Entrepreneur Files with Andrew Ellenberg
Entrepreneur Files with Andrew Ellenberg
Bootstrapping a New Business? Follow This Entrepreneur's Roadmap To The Top.
For Scott Holsman, entrepreneurship has been a series of marathons that have tested every fiber of grit, faith, and instinct in his DNA.
With unwavering confidence, optimism, and courage, this serial entrepreneur could never find a company with the high performance and enlightened culture he's been searching for his entire career.
So he created his own.
Betting everything he has on his wildly successful bootstrap operation, Scott is now the founder and CEO of an innovative technology, marketing, and recruitment agency.
Affectionately called NLP, short for Next Level Performers, he marries direct hire, executive recruitment, and creative job ads that emotionally connect with candidates.
His long-term retention of clients who experience spectacular results from a laser-sharp focus on designing compelling employee value propositions makes him the go-to for strategic intelligence in the fiercely competitive talent marketplace.
Crafting career ads that land at the top of search engines on over 150 job boards, Scott and his rapidly growing team of overachievers are reinventing the industry during one of the most challenging times in its history.
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Andrew Ellenberg is President & Managing Partner Of Rise Integrated, an innovative studio that creates, produces, and distributes original multimedia content across digital touchpoints. Email andrewe@riseintegrated.com or call 816-506-1257.
Entrepreneur Files, Inspiration Inside. These are their stories. We're back in the studio with another thought-provoking episode of Entrepreneur Files. When business owners discover new meaning in their businesses they feel more connected to people around them.
Executive producer Andrew Ellenberg created this fast-paced 30-minute podcast to inspire business owners, creating deeper perspectives into their personal and professional motivations. Join the conversation with other entrepreneurs who give you the energy you need to power through the daily grind of owning a business.
And I'm here in the studio with Scott Holtzman, the founder, and CEO of Next Level Performers, sometimes just NLP, right? It's easier to say that says shorter, NLP for short.
How are you doing? Andrew? I'm doing great. It's good to see you. You too, Scott.
I've noticed in your office, you've got all kinds of inspirational paintings and notes, and quotes. And you're creating a culture of high performance that matches your brand very nicely.
Well, you know, one of the things we realized a long time ago is that you really can't motivate people. But what you can do is create a motivational environment. So that's what we're after. At Next Level Performers, we make sure that we provide that atmosphere where people feel like they're their performance stretching, growing, and reaching new heights, and that's why we call it Next Level Performers.
It's designed for people who are looking to get the next level of performance, whether it's education or performance or their career path, and so we offer lots of training and support to help get them to the next level.
You have a very different approach to the industry, recruitment, job postings, and job boards. You know, a lot of people ask me, What do I do? It's kind of like if an ad agency and recruiting firm had a baby and that's you know, because really what we do is, first and foremost, you know, when you think about recruiting, it's marketing.
And I noticed a long time ago that actually when I started this business, there were no job boards. Everything was, you know, wants ads but then job boards came along. And people just started posting job descriptions that don't emotionally connect with anybody.
And the thing that's weird is you could look at a lot of different jobs and I don't care whether you say it's account receivables, production, whatever it may be, sales a lot of times when you pull up the job on CareerBuilder or Google jobs people don't really know what it is. They almost all look alike, because they're just using job descriptions.
And so there's nothing telling the candidate what's in it for them. So we thought that we really need to focus on what's in it for the candidate. Explain it to them. What's the employee value proposition? Why should I work here?
So focus on that and then make sure they're placed in the right places. So it's, it's kind of a twist on on on the staffing end, and then we don't everything's direct hire. So really, if you think about it, we manage the top of the funnel in the talent acquisition process. So our clients, all they have to do is interview, hire, onboard, and focus on retention.
And that's the key right now. Just focus on retention because half the people aren't making it through 90 days right now. Quietly quitting and not so slowly. It's crazy out there. You know, I met with one of our clients. He said 50% of his people aren't making it through the first 90 days.
