Choosing Your Pain with Rebecca Thornton

In this episode, Jon Bartos and Rebecca Thornton talk about the grit necessary to start a business from scratch – and the joy of getting to choose your pain points along the journey. From the thrill of betting on yourself to the freedom of working from anywhere – even international family trips – the level of choice in entrepreneurship changes everything.

Stop taking a commission check. Start signing the paychecks. 

Memorable Quotes:

“I was at a crossroads… do I continue to work for somebody else and really grind it out for them to do really well or do I go out and do this on my own? I’ve built up a set of skills over the years, through start ups and through my experiences that I felt like I could bet on myself. And so that’s what I did.” – Rebecca Thornton

About

Rebecca Thornton is the founder of Expanded Talent Solutions, a boutique recruiting firm specializing in the medical device industry with a focus on vascular, cardiovascular, and interventional roles. Before launching her own business, Rebecca spent years in the field herself as a medical device rep, which gave her a firsthand understanding of what it actually takes to succeed in this space.

A little over two years ago, she made the leap to build something of her own, bootstrapping Expanded Talent from the ground up with no outside funding and no safety net. What started as a one-woman operation has grown into a respected boutique firm placing clinical specialists, territory managers, and executive-level talent at some of the most innovative companies in medical device.

Rebecca is passionate about the idea that a niche done well beats broad every time, and that deep relationships and genuine industry knowledge will always outperform volume-based recruiting. She is also a wife and mom who will tell you that leaving the corporate grind was one of the best decisions she ever made for her family. Building something of her own has come with its challenges, but it has also given her a presence and flexibility that a traditional career never could.

Visit the Expanded Talent Solutions website

Connect with Becca on LinkedIn

About Jon Bartos

"Starting my own search firm in 1999 was both the most challenging and rewarding decision of my career. It gave me the freedom to build a business on my own terms, while still being present for my family, a balance that changed my life.

 Today, as CEO of Dimensional Search, I’m proud to lead a platform that empowers entrepreneurs to experience that same freedom and success. With global resources, proven systems, and a network of like-minded owners, we provide the support you need to build, grow, and scale a thriving search firm."

 — Jon Bartos, Chief Executive Officer, Dimensional Search
Chief Investment Officer, Starfish Partners
Senior Partner, Sanford Rose Associates
Senior Partner, Next Level Exchange

Connect with Jon on LinkedIn

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Sales to CEO, hosted by business veteran John Bartos. This is the podcast where we guide you from top-tier rainmaker to business founder. Stop taking a commission check. Start signing the paycheck. This is Sales to CEO. Here's your host, John Bartos.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Are you a successful sales professional tired of building someone else's dream? Ready to use your unique skills, your drive, your network, your ability to close to build your own nest egg and your own empire. No matter where you are in your sales journey, your sales career, there's opportunity for you, either a side hustle or full-time, to achieve your vision by owning your own business. Welcome to Sales to CEO. I'm your host, John Bartos. This is a podcast where we guide you from top-tier rainmaker to business founder. We'll cover everything from startups to franchising to financing your launch, leveraging your sales, network your massive for massive success. And finally, building your wealth and equity for yourself, not your employer. And along the way, we're going to bring guests to give you insight to help you understand their journey. Stop taking commission checks, start assigning paychecks. Get ready to flip the script. This is sales to CEO. I'd like to welcome everybody. We have a great podcast today. I'm excited to introduce Rebecca Thornton of Expanded Talent. But before I do that, let's take a look at what people make a change for. You know? Most of us out there, if you listen to Tony Robbins over the last 20 years, realize that most of the changes we make are not because we want to make more money, uh we we we want to have a better life, all of those things. Most of the changes that are made, intermediate changes, are because of pain. And the topic of today's show is choose your pain. Yes, you could deal with the pain you're currently dealing with in your job, showing up uh making money for the man as you make a living, or you can choose the pain of starting your own business for a short period of time and really have the fruits of your own labor to achieve the vision of life you really want to achieve. So which pain are you willing to choose? Well, let me share you this. I'm super excited because Rebecca Thornton is the founder of Expanded Talent Solutions, which is a boutique recruiting firm speci specializing specifically in med device industry with a focus on vascular, cardiovascular, and interventional roles. Before launching her own business, Rebecca spent years in the field herself as a medical device sales rep, which gave her first hand understanding of what it actually takes to succeed in this space. Now, the story starts a little over two years ago. She made the leap to build something of her own, bootstrapping expanded talent from the ground up with no outside funding. And get this, guys, no safety net. What started as a one-woman operation has grown into a respected boutique firm placing clinical specialists, territory managers, and executive level talent at some of the most innovative companies in the med device industry. Now, Rebecca is passionate about the idea that a niche done well beats broad every time, and we will talk about that, Rebecca, by the way, and that deep relationships and genuine industry knowledge will always outperform volume-based recruiting. She's also a wife and mom who will tell you that leaving the corporate grind was one of the best decisions she's ever made. Building something of her own has come with its challenges, but it's also given her the presence and flexibility that a traditional career never could. Welcome to Sales to CEO, Becca. How are you?

