Recruiting Conversations

Hosted by Richard Milligan, Recruiting Coach

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Oct 2026

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Welcome to the Recruiting Conversations Podcast, a conversation designed to help Recruiting Leaders who manage a team as well as recruit. Richard Milligan is a speaker, author, strategist, and recruiting coach who built 21 teams as a Recruiting Leader.

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October 27, 2026Episode 2366 min

The Poison Apple on Your Team: 5 Moves Before It Spreads

You know the person I mean. Great numbers, maybe your best numbers, but the way they treat the team, the attitude they carry, the quiet undermining in the corners, it's costing you something that never shows up on a production report. This is one of the hardest conversations a leader ever has to have, so most leaders avoid it, and like anything you're afraid of, avoiding it doesn't make it smaller, it just lets it grow in the dark. Here's what I want you to walk away with today. Production is never a good enough reason to keep someone who is poisoning the environment for everybody else, and addressing it clearly and early is one of the most important things you'll ever do as a leader. I'll give you five moves to do it. Episode Breakdown [00:01:30] I've Let Go of My Number One Producer More Than Once Let me be honest about how hard this is, because I've lived it. I've had to let go of my number one producer more than once, when their impact on the culture outgrew their impact on the board. Both times, on paper, it looked like a terrible business decision. Both times, it was the right one. [00:01:50] A Culture Is What You Tolerate in a Room A culture is not what you say on a wall, it's what you tolerate in a room. The fastest way to lose the trust of your best people is to let one talented person break the standard while everyone watches you do nothing about it. Your team is always watching what you allow, and every day you tolerate it, you're teaching everyone else that the standard is negotiable as long as the numbers are big enough. [00:02:15] Move 1: Name It Honestly to Yourself First Stop calling it a personality quirk or a rough patch. If someone is damaging the culture, name it plainly, so you can lead from clarity instead of avoidance. [00:02:30] Move 2: Separate the Behavior From the Production These are two different scorecards. On production they may be an A . On culture and values they may be an F . You have to evaluate both out loud and stop letting the A on one quietly cover the F on the other. [00:02:50] Move 3: Have the Direct Conversation Early Don't build a case in silence for six months. Name the specific behavior, name the impact it's having on the team, and name the standard you need. Most leaders jump straight from tolerating to blowing up, and there was never an honest conversation in between. Give the person a real, clear chance to change. [00:03:10] Move 4: Set a Standard and a Timeline Clarity is kindness. Here's what has to change, here's what it looks like, and here's by when. Then hold it. A standard you won't enforce isn't a standard, it's a suggestion. [00:03:24] Move 5: Be Willing to Let Go If the behavior doesn't change, you have to be willing to make the move even when the numbers scare you. Protecting the culture for the many is worth more than protecting the production of the one. [00:03:40] Why It Works Culture is the thing that actually holds your team together, and it's fragile. One talented person operating outside the standard doesn't just affect their own corner, it gives everyone else permission to lower theirs. And here's the part that should get your attention. Your best people, the ones with the character you want more of, are the most likely to walk when they see you protect production over values. They have options, and they will not stay in an environment you refuse to protect. The real risk was never losing the high producer. The real risk is losing everyone else while you try to keep them. [00:04:20] Your Small Win Tonight Name it on paper for yourself. Write down the specific behavior, the specific impact it's having on your team, and the standard you actually need. Getting it out of your head and into clear words is the win, because you can't address what you won't name. [00:04:40] Three Bigger Moves This Week Score that person honestly on two separate cards, production and culture, so you stop letting the one cover for the other. Have the direct, kind conversation, naming the behavior, the impact, and the standard, so they get a real chance to change instead of a silent countdown. Then decide in advance what you'll do if nothing changes, so the decision gets made with your head and not in a moment of frustration. Key Takeaways Production is never a good enough reason to keep someone who is poisoning the environment for everybody else. A culture is not what you say on a wall, it's what you tolerate in a room. Score behavior and production on two separate cards. An A on production doesn't erase an F on values. Have the direct conversation early. Most leaders jump from tolerating to blowing up with no honest conversation in between. Clarity is kindness. A standard you won't enforce isn't a standard, it's a suggestion. Your best people are the most likely to walk when they see you protect production over values. The real risk was never losing the high producer. It's losing everyone else while you try to keep them. If you're carrying a hard call like this right now, reach out. Visit bookrichardnow.com and grab time on my calendar, and I'd be glad to think it through with you. And if you'd rather work on this kind of thing in real time, I host a biweekly working lunch where we do exactly that together. The next one's Friday, November 6th at 12:00 PM Eastern . You can add it, plus all of our other 4C live events, straight to your calendar here: http://cal.ae/suuaiiw

