How Did Jeremy Jenson Turn STRUGGLE into LEGACY

Speaker 1 Welcome to Mick Unplugged, where we ignite potential and fuel purpose. Get ready for raw insights, bold moves, and game-changing conversations.
Buckle up, here's Mick.

Speaker 2 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another exciting episode of Mick Unplugged.

Speaker 2 And today, we have an extraordinary guest who is the founder of Encore Search Partners, Houston's largest privately held executive search firm.

Speaker 2 Under his leadership, the company has been recognized as one of Houston's fastest 50. It's

Speaker 2 been recognized as Houston's fastest 50 companies for five consecutive years. There were a lot of F's in there, Jeremy, that I was trying to get out.

Speaker 2 But please join me in welcoming the innovative, the driven, the accomplished, the man who now has to go get new taillights, Mr. Jeremy Jensen.
Jeremy, how are you doing today, brother? Excellent, man.

Speaker 2 I'm doing well. Good morning.
So you got to tell me, bro, like you just told me you had your taillight stolen at 3 a.m. What kind of freaking taillights do you have that people just want to go get?

Speaker 2 Well, now I don't want to tell everybody because apparently there's a great black market for them. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So I've got two cars that I park in my little circle driveway right in front of my house. The fancy car is in the garage.

Speaker 2 But I've got a BMW M8 competition. I've got a Ford Raptor.
And somebody just came and just ganked the taillights off the Ford Raptor at 3 a.m. And so we caught them on camera.

Speaker 2 But, you know, that's one of those things where we might just chalk it up to the game.

Speaker 2 Chalk it up to the game. You know, with my insurance background, I literally have like 40 insurance agents in Houston right now that are just looking up to see if you're their client.

Speaker 2 So we have to be careful.

Speaker 2 Yep. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Man, so Jeremy, very honored to have you on, man. Like, it's not every day that we get to talk to one of the moguls in the the executive search game, man.

Speaker 2 So I would love for you to just share a little bit about your background before starting executive search partners. Like what made Jeremy Jeremy, right?

Speaker 2 Like, I don't want to talk about the college dropout, but let's talk about the college dropout, right? Like, let's, let's go deep into Jeremy Jensen.

Speaker 2 Yeah, man, there's a, there's probably a five-minute answer and then there's a 55-minute answer. So I'll give you the five-minute answer.
Let's go.

Speaker 2 So born and raised in A-leaf, Texas, which is southwest Houston, a very underprivileged,

Speaker 2 poor community.

Speaker 2 You know, my mom had me at 16 years old. My dad left and abandoned my mom, my brother and I at a very young age.
He left whenever I was eight years old.

Speaker 2 And my mom had to work two jobs just to make ends meet, right? To live in an apartment complex, right, in a decent area of town.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 so, you know, that forced me to kind of, you know, make friends really easily because we were constantly moving all the time. My brother kind of didn't have the same skills, right?

Speaker 2 And so instead of him developing friends easy, he kind of became the kid that just sat by himself during lunch in the cafeteria or in the library rather, right?

Speaker 2 And so I'm glad that it had that effect on me.

Speaker 2 I played sports growing up, soccer in elementary school, football in middle school and high school. That taught me teamwork, you know, competitive drive, coachability.

Speaker 2 And I was a standout, you know, seventh grade, eighth grade, ninth grade, 10th grade. And then, man, you know, I, it had always just come naturally to me.

Speaker 2 And then by the time we got to 11th and 12th grade, when you actually had to like put in the work and hustle and grind and then spend that time into the gym, you know, other folks just started lapping me, man.

Speaker 2 And that was a big ego hit for me. And, and, um,

Speaker 2 And so I'm the, the kind of guy where a lot of the stuff, it kind of just comes natural, right?

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 then, you know, I haven't really learned until now that I'm a dad, a father of three kids myself, that component about, you know, focus, discipline, hard work.

Speaker 2 I recently went on a weight loss journey and lost 77 pounds over the last year. You know, it's just kind of like that take no shortcuts mentality, man.

Speaker 2 But, you know, I would say that it's kind of like the reverse engineering and finding the cheat code in order to grow things is my superpower.

Speaker 2 That's a big reason why I've got a 40-person direct hire recruiting firm here in Houston: instead of me rolling up my sleeves and doing a lot of the sweat equity myself, I did a good job of just delegating and elevating, right, and focusing on business development, focusing on marketing.

