruiters and sales managers, developing training programs in streamlining operations and technology implementation to drive overall growth. At Creelight, she leverages her extensive experience as a strategic consultant and podcast host to provide insights to clients and listeners seeking to overcome challenges and succeed in staffing and recruiting. On this episode, we talk about how engagement in the talent industry can drive revenue growth. You know, a recent report from staffing industry analysts showed that 80% of your future business will come from 20% of your existing clients. Yet frequently throughout this industry, I hear clients looking for new orders from new clients. We’re going out, and we’re trying to drive new business from organizations we’ve never worked with before.

Brad Bialy [00:03:04]:
On this episode, Kortney and I talk about all of the ways you can drive new business from your current accounts. Join me and Kortney Harmon as we take the stage. Kortney, in what’s got to be 150 to 200 conversations in the last couple of quarters. The thing that I’m hearing the most is that staffing firms want new business from new clients. Now, I recently saw you speak at MSA, and you had a great slide that had a ton of great data on it. But one point that stood out to me was 80% of future revenue in the staffing industry comes from 20% of existing clients. Knowing that, and I’m sure staffing owners know that data, why are we so focused on trying to drive new business from new clients?

Brad Bialy [00:03:55]:
I think based on kind of what we’ve had the past few years, we haven’t had to sell. So then we’re getting back to the idea we need to sell more, but we never look at the things that are right in front of us. I mean, coming from an ATS, how many times have you seen people, even for a job search, go back out to a job board for the first time to look for candidates when they have thousands and thousands of candidates in their system? Right there, right then. But the data is not correct. They weren’t nurtured properly. I think that’s why kind of, we’re in the same situation when it comes to clients. We’ve put them in, we set them, forget them, or there’s a drip campaign, and it’s like, well, they’ll reach out to us whenever they need something. And we just assume that in reality, yeah, the stat you said was 80% of future revenue comes from 20% of existing clients.

Brad Bialy [00:04:38]:
But I want you to think about it differently. I want you to think about retaining a customer. It actually costs five to ten times less than acquiring a new one. And it’s like whenever we’re going through these cycles, spending cycles, a spending cycle. So use your time wisely. And right now, it’s trying to break through the noise. You know, drip campaigns are amazing, but it comes down to the human element, too. It’s.

Brad Bialy [00:05:01]:
That’s to get you faster to a human interaction. And those are the people that stand out. And I guarantee you those are the key accounts or the reoccurring revenue that you have existing today because you have amazing relationships with them. You need to think about fostering that more yeah.

Brad Bialy [00:05:14]:
And in my world, I want to work with key accounts and I want to work with people who like me and like us. Right. And I think everybody does. If you have a staffing firm and, you know, you have your a level clients, your a level customers who love you, who love working with you, who have been with you for years, of course you want to have a conversation with them and talk to them more and do more business with them. That makes total sense to me. But, Kortney, I’m with you. I think often we’re looking at, okay, what’s new, the bright, shiny object, what’s out here? Instead of saying, we have this huge book of business of people who aren’t working with us, who were in the past, let’s not check in and see how they’re doing. Let’s see what’s going on.

Brad Bialy [00:05:48]:
Let’s have a conversation and see what we can do to. To bring them back to us.

Brad Bialy [00:05:52]:
Yeah. And it comes down to, it’s like a muscle. I’m a sports nerd, just from my history, but this is just like anything else. This is just like working out. If you don’t develop that muscle of reaching out at a certain cadence, you’re not going to continue to do it. My favorite thing, you know, whenever I was even running a desk, I oftentimes see people now that they have a meeting scheduled, they’re like, I don’t have anything to talk about. I’m going to cancel it. But that’s not where you’re building the relationship.

