B2B Podcasting sat down with Joe Lalgee, Lead recruiter at Hirewell and host of “The Headhunter Hideout”. 
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Learn how any industry leader can become a thought leader Find your niche voice and grow your infuence in your industry Discover how content creation can highlight your expertise Build business relationships through consistent content creation Your podcast can come from your thought leadership expertise
00:00-05:04 | A career in recruting can lead to thought leadership 05:04-13:54 | How to refine your thought leadership for your industry 13:54-19:14 | Learn how content can bring a new perspective to your industry 19:14-24:46 | Content creation can generate relationships for your business 24:46-29:17 | Your thought leadership can be the foundation for a successful podcast 29:17-37:50 | Find the balance between sales and relationship building 37:50-39:06 | Discover how a podcast can create inbound leads for your business
“If you think that you're going to start with everything fully mapped out, you might not start.” - Joel Lalgee “To create content you've got to understand the platform, what the trends are, respect the platform—and then you've got to experiment.” - Joel Lalgee “At the end of the day, marketing is communication.” - Kap Chatfield “LinkedIn content and just content in general turns any outbound that you’re doing from cold to warm.” - Joel Lalgee “You have to enjoy creating content—if you don't, it's super hard to build up an audience that's engaged, because people know if you're doing something you don't enjoy.” - Joel Lalgee “I’m looking at my content as something that I can use to get on people's radar, so as I'm reaching out to them they know who I am.” - Joel Lalgee “Content creation is a journey—as long as you stick to it, and you're committed, it'll refine itself.” - Kap Chatfield “You can actually start with no strategy in the short term and start to develop a strategy as you figure out what's resonating, what's working and what's not working.” - Joel Lalgee “You have to be passionate about meeting new people and learning from them—otherwise, they're not going to feel comfortable and you could ruin business relationships too.” - Joel Lalgee “Don’t approach your content with “what's the ROI?” Maybe the ROI is just the experience of connecting with someone else and you have to be okay with that.” - Joel Lalgee- Rveal’s website: rveal.media
- Rveal’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rvealmedia/
- Rveal’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC69p14R2ccMdyUbbmdlWCEw
Full transcription:
Kap Chatfield 00:20
Hey gang! Welcome back to B2B Podcasting, the show to help B2B CEOs, brand leaders, sales leaders and marketers skip ads and be the show. I'm your host, Kap Chatfield, CEO of Rveal Media. Today we have Joel Lalgee on the show, my man is absolutely crushing it on LinkedIn. So you, I'll make a note to you guys need to follow him on LinkedIn, we'll put his LinkedIn profile in the show notes. But he's a GIF master. And his his main lane is recruiting which is really needed in this time of, you know, American marketplace history. And so he's a lead recruiter at Hirewell, he's also the host of The Headhunter Hideout Show, which is a live show. And that's been a huge flywheel for a lot of their content. And so Joel, couldn't thank you enough to be on the show today, man, thanks for joining us,
Joel Lalgee 01:05
Thanks Kap, appreciate it man. I know we're in the same season of life with newborns. So I feel you when you said, I think we got on this and you're like, man, tired? I'm sort of in the same boat. But I love it man. Good, good to be here.
Kap Chatfield 01:22
Yeah, we got kids with pretty much the same name. Your kids name is Finn, my kid's name is Quinn. That's something that we could, we could like, do a little rock band with them. That's what I was joking around "the Finn Quinn show". But hey, enough about our kids. Man, I'm just I'm really grateful that you could jump on. You, you obviously have a really unique perspective on a lot of things going on in the marketplace in the workplace regarding recruiting. Everybody's hiring, as we were talking about in the pre show call. So why don't you just tell us a little bit about your, your background with recruiting, and also the new company that you're working at?