And Wall Street Journal was talking about that about a month ago. And we're like, what, what's causing that? And it's really hard to tell, you know, right now, 52% of kids under 30 are living with their parents. And back in 1999, when unemployment was about this low in Columbia, Missouri, unemployment hadn't been over 30% in 30 years.
We're down to 1.2%. Back in 99, the number of people living at home was about 20%. Everybody you know had bills. Now, if I'm living in my parent's house, you know, mom may get mad if I quit a job, but she'll know I'll probably have another one tomorrow because there are almost two jobs for every unemployed person.
I don't know if that's what's causing it, but it's definitely new out there. Another trend that's really surprising that's going on right now is the teenage workforce participation rates dropped down to 33%. It peaked back in about 1980. And so what that means is almost 70% of the people that are coming out of high school have never worked before.
So we have to teach them how to work, teach them how to do the work, that they're getting the job, and if they move on to college, and they still don't work, you know, we're gonna have a whole flock of college graduates that we're gonna have to teach them how to work as well. So it's just different out there. It's a whole new world that we've never seen anything like this before.
Yeah, I do not plan on having my daughter in the house until she's 30! Oh, come on. That is not gonna work. I love her. But you know, come on. She's got to go out there on her own and make it happen.
So you had been doing executive recruitment for many years? Correct. We started off in 94 with a staffing company to actually focus on my industrial staffing and did that for a couple of years and moved into office services. Which was, you know, receptionists, accounting, things like that. And then, we moved into executive search after about five years.
And so then in 2004, I morphed out of that, because one of the things that was happening was when the job boards came on, there were about 40,000 job boards in the United States, and about another 40,000 worldwide. Back in those days, I started I was president of the local chapter of the society for human resource members,
And I asked many of our members, you know, what they needed that they weren't getting out of the talent acquisition community. And they said, you know, there are so many job boards out there we don't know which ones to use, which ones perform well for what? And they actually started by partnering with newspapers in Kansas City.
CareerBuilder had partnered with Kansas City Star. So if you ran an ad in the helpline section of the star, you got an ad on CareerBuilder and vice versa, if he was on CareerBuilder, you got it and the star. So Kansas City was a definite CareerBuilder town. The other boards didn't play here, which was back in the early 2000s. And that lasted until about 2010.
St. Louis was a Hot Jobs town. San Francisco was Craigslist town. And so long as you partnered with the local newspaper you were ok. Monster was a late adopter, but they got into the newspapers by buying hot jobs from Yahoo!
That's kind of dissipated now because nobody's getting the newspaper, and so things are shifting again. Most people are starting their job searches on Google. And so Google came out with Google jobs about five years ago because Indeed used to say they were the Google of job boards. Well, no, actually, we're Google.
And when Google moved into the space, it was a game changer because when Google Jobs came out, they want to be more in favor of the job seeker. So there were four criteria to get on Google Jobs. It had to have clarity of title, had to have the address and the location of the job, so you know if it's a commutable distance, then you had to have the pay band. If the pay band wasn't on there, then Google jobs would assign a pay band to you, which they got from like sites like salary.com, Glassdoor, etc.
And they say, Well, this type of job should pay X amount of dollars to X amount of dollars. By not posting your pay band, the pay band Google says could be higher. So that's one of the things that we're talking to people about now, too, as its getting mandated, anyway, you've got to put your pay band in there.
But I bring that up because everything keeps shifting, you know, used to start, you go to CareerBuilder, or you go to Indeed, now they're going to Google to start. So what that means is you got to be everywhere. You just can't be in one place. And that's one of our competitive advantages I think, because we post on over 150 boards and social media networks and we search optimize them so they rank really high and the job posting so people could see it. This broadens your exposure and helps you find the right people faster.