October 20, 2026Episode 2358 min

Your Team Wonders If You're All Talk: 5 Moves to Prove the Vision Daily

You love painting the big picture for your team, and then you look at your calendar and your capacity, and the vision starts to feel like a fantasy you can't back up. So you either shrink the dream to something safe, or you overpromise and can't deliver. Here's what I want you to walk away with today. A big vision and daily execution can live together. The thing that connects them is a system, and once you build that bridge, you get to dream big and deliver at the same time. I'll give you five moves I call bridging vision to execution. Episode Breakdown [00:01:16] Eleven Years as a Spontaneous Recruiter For the first 11 years I recruited, I was what I'd call a spontaneous recruiter. I'd combust into recruiting whenever the calendar cleared or the company got scary, and then it would fade out again. Then the comp rules changed in 2013, and it cost me roughly $600,000 a year. So over the last two weeks of that year, in the week between Christmas and New Year's, I sat down and asked myself for the first time what it would look like to have a recruiting system. I came out of those two weeks with 32 steps written down, from the moment I identified someone as an opportunity all the way to the end of the line. In the first 90 days of 2014, I set 32 corporate site visits , and I'd never had success like that in my career. That year we made over 100 hires . Same market, same guy. The vision didn't change that Christmas. The structure underneath it did, and that's what finally let the vision show up in real life. [00:02:25] Move 1: Keep the 10-Year Vision and Turn It Into a Daily Project Don't shrink the dream. Hold the full ten-year picture and then convert it into something specific you work on every day. James Clear says it best in Atomic Habits, we never rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems. So look at your calendar on a Monday and find what's there that's recruiting. For most leaders, it's nothing. A destination on its own won't recruit anybody either. We're going to be number one in purchase market share is a finish line, and a recruit can't step onto a finish line, so walk it back into steps. Number one becomes being the chief educator of agents in your market, which becomes a named list of the top 30% of agents who do 95% of the volume, which becomes a seven-step campaign to get in front of every one of them. Every layer answers the question, tell me more. I work with a leader who went from about $1.2 billion in 2023 to nearly $5.5 billion two years later, and when you look at her calendar, it's mapped to recruiting. That didn't happen by accident. [00:03:35] Move 2: Map the Path With Average, Better, and Best A leap from where you are to the big vision can feel impossible, so break it into levels and ask what average looks like, what better looks like, and what best looks like. Mapping the steps makes a huge vision feel reachable, because now there's a staircase in front of you where there used to be a cliff. [00:03:55] Move 3: Design From the End, Then Execute One Quarter at a Time Start at the ten-year picture and work backward to what has to be true this quarter, then pour yourself into just this quarter. Designing from the end keeps you aimed at the vision, and executing one quarter at a time keeps you from drowning in the whole thing at once. The execution itself lives in small places. If you've got an hour blocked for recruiting and you lose the first five minutes, you almost never get the hour back. Win those first five minutes and you're almost guaranteed the whole thing, which is why I build a little routine to walk myself through that doorway. Big projects work the same way. When I hand leaders a full build, I tell them to block two hours a week for the next 12 weeks. That's about 25 hours between them and a finished system, and two hours of deep work in one sitting beats two scattered hours, because every interruption costs you about 20 minutes to get back to where you were. [00:04:55] Move 4: Prove It Before You Scale It Big vision leaders love to scale fast, and scaling something that doesn't work yet just multiplies the problem. Get proof of concept first, make it work small, and then grow it. And don't be a butterfly, flitting to the next shiny idea before you finish the last one. Finish the build, prove it, and then scale it. [00:05:15] Move 5: Only Promise What You Can Deliver It's fine for the vision to be huge, but the commitments you make to a recruit or your team have to match what you can do today. Expectations without agreements are toxic. The fastest way to lose a producer is to sell them a dream while you're recruiting that your day-to-day leadership can't deliver, and that gap shows up in the first 90 days. [00:05:44] Why It Works People can feel which one they're living in, a vision with nothing under it or a grind with no direction. When I decided to leave a seven-figure income to start 4C, four friends took me to breakfast on a Thursday morning, and I thought we were just having breakfast. It was an intervention, and every one of them thought I was losing my mind. I didn't argue. I laid out the vision and how I was going to get there, and by the end of breakfast every one of them told me I was good to go. Clarity does that to people, and it's exactly what a recruit feels sitting across from a leader who has it. The system is the bridge that makes the vision believable, because every day the work proves the dream is being built. I spent a couple of days at the house of a mortgage leader I coach, and the guy's ripped, and when you look closer it's all structure, the supplements, the meal plan, and exactly which body part he's training on which day. Nobody looks at a result like that and thinks it came from doing random stuff at the gym. Then we show up to recruiting and act like anything could happen today, and we still expect the compounding result. We always protect what's a priority, so when recruiting keeps losing to everything else on the calendar, the honest read usually has less to do with hours and more to do with priority. When your team sees a big vision and watches you execute against it a little every day, they stop wondering if you're all talk, and they start building it with you. [00:07:09] Your Small Win Today Grab something to write on and put your biggest vision at the top of the page. Underneath it, write the one daily project that moves it forward. Seeing the two side by side is the bridge in its simplest form, and for a lot of leaders it's the first time the dream has had a Tuesday attached to it. [00:07:26] Three Bigger Moves This Week Map the vision into average, better, and best, so what feels impossible turns into a staircase your team can climb. Pick the one thing you'll prove this quarter before you scale anything, so you stop multiplying what isn't working yet. Then look hard at every promise you've made to your team and your recruits, and close any gap between what you said and what you can deliver, because that's where trust gets built or quietly lost. Key Takeaways A big vision and daily execution can live together. The system is the bridge between them. Don't shrink the dream. Hold the ten-year picture and convert it into a daily project you can actually work. We never rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems. A recruit can't step onto a finish line, so walk it back into steps. Map average, better, and best, and the cliff turns into a staircase. Prove it before you scale it. Scaling something that doesn't work yet just multiplies the problem. Expectations without agreements are toxic. Only promise what your day-to-day leadership can deliver, or the gap shows up in the first 90 days. We protect what's a priority. When recruiting keeps losing on the calendar, it's usually about priority, not hours. If you keep getting stuck between a big vision and what you can execute, reach out. Visit bookrichardnow.com and grab time on my calendar, and I'd be glad to think it through with you. And if you'd rather build this kind of thing in real time, I host a biweekly working lunch where we do exactly that together. The next one's Friday, October 23rd at 12:00 PM Eastern . You can add it, plus all of our other 4C live events, straight to your calendar here: http://cal.ae/suuaiiw

October 13, 2026Episode 2349 min

You're Collecting Names, Not Building Relationships: 5 Moves to Change That

You know you're supposed to lead with value, but the pressure to grow is real, so you rush it. You make the ask too soon, and the recruit feels the pitch coming and pulls back. Here's what I want you to walk away with today. The leaders who win give so much before the ask that joining feels like the obvious next step, and by the time we're done you'll have a way to do that every month without it eating your calendar. I call it value before the ask, and there are five moves. Episode Breakdown [00:01:10] Fifteen Conversations and Nothing to Send A coaching client came into a session excited because he'd had 15 live conversations that week, a lot of them face-to-face from networking around his market, and he felt great about it. So I asked him one question. What are you going to send those fifteen people tomorrow that brings them value? He didn't have an answer, and there was nothing in his toolbox to send. Networking without something of value to follow it with is just collecting names, and most leaders are sitting on a stack of conversations that never go anywhere because the second touch has nothing in it. [00:01:56] Move 1: Give Three Times Before You Ask Once Think of it the way Gary Vaynerchuk does, jab, jab, jab, right hook. That's three real gifts of value for every one ask. Most leaders flip it around, one small favor and then a big ask, and it feels exactly as transactional as it is. Put the ratio back in order and the ask lands completely differently. The clock starts at your first conversation. I coach leaders to bring something of value within 72 hours of that first talk, while it's still fresh for both of you. Wait three weeks and you're starting over. Show up in three days with something useful and you're the person who listened. [00:02:40] Move 2: Make the Value Specific and Useful A motivational quote won't do it. Send the thing that makes their week easier, a real insight about their market, an introduction, or a tool. Here's one I've been building lately. I went to YouTube, found the people who know the most about showing up in AI search, pulled about 10 to 12 hours of their content, and dropped the transcripts into AI to build a skill. About 15 minutes later, I could put in a loan officer's name and market and get back a playbook showing where they rank in AI and a 90-day plan to get to the top. 52% of Gen Z now start their searches inside AI, so that playbook matters to every producer on your list. And how you hook it matters as much as what's inside it. Offering a playbook on AI visibility is weak. Offering a 90-day strategy to become the number one loan officer in their market is stronger. Telling them how another producer picks up two or three deals a month by showing up first in AI searches is the strongest, because it leads with a result. [00:03:50] Move 3: Build a Ladder and Anchor Your Value So It Stacks In sales there's a concept called the value ladder, and it's just ascending value, each step giving a little more than the one before it. For a recruit it might look like this: a connection request, then a playbook built for their business, then an invitation a couple of weeks later to a 15-minute conversation to walk through it with them, no strings attached. From there it climbs to a virtual site visit, and only then an offer. Once the assets exist, a good virtual assistant with access to your social media and a solid list can run most of that campaign for you. Every future touch can point back to that first playbook while adding something new, so your value keeps stacking instead of starting over. [00:04:36] Move 4: Deliver It on a Rhythm Value once is a moment. Value every 30 days forever is a relationship. That's forever follow-up, and it's how you stay in the conversation with a recruit over months and years. We've surveyed about 1,600 mortgage leaders , and the average one stays in touch with 7.3 people and reaches out every 9 to 12 months . That's the standard you're up against. Put two blocks on your calendar each month, one to create the value and one to deliver it to your whole list, and you're already ahead of almost everyone. When you reconnect, drop the words just checking in, because that phrase asks for attention and gives nothing back. Say you thought of them and wanted to bring them something of value, then ask permission to keep doing it. I'll say something like, one of my big goals this year is to be more valuable to the people in my sphere of influence, and I hope you're okay with me showing up from time to time with something I think would help you grow your business. Almost nobody says no to that, and now your value doesn't look strange against years of silence. [00:05:40] Move 5: Write to an Audience of One Whether you're reaching one recruit or 50 , every piece of value should feel like it was made for the person receiving it. When I send one of those AI playbooks, I won't just text it over. I'll record a 3-minute video walking that person through their own results. With about an hour and a list of 25 names , I can build every playbook and record every video, and that's more personal value than most leaders deliver in a year. Scaled is fine as long as it never feels mass-produced. [00:06:17] Why It Works Value creates velocity in relationships, and a lack of value leads to a lack of velocity. The law of reciprocity says that when someone brings us value, we feel pulled to bring something back, and we start moving toward them. Every real gift of value is a deposit, and contact without value is just noise. When you've made enough deposits, the ask stops feeling like a risk and starts feeling like the next step, because the recruit has already experienced what it's like to be led by you. That's the surrogate leadership principle. Surrogate means in place of. When a recruit isn't getting leadership value from the leader they have, and you keep bringing it, they start letting you step into that role long before they ever change companies. I think about my own career when I say this. I recruited for 11 years before I had people in one central place that I followed up with every single month and brought value to, and I wonder how many more I could have recruited if I'd done that from the beginning. And most of your competition is trying to show up better. Different has always beaten better. When you drop something of real value in someone's lap that nobody else thought to bring, you become unforgettable. [00:07:35] Your Small Win Today Pick one recruit you'd love to have. Before the day is over, set the pitch aside and plan the first gift, one specific, useful thing you can hand them this week with nothing attached. Writing it down takes five minutes, and it's the moment you stop chasing and start building something worth climbing toward. [00:07:55] Three Bigger Moves This Week Deliver that gift with zero ask and pay attention to how differently the conversation feels afterward. Build one anchor asset for a recruit, something like a simple playbook, so every future touch can point back to it and your follow-up keeps stacking. Then put your two value blocks on the calendar for every month going forward, so your best recruits hear from you consistently and your team sees that recruiting runs on deposits. Key Takeaways The leaders who win give so much before the ask that joining feels like the obvious next step. Networking without something of value to follow it with is just collecting names. The second touch is where most leaders have nothing. Give three times before you ask once, and bring the first gift within 72 hours while the conversation is still fresh. Lead with a result, not a feature. How another producer picks up two or three deals a month beats offering a playbook. The average leader stays in touch with 7.3 people and reaches out every 9 to 12 months. Value every 30 days is the standard that beats them. Every gift of value is a deposit, and contact without value is just noise. Enough deposits and the ask feels like the next step. Different has always beaten better. Drop value nobody else thought to bring and you become unforgettable. If you want help building a value engine that makes the ask easy, reach out. Visit bookrichardnow.com and grab time on my calendar, and I'd be glad to think it through with you. And if you'd rather build this kind of thing in real time, I host a biweekly working lunch where we do exactly that together. The next one's Friday, October 23rd at 12:00 PM Eastern . You can add it, plus all of our other 4C live events, straight to your calendar here: http://cal.ae/suuaiiw

