A Personal Goodbye
There really isn’t an asterisk. Athletes and rock stars do the fake retirement thing, and “going out of business” is an age-old marketing ploy. We played our stages, we aren’t going out of business, and the decision is final.
You’ve probably heard us say that we only work because we love it, and we still love it, but we’ve decided to remove the work part from our work-life balance. A life of just “the balance” sounds lovely.
We’ve been recruiting for decades and have been bringing our (often counterintuitive) techniques to you through stages, webinars, and coaching for 16 years. So many stories, analogies, scripts, techniques…
We’ve watched you show up again and again. We watched you find the courage to try new things and grow as recruiters and humans. Some of you went all in and allowed us to transform your firms and your lives. Some of you joined us for every single RAK Friday, and we only heard about our impact when you let us know of your celebrations.
You learned sourcing before anyone understood Boolean, and learned AI when Gemini was still Bard. And through it all, you continued to teach us. It would be impossible to count the number of times Tricia said, “Or, maybe I’m just coaching myself right now.” We spent countless hours talking about how to better serve you in each of your situations, and you’ve played such a large part in our lives, even when you weren’t with us.
Your wins always felt like our wins. The number of times your successes made it to our celebrations with our coaches was significant. Big retainers. Breakthrough moments. Revenue jumps that changed your lives. We’ve always been deeply invested in your success, and watching you realize it has brought us real joy.
We believe training sticks better when it’s fun and funny, and you returned that energy. It was always fun struggling to teach when chat had gone completely off the rails, full of jokes. The number of virtual candy bars we’d have thrown for making us “break character” and laugh is silly to imagine.
You trusted us with questions around sourcing, messaging, strategy, BD, AI… You also trusted us with some of the hardest moments and seasons of your careers and your lives, and there were many times we privately shed tears for you as we vicariously lived through your trauma next to you. You’ve allowed us into your desks and your lives, and we’ve received no greater gift in our lives. Thank you.
And this is the part that’s a little difficult to say.
We’ll miss the live classes, we’ll miss the rooms. We’ll miss the questions that made everyone stop and think, and we’ll miss watching things click for you in real-time. We’ll miss the energy of learning together, and of figuring it out side-by-side. If you’re reading this and feeling a little sad, we feel it.
We'll miss you too.
So what’s next? We’re not totally sure. Tricia wants spaciousness and the luxury of waking up with no alarm clock. Jason wants to go to aviation school and earn his license for airplanes and… gyrocopters? (He insists they’re safe.) We both want to travel, take aimless walks, read fiction, maybe write fiction, and generally have the flexibility to go wherever this world takes us. We’re looking forward to whimsy, relaxation, learning, and exploring.
And we wouldn’t be here without all of you. Thank you for the trust you put in us. Thank you for sharing your challenges, your stories, your laughter, and your wins. Thank you for letting us be part of your careers and your lives. We’ll miss you more than you realize.
With love and deep gratitude,
Tricia & Jason
PS. We know you have a TON of questions, so we made a giant FAQ page where we tried to predict as many as possible. If you have other questions, let Tricia know.