Brad Bialy [00:06:17]:
You are in transactional mode versus proactive mode. It’s the idea that I don’t have anything to talk about. I’m not going to talk to them. But you’re not learning about their in laws coming to town or the soccer game that they’re taking their kids to or the understanding that, hey, Bob’s on the verge of getting fired. We need to figure out a plan for him. And what’s the strategy? You have an upcoming board meeting. Let me help you. Let me give you some insights because I’m talking to all these people.

Brad Bialy [00:06:41]:
I’d love to give you some stats to support that, to make you look good. And we often forget that we’re so transactional in our business and we’re so busy fighting fires that we think that’s the mode we need to stay in. But in reality, it’s a detriment to our business.

Brad Bialy [00:06:55]:
I remember a call I had with a client, and I think there was one or two team members on the call, and the client was frustrated about something. And I got on the call and immediately just started talking about baseball. Cause I knew that this guy loved the Cleveland Guardians, then the Indians, but.

Brad Bialy [00:07:08]:
The Cleveland Guardians don’t say, the Guardians don’t always be the right, so.

Brad Bialy [00:07:12]:
And I’m a White Sox guy, so obviously we have good conversation about that rivalry a little bit, and it had to be 1520 minutes just talking about baseball and completely changed the scope of what the conversation was going to look like and became more of a, okay, listen, you know, things aren’t working here. How do we fix it? Instead of just, Brad, I’m coming, and I want to punch you in the face. And at the end of the call, I remember the team member saying, like, how did you do that? And it’s very much Kortney. Like you’re saying it’s having a relationship and having conversations saying, listen, I’m here to help. I want to help. By definition, I’m here to make sure that your business grows. That’s why I’m here. What we’re doing wasn’t working.

Brad Bialy [00:07:47]:
That’s okay. We’re going to fix it. Right. But I us arguing back and forth about it isn’t going to be the solution. So let’s have that relationship. Luckily, we had that relationship and we were able to fix it.

Brad Bialy [00:07:56]:
Yeah, and I think you commented on that one relationship. I think the other thing that we often forget about is there are other lenses in a business. It’s not just the one person you’re talking to. You can give so much more insight, so much more value when you’re across the business. Now, the downfall of that is it takes time. But the insights that you have to give that leadership, that executive team to have in the conversations that maybe other recruiters aren’t doing, you can guarantee they’re not doing that. We’re missing the loop of, we should establish more people in that business that we have relationships with, because you create more influence, and you’re going to have more influential conversations, like the one you did about baseball with many different people, and you’re going to be the go to person.

Brad Bialy [00:08:36]:
How do you propose we do that? Right? So think about, you know, one sales rep right now is working with Brad’s widget company. And every three months, they call Brad at Brad’s widget company, you know, maybe get an order, maybe they don’t. Whatever. It’s very, very transactional. Like you’re saying, how do you go from that’s a client to, I want to treat this person like a key account? What do you propose they do in that situation.

Brad Bialy [00:08:57]:
I think it comes down to the questions and the conversations you’re having. It’s not, do you need a guy? I got a guy. I love to understand more than just the needs of the business. How does the person that I’m selling to, how do they want to be perceived? What are their goals for the quarter? What are their team’s goals for the quarter? Not just the company. You know, we oftentimes think of one off, does that person want to raise? How can I make them look better? What do they need? So I think it comes down to the questions we’re asking and the conversations we’re asking. We need to get deeper. We need to understand the diversity of what they need, not just, oh, you have a job description that HR wrote you that it’s probably not accurate. Anyway, let me, let me throw some noodles at the wall and see if anything sticks.

Brad Bialy [00:09:36]:
We need to get out of that transaction. We need to come down to have the year of engagement, so to say.

Brad Bialy [00:09:42]:
Oh, the year of engagement. I like that. And I couldn’t agree more. Right now it seems very transactional across the industry, I have to admit it. Right. So I’m on a lot of calls, have the opportunity to speak to a lot of individuals, whether it’s at conferences or, or individuals who just call in to talk to us and, you know, prospects will say it feels very transactional. Brad, we’re struggling. What can we do to get x? Where do we get y? And the year of engagement, Kortney was an incredible thought of how do we strengthen what we already have? And even if we are driving new business, how do we use engagement as the way to do that? Now there are some very, very good individuals in the industry who are driving engagement comes to mind right now is my friend Adrian at Rolling, who is absolutely absolute powerhouse when it comes to engagement and driving relationships.

