TWO GUYS IN TIES
Insider strategies to land better jobs, earn more, and build the career you actually want.
TWO GUYS IN TIES
#1 - Introduction to Two Guys in Ties
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In this pilot episode, you'll get to know Rod McDermott and Mitch McDermott—their backgrounds, career journeys, and what led them to build successful businesses and work with leaders across countless industries. They'll share why they started this podcast, what they've learned along the way, and what listeners can expect from future episodes.
Two guys in ties. Welcome to Two Guys in Ties. I'm Rod McDermott, and I'm here with my co-host, my favorite son, Mitch McDermott. Great to meet you, everyone. Uh, we're here for a couple reasons. Number one, we both run search firms. I run an executive search firm kind of C-level Mitch. We focus on mid-level leadership. And we have a lot to say. Uh, in fact, uh, when you join us on our weekly podcast, we want to talk about things that you can use to help propel your career, help get promoted, help find a job, help get out of a job that you're not loving, uh, find your dream job. We're even gonna take uh some listeners on a journey with us and coach them through the process. But the whole idea behind this is we want to share our years of wisdom. I've got 27 years in executive search. Mitch has many, many years growing up, learning executive search from the dinner table, but also running a very successful search firm. We want to share what we know. Some of it, we're gonna be yelling at you. We're gonna be telling you, people, you're doing stupid things. People, you're telling yourself a bunch of stories, knock it off. So it's gonna get real. Mitch, what do you want to add?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think uh in today's world, the job search system is broken, and we get reached out to at our firm a lot by people who are looking for a job. And I think the way you find work in today's world has changed a lot and will continue to change with AI. So we want to bring out kind of contrarian ideas, contrarian beliefs, and how to actually get a job you want in today's world.
SPEAKER_00Now, today is an introductory podcast. It's our very first one. So we want you to get to know us. We also want you to get to know Reagan, our producer. She's actually on a microphone and she's behind the mixing table. Reagan, why don't you introduce yourself?
SPEAKER_01Hello, everyone. I'm Reagan, and I am the girl behind the mic.
SPEAKER_00She's also the one who's gonna call bullshit on both of us if we say something that she doesn't agree with. And she has a very short trigger finger, so very itchy trigger finger, I should say, um, and a short fuse. So she's gonna call bullshit a lot, and she's gonna wrangle us. She's gonna make sure that we are telling you all the things that we need to do, stay focused, and stay on path. She does that all the time throughout my life. Hey, I want to give you a little background on my journey. Mitch is gonna give you a little background on his. What brought us here? So, as I said, I've been doing executive search for over 27 years. I've had my own firm, McDermottable Executive Search, for 25 plus years. We are a North American firm, offices throughout the U.S., Canada, and we also have an office in Western Europe based out of Amsterdam that works on all of our client searches in uh the Western part of Europe. And we've been doing this a long time. In addition to our exec search business, we have an interim leadership business. I like to say that's where we rent an exec. You don't have to buy an exec. You can rent that person by the hour and by the week for projects or to fill a gap when somebody's out. Um, and we have another business called Activate180, which is our all-employee coaching company. Uh, cool little fact, we started that business. It's our newest business. We started it uh about five years ago. We actually didn't even take it out to the public uh until a little over four years ago. And this year I think we're gonna do about 12,000 coaching sessions. Mitch, you're coached by those guys, aren't you? Yeah, yeah. My whole team is, and they love it. Yeah, and I'm coached by Activate180 as well. So that's a little bit about what we do at McDermott and Bowl. I'll share with you after Mitch does his introduction a little bit more about what brought me here and some of the stuff I've seen. He'll do the same.
SPEAKER_02Awesome. Well, again, Mitch McDermott. Uh my whole background, obviously growing up around the executive search business, has been around recruiting and careers. Uh, I grew up with an entrepreneurial dad. So as you can imagine, uh our beliefs were a little bit different than the common knowledge of how to get work and find work and build a career. Um, but I started my career pretty young, uh, working at Mercedes-Benz um selling cars and ended up venturing into recruiting when I graduated college as I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I like sales and was pretty good at talking to people and figured I'd get into the search business and uh ultimately started my company to solve a gap in our industry for mid-level hires, playing at the level below where McDermott and Bull plays around C level, but helping place directors, managers, high-end individual contributors to fill a gap between contingent and executive search.
