#359: How To Power Your Way Through The Cheese w/ Steve Edwards

"Hiring Happens Here" with Steve Edwards, the CEO and Founder of Premier Virtual - an innovative company at the forefront of the future of hiring, helping businesses host virtual job fairs. Eric Readinger and Law Smith talk to Steve about his military and sales background before working in the virtual job fair industry , remote workforces, starting your own company, living in or near West Palm Beach and a shout out to the Dive Of All Dive Bars, The Hub, in downtown Tampa.

Episode sponsored by SQUARESPACE create a customizable website or online store with an all-in-one solution from Squarespace. Choose a website template and start your free trial today. https://squarespacecircleus.pxf.io/sweatequity

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, tampa, resume, job fairs, virtual, sales, wife, walked, job, squarespace, line, company, steve edwards, florida, tiki hut, hire, hear, places, hub, west palm

SPEAKERS

Speaker 3 (57%), Law (40%), Eric (1%), Speaker 2 (1%)

Law Smith 0:01

According to sweat equity podcast streaming show that the number one comedy business podcast in the world and the number one business comedy podcast in the world. Why? Pragmatic entrepreneurial visor that real raw Dogtown know? You love it. It's coming back in the intro. Our guests on the show Steve Edwards, co founder of Premiere virtual man that got shot out of a cannon. Oh yeah, he's a fun one. I love that he clicked. I missed it is like a big dip. Gleek almost, but he didn't have dip and because he's professional, he's a consummate salesman premier virtual.com. If you are an employer, looking to hire or if you're a job seeker, he has Virtual Job Fairs on there. Hey, hey, listen to us on iTunes, Apple podcast, Spotify. Use a little favor. Hit that subscribe smash the subscribe button smash it smash it. Yeah, girl. smash that subscribe button. Give a five star review. Write a little little sentence about how how clever we are

Eric Readinger 1:12

ya more clever than what you just said. But

Law Smith 1:18

too good please. Episode sponsor Squarespace. Squarespace we've got an affiliate link. Oh, yeah. What's up Holly? If you hear me, Squarespace look we made now between the two of us and combined over 200 squarespace sites. It's what I recommend for clients, especially in the professional services area. Or if you have a blog, or if you're you're a DIY or SquareSpace is the way to go. Fuck all the other content management systems. Okay. What? Squarespace is better. Thanks sucks. You got E commerce abilities. You got email abilities right in there. And now they have analytics tied in. It's getting girthy with Squarespace. Look for the look for the link for a discount in this episode description. And let's go hang out in West Palm Beach in a tiki hut with Steve Steve Edwards. Ah about my sweater woody woody Woody, hear us? Yep. Can you hear me? Yeah,

Steve Edwards 2:43

we can hear you. All right. Is this not audio only or is it video to

Law Smith 2:49

do both? Okay, perfect. Primarily audio, but we're gonna have to ask about your background. I mean, we're recording we just go right into okay, we want to be efficient with CEOs.

Steve Edwards 3:00

Dude, love it. Love it. You know, a lot of wasted time out there. I appreciate. I appreciate efficiency.

Law Smith 3:06

Steve. Steve Edwards, founder and CEO of Premiere virtual you for those listening. You can't see this Tiki hut backdrop he's sitting in. So where are you right now?

Steve Edwards 3:20

We live in. I live in South Florida. Okay, so I built I built the tiki hut in my backyard. I always wanted the tropical oasis and we just bought a new house like six months ago. And the first thing we did was build a tiki back here.

Unknown Speaker 3:36

It's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah. No. Are you worried about it burning down? Because that looks like a

Steve Edwards 3:40

funnel. I try to keep the the fire and fear but I got a little fire thing over there. We keep we try to keep it away from it a little bit, you know? Yeah. The hurricane as long as the hurricanes don't take it down. I'm good to go.

Law Smith 3:56

Well, you've been fortunate, I think last one, it hit over there. Andrew and 94 I think

Steve Edwards 4:04

we're in a couple you know, there's been a couple that have that have hit us here. But you know, was it four years ago? They were supposed to be the one that was gonna wipe out Florida. I was gonna be bigger than Andrew. We got it. You know, we had a newborn and that was a month old. We got in the car drove up to Atlanta. And we had a couple of sticks. You know, it hit us worse in Atlanta than it did in down here in South Florida.

Law Smith 4:26

What was that Irene?

Eric Readinger 4:27

Yeah. So you're not from Florida originally, then?