Speaker 2 But, you know, to answer your question, you know,

Speaker 2 grew up in a poor community, single mom, kind of had a chip on my shoulder because

Speaker 2 all the other kids were getting nice new cars, right? Nice new clothes. You know, here I was,

Speaker 2 you know, wearing the Stefan Marbury Spalding, you know, shoes. I didn't have Jordans, bro.
I didn't, I didn't have any of that Nike stuff.

Speaker 2 You had the $30 Stefan styrofolds, the Hockey Melajawans, if you remember those. We're about the same age, but

Speaker 2 it was tough, man. And I think a lot of that, I wouldn't say insecurity or humility or whatever you want to call it, right?

Speaker 2 But that kind of fueled my success because I really wanted people to be be proud of me. I wanted them to know that I was successful, right?

Speaker 2 And so, you know, there's a lot of entrepreneurs that make their millions and they kind of like do a good job at hiding it.

Speaker 2 Well, I don't know if it was just poor Jeremy growing up and now he's successful, but you know, I've got the Ferrari F8, right? I've got the M8 comp, I've got all of the shiny new objects and toys.

Speaker 2 And I think that it's it's really driven by that wounded child that grew up in the apartment complex in the nice neighborhood. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 2 And so I probably need to work through that through therapy or something like that. But, you know, I'm just that one kid that was smart and

Speaker 2 I used that intelligence and channeled it into starting my first company when I was 24. I'm kind of tweaking the business model at 26.

Speaker 2 And then here we are fast forward 14 years later and we're number one in Houston. I love that.
And that's an amazing accomplishment, man.

Speaker 2 I want to unplug a couple of things that you just talked about in your opener. So, you know, at McUnplugged, we, we talk about your because, that thing that's deeper than your why, right?

Speaker 2 Like, I could guess Jeremy's why, right? Like, you talk about, you know, proving yourself, right? But your because

Speaker 2 is that internal thing that holds you accountable to doing whatever that standard or goal is every day. And so, you know, it changes over time, right?

Speaker 2 Like, I'm sure your because when you were younger is not the same because that you have today. I'd love to talk just briefly about your because and how that transitioned.

Speaker 2 So like young Jeremy, what was that because? And I think we heard a little bit of it, right? Yeah. And then college, Jeremy to entrepreneur Jeremy, like how did your because change for you? Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, I, you know, really, I haven't even thought, you know, of those early days very much, to be quite honest, right? You know, I've been hyper-focused on growing this business since 2010.

Speaker 2 You know, as far as the because back then,

Speaker 2 you know, maybe I wanted respect and admiration from people who I respect and admire, right?

Speaker 2 And I don't think that that's changed over the last 30 years. I think what has changed is the people who I respect and admire have changed.
You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 2 And so, you know, when we're in high school, who do we respect and admire? The captain of the football team, the prom king, the head cheerleader, right?

Speaker 2 And maybe we wanted to vie for their attention, right? Vie for their respect and want to be included in the cool crowd, right?

Speaker 2 And maybe we were willing to sacrifice our morals or our character even sometimes in order to get access to that room, right? Yeah.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I can say whenever I went through a divorce in 2019, the people who I respected and admired back then is very, very different from the people who I respect and admire now. Right.

Speaker 2 I was idolizing the single dudes that were, you know, popping bottles with the bottle girls you know at 3 a.m and and and i thought that that was the standard for you know what it was in order to be successful as as a wealthy single man in the city of houston right and i tried to pursue that lifestyle and realize not only does this not make me happy it leaves me empty right

Speaker 2 leaves me challenging my own self-worth and feel unfulfilled right and it was kind of counterproductive than just sitting at the house you know watching just judy at midnight on a saturday night right but uh but you know you know i've found true love here recently in in the last six months or so and you know it's a young lady that that prioritizes health and fitness and and nutrition and and physical activity and traveling and and she's kind of really helped me reframe my mindset on what success looks like on what on on us driving into the future.

Speaker 2 Yeah, man. You know,

Speaker 2 one of my good friends, accountability partner, mentor, Carlester Crumpler, you know, he always asked me, you know, Mick, is it about happiness or is it about joy and fulfillment?

Speaker 2 Because when you seek joy and fulfillment, what you realize is your true self. And that's what I hear with Jeremy, right? It's like, you know, throughout everything, it's like, what fulfills you?