SPEAKER_00Um by the way, Mitch, I want to stop you for a second. I think you were a heck of a car salesman at 20. Mitch sold me a two-year-old. I didn't tell uh I didn't pay this. I'm gonna tell you right now I didn't pay it, but it was a two-year-old S63 AMG Mercedes that brand new went for 165,000. He sold me this car. It was the greatest car I ever drove. What happened to that car, Mitch, after two weeks?
SPEAKER_02The engine blew up.
SPEAKER_00But for two weeks, it was obvious, it was absolutely the greatest car. I love that car. Mitch actually was an amazing car salesperson. One of the things I will say about him is he had fun with his customers. He never tried to sell people. I really respected this fact about Mitch. He said people that buy Mercedes aren't necessarily sold a car, they're really sold more of a feeling and a vision for what they want to experience in that car. And so his sales, he struck me early on at age 20 as a real consultant. I don't know if I ever told you that.
SPEAKER_02I appreciate that. Thanks, Ed. Yeah, cool. He's another pat on the back from old dad. Uh, but yeah, basically, you know, I spent my whole career uh finding jobs that didn't exist, and a lot of it was from your advice. And I'm excited to share more about my story as we continue on with the podcast and also how I was able to find work throughout my life, even in other countries with jobs that were never posted or were never really out there uh being advertised that they even existed.
SPEAKER_00That's a big thing we got to talk about. The unposted job market is massive. They say it's about three times the size of the posted market. So if the job market today in the US is about seven million jobs, if you think about this, the unposted job market could be 21 million jobs. Those are the jobs that people get by going for it, where somebody actually opens something up in their company because they say this is the right talent we need. We've got to find a place for them. That's a massive market, and most people, like by most, I would guess 99% of people don't even think about it. Yeah, it's a huge number. Hey, I want to share something else. Why are we two guys in ties? Well, Reagan named it. Um, I'll just be candid with you. We looked for so many different names. We had amazing names, but they're either already trademarked or they already have the name of a podcast. And so one day Reagan was saying, Hey, you guys dress really nice. You guys are still a little bit traditional in that you feel like when you represent your client, you want to be, whether it's on a Zoom or a face-to-face meeting with somebody, you want to be dressed up. You want to look at. I was in a meeting on Monday with the CEO of a $50 billion market cap company, and we're wearing suits. Now, we weren't wearing ties, but we're wearing suits, and you know, you still show respect for people and they're dressed up too. So we decided let's go all in. We're not wearing tuxes. This is not formal, but we are two guys in ties because what we're talking about is serious, and we want to help people make a different impression in their job search and in their careers. Anything to add to that, Mitch?
SPEAKER_02No, I I just like to dress up.
SPEAKER_00Mitch has inspired me. He is a clotheshound for sure. And there was a while I went very casual. I was wearing my Lulu slacks and my golf shirts, and I love those, but I gotta tell you, I didn't feel ready for business and I didn't feel as serious. And it reflected in the business. And now I dress up every day. We have our team dressing up every day. We are getting back to business. COVID is over, it's been over now for six years, now five years, and and we're we're back to business, and we're back to being serious, representing our clients.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I've I've always dressed this way, and I think uh one thing for some listeners, and we'll get into this more throughout the podcast, is I've always been the youngest person in the room, and I've always been the best dress.
SPEAKER_00I love that about you, and that's including at our house too. Um hey, one one thing I want to share too is um, you know, uh biggest lessons I've learned from decades in executive search. I'm gonna share two little tidbits, and we're gonna have some future sessions on this as well. I have a saying, you are the CEO of your career. Actually, we tried to name the podcast that, but I guess somebody else has it. But I love that because I think a lot of people relegate their career development to their bosses. And they put themselves at the timeline of their bosses. And the reality is if they are a keeper, somebody that their bosses think is indispensable and want to hold on to in their company, they have an opportunity and honestly an a right and an obligation to their own career to be intentional with it and to be able to share their goals and objectives with the people that control that career. And I believe just like a CEO would share the vision, share the strategy, share the culture that they want to create in the company, you have to do the same thing with your own career and share that with your stakeholders and say, just so you know, this is where I want to be. And my plan to get here is X, Y, and Z. Now I know that might sound extraordinary to you. I love this word. Mitch, what does that word mean to you?
SPEAKER_02You love that word.
SPEAKER_00What does that mean to you, Reagan? What does that word extraordinary mean to you?
SPEAKER_01To me, it just means going above and beyond.
SPEAKER_00What does it mean to me?
SPEAKER_01It means extraordinary.