October 6, 2026Episode 2339 min

Everyone's Chasing This Quarter's Bonus: 5 Moves to Get Them Thinking in 10 Years

Everybody around you is locked into this month's numbers and this quarter's bonus. When you try to talk about the future, their eyes glaze over, because the next 90 days feel like all that matters. Here's what I want you to walk away with today. People move hardest toward a big future, and learning to lift someone into that frame is one of the most powerful things you'll ever do as a leader. I'll give you five moves I call lifting the horizon. Episode Breakdown [00:01:10] The Loan Officer Whose Dream Changed Everything Years ago I met a young loan officer who, on paper, was grinding like everybody else, focused on the next deal and the next month. So I asked him a different kind of question. I didn't ask about his goal for the year, I asked about his dream over the next ten years, and it opened him up. His wife was a pharmaceutical sales rep making $180,000 a year, and his real dream was simple. He wanted to replace her income so she could stay home with their kids. The moment he said it out loud, his work stopped being about a monthly number. It was about a specific ten-year future that mattered more than any bonus, and it gave me something concrete I could come back to with him for years. Vague dreams expire and specific dreams compound. [00:02:10] Move 1: Ask About Dreams Instead of Goals A goal is short, measurable, and left brain, hit this number this year. A dream is a ten-year picture, and that's where the energy lives. The word vision in its original Hebrew was hazon, and it meant dream. Most leaders have taken their vision and shrunk it down to a goal. When you ask someone about their dream, you move the conversation from the calendar to the heart, and that's where people get moved. When I do this with a leader, I start with a single sheet of paper with the words my dream across the top. Every idea in that brain dump counts, because if you start disqualifying ideas too early, you kill the best ones before they ever surface. [00:03:00] Move 2: Use a Ten-Year Window At one, three, or five years out, people stay realistic and small. Push the horizon to ten years and something opens up, because ten years is far enough out that the logical brain stops arguing. One question I use all the time is the ten-year rearview. Imagine we're sitting together ten years from now, and it's been the best decade of your life, then tell me what changed in your business and what changed at home. You can watch it happen in someone's posture while they answer, because they start picturing it. [00:03:30] Move 3: Get Specific A vague future doesn't pull anybody anywhere. That young loan officer's dream worked because it was specific, replace a $180,000 income so his wife could be home. Push past the first surface answer with a simple question asked again and again, why is that important to you. When someone answers with something generic like impact, give them context, point to the producers they admire, and keep going until you reach the real dream underneath. Then capture it. Record your recruiting conversations so years from now you can say the dream back to someone in their own words. Most leaders can't remember what a recruit told them last quarter, and the leader who can repeat a dream back three years later is the one people follow. [00:04:15] Move 4: Design From the End Once you've got the ten-year picture, work backward to what has to be true in five years, then three, then one, then this quarter. I did this for 4C back in 2017 . The ten-year dream was to impact 10,000 recruiting leaders in a single year, and I hadn't coached one person yet or launched a podcast. We backed it all the way into year one and set a goal to help 100 leaders. We helped 138 . And I didn't have the whole map when I started. Back in 2017 I had no idea AI was coming, and the platform adjusted as the world changed. Vision gets clearer in the doing, so don't wait until you can see every step before you take the first one. I've landed in a different place on goals than most coaches, and I'm not a big believer in them by themselves anymore. I believe in projects, because ideation without activation is complete madness. [00:05:25] Move 5: Anchor to the Why The short game is loud and constant, so a long-term vision needs an anchor to survive it. Tie the ten-year dream to the deeper reason underneath it, the people it's for, and what it changes for them. I hold myself to this one every day. One of my daily affirmations is that the current version of Richard wouldn't even be hireable by the ten-year better version of Richard. Ten years from now, I want to look back at this version of me and not recognize him. Then keep bringing it up. My simplest one-on-one has three questions. Where are you with your dream, what are you doing to pursue it, and what's the one thing I can do as your leader to help you get there. Leaders overcomplicate one-on-ones with reports and metrics, and the dream is the agenda that builds loyalty. [00:06:20] Why It Works The future is bigger and brighter than the present, and human beings move toward what's bigger and brighter. When someone can see a future clearly, they start working to close the gap between where they are and where they could be. There's a catch, though. There's research on something called mental contrasting, and one finding surprised me. Building a dream board and staring at it can give your brain enough of a reward that you never act on it, and people who only visualize the dream are less likely to reach it. That's why moves four and five matter so much. The dream has to turn into a project with dates on it, or it stays a nice picture. Clarity speeds everything up. And most leaders have never done this for their own team. In more than 19,000 hours of coaching, I've met two leaders who could clearly articulate a team vision the first time I asked. When you lift a leader or a recruit into a ten-year frame, you stop competing on this month's offer and start connecting to the life they want. [00:07:41] Your Small Win Tonight Before you go to bed, write out your own ten-year dream, the professional side and the personal side, and push past the first answer until it gets specific. It's hard to pull anybody else into the long game when you haven't spent ten minutes there yourself, and most leaders haven't. [00:08:00] Three Bigger Moves This Week In your next one-on-one, ask someone the ten-year rearview question in place of their yearly goal, and keep asking why it matters until you reach the real dream, because that single conversation changes how a person sees their work. Take one team member's dream and design backward from it to this quarter with them, so the daily grind finally connects to something. Then start naming the bigger why out loud whenever you talk about short-term numbers, so your team stops living ninety days at a time. Key Takeaways People move hardest toward a big future. Lifting someone into that frame is one of the most powerful things you do as a leader. Vague dreams expire and specific dreams compound. Get past the surface answer until the dream is concrete. A goal is left brain and short. A dream is a ten-year picture, and that's where the energy lives. Push the horizon to ten years and the logical brain stops arguing. One, three, and five years keep people small. Design from the end, because a dream you only visualize can trick your brain into never acting. It has to become a project with dates. In 19,000 hours of coaching, only two leaders could articulate a team vision the first time asked. Almost nobody has done this for their team. Start with yourself. It's hard to pull anyone into the long game when you haven't spent ten minutes there yourself. If you want help pulling your team and your recruits into the long game, reach out. Visit bookrichardnow.com and grab time on my calendar, and I'd be glad to think it through with you. And if you'd rather build this kind of thing in real time, I host a biweekly working lunch where we do exactly that together. The next one's Friday, October 9th at 12:00 PM Eastern . You can add it, plus all of our other 4C live events, straight to your calendar here: http://cal.ae/suuaiiw

