For my dream - like any dream - to make sense, we have to head back to the past and find my dream's underpinning and reason.  Consider, true dreams have to have deep roots stretching into the distant past.  True dreams mandate courageous action and limitless effort in the present.  And certainly, their ultimate purpose is nothing other than to become reality in the future.

Uncovering the roots of my dream's past will be our main thrust today.  Then, in the coming parts of this series we'll lay out the basis of the dream in the present and for the future.

We now time travel back to 1987... 

Stepping out of our time machine, we see a 26-year old me working independently. I had discovered that I was simply not a good employee, and had no dream to drive such a mission. I won no part-time sales management positions as I had planned, so the struggle to find value to sell was on.

Skipping forward through two unbelievably challenging years to 1989...

Bit-by-bit I blunder into short-term project contracting, training and consulting. Ultimately I build a wonderful market analysis and sales training tool that helps me support my family with a bit greater ease.  Real consulting begins in earnest.

Next stop 1993...

Jim Dykeman: The man who believed in me in 1993.

Six years into my practice, I am beginning to find peace with my strangely evolved, strangely chosen career as a consultant.  What keeps body, soul and family together, too, through these years is nothing other than my cold call selling skills and sheer discipline.

Then, in the autumn of 1993, I receive a fateful introduction to Jim Dykeman, then owner of Management Recruiters of Mercer Island, Washington. 

I share with Jim, within seconds of his taking my call and in reference to the sales method I created back in 1989, this claim: 

"Jim,  what I've built is the Simplest, Fastest, Easiest to Learn and Easiest to Train Method of Outstanding Salesmanship and in fact TOTAL COMMUNICATIONS available on the market today, at any price." 

Jump forward to the beginning of 1995...

I now serve a growing number of MRI shops through the end of '93 and all of '94.  Completing my first full calendar year's worth of service to recruiters. This is  the first time I've served multiple businesses all doing the same thing.  What's more, my cold call selling has completely migrated to the MRI family, and so I have a very big decision to make.  I must decide if I am now going to specialize or remain the die-hard generalist serving small businesses.

And this brings us to the reason I've shared that much of my story.

Roots of the Dream - The Truth Business

What I discovered, in analyzing that year plus worth of experience with recruiters, was that I believed recruiting to be the most powerful, the highest potential, the most important AND the most undervalued work in the entire world of capitalism. I found that recruiters knew more about their individual markets than any other player in those markets. 

Go back for a moment with me to what I sold when I was a generalist.   I sold my ignorance.  I explained with great joy to prospects that I knew nothing about their company, product or service, customers, market, competitors or way of making money.  But, in teaching me their business, we would find new perspective and ways to improve the performance of that business they could not gain in any other way.  I promised to be the best student of their business they would ever meet or hire.  It was a delightful thing to sell.

Now, look at consulting in general with me.  Consultants, me included, almost always blunder into the need for a model of some sort to apply to the current business situation of our clients.  So, we build, fall in love with, become true believers in and sell our model to the world as the greatest intellectual feat since Archimedes invented the screw.  Surviving consultants learn how to advocate.  There is no other way.  But, these models are always generalizations.  Our clients offer us the specific cases and situations with which to populate our models, and if we sell enough of the act of "model population" we do okay.  Still, what we always actually lack is specific knowledge about our clients' situations.  It is always this specific knowledge we must procure.

James McKinsey, founder of the great consulting firm that bears his name.

Now look at recruiters.  You do not work in a theoretical field at all.  You work in a tactical field where you're always presenting job opportunities to candidates, candidates to hiring managers, and coaxing their typically problematic young romance along in hopes that with a bit of lucky good chemistry you'll close your deal.  What is your world?  It is a constant stream of yeses and nos, no interest, we have a hiring freeze on and can't pay recruiters, you have to talk to HR and I'm too busy to talk about a new job right now, etc.  Focus, though, on that constant stream of yeses and nos with me.

What is this stream?  It is a stream of never ending decisions.  Even when the majority of your candidates and prospects may not think of it this way, there is always a cost to every decision.  To not pay attention is to lose vital information.  To say no is to ensure opportunity cost.  'Do you really want to just keep on keeping on as things are?'  'Can you really find the right person on your own?'  'Is this really the best job you can work right now?'  'Do you really have the right offer to attract the caliber of talent you need?'

But, surprisingly, all these decisions, decisions, decisions actually sum up to something.  The consulting term for that sum is Market Information.  However, in my line of work, I don't think of it in merely technical terms.  No.  I think of it philosophically.  My word for the meaning of that sum of decisions as they continuously roll out of your telephone calls is nothing other than TRUTH.