Noob School - Building the Perfect Team with Lee Kester

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

Today on Noob School we're joined by Lee Kester, founder and CEO of Kester Search Group - a Greenville-based healthcare executive search firm with diversified knowledge about the healthcare industry. Lee recounts the start of his entrepreneurial career, leading up to where he is today, while giving great advice for anyone in the sales world along the way. Check out what the Noob School website has to offer: https://SchoolForNoobs.com I'm going to be sharing my secrets on all my social channels, but if you want them all at your fingertips, start with my book, Sales for Noobs: https://amzn.to/3tiaxsL Subscribe to our newsletter today: https://bit.ly/3Ned5kL #noobschool #salestraining #sales #training #entrepreneur #salestips #salesadvice

New School. All right, welcome back to Noob School. John Sterling here. Today I've got an old friend, Lee Kester. Welcome, Lee. Good to see you, John. Yeah, man. Lee has a super successful placement firm,

executive placement firm or sales placement firm called Kester Executive Search Group or Search Group. Kester Search Group. And one of the things I love about it is it's in a great space. We're in Greenville, South Carolina. It's a great city to be working in, and he's focused on the medical community. So just people who want to sell to medical, right? Yes, so basically it's interesting. So we're headquartered in Greenville, but we work nationwide.

Okay, okay. We've got clients all across the country, anywhere from venture capital-backed startups, up to Fortune 500s. And we're helping them with sales and marketing roles and leadership roles for these, and they're all healthcare companies. They're selling some sort of product, service, or software, two hospitals, doctors offices, dental offices. Okay, great, right. Well, I'm super happy for you.

I know we met both went to the same training class, like 10 years ago or something? How long ago was it? Yeah, it's been a long time. It's crazy how time goes. I've been a few kids since then. I remember I still use it. You were the first one to invite me to a walking meeting,

which was fantastic, and now I do it with my team. Good. If I don't have to take a lot of notes, I say, let's go walk down Main Street. Right, right. And, you know, there's no phones. Exactly. Yeah.

So you really, I agree. I agree. I like a walk a meeting. Well, let's back up at the beginning because one of the things I liked the podcast to be about is where people like you that are successful, where you started, and the steps you took to get where you are today. And also what sales lessons we can learn along the way. Where did you do something good in sales? Where did you make an error?

Absolutely. And just pass it on to the next group. So I know, are you from Greenville? Yes, so I'm probably one of the, one of the few remaining locals. I'm from Greenville. I went to Greenville High and loved it here. But it wasn't as cool of a city back then. That's true.

That's true. I was kind of wanting to get out of town and got in the University of Georgia, had a few older mentors that went down and visited and really loved it. I wanted to do something different. So I was actually an international affairs major from UGA, graduated from there. And then my first kind of four-way into helping people and recruiting and customer-facing was I ran the Visor's Center for UGA. So that was really fascinating. I didn't even realize why I liked it so much because you met prospective parents and students and learned a little bit about what they were looking for in a university experience. And you would tailor your tour based on that.

So that was my first recruiting slash sales job. I worked there all through college. All through college. Wow, I bet you met a lot of people that way, too. It was fascinating. Yeah, it was kind of always new people coming in, hearing their stories, and that's kind of been a theme, I think, throughout my career. And then I actually worked, you know, so I saved up money and then graduated,

had a few friends of mine. We all kind of worked jobs and piled away as much extra cash as we could as we wanted to travel. And so after college, ended up buying a student travel association ticket and did the backpacking, working odd jobs. I actually did around the work. world trip. Nice. So that was amazing.

And just learned all about different cultures, different people, kind of, you know, grew up a little bit. Yeah. Came back from that trip and realized, okay, I was out of money. Time to go to work. And so my first job was with a large national search firm called System 1 Search. So back up for a second. Yep.

I have two questions. I don't know any other college person, particularly at Georgia, who saves money. I know. How did you do that? You know, it's funny, but I think I got exposed to the possibilities of traveling different countries in my major. My parents are also big travelers. So I knew, like, I mean, from freshman year on that I wanted to travel at graduation. You needed a certain amount of money.