Ubiquity achieved. Have you always been an entrepreneur? You come from an entrepreneurial family, don't you? You know, it's really funny as I do, I come from generations of entrepreneurs, but I never really considered myself an entrepreneur until, Gosh, on a lark because I was already, you know, I went from radio to recruiting.
I walked into a staffing company when I was 34 because I wanted something new. And that was my introduction to staffing. And I started figuring out what they did, and then suddenly, I had an entrepreneurial seizure, and it's been that way ever since!
I don't usually think of it as a health crisis, but I appreciate you bringing that perspective to the table. So when was the pivotal moment when you said, you know what? I don't want to work for anybody else. I want to control my destiny. That was when I couldn't find a job. Now that is authenticity defined.
I wanted to create an organization I wanted to work in, but I couldn't find one. So we decided to build one. And so that's what we do; we have a great team. They're self-directed. And we give them a lot of tools, lots of training, and get out of the way. And so they're really to me, I always tell them, they're like presidents of their own little organization. They just sent me an invoice based on what they did twice a month. And I just happen to be their biggest client.
I love that. So it's a relatively flat structure where you're inclusive and letting everybody weigh in on ideas, innovations, solutions to challenges, and so forth? Everyone's voice is heard? Well, there are two things that are the two requirements to join our organization. One is to have a curious mind. And so you're always willing to learn, and two is no ego. And what I mean by that is, if you create something and someone says, Hey, that's really good, but this might make it a little bit better. Many people, you know, get their feelings hurt because, you know, it's their work.
And I could relate because I remember back in my younger days, I felt like, hey, that's my piece of work, you know, you want to improve it, why? It was because of ego. And so, you know, my team is really good about, you know, putting things out on the table and constantly improving. How can we do what we're doing better? That's always the question.
There are three. What do we need to stop doing? What do we need to keep doing? And what do we need to improve upon? And so we ask ourselves that every day, and it doesn't matter who comes up with the idea. As long as it's good to move us forward?
The military debrief model is where everybody puts away their titles and they just look at what happened on the battlefield, what was done right, what was done wrong, and what can be done better. And that's the military command and control structure. So even in that space, they're using a similar approach to building ideas and intellectual property and moving the company forward.
So you define your culture as innovative, and it also improves engagement when people are heard when their voices are heard. It's not engaging not to be asked to engage.
You know, it's funny, we just did a lunch and learn today on diversity and inclusion. We were talking about, you know, diversity is it's way more than race, color, and creed. The diversity of thought and opinions and things like this must be a safe and welcoming place. But, you know, the inclusion is you can include them, but they may not feel like they belong. Including them is ensuring they have a seat at the table, but they won't feel like they truly belong unless they're heard.
And so you absolutely have to make sure that you carve out time that people can be heard and they felt like they're heard, because that's critical especially in today's workforce because there's so much noise out there, that for someone to actually sit and listen to you is hard.
We do something called five fifteen reports. The reports are due on Friday. And they take 15 minutes to write it and then five minutes to present it. They write it on Fridays, and then I have them over the weekend, and then we meet on Mondays for about five minutes, and they present it.
We just talk, and that's a really good way for us to stay communicating about what's going on, how we can help break down the barriers that are keeping them from moving forward, whether it's educational or it's a tool they need or maybe it's work hours as Marcus Buckingham said first break all the rules. People don't leave companies. They leave managers, and that's the truth. You see it all the time.
Have you ever felt like throwing in the towel? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah? Sometimes, you know, I mean, it's when I first started this thing, you know, it was then, some of the challenges we had before the comp and things like that. Gosh, If you're wondering about work comp, your experience may be that it was supposed to be a 10. And the franchise or that we had the time is when the largest in the country actually in staffing.
They let us operate at a five, which puts most people out of business. And our original developer said you either sell through it or suffer through it. And our cost to pay employees was everybody else's bill rate in Colombia. So we were $3 higher than anyone else in town. And it was in that market that we had to sell through. So we went from one million to 10 million in four years.