September 29, 2026Episode 2329 min

29% of Transfers Move Again Within 90 Days: 5 Moves to Beat It

You did the hard part. You built the relationship, you cast the vision, and you got the yes. Then the machine takes over. Licensing, systems, paperwork, and the weeks start going by. By the time your new producer is cleared to start, the fire's gone out, and sometimes they walk before day one. And even when they make it in the door, 29% of loan officers who transition end up moving again within 90 days. Here's what I want you to walk away with today. The space between the yes and the start is where a lot of leaders quietly lose people, and by the end of this episode you'll know how to protect it. I call it protecting the gap, and there are five moves to it. Episode Breakdown [00:01:25] The Cornhole Tournament A leader I coach hired a loan officer and refused to let that new hire start out quietly. He threw a first annual cornhole tournament built around the loan officer, and roughly 150 real estate agents showed up. When he told me about it afterward, the thing he kept coming back to was the momentum. They had so much momentum in the marketplace from that one event, and his new producer started with visibility and a room full of relationships instead of an empty pipeline and a lot of second-guessing. The energy you promise while you're recruiting has to show up during the transition, and the leaders who keep people are the ones who plan that energy before the start date ever arrives. [00:02:14] Move 1: Name the Gap Out Loud and Put It on Paper The moment someone says yes, tell them the truth about what's coming, how long onboarding takes, what happens each week, and what to expect. I'd go one step earlier than that. For years I did what most leaders do, send someone to corporate for a visit, make an offer, and only after they said yes would we start talking about onboarding. When I moved that conversation up to the local site visit, decisions sped up, because the fear of a hard transition got handled before it ever turned into an objection. People don't move toward abstract ideas. If you tell someone your transitions are amazing, that means nothing to them. The moment you hand them a checklist and say can I walk you through exactly what happens from day one to day 90, it becomes something they can see. A good onboarding document does two jobs at once. The big-picture person gets a confident top-line view of the process, and the detail person gets to see exactly what's going to be done on each day. People always move toward certainty and clarity, and that page gives them both. I'd also put William Bridges' book Managing Transitions in the right-hand drawer of every leader I coach. Every new hire walks into a transition zone the day they sign, new systems, new people, new tools, and a new culture all at once, and the leaders who've studied how people move through that zone lose far fewer of them. [00:03:40] Move 2: Keep Delivering Value in the Gap Most leaders go quiet after the yes because the selling feels done, and that silence is exactly when second thoughts move in. Stay present. Keep sending something useful, keep checking in with a reason, and keep them feeling chosen all the way to the start line. [00:03:59] Move 3: Build Momentum and Put a Person on the Transition Give your new producer something to be part of before they officially start, a launch, an event, introductions to the team, and a plan for their first 30 days. Then give them a human being. When I was leading, a transition processor would come into my office during the site visit and introduce herself. She'd say if you were to join the team, I'd be the one handling your transition, and then she'd lay out everything. It felt organic, and what she was showing the recruit was that we had them. I also had a transition loan officer who served as the concierge for every new hire's first 90 days, and I paid that person somewhere between 50 and 75 basis points of the new hire's production. That was the best investment I could make, because nobody missed a step that could cost them a loan while they were learning our systems. [00:04:50] Move 4: Keep Transferring Belief Onboarding usually gets treated as a checklist, and the checklist matters, but the bigger work between the yes and the start is reminding them why they made a great decision. Talk about the vision, the future, and the reason they said yes to begin with. Tasks get them set up, and belief is what keeps them. Just make sure you educate before you motivate. Education plus motivation plus application is what equals transformation. If all I do is fire someone up and never walk them through how the numbers work, they hit their first tough month, look at their pro forma, and say that's not what was sold to me. Belief built on a clear picture holds up when the first hard month shows up. [00:05:35] Move 5: Be the Steady Voice Time kills deals, and a long onboarding is a long stretch of time. During it, their current company may make a counteroffer, a friend may plant a doubt, and fear may get loud at the kitchen table. Your job is to be the calm, consistent anchor through all of it, the leader who doesn't waver while everything else does. And keep your promises lined up with what you can deliver. Expectations without agreements are toxic. If you sold a dream in recruiting that your day-to-day leadership can't back up, it shows up in the first 90 days, and by then the producer's already half out the door. [00:06:14] Why It Works That 29% has a partner. 68% of loan officers who transition say one year in that they're not sure they made the right move. When I look at those two numbers, I see onboarding, all of it. Excitement has a half-life. The energy a recruit feels the day they say yes starts fading the moment nothing happens, and silence during a long gap doesn't read as neutral to them, it reads like buyer's remorse setting in. Momentum and value reset that clock. Every touch, every bit of belief, and every piece of forward motion tells them they made the right call, and the leader who builds a great first 90 days is still collecting on it five years later. There's one more payoff most leaders miss. Anytime someone was in transition with me, they were my best recruiter. I had a first conversation with a branch manager named Tammy on a Friday afternoon, and I walked away thinking she wasn't going anywhere, she was cold. So I connected her with Tiffany, who was about 90 days into her move to our team, and Tiffany told her the first 90 days had felt like a vacation. Not long after, I got a text asking if we could get together Monday, because Tammy was highly interested in taking next steps. I hadn't done a thing to warm her up. A new hire who feels carried through the gap will recruit for you while that energy's still fresh, usually for about the first six months. [00:07:41] Your Small Win Today If you've got someone sitting between yes and day one right now, pull up their name before you close the laptop today and write down one useful thing you could send them this week. If nobody's in the gap at the moment, do it for the next person who will be, because they're coming. That one note is often the difference between a new hire who feels remembered and one who starts wondering if they made a mistake. [00:08:05] Three Bigger Moves This Week Map out the onboarding timeline you'll walk every new hire through, week by week, and put it on a single page, so the wait feels like a plan and your whole team knows what's coming. Build one moment of momentum for someone before their start date, an introduction, an event, or a first-month plan, so they spend the gap feeling like part of something. Then set a simple check-in rhythm for anyone between yes and start, so no strong recruit goes cold while the paperwork catches up. Key Takeaways The yes isn't the finish line. The space between the yes and the start is where a lot of leaders quietly lose people. 29% of transitioning loan officers move again within 90 days, and 68% say a year in they're not sure they made the right move. That's onboarding. Don't tell them your transitions are amazing. Hand them a one-page day-one-to-day-90 checklist, because people move toward certainty and clarity. Silence after the yes doesn't read as neutral. It reads like buyer's remorse setting in. Put a real person on the transition. A concierge for the first 90 days is worth 50 to 75 basis points because nobody misses a step. Educate before you motivate. Education plus motivation plus application equals transformation, and belief built on a clear picture survives the first hard month. The producer in transition is your best recruiter. Carried through the gap, they'll bring people to you for about the first six months. If you keep losing strong recruits somewhere between the yes and the start, reach out. Visit bookrichardnow.com and grab time on my calendar, and I'd be glad to think it through with you. And if you'd rather build this kind of thing in real time, I host a biweekly working lunch where we do exactly that together. The next one's 10/9 at 12 M ET. You can add it, plus all of our other 4C live events, straight to your calendar here: http://cal.ae/suuaiiw

