The Sales Side of Hiring with Michael King

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Now let's get on with the show. It doesn't really destroy or anything with the book, but the first chapter, it takes place the rooftop of my apartment in LA, kind of reliving my life and then going down some dark paths of standing on the edge of the roof, thinking about ending it because I didn't want to live this way. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. And today's conversation is with Michael King, and this was a fun one. He's the founder of King Recruiting and the author of Be There When I Return, a memoir on conquering epilepsy and reinventing his career from LA bartender to top Silicon Valley recruiter.

He builds marketing teams from B2B SaaS startups and mid-market players across San Francisco and Seattle. And today we talk a lot about career pivots, how candidates value roles, and what AI is changing in recruiting. And as always, we started with his origin story, which is obviously an interesting one because he was super into sports, kind of went through college just like I did, quite frankly, like yeah, whatever, I don't know what I want to be when I grow up, so I guess I'll get a business degree. And then was basically became a bartender, right? And for 15 years was a bartender in LA and making good cash doing it. That's one of those careers where you said that, you know, you blink one day and you've been in it for 20 years because the money's good and the lifestyle's good.

But his girlfriend at the time had to have an intervention with him and a friend and tell him like, dude, you got some issues. And when he went in, got the news and even contemplated ending it because he didn't know what that was all about. But then got some really controversial surgery that actually doesn't even isn't even allowed anymore. And it fixed him and it shouldn't have was not never meant to cure the epilepsy, but he hasn't had a seizure since 98. And then after that, he decided to after recovering from that and went out to Seattle with his wife and changed his entire career, got into recruiting. And the rest is history. So it talked a lot about, you know, his risk profile and how he makes decisions, his perspective now that he's gone through what he went through.

And then obviously we dove into recruiting and what's going on right now in the marketplace and how AI is fucking everything. So this is a pretty cool conversation. And for those of you who think you're challenged right now and going through some shit, we might give you some perspective on this one. All right. So hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Michael King. Welcome to the make it happen Monday podcast, my friend. How are you doing today? Thank you for having me, sir. Yeah. Thanks for jumping on, man. I think we'll get into some lively conversations about sports and all the fun stuff because we're both on kind of avid fans one way or the other, one from Boston, one from Cali.

But before we do all that, man, you got a real interesting story, real interesting background. And we're going to get into that because I think a lot of people need some perspective these days, quite frankly, with how challenging they perceive things to be versus how they actually are and what's really important, what's not. And so I think that's going to be a real pillar of this conversation. But before we do that, I always love to get origin stories, man, like stuff that we can't read off of LinkedIn. So talk to us about where you're growing up, your parents' influence, kind of where'd you get the itch to go off on your own? And I know you were a bartender for a long time, so it's been an evolution, but talk to us about the stuff that growing up and what made the impressions on you.

Yeah. I'm born and raised in San Francisco. Looking back, I had a blessed life. My father owned a sporting goods store. So, you know, I always had the best gear. He was a coach. Our teams always had the best gear. With that, I was able to be a ball boy for the Niners, a ball boy for the Warriors, you know, played baseball. The dream was to be a baseball player. I was a pitcher back then. There was no pitch counts. You know, you just pitched till your arm fell off, you know? And yeah. And then as you get older and older, junior college, I was lucky to play with two future Hall of Famers, Harold Reynolds and Bob Melvin, which was pretty cool. Then went on to college, but my arm was fried. You know, after trying that, then I was like, hmm, okay, I got my degree.

Now what? And then I just kind of decided I fell into this whole world of trying to get into acting and modeling in San Francisco. And my first thing was like, hey, I got to get a job at night. So I have my days free. And the best job was working at a bar. Yep. I mean, make the most money usually, right? Yeah. You know, it's like, what's a fun job for a single guy? I'm working at a bar. So I started off as like a doorman at, for people in San Francisco listening, they probably know the place. It's called the Balboa Cafe. It's a legend, a legendary place in the Marina District. After that, I was one of the original bartenders at the Hard Rock Cafe in San Francisco on Van Ness. And then 26 years old, just decided, hey, if you're going to do this, you got to go to LA.

So I packed up and moved 26 years old to LA and just transferred work at the Hard Rock in LA and then kind of pursued that writing scripts, doing anything to try to get in. And it's, it's harder than you think. Oh, I mean, based on some of the stories I've heard, it's not, it's, it's almost impossible for going to LA. So it's, it's not even just about the talent. It's right place, right time, who, you know, all that stuff. And it all has to come together. Everything. Let me back up a little bit. Why'd you choose econ? So, cause you're in business now and you're doing quite well. And we'll talk about that shift from, from what it took to go from kind of the bartender days to where you're doing now.

But why all of a sudden, cause you got your degree in, um, administrative, business administration in econ, econ, right? Yeah. Yeah. Was that a conscious thing for you? Or it was just like, it was kind of the default. Like, yeah, it was the default. It's what, uh, I mean, I was like, yep, just get a business degree. And, you know, like my, my dad always told me, he said, just get it. You may never use it, but, um, I had buddies going to school. I went to St. Mary's college over in Moraga, had a couple of guys played baseball with, it was, it was close enough to home, but further enough from home. So it was probably a 45 minute, uh, drive from where I lived. Nice. So your bartender, you go to LA, you know, you try to live that dream.

When did, when did you get diagnosed? Cause I, what I couldn't figure out and maybe I just didn't read the enough through, but you, you, you got diagnosed with epilepsy or you figured out you had epilepsy to go to, to go get it taken care of. Was that while you were a bartender or was that when you had made the shift? No, no, no. That was five years later. That was at 31. Okay, cool. So out of nowhere, out of nowhere. Yeah. So what were you doing? So you were, you, you, what were you doing when that diagnosis hit? Bartending. Yeah. Still doing the same stuff, bartending at night, going on auditions, trying to write scripts, just doing, doing the same thing. It had been five years trying to, uh, to kind of get over that hurdle, I guess.