Joel Lalgee 01:57
Yeah, I'm happy to. So you know, any, anybody you talk to in recruitment will kind of have a similar story is how they got into recruitment, which is typically they fell into recruitment. So like, nobody wakes up one day and says, "I want to be a recruiter." Maybe they do now, I don't know. But you know, back back historically, and pretty much every single person I've ever interviewed in the recruitment space, everybody falls into it. And I am no different. I had a friend that started up a recruitment company up in Milwaukee, which is near my hometown. And he said, "You've got to come join my recruitment company, we're doing something different". Again, I knew nothing about recruitment. So that sounded exciting. But as I've found, everybody says they're doing something different in recruitment, but they weren't, they actually happen to be doing something different in recruitment. So I worked with his company for about five years. And it was great, great experience, got got to consult with a lot of clients, got to work with clients all across the US. They were a remote company in 2015. So they were way, way, way ahead of the curve when it came to remote culture, remote workforce. And and then they had just, like most recruitment agencies, really entrepreneurial culture, and really, really cool experience. So I did about five years doing that. And about a year before I left that company, I got this idea in my head really, from just being on LinkedIn so much. I would, I started kind of browsing the newsfeed, most of my time was spent on LinkedIn recruiter, not the newsfeed but as I started to look at the newsfeed, I just started seeing people talk about this idea of using content to attract clients. And I've never really been that big of a cold caller. You know, I'll do it, because it's part of recruitment. But I thought, you know, what if I can, not cold call, and if I can get people to come to me, candidates and clients, that would be amazing. So I decided to start producing content on LinkedIn, and started literally with just cell phone, really simple selfie videos. And, you know, since then, I know in 2020, I posted over 1000 times on the platform, I've experimented with text copy, with text and copy are the same thing, but text, just images, videos, live shows, done pretty much everything you can on LinkedIn. And and then I got into actually coaching and helping companies with their LinkedIn presence, specifically recruitment companies. Did that for about a year and like you said, I just joined another recruitment firm, it's based in Chicago, last month. And yeah, looking forward to kind of get back into the market, but also leveraging the LinkedIn following that I've built as well. And I'm recruiting recruiters, so it's worked out pretty well. So that's, that's my background. So probably a little lengthy, you can cut down as much as you want.
Kap Chatfield 05:04
No, that's great. I'm loving. I'm loving how you you're leveraging you've, you've leveraged and you continue to leverage LinkedIn as a recruiting tool. And now you're in the position where you're recruiting recruiters. Yeah, I'd love for you to kind of share with us specifically, let's kind of get tactical, the journey of, you know, creating that content. And what was read, did you start creating content for LinkedIn? You have a pretty big following now on LinkedIn, too. But you, when you first started, did you have like a certain thing that you were going after? Did you have this goal in mind? Or was that something that like, truly just evolved, as you started to see who resonated with your content?
Joel Lalgee 05:42
Yeah, I mean, I think it's good to even just take a step back and look at the recruitment industry as a whole and just understand and understand the kind of the atmosphere and environment that I was in. Like, obviously, I know, I know, you've had some guests who are really big in the marketing space, in the B2B marketing space. You will probably not find any recruiters ever for your show outside of outside of me, or there's a handful, a handful of people. And what I mean by that is, the recruitment space is it's about as sales focus as you can get. It is cold calling, it is cold email, cold messages on LinkedIn, it's all outbound. And so even though I was working for a progressive recruitment firm that was do it and it is doing a lot of things that are progressive and is scaling rapidly. When it came to marketing, they were just as far as behind anybody else that I'd seen. So I really didn't have a, I didn't have anybody that I could really look to, to wrote to create a roadmap and go, "Well, this is how you create content on LinkedIn, this is how you create content as a recruiter". Didn't have any mentors, so it literally was, let's let me start emulating what I'm seeing other people do, let me start copying what other people are doing. And figure it out as I go along. And, you know, I mean, I started, like, if I was to go back to my posts, you know, two years ago, I think, you know, I'm fine to say this, it was a lot of kind of like motivational stuff that you would see other people posting, it was a lot of like the short text, you know, motivational stuff that that's just gonna get likes, that's where I started from, because that's what I saw other people doing. And, and over time, it's evolved. And I think it's probably taken me about a year and a half to two years to really start to find my voice and understand even the type of content that I want to produce. And recently, I've really started focusing on just creating relatable content. So you know, I'm, like you said, I'm recruiting recruiters. Now, I've been a recruiter, so I know, like the annoying things, the annoying parts of the job, I know, the parts of the job that recruiters can resonate with. And so I'm really looking at my content as something that I can just use to get on people's radar, you know, so as I'm reaching out to them, they know who I am. And I think, again, when I first started creating content, it was, I was just sharing kind of where I was at and my expertise. But I didn't have a plan. And I think over the last couple years, I've developed a plan for things, I'm clear and what I'm doing. I've got a strategy that works. And but yet the roadmap was pretty much figure it out as you go along, if that makes sense.
