The First Customer - How IT Pros Thrived by Choosing the Right Clients with Founder T Brad Kielinski

[00:00:27] Jay: Hi everyone. Welcome to The First Customer Podcast. My name's Jay Aigner today. I'm lucky enough to be joined by Brad Kielinski, who I've been trying to get on the show for quite a while. And here he is. Brad, how are you, brother?

[00:00:37] T Brad: How's everyone doing? Hey, Jay.

Thanks for having me. 

[00:00:39] Jay: My fellow Eagles fan here, fellow tech agency, whatever you want to call a guy in Philadelphia.

I think we have a lot of, you know, great similarities. So I'm excited to have you on. So thanks for being on. Did you grow up in Philly? Where'd you grow up? Did that have an impact on you being an entrepreneur?

[00:00:55] T Brad: Yeah, I grew up in Plymouth meeting about a mile away from Germantown Academy. And that's where my, upbringing was. Yeah,

[00:01:02] Jay: was anybody an entrepreneur as a kid? Did you grow up around your parents, business people? Like, how'd you get into the business?

[00:01:07] T Brad: I grew up, my uncle and aunt started a company out of their house. And then I saw that go from like, they were living in like a split level. Then, you know, employees started pouring into their house. They put an addition on, they got an office. And then I saw it go from, you know, them to about 400 employees.

and then I guess midlife, or I guess when I was a youngster, maybe in my teenage years, my father became an inventor. So I saw that. that. you know, that set up from start to finish and, you know, it was all, you know, it kind of drove me to see. You know, how entrepreneurship work, which is cool.

[00:01:39] Jay: How do you become an inventor at that? Like that? What do you, did he like declare that's what he was going to do is just like invent shit. Like, what does 

[00:01:45] T Brad: Now he was working for his brother and just working in a, like, he was kind of like a warehouse, you know, warehouse guy, you know, plant manager type.

And, just sketch out things and have ideas all the time. Then eventually, you know, found it, you know, the two wheel, wheelbarrow, and then, you know, found some other, you know, create some other inventions and, You know, it's funny because we grew up, you know, not too far away from the guy who was the patent attorney from, for the slinky. So, you know, it was, you know, it was kind of a, you know, a cool thing. Like when I met Michael, I was there, you know, it was one of the top 100 inventions, you know, went down at Disney world. So it was kind of cool to see not just my dad, you know, but other people and, you know, other cool inventions.

So it was kind of unique to see.

[00:02:22] Jay: That's cool, man. That's like the, I mean, I think that's what. At least most of our lives growing up, we, when we thought of like business people and entrepreneurs were like people who made cool stuff and just like invented things. And at some point that shifted into like tech entrepreneur, I think, but like for the longest time, like they were just dudes, like with some great idea or some different idea, or even just a regular idea that was marketed really well.

and it's just like a, that's an interesting kind of like era, I think of like invention and design and all that stuff. So it's very cool. Very cool. so tell me about IT pros. I mean, where, how did you get into doing tech recruiting? I mean, it's a very crowded space and we've talked a little bit off air about that just kind of ecosystem of very, you know, It was a big thing.

It kind of went away. It's a big thing. It kind of keeps coming back and now it's big again. there's like so many staffing, recruiting agencies, like what got you into the space to begin with? And then we can talk about how you kind of carved out this really interesting space for 

[00:03:12] T Brad: Yeah. So I started out, I was doing internships through grade school and high school and college. And. Just kind of doing I. T. Marketing sales, putting cubicles together, you know, wiring, whatever it was just to kind of figure things out. And then I went to finally with the school for college for,business administration with a focus on management information system.

So I was in the tech world and then graduated, found a job in, in I. T. Myself. And then, the company was part of a I. G. And then when I started crumbling down, There was like 2200 employees and it started the CEO left and I'm like, all right, the writing's on the wall. So I got recruited by recruiting a tech recruiting agency locally here.

And, they were recruiting me for one of their, one of their customers. And ultimately, they saw my last name and one of the partners there, grew with my father. so he pulled me aside and said, Hey, do you want to check out, you know, the tech recruiting side of things? You know, it was less pay and, you know, more upside.