And then you, I read about how you kind of felt something was off. You were almost kind of like denying it in some ways. And then finally made the choice, like, shit, I gotta, I gotta go get this checked out. What was that process like? So the thing with epilepsy, which I learned in majority of people probably listened to this, have no idea exactly the different types. And there are different types of epilepsy. So imagine the first seizure happened watching the NCA college basketball championship, uh, with, uh, my roommate and two buddies. And then it went to a commercial and then all of a sudden one of them said, Hey, what's up? Why'd you do that? And I'm, for a minute, I didn't know where I was.

I'm looking around, I wasn't sure who they were and finally came back into focus. And, and then one of the other, my, my roommates like, what are you so excited about? And all this stuff, and more or less just blew it off, whatever. And then I just started dating this, uh, this new woman and, uh, we were at Newport beach on the pier and just hanging out and after dinner, and she goes, why'd you do that? And I'm like, what now, now again, you know, if, if I had one of these, they would have just videotaped it and said, look what you're doing. But back then I was like, and so they did a little intervention. And so both of them cornered me in the apartment one day and just said, we need to talk to you.

And so the, uh, the, the girl I was dating said to my buddy, Tim, my roommate said, Hey, have you ever seen Michael do this and start clapping her hands and making weird noises? Like, woo, just weird noises. And I'm looking at him and he wouldn't look at me and I'm like, he goes, yes. I go, what do you mean? Yes. What do you, uh, yeah. So I don't, you know, I just total denial, you know, if someone tells you that you're in total denial, eventually I went, you know, I didn't believe them. I still continued on, but eventually went to a neurologist, did all the testing. And on the, uh, the CAT scan, there was some activity in the brain. So the, uh, neurologist said, uh, I believe you have a form of epilepsy.

And I remember looking at my girlfriend, just going, what? I thought it was Tourette's or something because the only thing I knew about epilepsy is what I'd seen in the movies or on TV. When someone says, Oh, epilepsy, they're on the ground, they're shaking, you know, movies had them like foaming out of the mouth. I mean, all this crazy shit. So when they said this, this is, was my introduction into, Oh, wow. There's many different forms of epilepsy. Hmm. Hey, taking a quick break here to remind you to check out some of my sales training programs at jaybarrows.com and use discount code podcast for 20% off the individual packages. If you're not interested in training or you don't think you need it, then you can still support me by leaving a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform or G2.

If you've already gone through my training before, you can also sign up for my newsletter on jaybarrows.com where every single week I put out a newsletter that breaks down what I'm learning out there, some of the new tips and tools and tech and resources that I'm coming across and some stories from the streets of train wrecks that I go through and stuff not to do. So if you could do one of those things, either sign up for the membership, give me a five-star review or follow me on the newsletter, it would mean the world to me. Thanks for your support. Now let's get back to the show. And so after that, after kind of, I guess, going through that acceptance, if you will, which has got to be a mind fuck in and of itself, um, what, uh, there was this experimental treatment that you got exposed to?

Like what we, well, actually before that, what was the, what was your mentality? Was it grief? Was it always me? Was it fuck? I got to take care of this. It's like, where were all the above, like, Oh my God. Every day was a new range of emotions. Um, lots of, as you can imagine, lots of why me, you know, it's like, what the fuck did I do to deserve this? I mean, cause just out of the blue, you know, and then you start rewinding again, you know, we're talking, um, I went through the, the late eighties, early nineties when Bart, just imagine bartending during that time and partying on sunset. It was, everybody had bags of Coke, everybody was partying, you know, then you start thinking as like, Oh shit, was that it was this it, you know, I even called my parents and just said, Hey, um, okay.

You can be honest. I mean, did you drop me on my head when I was a baby? Come on. I mean, where did this, and that, I mean, that was the frustrating thing is cause I'd asked the doctor, I was like, how does this happen? How does this happen? 31 years old, perfectly healthy. How does this happen? And they went, and that's why, I mean, I, I tell it's the oldest joke in the world. I was like, well, that's why they call the medical profession a practice. They don't know. They're just like a good question. So yeah, I went through the, the, I mean, uh, it doesn't really destroy or anything with the book, but the first chapter, it takes place on the rooftop of my apartment in LA. Um, kind of reliving my life and then going down some dark paths of standing on the edge of the roof, thinking about ending it because I didn't want to live this way.

Yeah. That's a scary, uh, scary mental process to go through. Uh, I got to imagine it's, uh, not exactly, uh, yeah, it's got to fuck with you in so many ways. Uh, even getting to that point of being like, how can I, right. Cause it, cause it was the prognosis that it was going to get worse or like, what was, what were they saying? Like, as far as your quality of life, if you will, at the time. Well, again, they don't know cause every brain is different. And, um, the first line of defense is medication. So, you know, they, they tried this one medication and then you keep, you know, you're going for your checkups, you're still having them. So they increased the dosage and then all of a sudden they said, oh, we have this new drug.

Well, let's try that, you know? So it's just, again, back to the whole thing about a practice. They're just trying everything until they find the right dosage. And until they do, then you, you're still going through all these, uh, seizures and, you know, for me, it was some, uh, I shouldn't be here cause I crashed my car, went head on into the trees. Ooh, you did? Yeah. No, I shouldn't be here. There's pictures of, in the book, there's pictures of the car and people see that they're like, holy shit, you were in there. I said, yeah, you know, I remember prying open the door and more or less the steering wheel was through the, through the windshield, the dashboard. And I was just looking at it going, holy shit, I was in there.

