People told Bryan VandenBosch that he had a learning disability because he struggled to sit through hour-long tests. He felt college wasn’t the route for him for three reasons. One, he struggled financially and didn’t want to be in debt as a result of college. Two, he knew someone that was halfway through college and realized they didn’t like what they were doing; he didn’t want that to happen to him. And three, he already knew what his strengths were and didn’t feel that he needed college to help him figure out a career. Instead, he was committed to learning and pursued jobs that sharpened his skills. Listen in as he shares his story and how learning “his way” has taken him further than college ever did.
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Jonaed: Welcome to the 35th episode of the No Degree podcast. This is your host, Jonaed Iqbal and today's guest is Bryan VandenBosch. Bryan started his career selling door to door. He was extremely good at it and learned a lot of lessons. He then went on to recruiting real estate agents. He excelled at this too. Despite coming from a non-traditional background, he used his skills to become a technical recruiter.
He is the founder of EverPresent Talent, a boutique recruitment agency that prides itself on building careers. He has had many ups and downs, but he always pushed through. Listen to Bryan's story to learn more. Subscribe to our Patreon@patreon.com/nodegree. Every contribution is appreciated. This show is impossible without you. Let's get this show started. Hey Bryan, can you tell the audience a little bit about what you do today?
Bryan: Sure. So, I'm the founder of EverPresent Talent. Oh, we're a recruiting company that specializes in finding tech talent. We can focus on any startup and we also do tech talent in the commercial real estate space and finding project managers. I mean, really anything in commercial real estate, but I'm a recruiter and I help people connect with great companies and I help companies find great people.
Jonaed: Nice. How did you fall into that?
Bryan: I interviewed for a lot of bigger recruiting companies after I had gotten out of the real estate industry. One of them were great companies like Rubber House, CyberCoders, Beacon Hill, and a lot of companies that I had the honor of interviewing with and I just couldn't seem to either land on the job there or feel like I could really fit into that culture and see myself going into that office every day.
I would have loved to work remote, and I felt like maybe I can do two days in the office and the rest remote. I didn't really see a whole lot of that out there and this was pre COVID, of course. I decided that I'm going to look for something 100% remote and I did find something 100% remote. I had a lot of fun with that, actually. It was tech recruiting in the Bay Area and in the Seattle really West coast. And I'm like, you know, I can do this myself.
I mean, this is something that I felt I was happy doing. I always wanted to be in recruiting and this was the way to go. I did not renew the contract. Looking back, people probably thought, are you crazy or why would you not? But I'm happy I didn’t and, you know, we started EverPresent Talent and went from there.
Jonaed: That's an amazing story. Now, let's go back high school. What did you want to become in high school? Because I know we always have dreams of becoming something and it changes along the way. So, what did you want to become in high school and what type of work did you do in high school?
Bryan: That was an interesting time in my life for sure. I always found scrappy jobs. Like I worked at a movie theater in the local area. I lived in and grew up in a small town type area where you could walk into the local restaurant and you would see everyone that you know or people would notice you or whatever. And I just felt like I want to get out of here. I really do.
So I moved down to Orange County after high school. Studied college a little bit, and I felt like, man, I can't afford this. This is pretty expensive. My job in Orange County was I worked at a bank and then I also did door to door sales. I really enjoyed the door to door sales more than I did working at the bank. We sold home improvement product, which is actually how I got into real estate. I knocked on the door of the broker that I ended up working with and it took off from there, but I felt like real estate just kind of fell into my lap. It just wasn't like, oh, this is what I want to do for the rest of my career.
I just felt like I was trying to find my way and in high school, I didn't. I honestly had no idea. I just knew that I loved talking to people on the phone. I wanted to help people in any way that I could. I know that's cliché, like everyone says that, but I just didn't know what that was yet. And I felt like through my experiences and through the different jobs that I did, I was able to like, I don't want to say trial and error, but I was able to find out what I liked and what I didn't. And that's what ultimately led me to where I am today.
Jonaed: What didn't you like?