Brad Bialy [00:10:25]:
How do we do that? How do you propose that individuals operate with that sort of lens?

Brad Bialy [00:10:31]:
I’m going to ask you first, why does Adrienne stand out to you? What is she doing differently that she is first to your mind?

Brad Bialy [00:10:37]:
So, yeah, Adrian, um, good friend of the program, he’s the current president. No, he’s the speaker of the House of CSA, also the CEO of rolling. Why? He stands out to me. And we actually just had him on lunch with Haley. I think we’ve had him on insights before too. He’s authentic. Right? So everything that I see that he posts on LinkedIn or that he has conversations about are authentically him. Right.

Brad Bialy [00:10:59]:
Anytime I talk to him, it’s very much down to earth. I know who he is, I know what he’s into. And that to me is why roll Link is doing so well, right. Because he’s sort of creating this infrastructure where the whole team operates that way and they all have a voice and they all have opinions and they all have the ability, and again, we had my lunch with Haley. He empowers his team to have the ability to have that voice, right. And that’s why I think they’re behaving differently and seeing results that are different than what the rest of the industry is saying.

Brad Bialy [00:11:26]:
And I think why when we all get into this industry, we get in because we want to help people, right? It’s by nature we don’t necessarily want to be in this industry, but we come. And because of the passion which drives us, however, we realize, well, if we do more things, we can get more money and in reality we get caught in, I like to say the KPI hamster wheel, because we all have this like do more mentality and I know like the automations are part of it, but the more we implement, the more shiny tools, the more shiny tech, the more automations. We’re getting away from the day to day conversations. We’re getting away from why we truly got in here to begin with. And I love that Adrian’s building that because that’s a culture, that’s a cultural difference that shows with his team. And I think that’s what we all need to get to. It’s not just how fast can I send an email or how can I bulk email 7000 people at one time. That’s not why you got in this industry.

Brad Bialy [00:12:19]:
Yes, you may have to be there faster, quicker. It is about speed. But if you’re proactive in building these relationships on the front end, you don’t have to send 7000 emails at one time.

Brad Bialy [00:12:28]:
I’m with you there. And I think what makes the industry great is because we have great people who can have great conversations and it’s hard and we probably shouldn’t automate that side of it. Now. Yes, there are c and D level tasks that I hope I never have to do again that I have automated and I have punted so far away from my desk that I hope I never even have to think about them again. And there are things that other people are doing that they’re automating and that’s great. And we should be automating things throughout the industry. But picking up the phone and calling a client and actually saying, hey, Kortney, how’s your day? How’s everything going? You know, I know I saw you earlier this month in Boston. How’s everything been since? You can’t replicate that and you can’t replace that and you shouldn’t try to do that, especially if we’re talking about strengthening relationships with your current customers.

Brad Bialy [00:13:10]:
I agree. And oftentimes we often think is like, okay, we’re talking about key accounts.

Brad Bialy [00:13:15]:
Yep.

Brad Bialy [00:13:15]:
Then when people think about a key account, well, I need to make every key account a key account. But in reality you have to go back to grading your clients. Like, this isn’t necessarily you’re bad, you’re good, but who’s worthy of your time because there’s only so many hours in a day. So understanding. You know, I would encourage anybody going down this path to start at a baseline to say who are the clients that I’ve been doing business with for the past twelve to 24 months and which ones deserve my time. And then figure out that cadence. Like, okay, maybe each one of them get a different cadence of automations, but how frequently do I, do I talk to. Whenever I was running a desk, I talked to our regional reps with Microsoft Consulting services.