And you don't remember any of it. Oh, no. I just remember as in, uh, Redondo, just crossing the intersection, looking up at the street cause the next street I needed to make a right turn. And then everything, I just woke up in the ambulance and I had a tank top on and I had all these scratches on my arm and, and I was like, what the hell? And when I got to the hospital, they explained that they had to pry the door open and pull me out. And the scratches were from the trees. Jesus Christ. Um, you know, and the lucky part, I guess, is that when that happened, I did have a seizure because when you think about it, if you're going whatever, 40, 50, 60, and you lose control of the car and you're going to go head on, you usually tense up and slam on the brakes.

And when that happens, your legs shattered, your arms are shattered with me. I almost caught it like Jell-O mad. You know, I was just like this, you know, just rolling with it. Yeah. That's why, you know, it's unfortunate, but like drunk drivers, nine times out of 10, the drunk driver is not the one who gets killed. It's because they're passed out. Yeah. They're just completely limp and, and they don't brace. Whereas if you brace, you snap everything, like you said. Yeah. So, yeah. So I guess, you know, if there's, there's any, uh, luck out of this, it's like, okay, I was lucky that I had one, but, um, but the way the, the surgery came about was, um, it was towards the end of 97. And I was like, you know, there's gotta be something.

And my sister in the Bay area had called just to check up on me and we were talking and she said, um, remember my friend, Jenny, who I grew up with? And I'm like, yeah, yeah. I remember her. She goes, well, you know, she has epilepsy and she recently had surgery at Stanford. She goes, have you ever talked to your doctor about possible of surgery? And it had never been discussed. So I went to my doctor at a Cedars-Sinai in LA. We talked about it and he said, is this something you really want to look into? And I'm like, yes, yes. So went to UCLA and it's, it was almost like, uh, a job interview is they had the panel of, of the, uh, epilepsy team and they're interviewing my doctor and getting all the information, all the medical records, how many years, what types then started grilling me about family history, everything.

What do you remember all this? And then I got a letter back that I was a possible candidate. So they go, they take you through all the tests. So one of the first round of tests is that they do, it's an EEG. And so they bring you into the hospital. You're there for about a week. And so they, the, the goal is to induce seizures. So they sleep deprive you, they take you off your meds and they want to really induce and see where this activity is coming from. So the thing is, I have that video and it's when I, first time I watched it, it was pretty like, wow, just made me realize why people were staring at me. When I was doing this and in the video, I, I, I do the same, clap my hands all the time.

But one time I have a grand mall and I was just like, whoa, you know, it's just, it's just scary to see yourself in that situation. Yeah. Especially if you don't know that you're doing, you know what I mean? It's one thing if you're conscious and being like, this is fucked up. It's another thing if you're completely blacked out when it's happening. Yeah. So we did that testing and then this is when it got kind of weird. Again, it goes back to my whole thing about a practice is, you know, after the EG, they said, okay, now the next phase is that they put a grid directly on your brain. So they have now determined the section of the brain where the seizures are coming from. So they go in, cut you open.

They put this grid on your brain, you know, put your skull back on, wrap you up and you go through all this testing again. So I went through all that and then they came back and said, um, unfortunately the section is bigger than what we thought. We need to, we need to go back in and put a bigger graph on your brain. And I remember when they left, you know, I'm talking to my parents are there and the girlfriend. I'm like, do these guys even know what they're doing? So back in for another seven hour surgery. So then it comes out and we do all the testing again. And then they come back and said, okay, the activity is in the temporal and the parietal region. So two sections of your brain. Unfortunately, um, the most successful surgeries is, is like my sister's friend is when you can remove the section.

So she had it in the temporal region that identified it. It didn't affect any of her left sides, any memory, speech, any of that. So they could go and remove it. So with mine, it's in two sections. So they couldn't do that. So they said, we want to do this surgery is called MST. It's called multiple subpeel transactions. And so what they wanted to do is go into the sections that we're having activities. And they put these little slits into the brain to hopefully lessen the amount of seizures that I was having. So I was doing this could be sometimes one, two times a day. It could be up to five times a day. It could, it could last a couple seconds. It could last 15 seconds. So that was the hope.

Um, you know, my parents and the girlfriend talked to the doctors, um, and I, you know, about worst case scenarios and what can happen. You know, they said, of course, bleeding on the brain. Um, the seizures may still always come back. Um, the other thing was memory loss, you know, could be long-term, could be short-term. And that's where, that's where the title comes from. Be there when I return. Um, because when I went in for the surgery and then I came out, um, in ICU, I remember just seeing three blurry objects in front of me and off to the right. And I noticed one was the girlfriend and I reached up and kissed her hand and waved to my parents and then went back to sleep. And the next day, and when they came to visit, we started talking and they told me exactly what had happened with that.

And they said they got very emotional because when the doctor said short-term memory loss, they were worried that I might not remember them when I came out of it. So that's kind of be there when I return. And, and also during the seizures, the girlfriend was always there to protect me in bad situations. So it's kind of be there when I returned from the, the seizures. Um, the, the thing with the, the surgery is again, it was meant to hopefully lessen the seizures, never eliminate. Um, also it was the first time they had performed that surgery at UCLA and three months after surgery, knock on some wood somewhere. So I've been seizure free since 1998. Holy shit, man. That's fantastic. So good for their practice.

And I guess, right. Well, the thing is, uh, there's a doctor that wrote an article. Uh, I saw it online and talking about the surgery and in bold letters, she puts this surgery is not meant to eliminate seizures. It's like a, an add on that will help if they do something else. And I, she hasn't responded, but I, I said, Oh, we need to talk. I said, I had it and I haven't had a seizure since 98. Um, I've met neurosurgeons when I'm doing these epilepsy events. And one was, was funny because the, the wife was the neurologist and she comes over and we're talking and the husband's worth her. And she goes, what type of surgery? And I tell her and the husband is perplexed. And he's like, cause I've never heard of that.