Bryan: I really struggled with structure and taking tests. Like in school, taking tests was incredibly difficult for me concentrating for an hour or two or three hours just to fill out tests and remember that information was very challenging. A lot of people said I had a learning disability and there was just some things that I really struggled with. I just felt like going to that structure and show up at 8:00 AM, leave at 5:00 PM. Do your thing day in, day out. I mean, it works for a lot of people and I think it's great for a lot of people, but for me, it wasn't.
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For me to be my best, sometimes I work really well in the afternoon. Sometimes I work really well in the mornings. It just depends on how the day goes and how life is. Sometimes people just -- you can't control life events, like something happens and you feel like, I'm not here today. You know? I mean, I want to work and catch up on work tonight and, catch up. That's where I was.
Jonaed: Did you know you didn't like -- Like when you worked. Because sometimes in school we're like, hey, in a job, it will be better. Did you try the structure route first? And then, you know, you realized you didn't like it, but were there any things you're like, ah, man, I can't, I can't do the structure stuff.
Bryan: Yeah, it was actually -- I mean, at the movie theater, they always gave me these odd shifts. I would work like 8:00 PM to midnight, or I would work one to 10 or one to nine. Then I would work eight to five or like opening to close. I mean, it just depends. I felt like this works for me. I did it for like all throughout high school. Like I said, I moved to Orange County and I worked at the bank. I struggled there. I mean, I didn't do well there at all. I felt like this specific schedule every day, I mean, I had like the set schedule where you would have to wait, you would show up on a Monday and then you would know your schedule for the rest of the month.
I just was like, man, that's great. I mean, I love knowing my schedule for the rest of the month, but I don't even know what's going to happen next week. I mean, I don't know. I showed up, I was never late. I always worked very hard and I never missed a day, but it doesn't mean it was easy for me
Jonaed: Within that structure, what part of it -- Did you like any of it, even within that structure? What were things you liked within the jobs?
Bryan: You know, I know a lot of people say, “Hey, I had a great leader that I worked for.” There was this person that just really made the job for me. I felt like those people were extremely lucky. I mean, I learned a lot from the leaders that I worked with. There was one person that I worked with at the bank that I was like, wow, this person gets it and I can learn a lot from him. It just worked. Throughout all the jobs that I had, what I liked was that I'd rather know this early than into my 30s and my 40s, you know, after I graduate college or something like that. And then I tried these jobs out and I feel like I'm behind, I'm happy for them actually, that I wasn't able to do these kinds of jobs early rather than later in my life. So, that's what I really liked about it.
Jonaed: Okay. Cool. You mentioned college. Did you have a plan to go to college or what was your plan?
Bryan: Yeah. Like I said, in high school, I know I started a little in school. I mean, it wasn't an excuse. I'm not trying to feel so petty like, oh, you know, like it was going to be so difficult. I mean, I could have done it if I really wanted to do it. But I felt like financially I struggled when I was younger and I felt like this is risky. I mean, I'm going to have to go get some loans and you know, what if I changed my mind. Like halfway through it, I just don't want to do this. I had a friend of mine that actually went through like half of nursing school and she just felt like, no, I don't want to do this anymore.
So, she had to pivot. That kind of freaked me out a little bit. I already knew what I wanted to do. Like I knew that I love sales and I love the business development and real estate. I felt like these are usually synonymous skills to other careers so I might as well try to build on this skill set that we had and figure it out on my own. I just didn't feel like I needed to go to college to feel like, hey, this is what I need to do when I already felt like that this is what I want to do.
Jonaed: What was your like “aha!” moment in terms of early on in your career? What was something like, “Okay. I think I really figured out the direction I want to lean into.” If you've ever had that.
Bryan: I was constantly rejected. I mean, like, even when I was interviewing for the recruiting companies. I feel like later on, that was my “aha!” moment. When I was interviewing for recruiting companies, I heard every rejection in the book, as far as why I wasn't going to be a fair -- or why this, I should look into something else. And recruiting is not easy. I mean, it's not, and I get where these people were coming from. But I felt like I want to do this. This is my passion and this is what I love doing and no one can get in the way of that. If it wasn't at a company, I mean, I was going to just figure it out on my own. So, that was probably when I was going through those interviews and trying to find my way, you know, that was probably it.
Jonaed: How does someone succeed as a door-to-door salesman because that's not as common, right? It used to be a lot more common before, but how does someone succeed as that? And what are some things that people will face? I can imagine you face a lot of things.