Kap Chatfield 08:37
Yeah, I get it. That's it's like anything in business. It's the journey, it kind of like, as long as you stick to it, and you're committed, it'll kind of refine itself. And I love how you, you know, you kind of I love the transparency, too. I think we've all been there as for those who have been doing content creation for a while, you're thinking you're just putting out stuff that you think other people want to see, you're kind of just emulating what's already out there. And it can, it can feel kind of vanilla, as you look back. And it could be genuine when you're first doing it, you know? I think that's there's, you know, you're you're being your truest self, and you're putting out what you care about and what you're thinking. But the more you've become an expert in the area of recruiting, you've really found your voice. And I think what's also kind of cool is you've, something that I've noticed is that when people are trying to find their voice or their message or their narrative that they're that they're gonna communicate, people get really hesitant about making it very laser focused, because they wonder, "Is there really an audience for this? And are people really going to care? And am I going to even have enough material to talk about before I just start kind of like being repetitive?" I'd love for you to talk about that journey of, of picking a very narrow focus and lane for your message and the benefits of actually sticking to that.
Joel Lalgee 09:56
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, within recruitment, I guess you could look at it and go "what uh, you know, what could you really talk about? Or what are the topics you could talk about?" I guess you could talk about job seeking, you could talk about finding a job, you could talk about talent shortages, culture fit. So there's a fair amount that you can talk to going going into it. Just the same with, you know, I think of b2b sales, like how much can you really talk about creating an effective email that's gonna get attention? But I think with social, like, the biggest thing that I've learned is that people have really short memories. So, you know, you can kind of talk about the same things over and over. And if I think about someone like Gary Vee, who's obviously the example that everybody uses, the guy talks about the same thing over and over, it's empathy. It's, you know, "empathy is the secret password to business". He talks about things that he cares about, like trends. NFT's, I guess, is like, huge right now. So I think from that respect, you know, I've been okay with like, with repeating a lot of the same thing. So I'm obviously gonna talk about things like ghosting, I'm gonna talk about culture, I'm gonna talk about the four day work week, I'm gonna talk about how you can attract people. But I think that's part of creating content, as well is if you think that you're going to start with everything fully mapped out, you might not start, so I would just encourage anybody. You know, obviously, you want to have a strategy, and you want to, you want to have a longer term strategy. But I think a lot of times, that longer term strategy will hold you back from actually just doing something in the short term. And what I found is that you can actually start with no strategy in the short term and start to develop a strategy as you figure out what's resonating, what's working, what's not working. And then you can build, you know, a longer term strategy as well, particularly for like entrepreneurs, I think. Because even the whole idea of, "well, what's our brand gonna be?" Like your brand is you a lot of the times, it's your people. And so, you know, I kind of cringe sometimes when I hear particularly smaller companies, like really worried about their brand, it's like, you don't really have a brand at this point. It's like, once you start getting out there, you'll probably figure out like, more what, what we're about? What are we passionate about? Any, and then you learn what resonates with people as well. So, again, that was one of the big struggles with me, just being in the recruitment world and working in a couple of different companies was, they were really quick to say, "well, this is this is off brand, or this, this, this doesn't match, like what our overall company brand is". And I'd sit back and just think guys are three years old and you know, you've got 2000 followers, like I don't know, if you like are necessarily like a brand at this point. So, so yeah, so I think like, like you said, things develop. And I think too, like you just have to be willing to be wrong as well and like just to change things up. And I think this is something which like, particularly on LinkedIn, because that is the main platform I use. But I see the same thing on Twitter, I see the same thing. I got like 14,000 followers on Tiktok, for example. And I've seen people enter into Tik Tok and think that they almost like not respect the platform as well and think that they can just put the same thing out that they're putting on Instagram or LinkedIn and think that it's gonna blow up on on Tik Tok. And to me, it's like, you've really got to understand the platform, you've got to understand what the trends are, you've got to respect the platform. And then you've got to experiment. And you've got to be okay with being wrong and not, not just be committed to the plan, because that's what our plan is. Like, change up the plan, vary, you know, experiment, figure out what works. And, again, I think that that's a massive challenge. And I think the older that we get, the more challenging that becomes as well. Because you just are less likely to think that you're wrong about things.
