Picking the Right People One of CEO’s Top Keys to Success

Sam Brenner

Sam Brenner has a lot of hobbies. He’s pretty good with computers – “I give my parents a hard time because they didn’t push me into computer science; I could have been Mark Zuckerberg,” he says with a chuckle – and he plays sports.

And Brenner, the founder and CEO of CRB Workforce, a Los Angeles-based recruiting firm specializing in sourcing top talent for the Technology and Marketing industries, also plays a lot of golf.

So, it’s not surprising that one of the people who has always inspired him is arguably the best golfer of all time, Tiger Woods. Brenner has never met Woods – “I’ve seen him in person a few times … He won’t recognize me because I was in the crowd,” he said – but admires Woods’ ability to ‘be clutch.’

“(Woods) is the most influential person who has impacted me,” Brenner said. “I love his ability to be clutch. When things are so important, he just gets it done.
“Back in college, when he was at his peak, my buddies and I coined this term, ‘clutch gene,’” he added. “You either have it or you don’t.”

Brenner launched CRB Workforce from his apartment in 2018. The company, which operates 100% remote, specializes in finding top talent with a strong focus on ed tech, entertainment, travel and leisure, and consumer apparel.

Brenner, who earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration and management and human resources from Johnson & Wales University, talked about CRB Workforce – a Best and Brightest Companies To Work For winner – his career 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: You were in commercial real estate and had a strong sales background. And then you started your own recruitment firm. Tell us about that journey. How did you get here?
Sam Brenner: Like many recruiters who just get into the industry, you generally fall into it. I spent about four-and-a-half years at an agency kind of learning it. When I decided to finally start CRB, my idea was I wanted to change how the industry operated.

In the past, staffing has this kind of negative connotation. Generally, it’s like one step above used car salesman, and I felt really bad about that because I knew the work that I was doing personally was impactful for clients.

I wanted to kind of change that dynamic, so that’s what I started doing in my apartment. I focused on better experiences for the clients, for candidates. And then most important to me was a better experience for my staff, the recruiters. I think those are the people in the industry that have been marginalized the most. Which in turn is how they treat their customers.

Kluge: I always like to say … pressure is a privilege. Tell us a little bit more why you made that one of your core attitudes at your company.
Brenner: It’s actually one of my favorite ones. Pressure is a privilege to me … take it in in the context of closing deals, and you go through a streak where you’ve lost four deals in a row, it’s a classic place to sit that salesperson down and say, ‘Don’t forget, pressure is a privilege. All of this pressure of … not hitting your quota is a privilege. If you look at it in that context, it can really change how you view failure, how you view success.

Kluge: You’re well known for your motto, “The harder you work, the luckier you will get.” Tell us more about that motto and how it fits into your success at your company.
Brenner: I can’t even remember who said it to me originally. It was told to me when I was probably like 16 or 17 and it just stuck with me. So, what’s really funny about it is when people join CRB and they hear it for the first time … The thing I hear a lot is, well, ‘I don’t believe in luck. I control my destiny.’ I kind of like that response because they don’t get it yet, and it’s an opportunity for me to kind of mold them into really understanding the intent of it.

Kluge: The term ‘hard work’ is subjective. What one generation might view as hard work, another generation might view as, ‘oh, you’re being inefficient’ or ‘you’re wasting your time.’ I think there’s a huge disconnect between what it takes to succeed and what people are told success requires. Can you expand on how you define hard work?
Brenner: I would actually introduce our other core values, freedom and responsibility. And so, I think that as each generation kind of defines what hard work is differently, I think that it’s important to trust people, to trust peers, colleagues, clients, that their definition of hard work is right. At the end of the day, if it’s not right, they won’t be there for much longer.