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Bryan: I had a lot of fun with it, actually. I did, and I love being outside too. So, that was a pro when I was younger. I think it's an attitude thing really unlike your emotional intelligence. Having a certain mindset with it and feeling like even after these stores get slammed in your face and these people tell you all these things and do all these things to you. I mean, you just have to keep going. That's how things are in life. I mean, you're going to get rejected a lot. A lot of things are not going to go the way you planned. Like 10 years ago, I thought this was where I was going to be. I would have thought you were crazy. Nothing has gone according to my plan at all.
I feel like you just have to stay positive. I know that people say that a lot, but you have to put it into action and actually do it. I look at the bright side. I was thankful I had a job. There was a lot of people that were struggling to find work and to get paychecks. Financially I knew a lot of people that had a hard time, so I just felt thankful that I had that kind of job and that kind of opportunity, especially where we were too. I mean, who could complain going in, knocking on doors in Orange County, California. I mean, a lot of people wanted to be here and it felt like I'm very fortunate to be where I am.
Jonaed: How much does the door-to-door salesman make? How does that pay structure work?
Bryan: I can't speak for anyone else, but you know, usually it's a small, hourly rate plus commission. So, if you're doing door to door sales and you're going into the home and selling the product yourself, you're obviously going to make more money, which is what I eventually did. But there's also canvassers where people will just go and knock on doors and make the appointments, which is what I started doing.
I mean, it just depends. You know, you can make really good money doing it actually. A whole lot of people say it with commission type jobs, and I'm honestly not a huge fan of like 100% commission jobs. I think if you have a base and you have that base plus commission, it's a lot more conducive but it's up to you. I mean, there were people that made like $50,000, there's people that made over $100,000. It just depends.
Jonaed: So who is door to door sales not for? Like, you've probably seen other people who thought they could do it and then they just left.
Bryan: There's like a million different reasons why people would not want to do it.
Jonaed: Who were like the top few that you kind of saw?
Bryan: A lot of people just don't like knocking on that many doors per day, you know, like going through the numbers game that salespeople would always say, and a lot of people didn't like that. So, a lot of people didn't like the hard rejection. There's some crazy things that can happen to people, like when you're going -- I mean, especially now, it was even different 10 years ago. But I can't imagine now. I mean, people are really defensive now. Like when you're showing up to their door, you're a stranger and people are already kind of on alert. So, it's different now. What it was 10 years ago was not what it is today. But for the most part, it's just people not liking the rejection and the harsh realities of that kind of job.
Jonaed: How many doors would you knock on a day? That's…
Bryan: Like 80 to a hundred, at least.
Jonaed: Eighty to a hundred. Okay. And I guess how many of them were rejections?
Bryan: Well, like 99% of them.
Jonaed: Wow. Okay. So, you're looking for that one way at one sale.
Bryan: Well, it's just like with anything. I mean, just like with people looking for jobs, you just need that one person to say yes. You don't care about the 100, 200 people that rejected you for the job. All you care about is that one person that accepted you and give you that opportunity. That's all you need. I felt like as long as you keep going and keep – Every “no” was close to you, yes. Eventually you're going to get there. I think it's just a matter of how many times you're willing to do it.
Jonaed: You mentioned that you did door to door sales and the bank. How did you manage that?
Bryan: Yeah, so the door to door, like when I was an appointment setter, it was part-time. I would work like 20 to 25 hours a week and then the base plus part-time so all in all, I was working full-time hours, but I didn't go full time with it until I left the bank. Okay.
Jonaed: And then did anything change when you went full time? Was it scary because I could imagine it's like now somewhere on commission, less structured?
Bryan: I actually made more money than I did at a thing. I mean, the bank, I was just making like $15 an hour at the time. The benefits were great. I mean, that's always something that people really try to go for these days. I felt like I was making more money and I was learning a lot more being out in a job like that than I was doing the same thing day in, day out.
Jonaed: So what came after the door to door sales? When did you kind of say, “Hey, it's time to leave.” What caused you to leave?
Bryan: Well, I left because the broker actually had recruited me to Realty One, which is where I spent a lot of time.