Steve Edwards 4:30

No, I'm from Wisconsin originally.

Unknown Speaker 4:33

Okay. That's it. Yeah.

Law Smith 4:35

You're good. Important? Yeah. Well,

Unknown Speaker 4:36

I'm just thinking

Law Smith 4:37

the content. We're in Tampa, by the way.

Steve Edwards 4:39

Yep. Yep. I lived I actually lived in Tampa for two years. Oh, guys. Right down. right downtown. You know, the hub. The bar the hub? Yeah,

Law Smith 4:48

I've performed in the hub. Did you know that? Oh, yeah, I yeah, I lived at the condo element right across from them. Okay. A couple of years. guy saw Eric, destroy a girl who was in the palm of his hand at the hub. I didn't do anything wrong. She was ready to go. And he was like, that's not what happened. What happened? She was like, I want to dance. And you're like, wow, how did

Unknown Speaker 5:15

you do? That's not what happened at all. You know what happened? We've talked about it on the show fishery.

Steve Edwards 5:20

Hump is such an amazing spot. So really, man, I was there, and I was there and my buddy lived across the street. And I walked over one day, we're at the pool. And I walked over to get a bottle and talking to the lady there. And she's like, Yeah, we sell to go bottles till 2am And I'm like, Okay, I walked in and I had just moved to Tampa was looking for a place, walked back over to the element and said, Okay, I want to sign a lease. Right? That, you know, it's the I O decide describe the hub. There's not many places in America will you'll have an attorney, a homeless dude, right. And then a middle class guy all sitting next to each other. Talking having a good time. I mean, every drink is a triple there. I mean, you walk out of there. You smell like an ashtray. The

Law Smith 6:08

plastic. Yeah, so that smokes inside I think, right? No, no, that's not allowed anywhere anymore. They that. So for those out of the area that think of the dive bar that is stayed in downtown, while everything else grew around it? Yeah. And it's like

Eric Readinger 6:24

duck in 1978. Right. Everything else is it's pretty dark.

Law Smith 6:28

It's really dark. It's like, jukebox, you got it. Yeah, you got a weird, like kind of people coming in there. from all walks of life very Florida. If I had to kind of give it a theme where you you do have like, doesn't matter. Class wise, it just matters. Everyone's a little weird that goes in there

Steve Edwards 6:47

is such I mean, there was many nights where we started there. And we had planned to go to sell Tampa. And we never made it out of it. You know, for drinks later. And it's like, yeah, you're not you're not you're not walking too far.

Law Smith 7:02

Yeah. Any other decrepid places you loved in Tampa.

Steve Edwards 7:08

You know, my favorite spot was the Eddie and Sam's little pizza spot downtown. Yeah. Big, big fan of Eddie and Sam. Anytime I traveled to Tampa, I go back there

Law Smith 7:21

relax. A lot of good pizza places. So that was one of the legit ones. Yeah,

Steve Edwards 7:25

yeah. Yeah, I tell you know, everybody I tell it's from New York that I know when they're in town. If I go go check out Eddie and Sam's. You're gonna have that blue point. I'll by the by international Mall. It's a big fan of that restaurant out there. But as di bars, hubs, probably one of my favorite that I've seen in the country as I travel around a lot for work.

Law Smith 7:45

Yeah, it's the dive of dives, I would say yes. So you're in West Palm Beach. Is that right?

Steve Edwards 7:51

Yeah, we're a little south of there. But we're right between West Palm and boca.

Law Smith 7:56

Yeah, West Palm is a interesting area in itself. It's like super hoity toity. And then not at all like it's like, clear line between the two. Like I've done the West Palm improv a few times. And I'm like, such a weird atmosphere as like people in like, boat shoes and blazers and like, oh, like, like 80s rich people. Yeah, like what you see like characters of rich people in 80s movies. And then like, just fucking opiate struggling like people coming off the street.

Steve Edwards 8:30

I'd say I'm all through college. I bartended up off a clematis so that you couldn't describe it in a better way. Nice.

Law Smith 8:39

FAU you went to right? Yeah, so

Steve Edwards 8:41

yep, I went to FAU the bar I worked for actually. They used to have one in Tampa two was called Bar Bar West Palm. They had bar Tampa bar Atlanta, throbbing. Used to go. I heard Yeah, law. There was a long, long time ago. But it was a fun little fun little spot that they turned into Have A Nice Day Cafe and then something else now. It's completely torn down. And that whole area is a little different.

