Hey everybody welcome back to another recruiting conversations it’s your host Richard Milligan. Thank you for joining us today and when I say us I mean I’m the only person here in studio, it’s me, myself, and I, and man are those three a powerhouse today? I don’t know, if I don’t believe it who will believe it right? So I’m coming to you to share a framework that I talk a lot about in my coaching, and this framework is where I like to begin everyone in my coaching, that wants to improve the recruiting efforts. I’m choosing my words carefully here because this particular framework is very it’s intangible for example in when I give people a new phone script, that’s very tangible, you can see the words on a piece of paper you can memorize the words on piece of paper, you can speak those words when you’re on the phone with someone, you can measure how many people were setting a meeting with you before you use the phone script that I give you and you can measure how many people are setting an appointment with you, I’m using the phone script that I gave you after you got it, right? So it’s very tangible. I can draw a straight line from here’s where I was setting 17% appointment rates with the number of people I’m speaking to, to 35% employment rates right it’s very tangible. This component here is intangible to some degree until you get to a place where you have it. The terminology I use is called passion zone. So I’m always challenged, challenging myself as much as I’m challenging other people are you operating in your passion zone. I have found that there’s three components to this passion zone that if you are willing to work towards getting clarity in three areas and you’ll work towards being able to communicate clearly to people in three areas that you’ll move into the passion zone. So, that’s what I want to talk to you today is like how do we get to this place called passion zone because this is the most important feature to a recruiting leader. It’s the most important function to every leader, it’s the most important component in your recruiting system, and the reason why I say that that’s you know something might some when I say Milligan’s being a drama king, when you might call me a drama queen but drama king, and and the truth is that I can’t overemphasize the importance of this. I just literally I believe this I can’t overemphasize the importance of figuring out where your passion zone is because this is where you create influence, this is where you inspire people to change and as a recruiting leader that’s or about. The only way we grow is if we can inspire someone to change and this passion zone is directly correlating to your ability to have someone who says they’re happy where they’re at, or their status by where they’re at make this enormous decision to move from where they are being content to moving to align with you, and I know I’ve said this from time to time we don’t, we underestimate the amount of things that change when we ask people to move from one company to the next. We underestimate it, it’s everything it’s you know I remember moving from one company the next and having to have the conversation with my wife about our pediatrician was going to have to change and when you have four kids that’s a big deal you’re you know just when you start looking at some of the health benefits or perhaps the lack of health benefits do you take one single piece of information like that and it’s a big change not talking not even talking about like moving the system and the process around everything that you do in the office, and everyone that you interact with the office is enormous. So if I’m going to inspire someone to leave where they’re happy to go to another place it will not come through the lens of your opportunity improvement offer. Get this, if you’re calling people today and you’re saying are you open to new opportunity or would you be willing to look at a new opportunity, you’re missing the boat on the passion zone. You’re literally missing it, that’s the opportunity improvement offer and those will always exist at any moment when anyone wants to make a move, anyone wants to make a change, you can find someone the whole frame something up in a way that makes it sound like it’s better than where you are to move you towards that, but that’s the that’s a small motivator, I don’t care if it’s more money it’s a small motivator your recent survey I saw is that 95 percent of people today said they would choose culture over compensation. I’m not making this up, there’s a large study that that people today would choose culture over compensation.
Well what is culture well I think culture comes down to the immediate leader that you report to or that you’re under and how they present the organization how they lead with the tagline of leader inside the organization, that’s culture. So let’s, let’s break this, down this passion zone if I want this and I call the passions on kind of the it factor like if I said like that person has “it” like we all kind of come to a place where we’re like yeah kind of, kind the know what you’re talking about Milligan, it’s like you know they’re really enthusiastic, lots of energy, great communicators, but there’s a long list of things here that we could say about this individual that has this “it factor”, and I think like I could give you my entire recruiting system that I teach and look I spent three hours yesterday with someone who’s a head of recruiting for a large organization, building out a recruiting blueprint and that blueprint is going to make a significant difference in the winds of this organization has as they move to execute on that, but if there’s if there’s one thing that will move the number of hires that you make most, it is having leaders who recruit that are operating inside the passion zone that can communicate that with clarity.