I love it zigging while everyone else is zagging, and you have to. Now you're kind of innovative, so the market wants to place your brand in their minds. And sometimes, that takes some education, and there's some resistance to new ideas, and people are uncomfortable with change in many cases. So how are you addressing that challenge?
You know, that's a great question because, really, it's the early adopters that are looking for something new. And many people get stuck just doing what they're doing, and they say, here's what we do. So that's what we do. And to explain what we do. That's the hard part. People are like, what do you do?
Because you know, we call it recruitment marketing is oh, what's that? Oh, well, we're marketing you're recruiting opportunities or job advertisement, you know, says one of the things we battle with is, you know, how do you explain what it is you do? So that's why I say we're kind of like an advertising agency and recruiting firm that had a baby. Because what we do is just being at the top of that funnel and trying to get that to resonate when it's new. Once they start working with us and they see it. It's really sticky. People rarely leave because it takes a lot off of their plates.
So you are getting the retention, the recurring revenue, and that loyalty to the brand. That's awesome. You got to have that can't be starting from ground zero every month, right?
You know, in what we do, it is like recruiting some people who will only need us for that month because they only need, say, a superintendent, whatever they need. On the recruitment marketing side, though, that's more geared toward people with ongoing needs that we're constantly recruiting for. And so those are the ones that are our bread and butter. That's the one that we typically work with is we do all their advertising, schedule, all interviews so they can focus on really putting in emotional deposits on those new hires.
And I call it Stu. Stu is your best friend. It's the secret to life and is seeking to understand. So if we can free up HR and supervisors time to really get to know their people, then they have a better opportunity or likelihood that person will stay. I'll give you an example. I was training one of my clients.
About once a month and train and we're training on retention, and this one supervisor says well, there's someone on my team that you know, we just don't like each other we don't like to talk, and I said, well do you know anything about her? He goes no. So I suggested that he find out something about her and next month, guys back here he comes over he goes Hey Scott! You know that lady I was talking about that we didn't get along at all. I said, Yeah, he goes. Man, we're great friends now. What happened? He goes I found out she had a grandbaby?
And I just went up to her and said, Hey, I want to congratulate you. I heard you had a grandbaby. We've been friends ever since, and see. It's just one little thing you learn that changes the world. They didn't get along. seek to understand that they had a grandbaby and now you know they have a good working relationship. Just one little thing. One little emotional deposit made all the difference.
Personal connection! It's really important. People may make decisions with their emotions first. I think I would argue that and then justify it with the reason, all the cerebral stuff, facts, figures, charts, graphs, and everything.
You're absolutely right. That's why you know, seeking to understand is, is absolutely doing that is find out where's this person coming from? You know, emotionally? You know, have you ever read the seven habits by Stephen Covey? Remember the story about the family on the subway? Sure. You know, he was the dad who was sitting there. He had five kids that were just running around the subway going crazy, and the dad is just holding his head down. Seems like he cannot control his kids. And of course he finds out that, you know, his wife just died, and the guy doesn't know what to do.
And he's, you know, he just doesn't know how to handle his kids right now. completely changed the narrative. I mean, the paradigm shift is instantaneous. That's what happens when you seek to understand is. It removes a lot of biases that we may have. And many of us have these hidden and intrinsic biases that we don't even know about. And so if we seek to understand instead of being understood, we will have a better opportunity of retaining that person or make a connection.
Who is your first customer, what was the contract worth, and how did you create value in their minds? Well, that's, you know, it depends if you're talking about my days and staffing or by days. recruitment, job advertising, recruiting marketing.
Next Level Performers. Rhythm Engineering and Reggie Shandra were one of my first. They all started using me around 2010 on this iteration, and I am still working with them today. Fantastic. That's a testimony to the value proposition that you delivered.