Speaker 2 And sometimes you need to empty the cup. to get filled again with something new.
And to me, that's what life and life journey is about, especially in the business side of things, right?

Speaker 2 Like when you're, when you're starting out and it's you and maybe one other person or you and a couple of people, or sometimes it's just you, right?

Speaker 2 Like that cup has to get filled and then it changes. And that changes you as a human being too.
And, you know, I say this all the time for entrepreneurs, especially those that are starting out.

Speaker 2 Make sure you're willing to step into the game of entrepreneurship, not just dabble, right? It's different than being a side hustle.

Speaker 2 Side hustle is one thing, but when it's the main thing and you got to keep the main thing the main thing, like make sure you're really prepared for those lessons that you're going to learn.

Speaker 2 And to me, again, I go back to joy and fulfillment because if it was just about being happy, I probably would have never lasted as an entrepreneur because happiness lasts until you got to make your first payroll.

Speaker 2 It's like,

Speaker 2 oh, crap, what's that? You know what? Hi, Morgan Freeman here.

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Speaker 3 Atruvi is an old medicine used to treat adults with ATTR-CM to reduce death and hospitalization due to heart issues.

Speaker 3 Tell your doctor if you're pregnant, plan to become pregnant, or are breastfeeding, and about the medications you take. The most common side effects were mild and included diarrhea and abdominal pain.

Speaker 3 If you have ATTR-CM, talk to your cardiologist about Natrubia or visit atrubia.com. That's A-T-T-R-U-B-Y.com to learn more.
It's time to get busy living.

Speaker 2 What's funny is, is us as entrepreneurs and, you know, I went to a lunch-in one time that was facilitated by a gentleman named Cameron Harold, who's the founder of the COO Alliance, very successful entrepreneur.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 he showed like these 13 characteristics and he went through them in the slide and he goes, what are these the characteristics of? And then everyone said, oh, an entrepreneur.

Speaker 2 And then it went to the next slide and it said, no, a sociopath. Right.
And so like for us as entrepreneurs, we kind of have to be wired differently in order to pursue,

Speaker 2 you know, that, that direction in our careers. But one of the things that I found is, is that happiness and success is a moving target, man.
Where it's like,

Speaker 2 when I started, it was like, man, if only I could make $250,000 a year, right?

Speaker 2 And then I made 250 and then all of a sudden it was like, well, now I got to make 500. Then I had to make a million.
Right.

Speaker 2 And then when I was making a million dollars a year, it was like, oh, you know, now I got to have 20 employees. I got to have 30, 40 employees.
Right.

Speaker 2 And so now you fast forward 15 years and it's like, you know, we're doing a million dollars a month in revenue and I've got my team sending out six figure invoices and it really doesn't bring me a tremendous amount of joy or happiness because it's almost kind of the status quo now.

Speaker 2 Right. So I would say I had a way more fun and it was a lot happier.
those early years when that $20,000 direct deposit from the client hit the bank account and it fucking meant something, man.

Speaker 2 And I think we rob ourselves of that joy whenever we're super early career because we're always hustling and grinding wanting more, you know?

Speaker 2 And so I want to kind of pivot and give you two experience shares from a couple of things that you just shared. Number one, I think early, Jeremy,

Speaker 2 you know, I chased money, right? And then I got money.

Speaker 2 And I went through a divorce and I cut my money in half and I woke up the next day and was like, oh, wow, like that didn't really hurt that bad, right? I still have a very successful business.

Speaker 2 I have my health. I have my children's health.
And

Speaker 2 then I channeled that energy and then I chased power. Right.
And so like, well, you know, what is power? Okay, headcount, right?

Speaker 2 The more people that I can lead, more soldiers that I can develop, right? And I built this company and that. You know, you introduce more people in your business.

Speaker 2 There's going to be more headaches, right? There are very unpredictable variables, right?

Speaker 2 And then over the last few years, I kind of chased influence, right? And I kind of hyper-focused a lot of my direct marketing strategies that I utilized on LinkedIn.

Speaker 2 And I channeled that onto Instagram after I created an Instagram in 2019 and created some notoriety. I started a dating podcast.
I had a different Path to Success podcast. And

Speaker 2 again, all of that kind of left me unfulfilled

Speaker 2 until I went to a legacy planning seminar in February that was

Speaker 2 facilitated by a group called Petra Coach.