Kap Chatfield 13:54
Oh, that's true. Got to stay humble. I got to say, you got to continue to be a learner and a listener. I mean, marketing is like, its marketing is really at the end of the day, I'm what I'm discovering it's it's communication. It's just like, you're just communicating with people. And communication is a two way street. If you're just preaching, but never listening. Yeah, it's, it's not gonna take too long before you have nobody to talk to. Because people want to be heard too, right? So it's, you have to be an active listener. You said something about the recruiting industry that I really want to touch back on, because you said that the recruiting industry, you said that you, you yourself might be the only person that I actually end up having on the show that's in the recruiting world because it's such an outbound cold prospecting industry. I want to hear straight from you. How important do you think content needs to be in the recruiting world moving forward?
Joel Lalgee 14:46
But I think it's massive and I'm not the only one. I mean, there's a couple other people too, I would really reference and obviously I didn't know them when I first started. But like I look at someone like Joe Mullings who, if you don't know who he is, check him out. He's in like the met device space and he, I mean, he's like next level. Probably, I would probably say that he's the most, like, the most strategic and refined content creator out of recruiters that there is, but there's other, there's obviously other people like, there's a guy, Adam Posner as well, who he's, he's great. He's got a great podcast as well, he uses his podcast a lot. He's within the marketing space. And, you know, recruits within the marketing space, but yeah, I think, I think the importance of it is, is accountability. And, again, like, what's when you look at like recruiting as a brand, like, if I look at, like, what do people think about recruiters? They're probably on the same level as a car salesmen, which is not good. Like when you think about car salespeople, they're pushy, they want what's in it for them, they don't really care whether or not you're driving away in a safe vehicle, they care about their commission, very similar to recruitment. And that's because the nature of recruiting is shoot super short term. It's extremely lucrative, and it's rate transactional. And so a lot of offices and a lot of companies don't ever scale past 20 people. Because it's, it's a cut, and it's a cutthroat industry as well. And it's like, they, you know, this is just been my experience in the industry. And it's the experience just across the industry, as well. But, you know, like for most recruitment companies, they care about, like, what, what's the week gonna look like? What's the month going to look like? And that's probably about as far as they think. So it's like, what deals do you have? And it's how do we get how do we get the next deal? How do we get the next deal? And I think content, it brings accountability to that. So for example, you know, I'm building I'm building a brand on LinkedIn, if I'm, if I'm talking about not ghosting people, and I'm ghosting people, I'm going to get called out right away. And so I think that's a part of it, accountability. But then I also just think that, like, that's been a really huge shift in the demographic of the workforce, you know? There's a lot of baby boomers retiring right now. And, you know, so you have a lot more millennials, and younger, basically, in decision making responsibilities, and what they care about is different than what the, you know, the baby boomers cared about, and relationships are different as well. You know, historically, recruiters could just probably develop all of their business on the golf course, or like Country Club, or, you know, within like a close network of people. Now, because recruitment, again, has gone remote, you've got younger people entering the workforce. If you think about like a nationwide search, you can't just rely on your like little tight knit network that you know, offline of people. You've got to start looking at ways to scale your reputation online. So is it there's a number of factors. I think the challenges with that, again, from a recruitment ownership perspective, most recruitment owners have been in the in the recruitment game for 20 plus years. And, you know, how do you tell somebody that, how do you how do you tell a recruitment leader that has put all of their kids through college and is driving a Bentley that maybe their their strategy isn't working as well as it once was? You know, how do you start to communicate that in a way to where to where they're willing to change? And from conversations I've had with people who, you know, high up leaders within recruitment organizations, it's a massive challenge, you know? And so what we're seeing now is a lot of like, younger firms and companies that are just more innovative, they're jumping, and understanding and realizing the power of content, and not just like, not just like the classic, "hey, let's just write blog so we can show up in SEO", but like, actually, you know, connecting with people through content. And I think that's what we're gonna see more and more of, and it's not going to slow down. And I think it's gonna be, it's gonna get more and more challenging, if you don't have, you know, if you don't understand how to create digital conversations and create those relationships digitally, digitally.