Jonaed: How did that turn out? Like you knocked on his door and he hired you? Share that story, if you don't mind.
Bryan: Yeah, I didn’t go for it. At first, I was just like, I don't want to do real estate. I don't want to do open houses and spend every weekend trying to go knock on doors and do pretty much essentially the same thing.
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I didn't have the right attitude at that point for it. It took me about a few months to really start to see like, I can make this something, but it just evolved from there. I mean, I just kept talking to them. I met with them at different locations and we just talked about it and I got to know him. I picked his brain.
I always just tried to ask as many questions as possible. A lot of people go into things and in the end it's just with anything you do. I mean, they'll just go and do a job and it just hope it works out. They'll do their research for a little bit, but I really did my research. I really didn't want to just waste my time. I've already been through three or four jobs already or five jobs at the time already. So, the last thing I wanted to do was go jump to another job. I had a lot of jobs, you know, there was a lot of jobs that I would do throughout my real estate career that I felt like this is what I have to do to make ends meet. For the times that are slow, I'm going to go figure it out. I just wanted to do whatever it took to succeed.
Jonaed: Were you an agent on the real estate side? Like what did you do on the real estate side?
Bryan: Yes. He did have exposure in the commercial space as well because he was a developer. So, you know, he did a little bit of both.
Jonaed: As an agent, you mentioned that you did some other stuff during the slow times, what did you end up doing during the slow time to sort of make ends meet?
Bryan: After like about five or six years in the business, I actually moved back East to go work for a commercial real estate company, the CoStar Group, and I enjoyed it. I did really well. You know, it just wasn't for me long-term. So, I came back to California, finished off real estate and I did it, I did CoStar Group. I would do assistant work, like I would help clean up open houses and do help other people with their staging companies and make money on the side. I do a lot of under the table stuff too. I mean, I tried Uber and Lyft, but I couldn't stand it. I was done with it the second time after someone threw up in my car.
Jonaed: Oh man, why couldn't you personally stand it?
Bryan: I wasn’t a fan of picking up drunk people at the time. And the times I just wasn't. I don't know how those people do them. I mean, they're props to them, but…
Jonaed: It’s tough, man. It's got to put in a lot of hours. You've got to deal with a lot. I mean, a lot of them have dashcams just to protect themselves, right?
Bryan: Yeah. Because I was so stupid. I didn't have a dashcam back then. I was like, wow, what am I thinking? If something happened, what am I going to do? It's my word against theirs so I stopped doing that pretty quickly.
Jonaed: Now you did that for a decent amount of time, right? As a realtor, what made you make the transition? When did you realize, like, hey, I kind of want to get out of real estate and do something else.
Bryan: I would do a lot of recruiting in real estate too so we would recruit people over to the brokerage all the time. I was really good at the recruiting side of it. I would make money off of their first three deals. You know, I helped build out a brokerage in Orange County and it felt like, heck, I mean, this is recruiting. I mean, I was using the same tools that recruiters use, like LinkedIn Recruiter, ZipRecruiter, Indeed. I would use all of it and I felt like this is no different than what recruiters do. I mean, sure, if they're properly recruiting for different roles, but I felt like it was the same skills that you would have to apply to succeed.
So I wanted to do it because I knew a couple of other real estate professionals that did go into the business and they had a lot of success, like they had that flexibility. Some of them did work remote. I would love to work remote. I mean, I would love to have that flexibility. They were making a lot of money on some placements. It wasn't just about the money. I mean, I felt like I didn't have the same passion for real estate than I did with recruiting. I felt like the only reason I stayed in real estate that long was because there was that recruiting side to it.
You know, I just felt like this is what I want to do so I'm going to try to start interviewing. A lot of them wanted a degree. A lot of them wanted to call us degree and they have that. Sure, I said courses, a couple of colleges, but I didn't finish. That was like automatically a deal breaker for a lot. I didn't have any recruiting background. You know, a lot of people that saw my resume and were like, well, you were an agent. You were in real estate. They didn't see the recruiting side until I would talk to them about it. So there was a lot of barriers that I had to break through for it. And just like I said earlier, that was like my “aha!” moment that if I can't figure it out, at a company, I'll go figure it out on my own.
Jonaed: Okay. So did you end up working for a company?