Speaker 2 And I realized that all of that didn't mean shit if I didn't have purpose. There you go.
Because they say that a man

Speaker 2 who doesn't have purpose will seek pleasure. And I think we all know that pleasure is fleeting, right? That doesn't really bring true happiness.

Speaker 2 I think true happiness as men is really bred in moments of achievement, right? When we're achieving. And it's really easy to hit these milestones when you're in your 20s, right?

Speaker 2 The first time you buy a house, the first time you set up your investment accounts, you buy that dream car that you wanted, right?

Speaker 2 You have kids, you, you know, you, you build a family, you start a company, you hit certain revenue milestones. As me, as a 40-year-old man,

Speaker 2 it's much more difficult to hit that next level of achievement. Yeah.
Right.

Speaker 2 So it's important to like really channel that humility and that gratitude component and be a little bit more comfortable in how far you've come and not how far you still need to go. I love that.

Speaker 2 I love that, man. So let's talk to entrepreneurs right now because you're, you know, best, fastest growing, best company in Houston, right? Like I'll brag for Jeremy so he doesn't have to, right? Like

Speaker 2 you are the gold standard in the city of Houston and in the state of Texas. What that tells me is that you prioritize culture.

Speaker 2 And I think that that's where entrepreneurs, and I don't care any size, where they get it wrong, where they think, oh, I've got a team. I'm going to let my team do their thing.

Speaker 2 Your job as a CEO is to be culture. So how did Jeremy make culture a priority at Encore? Yeah, I mean, it's definitely been about eight years in the making.

Speaker 2 You know, whenever we were were a small company, I'm flashback 2015, 2016, had five, six employees. I knew that I was the best recruiter.

Speaker 2 I knew I was the best salesperson, the best at calculating commissions, right?

Speaker 2 And I was kind of a control freak to some extent. And if you didn't do it my way, you were doing it the wrong way.

Speaker 2 And mind you, I was in an unhappy marriage. I was going through a divorce.
I was very arrogant, cocky.

Speaker 2 I was super, super aggressive in the way that I communicated with my team, and that bred a tremendous amount of turnover.

Speaker 2 And then in 2016, I brought in a vice president to help come implement processes, systems, and accountability. And he brought a system called EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, right?

Speaker 2 And he's actually my EOS integrator. He was hired as VP, promoted to COO, and he's now the president of the company.
He's been here since October of 2016.

Speaker 2 And really the culture was developed by implementing our mission, our vision, our values, and really being hyper-consistent on interviewing, coaching, hiring, firing to those core values.

Speaker 2 It required a tremendous amount of openness, honesty, authenticity, vulnerability as a leader, right? If maybe we were going through challenging times, not hiding it from your people.

Speaker 2 Whenever we were experiencing big wins, being transparent about the revenue figures and the profit figures, right?

Speaker 2 And I think that transparency and that honesty and vulnerability from leadership breeds trust and camaraderie, right?

Speaker 2 I don't think culture is built on having fucking ping-pong tables, right, in the break room. I think that's a common misconception that, oh, we've got, you know, fun, fun is like unlimited PTL.

Speaker 2 We've got great culture, right?

Speaker 2 I think that as long as you have clarity around what do you stand for

Speaker 2 and why you stand for that, and you provide consistency, then your culture will organically take care of itself, right?

Speaker 2 The culture at GoPro is different than the culture at Microsoft, is different than the culture at, you know, Tesla, is different than the culture at ExxonMobil.

Speaker 2 But as long as people know what they're signing up for and are excited to live those values each and every day, then that's going to breed.

Speaker 2 a positive culture that's congruent with what leadership wants. Totally agree.

Speaker 2 And i want to add on to to something you said about hiring and terminating to the values because here's what i again here's what i see a lot of leaders do wrong oh well you know jeremy's been with the company for 15 years and you know jeremy's managing two million dollars of accounts and if we let jeremy go then all of a sudden now we got to figure out what to do and i'm like well so what that's what you're supposed to do if jeremy is crushing your culture, then you're about to have 30 Jeremy's really, really soon because all it takes is one example to be the norm.

Speaker 2 And again, I think that's where people go wrong. They're, they're fast to hire and slow to fire.

Speaker 2 And it needs to totally be the opposite way because the moment someone's not adhering to the values of your company, all it takes is one other employee to see that. And now you have two.

Speaker 2 And then you have four. And then you have 20, and then you have 100.
And now you're stuck with trying to figure it out.