Kap Chatfield 19:14
I love that comment about connecting with people digitally through content. I've, you know, we talked about it a lot on the show about how content is essentially, its residual relationship building, because you put it out there. It basically works for you while you're sleep, right? Like people can consume your content later and then they can kind of jump on and get to know your story and get to know who you are. I'd love for you to share about how, just by creating content through LinkedIn and through your show, I'd love to kind of talk about that as well. How have you been able to build some strategic relationships, whether recruiting for your business or new business opportunities? Let you kind of like go off on how you've seen that content help you build strategic relationships.
Joel Lalgee 19:57
Yeah, I mean, like, it's It's so funny because, you know, I would watch videos on LinkedIn all the time and people talking about like the inbound leads, and all of that type of stuff. And honestly, like, I would watch a lot of that stuff, and you just kind of, I guess I'm just more of a negative person, naturally. So I'd be like, "okay, that person's obviously, making it up". But I think really over the last year, so it took me about a year because, again, I was starting really from nowhere, I didn't have any online presence, I didn't have any experience with it. But, you know, even even while I was outside of recruitment, I would get leads in for for, you know, recruitment projects. And so I started to develop a network of recruiters, where I basically just became like, almost like a lead magnet for it for them. So that even within itself has just produced a nice revenue, source of that, that's continued. But I think, you know, again, it's like, with, I think, with recruitment with recruiters, and again, I've coached lots and lots and lots of recruiters on this. We have that type of product where it's just all based on on trust, and trust takes a long time time to build. And so the way that I've seen that LinkedIn content and just content in general works is it really, really just turns any outbound that you doing, it turns it from cold to warm. And the reason I say that is because with with, particularly with recruiting, you know, no one is going to DM you and say, "I have four open roles, and I want to pay you $100,000 to fill them". It's just it's kind of unrealistic in a lot of ways for people who are starting out with content. It's not, that's not like, that's not what happens overnight. What happens overnight is, as you start to create content and connect with more people, people just have an awareness of who you are. And then over time, the more content that you have, which is really to the point that I'm getting now is you start to just you, that's when you start to create the inbound leads, because people start to trust you, they start to recognize you, they start to like you. So I would say the only reason I'm saying it like this is because I've seen the fruits of the work that I've put in, it's just taken a long time within this space. But I think like depending on who you are, the ramp up time can be really quick. And so if you're if you're somebody who like offline, has tons of relationships, and you're really well known, and you're reputable, and you're not really you don't really have an online presence, if you start putting effort in your online presence, you can see things happen really quickly. I started from point zero, like nobody knew who I was. Nobody had any idea who I who I was. And now it's to the point where like, my headline is "the best, you know, recruiter to follow on LinkedIn unknown". It's kind of like a joke, but everybody knows me. Like, there's not one, like, when I send out connection requests, like every single one of them, you know, I get gets accepted, because they've seen something that I've done. And I think that's now like, I'm coming in, like, I'd love to actually, I'd love for you to catch up with me in a year and be like, "Okay, where are things now?" Because I think it's just taken, it's taken me, you know, 18 months to two years to really get on that trajectory. So yeah, it's probably not the most encouraging thing that people want to hear. But I think it's sometimes it's helpful just to, especially when, especially if you're just brand new in this stuff, like you just got to be you got to be realistic as well. So again, it starts off with like, more awareness when you when you do an outbound, which is huge. Like, I think people underestimate like, how big that is. Like, you know, like, think about this, like, if I sent 10 if I send an email and somebody got 10 emails sitting in their box, my email stands out because they just know my face, you know? And I said, the best little brand, it's yeah, it says "the best LinkedIn recruiter to follow". You know they're gonna click on my profile and be like, "Who is this guy?" And then they're gonna see oh, 76,000 followers. Oh, this GIF just got 12,000, you know, likes. "This guy's funny, okay, I'll have a conversation with him". And all those other recruiters, even if they're way better than me and they got better opportunities. They're doing nothing to differentiate themselves. So it starts with outbound. And then obviously, you know, I'm starting to see inbound and have been seeing amount for about the last I'd say a year consistently. You know, and that's nice, you know, because then you get to kind of pick and choose who you want to work with. So,
Kap Chatfield 24:46
Dude, that's really cool. Like the whole you know, our motto, as you heard the beginning of this episode, be you know, skip ads be the show. What does it mean to be the show? And like, what you're doing is you're creating demand for, you know, your brand, and people are actually coming to you. They you know, you're putting yourself out there to some degree but like, they're, they're coming to you because you've done such a good job at showing up consistently and bringing that value through your content. And I'm curious like, so does your show The Headhunter Hideout, did that have, how early in your content creation journey did you start that? Was it a recent thing? Or did you do that for a little while? And yeah, love to hear just kind of like the whole genesis of that.