September 22, 2026Episode 23111 min

Recruits Google You Before They Call Back: 5 Moves to Control What They Find

You leave a voicemail for a loan officer you'd love to have on your team, and before they ever call you back, they look you up. For years that meant Google. More and more it means they open ChatGPT and ask who you are, and whatever comes back becomes their first impression of you before you've said a single word. Most leaders have never once checked what that answer says. Here's what I want you to walk away with today. The answer about you gets written either way, and by the end of this episode you'll know how to help write it. I'll give you five moves to become the AI-recommended leader. Episode Breakdown [00:01:25] The Producer Who Signed Because of a Monday Post A leader I coach had been working a hundred-million-dollar producer for a long time. She made him an offer and he said he was in, then he didn't sign. The offer expired, she wrote another, he said yes again, and still no signature. Offer after offer, and if you've recruited any length of time you know how that feels, wondering if you said something wrong or if he was using you to get a raise. Then one Monday morning her phone buzzes, and it's a text. He's signing. He saw her post that morning and told her that was what he needed. Nothing about the offer changed that weekend. The comp was the same, the company was the same, the start date was the same. What changed was what he saw when he looked her up. He'd been quietly watching to see who she is as a leader the whole time, the same way every recruit does. [00:02:50] Move 1: Run the Check on Yourself Search your own name with nothing else attached, because that's exactly what a recruit does right after your voicemail. Then open ChatGPT and ask it who you are. That's the first minute of a recruit's research, and most leaders have never looked. While you're at it, search your name with the word mortgage and your state and scroll to page two, because all of that is part of what a recruit sees. I ran an AI audit recently on a producer doing about $25 million a year. When somebody searched her name, AI named her 19 times out of 20 . When a stranger asked AI for a loan officer in her market, it named her zero times out of 35 . She had profiles, reviews, and content everywhere, and she was still invisible to anyone who didn't already know she existed. [00:03:54] Move 2: Say Who You Are the Same Way Everywhere AI decides what to say about you based on clarity and agreement first. Clarity means it has to be sure which person you are, because a common name, an old title, or a company change last year can make it describe somebody else or an older version of you. Agreement means your LinkedIn, your company bio, and every intro all describe the same leader. So write one sentence I call your known-for statement, who you build for, where you lead, what you help them do, and what changes for them when they work with you, and only say what's true for your team today. Put that sentence in your LinkedIn headline, the first line of your About section, your company bio, and every podcast or speaker intro, then leave it alone for 90 days , because AI learns it from repetition. And when a recruit clicks through to your LinkedIn, open your About section with who you are outside of work, because they only see the first few lines before they decide whether to keep reading, and I want them connecting with you as a person first. [00:05:15] Move 3: Put Proof Where Recruits Look The third thing AI weighs is proof from other people, and what loan officers say about you carries more weight than anything you'll ever write about yourself. I studied a loan officer who shows up number one in AI in his market and couldn't explain why. When we dug in, it was reviews. At every closing his team hands the client an iPad with the Google review already pulled up, the whole team does it, and he's sitting on around 1,800 of them. The same principle works for you as a leader. Ask the loan officers you lead for an honest LinkedIn recommendation about what it's been like working together. Tell them to say whatever's true and that it's completely fine if they'd rather not, keep it voluntary, don't offer anything in exchange, and run any team results past your compliance team before you publish them. [00:06:15] Move 4: Build for the Kitchen Table There's a predictable path every recruit takes once you've reached out. First is the check, that bare search on your name, and it's the one that matters most. If you pass it, they do the company check to see what's behind you. Then comes the kitchen table, where they decide, usually with a spouse who looks you up all over again on a phone that's never more than an arm's length away. That spouse may have heard years of complaints about this industry and has no reason to trust you yet. So build one page, I call it your Working With Me page, that answers what the spouse wants to know, who you're a great fit for, how you lead, and what it's like to be on your team. Most leaders never think about that second search, and it's often the one that decides it. [00:07:10] Move 5: Show Up for Loan Officers Every Week and Point People to It A lot of leaders have a feed written entirely for borrowers and agents, so when a producer searches their name, there's nothing there for a producer. Post weekly for the loan officer you'd love to recruit, about leadership, growth, and where the business is going, and hold that rhythm long enough for it to add up. I did a version of this back in 2010. I pulled my state's list of licensed real estate agents, started a LinkedIn group, and posted into it twice a week as the only mortgage leader in the room. About a year later, agents I'd never met were walking up to me in restaurants because they recognized me. Then make it easy for recruits to find. One team was running a 55% no-show rate on booked first meetings and tested one change. The confirmation text got a PS with a link to the leader's social profile, and the no-show rate collapsed. The only difference was that people got a look at who they were about to sit down with before they showed up. [00:08:15] Why It Works The data on $20 million producers says 75% of them made their decision based on the peripheral information they found well before the first or second conversation did any of the work. And the place they go to find that information is moving fast. A couple of years ago almost nobody searched inside AI, and today 52% of Gen Z start their searches there instead of Google. AI builds its answer about you from clarity, agreement, and proof, and every one of those is something you can shape starting this week. There's a second payoff most leaders miss. Once you've done this for yourself, you've got something to give. In our recruiting intensive this month, one leader ran an AI visibility check on the loan officers on his team the day we taught it and booked one-on-ones with them for the following week. Do that for a recruit and you're handing them something their current leader has never thought about. I call it the surrogate leadership principle. When you bring leadership value someone isn't getting where they are, they start moving toward you, and a recruit who's already seen that from you tends to like what they find when they look you up. [00:09:35] Your Small Win Today Before your next recruiting call, do the check. Search your name by itself, then ask ChatGPT who you are, and read what comes back as if you were a loan officer deciding whether to return your voicemail. It takes about two minutes, and it'll probably bother you a little, and that's the reason it goes first. [00:09:55] Three Bigger Moves This Week Write your known-for statement and put it in your LinkedIn headline and your company bio, so every recruit who looks you up meets the same leader your team already knows. Send the recommendation ask to three loan officers you lead, which gives your people a chance to say what it's like to work with you and gives recruits proof they can trust. Then add a PS with a link to your profile on every meeting confirmation your team sends, so fewer of the meetings you worked hard to book end with an empty chair. Key Takeaways The answer about you gets written whether you touch it or not. Your job is to help write it. Nothing about the offer changed the weekend that producer signed. What changed was what he saw when he looked her up. You can be named 19 times out of 20 on your own name and zero out of 35 to a stranger. Known is not the same as findable. AI builds its answer from clarity, agreement, and proof. Say who you are the same way everywhere and leave it alone for 90 days. What your loan officers say about you carries more weight than anything you'll ever write about yourself. The decision often happens at the kitchen table, with a spouse who looks you up again. Build a page that answers what they want to know. 75% of $20 million producers decided on the peripheral information they found before the real conversations ever happened. If you'd like a second set of eyes on what a recruit finds when they look you up, reach out. Visit bookrichardnow.com and grab time on my calendar, and I'd be glad to go through it with you. And if you'd rather work on this live, I host a biweekly working lunch where we build this kind of thing together. The next one's 9/25 at 12 PM ET. You can add it, plus all of our other 4C live events, straight to your calendar here: http://cal.ae/suuaiiw