Law Smith 9:02

So congrats on getting on Forbes, by the way. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 9:07

Oh, thank you. Thank you. We want to know how you did it. Not

Law Smith 9:11

to be glib. But we just want to ask us we, we know there's a path to being a contributing writer. And we figure we just instead of trying to figure it out, you know, with writing something or hitting up our PR friends that have come on this show, why don't we just ask the guy who just got on there?

Steve Edwards 9:28

Yeah, you know, honestly, it was through a PR company that we work with. And we actually were in there twice. The first time was just kind of a mention of Premiere virtual. And then they reached back out to me and did an article so I went kind of the PR route of getting in a lot of different magazines getting you know, published or in different newspapers. And then we got that call, which was again, it was from the PR place but it was getting getting our name out there. Getting it in the, you know, the smaller, you know, stuff that nobody's ever heard of before, you know, a backroom newspaper in the LA, I think it was LA Weekly was one of the first bigger ones that we got into. And it just kind of escalated from there as in, we were just they were just put our put our information out there. And finally we got a phone call.

Law Smith 10:18

Yeah, we might need to get that PR company's info off air unless you want to give them a plug. But we think it would be funny because we tow the line between comedy and business or entrepreneurship and with this show, and we think it'd be funny if we got like legit ranks of like, as mentioned on

Eric Readinger 10:37

why you shouldn't take business so seriously. Yeah. You know,

Law Smith 10:42

you know, as seen in King magazine, that stuff like that, yeah, USA Today seems like we could do that we can make that happen for some reason

Steve Edwards 10:51

why, why is that one, I think you know, this is in this may be a little off the subject, but send out tweets, go out there, just send out messages right now that Musk owns it, you can do pretty much whatever you want, you're gonna be able to do on there. But I used to do that every time I used to free what I'm doing today, I used to put on job fairs. That's kind of how I got into this industry. Every time I go to a market, I just send messages out to reporters. And a lot of times they didn't pick it up. But sometimes they pick it up, I get mentioned on the news that was all free, all free press that I got. So if that's what you guys are looking to do come up with a catchy tagline. Send out Twitter messages to every reporter because it's really easy in every market, right? I'll use Tampa for an example. Every time I would go into Tampa, I'd go to the fox, ABC, NBC and CBS affiliate. And I would just send them messages. I would send all the reporters I'd send him a tweet. And just, you know, mine was just a little bit different. Okay, I'm coming into the I'm coming in with 400 jobs would love to get you out here and do do an interview or something with

Law Smith 11:58

me. Yeah, we got to. We got to figure out that angle. That's the thing. I think we're we've been here our whole lives. We're working on Yeah, we have to have a reason to hit him up. But you're right. It that's that do a telethon. Well, your background is in sales. And that is a very gritty sales thing. Because you know, where we might stop ourselves doing that is like, feels icky. But I feel like good people with a sales background like efficient, proficient people with the focus in that area. professionally. You just you'll just get it just go do it. Not good.

Steve Edwards 12:34

Right. Sounds icky on there. But think about right? You said you did West Palm improvs same thing. Some people are gonna laugh at you. Some people are right, what can happen in sales? And this is what I teach myself. Who gives a shit? If somebody says yes or no to you know, I know. You're writing it here. I'm come up with a cheesy line, write a cheesy, you know, thing I just I sent out to my my director of marketing last week. And I said, I want you to create a blog on this, the gray resignation. Verse, The Great, the great return, who's going to win? And most people don't know what the great return means. But it's all these companies that are trying to bring people back in the office. And people like No, I like working from home. I like working from the beach or wherever. So it's gonna be a battle. So I said make this fun, and go out there after that. You guys could do the same thing. Come up with a cheesy pickup line or a cheesy line. I like cheesy pickup lines how I met my wife but you know, come up with a cheesy line. It comes put your things in there a quick little article it's all about you know, its clickbait right. Yeah, send out something get them to go the story to get you on air. Yeah, whatever you're trying to

Law Smith 13:45

do figure out an angle we're we're kind of leveling up the show and so once we'll we'll kind of pry dovetail it with that or we'll figure out some way to I mean, you gotta have a reason to be like hey, we can't talk to her buddy Ray row is editor in chief of creative life and be like, Hey, do a thing on us. You know like he's right. And what was we