How much did you save up for the trip? You know, I think I piled away maybe $5,000, which is a lot of money. That's a bank roll for a, that's great. And then did you get an around the world plane ticket? And so it was one of those deals where you had to be within a year. year of graduating college. Yeah. And he had to take all the worst flights at the worst times.

And, you know, you had to keep going in one direction. Right. But I got to go all through Europe, through Turkey, India, China, Japan, Thailand, and just really did a lot of growing up, a lot of learning. Did you have a travel buddy? So I had different travel buddies throughout the time. But we did it, you know, the bunk rooms, right? You know, 20 people in a room, 15 bucks a night kind of places.

And something you can only do in your 22, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But it was, I had to, I think my, I knew I had to get that out of my system. Well, in my book, I don't know if you've read it or not, but I recommend that for everyone coming out of college. And whether you do it before college or during college or right after college, but a year around the world, working odd jobs, particularly if you know you want to be in a certain

field to try to get the odd jobs or internships in that field in different countries. Well, said. Imagine how strong that would be. be when you finally are interviewing for a job and you're like, I've worked four times in this field in different countries. Yeah, that's well said. Yeah, they would never, they would never hear that. So I love the idea and I do think that safety is important.

You know, people should have trouble bodies and, you know, keep your head on a swivel. But, boy, I think particularly for Americans, it's important to get out there and see what the world looks like. It's a very humbling experience. Yeah. It's a big world. It doesn't, you know, the universe doesn't. spin around yourself or even the United States for that matter.

Right. And so that was a great. And I had an older brother that he was seven years older. And so he kind of said, you know, hey, once you start that career trajectory and you get married, you have children, it's really hard to hit pause and go do that again.

You can hardly do a guy's weekend. Yeah, I can hardly get away for a Thursday to Sunday anymore, right? I've got three little ones now. Yeah. So yeah. And so then so I came back and I realized, okay,

you know, hey, had, you know, $57 to my name and it's time to go to work. And so my first professional job was with this large national search firm. Funny enough, was really, they've been around for 50 years, they had offices all around the country, and they really were started when the whole idea of talent acquisition and recruiting was started. So, I mean, we're talking mid-70s, corporations couldn't find enough talent

for the roles they needed. And so it was a great place to learn. Now, how did you decide to go to work for them? It was a great question. So I started interviewing everywhere. And I think I just, something about the psychology of making the match between the client and the candidate. Yeah. And health care.

I'm fascinated by health care. Yeah. And, you know, hey, I was 22 and needed a job, right? And so that combination, I realized that, hey, this is, this is something I may want to take a shot at. Well, is it, is it too much of a stretch to say it's kind of like the work you did at the University of Georgia where you were matching up the tour to the people? Very similar. Yeah. I think it's that idea of uncovering, uncovering someone's kind of goals and motivations,

whether trying to accomplish and if you've got the right solution for it, then great. And if you don't, that's okay too, right? And so during that time was really interesting. I got short version, but I got to be a recruiter, senior recruiter, business developer, trainer, manager of a team. I did a lot at a young age. And so at about 28, 29 years old, there was a lot of partnership buyouts and changes. I realized, hey, if I've ever a strikeout on my own and doing something entrepreneurial, this might be the time to do it. There's just a lot of changes happening.

And so I started my own firm in April of 2013. So we just celebrated our 10-year anniversary. Okay, so you were almost 30? Yes, I was 29 when I started. Wow. Good for you. Yep. Good for you.

Thank you. By the way, by the way, I tell people a lot of times when they ask me, how can I become one of these people who's, you know, let's say really business successful on my own business. I'll often tell them, you know, if you can figure out a good match for you, what you kind of like, what industry you want to be in, what you did, and work at it really hard for 10 years, get pretty good at it, you'll be 30 years old. That's accurate. Yeah. And then, you know, you got to get your resources together and plan, then you can start on your own somehow, maybe with partners. And then I say you've got about 20 years of work. And then you turn 50 and you're an overnight success.