September 8, 2026Episode 2297 min

5 Moves to Lead With Value That Never Feels Like Bait

You know you're supposed to lead with value, but when you barely know the person, reaching out feels strange, like you're either buttering them up or angling for something, and they can feel it too. Here's what I want you to walk away with today. Value only feels awkward when it's about you. The moment it becomes about them and specific to them, the awkwardness disappears. I'll give you five moves to make that shift. Episode Breakdown [00:01:15] Why Most Value Attempts Feel Forced They feel forced because they're generic, and generic always feels like a setup. Think about the recruiter who calls and says I saw you did a hundred million in volume, I'm impressed. Every single recruiter says that. It's about production, it sounds like everyone else, and the person on the other end hears the pitch coming from a mile away. [00:01:43] How to Actually Open With a Stranger Here's how I open a call with someone I've never met. Hey, we don't know each other, but I recently did some research on you, and I have to tell you, I'm incredibly impressed with a few things I found. That names the awkward part out loud, that we're strangers, and then it earns the moment with something real. And the specific part matters more than anything. I'm not affirming their numbers. I might say I noticed you've kept the same team around you for years, or you've clearly built a client-for-life reputation because I can see it in your reviews. That doesn't feel awkward. It feels like being seen. [00:02:24] Move 1: Affirm Character, Not Production When you affirm someone's numbers, you sound like every other recruiter who's ever called. I'm not a fan of production affirmation. I'm a huge fan of character affirmation, naming something about who they are, the loyalty they show their team, the way they treat their clients. That's how you stand out, because almost nobody does it. [00:02:52] Move 2: Do Your Homework So It's Specific Awkwardness comes from generic, and specific is the cure. Before you ever reach out, do the research, look at their production history, read their public reviews, study how they show up online. You're hunting for the one real thing you can point to that proves you paid attention to them specifically and not to a list. [00:03:18] Move 3: Name the Gap Out Loud, Then Affirm Here's the move that kills the awkwardness. Don't pretend you have a relationship you don't have. Say it plainly, we don't know each other, and then follow it with genuine research-based admiration. When you name the honest truth first, you take the weirdness out of the room, and what's left is a real compliment that lands. [00:03:43] Move 4: Give With No Ask Attached and Make It Useful The fastest way to make value feel forced is to bundle it with a request. So don't. Send the article, make the introduction, share the insight, and then stop. And make it useful, not flattering. Flattery is about winning them over, usefulness is about helping them, and help never feels awkward. The second you attach a hook, it stops being value and turns into bait, and people can always tell the difference. [00:04:15] Move 5: Write to an Audience of One Whether you're reaching one person or a hundred, every message has to read like it was written for the single person receiving it. My rule is that nothing goes out until it reads like it's going to an audience of one. The moment something feels mass-produced, it feels transactional, and the most non-affirming thing you can do to someone is spam them. [00:04:43] Why It Works Awkwardness is just the other person sensing that you want something from them. The second your outreach is specific, useful, and free of any ask, that signal disappears, because there's nothing left to be suspicious of. You're not performing, you're helping. Character affirmation works because underneath all the production, people most want to be respected for who they are, not just for what they produce. Give someone that with no strings attached and you stop sounding like a recruiter, you start sounding like the rare person who saw them. And here's the bigger reason it matters. Value earns permission. The leader who's known for adding to their market instead of always trying to extract from it becomes the default call when a producer finally decides to make a move. You're not just being nice, you're earning the right to the conversation you'll want to have later. [00:05:47] Your Small Win Tonight Pick one person you barely know but want to build a relationship with. Spend ten minutes finding one specific non-production thing worth affirming about them. Finding that one detail is your win, because it's the whole difference between awkward and welcome. [00:06:09] Three Bigger Moves This Week Send one message that affirms someone's character with no ask attached, so you feel how different value lands when it carries no strings. Do the homework on one person before you reach out, their reviews, their history, so your outreach is specific enough that it could only have been written for them. Then take a message you'd normally send to a group and rewrite it for one person, because that's the skill that makes all your outreach feel human, and it's a model your whole team can follow. Key Takeaways Value only feels awkward when it's about you. Make it about them and specific to them and the awkwardness disappears. Generic always feels like a setup. I saw you did a hundred million is what every recruiter says. Affirm character, not production. Underneath all the numbers, people most want to be respected for who they are. Awkwardness comes from generic, and specific is the cure. Do the homework so it could only have been written for them. Name the gap out loud. We don't know each other takes the weirdness out of the room before the compliment lands. Give with no ask attached. The second you attach a hook, value turns into bait, and people can always tell. Value earns permission. The leader known for adding to their market becomes the default call when a producer finally moves. If you want help learning to lead with value that never feels forced, reach out. Visit bookrichardnow.com and grab time on my calendar, and I'd be glad to think it through with you. And if you'd rather build this kind of thing in real time, I host a biweekly working lunch where we do exactly that together. You can add it, plus all of our other 4C live events, straight to your calendar here: http://cal.ae/suuaiiw

