Art Betancourt believes that to succeed a businessman must be willing to fail first.
And since Betancourt, the principal and founder at AEBetancourt, a national professional placement firm working with organizations ranging in size from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies, has turned his company into one of the country’s fastest-growing in less than 10 years, he might know what he’s talking about.
“In sales, especially starting up a business, you have to be willing to fail for it,” Betancourt said. “You’ve got to put yourself in opportunities to be told no, to learn from them, to keep moving forward. That’s just part of it.
“There’s like a saying about a baseball player that … that misses two out of three,” he added. “What do they call him? They call him a Hall of Famer.”
Betancourt recently began working with an account that he originally pitched maybe eight years ago. He put together what he thought was his MVP – Minimum Viable Product – he thought was perfect.
He went back and took a look and realized it wasn’t.
“It was embarrassing, but at the time, I was very proud of it,” he said. “If I wouldn’t have put myself out there, we wouldn’t have learned how we are today.”
Betancourt, who founded his business in 2015, earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing from the University of Texas and a master’s of business administration degree from Notre Dame.
He talked about getting the business started and a variety of other issues during the most recent episode of “CEO Thought Leadership Series on LinkedIn Live,” the discussion series hosted by the National Association for Business Resources.
Produced in conjunction with the Best and Brightest Companies to Work For and Corp! Magazine, the series is hosted by NABR CEO Jennifer Kluge and features business leaders from around the country.
Jennifer Kluge: I always like chatting with the CEOs that are the founders. It’s a completely different perspective. Tell us how and why you started.
Art Betancourt: We’re a national recruiting and talent strategy firm and our specialization is really helping organizations learn how to find the right talent. Our vision as a company is to be a top-three recognized brand in the nation for talent strategy. We’ve grown a lot, but we still have a long way to grow.
What I like to tell people is, in 2015, I made some crazy life decisions and startedAEBetancourt, went back to school, got my MBA at the University of Notre Dame, and had a fourth kid all at the same time.
So it was a crazy time. And I don’t know that things have gotten any less crazy, but I really started it out of a passion for helping businesses thrive and achieve their goals, by bringing the right people to them to help them do that.
One of the biggest challenges that we had early on was building trust in a very competitive market. You know, the recruiting industry has a low barrier to entry. Anybody can get into it. But by understanding the client’s needs and what they were missing, and consistently exceeding their expectations, that’s really how we’re able to grow rapidly and early on in the organization.
Kluge: Let’s talk about the rapid growth. A lot of entrepreneurs say exactly what you say. “I have a goal. I have a target. But they struggle to get there. How did you grow so fast?
Betancourt: I think the stats are something like, you know, 50% of small businesses fail within a couple of years, and then only like 20% of those ever grow to be more than a million. Our growth has been all has been all organic. One of the big things I learned at Notre Dame that really resonated with me is there’s two primary reasons why companies fail: lack of sales and lack of cash. I am a sales person at heart, you know, that’s where I’ve always been great at. The finance piece was not something that I was strong and that’s why I went back to Notre Dame.
We built our business model to be able to grow organically, to focus on going out and selling and then making sure that we had a financing model that actually created enough cash in order to fund that organic growth.
Kluge: There’s so much going on in the talent space. What advice would you give other leaders about protecting your team from being poached?
Betancourt: That’s a great question, actually. I have a whole presentation that I do on that, and it’s called “How to Recruit Proof Your Business.” If you want to keep talent engaged and prevent poaching, you need to know the one powerful question that we use as recruiters to, potentially, create an opportunity for somebody that we’re talking with.
The best way to do it is to understand what motivates your team members, and ensure that they are fulfilled by their role.
Kluge: So it’s not only the professional goals, it’s the personal goals. Do they want to buy a boat one day? Do they want to go on a fantastic trip to a place on their bucket list? Helping people get there, is important for a supervisor.
Betancourt: The interesting thing mentioned in our employer reviews that we’ve developed here is how we help organizations as part of our talent strategy arm. One of the sections is on goals, and we want every employee to have at least a personal goal, a professional goal, a “big bag” — which is a big, hairy, audacious goal — and a long term goal.