SPEAKER_02 3:41

I'm wonderful. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Yeah, I I'm so excited to tell your story. Uh, and let's just start off there, especially when you're bootstrapping this yourself with with no safety net going through. Talk to me. Let's hear about the story, what led to this thing. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_02 4:00

Expanded talent. Well, I began my journey in MedDevice uh, you know, a little over a decade ago, and I'd always been fascinated in how things work in people's bodies, and med device sales just seemed like a great place to end up. My dad wanted me to be a physician, and I said, no way, I don't want to go through that schooling. I don't, I that's not for me. So uh that's how I got into med device, and I was really passionate about how those technologies could affect people on the table, um, bringing those innovative technologies into doctors' hands and helping patients get better on the table. So, with that being said, I worked for a couple of startups in this space. Um, I was an associate territory manager in a neuromodulation role, and I grew all of Atlanta to millions of dollars from nothing and no relationships whatsoever, just going out there working really hard and building really great relationships along the way and doing the best by the patients and by the physicians as well. Um, the most recent startup I was involved in before I started my business was in the neurovascular space. So I was working with doctors to take minimally invasive uh treatments to the brain to help treat life or death uh uh diseases on the table. And yeah, very interesting, very uh high pressure, high stress, but very rewarding. And um, when I joined, I was the first sales rep in the field. Um, it was right before COVID. I was the only sales rep in the field during COVID. I lived on a dump de plane. It was interesting, um, interesting times to say the least. But what we're able to do is take sales uh to a number uh where we had private equity investment interested in investing in scientific vasculars where I was where I was. And uh they invested $55 million into the company with only one salesperson on the ground. And yeah, it's a huge investment.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Confidence in you, there's no question about it.

SPEAKER_02 5:47

Well, confidence.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Rebecca can do that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

No, it's an entire entire team effort. It was a fantastic team, fantastic product. Um, it just had a lot of really great support. But that's where I feel like I really dug in and got the experience of wearing a lot of different hats, marketing to just figuring it out. I didn't know who the players were, I didn't know even what the procedures were. I had very minimal training and I went on LinkedIn, I figured it out. And I, you know, we were able to grow the business to a standpoint where we got private equity investing well. Um soon enough our team expanded and uh it just you know, spending three nights on the road a week really wasn't what I wanted to do anymore. Um, I had a really wonderful time helping doctors treat patients in very meaningful ways. Uh, but you know, my family was certainly, you know, took the backseat during that. I managed the best I could. But um, you know, with with small kids at home, it was it was time to to consider something different. Yes. Um, but where the rubber really met the road was the beginning of 2024 when I actually got let go um of all things. And to me, that was just a knife in my heart. I had spent my blood, sweat, tears into that role. And um, the growth expectations that I was uh saddled with were just not realistic, and I felt almost like a sacrificial lamb, if you will. So um I was at a crossroads. I do what do I do? Do I continue to work for somebody else and and really grind it out for them, for them to do really well, or do I go out and do this on my own? I I've built up a set of skills over the years through startups and through my experiences that I felt like I could bet on myself. And uh so that's what I did. And um, my husband looked at me and I had several job opportunities in my lap, well-paying jobs, well-respected jobs in the industry. And I could have taken any of those and had another W-2 job, but uh, he was like, Well, can you do both? Can you take a W-2 job or and can you start this on again, you know, on the side, you know, do this on the side?