And I thought, you know, let me try it out. And I mean, do I want to be a CIO or CTO? And I don't think that was my cup of tea. and that's how I got into tech recruiting.

[00:04:13] Jay: Who was your first customer? How'd you get started?

[00:04:16] T Brad: So when I, so I, so before I started it pros, I worked for two. Tech recruiting agencies. And then,my first customer was a company called XTM, which was ultimately acquired by Valve IP. and what's interesting, before I started my business, I started a community called 2009. So that's where I leverage a lot of connections to get the butt up going.

So in 2011, when I started IT Pros, you know, we were kind of off to the races. So yeah, Day one, you know, inked an agreement and then it was a few weeks, you know, later where they were interviewing our people and then, you know, starting to hire, you know, a bunch of folks. And then, which was cool to see because they were a small, you know, business at the time and, you know, placing a lot of people there was kind of a cool experience.

[00:04:55] Jay: I love the community to kind of funnel, program there. Tell me a little bit about the community. Like, and this was 2009. So it was, what's that 15 years ago. So that's like a lot of, technology has come since then. So tell me about like, how did you start a group in Philly in 2009? And like, was it all online?

Was it like in person? Like, what was the, point of people joining it?

[00:05:17] T Brad: Yeah, well, so, the whole concept was this has been linked in, I think linkedin was founded in 2002 maybe or something like that. So I just throw it up on the linkedin groups and I said, here's an easy way to join this thing. And then ultimately we started, the whole concept was to learn, network and grow with, you know, like minded folks in the Philadelphia region. So then we would have events, there were typically like once a quarter and we would put it at some like cool place somewhere in the Delaware valley where people haven't been before. And then it just turned to, you know, just people coming out and then, you know, just interacting. And then, you know, Oh, what do you do?

You know, what do I do? And then it just turned into, you know, getting, you know, some new clients and, you know, growing from there. So that was a really good experience to, I mean, for anyone thinking about starting a company, just trying to build a community, you know, around what you're doing first.

so people know who you are, you know, that, that was a big advantage for us.

[00:06:06] Jay: I really, really, really do love that. I'm a huge community builder guy, and I never applied that to our business. I still want to very badly. And I think there's a big niche for a QA community here in Philadelphia. but it's a great idea and it's a great, the only thing is, how did you, I mean, I guess as LinkedIn groups, it was like kind of low pressure, right?

Like there was no sales to it. You're just like saying, Hey, here's a place. If you're an it guy in Philly or girl in Philly and you want to connect with other people, a place to do it.

[00:06:34] T Brad: Yeah, so like meet meetup was popular back then. So

like we were competing with like some of like the more niche site, like within it, like you have like, you know, the Java group and you have, you know, the other, you know, really specific to like a smaller segment of it, but, and then you have like Philly, you know, tech meetup and new Philly tech meet up.

And, but it was really focused on like the city of Philadelphia where. I mean, I live out, I live in the city and now I live in the suburbs, but you know, there's way more tech that happens in the suburbs of Philadelphia than inside. but we would look to encapsulate both kind of bring the whole Delaware Valley together versus just segments of Philadelphia,

and not focusing on the other, you know, surrounding counties and getting into Delaware and New Jersey and things of that nature.

So that, that was a, it was more of like an all encompassing type thing versus like really just focusing on the city of Philadelphia,

[00:07:18] Jay: And what happened to that group?

[00:07:21] T Brad: it's still going. We celebrate our 15th, like you just said 15th, you know, anniversary. We have over 4, 000 members representing over 2, 500 companies. And, you know, we now host in person, networking events, each month.

so that's still going, we took a, I took a break, like during COVID, you know,

we did more like online type stuff, but we're back into the, you know, the in person, you know, live networking type of stuff. and there's no sales pressure. Like I don't want. A room full of a hundred salespeople trying to sell to 30 tech people.

so, you know, if a salesperson wants to come there, they're more than welcome, but, you know, we encourage them to at least be a sponsor or, you know, we figure something out. So it's not, you know, an annoyance type of thing.