By understanding those things, knowing that, knowing what’s important to them, you can tie those things back to your organization.
Kluge: Let’s keep talking about industry and industry trends. What do you predict the next six months of talent looks like from now to the end of the year?
Betancourt: To predict the future it’s important to look at what’s going on now in the industry. National unemployment has risen a bit to 4.1%, so that does suggest there’s a larger candidate pool available. So we’ll start to see some roles, not all of them, but that maybe wouldn’t get a lot of applications just from a job posting. You might see that. Be a little be a little bit more active. labor participation rate is good.
We’re still continuing to see trends. Salesforce recently has changed their work-from-home policy. and I think you’re going to continue to see that trend more and more because what you’re finding in organizations is a lot of younger talent is coming in, and they’re missing out on key mentorship and collaborative work environments, and they don’t feel like they’re getting what they need.
Kluge: Let’s say you had 500 future CEOs sitting in front of you. What advice would you give them?
Betancourt: Stay curious. Never stop learning. This is a big one for me, and I’ve done it early on and continue to do it over and over and over again. Surround yourself with a strong network of mentors and peers that can provide guidance and support, especially as a leader. The more you grow as a leader the more difficult, it can become. You can start to feel a little bit isolated. The important thing is that you’re active in a way where you’re proactive so that it’s not a lonely position.
Most importantly, I would say maintain the vision and purpose for your business and stay true to who you are and your values.
Kluge: We’ve all had monumental moments in our careers professionally. Could you share with us a monumental moment and what you learned from it?
Betancourt: There’s so many of them that I can look back on and say, if somebody didn’t help me in this way, if our first client didn’t take a chance on me, if I would have made this decision instead of that decision.
One that I will share, if I had to pick one, is really what I call our “burn the ships” moment. We were at a point as an organization where it was just me and, hey, I can make great money as an individual consultant.
But I wanted to build a business. I wanted to build a legacy, and, something greater that had an impact on people’s lives and on the community. That was a legacy for my family, and part of that was we knew in order to get there that we had to hire our first employee to fuel the growth. It’s kind of weird, but I had to do less in order for us to do more. And less doesn’t mean less work. It just means less of, you know, if we’re going to grow, I can’t do all the recruiting work.
Kluge: Describe your culture there. Why does somebody want to work there? And then what is your role? What specifically do you do to uphold the culture?
Betancourt: I love that question. The culture we’re trying to build every single day is one of the difference between a consumer and a career. And we do lots of amazing things here for people to consume.
Our culture is really built for people, not just to consumers, but to be creators within the organization and to grow. Our value statement is that we’re passionate about … the impact and value that it has for individuals, our community and organizations.
Kluge: I like to demystify the seat of the CEO. You know, a lot of people are intimidated by the title. You’re the founder. That could be very intimidating. Do you have any daily rituals that keep you focused?
Betancourt: One thing to remember about being a CEO … maybe two things. One, if you want to be CEO, just go press your business card, put CEO on it for business. But all CEOs, whether it’s a CEO of a Fortune 500 company or a small business, we all put our shoes on the same way in the morning, right?
What keeps me going on a daily basis is a commitment to moving the needle forward every single day and making consistent progress toward our goals.
Kluge: Who in your life has left a lasting impression on you?
Betancourt: There are so many people in my life. As I mentioned, earlier, mentorship has been something that is incredibly important for me, and I’m constantly seeking out opportunities to learn from others, constantly finding those people that can speak to me and be influential. And sometimes that’s, sometimes that’s an actual live person in front of you that you meet.
And sometimes those are people that you learn about. So, you know, I love reading Walter Isaacson biographies, to really learn and understand people. Part of my story is I barely graduated from high school. I was a young kid making really bad decisions in my life, and was going in a very different direction. Thankfully, my mom was like, ‘hey, you’ve got to do some things, otherwise there’s going to be some major consequences.’