Brad Bialy [00:13:53]:
You know, it was an every two week meeting and we didn’t miss those meetings. But I couldn’t do that with every client. I had to be realistic with my time. So again, I 100% agree. Automation’s part of it. But how can it get me to the phone? How can it get me to making business happen? And we really have to earn the right to have those conversations. It’s not just we assume that we want to do it, so it’s going to happen, we’re going to wish it into existence. We have to put in the work to be able to get to that point, to earn the right to be a preferred partner to our clients that were serving Robert.

Brad Bialy [00:14:24]:
And you started going down a path of assessing your current clients and you talked about where have you made a placement in the last twelve to 24 months? Within your slides, again from Boston, when I last saw you speak, there were a couple other stages there too. So its understanding if you have multiple relationships across the business, talk about that. And you sort of started to allude to that a little while ago. But how do you evaluate, and this might be easy if you have multiple relationships across the business and how strong those relationships are.

Brad Bialy [00:14:48]:
Yeah, I think it comes down to if you look at you’re serving a client, they only going to call you when they need you. Well, yeah, maybe. But what happens if that one person’s gone from that organization, that person that knew you isn’t going to call. So how do we get someone at every level? How do we get someone boots level from my world? How was I talking to developers that were there? Maybe it was previous placements that I’ve had, managers that were the hiring authorities, different departments, even though maybe they might not have a need. How does this job apply to that department? Having an intro conversation there. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be they have a need, but like would love to have an introductory conversation. Is it the executive team? Hey, they have different pain points. They have a different lens.

Brad Bialy [00:15:31]:
They see the business through an entirely different vision. So are you having those conversations with them? So I would encourage you, if you have the ability to find an.org chart or use a build your own to really understand all different levels. I think that helps you gain a big picture vision of who they are as a company and what makes them tick and what really their goals are.

Brad Bialy [00:15:51]:
Another point on that chart is understanding. If you have the trust and influence of the current client, how do you evaluate that?

Brad Bialy [00:16:00]:
That’s going to take time as you’re having conversations and I think it comes down to what kind of stuff you’re sending them. Whenever you think of your value. We kind of talked about this before we started the show. If there is a client that you’re telling your client, well, I’ve been in business for 30 years, that’s why you should do business with me. If that’s the only thing you’re relying on, it’s probably a problem. So what kind of value are you providing to the clients that you’re working with? It comes down to as silly as it is, some of my top clients, I would send a barbecue recipe on Memorial Day or a top wine list at Christmas or whatever it is. But whether, if it’s the CEO that I’m working with, maybe I’m sending the latest report from the CEO website. That top CEO’s follow or report based on business analytics that I’ve seen, it’s not just being top of mind because of a job, but what value are you giving them beyond that? So you really have to earn the right to really have more of an influence.

Brad Bialy [00:16:53]:
And then if you’re going to continue to give information to them, it’s like, okay, they really know the industry. You become a trusted advisor, not just someone that is there to fill a job whenever I need it. So you have to understand what’s giving them pain.

Brad Bialy [00:17:05]:
Yeah. And again, it’s getting out of the mindset of this is a transactional, commodity driven industry and one that is more relationship driven and absolutely not a commodity. You know, we treat our industry like a commodity because frankly, sometimes we treat it like a commodity and that’s why it seemed like one. But it doesn’t need to be. It absolutely does not need to be.

Brad Bialy [00:17:26]:
No. And you don’t necessarily. You can’t do that all by email all the time. You said it earlier, picking up the phone whether it’s needed or not, whether they’re anticipating your call or not, they’re more likely to call you back whenever there’s that open line of relationship.

Brad Bialy [00:17:39]:
Yeah, I actually am trying to get away from email a little bit. I’ll be honest. My inbox is, I hate my inbox. I would rather, much rather have, you know, a ten minute conversation with somebody, or if it’s a bigger conversation, have a 30 minutes conversation with somebody, whatever the time needs to be. I would rather dedicate the time over Zoom, look you face to face and have a conversation about something. Thats how I want to operate. And I think candidly, ive seen a lot more success in doing that one. You dont know whats really going on on the other side of somebodys inbox, right.