Speaker 2 Or you're a company that's run by your employees, and people might think that that sounds great, but that's the worst thing that can happen. I can promise you that.
100%, man.

Speaker 2 You know, one of the, there were two things that I've learned over the last five years. The first thing that I want to share with your listeners is

Speaker 2 if you fire your top salesperson, right?

Speaker 2 Because they violate core values or they're toxic or combative

Speaker 2 or whatever you want to say, right? If you fire your top salesperson, then guess what? You have a new top salesperson 100% of the time. Hi, Morgan Freeman here.

Speaker 3 I want to talk to you about a serious rare heart condition called ATTR cardiac amyloidosis or ATTR CM.

Speaker 3 Now, I don't have the condition myself, but if you're living with ATTR-CM, it's important to know about treatment options like Atruvi, also known as Acoramidis, because you have the power of choice when it comes to treatment.

Speaker 3 Atruvi is an old medicine used to treat adults with ATTRCM to reduce death and hospitalization due to heart issues.

Speaker 3 Tell your doctor if you're pregnant, plan to become pregnant, or are breastfeeding and about the medications you take. The most common side effects were mild and included diarrhea and abdominal pain.

Speaker 3 If you have ATTRCM, talk to your cardiologist about Atruvia or visit Atruby.com. That's A-T-T-R-U-B-Y.com to learn more.
It's time to get busy living.

Speaker 2 I'm not, right? It's true.

Speaker 2 You let go of Tom Brady, you have a new starting quarterback the next season. Correct.
Yeah, okay, that's number one.

Speaker 2 And I forgot what the second one was just because I was so passionate.

Speaker 2 No, no, that's

Speaker 2 great, right so it's you've got to be quick to fire and not let the rest of the team see that you tolerate that because i will tell you your culture is the equivalent of the least value that you accept so if you accept tardiness that's your culture if you accept cutting corners that's your culture absolutely and another thing that we rolled out i remember what it was now one of my colleagues in eo the entrepreneurs organization went to you know kind of like an executive education strategy session at Harvard last year.

Speaker 2 And he sent a screenshot of the presentation. And it basically said there's two types of cultures, right?

Speaker 2 There's, there's companies that run it like a family, and then there's companies that run it like a sports team. And that was a huge eye-opener for me.

Speaker 2 because I realized that we run it like a sports team.

Speaker 2 And as long as you communicate that to your team and you're consistent with actually living out your words through action, then I think that's perfectly okay, right?

Speaker 2 You know, you think about where do you live?

Speaker 2 Let's say South Carolina. South Carolina, right? So Cam Newton was a great quarterback for many years for the Carolina Panthers, right?

Speaker 2 But that didn't mean anything until

Speaker 2 whenever he wasn't performing to the standard of what he was being paid for, right? And so unfortunately, they had to make a change. Right.

Speaker 2 And so we tell our team, we don't care how much revenue you've generated for the company in your history with the organization, we're going to hand the ball off to the person that gives us the highest probability to score.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 And just because you've been here for six years

Speaker 2 doesn't mean that you get exclusivity to those key accounts.

Speaker 2 If I have a rookie, right, that's coming in and he's got the right skills, experience, work ethic in order to increase the probability to close. Right.

Speaker 2 And so that consistency really breeds them self-managing themselves because it doesn't allow complacency.

Speaker 2 I freaking love that because when I talk to organizations and I'm working with the sales team, I pretty much mimic that exact same thing when I'm talking to the CEO or the VP of sales.

Speaker 2 I'm like, okay, let's think about this.

Speaker 2 You say that you have your salespeople in different niches. And if it's this type of niche, it always goes to Jeremy, right? Well, Jeremy knows that.

Speaker 2 And I promise you, jeremy's getting complacent and he's not going to be as hungry because he knows you're feeding him a hundred percent of that business

Speaker 2 if jeremy has competition and if jeremy is the salesperson that you think he is jeremy's going to start rising and closing faster and producing more and again i think another

Speaker 2 i say myth that ceos follow is you know, I'm going to silo these people into these silos.

Speaker 2 I'm not saying that silos aren't right, but you can't have a one person silo and expect that silo to be the best silo that it could ever be.

Speaker 2 Absolutely true. Yep.
Yep. So let's talk about the success you've had in Houston with your company, man.
Like, again, culture's dynamic.

Speaker 2 I know that that's there, but it also takes that visionary, which is Jeremy. It takes that visionary to see the where.
the world and where the trends are going.