That's exactly right. Right? And that's what happens time after time, overnight success. And there's a lot of people who try to do it in two years and it doesn't work or people who never think it's the right time. And of course, that doesn't work. But I think you're right on a good pace. And that's great advice, I think absolutely.

And people have asked me all the time. And so you really don't want to start a business into, you have some domain expertise in that field and you have some maturity and have some business and don't start a business if you think it's going to be less work. Yeah. I think that's a big advice always would be because whatever functional job it is, if you're in accounting, engineering, recruiting, like you have to do your functional job and then you have to run the business with taxes and accounting and finance and legal and HR.

And I think that's what people don't realize is you got the 40 hours of the normal job and then another 40 hours of running the business until you can hire people to help you. Right. And so, you know, I was at 29, you know, young, dumb, and hungry, and I didn't know any better. So I'm glad I did it at that age what I did. Yeah, well, I think it's a good, a good trajectory. So you must be about 40 now. So I'm 39.

Okay, yeah, so it's been 10 more years. Okay. Well, when you're 49, there it is. Absolutely. Yeah. So, okay, keep going on. You asked about sales, maybe some lessons. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I would say, you know, a couple things, and, you know, on our walking meeting, you and and I really kind of hash through this point and it's served us extremely well throughout my entire time as this concept of the monkeys poll and so in our in our business we'll call it a retainer or an engagement fee but some sort of upfront money to show a mutual accountability and there's some skin in the game there's some good communication and we found that to be a huge differentiator when we run the numbers a couple years worth of data I mean we're talking you know 93% success rate with a engagement fee or retainer and maybe only 50% without. So dramatic numbers.

And it benefits for our business, but also the client. The client wants to hire us to meet a need, which is to find a quality person. So it's a win-win all around. So just back it up a second to make sure people understand what you're saying. You're saying you want to make sure your prospects, your good prospects, as you propose to them, you're going to work together. They pay you something, a retainer, to. engage your company?

On that specific search, so we do it, we do it where it's a specific search. They may say, hey, Lee, we'd like some help on a vice president of sales based out of Texas to run our $50 million business. And we say, that'd be great. You know, for that particular search, we need a third of the estimated fee up front. And then you're going to get our best attention and resources and engagement. And let's have good communication. Let's have a weekly cadence.

Let's work this to fruition. And if, and I'll say, I'll be the prospect. And if we don't find someone, do we get our money back? So what we say is we'll deliver, and this is unique to us, so the large retained firms will get the money no matter what happens. But us being a little more of a boutique firm, we'd say, hey, John, we're going to have to deliver at least three candidates that you accept an interview to have earned that third. Okay.

So that way you don't feel like, hey, we're just going to take your money. And so that's a big thing. And I think that's been a huge thing. That and then we call it an exclusive. I mean, we're the only search firm assigned that particular assignment for a 30, 45-day period. So we're not in a jumpball situation against other firms. That's been huge. And then, you know, it sounds crazy, but some companies try to hire a third-party executive search from

and don't let them talk to the hire manager. Yeah, they have to go straight through HR. Oh, my gosh. And so we've realized, you know, we've got to, if you're, if you're doing a VP of sales search and reports to the CEO, you've got to talk to the CEO. Yeah. And so that those three things, I think, have been huge for our business, you know, engagement fees retainers.

That's part of the, that's part of equal business stature, right? Correct. We're not going to get pawned off on the HR guy. We're going to talk to the boss. And we'll play nice. We'll work with HR. We'll play nice.

We'll copy them in. And it's all part. It's great. Yeah. But we've also got to hear it directly from the hire manager. So let's go into the Monkees Paul a little bit because that's one of the things. You and I both learned we were in that training together with our wonderful teacher, Walker, right?