SPEAKER_00Extra. I'm very extra. It means extraordinary. If you want an extraordinary life, you have to be willing to give extraordinary effort. And if you're willing to give extraordinary effort, let those around you that are controlling your career, by the way, don't forget this, you control your career, nobody else does. But if you cede that control to somebody or they control your ability to get promoted, you need to let them know where you want to go. That's what CEOs do. They let people in on the vision. This is where we're trying to go. You should do that with your career too. Mitch, tell me where you've seen that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I would almost argue most people don't even have careers, they just have jobs. You know, I rarely ever see people treat their job as a career and and be intentional with where they work, the role they play, and how they progressively make steps. Typically, what I see is they end up in a job, the job goes away for whatever reason, they end up in another job, and they putt around for 15, 20 years and kind of end up somewhere where they never really built or created anything.
SPEAKER_00Dude, you're making me so sad right now.
SPEAKER_02I mean, this is people's lives. This is how they go through life. Why do you think that is? I don't one, I don't think people are taught how to have a career. I think they're taught how to get a job. And I think some of that starts with the educational system where you follow this path, you get a degree doing XYZ, and then you get a job in that field, and then you climb the corporate ladder. I think I think nowadays the new generation, I can speak from this personally from experience, has become a lot more entrepreneurial with social media, um, kind of the solopreneur economy. I think now people are waking up and realizing there's a different way to make money, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I was thinking of Reagan's sister. Reagan, your sister had a job. Would she have called that a job or a career?
SPEAKER_01I would say a job for sure. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00What does she have now?
SPEAKER_01She has a career.
SPEAKER_00She has a career. She's fired up about it. Does she feel like she works every day?
SPEAKER_01I mean, yeah. But does she loves it?
SPEAKER_00But does it feel like work? And I'll put work, I'll put the word work in quotes and with an with a with a sad face next to it. Like work can feel like work, right? And work as a word can sometimes have a negative connotation. Do you think it's negative or positive?
SPEAKER_01I think work is work, but work can also have a happy face next to it.
SPEAKER_00Nice. Does your job have a happy face? It does. Thank you, Reagan. You're welcome. That's biased. I call bullshit. She wants a bonus. She wants a bonus. Reagan wants a bonus. Now, seriously, Reagan brings a smile to her job every day, and I love that, but that's really important to me. And Mitch, your point, I think, is a really good point. I feel like so much of society has gotten in this place. I'm gonna I'm gonna take it a little step further, what you said. People graduate, they have a degree, they have goals, they have visions, they have dreams, they want to do something, right? And then they get a job. And the next thing they get, what happens after they get their first job? What do they buy after that? A house. No. A car. A car with a payment. Yep. And it's like, oh shit, now I gotta make these car payments. And then what happens after the car in their lives? What usually happens? Yeah, they meet a partner, they get married, they have a kid, they buy a house, they do all that, and they need income. So that job is no longer a career and something they love. It's income, it's a means to an end. And then all of a sudden, those kids grow up. And what happens when kids grow up, Reagan? What do they want?
SPEAKER_01Money.
SPEAKER_00They want stuff. They want stuff. And then ultimately, when they become 18, where do they want to go?
SPEAKER_01College.
SPEAKER_00And you gotta pay for that. And I find so many people that live for two things after they've been working for over 20 years. You know what those two things are, Mitch?
SPEAKER_02Paying for their kids' college?
SPEAKER_00Nope. They live for two things. Paying for their kids' college is another thing they have to do, they have to work for if they're gonna do it.