So let’s break this down I wanna make this as simple as possible and of course I don’t want this to be like a two-hour podcast I could talk about this for hours, I could literally and I do I hold events where I talk about this for sometimes three and four hours, and break this down and get people to a place where they actually have the “it factor” the passion zone factor. Now operating their favors so let’s talk about the three major components because I think we’re looking for a bull’s eye here, okay? There’s a big circle in the middle here I tell you what I hadn’t planned on doing this but here’s what I will do on my website recruitingconversations.com, I’m going to drop a very little probably a 12 page presentation that will actually give you a visual of what I’m talking about here because we’re talking about bull’s eye, passion zone if factor but in that there’s these three things that kind of overlap that bull’s eye component, okay? and so I’m gonna put that recruitingconversations.com/it, how’s that? I hadn’t planned to do that we will do that so recruitingconversations.com/IT. It we’re going to upload a presentation there are PDF that you can download that will give you some additional insight into this let’s talk about those three things first you need to know why, you do what you do that’s pretty simplistic you need to know why okay now how I define why is this purpose cause or belief that inspires you to become more, that inspires you to be more, like this is this is a for me was a huge turning point in my life I go back to 2007 and in 2007 I’ve been the mortgage industry for about five years and for those of you that can reflect back to like 2007, 2008, 2009 it’s hard to believe that 2007 has been 12 almost 13 years ago, but I can reflect back those moments I was in growth mode inside my mortgage business and I’d taken a lot of risk to get to the next stage of my mortgage business and I had just taken that risk. I just signed leases on facilities to do five year leases to do entire build outs, I was in growth mode, and there’s that statement you don’t know, what you don’t know, until you know it. Well that was true about me, and I didn’t know it until it was too late, and I’d taken this enormous financial risk and what was coming at me pretty quickly being in the mortgage industry was a lot of pain. I had to recreate myself my business model was broken, and so in the recreating myself and getting from one revenue stream or one book of business to the other revenue stream in the other book of business it was painful, and for those of you that know a portion of my story look I grew up I’m incredibly poor, and you know when I left home one of the things I said is that I’ll never go back to that. I mean remember missing meals eating saltine crackers, and powdered milk for breakfast, you know being evicted from homes having homes that were ultimately just taken from us, and having to move and downsize enormously and just all these things that created confusion as I was a kid and looking back on those some of them I didn’t realize that what they were at the time I just know was change and change and there was a lack of and a lack of and when I left home at the age of 19 I just said I’m never gonna live like that and so 2007 rolls around at the time I’ve got a five-year-old son Ethan, I’ve got a newborn Gavin and I’m looking failure for the first time in my life straight in the face, and there’s no way around it it’s only through it. And I can tell you in that season like there were times where I actually asked the question to myself, like is this even worth living for, and I think some of those components played into the fact that I’d made a promise to myself I’m never going to get here, and in 2007 we lost our house, we lost our cars, to the large degree I lost my I would say dignity but honestly I lost my pride, and that was a valley to me in that season to get to where I am today is that I lost my pride, but I would’ve told you this season was dignity, because to go through that to fail publicly in front of your family and your friends and a community because I position myself and a leadership role to walk through that failure. I got ultimate clarity on my why, and I remember waking up in the mornings and thinking to myself like today’s just not worth living. I’m gonna walk through hard conversations all day long. we have to walk through a season of recreating myself and I’m not even sure I want to do that, and in that season Leah and I were married had been married for almost 10 years, Ethan’s five, Gavin’s newborn, I looked in the face of those three human beings and said “that’s my why”. They are my cause they are my purpose and my belief was that like they need me like I’ve been called to provide to have a role in the three of their life and that inspired me to become more in that season and because it wasn’t about money any longer, it wasn’t about success it wasn’t about like what people thought of me, it wasn’t about any of that. What it was about was about them and so I did it for Leah, I did it for Gavin and did it for Ethan, I did it for the three of them and that clarity in my why actually inspired me to go through that season and to become more. You got to know why you do what you do it and it doesn’t necessarily have to be your family, okay? Sometimes I think where we get to a place of comfort we get to place of convenience we’re like hey we’ve made it we’ve arrived financially we’re safe, right family’s good, like you know things in my world are going well I’m going to place a leadership of my organization, sometimes you have to create a large or why, a larger purpose, a larger cause, a larger belief that inspires you to become more look we’re doing it I’m doing it right now inside my own organization I’m I’m talking to someone an individual in Uganda that has a orphanage that’s an individual that was born and raised in poverty in Uganda that now has 60 children under the care of what they are calling their orphanage, they have little to zero funding to go from day to day, week to week, month to month for food for clothing for schooling for some basic needs and so I’m calling bringing myself into a larger why today, this larger purpose cause our belief that’s going to inspire me to become more clarity on your why is where you’re going to start with.