I think the low key to retention with your clients is just got to get on the same side of the desk with them and say, here are the challenges that are going on out there, and it's our job to bring on as much information as we can so we can address the talent acquisition strategy because a lot of people look if you're gonna do an expansion, you know, HR is critical because it's like, well, we're doing expansion, we need to add 50 people, what's the marketplace look like?
And that's where we come in as we bring in all of our tools, and we could tell him the likelihood of finding some kind of pay bands and things like this is the insights into the marketplace. If we can provide that information that they don't know and help educate them, then they don't leave us.
You're also a change agent. If you will, in that you're educating the hiring managers and the executive leaders to change their mindset from we have a job and here's what we need you to do to focus on the employee experience.
We try to get the mindset of you know, out of that command and control. You know, it's easy to have so many widgets per hour; otherwise, you're toast and trying to get them to really invest in their people and see it from their side because, you know, well, it's just not going to change the birth dearth.
You know, we're gonna be in this labor shortage for a long time. And so we need to, you know, it's a buyers market, you know, for job seekers, so, that's why we have to change, you know, we got to start talking much more about career pathing where this job will take you what you're going to learn, how is this role going to prepare you for your next role? And those are all the things that we need to be communicating, and if a supervisor or someone's direct report is talking to them in that manner, as opposed to just saying you need to produce this quota or whatever it may be, that they're going to have a much deeper relationship with that person. It all goes back to leadership.
Who's been the biggest influence in your life and your career philosophy? That's a tough question because I've got many of them, but if I say anybody who had the biggest impact on my life is probably Zig Ziglar. And when I had people laugh, you know, because why Zig? But you know, he had a series of tapes on goal setting that I listened to when I was, Gosh, 33, and I just got out of radio, and I don't know where this line came from kill your radio, ignite your career, make your car a rolling University and it works.
And he had 16 tapes, and he says, listen to the 16 times, so you know what I'm gonna say next, and it'll change your life. And it did. It really helped me understand because nobody taught me how to set goals and things like this. And they really did. I mean, it affected how I thought and saw things. But beyond that, there are so many mentors that I've had Don Lair, the chamber chair in Colombia, was instrumental. I mean, there are too many people to count the cofounders of the franchise where I came from at Express. Gosh, Nikki Sails. The list just goes on and on and on.
How has Scale Up that experience changed your strategic thinking? Scale Up Kansas City, I went through that earlier this year, and they have a small business development center. The Kauffman Foundation is for companies that have gone through the growth stage, and they go into scaling. I went through fast track through Kauffman twice and then called the spark program a strategic management, review, and analysis tool based on Baldrige, which was a great prep for Scale Up. And Scale Up was really good because it really made you examine your business had a lot of experts that they brought in and help you look at your business, what you're doing, how you can improve it, and look for efficiencies. What are you delivering? Things like that. So it was well worth it?
How has your original concept for the business evolved based on the feedback you've been getting? When I started this, we used to say we get to 10 people in 10 days, and you know, we charge you a flat fee of 2500 bucks. And that was Gosh, by 2004. And you know, back then, unemployment was a lot higher. And so, you know, that was easy to do. So what we did is we would manage all that we'd write the ads manage the job boards, and then send them 10 people within 10 days and then make a hire.,
Then we started morphing because clients told us that many things have happened since then. I mean, geez, we had a great recession. And you know, you have a lot of things happen. But now, instead of just writing ads and then getting all the resumes which is what we normally did, they really want us to engage with the people because they don't have the bench to do it. And so that's really it's pushed me back more into the staffing side instead of just recruitment marketing because we're truly talking to the people and see if they're interested, available, and qualified. And then, if they are, we'll get them scheduled, and the hiring company picks it up from there.
Fantastic. Sounds like a great model. What gives you the greatest source of satisfaction and reward? Looking back and seeing who's in my wake and what I mean by that is when I talk about leadership, I was asked him I'm like gonna if you're a leader, you know, you've developed some other people where are they now and you know, who have you left in your wake?