And she goes, yeah, I don't do that anymore. Really? Well, yeah. Cause it's, they're using implants. Now they do these devices. They're trying lasers, but, but mine was never meant to eliminate seizures. Wow. That's impressive, man. All right. So stay, you know, whatever stage, whatever of your life, right. You got to that one. You got through it. I'm sure there was brutal recovery in general. When did, when did you say, fuck it? I'm going to, I'm going, I'm going to move the family. Cause it was like around 41. Cause so when did that, what age? 37. 37. So then a couple of years of recovery and then around 41, you said, fuck this. I'm going to go, I'm going to go to California or wherever. So move to Seattle.

Yeah. Seattle. What, what happened there? Like, what was that? Like, did you go back to bartending or what? No, no, no, no, no, no. No. So, um, so what had happened is after three, four months, I'm doing checkups with the doctors. Everything's fine. And, um, the girlfriend and I, we're like, you know, we're not getting a younger. I want a baby. I love kids. She wants a baby. And we asked the doctors, is this an issue? You know? And he says, no, everything's fine. You know, we didn't expect this, but boom, she got pregnant right away. So here I am bartending at night. She was working at the cheesecake factory at night in Redondo beach. How do you have a child with both people working at night?

Um, you don't. So it goes back to what my dad always told me, get the degree. You never know. I never thought I would ever use it. Um, and just, I started thinking, oh, what do I want to do? You know, I like sales. Bartenders are some of the best salespeople. Um, so I started looking at the LA times, you know, or maybe go work in a restaurant as a daytime manager. I had no clue. And after about a month, I just got so frustrated and I've been playing golf since shit, eight years old. Uh, when I was at the hard rock, there was four of us that used to go out all the time and play. And over the years lost contact with these guys. And then one day a buddy and I went up to Griffin Park in LA to go play golf.

We went, we checked in, we're walking out the big double doors open. I hold the door and three guys come in. The last guy was one of my bartending buddies who I used to play golf with. I hadn't seen in years. And so I'm like, Calvin, man, Hey, what's up? And we start talking and the other two guys went up and paid and we're talking and I'm like, you still bartending? He goes, no, no, no, no. He goes, cause I'm a recruiter. I mean, I do nothing about this. I go from like the army. Then what do you mean a recruiter? He goes, no, no, no, no. For tech companies in Silicon Valley. I'm like, what? He goes, yeah, those two guys, it's just five of us. Those two guys, they go find the clients and me and these other two guys, we find the candidates.

I'm like, all right, you know, after three brain surgeries and not making money and having a hard time keeping a job as a, you know, we so far in debt, you know, over 40, 50 grand. It was crazy. I just needed to make money. I'm like, do you make any money doing this? And he's like, I'm going to make a hundred grand this year. I was like, holy shit. Fast forward about three, four months later, I joined this little company. My wife, the girlfriend slash wife thought it was crazy. It was 10, 10, 99, a hundred percent commission. No, nothing, you know? And she's like, what are you doing? I'm like, I don't know. I, I kind of think I can do this. Well, bartenders are basically a hundred percent commission too, almost.

I mean, you're not making, right? So what's the difference? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, you, you work in good places. You can make good money, you know, you know, and you got your days free and it's, but what I tell people, the, the bartending gig, especially if you're in a busy area, you know, LA, New York, San Francisco, places where you're making good money, you blink and you're, you're going to be doing it for 20 years and then you're stuck. So you got to remember, this is like the end of 98, beginning of 99, when things were popping in the dot.com was popping and I was like, whoa, you know, so it was cool. I almost made a hundred grand. Things were just going really well. And then all of a sudden, as we know, it burst.

And so the place shut down and I didn't know, you know, do it. Is this still going to exist? Are these, there's still going to be recruiters or what am I going to do now? And then again, we have a little girl was born. So my wife grew up in LA and I had been there for over 15 years and I really wasn't excited about bringing up a little girl in LA after everything I'd seen. So again, she grew up in LA when she was 18, still living at home. Her parents moved to Wenatchee, Washington with her 10 year old sister. So Wenatchee is two and a half hours East of Seattle. And over all the years, more and more family members had migrated to Seattle. You know, the grandparents, the cousins, all these other.

So she said, what about moving to Seattle? I knew nothing about, the only thing I knew it rained every day. That's all I knew. So at this time you have to realize, I think there was three to four cheesecake factories at this time. So the owner, David Overton had comes into the local ones all the time because he lived in LA. So she got to know him and he always told her, you know, you're a great, great employee. If you ever need anything, let me know. So she called him and said, Hey, I'm thinking about, we're thinking about moving to Seattle. I saw that you just opened up a store in Seattle. I want to get back into bookkeeping. That was what she had done in a previous life. And he said, Oh, he goes, yeah, come, come to Seattle train.

He said, after the first of the year, we're going to open up a new cheesecake in Bellevue, which is right across the water. She goes, perfect. So she gets off the phone, tells me, she goes, okay, I got a job. Your turn now. You know, I'm like, great. So same thing. Started looking around just one day on Dice. I see an ad for this company called Triad Group and it was in Bellevue. And I remember she was sleeping and I was like, Bellevue, isn't that, is that where the cheesecake's going to be? So she was sleeping. I woke her up and I go, Hey, quick, quick. I go, where's that new cheesecake? She goes, Bellevue. I'm like, Oh, this place is in Bellevue. You know, I applied, fast forward, I get hired and we more or less just make the move and go, okay, let's, let's make this work.