Eric Readinger 14:06

just need to make up something that will do right probably embarrassing for us. We'll have you know, a dance a thon telethon will

Law Smith 14:13

do a free strategy session for someone Oh, sell someone, someone who wants to need no needs to be entrepreneur, somebody are being I don't know. We'll figure that

Steve Edwards 14:23

out. There's me shit. There's a ton of you know, come up with something and think of how many people are moving to the west coast of Florida right now from New York and New Jersey. Right? How many people right now are moving to Florida as a whole. And you know, there's a lot of it right with entrepreneurs. There's tech money coming down to Tampa, just like it is here to Miami. Come up with something like that. Right. There's a ton of money coming in there. And people want to hear and think of stuff outside the box. Yeah,

Law Smith 14:53

no, you're right. I was just kind of saying stuff out loud as as well. Lie. We've

Unknown Speaker 15:01

got a committee. Yeah. The welcome pie podcast. Welcome.

Law Smith 15:05

You know, so I pulled up some stats, per what you're talking about with the blog. Wait, before we get sidetracked on the real important thing. What was the cheesy pickup line that got your wife?

Steve Edwards 15:18

So we were at? It was at an FAU football game first football game at their new stadium. I walk up,

Law Smith 15:23

you kind of look like a football coach. Is it the ball? The ball may look like an offensive coordinator for some reason.

Steve Edwards 15:30

Could be you know, I walk up to this girl that's in the stands, and I go, Oh my God, You look familiar. She's like, Yeah, go, you look just like my next ex girlfriend. She started laughing. She goes to leave. I put my phone number in her in her phone is your next x. And now we've been now we've been together. 10 years got a seven year old and a four year olds.

Eric Readinger 15:52

Man. That's easy. No, that's pretty good nuts to do that.

Law Smith 15:57

Yeah. Now, how many? How many tricks? Did you do that to that?

Unknown Speaker 16:00

Right? Yeah. What is that?

Law Smith 16:01

What's the numbers game man?

Steve Edwards 16:03

How many wives don't have more than one wife, one wife on that night. But the but the best part took me a month to get a date with her and I'm texting her. And she finally sends me a text back. She goes, Why don't you just put me and my friend on the same text message group texts, because you're saying the same lines that you are to me. So why don't we do this? And I was like, Listen, I'm going to a party. It's a birthday party. I'm coming to pick you up. She's like, Nope, I'm at home already. And I was like, Listen, I'm going to Mickey Mouse shirt. I'll be at your house and pick you up. I'm going to take you to his birthday party and we'll go from there. And it works you know, why are we are

Law Smith 16:41

nurturing a lead like almost like the programmatic bots that hit us up. You're like, the same thing we tell everybody.

Steve Edwards 16:49

You know Grant Cardone on that one. Just No, stop it. You know, if you listen to if you listen to Grant Cardone when he talks about, you know his wife and how he goes after things, like he doesn't stop. People are either people either love or hate that guy. And I feel the same way. Right? You can either love me or hate me, but I'm here to help people. And I'm here to I'm here to get what I want. I think we love

Law Smith 17:08

you. Yeah, we love you. And we're you know, I'm a fan of Grant Cardone, I think the the biggest thing is like, you don't let those those small negatives get in the way of what you're doing, you just kind of move on. And I think that's a good kind of philosophy when you're, you're trying to lead a business, right? Or you're trying to do your own thing, or live your life. Yeah, live your life in general. I mean, the thing like all comedians have is like, you could crush but that one person with the folded arms that out of 300 That isn't liking it in the club, you're like, fuck that guy's problem, you know? And you're, it takes a while for you to realize it's probably not nothing to do with this show at all, he probably had some other shit. You know, why would you come to a show a comedy show and fold your arms and just be, you know, stone face the whole time. So, you know,