SPEAKER_02Oh, they live, they they they work for retirement.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Vacations and retirement. God, I want that vacation. God, I want that. Boy, if I can only do that. What if we could, what if work could feel like vacation? What if our jobs, our careers could feel like we're not working? I wonder, I'm gonna ask this to people that are listening. How many people know somebody that have what looks like an amazing job and it doesn't look like they're even working? Yet they make really good money and they freaking love it. It's like they get to do. I one of my favorite sayings, Mitch, you know this, right? It's either a got to or a get to. I either got to do this, which sucks, or I get to do this, which is joy. I want joy. So I think there's a lot of people that struggle with that, and it kind of sucks, but you get into this pattern. I remember uh we haven't done this in a while, but we're gonna ramp them up again. We used to do these McDermott and bull gathering dinners where we would do one year we did 28 dinners. We'd have CEOs in a great restaurant like Mastros, and we'd probably have 15 and you know, a couple people from our firm, a couple from a co-host. And one question we would ask people is if you weren't doing what you were doing and money wasn't an issue, what would you be doing? What would your dream job be? And you would hear these amazing things, like one guy would say, Yeah, I really want to be a pilot. Or I had one guy sit next to me, he was the CEO of a pretty big company. He said, I'd love to be a high school basketball coach. And I'm like, All right, that's really random. Where did that come from? And he's like, My high school basketball coach shaped my life. I didn't know it at the time, but he taught me work ethic, he taught me perseverance, he taught me organization. We had early morning practices, and when we were going to CIFs, we had two a days, and I had to be organized because I was still a high school student. I had to get into college, so I had to keep my stuff together. But I learned so much that I've taken on in the rest of my life, and I just know that he taught varsity or he coached varsity basketball. So think about this. Every two years he's getting a new crew of kids, but those kids, those 12 kids that are on that team, he's getting a new crew every couple of years, and those kids are going off into the world. Some of them are becoming CEOs like me. What a major legacy. You know? And so you hear something like that, and you ask this person, you say, so what is the big thing for you? Why would you do that versus what you do right now? And his answer was meaning. I would have so much meaning in my life. So anyway, I I've been talking a lot. Mitch, jump in.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, I think everyone wants more meaning in today's world, but I think uh, like you said, being able to support the lifestyle you want and create the meaning narrows down certain paths quite a bit.
SPEAKER_00You know, I got in this conversation today with my very first big client. Um, I had lunch with a guy just retired. He was a client of mine at a big computer company back in 1999. I first got into search in April of 99, and he became a client in September of 99, and I'll never forget it because over the course of a week, he retained me on three searches, and I just took him to lunch today because I ran into him recently. In fact, you and I were having lunch when we ran into him like three months ago, and he's just retired, and I told him, I said, You gave me my launch. He goes, you know, I never knew that. I'm like, Yeah, well, I'm not gonna tell you you gave me my launch. Nobody wants to hire a brand new search guy. So, but I told you about my experience hiring people in tech because I was a tech VP of sales and all that. So, um, but one of the things I learned is that people job search to fill that job, to find or fill that need and find a job that's gonna give them income and hopefully happiness. But what they do is they don't do it with intention. They look at jobs that are being offered and they say, well, that might, that might do it. That might give me the money I want, and it might give me the life I want, the happiness I want, versus identifying what does success in your life look like? And that's one thing I was talking to him about. I said, before he goes, How'd you ever get in a search? And I said, you know, I started looking at different things when I knew I wanted to get off airplanes. I was traveling 70% of the time, and I started looking at new things. And I said, Well, that might give me happiness, that might give me the income I want and give me the life I want, but I didn't really define what that was. And after looking at a number of things and deciding not to do it, I mean, I had a buddy of mine ask me to be a mortgage broker and open up a mortgage brokerage office in Orange County for him. And after going out on a signing with him at one point, I'm like, that's not me. I don't want to do that. Um, I could have made a lot of money, but I don't care. That's not me. I want to have joy. And so what I started doing then was writing down the components and characteristics of my dream life. Income, kind of people I built relationships with, kind of travel I had, um, how much authority I had and control I had over my job, my life, you know, what which which drove me to do something entrepreneurial. The fact that I wanted to take a month off and live in Spain for a summer. Can I do that? Well, most jobs don't let you do that. But I started with what are the characteristics, and then said, okay, now that I understand what my life looks like, now let's look at things that will give me those. It's the exact opposite, I think, of what most people do when they job search. Now, Mitch, I know you have coached a number of people in job search. Tell me how you've approached them identifying what could be their dream and going after and getting it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think the big thing is like you said, what do you really want? And I think people need to be honest with themselves. If you want a job and that's really all you want to get out of it, then that's a different approach to finding kind of that dream job or making a career pivot. It all comes down to what what do you what can you bring to the table now to trade value for currency and what path is going to align you with the kind of life you want and the kind of career you want and the impact you want to make in the world? A lot of the time when I was coaching people on how to find a job, they were mostly unemployed, some up to 12 months, couldn't figure out how to navigate the job search system. And a lot of it was about assigning focus to their job search. These are people who would say, I'm applying to 50 to 100 jobs a day.