And so that's, that's how we kind of, you know, just decided that we got to make this work and I got to make this work. And Triad was another recruiting firm, right? Correct. That was a recruiting. It was a bigger firm and they had been there since the eighties. So I was like, wow, they're still open. Yeah. Shit. They're still open. When I went to interview, they had like eight, nine people there and it was a good, I was like, Oh, okay. Okay. Talk to me a little bit about your risk profile. So, and when I say that a couple of different things, like how you make decisions, right? Cause there are, I always say for, for me, I'm not like the ultimate risk taker. Like I'm not the entrepreneur. And I also try to educate people.

People say, I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to join a startup. That's not being an entrepreneur. The entrepreneur is the one who says, fuck it. I'm putting my credit. You know, I'm going to live in my parents' space. I'm not that guy. I'm a calculated risk taker where there has to be at least a, you know, a couple of pieces in place for me to make the move. But I'm curious before the, the surgery and after the surgery, did you have a different risk profile as far as the types of risks you were willing to take, or did it stay the same? And how do you, how do you look at making decisions now, right? Is there a process you go through to say, this is risky, but right. I'm going to do it. Cause joining a company, bartending risky, um, joining a company with a hundred percent commission risky, right?

So talk to me a little bit about how you make decisions, how you look at risk and did it change with the, um, with the surgery? Well, I would say age, not really the surgery is more of the age. I, um, I still have buddies who I grew up with that still live in the Bay area and have never left and will never leave. And I've always, I don't want to, you want to call it a risk taker, whatever, but I just moved to LA, boom, I'm out of here, you know, and a buddy helped me move. And, and he was like, wow, that's, that's pretty ballsy. And I'm like, I got to go for it. You know, then, you know, the move to Seattle, it was like, okay, what are my other options? It's like, stay here. I don't have a job here.

She has a job. Let's just go for it. So a lot of it is, you know, when you start hitting your forties, uh, I didn't have lots of options, you know? And so I had to make it work. Um, and just, you know, being a sales guy, you'll understand this, but my first year there, I didn't make a deal all of 2002, nothing. And so we were living off, we were living off credit cards and her, I think she was making $25 an hour. It's a cheesecake, living in an apartment with a little girl, just getting deeper, living off credit cards. Um, thinking about going back into bartending cause nothing was working. Um, but I was just blessed that I had a, uh, an owner who my, my office was next to his since I was the lowest man on the totem pole.

Cause we had a beautiful office in Bellevue and the, the billers all had beautiful views, uh, uh, from the high rise. I did not. And I was, had this little office next to the owner so he could, you know, watch me and listen. He tabs on you. Yeah. And so we, we had our, you know, end of the year meeting and here I am zero on the only one, a big zero for the whole year. You know, when I left in the morning, I told my wife, I was like, I'm going to get like, I mean, no, I'm going to let go because the owner had sent out an email a couple of days before talking about the reviews and said, um, this is a sales organization. If you don't perform, you will be removed. And I'm thinking, what else do you need to say?

You know, that's it. You know, so I remember walking down the hallway and trying to position this, that, Hey, things are getting better. You know, I had people that were going to get offers, but this happened, you know, I just need some luck or what have you. And I did my spiel and he just listened to them. It was his turn and I was waiting, you know, for the, the hammer to drop. And he just said, uh, I think you're going to be very good at this. I'm like, what? Really? What? Because I listened to you of producing no results and the CEO comes, what the fuck did he see in you? That was, I mean, most people wouldn't even come close to even giving you that long with zero results in sales. Exactly.

Exactly. He just said, I listened to you on the phone. He says your personnel, everything. He says, he goes, yes, I know you had a couple of deals that should have gone, but they didn't. And he says, I just think you're going to do very well. Wow. And so 2003, mid January, I did my first little deal and then all hell broke loose. People out there, I'm sure you remember Calidus software. This was in early 2003 and, and nobody was hiring. I mean, the market still was tough. Brutal. And I remember it well. So I heard that they were looking for a, to replace their VP of marketing. So I just reached out to the CEO and nice email. I, I think I spent two days on the subject line. It's like, okay, I got to get this right.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, he reached out and he said, uh, we talked and, and I just talked about the different executives. I had placed it at companies like broad vision was a big account. When I worked with this company in LA, I placed a VP, pulled them out of Oracle and put them over there. And he said, I'd like you to work on it. Boom. I placed the SVP of marketing. And then the head of HR had called and said, um, Hey, great hire. Cause you just place executives. And I'm like, uh, no. I said, what do you need? And she started rattling off all the jobs. Oh shit. And it was like three senior directors of biz dev. Yeah. Marketing role, all this. And I was like, and so in July, we said July, I placed seven people and three in one day.

Wow. And then it just, just catapult. Yeah. What? So let's go back to that year that you weren't. Cause, cause I, I got it. I guarantee you there are sales reps listening to this right now who are just like, why the fuck am I in this profession? This market is brutal. AI is screwing every corner. Every decision's taken 10 times longer. And they're probably genuinely considering quitting this profession, like getting out of it. So what was your, for that year was, were you like, Oh, that's just bad luck or I suck or like what the fuck? Like what, again, probably all of the above, but what were some of the things that helped you get through those shitty times? Because sales is one of those professions where it does take a while.

Usually it takes a while to kick into gear, but then once it kicks into gear, it's an incredible career. But so many people get out so fast because the first year or two are just like, fuck this. I can't do this. And I can't pay my money. It's demoralizing. I'm stressed every day. So walk us through a little bit about the mentality that you use or what you, how you got through that shit, um, out of, you know, to, to get to that point. Well, again, it was the age is like, I, I got to make this work. I mean, I, I went interviewed with a couple of different bars in the, uh, Bellevue, Seattle area. I was thinking, well, maybe I'll do that just cause we needed money. I mean, again, we're living off her, whatever, 20 bucks an hour.