Teacher Walker, well, still my favorite teacher. So long story short, I can't even make it short, but a monkey's paw goes back to the Navy, right, when they would have to throw those huge ropes off of a ship to put them on the cleats. Well, no one can hold those ropes. I mean, they're like a zillion pounds, so they put a little tiny ball with a little string on it, and then the string gets bigger and bigger and bigger to a rope and eventually it's a big old rope. So they throw the ball off, tie that on and just slowly start. to pull the rope.

I didn't know that background. That's fascinating. My dad was an officer in the Navy, so I need to make that connection. They call it a monkey's paw or a monkey's fist. And so that's where it comes from. So the idea is you can't just take that rope and throw it off the side. It'll kill somebody. You throw that little ball out there that's connected to the big rope.

So in your case, instead of saying, hey, I need 100 grand, you know, want our commission up front, you know, and they're going to say, wait, wait, wait, and there's going to be a fight. you say, we want a small piece of it up front. That's right. We just want a partial commitment. Yep. So we're kind of in this together. That's correct.

And, you know, the guy said, well, I don't want to pay anything. I'm like, well, Craig's list is available, sir. That's exactly right. It's free. You should just use that if you want. It's funny. I mean, we hear it all the time. We see it and we hear it from our clients.

You know, they'll post a job on Indeed or a career builder or LinkedIn. And they may get 380, 400 applicants and only. a couple are worth an interview, right? So you're talking about 99.7% of the random applicants aren't worth interviewing, so they waste a lot of time. Waste a lot of time. Yeah. And you'd asked about maybe some things we've done wrong in sales right over the years.

I think the couple things I've learned, if you want to stay as more of a boutique, lean and mean smaller firm, if you're not going to the large corporate route, which we're now, we're still privately held team of 14. So still kind of lean and mean is we found that we, is not worked well if we've gone if we've gone to work with two larger companies or to a small

of companies and so you got issues on either side so i kind of got um you know i kind of got um excited about some really large brand names early in my career work my tail off and really those are some of the took so much so much effort and resources and so little return because they're the big boys um and then on the flip side sometimes we're not the right fit for maybe a firm that's only a company is only doing a million of revenue. They're not ready to pay a search fee. They don't really have their commercial plan mapped out. So we've learned not to go too big or too small.

So that's been a lesson learned as a small business. And I think the other thing is we had this, which I'd love to get your advice on this, but we hired a director of business development last year that didn't work out. And I'll take responsibility for that. I think what I missed, we interviewed him, great guy, did all the interviews well. But what we missed was he was really comfortable and really good at a short sales cycle. And we're in a complex, long professional services sales cycle. And that was the wrong match.

So if that same person, if our business was a short sales cycle, I think he would have done fantastic. And so that's something that I think there's some things that would be very helpful for you that I've learned over the years is there's the hunter sales rep and the farmer sales rep. And then there's the long complex sales cycle and the short sales cycle. and if you put the wrong, you could have a great person, you put them in the wrong role, they're going to fail. Yeah, I agree. Totally agree. That's the right seat on the bus, right?

Yep. What was that book? Good to grade. That was probably one of my favorite books. Favorite book? Yeah. It's one of my favorite business books, that's for sure. Yeah.

What kind of, like, personality profiling test do you recommend? Yeah, that's a good question. And we get that a lot. So for a long time there for sales, there was a company called Divine that everybody was using. Remember that, yeah. And I think they got bought by a private equity group and kind of put out of business. I'm not sure the whole story.

There's a group here in town that we do some work with, Amplos, which is great. And they do the pro scan. So their test, that's been pretty good. Outmatch is another company that does sales assessments. But I think there's different options if you're hiring a leader versus a sales professional. But everybody, I always say with the personality test or assessments, it's just another tool in the process. we recommend to our clients, don't let it be more than 15% of your decision making. Just another data point.