Steve Edwards 17:58

it's it's something in their life, right? You got to look at it like that I got taught early on in my sales career. And I can't teach it like this in sales. But I can do it, I think here on this podcast. So yes, early on in sales right out of college, I was a stockbroker. And back in this was where you were just dialing the phone. And that's all you had, right? There was no Twitter, there was nothing. It was a stack of cards of people that were BS. And you had a phone and a mirror in front of you with no chair. And I had to sit there and dial 600 calls a day. And at one time, this guy told me he's like, eff off. Don't ever call me again, throw my number away. So I went to my senior broker and I was like, Hey, this guy said, you know, everyday this guy said, he takes it and he puts it in to the bottom of the pack. And he goes, No, get back to the doll. I'm like, This guy told me to call he goes, Listen, this guy probably just walked in on his daughter getting banged up by some dude that he doesn't like, and he wants nothing to do with anything. You sell him. He goes next week you call wife and taking them out and gave him some ass now He's happy. He's gonna listen, everything you got to say, and I go. So what you're telling me is sales is all about timing. He goes, Yeah, exactly. So that was over 20 years ago today, and I still teach that to my people. Now, I obviously I have, you know, female employees that work for me. And then sales. I don't know the whole details, but I thought it was doing something with somebody he shouldn't have been doing. And then next week, the wife goes out to dinner, and he's in a much happier man. But if you think about it, right sales and write the punch line and stuff, like so much of it's about timing, and so much but uh, what is that person going through in their life? Right? that that person that comes to your comedy show that is sitting there with their hands crossed? They might just be having a bad day or they're just

Law Smith 19:40

pissed off at like, yeah, oh, yeah, sure. It takes you a while to really gotten dragged there. Yeah, yeah. It could be the husband of a wife that wants to really go to show that he's just like, I want to play with my Hot Wheels or whatever the fuck you know,

Steve Edwards 19:55

that husband could have been traveling all week long. You know, came home it's free. At night, he's he's eating out to dinner. He's been out, you know, entertaining clients all week he comes home, it's Friday. He's got to mow the grass. And then the wife wants to go out to dinner and he doesn't want to listen to her nag anymore. So he's like, I'm gonna go out there. And he's empathy. What the guy should do is say, Hey, I'm going to have somebody come in, you know, cut my grass when I get home on Friday. Oh, that's spend that two hours cutting grass. So I can go out, smile with my wife and be happy. But something is going on with his life.

Law Smith 20:25

I agree. I'm, I'm great. Not your fault. And everybody should be laughing. And if they're not, it's their fault. Well, do you think your military background meets your professional beginnings and stockbroker, and mortgage industry sales? Do you think those really helped helped you to get where you are right now? Like, I feel like, I feel like you have efficient, you have good energy. I can we can kind of feel that but it's like, you know, you gain those kind of skills along the way, on the sales side, that the military kind of gives you that kind of get up an atom or that kind of due diligence or diligence, I should say,

Steve Edwards 21:08

you know, I think the the military gave me discipline. Yeah.

Law Smith 21:14

I was trying to go for

Steve Edwards 21:16

I was a 17 year old kid when I signed up for the Army because I didn't want to go to college. I hated school. I wanted nothing to do with I got to the army. And I was like, this oxide, I was like, I, when I was signed up, I was like, I'm going to be a career. I'm going to be a lifer. Like, I love this stuff I got there. I was like, this isn't fun, right? The peep a lot of the people around you, you're like, yeah, there's a reason that you're gonna be like that you're a lifer in the building, because you can't do anything else. But I started to go to school at night, while I was there, I was like, just I kind of took the discipline that I had, you know, and then I went to college. And, you know, I kind of went backwards in for a semester. And then I, you know, realized that, hey, listen, Mike. I like nice things in life, and to have nice things in life. Like, I got to work hard. And, you know, I was a little older in college, because I, you know, got out of the military. And a lot of my friends were older, they were stockbrokers. They were in the mortgage industry. They all had money, and I'm like, I want money. That was what I was, like, how do I how do I get that? Right? Like, what do I have to do? And I it's not always been success. I mean, I've had terrible years. Um, you know, in challenges out there. And you know, when I met my wife, I go, Listen, I'm a salesperson, like, I'm gonna have a great year, and I might have two bad years where I take a loss, I go, but that's just the roller coaster. If you want to be on it, I'm gonna have it. But I just had the discipline to be able to go out. And I know that you come out with a, you know, a positive attitude, a great work ethic, right? You can you can build yourself, you can find stuff out there, you know, like, people said, Oh, you were lucky when COVID hit. You were lucky with your business. I said, No, I just, I watched the trends. And you could see where, where my business was going. And I just took a shot.

Law Smith 23:00

It's opportunity meets preparation. I mean, like, given your background. So let's Yeah, let's you nicely dovetail this into Premiere, virtual, you know, you've kind of found yourself in a unique position, because you had you been doing career fairs before that correct.

Steve Edwards 23:19

For nine years,

Law Smith 23:20

were those virtual or online, they were all, they were all online. So you were kind of probably the Rockstar, where you're working, I'm guessing.