SPEAKER_00Mitch, how many of these people suffer from limiting beliefs? Almost every single one. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. What are some of the things they told themselves or some of the assumptions they made?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think they uh one assumption is they would start to tell themselves stories about their career, make excuses for why they weren't being seen, like, oh, it must be because I have too much experience or I'm too highly paid for a role like this, or they're they don't think I have enough, right? They would they would come up with the reason for everything versus looking from within and and understanding, am I even positioning myself this way? Another one was for some of these people who really wanted bigger jobs and probably probably were a little underqualified for it but could get it, they didn't view themselves as valuable. And I think that's a big one is at the end of the day, companies will budge on the requirements for an all-star. The person defined success in the job, not the resume. And I think people forget about that. And a lot of it has to do with the way companies screen now is it's all criteria driven in the beginning. So it's really hard to get seen if you just apply, apply, apply.
SPEAKER_00How about imposter syndrome? Is that something that you saw when you were coaching these people?
SPEAKER_02N not as much. Some of it, yes, especially the mid or later stage career people who hadn't never looked for a job before, they had been recruited or brought with with other leaders to different companies where this is the first time in you know, 25-year career they're actually out of work and trying to find work. And I think especially some of the people at bigger companies, and I coached a guy who was a fairly senior person at HP for almost 20 years and was part of a massive uh restructuring. You know, there was definitely uh some imposter syndrome of being in the job search, definitely, especially with more senior execs, uh, insecurity of unemployment, especially after several months.
SPEAKER_00You know, one of the things we're gonna do, and I don't want to go too deep on this, but I want we wanted to give everybody a little bit of a teaser about what we're gonna be talking about on two guys and ties. We're gonna be coming to you every week. Uh, Reagan, if people want to send us a note and ask us a question that we're gonna answer in our podcast, how can they do that?
SPEAKER_01We have an email. You guys can send in stories, questions, comments to twoguysintiespod at gmail.com.
SPEAKER_00And is there any other way to do it? CarrierPigeon, Telegram.
SPEAKER_01We have an Instagram. You guys can follow along there. Send a DM if you like. That's a direct message. Thank you for that, by the way.
SPEAKER_00I don't speak Instagram. Thanks, Reagan. I appreciate it. I'm 60. Sorry. Um, hey, I I want to share something else. So we're going to pivot from job search because I think that's going to be a big part of what we're going to do. But I want to pivot right now, pivot right now to career development and mistakes people make in their careers and some of the stuff that we're going to talk about. And Mitch, if you want to start or you want me to, I can start and then you can jump in. What do you want to do on this?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, why don't you start us off?
SPEAKER_00Okay. So one of my biggest things in career development, when I coach people and they ask me, how can I move ahead? I want to have an amazing career. One of the things I start with is let's step back and let's talk about what that looks like, identify what it is. You know, we just hired a guy. I think I told you the story, Mitch. We hired a guy about four or five months ago. And if he's listening to this podcast, he'll probably get a laugh. I interviewed him and I said, Hey, what is your why? Like when you want to come into work every day and work really hard, what are you working for? And he goes, I want to be financially independent. I said, That sounds nice, but that's very generic. What does that mean? He goes, I want to have 10 million in the bank by the time I'm 50. I'm like, okay, that's specific. Wow. Where did you come up with that? And he told me a story, a backgrounder, about why he had that in his mind. I'm like, that's a really good why. That's a really good uh reason because you've lived through some things that have informed you now on why you don't want to live through those or you don't want your kids to live through those. So that's the first thing I do is I ask people what drives them and why are they gonna show up every day and try to make a difference. The second thing is I ask people if you want to have an unbelievable career, if you want to move ahead quickly, if you want to have great responsibility and you want to have great income and great opportunity in your career, what are you willing to give for that? Because everything comes with a give and a take. And sometimes the give is too much. And people need to answer that question, you know, is it something I really, really want? And if the answer is no, then maybe that's not the right thing. You know, but you have to really know what are you willing to sacrifice? Because having extraordinary careers requires what, Reagan?
SPEAKER_01Extraordinary going above and beyond. I don't know. Effort.
SPEAKER_00Effort, extraordinary effort. If you want to have, I would say, what does extraordinary mean? Break it down, extraordinary. I don't want to be ordinary, I want to be extraordinary. Well, you got to be willing to give extraordinary too. I also have this belief, and this is something we're gonna share on this podcast, how do you become indispensable? Like you mentioned, somebody getting laid off. And by the way, I don't want this to sound bad to anybody that got laid off because a lot of things are beyond their control. But one of the questions I ask people that come to me that have been laid off is, was your entire team laid off? And they say, no, they laid off about a third of the team. And the first thing going through my mind is, why were you picked and the other two thirds weren't? What is it they do? What is it they did differently? Or what is it you did or didn't do? And I really think people need to self-reflect. You know, one of the things I'm really big on is owning it, right? By the way, Mitch, how many times have you failed?