[00:07:59] Jay: right. And how do you, well, I mean, that's, I mean, 4, 000 members, that's a solid group. how do you have like measurables around deals that come from those events? Do you like know any sort of like, Hey, if we do 10 of these events this year, we should get five new clients out of them. Right.

[00:08:18] T Brad: what I call signature events. and then. From there,we'll probably get somewhere between four and five new clients from that. And then, you know, some of those could be like a one off deal, but just one would, you know, and the other thing is like, we're not spending a tremendous amount of money. It's just more of a time type of thing. And then, you know, ultimately, it's, you know, me going to all these different counties, which is fine, because I grew up like in this area, but it's really not a lot of output, you know, as far as, you know, money and resources go, because it's just

the people that are joining, it's just sending, you know, it out on LinkedIn and then they join the event or the group and then now they're part of that community and then

they interact like outside of, you know, just me being there and so forth.

So it's kind of cool to say,

[00:08:58] Jay: Yeah, I love that. That's awesome. I think that's great. And it's, I mean,it's as close to like a referral factory as you can make, right? Like referrals are like, I love and hate referrals. Like I love them so much because they're no effort and they're, you know. The barrier entry is so low and it's already worn all the great things from it.

And I just hate them because they're not scalable or really like reproducible. So I love like kind of your own little referral factory. 

[00:09:23] T Brad: about this group is that like you get the job, he gets a bunch of job seekers there. You'll get some maybe new entrepreneurs that are starting out,

and looking for advice. So what's cool about the job seekers is that, you know, can we help everyone get a job? no, because companies aren't going to spend a premium, you know, just for anyone that's a, as a tech background,

[00:09:39] Jay: but you get to meet a lot of executives that are on the move where you wouldn't really get FaceTime with them, you know, otherwise,

[00:09:44] T Brad: because once they land a job, then they're getting cold calls, emails all day long. when you catch them at the right time, then that's it. That's an easy way. Cause you're looking to help them as well, but

also they know who you are now. So when you do make that call or when they think about, Oh, I need to hire some people for my team. You know, they think about it pros,

[00:10:01] Jay: I think a tea bread, I

[00:10:02] T Brad: they think it's you prep, right?

[00:10:03] Jay: think a tea bread.so how, I mean, so tell me about how the customer has changed from when you first started to today. Who was it when you started? Who is the customer today? And just kind of, we can talk through, that's where a lot of the fun conversation comes in because we can talk about what happened, but talk about where they were to where they are now,

[00:10:20] T Brad: So typically we would be chasing or not even chasing, but we would be focusing on the venture backed startup or the company that. That's the no name company that's in the Delaware Valley region that really no one knows that we would stay away from the larger companies that you know, everyone knows, right?

If I were to ask you, can you name 15 companies in a certain, you know, county in the Delaware Valley? It's that's not a big name. It's that's hard to do.

So that's where those companies struggle. and you know, really the struggle to tell their story, you know, so that's where we come in to dive in and think about, okay, like you guys live and breathe your company, but you know, how can we take someone out from another company and then what are you offering and things of that nature?

So we did that through the, like the venture backed startups for a while. We still do a lot of that. but it's a lot of like the bootstrap companies that no one's heard of before, where it's manufacturing companies that you don't think about how. Big manufacturing is in the Philadelphia region for the most part, but there's a lot of manufacturing companies where, you know, maybe they're not as exciting because you haven't heard of them before, but they have some cool stuff or cool stuff they're doing, you know, modernizing their environment and things of that nature.

but historically we would take on anything really in the Philadelphia market. and then it expanded to not doing that, right? Like, so staying away from the larger companies that don't want to, they want to pay. And a million years from now,they mess around with you. Like the terms and conditions are just so skewed in their favorite. We just say, we just stay away from them and really focus on the more agile, fast moving, you know, where it's more exciting for people to hear about. or it's, you know, like the manufacturing companies, you know, that we've carved kind of like a nice segment out of, but, the customer has gone from pretty much how we started to today. We just eliminated a lot of the bigger names, that, you know, just take too long and aren't as exciting as some of these faster growth companies.