And I'm like, I, you know, I, the, the, all the voices, as you could imagine, started coming in my head is now you have to remember when I, when I first got into recruiting, it was just, the place in LA, it was just finding candidates. It was not opening up clients. So it was just that one piece. Now I, I kind of fibbed a bit in my interview process with the owner at triad group, because triad was a full desk, meaning you go find the clients and you find the candidates. I'd never done it, but I told him I did. So, you know, I started, the voices were coming into my head going, what made you think you've never done this? What made you think you could do this? You know, just every possible thing in my head.

But I just decided that, okay, you know, I'm just going to first in the office, last in, I told my wife, I said, I'm just going to, this is it. You know, I got to make this work because it's not like, oh, I'm in my twenties. If it doesn't work, I got 30 more years or whatever. It's like, I got to make this work. You got like, yeah, it's just so that you, whatever you want to back against the wall, anything like that is, is I just had to say, okay, you know, there's going to be the ups and the downs. And I learned early when I was working at that recruiting firm in LA of the mindset of just being neutral. Never, never, never get too high, never get too low. Oh, cause there was this one, one guy again.

This is when this was like, uh, late 99, early 2000, when things were popping and they hired a new recruiter. And this young guy came in, same thing, never done this before in the first three months, he closed the senior director deal, like a $40,000 fee. And it was on a Friday and we all went, it was, went down a third street promenade. We're all celebrating and he's just so excited. We're like, dude, congrats. And come back Monday morning and we're getting in there, looking at our email. And all of a sudden you hear, fuck. We're like, whoa, whoa, what, what shows the email. The candidate changed her mind. Ah, so he went from here and just crashed. Two lessons on that. So I like the, the never let the highs get too high and lows get too low.

But the other one is never, ever celebrate until the check is in the fucking bank. I can't tell. I used to have like, when I negotiate, there's this give, get scorecard that we do. And one of the things I used to put on there was verbal agreement, right? Cause you want to, Hey, I got a verbal agreement, right? I took that off so many years ago because I can't tell you how many times I've had somebody look me in the eye, shake my hand and say, John, send me that contract and we're doing this. Right. And then, holy shit. You know, I go and I do the same thing. High five, buy drinks for everybody at the bar. And then two days later I come back and sorry, we're not going to do this. Like fuck. Yeah.

It's funny because, you know, it was probably, I don't know. 10, 12, 15, maybe years ago. I started doing this little, my celebration was like, this is say you were the candidate and you accepted and you accepted everything's done. You sent it in. You say, I'm starting on November 18th. And I'm like, cool, cool. That's it. You know, all of a sudden, December 18th, I'll ping it. Hey, John, man, how was the first day? Oh, it's great. I'm like, all right. All right. There you go. Checks due, net 30. You know, all of a sudden, the owner's like, checks in. I'm like, there it is. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and other people in the office would do the reverse. They put it up on the board and they're getting all excited.

I'm like, don't do it, man. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't get all excited yet. You know, don't go celebrate. And even in that July month, when I broke all the company records, placed in seven people and the owner wanted to do this big celebration. And I just told him, I go, no, no. He goes, people need to hear about what happened. I said, okay, but just make it low key. And I was just low key. And I told people, I said, you know, this is great. Yes, these are on the board, but nothing's done yet. So, you know, this is great, but I'm not celebrating yet. That's awesome. So now you got your own firm. I do want to ask you about recruiting right now because it is really interesting out there. And especially with AI, I got to imagine this is such a shit show right now because, you know, the joke I make, because I have a buddy who's been out of work for a while helping him get a job and I asked him about where he is on AI and, you know, I'm like, dude, you got to level up here.

But because he was like, oh, well, I'm using it to update my resume. I'm like, oh my God. I'm like, that's the most rudimentary. But what I see is you have companies using AI to create job descriptions. You then have sales reps using AI to optimize their resume to meet the exact standards of that job description. Then you have AI reviewing the resumes that are optimized for the job description to then figure it out. So I don't understand how every resume isn't like the perfect resume for every job and therefore how the fuck do. So I guess my main question is, is right now is as a candidate, like if you are out there looking, right, let's take it from both sides, but let's to the candidate side of the house first.

Like how in the world and obviously networking and who, you know, and all those things are huge parts of this, but like, what, what do you do right now? If you're just looking at this sea of shit and you've been submitting your resume a hundred times over the past month, which I think is a fool's errand, like, what do you do to differentiate at this point? It's, you know, I want to always try to be that, you know, half glass full person. I'm trying. But, you know, but yeah, it's, but in my business, yeah, in my business, I mean, daily I'm getting resumes, you know, we just whacked this. I got some buddies at Amazon, they ping me, you know, two in the morning, they got a text job eliminated, not even a call, not even an email, a text.

But, you know, it's, it's been this way for the last few years. Last year was the same way. If I always tell people, if you're looking for a job, there's, there's different steps. So the very first step is you notice a couple jobs and you have to think ABM, it's got to be ABM thoughts, meaning you can need to target. So if I'm working at a, a MarTech company, we'll just say target MarTech companies. Okay. Don't go target hardware companies, security, beat it. Don't send them, don't even waste your fucking time sending them resumes, but target companies when they see where you work, they're going to know, you know, the product, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the message, you know, what people want to hear, what they don't, you know, the players, you know, everything, and then reach out to the hiring manager on LinkedIn or try to get an intro.

The very last thing you want to do is some, just throw resumes out there. And it's, it's tough because a lot of people have been heads down, just working, working, selling, selling, selling, and then now they're coming up for air and they've been laid off and they really haven't expanded their network. And it's, it's tough, but I try to give advice of that, of just go to your power, whatever your power is, you know, I would rather you send five resumes a week to companies that know where you work. There's some connection. You have some sort of referral in that someone you worked with knows somebody there, but, but don't just send out a hundred resumes and go, okay, that was a good day. Let's see what happens.