Bryan: I did. My transition out of the real estate, out of Realty One was I went to go work for commercial real estate company on a contract for about a year and I left early. I actually made a post about it recently. My cousin had passed away and I left early.
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After that contract has expired I had a couple of months to look and it was right around the holidays. Honestly, I was still looking a little bit, even when I was on the contract and my time was dedicated to that company. I worked really hard and I hit all my goals, but on the side every now and then I would look for recruiting jobs and I would interview at the bigger companies. Like I said, I just didn't want to be in the office every day from like nine to seven or 7:30 PM.
And I worked those hours now, but I'm home and I have flexibility. I found that 100% remote job for technical recruiting. He was nice enough to bring me on board without any experience and I felt like this is my shot. This is my time to do this and every day for that year I worked. I mean, I did not lose any time working that job. I brought in new clients, I learned the technical side to it. A year doesn't sound like a long time, but I worked every day during that year to really try to master that job and to understand like what it would take to like, okay, if this guy can do it, how can I do it?
Fast forward to 2020, it's completely different now. There's a lot of recruiters that are unfortunately being laid off and they're having the same mindset where they're like, now I did it here for this many years. I can do it on my own. Let me figure it out and utilize my network and my skills to build up my own brand. So I think a lot more people are trying to focus on trying to figure out how to build their own brand especially now. It's tough. It took a long time. I mean, I didn’t create the LinkedIn company page until like March. It took months to create the website and that's just because the first website didn't look great.
So, I had to redo the website again. I'd had to do branding, healthy content. It just took a long time to write it. I started in like November December-ish and you know, fast forward six months here we are.
Jonaed: What new things did you learn because you obviously did the recruiting on the real estate side. Now, when you were a technical recruiter and recruiting is your job, what new things did you learn and what things translated?
Bryan: Yeah. I just learned the back end a lot more. Like when you're working for a recruiting company, their process is a lot different. They have agreements that they signed with employers. If you’re recruiting for contract roles, they have bill rates that they send it to the company. It's just a completely different process. So I learned the back end to recruiting than I did. I only had so many years of recruiting experience and it wasn't compared to what these other recruiters were doing. So, I had to constantly try to reinvent myself. Just learn from other people and just ask questions and I did even when I was in real estate. Like I said, I knew some people that went to work in recruiting jobs, and I just tried to understand what works for them and what worked for me and what didn't. And just apply those to the job and continue to try to find what was going to make me successful.
Jonaed: So now when your contract ended, you obviously came to a point, what made you sort of say I'm going to do it for myself as opposed to doing another contract or another company?
Bryan: I felt like I got pretty lucky finding a 100% remote recruiting job that offered me a base plus commission. That was hard to find and it took a long time to find it. Actually, it wasn't just like it came out of nowhere. The reason I didn't extend the contract was because they wanted me to sign a non-compete and it just wasn't like a long-term contract situation that I wanted to be in. I felt like, okay, am I going to go out and find another full-time recruiting job with a salary plus commission and compete with all these other recruiters again?
Or am I going to try to figure out how to do it myself? Because this is what I've been doing for the past year. Do I want to do this again? Now looking back, I'm really happy I did. I felt like even in January, the job market's been poor for a long time. It hasn't been easy. It's always been very competitive, but I just wanted to do it myself. I wanted to figure out a way to do it. And now, like that time was my time to do it. It wasn't right two years ago. It wasn't right even a year ago, but it was right in November, December. So it felt like might as well just try to take advantage of it and go for it.
Jonaed: How was it different when you started off by yourself because it's always a little different. Were you hit with any surprises?
Bryan: I was by myself, and again, I wasn't a big believer on trying to hire someone 100% commission and say, “Hey, come help me build my recruiting company for free and I'll pay you this commission percentage.” I was never going to do that.
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I found a really great website guy, a tech guy that could help me build up some of these things. I just signed a lot of the stuff myself and wrote all the content myself. I didn’t outsource anything besides the website and that took me longer than probably someone that just decided to outsource everything and have like this plan in place for it. So, it took me a little bit longer to create those things. While at the same time, trying to talk to clients and say, “Hey, this is what we can do for you.” There's just a lot of different moving parts at once. But once that all came together, it seemed to work out just fine.