Brad Bialy [00:18:04]:
You dont know why somebodys not responding. You dont know whats going on in their life. The more you could talk to somebody, the better. And the deeper relationship you can have. The last data point here that you really had, though, under assessing your current clients is do you really understand the companys problems and their opportunities? And I think that’s one of the biggest challenges for us when we have a transactional relationship, is you need welders. Here’s a welder. But we don’t understand exactly what their challenge is. We don’t know what they’re trying to accomplish.

Brad Bialy [00:18:29]:
We don’t know their goal of the year. And when we don’t know their goal, we can’t provide a solution. We are just transactional driven. And the best part here is if you understand their problems, their opportunities, their goals, what they’re looking to achieve as an organization, well, then you can become that trusted advisor. If you don’t know any of that, you are going to be just sort of a necessary evil. Im here to give you welders when you need welders.

Brad Bialy [00:18:50]:
We actually im big on scripts. So my past of director learning and development, it was like we want people to have these certain types of conversations, but we dont tell them how to get there. So one of the links that I actually provided at the Massachusetts association was a book of conversations. So whether youre prospecting new clients, youre sparking additional conversations, but it’s questions to help you dive into more. Right. It’s like questions that it kind of gives you a baseline of, like, their biggest hurdle, what is their greatest opportunity of growth? What is their resource requirements, what are important skills, trends in their industry? It’s just really to help you open up the conversation more versus, yeah, I know you want me to get there, but how do I get there? It goes along with responding to resistance. I know you don’t want me to let them hang up the phone, but how do I do that? So what are the pattern stops that we can do or implement or ask to help change the outcome? So that’s actually one of my favorite books that we actually give out is just, it comes down to scripts. And I joke and Katie might yell at me, but I call it my oh, shit.

Brad Bialy [00:19:52]:
List of questions. Oh, shit. How do I get them to talk to me more? How do I get them to open up more?

Brad Bialy [00:19:57]:
I think that’s a great point. And knowing the industry and knowing how much turnover exists in this industry, it’s tough to have really great salespeople because of the turnover that happens now. There are fantastic salespeople, and they’re very new to the industry, salespeople who crush it, too. But when you think about the turnover that happens in staffing and recruiting, not having scripts and not being able to coach your team members to have the conversations that some of your senior level sales reps are having is a huge disservice. So, Kortney, how can somebody get a copy of that? Should they want to download it?

Brad Bialy [00:20:27]:
I can actually give it to you to put it in the show notes.

Brad Bialy [00:20:29]:
Perfect. I will do that, and we will link to it directly. I love it because I would love for everyone to be able to have a copy of that. I’d actually like to see it myself as well.

Brad Bialy [00:20:36]:
Would love that.

Brad Bialy [00:20:37]:
Kortney, when we continue to think about 2024 and we think about the opportunity within the industry, I don’t think there’s any, I don’t think you and I are going to disagree here that going back to current clients is really, like, the sweet spot. Why else do you feel like individuals should be targeting current clients to drive repeat business?

Brad Bialy [00:20:55]:
I say this quite often. The number one complaint about recruiters and or salespeople is they call too frequently. Right? They call us, they hound us. They get us on every channel. Like we’re like professional, like spies, right? Or, you know, PIs. But then when they get what they want, they never call us back. You like, you pour your blood, sweat and tears to be like, you want to know my problem? I’m going to tell you my problem. Well guess what? You don’t have a solution for me.