Yeah. Yeah. Do you ever recruit for people that are just coming out of college? Great question. So we don't, and the reason why is I think they, you know, if they're going to pay us a fee, they want some previous experience. So we like, we do, we have a Kickstarter program at our firm that really is just to help people with their resumes, interview tips, LinkedIn profile.

file. But for the new right out of school, I'd recommend it's their own network and then it's a lot of the campus recruiting, right? That's a good way when you're graduating. But for Kester Search Street, really for our firm, we've got one division that's retained executive search for C-suite, GM, present, VP level. And that's a longer process. That might be a 60-90-day process. And then we do a lot of just sales and marketing roles, commercial expansions. There may be a company that got FDA approvals, ready to launch a product. And they say, hey, Lee, we need 25 sales reps the next 90 days. And so because we have a bigger team,

we can kind of handle those larger projects. So that's kind of our firm's niche. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of recruiters to do right out of college just because the companies can find them on their own. Yeah. They can find them on their own, but I've found in my coaching world

that they just, they don't. They don't as much as I would like them to. Very often, you know, the easy way out is just that whatever comes in. That's right. You know, wherever comes in, through the portal, through the internet, through whatever Indeed.

And I'm telling you, I generally would say I wouldn't hire one of them. Just without even seeing the resumes, I wouldn't hire them. Unless I know where they're coming from or they know Lee or something. That's interesting. So I have a crazy idea for you. But with all your success, you go by yourself a medical distribution company. All right. Hire the people out of college that are perfect fits.

Train them up for a year or two. And then put their resumes out there to your recruiter. you just sell them out there. Right. I know. You know, so you're kind of growing your own little field of people.

I know. It's not a bad idea. There's just, there's just interest in school called medical sales college. Yeah, if you've heard of that, that does a lot of that.

You know, it's fascinating about, I love Greenville. I'm from Greenville. You know, love the city. But it's funny, we don't get a lot of

Greenville searches because we're dealing with these larger national companies. You know, in the southeast, we're getting a lot of the openings will be in Atlanta, Charlotte,

Nashville, unfortunately. But I like it. I think there's a lot to be said for, I think there's a real gap in today's world of people willing to train, coach, mentor. Our model has been kind of catching people. Maybe it's their second job since college. And we really coach them and train them up. It's really quite interesting.

The corporations, they want them plug and play. There's little to no training. What's they get there? They want people that got the five years experience at Pfizer or whatever. Exactly. Yeah. You know Peter Barth? I know the name, but I don't know.

So Peter, Peter had a company that did tech investments in Greenville a while back. Couldn't find enough coders. Interesting. Okay. And started a coding school. It became the biggest coding school in the world. That's amazing. So maybe your medical training school can do the same thing.

I like it. Yeah. He was on the podcast recently. Okay. Okay. What about chat, GPT, BARD, any of those things affecting your business? It's been fascinating, right? I would say the intellectual curiosity just for myself playing around with it.

It's been interesting. The piece, I think, is going to happen. We've already seen a little bit is the ability for them for an internal. So sometimes our competitor is an internal recruiting team at a company. And so for them to be able to ask a system like that and populate a list of target companies in a similar field where before you needed the industry knowledge. So I think a lot of the sourcing side of like, who do we go after? Who's this pool of 100 candidates for the opening?

Now, I still believe there's an art form in the engagement of the person, building relationships, understanding their career goals and career wounds. So that piece is going to be hard to automate. But just the research side I found, what used to be, hey, I know this because I've got to 10 years in the field, that's become a level playing field where people can, ask the questions of chat GPT and Bard and kind of get that knowledge at the fingertips.

Now, can they actually apply it? They have the skill set built over time to apply it as the, I don't believe so. Yeah, I'm finding it fascinating too. I'm having a good time with it. It's amazing. We're living through another very important part of the technology revolution.

I mean, the phone, the internet, the PC, I mean, this is one of those things. That's exactly right. It's crazy. What is, well, maybe we've talked about it, your favorite book? Yes, I was going to talk about good to grade. I love to get the right people on the bus, and especially as a young entrepreneur, I didn't,

you know, I didn't really know what all the roles were I needed. I didn't know kind of what was the right personality and background for each role. And so I focused early in my career running my own business. I'd recommend this to anybody. I'm just going to try to find really good people. hardworking, high integrity, coachable people, and then we'll work together to figure out where to put them. And so that's the right guy, got the right people on the bus.