Joel Lalgee 25:31
Yeah. So yes, so I started creating content and then about two months later, I heard about like LinkedIn Live. And basically, you have to apply to get LinkedIn live. And so I was like, "Okay, well, you know, maybe I'll do the application for it". So I did, the application, got denied. And then I just basically realized that it was just a person that's doing the application. So I just, they give you like, they back in the day, they gave you one chance to rebuttal. And I just wrote and just said, "Look, I'm, you know, I'm a little bit crazy. So I'll just apply every single day until you give it to me". And then they gave it to me. So that was about two months, two months in and, and then the first guests that I got with this guy was this guy called Lou Adler. And if you're outside of recruiting, you're not gonna know who he is. But if you go look him up, he's got like, you know, 3 million followers. And I mean, he's like, you know, he's a LinkedIn actual influencer with, you know, with the LinkedIn little logo thing. And he has been training like corporate recruiting teams, for the last like, 40 years. And he's like, he's like an actual legitimate, like, person within the recruitment space. And he had, he had previously presented to the old company I worked with and I had gone through his training program, so I was connected with him. So I could send him a DM I said, "Lou, I'd love to get you on a LinkedIn live". And he said, "I, you know, I'd love to do that". And so I got him on, he was like, my first guest. And
Kap Chatfield 26:56
That's helpful.
Joel Lalgee 26:57
And yeah, anytime you can get a guest that's just well known, it's obviously going to help trying to get other guests. And that has proven true. And, and so yeah, I went into it, like pretty naive. It's a live show so obviously, like, this actually feels kind of like a live show that we're doing. It's got that feel like we haven't like, obviously, like prepped, like, and got massive structure to it. But you know, some podcasts like I've been on, like, the super structured, and they've got the SEC questions they're running through, and it's very ready, it feels very structured. LinkedIn live was like, you know, back in a day, too, I was one of the first people to get it. So it was like, there was like, 300 people on the, you know, the live show, it's my first one. And he just, you know, I should have done some research and kind of looked at his content, but he just basically just start pitching himself and pitching his services, and which is totally just his personality anyway. And so yeah, I started there. And then, and then, you know, at that point, I wasn't doing any business development really with it, I was just doing it because I just thought, "Wow, this could give me good exposure". And it wasn't until I left that recruitment job, and then started working with this marketing company and doing the coaching for LinkedIn, that's when it became more of a, like, business development tool. And, yeah, it was great, you know, I could reach out to a prospect and say, "Hey, would you like to be on my podcast?" And they'd look at some of the guests and be like, "Yeah, I'd love to be on the podcast". And, you know, "okay, well, let's set up a 30 minute call just to chat about the podcast". And, you know, that was, that was a great way for me to build relationships. But like, again, with me with everything, it's like, I kind of had the business dynamic to it. But I also like, I just really enjoyed it, too. And I think, you know, that is, I think that's a challenge for people. And I would just say, like content in general, like, you have to, like, enjoy it. And if you don't, it's super hard to build up like an audience that's engaged, because people just know if you're not, if you're doing something you don't enjoy. You know, it's like, I sometimes read blogs, I just think, "Man, this person was really trying hard to write this. Like, they don't really care about this". And I think if that people sense that and your content, or any interviews, it's tough.