[00:12:03] Jay: How did you. Scale the business beyond yourself when it comes to, you know, operations, sales, finance, et cetera. Like when you first started, how did you go from T Brad to T Brad and team?

[00:12:16] T Brad: Right. So, so it took me about three deals to hire another recruiter. So for me to get out of the weeds, I needed to get out of, you know, the day to day of the recruitment function. So it's starting out with. Someone that's talking to the customer, talking to the candidates that were, you know, targeting and so forth. and then it's bringing in a sourcing team. These are the people that are doing all the research, and you know, scaling that, looking at operating a 24 seven environment. So looking at the time zones that the world has to offer and see, okay, how can we do 24 seven, not just hiring people in Philadelphia that, you know. Everyone wakes up and goes to sleep at the same time. so when that person here in Philadelphia is working, they have a solid pipeline to go after. So that's a big competitive advantage of doing that. And then hiring someone that knows the operations piece, you know, more of a, you know, the business mind and allowing me to do more of the innovation and, you know, the major implementations that, that we need to do to run the business versus, you know, me, you know, constantly, you know, doing a lot of the recruiting activity, you know, sometimes I still get some of that because I'm talking to the founders and they want to talk to the person who runs the show,

which is fine.

But then, you know, delegating that is, is a big, you know, aspect of, you know, operating a business like this.

[00:13:25] Jay: Yes. And I think that's why most business coaches exist, is for that, like initial, like how to get out from under your self phase, which is why there's probably, you know, a hundred million business coaches and a hundred million people that are at that point where they can't quite figure out how to get from under their business and like the ones that do, or like the ones can scale it up.

So, so tell me a little bit about, Okay. Personal brand. I mean, tongue in cheek was saying T Brad, obviously, but I mean, to the most, for the most part, like you do have a very clean, very like, well, kind of curated public image, I would say from LinkedIn and Google and everything else. Like, what does personal brand mean to you?

And like, how do you kind of mix that in and out with it bros brand, you know, versus yourself?

[00:14:07] T Brad: Yeah, it's just kind of thinking of the perception of how others would perceive me because like when we're looking at other companies, right, it's so interesting to see like when my team says like, I'm not really sure what they do, like we'll go on their website. And it'll say like, it'll say that they're a computer software company, but then we're looking through, like, we still don't know when we'll spend a couple of minutes, we still have no idea what the heck they're doing

because they're making it so complex with a whole bunch of BS words and adjectives, or maybe being too sophisticated. Like if my seven year old son, like if I, if he doesn't know what I'm doing, like that's a problem. so like we want it to be that simple. So when people think about, okay, what is T Brad Kalinske do? It's, you know, it's tech recruiting in the Delaware and Lehigh Valley region. and you know, looking at it from, you know, okay, can he help me get a job? Or can you help me hire, you know, some people,and that's really, you know, it's been, you know, a lot of years just thinking through that and, you know, asking people, like, even when I'm on LinkedIn, sometimes I'll say like. How would you improve my profile? So it gets eyeballs to, you know, my, you know, my personal brands,

but you also get some key aspects of like, just ask the people that are following you, what would they want to see that's better, or that's, you know, that's too difficult to understand

and just kind of dumbing it down.

So people, you know, understand it, but the other thing, like it's separating myself from like it pros. So it pros has more followers now than me. And that was a problem early on where I had. It was just me. And like it pros was like a second thought, or like, you know, and after thought of, you know, just dealing with me, but to be able to scale a business, they need to think of it pros, not so much, you know, me at the forefront.

but you know, it's just really just thinking through those things and, you know, the complexities and just the perceptions and I think, you know, still, it's a work in progress, but I'm hoping that it's, you know, in the right direction.

[00:15:48] Jay: tell me about, a big fuck up, a big failure, whether we're sourcing clients or with the client relationship, whatever, and then what'd you do after that?

[00:15:58] T Brad: Yeah. So let me think about, we had, it's kind of funny because there was a company that, That actually was acquired. And, and this is the first interaction. They were looking to hire a chief product officer from us. We supplied the chief product officer and actually this, I don't want to get, I don't want to give any names away here, but it wasn't too far away from where I grew up.