September 1, 2026Episode 2289 min

Nobody Feels Your Corporate Posts: 5 Moves to Cast Vision That Moves

You know you're supposed to show up. You know the producers you want are watching. But every time you sit down to post, one of two things happens. Either it comes out sounding like a corporate mission statement nobody feels, or you freeze up, stare at the screen, and decide you've got nothing worth saying. Here's what I want you to walk away with today. The producers you want are already watching you online, and they're deciding whether you're a leader worth following. The goal on social is to show up consistently and cast a future they want to be part of, in a voice that sounds like you and not a press release. I'll give you five moves to do that without sounding stiff and without ever running out of things to say. Episode Breakdown [00:01:20] The Mistake That's Keeping Your Content From Recruiting Most leaders post to the wrong audience. They talk to consumers and to agents, the people they sell to, and then they wonder why no producers ever reach out. If everything on your page is about rates, market updates, and closings, a loan officer scrolling by sees nothing that speaks to them. The people you're trying to recruit aren't your customers. They don't care about your rate specials, they care about where you're going, what it's like to be led by you, and whether they'd grow by being on your team. The day I stopped posting like a producer and started posting like a leader, everything changed. [00:02:24] Move 1: See Yourself as a Media Company First Most leaders think of themselves as a mortgage pro who happens to post online now and then. Flip that completely. You're a media company that happens to do mortgages. The moment I started seeing the world through that lens, content stopped feeling like a chore I had to squeeze in and started becoming the business itself. Attention is what earns you the conversation, and content is how you get attention. It isn't a side project, it's the top of your entire recruiting funnel. [00:03:00] Move 2: Lead With You, Not the Platform The leader is the product, the company is not. Every company out there offers basically the same platform, the same comp structure, the same licensing reach. It's a sea of sameness, and sameness never moves anybody. The one thing that sets you apart is you, your value stack, your coaching track record, your vision for the culture. So your content should lead with what you bring, not what your company offers. Producers can get the company anywhere. They can only get you from you. [00:03:40] Move 3: Lead With Team Vision There are three altitudes of vision. Me vision is what you get. Corporate vision is what the company gets. Team vision is what a producer gets by being part of what you're building. Corporate vision is what makes you sound like a press release nobody feels. Team vision, the specific future they get to be part of, is the one that moves people. So when you cast vision on social, cast it at that altitude, the one that answers the only question they're asking, which is what's in it for me. [00:04:15] Move 4: Use Social ID So You Never Run Dry Leaders constantly tell me they have nothing to post, and then they turn around and lead all day long. The framework I coach is Social ID . ID stands for identify and document. Identify what you're already doing as a leader and document it. The one-on-one you just had, the problem you solved this morning, the recruiting conversation that taught you something. You're not inventing content out of thin air and you're not performing, you're just capturing the leadership you're already living. Do that, and you'll never run out of material again. [00:04:55] Move 5: Move From Transactional to Transformational Most producer content is transactional. Closings, numbers, rate updates. It says look what I did. Transformational content says here's what I believe, here's where we're going, here's what I'm learning as a leader. That's the content that builds connection instead of just racking up views. And then you keep showing up, because visibility precedes relevancy. The producers you want will often watch you quietly for months before they ever say a word. Those likes today aren't the point. You're posting for the recruit who's watching right now and hasn't said a word yet. [00:05:42] Why It Works Producers decide who to follow based on who they want to become, and a corporate mission statement gives them nothing to reach for. A clear vision led by a real leader, told through real moments, gives them a future they can see themselves inside. Social ID works because authenticity beats polish every time, and the truest, most magnetic content you have is the leadership you're already doing every single day. Consistency works because trust isn't built in one viral post, it's built over months. The leader who shows up week after week becomes familiar, and over time that familiarity turns into trust, and trust is what finally makes a producer reach out. Winning the algorithm was never the point. The point is being the leader who's already in their feed, showing up with value long before they ever need to make a move. [00:06:53] Your Small Win Tonight Think back over the last two days of leading and write down one moment worth documenting, a conversation, a decision, a problem you solved, something you learned. That one moment is a post, and finding it is your win, because it proves you'll never run out of things to say. [00:07:14] Three Bigger Moves This Week Rewrite your next post so it speaks to a producer you want to recruit instead of a customer you want to close, so your content finally starts attracting the right people. Make one post that leads with your vision and your value as a leader, not your company's platform, so you stand out in that sea of sameness. Then commit to a simple posting rhythm you can hold, because consistency is what turns your page into a recruiting engine, and it teaches your whole team that showing up is a discipline, not a mood. Key Takeaways The producers you want are already watching you online, deciding whether you're a leader worth following. Most leaders post to the people they close, not the people they want to lead. Stop posting like a producer and start posting like a leader. You're not a mortgage pro who posts now and then. You're a media company that happens to do mortgages. The leader is the product, the company is not. Producers can get the company anywhere, they can only get you from you. Cast team vision, the future a producer gets by joining you. Corporate vision is the press release nobody feels. Social ID means identify and document. Capture the leadership you're already living and you'll never run out of material. Visibility precedes relevancy. You're posting for the recruit watching quietly right now who hasn't said a word yet. If you want help turning your social presence into a vision that recruits, reach out. Visit bookrichardnow.com and grab time on my calendar, and I'd be glad to think it through with you. And if you'd rather build this kind of thing in real time, I host a biweekly working lunch where we do exactly that together. The next one's Friday, September 11th at 12:00 PM Eastern. You can add it, plus all of our other 4C live events, straight to your calendar here: http://cal.ae/suuaiiw