Jonaed: Nice. Now what's some advice you would give to recruiters who are trying to go on their own, like some things to really consider?
Bryan: I'm not an expert, man. I still have a lot to learn and I'm not someone that has it all figured out. I mean, I'm learning every day still, and I just think to -- you have to like accept that. There's always going to be someone out there that knows a lot more than I do, and that's going to be a better recruiting company than we are. Even with all of the things that I know, I'm going to do everything I can to beat my competition and I'll work hard and make this thing happen.
But I just think you have to go in with an open mind, you have your expectations for your list. I thought I was going to have -- we started off actually pretty strong given our circumstances. Then COVID hit and people were like, wow. I mean, it must be crazy to do a recruiting company out of little things during this time when a lot of people are experiencing layoffs. You just have to. I keep saying to stay positive and have the right mentality for it and just have realistic expectations and write out your goals if you have to. If you want to have this amount of clients that you're working with, with this amount of candidates, find a business model that works and go for it.
Jonaed: If you went back, you're 18. You have the knowledge you have now, right? So you went through everything, you got the lessons. How would you do things differently?
Bryan: Looking back, we all wish we knew back then what we know now. I mean, everyone wishes that, but I don’t want to change a thing. I'm happy with the way things worked out. It wasn't easy and I had a lot of really hard times but I'm happy I did. You know, I failed as many times as I did. It was hard. I remember like the door to door sales shop that it worked out, they closed down and they let me go. They went out of business and I remember being like -- That's kind of why I got into real estate business.
I'm like, okay, well now we got to figure something out so I called the broker and said, let's do it. But I always remember the time I got let go and all the different kind of jobs that I went through and I'm happy I didn't have the cookie cutter background. Yeah. I'm happy with the way things turned out. I mean, sure, some things could have been better along the way, but as with anything.
Jonaed: Now, what are you sort of thinking about for the future? Like, you know, you've done it for some time. What are some things, some goals you have set for the future, if you mind sharing them?
Bryan: Sure. I'm extremely happy with recruiting. I mean, I can see myself doing this for a really long time, whether it's continuing to build EverPresent Talent or helping other companies grow. I'm happy doing what I'm doing, but in my mind, there's no way we can fail. We already had a small taste of success early on and I felt like as long as we keep doing those things and showing up every day and doing my thing, I'll be happy with it and I’ll just continue to build out the company, but there's still a lot to learn. Like you said, I love reading books. I love listening to podcasts like yours. This was my first podcast talk with anybody and it was probably very -- it's been very sloppy.
Jonaed: No, it's fine because like I said, the goal of an episode like this is to kind of talk to someone in your position because a lot of times it's like you go through school and it's like there's certain aspects. You're like, look, I don't like structure and then they go to college or just like, you have structure, but you don't have to listen. So, for some people, it ends up being terrible, right?. They never end up going to class and it's just super tough. So, don't worry. You're not sloppy at all.
Bryan: It's always interesting to learn from other people and I've listened to some of your podcasts and I love what you're doing. I mean, I just wish more people would embrace stuff like that. It's not easy and no one ever said it would be, but you know, you have to kind of embrace failing at these kinds of things. It's never going to be perfect or how you think it's going to be so might as well try. I mean, you have nothing like what is there to lose?
Jonaed: Yeah. Now, what advice would you have for a high school kid that was kind of in your position?
Bryan: Just enjoy your life. Try to just be happy and embrace, like don't be afraid to fail at things and who cares what people think? It doesn't matter.
[0:30:10]
Jonaed: What advice would you have to be efficient at remote working? Because some people end up just watching TV and Netflix all day and other people end up working. So, what advice would you have?
Bryan: It's hard because everyone has different circumstances. Like I don't have any kids, I don't have a pet that I have to worry about. I'm single, I'm not married, you know. So, it's a different life for me than it is for someone with three kids running around the house or two dogs, wanting to be fed and all these different moving parts going on. So, I think employers will start to embrace the remote flexibility work style if their business can adapt to it.