Speaker 2 And that's why I applaud you for being one of the top five CEOs in the world that I know, right? Like literally, and I mean that from my soul, bro. Thank you.

Speaker 2 Because the characteristic of the best of the best, the elite ones of one, is they can see things that most people can't see.

Speaker 2 And they know how to build the plans before that they can become a problem or a challenge so that you can build. Hey, we're going to run into this obstacle.
Here's going to be our plan of attack.

Speaker 2 Doesn't mean it always works, but at least you know that it's coming. How has that been a part of who you are? Because I know that that's a part of who you are.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, you know, I'm, remember, I told you that I was really smart whenever I was in primary school, right? Yep. And so I have a unique ability to look at data and to come up with hypotheses.

Speaker 2 And then I'm very, very quick to act, right? Once I have information, I don't really sit on it. Right.
And, you know, unfortunately, sometimes I get it wrong because I move very quickly.

Speaker 2 But more often than not, right, because it's an educated decision, right? It pays off. Right.
And so, you know, really analyzing the data, looking at market trends.

Speaker 2 I think one of the biggest things for us to grow our revenue over the years was,

Speaker 2 you know, I think I saw on LinkedIn where a company

Speaker 2 paid McKinsey to come in and they paid him $2 million in consulting fees in order to come up with a strategy in order to increase revenue.

Speaker 2 And after paying them $2 million, they told him, well, we suggest that you increase your prices by 10%.

Speaker 2 And it was like, yeah, no shit, right? Like, if I just increase my price, then my revenue is going to grow up, you know, go up.

Speaker 2 But it was a big eye-opener for me because it was like, you know, it takes the same amount of energy to take a deal from origination to close,

Speaker 2 whether it's a 10K fee or whether it's a 100K fee.

Speaker 2 Right. And if we focus on building a brand around 100K fees and we become very consistent with direct marketing to potential buyers for 100k fees right

Speaker 2 then then that will obviously help increase our revenue with just you know the same level of labor right in-house um the same number of people and again it was really watching you know steph curry you know you know uh in in the nba and saying, hey, look, if I have a 50% chance at making a two, but a 40% chance at making a three,

Speaker 2 well i'm just going to shoot threes all day right that was a massive game changer for us in business to have the discipline to walk away from the easy fucking sales

Speaker 2 and to be hyper consistent on our messaging and our branding in order to go get threes all day there it is i love that man Yeah, and I'm sure that you tell your clients that, right?

Speaker 2 Like, what is our core focus? Who's an A client, right? Why do these A clients buy from us? Who's the number one person in the market? How is their brand different than our brand? Right.

Speaker 2 Is there some confusion? What's, you know, you know, a lot of times it's, it's tweaking the brand might be a way to increase revenue by 33%.

Speaker 2 Dude, I tell people all the time, when people hire me to come into their business, I tell them all the time, growth and scaling isn't as hard as you think it is. It's discipline.

Speaker 2 And it really is, it's not easy, but it's just discipline. It's how do I not get distracted by low-hanging fruit? How do I not make other people's priorities my priorities?

Speaker 2 And then scaling doesn't isn't hard, right? There's no rocket science to scaling, right? Like, hey, if I've got to sell 5,000 widgets, then let's go sell 5,000 widgets, right?

Speaker 2 I don't need to figure out, you know, the quantity of this and the color of this. No, I just need to sell 5,000 freaking widgets.
Let's just go sell 5,000, right? Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, my, you know, one of my good friends, he's a client of mine.

Speaker 2 They're an an ammo manufacturer right so he's got 30 employees here in houston and then he's got a factory in mexico with 2 000 employees that just make ammo all day and for years he's been selling right to uh local police departments and um

Speaker 2 you know uh sporting goods stores and then you know a couple of years ago he's like why can't i sell to like the nation of israel right saudi arabia

Speaker 2 and so by being hyper on chasing that business, he's been able to 10x his revenue, right? Just because he's targeted the right clients through focus, discipline, and accountability, right?

Speaker 2 That's what you talked about, that lack of discipline where people can get distracted. I think that focus and discipline are critical, you know, whenever you're an entrepreneur.

Speaker 2 Dude, I think we just need to do a masterclass for CEOs.

Speaker 2 Charge everybody like 25 grand to sit in on this masterclass and we together will help them scale their business in two hours because we can do it.