This this the second component to this is going to be clarity around your core value system. Now the core value system is like it’s these guiding principles that dictate our choices and our behavior and I’ll say that again it’s our guiding principles, that dictate our choices and our behaviors these are not words that we speak, these are things that we do. Too many people say there’s something and then don’t live that out and that’s a problem and it’s a short-term runway for anyone who says they are something and then behaviorally doesn’t live that out it’s a short-term runway at oh it’s a failing model because we as human beings figure that out over a season and that individual and that business will fail and doesn’t mean that they can’t right the ship I mean look there been times where I haven’t operated in in alignment with what I said my core values where I’ve made those mistakes but where you’re clear on this and you’re living this out this comes to some of the attractive leader framework that I’ve talked about before on this podcast the attractive leader represents three things clear vision, clear value system, someone who can clearly communicate that, articulate that, and someone who lives and acts and alignment with it that’s an attractive leader and we all want to work for that person, okay? That attractive leader has clarity around their core value system and they’re living them out this is an overlap of that “it” it’s an overlap of that passion zone you’ve got to have this you’ve got to be able to communicate that communicate this and when you do, then people will move towards you that are like-minded, this is a connection for people moved quickly towards you that are like-minded, for example I just shared my large or why it’s still my larger why today. Now, that Why’s grown I now have four kids two kids and Leah I’ve been married for going on 21 years not just about ten. So you know without that wise actually grown but it’s the why the core value system communicating those components.
Then the third part of this is going to be your vision now we’ve talked about vision from time to time on this podcast but let me give you a definition of vision, vision to me is this it’s a clear roadmap to where you want to go. That’s really it like when I started this organization in 2017, I said in 2027, in that year in the tenth year we want to impact 10,000, recruiting leaders now let me explain a component of that which was this I clearly understood what vision was I don’t know that a lot of people clearly understand what vision is. A lot of people see vision almost like a goal like hey and to some degree there’s some truth in that okay like the goal is like I’m not there but it’s somewhere where I want to be right I think it’s more than that though because it’s easy for me to look at next year and say okay we impacted X number of recruiting leaders we want to impact 30 percent more so X is this one of the things I love to do, is I love to go to old languages okay go to Latin go to Hebrew, go to Greek, go to an old language and get the get the definition or the word usage for some of these words that we’re talking about to get a clearer definer or a clearer idea of what that word actually means. So, I’ll give you a perfect example status quo now when I say status quo you would say oh I’m content oh I’m satisfied right status quo that to me a lot of that’s connected, but they were status quo and in Latin means mess we’re in so on the recruiting side when I hear someone say I’m content I’m satisfied, right? I mean I look at surveys a lot of times they use that word satisfied in surveys when they’re surveying you know in trees and so let’s say what’s the satisfaction rating, okay? What I know is that there’s a big difference in being very satisfied or very happy and just being content,and so I would dare say most people would tell you I mean most people if I look at their lives where they say I’m happy where I’m at they’re actually in a mess it’s a mess that they’re in right they’re lacking good leadership, they’re lacking clear direction they’re lacking someone who’s actually providing some accountability you know this motivation inspiration to get them to where they want to get they’re lacking a clear path a clear roadmap and so they’re kind of an a mess because they could be more they could become more, let’s use this vision in this example here, okay?
The word vision in Hebrew is the same as dream, okay? think about this, how many of us have just taken our vision and reduced our vision to a goal. Like I go back to 2017, and I said 10 years from now I’m going to impact 10,000 recruiting leaders in that single year. That was an enormous dream. I hadn’t even coached one person. I’ve never launched a podcast I hit haven’t hadn’t written a boo, hadn’t posted the thousand plus times, and you know LinkedIn along social media. I didn’t even have like ultimate clarity around like moving from like an eight-week coaching program to a 12-week coaching program to you know there were a lot of things I lacked ultimate clarity on but I just dreamed and I and I began to think like, look if I impact a hundred people in the next year, what could it look like in year two and what could look like in your five and your seven year 10 and exponentially as I continue to improve and grow and provide resources to people what could it look like. It was a enormous dream to get there I think vision done best is dreaming look we’ll get to 10,000 you come back here ten years from now or now it’s eight years from now eight years last week. Come back eight years from now. I can assure you that we will get there and the reason why is I’m clear on why I’m doing this, I’m clear on my value system, that I have wrapped up in this I’m clear on the vision of how we’re not just going to what we’re going to accomplish this roadmap but what I would like to achieve but I’m clear on how we’re going to get there and look the vision statement around the 10,000 recruiting leaders in 2027, that’s one part of that I. need clarity of the things around that, so I’ll give you a perfect example here’s a vision that I could just speak out loud and it’s a very simple vision, but if you’re the mortgage industry this will make a lot of sense to you, a simple vision could be we want to become the lender of