Brad Bialy [00:21:18]:
You think you need to fix my problem even though you can’t have. So then you never call me back. So, you know, there’s a lot of people in this industry that have a bad rap for the way they do business. And I think, you know, as we get all of these additional tools and all these additional things that are coming into our industry and how things are changing, we just did a podcast with Maurice Fuller and he was talking about AI trends and he actually spoke about like the new gold standard from what he was seeing was like 100 automations within a staffing and recruiting organization. My eyes about popped out of my head. But really the idea of the more noise there is, it’s going to come down to you have to be unique, you have to develop these relationships, you have to stay in front of them or you’re going to get lost in the noise. They’re not going to take your call because they’ve never seen you before. It’s just going to get harder and harder to cold call or going to have a way more detailed touch plan strategy to actually get someone on the phone.

Brad Bialy [00:22:16]:
So rest your laurels and the idea that youve already done the work, its already in your system. You just have to figure out how to nurture them, how to stay in front of them because cost wise its going to be your best bet.

Brad Bialy [00:22:27]:
100 automation sounds like a lot, but thinking about how you can actually deploy those, I would love to know what a company like Lululemon or Bird dog or some of these b two c companies, how many theyre running. I talk about Legion supplements quite a bit on insights because its a supplement that I use quite a bit. I use a lot of their stuff, you know, in knowing like cart abandonment or you looked at this product, here’s another product that fits or knowing, hey, you were on this page, we know you looked at this. So you might be interested in this sort of guide. Those are all automations that are firing behind the scenes, right? And we can be doing that and should be doing that in staffing and recruiting. But it’s not a generic hey happy birthday or hey happy Memorial day automation. Those are sort of, those are sort of table stakes at this point. It’s how do you actually drive business with your automations? And hearing Maurice say 100, that, that adds up to me.

Brad Bialy [00:23:14]:
And if you’re listening, thinking, wow, I’m, I’m way behind. That’s okay, because we’re all sort of figuring this out together and even the best staffing and recruiting firms are probably right around there, but the majority are really just getting started here as well.

Brad Bialy [00:23:29]:
Absolutely. And even we hear a lot of questions. Am I too late? Well, no, you’re not too late. The train may be leaving the station, but it is not left. It is not miles behind. You are here. The fact that you’re open to the idea you can get up to par quickly, but the first step in any program is admitting that you need to be on that train and understand how it can help your business. But I think it comes back to, I’m a big process person.

Brad Bialy [00:23:53]:
If you don’t necessarily know your process and how you’re going to use it, then it’s not going to be your magic bullet. It’s not going to help you how you think it’s going to help you if you have no idea where and how you want to implement it.

Brad Bialy [00:24:03]:
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more there. I think if you’re just using automation or just using AI or chat GPT or insert tool here, because you know, Kortney, staffing firm is doing it well, you’re probably wasting your time, right? It’s um, we had Trisha Tamkin on the show a little while ago and her whole sticking point was how can AI help me in insert task here? And friends, if you’re sitting at your desk today, and I just talked about some of the C and D level tasks that I have punted halfway across the state of New York that I never want to see again. If you’re sitting at your desk thinking, why am I doing this again? That is your body telling you, stop doing this and find a way to either a have something automate it, or b have somebody else do it. And have somebody else who likes to do it do it. It doesn’t mean it’s a task that doesn’t need to be done. It just means you’re not finding joy and fulfillment in it anymore. So have somebody else do it. Kortney, I had a great time talking with you today.

Brad Bialy [00:24:50]:
I think when we look at 2024 again, everything that I’m seeing throughout the industry, unfortunately, is we need new clients, we need new candidates. We’re always looking for what else is out there. And the challenge there that I continue to see is for most of the industry were these small, localized organizations that operate in Buffalo, New York, and there are only so many candidates and theres only so much business in Buffalo, New York. And were always thinking, well, oh, whats over there? Instead of thinking, you know, what, what we got going right here is pretty darn good. What if we just increased it a little bit? What if we just got two more orders from each company or one more order from each company? What would that do to our business? And your talk here really sort of enlightened me in the thought of there are ways to be doing this. And it starts with having good relationships. It starts with having good process. It starts with having a good plan in place.