Steve Edwards 23:31

So there was a small company. It was it was me and I got in the job fair industry because previous to the job or industry, I was the Director of Sales for a company and I would go in the company I worked for, we had clients Verizon AT and T T Mobile. So I would build sales forces. That's what I would do. Like when I was in Tampa there, Verizon Fios was my clients. So I ran business to business sales team for them. But how do you build a sales team, job boards and job fairs? You got to hire people. So my markets were New York, New Jersey, Florida and Texas. So I was on the road, I was single pre wife, three kids back then. And you could go to these markets, and you would go to every job fair? Well, I found a company out of New Jersey, and I love their market. They were they were geared towards sales. They did it in the evening time. So people that were employed, looking for a better opportunity. And we did a presentation format where we got to speak in front of the group and say, here's who we are. Here's what we do. Here's what we're hiring for. Here's why you should work for us. So it was efficient, and I loved it. But then when my company shut down to division, I went to the owner of that company and said, Hey, I like what you do. I don't want to work for you, but I want to do what you do. So after six months of negotiating, deciding what we ought to do, I bought the license agreement. So I had North Carolina to Florida to Texas and Arizona, and I did the job fair. So it was me. And I was the only guy out of that. And he had had a couple of people that tried to do the same thing that I did that just weren't successful. But in 2018 People didn't want to come to job fairs anymore, right? They want it they want to be on here.

Law Smith 24:57

The trains are already going that way pretty pandemic it was right. So

Steve Edwards 25:01

think of if you look at indeed right indeed change, I can get into a whole thing about from monster to indeed, and that whole montage of things. But But yeah, but people would rather play online you will get every millennial and Gen Z. I mean, my four year old seven year old are all over their iPads, right and they can grab my phone and get anything. It's the generations where we're at right things were changing. And I found out about virtual, I said, this is the future, you know, instead of me being, you know, on the road with young kids, and you know, being gone three nights a week, I can be sitting at my desk running an entire job there in Florida at one time. And I said, this is it, you know, the guy that we're working with in Jersey just wasn't as big of a fan as virtual. So we parted ways. And we started developing the premier virtual software in 2019. So it developed it all of 2019 and launched in January of 2020.

Law Smith 25:53

In the first 10 months, Premier virtual was up and running, you helped connect 35,000 companies with 350,000 job seekers.

Steve Edwards 26:03

That's a big numbers. Yeah, yeah, we've now had almost a million job seekers, which if you look at Indeed, it doesn't seem like that big of a thing. But I did more job fairs in the first six months of Premiere virtual than I did nine years combined with the other company.

Law Smith 26:24

So that kind of added the tiki hut. That's why you have your own addition, you have your own bar at your house. Looks like could be for Margaritaville, that's all we can kind of see. But the you know, you kind of like a lot of people go you just got lucky with the trend. But you saw remote remote workforce happening. I got thrown some stats I prepped 16% of companies globally are fully remote. Pre pandemic 4.7 us employees were working from home. And then 4.7 What million US employees is that? I skip that. And then now

Unknown Speaker 27:06

seven human walking around.

Law Smith 27:08

And then 58.6% of American workforce is currently working remotely. in some capacity, not maybe not fully, but at least some hybrid or full, working remote. I mean, we've we've talked about it on this show for five years, basically, how long have you done this? Five

Eric Readinger 27:29

years, five years? And that's weird that you said that, because I just noticed that today. It wasn't been five years today.

Law Smith 27:34

Nice. So, you know, we've been talking about like, it was more frustration of having to meet, not via zoom, because people want to meet in person that are low tech, or like, or just like, I'm like, it's, it feels like a colossal waste of time to drive to her old office. Come up there and like, or I had to drive to other clients places that didn't really need it. Right. It could have been a phone call or Zoom call. And it's like that we saw this happening and the pandemic just sped it up. You know, it was,