SPEAKER_01 7:54

And I said hustle, side hustle, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:56

I I was like, you know, if I'm gonna do justice by my business and by somebody else's business, I think I have to choose a horse. Do I do the W-2 thing again or do I do start something on my own? So I I decided to start something on my own. And maybe it was a little bit of a scorched earth mentality at that standpoint, but I was really ready for something different. And this uh doing what I do today is is very different. My day-to-day looks very different than what it did in my last role, and uh, couldn't be more thrilled about that.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

But but here's the interesting thing, Becca, is that you left something that you loved and built. And by the way, you said something that's pretty important. You you you learned a certain set of skills. That's Liam Nielsen's famous line, as you probably I I've learned a certain set of skills. I love that, by the way. Absolutely love that. But you stayed in the industry you loved. And think about that. Because I think the industry you chose, and let's talk about expanded talent now, if you don't mind. Uh what does expanded talent do? But you got an opportunity to leave what you you had a passion for. You built organizations in that space, and you went right into the space you had passion for to keep going with your own business to make really expanded talent, grow, build, and scale, what you wanted out of there. Share that with us, if you don't mind, and what tell expanded talent is. You know, what do you do kind of thing?

SPEAKER_02 9:14

Absolutely. So I partner with very innovative companies in the space. I I work with a lot of startups, I work with established companies that are launching new products that are advancing the field of care for again, patients and and the physicians treating the patients, and I look for the right people to uh, you know, essentially build those teams and really make an impact on the market. Again, talking about certain skills, it's it's not only the skills, but it's it's the EQ. There's a lot of uh a lot of complexity sometimes when it comes to filling these roles. And because to your point, I had a lot of passion about the industry and I continue to. I love the innovation behind it. Um, it's nice to be able to use those uh same set of skills that I developed when I was out in the field and have that perspective when I'm looking at talent and looking at roles and being able to bring both sides to the table to really pair the best people with the best managers.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

Yeah. No, I love it. And then um did you use the same contacts? I mean, because obviously you had a lot of contacts within the industry. What was were those reusable? I mean, what was it was it an easier start because you had contacts already in the industry that you were from?

SPEAKER_02 10:21

So I did have some contacts, but I will tell you the majority of my business has just come from cold calling other people and making it happen. Yeah, making it happen. Some of my best business has just come from, hey, I I don't know that person, but how I start every single phone call is hey, I'm just introducing myself as a friend in the space. And uh I think that just having that MO and just, you know, uh putting the pieces together, kind of putting the pieces together of my own puzzle has been very helpful in building these new relationships as well. So yes, my contacts were handy, but I I do think that a lot of my a huge part to my success was being able to develop an additional network beyond my contacts as well.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Yeah. And and by the way, that's one of the when when you talk to somebody about the executive search industry, people think, oh, I've got a lot of contacts. And I remember I thought I did when I, you know, when I started my first uh recruiting firm out of three in in 1998, I thought I got so many contacts, this is gonna be great. At the end of the first year, when I look back at all of my businesses and clients that I had that helped us be successful, I knew none of them before I started the business. No, I knew of them, but I didn't have the relationship with them. Yep. And it's almost one of these things, everybody, hey, I want to get into executive search and build world-class teams and grow, build, and scale companies. I got so many contacts, I'm gonna be great at it. When we finally realized we really know one 1% of what we actually know, you know uh Becca now, hundred times more people than you ever knew in the industry, you know, when you started, which is really kind of a crazy thing. Talk to me about how you selected, though, the right business for you that allowed you to go into. Did you take a look at multiple businesses before you selected the one? Just give me that process. You went to the bigger one.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