August 24, 2026Episode 2279 min

5 Moves to Stop Carrying People Who Aren't Growing

There's someone on your team who isn't growing, and you keep pouring yourself into them anyway, emotionally, mentally, month after month, hoping this is finally the month it clicks. You lie awake thinking about how to reach them. You replay the conversations. You carry them home with you, and slowly, quietly, it's draining the very energy your best people need from you. Here's what I want you to walk away with today. Carrying someone emotionally who won't grow isn't kindness, it's a slow leak in your leadership, and learning where to set that weight down is what frees you to pour into the people who are moving. I'll walk you through five moves to do that without guilt and without becoming cold. Episode Breakdown [00:01:30] I Fired My Number One Producer, Twice Let me tell you something that still isn't easy to say out loud. I've fired my number one producer, not once, twice. Both times the numbers were incredible. By volume and by units, that person was winning, and on paper letting them go looked insane. But here's what I finally had to admit to myself. I was winning in production and losing in culture. That one person was costing me in environment, in alignment, in the way everybody else on the team felt showing up every day. And for a long time I carried it, because the production was so good the numbers kept me hooked. [00:02:14] The Trap Isn't Always the Low Performer Sometimes it's the person with the best numbers or the most potential, and their production or their promise is the very thing that keeps you carrying something you should have set down a long time ago. Keeping the wrong person, no matter how much they produce, is never a winning strategy. Volume alone is never a good enough reason to keep someone who's quietly undermining everyone around them. [00:02:45] Move 1: Get Honest About the Difference Between Potential and Behavior Potential is what someone could do. Behavior is what they're doing right now. The most dangerous person on your team is high in potential and low in behavior, because the potential keeps your hope alive while the behavior slowly drains your tank. Same with production, like my number one. The good number kept me hooked while the behavior cost me everything around it. Lead to what's in front of you, not to the highlight reel of what could be. [00:03:19] Move 2: Define Your Avatar and Non-Negotiables Before You're Tangled Here's what I learned the hard way. If you don't decide in advance what you actually require, in values, in character, in how someone treats the team, you'll rationalize almost anything once the relationship is deep and the production is good. So write down the non-negotiable values for the person you want on your team. Decide the standard while your head is clear, so you aren't trying to make a values call through a fog of emotion and good numbers. [00:04:00] Move 3: Name What You'll Tolerate Out Loud You get what you tolerate. If you never name the standard, you've silently agreed to carry whatever shows up. So say it kindly and clearly. Here's what growth looks like on this team, here's what I need to see from you, and here's what happens if I don't. That isn't harsh, that's clarity, and clarity is one of the most caring things a leader ever gives, even when it's hard to say. [00:04:30] Move 4: Put a Budget on Your Investment Decide ahead of time how much time and emotional energy you'll pour into someone before their behavior has to change. Without a budget, you'll carry a person for years on nothing but hope. With one, you protect yourself, and you make the hard call before you're too tangled up to make it well. A budget isn't cold. It's the thing that keeps your leadership solvent. [00:04:55] Move 5: Move the Weight to the Willing Take the emotional energy you were spending trying to light a fire under someone who won't move and pour it into the people already showing you desire through their behavior. That energy compounds where there's desire and evaporates where there isn't. Here's the quiet tragedy most leaders never see. Your best people are often getting your leftovers, because someone who won't grow absorbed your best. Give your best back to the ones who are running. [00:05:33] Why It Works Your emotional energy is finite, even more finite than your time, and every ounce of it you spend carrying someone who won't grow is an ounce you stole from someone who would. That's the part that stings. It doesn't only cost you, it quietly robs the people on your team who are doing the work. There's a second thing too. The leader is the ceiling. When you're consumed carrying one person, you stop growing, and when you stop growing, the whole team's ceiling comes down with you. So setting a weight down was never about abandoning someone, sometimes it's the only way to keep leading everyone else well. And one more truth I had to learn twice over the hard way. Carrying the unwilling rarely even helps them. Growth was always going to be their decision, not your effort. You cannot want it more than they do and call that leadership. [00:06:47] Your Small Win Tonight Name the one person you've been carrying emotionally with little in return. Be plain about it, and be honest about how much of your energy they've been taking. You can't set down a weight you won't admit you're holding, so naming it is the win. [00:07:06] Three Bigger Moves This Week Write down your non-negotiable values for the kind of person you want on your team, so the next time production tempts you to ignore a red flag, you've already decided what you stand for and your whole culture is protected by that line. Have one clear, kind conversation naming what growth looks like and what you need to see, so the standard stops being a secret you carry alone and becomes something the person can actually rise to. Then take the energy you free up and pour it into someone who's already moving, because coaching compounds where desire already lives, and your best people finally get the leader they deserve. Key Takeaways Carrying someone emotionally who won't grow isn't kindness. It's a slow leak in your leadership. The trap isn't always the low performer. Sometimes it's the best numbers or the most potential keeping you hooked on someone you should have released. Potential is what someone could do, behavior is what they're doing now. Lead to what's in front of you, not the highlight reel. Decide your non-negotiables while your head is clear, because good production will talk you out of every red flag once you're tangled. You get what you tolerate. Naming the standard out loud is one of the most caring things a leader can do. Put a budget on your time and emotional energy. Without one you'll carry a person for years on nothing but hope. Your emotional energy is finite. Every ounce spent on someone who won't grow is stolen from someone who would. If you're wrestling with where to keep investing and where to set the weight down, reach out. Visit bookrichardnow.com and grab time on my calendar, and I'd be glad to think it through with you. And if you'd rather work on this kind of thing in real time, I host a biweekly working lunch where we do exactly that together. The next one's August 28 at 12 PM ET. You can add it, plus all of our other 4C live events, straight to your calendar here: http://cal.ae/suuaiiw

August 18, 2026Episode 2266 min

The Fires Win by Wednesday: 5 Moves to Protect Your Recruiting Time

You start strong on Monday with the best intentions, and by Wednesday the fires have won, and by Friday the recruiting you swore you'd protect never happened. Here's what I want you to walk away with today. You don't rise to your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. Motivation fades, but a rhythm holds, and building the right weekly rhythm is what turns recruiting from the thing you keep meaning to do into the thing that just gets done. I'll give you five moves to build a rhythm that survives a hard week. Episode Breakdown [00:01:20] Most Rhythms Fail by Design, Not Discipline It's rarely a discipline problem, it's a design problem. Leaders try to hold their whole week together with willpower and a to-do list, and willpower is the first thing that breaks when the week gets hard. I've watched it in myself and in hundreds of leaders I've coached. The ones who stay consistent aren't more disciplined than everyone else. They just built a rhythm so clear and so protected that it survives a bad week. The goal was never the thing that moved them. The system they built underneath the goal was. [00:02:00] Move 1: Turn Your Goal Into a Project A goal like recruit more people is a wish, and wishes never make it onto a calendar. Turn it into a daily project with specific repeatable actions. So instead of I need to recruit, it becomes I make 20 outreach calls at 9 every morning. We don't rise to a goal, we fall to the level of the system we build underneath it. [00:02:26] Move 2: Protect the Block Before Anything Else Fills It Put your recruiting time on the calendar first, ahead of the meetings and the fires. If recruiting only gets whatever's left over at the end of the day, it will always get nothing, because there's never anything left. Treat that block like an appointment you'd never cancel on your best client. [00:02:46] Move 3: Track Inputs, Not Just Outcomes You can't control who signs this week, but you can control the calls you make and the value you deliver. Measure the inputs, the activity you actually own, so a slow week doesn't feel like failure and you keep showing up when the wins are quiet. [00:03:10] Move 4: Report It to Someone This is Pearson's law. What gets measured improves, and what gets measured and reported improves exponentially. The moment you have to tell one other person what you did this week, your consistency jumps, because now there's a little accountability riding on it. [00:03:29] Move 5: Reset Every Friday End each week with three quick questions. What worked so I can double down on it, what didn't, and what's the one thing I'll improve next week. That 15-minute reset is what keeps the rhythm honest and keeps it evolving instead of quietly dying on you. [00:03:50] Why It Works A rhythm beats motivation because motivation is a feeling and a rhythm is a structure, and structure keeps working on the days the feeling is gone. Turning the goal into a project works because your brain can't act on something vague, but it can absolutely make a 9:00 AM call. And the Friday reset works because a rhythm nobody examines slowly drifts until it disappears, while a rhythm you review every week keeps getting stronger. Consistency was never about trying harder. It's about building something that carries you on the days trying hard isn't enough. [00:04:33] Your Small Win Tonight Open your calendar and put one recruiting block on it for tomorrow, at a specific time you can honor, then treat it like a real appointment and protect it. That single block is your win, because a rhythm starts with one protected hour, not a perfect week. [00:04:50] Three Bigger Moves This Week Turn your top recruiting goal into a daily project with a specific action and time, so it stops living in your head and starts living on your calendar, which is a model your whole team can copy. Pick one person to report your weekly activity to, because the accountability that sharpens you sharpens everyone you lead. Then put a recurring Friday reset on the calendar, the three questions, so your rhythm keeps improving instead of fading and your team sees a leader who sustains what they start. Key Takeaways You don't rise to your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. Most rhythms fail by design, not discipline. Willpower is the first thing that breaks when the week gets hard. A goal like recruit more people is a wish. Turn it into a daily project, 20 calls at 9 every morning. Put your recruiting block on the calendar first. If it only gets what's left over, it gets nothing. Track inputs, not just outcomes. You can't control who signs, but you own the calls and the value you deliver. What gets measured improves, and what gets measured and reported improves exponentially. Report your week to one person. A rhythm nobody examines drifts until it disappears. A 15-minute Friday reset keeps it evolving instead of dying. If you want help designing a weekly rhythm that actually holds, reach out. Visit bookrichardnow.com and grab time on my calendar, and I'd be glad to think it through with you. And if you'd rather build this kind of thing in real time, I host a biweekly working lunch where we do exactly that together. The next one's 8/28 at 12 PM ET. You can add it, plus all of our other 4C live events, straight to your calendar here: http://cal.ae/suuaiiw