It ain't gonna, I mean. It's the same to prospecting these days, right? Don't load up a hundred accounts and just blast off some sequences. And then go play golf and just wait and see, you know, those, I mean, that was, you know, if you've been doing sales long enough and you were at a great company, that's, that's how you wrote it sometimes. You know, you're like this, I'm taking orders. I might at a company whose product sells itself and you blast it out and you're just doing stuff and you're like, oh shit. Oh shit. Another one, another meeting, another meeting. But that's why it's completely different. That's why like, I, you know, I have a whole keynote that talks about age of, um, it's called age of the agile sales org, but it actually, I positioned 2010 to 2022 as the golden age of sales.

And I sell, I tell people like, I'm sorry, like, I don't mean offense here, but if you got into tech sales after 2010, it hasn't been that hard. Like we were basically order takers for, for 12 years, you know, and COVID made it even worse because it was like, like if you were at zoom, if you were at zoom or like those, I mean, you, that wasn't selling. That was pure order taking. Order taking. Yeah. And now I was going to say 20, yeah, I was going to say 2021 was by far the craziest year in my life as a recruit. It was just out of control. I made the most money I've ever made in 2020. Oh yeah. And that's the thing. If you didn't, if you can't sit back and say, I made million X amount, whatever you're unfortunately you're at the wrong company or you weren't doing something right.

Um, yeah, because I was getting reached out for companies. One company got over 200 million and a seed in a and a B in one year and just went crazy. And I remember telling the CMO, I'm like, dude, you're the revenue doesn't support this. He goes, oh no, we'll be good. Just throwing out titles. And, and, you know, it used to be, if you were a hiring manager, I'd say, John, so what are we looking for a base range? And he'd give me a range, you know, I'd ask him, he goes, I just want the best person. And I'd send that, send this person in for a director of demand, Jen, I said, well, they're looking for, you know, two 40 base. He goes, okay. I'm like, shit, I should have asked for two 70 base, but it was like, they had all this money.

So they just grow, spend, grow, spend. And, and then of course we saw what happened and everyone got laid off and a company I mentioned got acquired for really nothing. And, and so, yeah, if you, well, that's again, the whole, you know, glass half full is, you know, if you're a sophomore in high school or a sophomore in college and you want to get in the sales, I mean, I used to get buddies of mine SDR roles just like that years ago. You know, I'd ping an SDR man. How many? Oh God, I'm looking for five and five or six, you know, newbies. It would be sink or swim, you know, whoever did well, moved up the other. Now it's, you know, as the years to come, how many are they going to be hiring right out of college?

And then the other problem is there's going to be people, you know, looking that have experience. So you have the, the, the person right out of college and you have this other person with two, three years experience as an SDR knows the product, you know, and starts talking about how they use AI and how they use Salesforce and HubSpot. And the other one's like, what's HubSpot? What is that? And I'm good. I'm the man. I don't want to train. I want, you know, if it was you, it's like, John, boom, you're hired, get in there, kill it instead of Debbie. I don't want to train Debbie on all this. I don't have time. Yeah. That's why I'm, I'm genuinely concerned. Well, I mean, look, there's going to be different opportunities that come up, obviously.

And the other part of the, the, the beauty of AI is if you're curious enough, if, if you're creative enough, you can create a life without having to go into the corporate world at all. Like you, you absolutely, there's 50 options of how to make money. You just got to be good at like, figure it out. Right. But if you go into the corporate world, like it is, it is not the same game as when you and I got into this and, and it's a churn and burn because, because AI is genuinely doing my, my biggest concern with all of this, and you see it probably more than I do, is that you and I, you know, I'm, I'm creeping up on 50 now. Right. And, um, you know, all that shit work that you and I did right in the early days, right out of school, like you did the bartender stuff, but it was like all the stuff that we did in our early years.

It was like, it sucked, but it put us in a position where we can have this conversation. I don't have to use a script. I don't have to use a template for anything. I I'm thoughtful with my approach because I have context. I have grit. I have all those things that were developed at that early age, but now that AI is doing pretty much anything that an entry, especially an entry level, like it's doing anything that anybody can do, but, but especially at the entry level, it's doing it so much faster, so much better than any kid out of college ever could that my, my fear is, you know, the questions I keep asking are one is, you know, where, where do the fundamentals come from or like what, but more importantly, what are the fundamentals anymore?

And I, and I don't know the answer to that. Now I do think that again, for the small percentage that are curious enough, it's a superpower because you can actually use it to improve your business acumen, learn about a business like faster than anybody else. And I, but the vast majority of people are just lazy and they just use it as kind of an answer engine. Like write me an email, help me pick my resume. And those people are just fucking done. Like you have to be intellectually curious. You have to have business acumen. You have to have, you know, all these different pieces to leverage this shit. It's going to run you over. Yeah. No, I remember when I first started doing the recruiting and I mean, we're talking old school.

So what this company did is they bought mailing lists, company employee directories. And so we, the owner would just split it up between us and Bob Smith. I just call Oracle. Hey Bob, you know? And so I just did that for a bit and I'm like, I just started thinking more and go, okay, I got to do something different. And so I came up with this idea as what my, my, so I had this little playbook that I would do is say if it was you and you're at Oracle and I don't know if you're in the Redwood Shores office, you could be anywhere. So I would call and I'm like, John, Hey, are you in the Bay area? I'm like, yeah. I'm like, cool. Where did you grow up in the Bay area? And you would go, yeah, yeah. I go, where'd you go to high school?