I did. And I had started considering what what could a life after being a med device look like at the end of 23, you know, when I kind of saw the the writing on the wall. I knew the ending was coming, right? And I was just no longer happy. I mean, I I was completely miserable in my old role. And so, like, if if if if it weren't pushed to do it, I would have done something my own on my own, you know. But I did look at several different businesses and I actually, you know, initially wasn't super crazy about this idea of recruiting, to be perfectly honest. Um, but then I really sat with it and I considered kind of what some options were on the table, and I realized how ideal this would be for my life. You think about it, I I wanted to architect my life in a way that made sense for me and for my family, and I'm able to do the things I love. I love to travel. I have a passion for travel, so we try to take two big international trips a year. Like that's so fun to me, but I can't really do that in a corporate nine to five, and I can't do that if I have a physical location. I love the fact that I can pick this business up and take it anywhere in the world with me. I was on spring break uh last year in New Zealand and I was making phone calls at you know, the wee hours of the New Zealand morning, but opened in my market and I was able to connect and get some new business while I was there. Um, and also too, it's just I'm the master, you know, I'm the captain of my ship. I really get to engineer my destiny. I can scale this to a huge team if I want, or I can stay small and I can really choose on how much business I want to take on. And even better, I think, is I have the power to say no to things that I don't want to work on. And I think that when you have that power of no, then you get some really good yeses, some really cool yeses in the interim.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Yeah, and it's crazy. I I remember um and I and I started my first search firm in uh 1999, but I remember coming up in about 2005 with my really asshole client. Uh and unfortunately they were from New York. I'm not picking on any New Yorkers here, but uh it was a New Yorker, and I remember having a conversation when he was asking one of my team members, Did you really vet the candidates that he just interviewed? And he was just coming across as the biggest asshole that you've ever seen in your life. Just absolutely crazy. And I remember the conversation, I was kind of concerned about firing the client, but I remember once I had the conversation, fired the client, how great I felt that I never had to work with an asshole ever again, because I have my own business and I don't have to put up with that. You know, which was really, really cool, which is really a strength that you're gonna work with who who people are gonna build you up. You know, you don't have to work with anybody you don't want to, it's your own business. Now, in in terms of you know, I know the startup's tough in any business. And specifically the time frame you went through, because don't forget COVID 2022-23, and pharmaceutical industry wasn't doing that good during this period of time. So you didn't pick the perfect time to get into your industry. Now, if you went into construction, you know, I went into manufacturing, it's a different story, but you went into a tough industry. Talk about how you got through the startup, because starting a limitade stand is tough today. Talk to me about that first nine months.