Speaker 2 Well, you know, it's funny.

Speaker 2 Another big light bulb moment came for me whenever I started to consume different fucking content, man.

Speaker 2 You know, whenever I first created that Instagram in 2019, my feed was like bikini models, right?

Speaker 2 And, you know, the algorithm almost knows us better than we know ourselves sometimes. And then I started to retrain the algorithm to where now it's Alex Hormozi, right? Yeah.
Cody Sanchez, right?

Speaker 2 You've got so many thought leaders in the B2B space where we can get those masterclasses for free

Speaker 2 just by retraining the way that we think, man. Absolutely freaking love it.
Jeremy, I know you're a busy guy, so I appreciate you taking some time just to talk to the viewers and listeners.

Speaker 2 What does Jeremy have going on? What's coming up next for Jeremy?

Speaker 2 Man, you know,

Speaker 2 hiring over the last 12 months, you know, companies aren't creating positions the way that they were in 2021, 2022, right? Whenever they were getting infused with all this PPP money and ERC money.

Speaker 2 And so a lot of the growth that we've had has been penetrating new markets, right?

Speaker 2 And so what we want to do is we want to really invest in

Speaker 2 more demand generation, right? And not as much lead generation.

Speaker 2 And what I mean by that is, is for so long, we've been so reliant on cold call it, right?

Speaker 2 We've been so reliant on going and trying to acquire a customer just through brute force.

Speaker 2 But whenever we've reverse engineered who are our A clients that have signed up with us over the last 24 months, it's been due to providing content and establishing ourselves as thought leaders in our space.

Speaker 2 And then by the time they engage us, they've already decided that they're ready to buy. Right.

Speaker 2 And so we're hiring more marketing people.

Speaker 2 We're hiring more people that are skilled with social media advertising and things of that nature and being a little bit less focused on some of the old school strategies on client acquisition, right?

Speaker 2 Because the reasons why people buy in a digital age are very different maybe than the reasons why they bought 10 years ago. Absolutely.
The reason,

Speaker 2 the path of how they buy. And honestly,

Speaker 2 now people know what they want to buy before they contact you. Like, like, pretty much they know they've done their research.
They know your pricing structure.

Speaker 2 They need you to be a concierge in the process. Right.
And that's what I train salespeople on. Just be a concierge now.
Like, you don't need sales tactics.

Speaker 2 You still need to build relationships, but where you build those relationships are different.

Speaker 2 And the approach that you have should be that of a concierge, not of that of somebody who's going to just spit out a bunch of knowledge because people have knowledge now.

Speaker 2 It's there. Jeremy, bro, where can people find and follow you? You know, the two best places to find and follow me are if it's business related, right? LinkedIn is the number one resource.

Speaker 2 It's just my name, Jeremy Jensen. I've got a little goat emoji after my name, the CEO of Encore Search Partners.
If you DM me there, I'm 100% going to reply, right?

Speaker 2 If you want to follow the personal life, follow me on Instagram. It's just my name, Jeremy Jensen, J-E-N-S-O-N.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I'd be happy to do a follow back there. But man, I have a lot of fun with my three boys, with my girlfriend.
We just got back from Belize yesterday. Nice.

Speaker 2 That was an exciting trip that we did over the Thanksgiving week. I'm going to Poland this month to meet the future in-laws.
That's going to be a super exciting trip.

Speaker 2 It's like 14 degrees there right now. So that's a little bit scary for a Texan.
It's not Houston. Yeah.
Yeah. But, but, man, I'll tell you, man, I'm really excited for the near term.

Speaker 2 And I've got a lot of ducks in a row, right, in my business and in my investments.

Speaker 2 But man, really hyper focusing on getting fulfillment through my personal life is something that I'm super excited about in the near future. I'm excited about that for you, brother.

Speaker 2 And for everybody, just know, Jeremy's an amazing follow, both on LinkedIn from Business Strategy. He gives out a lot of free stuff that he shouldn't be giving out for free.

Speaker 2 And then on Instagram, you'll get to see some behind the scenes things with Jeremy Jensen. Jeremy, brother, I appreciate you more than you know, my man.
Excellent, man. Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 2 You got it. And for all the listeners and viewers, remember, you're because is your superpower.
Go unleash it.

Speaker 1 Thank you for tuning in to Mick Unplugged. Keep pushing your limits, embracing your purpose, and chasing greatness.
Until next time, stay unstoppable.