Steve Edwards 28:07

you know, you said it right. And I say it a lot is it was a catalyst, right? It really showed the world. What could be done, you know, pre pandemic, people are like virtual job fairs, like how does it work? Right? They didn't understand it. And they started to see, you know, what could be done now. And in less than two years, we've done 7000 virtual hiring events. So think about that. 7000 virtual owners is a job a job fair in Massachusetts, the state of Massachusetts did an event. And they had 1700 companies and 17,000 job seekers at one events, over 1.3 million company booth fees. 46,000 46,000 available jobs on the job fair, record breaking job fair, largest average offer, that couldn't be done in virtual. But guess what, that Oregon State of Massachusetts now said, Steve, and we joke about they're like, We want to break your system. They now have partnered with six states around them, and are doing a job fair with 5000 companies later this year. In one place. Yeah. People see what it is. But the best thing about about right virtual as a whole is, anybody can do it. You can do it from anywhere, right small town, Wisconsin, you know where I live, you can be on the country. Maybe you don't have internet, but you have cell phone service so you can get on mobile. Right? We work with, you know, West Virginia, Tennessee, Wisconsin, a lot of places that are ruled and they can still attend these events. But the data which is the most important thing out there, can be tracked right from an in person job fair. Guess what? You might know how many people walk in the door. But you know how many conversations you know how many resumes are submitted, you know, any interviews are scheduled? That was a deck of business cards. It's like this

Law Smith 29:55

high, right? Yeah, it gets overwhelming for the people trying to hire And then they end up. I think that hiring happens a lot of that way when you do like zip recruiter from the employer perspective. And they everyone gets like small business specially, because it's usually not an HR person and someone just beleaguered, I'll step up and help out so tired, I need to hire, right? I'm a coordinator or associate level or something, I'll just help out the team. And it's like, they get inundated with so many resumes. They just go fuck it, I don't even want to look at this thing. And it's like, it's kind of a bad system pre what y'all were doing? I'd say, the tracking when you go to the house, how it works on Premiere virtual.com it kind of explains that and that I was thinking almost like, in a silly way. Like, what if you had that like a trade? To me job fairs like a trade show kind of setup? And in real life? What if you could tag everybody like a cow. And just like, you know, like, you have tracking on everybody, you know, jacket,

Steve Edwards 30:59

you're gonna love. And I love the way you say that. I'm gonna figure out how I can spin that and say that in a in a post. But think about it like this, right? You really touched a point there. You have a recruiter that's sitting back, right. And I think recruiters are like salespeople, you either have the the ones that want to sit there and wait for everything to come to them, or you have the hunters that are out there. But the ones that are waiting for the resumes to come in on the you know, all the job boards that are out there, right? They they get the resumes and they're just coming in, okay? They look at it, right? And they're looking at a resume, they're looking at some words on a piece of paper, right? And then how many candidates out there, right? They just, they just sit there and they see a job and they just submit their resume. Right? Like, you know, there's there's a couple of the job boards out there that after you submit your resume, there'll be a thing that says, here's some other jobs that you may be interested in. And one of the candidates do they go? Click a good, good, good, good, good, good. Click Apply to fit the jobs feet go up in the air Jerry Springer comes back on and guess what? They think they applied for 50 jobs, right. But they're not qualified for any of them. Right. And then the recruiters get pissed, because they're not getting qualified people. You know, because people aren't reading. You know, I had it a couple of weeks ago, I had something on a job board, and a person came in and they, they asked me a question. Okay, the question they asked me was in the job description. So that was one red flag already. Then, again, I sent them back. I said, Hey, it's in the job description. But here's the answer. sends me an email back. Where are you located? Delete. Delete. I'm like, You didn't read? Right? So that's the problem. So what we did, right, we'll call it your your, your tagging aspect here is I believe a candidate is more than just a resume, write a resume, my first resume, I went to Google and I said, sales resumes. And I pulled some stuff on like, oh, this sounds really good. I took that sentence. And I put it here, I build my resume off a BS stuff off of Google. But what we built is, is you have your resume, you can upload multiple resumes, right? They can tailor make a resume, right in and submit, right, because some people have multiple resumes for like sales and one for leadership. But we also they can, they can tag all of their experiences. So they can put their experience they can put it they have any certifications, you know it your teacher, they can put it they have security clearances, and then they have video questions. So a host of an event could ask like 10 generic questions. Tell me about yourself. If you were able to time travel, you know, what would you do? You know, why should we hire generic questions? So now that candidate could come in? And leave a video answer, right? So almost like their video resume. So when when that job seeker, right, they want to, or that whole organization, ABC mortgage wants to look at a candidate, they could look at a candidate, they can look at their resumes, watch their video resume, look at their experience, and then say, hey, I want to have a conversation with you know, in a job fair, there might be somebody 15 people back that's just waiting in line. That's that's the right fit. But I got to get through those 14 people that are not a good fit to get that 15 one, right. And then I can do that in the virtual side is I could go through and look at each one of those resumes. Not a good fit. Not a good fit. Not a good fit. Not a good fit. Oh, man, this one's got a great video resume. Let me send him a message or her a message and say, hey, I want to talk with you. Can you jump on a quick video, instantaneous instead of waiting to get through all those other 14 people

Law Smith 34:15

not to mention the opportunity cost of waiting through those people in real life to wait for your turn to get up. While you may have missed out on other things that could you could have applied for or talk to, at a real job fair. It's an A synchronistic way to kind of do it.