And then I figured out which seats to put them in, which is the good to great concept. I love that. And then that kind of level five leadership that comes out of that, right, of just this unwavering commitment to excellence, but to do it with humility, I think is what I found is a rare thing anymore. And what I respect in a CEO or a leader is just, we're going to be great. but I'm going to do it without being cocky, right? Right.

You know who I think besides yourself, another level five leaders, our mayor, I think Knoxville is a level five leader. He's just quietly effective. Oh, I mean, just for years and years, right? Year after year. And it's just you look at how amazing our city is and all the businesses and all the thriving economic. I mean, when I was an 18-year-old, I had no plans to come back to Greenville, right?

It was a totally different city. Yeah, right. Get out. And now, like, I couldn't imagine, you know, living anywhere else. Yeah. everyone's moving here. That's one of my favorite books, too. Yeah.

Love that book. What about favorite band? You know, I think lately it's definitely been a little Morgan Wylan. I can't get enough Morgan Wollett. So that's been good. If you ask me, I've got two daughters. So I've got an eight-year-old son and then a six-year-old daughter and a three-year-old daughter. They're all into Taylor Swift, of course, the daughter.

So that's just always playing in my house now. My daughter's 27, and she's a complete Swifty. I mean, she watches the Kansas City games now. That's what a Swifty series. Oh, yeah. That's funny. And one day, one day she says, like, well, Dad, is Taylor, do you think Taylor's a really good singer? Just ask me this question.

I'm like, I'm thinking, oh, my God, what am I supposed to say here? And so I use my sales techniques, but not well enough. I said, I think Taylor is fantastic. And I really respect her as a person and a business person. She's done remarkably well. But we all know that there's better singers out there. And she, I mean, she was so mad at me. She left the, she stomped out of the room.

So, can't rationalize. By all means, don't tell the truth if you don't have to in that situation. That's funny. But, yeah, I am completely proud of Taylor Swift for what she's doing. I mean, she's become the biggest, the biggest scene star all the time. Like the Beatles or something. Bigger than Elvis. Yeah.

It's amazing. It's amazing. I love it. I love it. Okay, favorite movie. Oh, let's see. Favorite movie? Yeah, I definitely, I'd say maybe like I'm a guy that Shawshank Redemption comes on. I've got to watch it every time.

Yeah. You know, especially, you get that random. Maybe you get a little downtime over the holidays and it comes on. I'm going to tune into that. I haven't been watching it with commercials. I know. It's that good. Right?

I probably have it. I have the DVD somewhere, but, you know, I'll just watch it. My wife was out of town the other night, and I'm sitting there for a rare moment alone, and I'm clicking around and Master and Commander came on. Okay, so that might have been before my time. Russell Crow. I don't know. He's on the, you know, he's fighting the pirates.

It's, it's, you all want to check it out. Definitely. Master and Commander is a good one. All right. How about favorite word? Oh, favorite word. That's a hard one. It's probably overused, but passion is definitely one for me.

I think like I have a hard time, you know, I don't mind what it is, but you got to be passionate about something. I kind of have a hard time hiring someone or doing business with someone or recommending someone and recommending someone. recommended someone if they don't have a little bit of fire. So it's that you call it fire, call it passion, but just some some internal aliveness. Yeah. Yeah. I love that.

Passion is good. Fashion is good. And you certainly have it. And, you know, the great thing about your size company is you can, you can hire who you want to. You want to hire just passionate people. You can do that. That's wonderful.