SPEAKER_02Many.
SPEAKER_00Can you even count how many times you failed?
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I can't either. I try so much stuff. By the way, failure is a necessary step to ultimate success. You have to fail. How many rockets has Elon Musk blown up to do what he's doing at Star uh SpaceX?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, tons.
SPEAKER_00Tons. But it doesn't matter. It matters that you learn from it. It matters that you own it. If you don't own your failures, you're not gonna learn from it. If you don't learn from it, I'm gonna tell you right now, Mitch, when you see somebody that you think has failed and you're interviewing them and they don't own their failure, what do you do?
SPEAKER_02I mean, to me it's a red flag. You know, I think uh especially when they try to hide or cover up the story and you can smell the bullshit detector comes off.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Then it makes you question the the depth of what actually happened versus the ones who own it. I feel like you never have to wonder, right? I I actually, this recently happened. We had a gentleman we were interviewing for our company, and uh he had been through a a fortunate series of layoffs, and he was with the company five years, so I figure he had to have been pretty decent if he survived for that long before getting let go. Uh, and he was very upfront about everything. He said I have references, you know, yada yada yada. And it made me feel a lot more comfortable about advancing him to the next round because he didn't hide anything and there was no wondering. I think when people try to cover it up, and is when you start to wonder. And when you start to wonder, it's really hard to get that out of your out of your mind when you consider am I gonna bring this person into my business?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. I also think that, you know, by the way, getting laid off is not a uh it's not a a a major red mark. People, it's happened to people, but I do think owning it and owning what you could have done differently. Now, by the way, if you worked at Sears in the US, I think there is still a Sears store in Canada, I just heard that recently. But if you work at Sears in the US, I don't think there's any stores left. You've probably been laid off. Companies that go under, you probably, you know, people get laid off. And to no fault of their own, the company just didn't execute on their strategy. A company that downsizes and moves in a different direction, your skills don't match what they need, yeah, it might be no fault of your own. But I do believe people should always look within and say, is there something I could have done differently? Maybe I could have networked internally to get another job, to land another division that's growing. You know? I'm always looking for what could somebody have done differently to be indispensable.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. You know, the other thing is I'm thinking about it too, when it comes to people who have experienced a layoff and now they're trying to figure out how to get a job. Uh, I think the biggest red flag I see as we're talking about it is the victim mentality. Especially with candidates who have been through a series of different unfortunate events and the blame is never within. Um, to me, that's almost never a candidate we will send to our client. Because I know the story it's it's all about I think it's it's 50% about what happens and 50% about the story you create from that experience and how you share that with future companies.
SPEAKER_00So, what do you think has to happen for that person to not be a victim?
SPEAKER_02That's exactly what what you're talking about, taking ownership, reflecting. And um because when you hear the same story enough times, you start to wonder who the common denominator is. Um you know, same for Canada to oh, I was recruited here, I was recruited here, I got recruited here. Well, great, you got recruited, but you left every company for the last five years after a year. You know, there's no way my client's gonna consider you. Right because they're gonna be wondering in a year what's gonna happen if you get a call from someone like me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, history repeats itself. How often does that happen? You know, I'm I'm a big believer. This is something you've heard me ask before too. Reagan, I don't know if I ever asked you have I when you were a recruiter for us, like how many people ever told you they'd been fired?
SPEAKER_01Um I feel like not many because I would look at their profiles.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And make sure so I've asked this to recruiters, like like you were doing internal recruiting, so you didn't interview thousands of people for us.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I did it for less than a year, so I might not be the best person to ask.