So I knew exactly where the building was. I knew it was near a flood plain. I knew like all these things. I actually asked those questions, like where would they park when it floods and things of that nature. but I didn't have a chance to actually go to the office. This was like earlier days. So the chief product officer gets there, you know, she gets hired, everything's great.

And then, so we have a 90 day guarantee. and. Day 89, the owner of the company calls up, says, listen, we need to, you know, terminate this person.and I was quite frankly pissed off, but here to find out that she was getting, the company was getting acquired and she just didn't want to, you know, have to, you know, pay the fee.

So I, I told her, I said, we're not replacing this because this isn't a termination based on performance. This is just because you're getting acquired and you just want to save the whatever amount of money that we're paying.

And, looking back on that. like those types of interactions, like, although how I could get pissed off at those, like sometimes that trickles down, like where that person that, that was acquired, like, she's now working somewhere out, like she's an entrepreneur, she's a founder. And it's just like, if she knew you, Hey, what are your thoughts on IT pros? It's like, well, they suck no matter how many placements we make. It's like those types of things,

like we're terrible. Like we don't know what we're doing. No matter, we could have 5 million placements and. Like that's a lesson learned.

Like where that reputation is like the biggest thing. and, you know, it's sometimes not worth trying to save the 40, 50 grand fee that the company is paying for

because you may lose out on, you know, hundreds, if not millions of dollars in future business because of that.

[00:17:42] Jay: Yeah, that's a great one.what would you do if you had to start over tomorrow? Like everything you knew, you know, what kind of business do you want to start? Hey, I've been in staffing. I want to start my IT pros company. What's step one tomorrow for you to start the business?

[00:17:57] T Brad: It's honestly the same thing that I did. I don't want to sound like a know it all and that was. part of my problem before I started, you know, my business. I thought I knew it. And one of the partners was like, dude, you got to settle down. Like, you don't know, you don't know Jack right now. but it would still be the community first.

And then like, and the thing I would probably have sped up that process a bit, like, like really focusing more on the community. It was kind of like moving at a snail's pace. And then I eventually, it was like, all right, let's get this thing moving. And then just not like, I didn't have VAs or I should have gotten more of those types of people to help with that, you know, just more, you know, day to day where you put the playbook together for them and show us like plug and play.

It's like, you don't really need to think a lot. Like I was doing a lot of that stuff. I would have delegated that much sooner,to set the business up. So when I was working somewhere else and then, you know, departed, I could then set it up and, you know, get moving much quicker than what I did.

But, yeah, there really is not much there outside of more delegation early on, you know, because I went in knowing that the tech recruiting, but it's not like I jumped into a business I wasn't familiar with

because I was working at two other, you know, recruiting companies before, and then just taking what they weren't doing and what I wanted to do for.

[00:18:59] Jay: For my own business. a while and I probably have you back on just because I feel like we could talk for probably three episodes worth. I got one more question for you though, non business related. This is just for Brad being Brad. If you could do anything on earth and you knew you wouldn't fail, what would it be?

[00:19:20] T Brad: it would just be able to cure like uncurable diseases, just focusing it on stuff that like for humanity, like it would just benefit all humanity. So that would really be it. I mean, it's just like helping people that and also would be to try to do it in a way where it's somehow like it's not out of pocket to the general, you know, person.

[00:19:37] Jay: Right.

[00:19:38] T Brad: So that, that would be it.

[00:19:40] Jay: Well, you can't fail, so that sounds like a great one. I like that. All right. Well, if people want to find more about you, Brad, or about IT pros, where do they do that?

[00:19:48] T Brad: LinkedIn's the main place I hang out. So, you know, feel free just to connect with me on there or follow IT pros and you know, that'll be the spot to go.

[00:19:55] Jay: Beautiful. All right, brother. Well, I think we have lunch coming up, so I'll see you again soon, 

[00:19:59] T Brad: Yeah. 

[00:19:59] Jay: it was great getting to talk to you for a little bit, and, hope you have a good rest of your week. Thanks, buddy. See ya. 

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