Oh, I went here. And I'm like, dude, I went here. And then all of a sudden like this. So I had to think of ways instead of just going, hi, John, my name's Michael, executive recruiter. But, and so I was trying to find ways to just pull people together and just build these relationships. And I mean, I had some funny ones. So for people in listening in San Francisco, you'll get this. So I went to St. Ignatius, which is, is one of the schools in the, in the city and in the sports world, like Sacred Heart and Reardon, those are the arch rivals in the city. And so I had conversations sometimes with people that when I'd asked them where they went to high school, I remember one guy goes, yeah, yeah, I went to Reardon.

I said, oh man, I can't talk to you. And then all of a sudden he's like, what, did you go to SI? I'm like, yeah. I'm like, oh man, we just started. So boom, I built a rapport there. But, you know, like you said, are people getting lazy now because they're going on AI and go, hey, you know, write me a, write me a pitch to use for this instead of being creative. Yeah. Or even, even understanding it. You know what I mean? Like, fine. It'll give me some free, like insanely good pitch deck, whatever it is. But do I understand it? Do I, do I understand? Like, so when I present it, if I get asked that second layer, third layer question, like how deep can I go? And if you can't these days, I don't understand the point of you.

Like, I don't understand the point of the human when I can just go into ChatGPT and find that out myself. Find it. No, I know. And so I actually just wrote for the newsletter, for my newsletter coming up in a couple, probably not this weekend, next weekend. I, I went from being like, oh, sales reps don't need to know a lot. They just need to be the quarterback. Right. They don't need to go deep. Then I'm like, holy shit. No, now with AI, they need to go deep because they, they need to be able to answer the questions. But then I started to realize that one of the biggest things that I do with my training and I'm noticing the value that I bring, it's not necessarily the content that I'm delivering them.

It's how I'm showing them how I'm using AI to augment certain parts of it. And I see literally light bulbs go off like, holy shit. And it tells me that there are like the vast majority of people are still in the dark ages when it comes to AI. And I think that's a massive opportunity for sales reps. So now, for instance, if I'm a 22 year old kid, I'm going to create my own custom GBT with all my customer company information on it, whatever. And Michael, if I'm selling to you and you ask me a question that I don't know, instead of being like, um, let me get back to you or let me go get my engineer or whatever it is and wait a week, I'll be like, Hey, you know what? Let's screen share here. Let me, I'm going to open up my internal GPT and let's, let's talk this through.

Let's figure out what, uh, and kind of showing learning out loud as a way to engage. And to me, I think that's a huge opportunity to show your creativity, your value, your ability to figure shit out without necessarily having to know the answer. Right? No, no, it's lots of value. Lots of value. Um, the other thing is as I just placed marketers, executive marketers, senior directors, and it's still, I'm, I'm blown away when someone sends me a resume and they don't have those two magic letters on the resume. And they're like, they're like, what do you think? I'm like, you, you, we got to put AI somewhere. I mean, you, you can't, I said, you got to put it on your LinkedIn. You got to put it on your resume.

Uh, one of the first questions, you know, and it's, it's a trickle down, you know, you have board members grilling CEOs about what's our strategy, what's our strategy. And then in turn, if they're looking for a VP of marketing right out of the box, it's not like, wow, you were at X, Y, Z software. That's great. It's like, what's your AI strategy? What are you doing? What are you using? And if, if you can't give a, a good answer, it's like, nope, next. Nope. Next. Yeah. Awesome. Well, I think it's just going to keep getting more and more interesting, but in the interest of time, I think we're going to tie things up here, Michael. And, and we didn't even really talk to in too much detail about your book.

So I want you to mention the book, um, be there when I return, wherever you get it. And then there it is. Uh, and then where else they can find out more information about you and what you're working on these days. Yeah. LinkedIn's the best. Just Michael King at LinkedIn, uh, King recruiting. It usually pops up the website, uh, for the book is Michael T King. Dot com. Believe it or not, Michael King was taken. I don't know how it's not a common name. Um, so I had to throw the middle initial in there. Um, you know, but, uh, that's the best two ways. And LinkedIn, I've been sharing a lot of the, uh, the recruiter side and then also, um, just personal stuff. Yeah. I saw the, uh, I saw the last podcast you went on.

They screwed up with AI. Oh God, that was hilarious. Oh my God. I was giving him a hard time. He's like, oh, I'm like, yeah. They just threw it in AI and go, here's the, this, and the producer, you're not an evangelist. You know, church ministry where, I mean, he must've just somehow said that I went to St. Mary's college. So they must've said, oh, ministry. I'm like, oh, but yeah, I mean, that's the other, but that's the problem, you know, with some marketing teams is because everything is do more with less. So this poor marketers got this huge list of things they're doing, they're pumping it and they don't go and review it. Cause they got to get all this shit done. And then when he sent that to me, the producer was all excited and I'm like, oh, and I sent it to the, you know, my buddy, I'm like, who is this?

He's like, oh my God, let me fix it. And I'm like, oh my God. Awesome, man. Well, I promise I'll, like I tell people all the time, like let the tech do all the heavy lifting, but be the last mile. Be the one who just sees it before it goes out the door. Please don't just copy and paste it. No, no, no, no. Fine, no, I don't. Well, Michael, thank you so much for coming on the show, man. I really appreciate it. Oh man, thanks. It was a blast. Yeah. We could have went on for hours, man. Yeah, totally. So awesome. Well, everybody hopefully enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. And like I say, at the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today because no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went, if you make somebody smile today, you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now.

So thank you all very much. And I will see you on the other side. Hey everyone. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. With your support and our incredible guests, we're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now. And I can't thank you enough. Now to keep the momentum going, it would mean the world to me if you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network. Also, I am super excited to be launching my new newsletter where I'll be sharing everything I know and everything I'm learning along the way while I'm out there selling every day just like you. Go to jbarrows.com slash newsletter to sign up today.

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