SPEAKER_00No, but I used to ask people that were recruiters for three, four, five years for us, and they would literally interview thousands of people over that period of time. And I would literally go around with company and I ask how many people told you they were fired. Most people said very few to zero. Some people literally had been a recruiter for three, four years, interviewed literally thousands of people, and not a single one had told them they'd ever been fired. That is not owning your shit.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, I'll I'll tell you the story. There was a guy who uh who I had when I was on the Orange Coast Venture Group board, we had uh, this is going back 20 years, but we had these big breakfast meetings, and I had a couple of CEOs from really, really successful companies up on a panel I was hosting, and I asked this one guy, I said, Hey, tell me about your biggest failure. And he shared this in front of 300 people, and it was really interesting. The guy had a very good success, successful career with some really big companies in the tech space, then got hired to be a CEO of a company, raised $75 million. This is back in like 2004, 2003 time frame. So over 20 years ago. That was a lot of money back then, it's a lot of money now, and proceeded to make so many mistakes that money was gone in less than a year. And he stood up there and he owned this. And I asked him, I said, Hey, so what happened? He goes, They fired my ass. And they should have. Now, here's what I learned from this. This is what he told me. Here's what I learned from this. My instincts told me raise the money, produce the product, do not bet the farm on manufacturing the product. Let's test the market. He goes, that's what I learned my entire career. But he said, my board was saying, go, go, go. We gave you this money to go. We don't want you going slow. And he's like, wait, if I go slow for one quarter, it only takes 90 days to produce more product. But if I go slower for one quarter, I keep all my nuts in the tree, all my dry powder sitting in the bank, and I make sure that we're good to go. And I could reorder after I might be out of stock in a short period of time, but I'm still gonna have my cash and I can reorder. If I buy everything I think I could sell and I build it, and I end up not, I end up taking a dump on that product and it doesn't work, I've spent all my money. Well, guess what he did? He did the latter, he did the second, and they spent all their money and the product didn't sell. He thought they were projecting 60,000 units in one quarter. Guess how much they sold?
SPEAKER_02I don't know.
SPEAKER_00One tenth of that.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_00One tenth of that. The company was gone in a year. But he stood up in front of 300 people and he owned it. And that was really cool. He ended up getting hired by another venture capital firm, walked into a company that had burned through a bunch of money, and he said, I can fix this thing. He fixed it. They sold it for a few hundred million dollars within a matter of years. He did really, really well. The VCs did well, the founders did well. He fixed it. Why? Because he learned from it. It was a badge of courage. When I talked to one of the VCs and I said, How comfortable do you feel did you feel hiring a guy who had had such a big failure? And he said to me, Boy, that was a really expensive education. I like to hire people that have expensive educations, especially if they learn from it. So that's one of the things we're going to teach people. Learn from your failures. Own them. Own them. Wear them as a badge of courage. Be prepared to talk about it. Don't hide it. Don't hide under a we left because it was how many people ever leave a company mutually, Mitch?
SPEAKER_02Uh, I think, well, it's funny because I when we talked about people getting fired, I don't think anyone's ever point blank told me they've been fired. But what the first thing I thought of was, oh, it was mutual. That to me is I got fired.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. They're not owning it. Yeah. They're just saying it's never mutual. If the company wants to keep you, they're saying, no, no, don't leave.
SPEAKER_02It's like a breakup, right? Someone has to, it might be mutual in the end, but someone started the conversation.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. It could be mutual in the end. I have a friend of mine who sold his company, and the company that bought his company said, Hey, we don't think you're happy. And he's like, No, no, I'm happy. And they said, No, we're going to make a change. We don't think you're happy. He told me 24 hours later he woke up, he said, they were right. I was not happy. So it wasn't mutual at the beginning. It happened because they made it happen, but it turned out to be mutual. And so sometimes it's not a bad thing, but just own it. Yeah. People, own your shit. If you don't learn anything else from this thing, own your shit because until you do, and I had a coach tell me this 25 years ago. It was really interesting. He said, imagine this until somebody does. They are the candidate is kind of like a beautiful rose garden. You're walking up to this beautiful rose garden. You're like, wow, this is amazing. And you're leaning your nose in there because what do you want to do with roses, Mitch?
SPEAKER_02Smell.
SPEAKER_00You want to smell the roses. And guess what's underneath that rose garden? Thorns. A sewer. A sewer. A sewer is underneath the rose garden. The sewer is the shit that you didn't clean up and you didn't deal with from your last job. Until you clean up that sewer, the closer I get to you and I want to smell you. That sounds weird.
SPEAKER_02A little weird.
SPEAKER_00It's a little weird. But the closer I get and I want to do that, the more I'm going to smell that sewer. Clean up your shit. Clean up your sewer. All right, we're going to talk about that. Mitch, what else are we going to talk about?
SPEAKER_02We're going to talk about uh leadership and how to build a dream career. I think part of this is going to be about job search and how to find that job that will set you on a trajectory for a dream career. But I think the other half is going to be how to take what you have today and turn that into a dream career, too. Because there's probably a lot of people out there right now in jobs at decent companies with upside, but they don't know what to do with it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think it's funny. Um Love the One You're With. I love that song. Yeah. You ever hear that song? Reagan, you ever hear that?