And for me, the biggest joy that drives me is helping people get to the next level and to the right role. For instance, I had a sales guy who worked with. He was an amazing genius in marketing, but he was a professional visitor in sales. You know, people love seeing them because, you know, he's a really nice guy.
He just, you never sold anything, and we kept growing. He said to me one day we really knocked out of the park. I said yeah, but none of it is your business. I told him I said. You know what? You're a great marketer. I have a friend of ours over at one of the water companies in Colombia who needs an assistant marketing director. And he said you know, I think you're right, so he went over there.
After I left Colombia, he went back 10 years later. Now he's the Director of Marketing. I had another person who's worked with me on their own staffing firm now. And so those are the joys of watching people that you get into a role that they really thrive and grow.
What advice would you give to Gen Z and people even beyond that a little older as far as deciding between doing the corporate route or starting something on their own? Well, first off, you need to think about your risk tolerance. You know, can you give everything up? You know, are you willing to lose it all for a venture? You know, because I have, you know, I've lost it all and started all over to rebuild again.
And you know, and you got to have the fortitude and to be willing to do that, to lose everything you've got to reach your goals or your dreams, and if you have that within you, that's a good start. I said entrepreneurial seizure because that comes from Michael Gerber from eMyth. Great book. Oh, it's a great book. I mean, anybody who starts a business whose an entrepreneur needs it. It's an old one, it came out of the 90s, but it's spot on because, you know, I'm the best mechanic in town. So why is Andrew making all the money?
You know, because Andrew owns it and Scott's the best mechanic, so I'm going to start my own shop. The only thing I forgot was I want to run a business. I know how to fix cars. I know how to bake cakes but don't know how to function as a business. And that's why so many run out of business is because they're really good at the tactical work of doing and doing and doing it but learning how to run the business is a different animal.
But I believe that, really, if you've got the drive, you can do it. Anyone can do it. You learn how to do it. If you've got the drive. As far as Gen Z's, Gen X, or baby boomers, get a mentor. Get several mentors because no one knows it all. And if you get a mentor, make sure you got a pen and paper every time you see them. And even if you're not learning anything from them, act like you're writing. That way, you know, because if they're gonna take the time to feed you, you should pay attention. And the other thing is to stay focused. You know, it's everyone who talks about this work-life balance. And if you look at Eastern philosophy, there's only life, you know, There's no life work Balance, there's only life, so we got to do is find out what kind of life we want to live that certainly plays into what kind of career we want to do. So, get into something you love, and then don't have to work again. That's excellent advice.
What is your greatest source of optimism about the industry going forward in the next three to five years? I think, well, optimism as well. It's kind of a two-way street. We're out of people. You know, so if you're looking at it from a growth standpoint, while we're doing it, people will need us because people are getting harder and harder to find. We're really good at doing that and attracting their attention.
We don't necessarily go recruit people as much as attract them to your organization. So that's going to be a, but I guess what really creates the optimism for me is watching my team grow and develop and mature and watch them. I have some younger people, and watching them over the last couple of years really step up, and you know I have a lot of fresh out of college and watch them become young professionals and watch it and you know, one person on my team she got to go buy a house. Another one is at Disneyland today. I mean, those are the things that drive me. Watching other people around me succeed.
Excellent! Entrepreneur. Files Scott Holtzman, CEO and founder of Next Level Performers.
We hope your inside look into today's industry titan's entrepreneur file inspires you to bust through any walls between you and success. Not literally, Entrepreneur Files is not responsible for any property damage caused by uncontrollable zeal. Well, our job here is done. You could be the next entrepreneur we feature on the podcast. Call 816-506-1257 or visit riseintegrated.com to schedule a quick meet and greet with our producer. Now we're off to visit Quotability, our creator community, where we share what we love and love what we share. It was designed for creatives by creatives to collaborate and grow media projects like Entrepreneur Files, find Quotability on LinkedIn and continue the conversation there.