Kluge: Tell us more about market conditions right now – the talent pool, the economic factors related to the talent industry.
Brenner: I think that this varies pretty significantly based on segment. Pretty specific to tech and marketing, where we generally focus, we still have a massive oversupply of candidates and under-demand for jobs. It’s generally kind of unique when you think about the overall market, because I think we have a a rise in unemployment in tech right now to about 6%. We got down to under 4%, but we still added about 20,000 new jobs. The unique part to that is that AI and cyber kind of helped fill that void, drove a bunch of the growth. From a marketing standpoint, a lot of the sales teams, customer acquisition kind of dwindled down. They focused heavily on customer retention.

I don’t know what the future will be, but I think we’re still kind of in this place of trying to define what the market will be. I think overall we’re headed in a strong place.

Kluge: Here you are 100% remote for you and your team, and many companies have considered that in the last two or three years. They tried it, they did the hybrid work a little bit. They did 100% remote a little bit. A lot of small businesses are finding it advantageous to get the best talent by remaining hybrid or digital. Not many people are doing 100% remote successfully. So, what is your secret sauce there, and is there anything you would have changed on your path to go 100% remote?
Brenner: If I was to do it over, I’d sure wish Covid never happened. I would never have gone remote. So, I think that the simple answer is it’s been hard. And I genuinely wish we were all together. And if any of my team are listening, don’t worry, we’re not coming back to the office. But we are, you know, we’re in about 30 different states at this point, so it’s not even possible.

Kluge: What advice would you give a roomful of young entrepreneurs embarking in their own businesses?
Brenner: I think the number one advice would be to slow down. I think a lot of young entrepreneurs, this generation that’s coming out of school the last couple of years, I think they want to move really, really fast and some will be able to, but the large majority won’t.

And so, I think if I’m giving advice to a group of people, I’d say slow down to make sure you’ve got a job first. Make sure you learn from somebody and that that may only take you a year, two years, but you don’t know anything. And you’ll find that even 20 years in, you still don’t know anything. And so just having a couple years opportunity to see somebody else doing it, learning it will give you a massive leg up.

Kluge: What decision have you made that was a game-changer.
Brenner: There have been a lot that have been game changers, but I would say – this may be kind of a corny answer – the people I’ve hired and the people I fired have been the biggest game changer. I think that it’s so important to surround yourself with the right people. That’s absolutely been a game changer when I’m fully committed to having the right people around me. And I’ve been incredibly lucky to have the right people. But I don’t know, it might be a cop out answer.

Kluge: What’s your ‘go to’ for your wellness? How do you relieve stress?
Brenner: I’m still trying to figure it out. It’s never-ending. But if we’re not stressed, we’re not doing anything meaningful. It’s part of the game … work out, eat healthy, have friends. Those are all really important to help kind of minimize (stress). And then I try to shut it down at the end of the day for a period of time.

Kluge: Is there anything you would have changed on your path to go 100% remote?
Brenner: I think you really keyed in on what the major issue with remote is. It’s that collaboration. And then, even secondary to that, another big issue is junior people. I think that’s the part that really hurts my soul, all of these college kids graduating with low experience levels.

Those are the ones who get hit the hardest. They need to be next to somebody. They need to hear from someone who’s been doing (the work). That’s how I learned, and I know our success and failure ratio of new employees is heavily determined on how much time we spend with that person. And it’s a lot of work remote. You can’t sit on a Zoom call all day long, but you can sit next to them in an office all day long.

What works for us? Number one, it’s like I and my entire management team have to be open book, and I expect all of our employees to be. That’s that element of freedom, responsibility. So they have to protect that. We trust them. They trust us.

We just expect you to get the job done, to reach out for help. We ask them to always push their way in. Don’t wait to be pulled in and if they don’t adopt that they struggle.

We have to consistently remind them and keep them engaged. But it really is tough. I hope remote in general kind of goes away in the next 10 years. But I don’t think it will. I think it’ll shift back to what it used to be, but it’s a unique opportunity to get people in very small markets and have a very dynamic team, a diverse team.