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_00I don't know who actually sings it, but it's basically a metaphor for me saying, uh, you are sitting on acres of diamonds. Don't sell your ranch and buy another one because you want to find gold. There's acres of diamonds underneath you. The job you have might be the best job. And by the way, this is actually true. I had a friend of mine years and years ago. I worked with him in banking. He was the head of investor relations of a local company that was a public company that was doing okay. Not great, but okay. And he said to me, you know, I'm thinking about making a change. I'm like, dude, you might be in sitting on a gold mine. Before you make the change, maybe you go to the CEO and tell him what you want. What is it you want? And he's like, I think I'd like to be the CFO, but I don't know that I'm ever going to get that opportunity. I said, Well, why don't you engage the people that are your stakeholders and let them know? So he did that. He had a good relationship with the CEO. And lo and behold, the CFO got recruited away to another company. And so they put him in that job. He killed it. They ended up selling that company for like $50 billion. And he was a CFO for many years. He did incredibly well. He could have left that. The acres of diamonds that he was sitting on were not evident at that moment, but all he had to do was unleash the opportunity. So we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about how to make the most out of your career. We're going to talk about making a career move that helps your resume so that you are set up for your next big C-level job. And if it's not a C level job, it's a stepping stone job. We're going to show you how to get the experience so that somebody like us calls you and says, we want you on our client's team because you've done X, Y, and Z. So we're going to show you how to do that. Sometimes, I would you've heard me say this before. Sometimes it's the right company, the right job, and the right comp. You know how often it's all three of those?
SPEAKER_02Never.
SPEAKER_00I wouldn't say never, but it's pretty rare. It's pretty rare. So sometimes you take the right company with the wrong job because you have an opportunity to be an early employee at Apple or Amazon or SpaceX or one of these really cool companies or Google. Sometimes it's the wrong company, but the right job. You get into a company that you know you're only going to be at for five years, but you're getting a C-level title. You're getting a big promotion, and you need that to get the opportunity to ultimately jump to the right company and the right job. Sometimes things are stepping stones. And these days you don't have to spend a whole career at a company. So we're going to talk about that. What else are we going to talk about, Mitch? What else do you want to talk about? What's on your mind?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think a big one's going to be like we talked about earlier, like owning your career and owning your job search. And I think a big one, a big thing that I'm passionate about, and something, as you know, I started that other business last year, helping people who are out of work navigate the job market is getting rid of limiting beliefs and playing big and taking action in your life and your career. I think that's a big one.
SPEAKER_00I'm excited about that. If anybody has any questions on job search, we want to tackle it. And by the way, I Reagan told me not to tease this, but I'm going to tease it anyway. Sorry, Reagan. Um, we I want to take somebody on. Mitch, how do you feel about taking somebody on who's got to do a job search? They have found themselves either out of work or maybe they graduated college, they don't know where to get started, and they need help, but they have dreams, they have ambitions. They're they're like a babe in the woods. There's this like newborn bambi, and it's time to grow up and it's time to go get something real. We can help them. I think we can put them on a trail. Absolutely. All right, so I want to do that. I'm gonna throw that out. Reagan, sorry. I know she's mad at me. Reagan, are you mad? No, she's a little mad. Uh because I said we're gonna do this. Write us at the DM and the email that Reagan left. Reagan, what's that? What's that DM and that email? What is it?
SPEAKER_01The email is twoguysandtiespod at gmail.com.
SPEAKER_00And what's the Instagram?
SPEAKER_01Two guys in ties.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And let us know if you want us to take you on this journey. I'm gonna throw this out right now. I will coach you for a month, Mitch. I'll coach you for a month too. All right. So you'll get both Mitch and Rod. You'll get each of the two guys in ties coaching on this journey. And I think we will help you identify your dream job, build a strategy to go get that dream job, and get it. And that dream job. We're gonna help you do that. So uh I want to tease that out right now because that gives me a lot of joy. Uh, we're gonna wrap it up here. Uh, it's been great kicking this off. I'm excited about this. Come back every week because we're gonna have new episodes and we're gonna talk about stories. By the way, we're gonna share stories from our various firms, both internally into our firms, about stories we're learning from our employees, but also we're gonna share some external stories that we learn from the clients that we work with around the country and around the world. They always tell us stories. Whenever they're looking for us to bring in an executive and replace somebody who's there, first thing I ask is why did that person not succeed? I got a lot of stories. Don't be that person. Don't be that person. You have it within your power not to be. Reagan, you want to close us out?
SPEAKER_01Me. I think you guys should say, See ya. See you next week.
SPEAKER_00Go ahead, Mitch. See you next week. All right, see y'all.