Brad Bialy [00:25:37]:
So I want to thank you for coming on and sharing some insights on that.

Brad Bialy [00:25:40]:
Absolutely. And as you think about those long term client relationships, it leads to 67% higher customer lifetime value. There is a return in this. It’s not just work. It’s not just something that it’s a to do. You will see the outcome and the ROI associated with this attempt.

Brad Bialy [00:25:56]:
Kortney, before I let you go, I gotta run you through our rapid fire round, if it’s all right with you.

Brad Bialy [00:26:01]:
Absolutely.

Brad Bialy [00:26:02]:
All right. One book that has fundamentally changed your life.

Brad Bialy [00:26:05]:
Well, just like you, I have little kids, so my time in reading is limited. However, I will go back to atomic habits. I’m a big fan and my favorite quote is, you do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. By James clear, one of my favorite quotes. So atomic abbotts.

Brad Bialy [00:26:22]:
Love it. You might be the second person who has mentioned atomic habits. That is becoming a friend of the show for sure.

Brad Bialy [00:26:27]:
I love it.

Brad Bialy [00:26:27]:
Second question. You got 30 minutes to sit down with anybody, living or dead. Who’s it going to be?

Brad Bialy [00:26:32]:
I’m a sucker. It goes back to family for me. I was very close with my grandmother, so I would go to her just because it’s been too long.

Brad Bialy [00:26:39]:
Yeah, that’d be a great conversation, right?

Brad Bialy [00:26:41]:
Yeah, absolutely.

Brad Bialy [00:26:42]:
And then one piece of advice to somebody just starting in the staffing and recruiting industry. What are you going to tell them?

Brad Bialy [00:26:48]:
This is my advice to anybody starting anything. Have as many conversations as you can. Tank one golden nugget every time you talk to somebody. Don’t think everybody’s process is the way to do it. Find one thing, figure out what you like, and then make it yours. I was that way with pitching. I wasn’t that way with coaching. I’m that way with business.

Brad Bialy [00:27:06]:
Have a lot of conversations. That’s how you learn, that’s how you grow, that’s how you develop.

Brad Bialy [00:27:10]:
Kortney, before I let you go, I wanted to give you the opportunity to talk about the full desk experience. I want to do it earlier in the show, and I’m not going to say I forgot I saved it until the end specifically.

Brad Bialy [00:27:20]:
Best for last.

Brad Bialy [00:27:21]:
Yeah. So Kortney Harmon is also the, the host of the full desk experience. Kortney, go ahead and give us the overview on that show.

Brad Bialy [00:27:27]:
Awesome. Thanks so much. We actually talk about people, process, technology, all the same things that you kind of talk about. We do a different couple, different formats. So we do workshops, live workshops where you can come ask questions, kind of like your lunch with Haley. We do short episodes for those that need quick hits in and out. We drop an episode every single Thursday. So that day is tomorrow for us.

Brad Bialy [00:27:47]:
So tune in, listen. We’re on all podcast platforms called the full Desk Experience. We’d love to have any insights if what you’re looking for. And we’re here to just help our industry grow and like you said, just do better.

Brad Bialy [00:28:00]:
She is Kortney Harmon, the director of industry relations and host of the full desk Experience. Kortney, can’t thank you enough for coming on this episode of take the stage and sharing all of your insights with us.

Brad Bialy [00:28:12]:
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Greatly appreciate it.

Brad Bialy [00:28:14]:
Thanks so much. Take care.

Kortney Harmon [00:28:17]:
I’m Kortney Harmon with Crelate. Thanks for joining the full desk experience. Please feel free to submit any questions for next session to [email protected] or ask us live next session if you enjoyed our show.

Brad Bialy [00:28:33]:
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast.

Kortney Harmon [00:28:35]:
Wherever you listen and sign up to attend future events that happen once a month.