choice for real estate agents in the markets that we serve simplistic vision. we want to become the lender choice for real estate agents in the markets that we serve that’s really clear, okay? Now I gotta like I’m focused on realtor’s I’m focused on becoming the lender a choice right I’m focused on only the markets that we serve, okay? there’s a lot of clarity around that vision now but I’m gonna go beyond that and I’m going to actually create a clear roadmap to that, what does that mean? well then that might mean that we say as part of this vision we’re going to develop a real estate agent a state-of-the-art real estate agent training center in every market that we serve and then we’re going to hold monthly trainings there for real estate agents in the three areas, right? Might be personal development it might be business development business planning and it might be whatever the third component is, okay? But we’re gonna have a state-of-the-art facility in every market to educate and train real estate agents to becoming the best and then our objective here is that every one of our loan officers would get continuing education certified so that we can become that lender a choice, and then we’re going to also every single year bring in one of the top real estate agent coaches to speak in our market and we’re going to have one quarterly synergy event, every year we’re gonna have a monthly training event. We’re gonna invite every real estate agent, in the market that we’re in, to those events, I can take that very simple vision we will become the lender choice for real estate agents the markets, that we serve and I can create a clear roadmap to what I want to achieve, okay? If you will get. this if you will work towards this. if you work towards getting clarity on your why and that means like peeling the layers of you back you’re an onion peel the layers back like ultimately white continue to challenge why, continue to challenge why that, why that. why that. to get back to a place well you could make a statement like me,, I remember when I was 19 years of age and I made a promise to myself that I would never go back to that, I can connect the dots to my why on being 19 years of age leaving home having $50 to my name driving a thousand miles to get to a college where I didn’t know ultimately anybody to start a new life. I can draw a straight line from where I am today to that moment and the emotion that moment the commitment that I made to myself and where I want to be in the future, my why, my passion, me my passion zone is there you start there pillar layers back figure out why you do what you do figure out what are your top three or four core values and I would limit that to your two top three or four because you got to be able to communicate, this clearly okay any more than three or four gets very difficult to communicate, you have more core values than that yes but what are the top guiding principles okay around the core values that you have that that are pieces that dictate how you decide and how you behave and then your vision the clear roadmap you have to have this and here’s what will happen, here’s how here’s how I define the passion zone, what will happen is you’ll move to this place, this place where this emotional you’ll have this emotional space that will grip you it will motivate you it will light your imagination on fire it will define you. It will define you you will be so enthusiastic and you’ll be able to with clarity communicate, to the individuals you get in front of, why you’re so energized, why you’re so alive and look that is transferable where someone says I’m satisfied but they’re lacking a leader who’s in the passion zone and you show up I want to align with you. That’s just a true statement we want to align with people like that. I know I do it’s how we’ve been designed as human beings is that we actually want to operate from a place where we’re aligned with people that have a clear why of what they’re doing, we want to align with people that have clear core values that we also believe in. We want to go somewhere bigger than where we are today and the vision that you cast for the three-year five-year ten-year window of time is going to be this adventure that you’re inviting people into to go do something more and I honestly believe that inside every single human being there is a desire, if you can light that desire on fire there is a desire where people actually want to be more, people actually want to be a part of something bigger than they currently are I think, that’s there this is worth fighting fo, as a recruiting leader this is worth fighting for. So here’s what I’m going to do to help you on the journey I will upload a presentation that will be about 10 to 12 pages long that will have some visuals here for you to look at challenge this as we move towards 2020 one of the things I love about 2020 is, that it’s connected to vision 2020 vision, okay? You’ve got to have a vision going into 2020. You got to have clarity around your core values and you’ve got to understand the larger piece of why you do what you do and when you get there you’ll be in this space where you will be on fire okay it will literally define you people leave a meeting from you and say they have it I won’t necessarily define it but they’ll understand that you have it and I think most people want to align with a leader that have that it factor. Because they realize it will propel them forward it will move them into the future into places that they want to be as well.
So there you have it we talked about passion zone today I’ll leave you with this we’re working on we’ve got a project in place I teased it last week on the podcast where we are going to have something available that will most likely include a closed Facebook group, where leaders like yourself where we have several thousand leaders right now that are downloading and listening to this podcast where they can actually engage with each other inspire each other, share ideas with each other, we’ll have an opportunity for you here over the next month I’m hopeful in the next couple of weeks to provide you some more information around that, so I’ll continue to tease this information come back next week, we’ll have another recruiting conversations podcast for you and until then everybody have a great week