Kap Chatfield 29:17
Yeah, people just they have that that like BS meter built into them, dude, it's crazy. You can't get past human instinct. One thing that you said that I think is really cool, we talked about this as a company because we do shows for our clients. But we've had a handful of people come on and say that they've leveraged their show, as a relationship accelerator, kind of like what you said, like it's an opportunity for you to invite a featured guest on for whatever reason, I don't know, man, it's it's interesting, but people are a lot more interested in saying yes to opportunities like that than just to be pitched to. I wonder why. It's like, yeah, you know, you're creating an opportunity for them to be heard and for them to be like, build a brand and all of that. But I have a question that I'd love for your input on because I think one of the challenges is when you approach a podcast strategy or show strategy with that in mind, where you're like engaging target accounts that you'd love to do business with eventually, or in your case, you'd love to recruit, and you're targeting them as featured guests. How do you how do you manage the tension of doing that with a business development goal in mind, without them also feeling like they're just a cog in the in the machine to get you what you want? And to really make it a truly genuine experience for them?
Joel Lalgee 30:33
Yeah, I mean, it's it's a great question. I think it kind of comes back to even just what we were just saying, where it's like, you've got to number one, you got to enjoy it. And you've got to be engaged yourself in the conversation and enjoy the actual conversation. So like, if you're going to do that as your business development tool, like I probably wouldn't even have your salespeople do it. I'd probably have somebody who's not salesy do it because like salespeople, they just are going to come off disingenuous. And they're going to ask like, stupid questions that kind of tie back to the you know, like, it'll be like, they'll ask you a question, and then be like, well, you know, and in my experience, and they'll be like that person in class, you know, when you're in college, and they ask the question, but it's really just a statement that shows how great they are. So I probably wouldn't default to your, I probably wouldn't default to your salespeople, I'd probably default to somebody who is just passionate about, like, executing what you do. And obviously, they have to be comfortable with conversations, as well. So I'd say that that's one piece of it. And then the second piece of it too, is just to keep in mind, like, recruiting is a long term game. B2B sales is a long term game. Everything is a long term game. Relationships are a long term game like you don't, you don't just date go on one day with someone and get married to them. It's a process. And I think it's, you've got to view it as like, not every single person and not every single guest is going to be a client. But if I can help them, if we can have a great conversation, if we can connect, there's every chance that they could be, or you can start referring and sending them business that they want as well. And so I think like, it can be a dangerous mindset. But I, you know, I'm sure like, I noticed you had like Chris Walker on like, I love like, his approach to just stuff in general, where it's like, it's just like thinking bigger than just the sale. It's thinking, the relationship you don't know where people are gonna end up. And, and then also, like, just from a personal perspective, like just meeting new people and be and learning from them, I think you have to be passionate about that, again, because otherwise, they're not going to feel comfortable, your audience isn't going to feel comfortable. And you could probably ruin business relationships, too. So, yeah, so I would say like, if you're just coaching people with that, it's take that pressure off, like take the pressure off, like the ROI, like, I hate that. Like, when I was coaching people on just content in general, it was like, that was a dumbest question like, what's the ROI? What's the ROI? And it's, and I think you have to, like not approach it from what's, what's the ROI? Like, maybe the ROI is just the experience of connecting with someone else, you have to be okay with that. Otherwise, you're just people like it, people are gonna just, they're gonna feel it, and they're not going to enjoy it. And you know, you won't grow an audience. And to be honest, you won't even grow like relationships, if that's how you're approaching it.
Kap Chatfield 33:33
But when you do grow relationships, and you do grow an audience, I mean, you're living proof of it, it takes care of itself. Yeah, you can, if you really know how to connect with people and give them something that they're interested in and show up consistently, it will take care of itself. And it might take care of itself in ways that you were never experiencing. I mean, I'd love for you to just talk, and we're coming to the end of our episode now, so maybe we can just end with this idea. But were there some results, quantitative or qualitative from your content creation, you know, output or your show, specifically, that you were surprised by? You're like, man, I was doing this and I was really, I wasn't expecting this to be like the backside advantage of doing something like this.