Steve Edwards 34:31

I'm at a job fair. And I'm like sitting in line and I'm like, I got my resume. I'm all excited. I waited 15 minutes to get to the front of the line I and on the resume. I'm like, Hi, my name is Steven. I'm looking for a sales job and like, sorry, we only have engineering jobs. I just wanted to let me go stand in another line. And then I do the same thing there. And then I go see here virtual like it's built. I built this for efficiency so that that candidate can come in, look at a location look at an industry find just those companies because my goal when I tell every client out there is you want to put the right recruit You're with the right candidate to make it efficient, right? That candidate could come in, see a company and say, No, I'm not really interested in that company. I'm gonna go to the next one. They didn't have to wait in line that took him five seconds to go in and see it. Next one they could go in. This is a perfect company, I want to send a message to them. The recruiter says, are you ready to jump on do a video interview, they could do a video interview, then they could, you know, they could be scrolling through and say, Hey, I like these three companies right here, I want to schedule a one on one time with each one of these back to back to back, they can do all that we efficiency efficiency, or

Law Smith 35:31

you cut the fat in hiring. I love that you just spin off camera. That's awesome. We missed it. We could definitely have a beer with you at the hub. And it's funny you said time. So we want to have you back on because there's there's a lot more meat off this bone I especially scalability, and hyper hyperspeed. But we tried to keep these about 33 minutes and we want to be respectful of your time. I'll we'll contact the booker that put us together. But we asked everybody that first time that come on. And it's really weird, Eric and I made eye contact. Not necessarily the normal not in a sexual life. But when you said time travel because the way we we kind of preface this last this question for your first time coming on is what advice would you give your 13 year old self and we kind of always have a secondary explanation of like you time travel back Bill and Ted style in a phone booth. You go back you see yourself grab yourself by the lapels. And in Wisconsin, and you go,

Steve Edwards 36:40

I'm gonna actually tell you probably something you've never heard before. Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell my third yourself, do what you do, don't change a thing. Because I wouldn't be here today, if I changed anything. And you know, I wouldn't have met my wife, I would have my wonderful kids like what I did in the past. And I had a fun path. Right? I love being a bachelor. You know, I didn't get married till I was almost 40 years old. And and I wouldn't change. Did I make mistakes in my life? Absolutely. I made financial mistakes. I made mistakes with women that I shouldn't have been talking to. I made a lot of mistakes. But what the mistakes that I made is made me learn how to not make those again, and how to be a better person. So I'm not going to change anything from who I was from what I did when I was 13. You're scared

Law Smith 37:30

of the butterfly effect? No, but it's one of those things where you entrepreneurs, the big difference is learning from your failures, I think and limiting your weaknesses, and whatever way you can. So that that is I don't think anybody's ever said that.

Unknown Speaker 37:46

I thought we had I think we have. But

Law Smith 37:50

remember, I don't remember who you can remember 359

Steve Edwards 37:56

Nobody's nobody's like Steve Edwards, nobody thought of that.

Law Smith 37:59

Well, you definitely thought I

Unknown Speaker 38:01

might do that. I'm gonna be like, I'm good.

Law Smith 38:03

Where you you got that you've got good energy. We love as a guest. We'll have to get you back on later this summer. Because I want to ask about that hyperspeed growth, I want to ask you about, you know, probably some of the data features you might be implementing soon. Because that that that video stuff gets me thinking if you can start tracking data on facial cues, you can transcript those out. Maybe you can use that data somehow. So I'll table that. Plus, I want to hear all the girl mistakes you made. So but yeah, I appreciate you coming on and yeah, we'll have you on soon.

Steve Edwards 38:41

Sounds good. I appreciate it. Thanks, guys. You guys have a wonderful weekend. Yeah, you're wonderful.

Law Smith 38:44

We ever in Tampa hit us up. Yeah, definitely. Sounds good. Thanks, everyone. See ya.