Just find time, like set different times. Like if you have to work from like eight to 11, and you feel like that's when you're extremely productive, do it. And then go take a couple hours to get some things done and then come back and get the work done. Do whatever is comfortable for you as long as you feel like they're getting the job done. And I think that's what people should focus on. Like, can this person do the job? Will they be able to meet their goals and be productive? I just think that if these businesses can adapt and that these people can adapt to it, I mean, not everyone's going to like it either.
A lot of people won't like remote working in the same way I do. And I've talked to people that don't, and that I've talked to people that really loved it. So, I guess just try to find out what works best for you and stick to that and try not to compare yourself to other people because the comparison game is going to really -- Oh man. That's brutal.
Jonaed: Were there any things that when you first started remote working that you learned along the way, for you specifically. Now you're like, hey, I got to do this.
Bryan: Oh, man you know, I didn't really struggle with adapting to remote work. I would have loved to work remote years ago. I wanted to do that so bad. I felt like, oh, finally, you know, this is perfect. I love working on teams and I love collaborating with people. We would have Skype calls and do whatever we needed to do, but I felt like that wasn't really the norm, you know. Like the norm was showing up to an office every day and working with your team there, which I like, I like to, I liked that. I liked seeing people that I'm like, hey, you know, it's great to talk with people and see how their weekend was or if there's anything I can do to help them with their work and vice versa. What I guess I learned, to answer your question was, I don't know. I just really loved doing it so I felt like I didn't really have time to waste and I have trouble staying focused on my job. I just like doing it so I didn't really have a hard time adapting to it.
Jonaed: Okay, so let's slowly start to wrap up. How can someone get in contact with you if they want to get in touch with your company or you personally?
Bryan: Yeah. We have all of our contact information on our LinkedIn company page. I have it also on my personal page. I have two different phones, but the number will ring on my cell phone too. So if I don't have the phone and they can contact me directly, they can text that number and they can go on our website and submit their information and I'll get emailed that, and it comes directly to my phone as well.
Jonaed: What's the name of your company, for the audience?
Bryan: Of course. EverPresent Talent.
Jonaed: EverPresent Talent?
Bryan: Yes, sir.
Jonaed: How did you come up with the name?
Bryan: Yeah. You know, I don't want to do like Bryan Recruiting or VandenBosch Recruit, or I just didn't want to use my name. I felt like there was a lot of people that use their name and good for them. I mean, I think some of it sounds great, but for me, my name was kind of unique. It's just not going to sound good and I don’t see that working out. I liked EverPresent because EverPresent, liked the meaning of it and like it’s always being there like ever present, I felt like that's just the word that I really liked.
And that's something that can describe our business and like what we do and how we're always there for people. I just decided to try to figure that out and I liked just the name. At first it was EverPresent Consulting and I'm like, no, that doesn't really work. I don’t like that. Then it was EverPresent Talent. So, I felt like EverPresent Talent was just better. I mean, I didn't like the consulting and that's actually what I – Like I said, the first website that I had was EverPresent Consulting. I'm like, this is not going to work. I got to shift. I quickly realized that that name was not going to work. So, I had to figure out a different name. I just came up with EverPresent Talent and I liked it. I mean, it just kind of worked.
Jonaed: All right. Cool. Thank you so much for your time, Bryan. I appreciate you. I know the audience is going to get a lot of value and I wish you the best of luck in the future.
Bryan: Likewise, I'll talk to you soon. I appreciate it.
Another great episode. Thank you for listening. Hopefully this information was valuable, and you learned a lot. Stay tuned for the next episode. This show is sponsored by you. No Degree wants to remain free from influence so that we can talk about the topics without bias. If you think the show’s worth a dollar or two, please check out our Patreon page. Any amount is appreciated and will go towards making future episodes even better. Follow us on Instagram or Snapchat at No Degree podcast. On Facebook @facebook.com/NoDegreeInc. If you want to personally reach out to me, connect or follow me on LinkedIn at Jonaed Iqbal, spelled J-O-N-A-E-D, last name, I-Q-B-A-L. Until next time, no degree, no problem. Nodegree.com.
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“No degree, No problem. Any problem, we can solve them. Linked Insomnia keeps us evolving. We’re growing in the knowing. The wisdom is flowing. If you did, you know, now you know where I’m going. No Degree, no problem. Any problem we can solve them.”
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[0:37:35] End of Audio