Joel Lalgee 34:18
Yeah, I mean, I think for me, man, it was just like, I was pretty lost just in my career. When I when I first started creating content. And again, like, I'll probably a lot of people that you're dealing with are either listening or like entrepreneurs, so you kind of got that vision of what you do. I like I wasn't even at that point. I was like, I've been recruiting for five years, I was a little bit bored in my role, and I was just like, "oh, this is interesting. I think I'll just start doing this". And, you know, fast forward two years, you know, I've spoken I've been able to speak on these like virtual stages and been invited to speak on real stages, which which are coming up which is which is exciting. Build a following, which is also then translated into just confidence and like, the fact that I have something to say. But but not putting, I don't have to put something on there, like, I can just be actually be myself, which is probably the most freeing thing within itself as well. And then just like connections man, like the like, and it's, it's so cliche, because, you know, it's like LinkedIn, like, you know, your connections and all this other stuff but but like that actually has been massive. And I, you know, doing like the job search, right? So I was just recently doing a job search, and it was literally like, I'm going to send two DMS to people. And, you know, I said, I think I sent three messages out, got an offer in a week, and then got two offers in, you know, the next couple of weeks. And that's, there's no applications, you know, and I'm going in interviews, and you know, people like, "Oh, this is weird, like, I know, you, I feel like I know you and I've never interviewed anybody like this before". So it's like that kind of like that gravitas piece in it. But also, then with that, it's like, it's really, really freeing place to be like, when people just know you, it is really, really powerful. So that's been the biggest piece. And I think that's why I was always excited. Like, if you are successful or ready, you know, maybe you're just looking to get to that next level. Again, let's just remind me, I'll remind everybody again, I started with like, zero, like nothing like no brand, not really that much experience nothing. And I've been able to build something which now really for the rest of my career, and, you know, at least for the next, you know, whatever, three to five years, I'm going to be reaping the benefits. And then if LinkedIn goes away, and another platform pops up, I know how to produce content, and I've been learning, like how to get attention, how to do all of these things. So that's been, that's been the biggest thing for me. And, and then the last thing I'd say is just general, like just purpose and, and like, just feeling more driven to do things. And I think a lot of times, like the audience that I have, it just kind of keeps me accountable with my own journey, and like just showing up and being consistent. So it's like, the consistency of showing up consistently has helped me actually be more consistent in my life. And it's also just taught me a lot too. Its taught me about, like, you know, right now I'm in a season where I want to spend more time with my family. So I've made decisions that way. And it's like, kind of helped me realize, like, what I want or what I don't want, you know? Like, I've interviewed people that are incredibly successful. And I've asked them, like, the sacrifices they've made. And you know what, some of them have been like, I don't want to make that sacrifice, even though there's there's amazing things. You know, and I think that's important because that's self awareness. And, you know, self awareness is really underrated as well. So there you go. No, cap.
Kap Chatfield 37:50
That's cool, man. That was great. Yeah, no cap baby that was, that was good, man. Hey, Joel, I couldn't thank you enough for being on the show today. You brought such a unique perspective that we haven't heard yet as far as how you know how a personal brand, A can help your your, your employer's brand even that's like helping at that level, but then how you're using that to build residual relationships. How you're using that even as a recruiting tool. I really hope that the recruiting industry takes what you have to say seriously. And for those who are listening, I don't know if you're in the recruiting space, but if you're not, you might as well still follow Joel, we're gonna put his LinkedIn profile link in the show notes, in the description of this episode, as well as the link for Hirewell so that people can check out the company you work for now, too. And then on top of that, we're gonna put the link for The Headhunter Hideout would definitely want people to subscribe, or check out that show. So Joel, man, thank you so much for joining us on B2B Podcasting today. Dude, this was fun.
Joel Lalgee 38:47
Thanks Kap, I appreciate it, man. Have a good good rest of the day.
Kap Chatfield 38:51
You too.