And build a real strong nucleus, a strong flame, you know, to grow from. I'd love to get your take too. It's been, it's interesting. I kind of found that the modern business world a little bit I've recognized over time it's kind of gone, this is good for people thinking about their own careers, right? It's like you almost got to go, you know, small boutique, lean to mean, have some cost containment, keep things reasonable so you can ride through downtown and boomtown. Or you kind of, I've found the large publicly traded companies and my wife works for Abbott's

Fortune 500, stable company, but it's huge. Yeah, just a number. Yeah. But you have a good, stable job, good benefits. Or we found a lot of our clients are these just extremely well-funded companies, right? They've just got something that's really disruptive, really unique, and they've gone out and raised a couple hundred million in capital. And they're going. I found that it's been fascinating since the pandemic, the people who are kind of in between are the ones that seem to be struggling, doing layoffs, hiring, freezing.

It's like, you've got to go really big, really well-funded, or stay lean and mean. That's kind of a new trend, I've found. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if you don't have the big bank roll from private equity or venture capital or whoever, you darn well better stay lean and mean. That's exactly right. Make sure everyone's pulling their weight. So I think I think you're right about that. And I also think it's smart for kids in school to have, even if it's wrong, they need a strategy.

What is my strategy? What is my plan? Yep. And, you know, when someone majors in architecture, that's fairly easy. you to know what their plan's going to be, right? It's just a question of where they're going to live and what size firm. But for people that are more businessy or entrepreneurial salesy, you know, you need to start narrowing down what you want to sell, you know, what you want to do and then start getting that experience. I think that's really well said. It's an important

point, right? Because in the recruiting industry, I've seen tens of thousands of resumes, conducted tens of thousands of interviews. And that's something I didn't really realize younger. is that so you got to work a lot of different jobs, have internships, have coffee meetings, maybe do that gap here. But once you start your professional career, you're going to be interviewed and measured and judged on every move you've made once you start. So from 23 on, let's call it. And so you really got to your point, if you're not going down the, you know, I'm going

to be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, an architect. If you're going to be in business or sales or recruiting, you need a strategy to think, like, I've got to have job stability. I got to be in the right field because I didn't realize until I got into this that your career is like a chess game. Yeah. Each two to three year run of experience sets you up for the next thing. Right, right. Yeah.

And pick a good industry. I mean, you picked a very good one. I was, you know, coming out of school in the mid-80s and I was not a technologist by any means, but I picked technology just because it was red hot. Absolutely. I'm like, I might as well go where the fish are, you know. I've found that to be right now, I think, because people are thinking about it. It's that intersection for us where healthcare meets technology, meets AI, SaaS. That is just absolutely red-hot.

If I could go back, if I was a 22-year-old again, I'd be in that intersection of health care and tech from a sales perspective. That's wonderful. Well, now is when you get to promote anything you want to promote. You can promote Kester or you can promote nonprofit, wherever you like. Yeah, so I'd say, I think for us, you know, we're always, so we work. nationwide. Again, you know, venture capital-back startups up to Fortune 500, executive search, so sales and market roles. But we also would like to do some more stuff locally, right, just being that we're in Greenville. So I think if someone's got a leadership

role for a small to medium-sized company and they, you know, don't have enough qualified candidates, positions staying open too long, they're really just struggling to find the right fit. You know, we'd love to do some more local work, really just because we're here in Greenville, we're headquartered right across from Jones Oyster Company downtown. So for anybody that would like, you know, outsource recruiting services, obviously open to that. And I think the only other thing I'd say is in 2024 at some point, we're probably at a point with our business, we're ready to hire, you know, a director of business development, director of sales. So somebody in professional services, if they had recruiting background, fantastic. But really just a hunter sales rep that can kind of help us take our company to the next level.

Good. Good. Well, I'm thankful you came today. That's a heck of a story. Thank you. think you're playing your cards real well. I think the way you're going about it, including the gap year. I know. Exactly. That made you a more interesting person, you know, to have that experience. So I'm glad things are going well, and maybe we'll have you back in a year or two and just keep

tracking the progress as we go along. That'd be great. We're fortunate enough. We ended up winning the Inc. 5,000 award for one of the fastest privately held companies. And so we did that two years a row and so now the pressure's all right can we keep it can we keep it going the trajectory right so i appreciate that and thanks for having me on it was really good to catch up and thank you buddy appreciate it thank you thank you