Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in business development but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Dandan Zhu, Founder, and CEO of DG Recruit, located in New York City, NY, USA.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
DG Recruit is a recruitment agency - we service other recruitment agencies as our customers with the goal of moving top agency recruiters and salespeople to our client network.
Tell us about yourself
A year out of college, I entered the field of agency recruitment and became a headhunter, where I excelled at selling our services and making placements of top talent within the pharmaceutical industry, eventually setting up our executive search business. While hustling as a top producer, I leveraged smart financial habits and diligent rent hacking to accumulate enough cash to get into real estate investing at age 25. After five years of corporate America as a top headhunter, I decided to leverage the wealth I built in real estate and the knowledge I gained to become an entrepreneur, becoming full-time landlord, and a content creator.
In 2018, I missed recruitment, and my real estate properties needed more cash influxes, so I started DG Recruit, a recruitment firm specifically servicing other recruiting firms, something I've never done before but came naturally to me as the biggest cheerleader for the life-changing nature of our profession, having personally experienced it myself.
What motivates me every day is the ability to use what I've learned to change other go-getters' lives and to spread knowledge of how to build wealth and success from the ground up. As someone from humble beginnings, the journey of wealth creation, business building, and perseverance at all costs has changed my life for the better. I wish to share my life story, experiences, and knowledge to empower others who are also on the same journey and path of self-actualization and financial freedom, and abundance.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
My biggest accomplishment as a business owner is surviving a failed partnership. In 2018 when I first started DG Recruit, my team was a rag-tag team, and I was a rag-tag leader, winging it as I went. While things were fine, and we hit 7-figure revenues in our second year, our team fundamentally wasn't strong. I was supporting people who genuinely did not have the capability of succeeding in our tough-as-nails job; meanwhile, my business partner was inadequate as well to take our business to the next level, all of which came to a head in 2020 when the pandemic hit. He decided to leave me high and dry in 2020/2021 by taking out a large sum of money and leaving me, and one other colleague remained, a mountain of debt to the tune of over $145k.
Since then, my remaining colleague and I have reset our business from the ground up, forming a new partnership that has been fulfilling and exciting in ways we never had access to before. Since my now colleague-turned-business partner and I have been working together since 2018, I fearlessly entered into this new partnership with renewed hope, vigor, and confidence for our impending success. As expected, we worked hard, paid off the debts left to us by my previous partner, and emerged unscathed, reaching an incredible financial result in 2022, making more money personally while doing less work with less headache. I am incredibly proud of how my current business partner, purely through grit, talent, and hard work, changed the outcome of an otherwise terrible situation to be left in. In 2023, we are more positive than ever that we will have another solid year despite recessionary fears due to how strong our fundamentals are this time around.
What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?
The hardest thing about being a business owner is that you don't know what you don't know. What I've learned is that there is no guarantee in business or path the way I used to have as an employee. As business owners, we are the makers of our own destiny, and we must play our cards right in order to survive, thrive, and sustain financially. That's why adaptability and perseverance (the willingness to fight to survive) are critical for business owners. Whether it's external or internal, there is no option to avoid issues. Only head-on confrontations and brute force to right wrongs and double down can change the outcome. Ultimately, the ball is in your own court to make your dreams a reality, but there is no quick path to get there except to learn and continue to fail upwards all along the way with a big smile on your face no matter what terrible, crippling obstacles get in your way.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
- Be financially ready for turbulence. Unless you're using OPM (other people's money), you have to be in a financially strong position to weather the storms of entrepreneurship. If you have high fixed costs like rent or mortgages to carry and no support system, running a business can be extremely challenging. While I'm all about "going for it," I do believe that having a real support system, whether through your own assets or combined assets (i.e., a spouse with benefits and a stable job), is a critical component to survive the down years. I've seen too many people fail in business because they simply run out of leeway due to financial constraints to make it through the lows of entrepreneurship truly, so having a strong financial backbone is critical to take risks necessary to make your business work in the down years.
- Business isn't about the size; it's about the quality of people and the quality of life you have in your business. When I first started DG Recruit, the more, the better. We wanted more clients, more recruiters in our teams, and more support. But with that came more headaches, more oversight needed. Instead, our lifestyle now of having just the two of us - my business partner and myself - is more than enough to take care of the needs of our exclusive clientele (half of what it used to be). We now have more free time, higher quality of life, and a stronger business because we're focusing on fewer people with higher potential, deeper relationships, and better talent. This is the exact goal of creating talent density instead of dilution. No longer will I ever chase size and speed of growth. Bigger isn't always better, especially when we can have a nice lifestyle business that pays well and runs itself with less headache.
- Pick a business you have a marked competitive advantage. Our line of work is R2R (recruiting for recruitment businesses). This is highly niched where our competitors cannot succeed consistently and deliver at a high level since many of them personally have not been a global top biller at a tough agency. Having experienced it personally, I know our advantage in the marketplace has always been pronounced because our content and social media strategy really resonate with our clientele and candidates. Since we've been there and done that, our impact and credibility in the eyes of our network are leagues above the rest. This is critical to compete in the business world today - find a niche/focus that you have a clear competitive advantage within and leverage the internet and your unique views to sell your business for you.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://www.dgrecruit.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dandanzhudg
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dandanzhudg/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dandanzhudg
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dandanzhu/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
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