SPEAKER_02 15:02

It was tough. I mean, it's yeah, you're you're really waking up every day, especially in the beginning when you don't necessarily fully understand the business, and you're always learning, right? I mean, there it the the moment I feel like you stop learning, you die. Um, so I feel like in the early days, I felt like I was throwing a bunch of stuff against the wall, like like spaghetti. Like, is this gonna stick? Is this not gonna stick? I look back at some of the messaging that I had early on. I'm like, good goodness, good goodness gracious, this is absolutely terrible. But you learn from it. And I think that's the that's the cool part about it is that failure is a part of success. You gotta fail in order to succeed, to stumble a little bit so you can learn from it, become stronger, become better. Um, also, too, I just I worked really hard. I worked really hard. And I also, a couple of things that I think were very key to my early success. One, I aligned myself with some really uh great mentors in the space. And and you know, some of those, some of those mentors, I mean, we would chat every single day. And uh I'm just so forever grateful for that time that they spent with me and uh you know helped give me a handshake to my first client, which uh, you know, I don't really work with as much anymore, to be perfectly honest, but um at least it gave me work, gave me something to work on. And then also, too, when I was putting the messaging out on the market and targeting a huge company that I really wanted to work with, I had a very niche uh, you know, proposition. I was looking to fill a role that not a lot of recruiters fill, which is a clinical specialist role. And those people can be very difficult to find if you don't know that what you're looking for. And then not only that, it does require a certain amount of emotional intelligence and skills and interaction. I mean, you have to have the right motivators. So it's not only just the technical skills, but it's also the emotional relatability too that a lot of times um you really do have to dig in and qualify um those candidates. So I was able to start out my journey with this company, which is one of my biggest customers today, with that niche role, and it's grown into bigger roles beyond that.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

Love that. Oh, I love that. I love that. And then uh I want to go back to something you said because not not a pe a lot of people realize that you can have your cake and eat it too. Meaning that, you know, a lot of reasons people get in this because they've had enough. They, you know, they have the pain and they want to do something else. For me, it was I never got a chance to see my kids. I just did. You know, it was you know the higher you get in an organization, you know, and then I went to VP of Sales and Chief Revenue Officer, then you're you know, you're getting higher and higher. But unfortunately, uh you don't have a more free time. Yeah, they may give you more vacation, but you still put in the eight hours, ten hours, twelve hour days, especially in the times you need to do. How did starting expanded talent get you to have your cake and eat it too? Give you the flexibility that you wanted, share with the because not everybody thinks you can have that with your own business. Most people think that I start my own business and I gotta work 14 hour days and uh you know and I'm gonna sleep six or whatever it is. How did this business give you, you know, having your cake and eating it too?

SPEAKER_02 18:01

Well, I think that's the beautiful thing about a business as a business owner. You can really decide on how you spend your time in this business, especially this business, is incredibly flexible with that. The location is incredibly flexible. I don't have an office that I go into, work anywhere. Um, I I have something on my uh, you know, my my daughter had student-led conferences this morning. I blocked it out on my calendar and went to her student-led conferences. I couldn't be more proud of her, you know. So it's just a matter of being organized and managing your schedule. Um, and you really get to decide how you spend your time. Now, don't get me wrong, I've had the 12-hour days, I've had the 14-hour days, but that's by choice. I also love to work really hard and I love to see things happen. I love to see success. So I also know that I've realized that some of these hours that I'm sacrificing for my daughter or you know, my family, I also put a network on the back end. Um, but also too, I think another component about this is that as a business owner, you get to decide on how you're gonna invest in your business, whether that's a new tool, a new person in your business. And so I mean, that's the great thing. I hired, I have somebody that's full-time in my business. I've employed tools that have made me more efficient, made me more productive. And then, you know, I'm very I'm about to pull the trigger on an additional resource that's gonna help make my life that much easier and it's gonna free up my time. And hey, who knows? Maybe I'll get out of here early on one day and go to the golf course and play a round of golf, you know.

SPEAKER_01 19:20

I love it.

SPEAKER_02 19:20

But uh but yeah, you're able to dedicate your time and your resources how you see fit and how best works for your life as well.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Yeah, and and um, you know, not unless you had a brick and mortar business and let's say a retail outfit, you gotta be there while it's open, you know. They can also hire people when it's successful. So there's certain business models that are available that you don't have to have a brick and mortar, that you don't have that extra expense, that you can be on your yacht in the ocean and do the business, or maybe it's traveling, you know, New Zealand at spring break, right on the beach. Yeah. I kind of like that, I kind of like that a lot. Talk to me about future for you, all right, because obviously you can grow, build, and scale, you could stay small. What do you see in the future for you or what you want to do with expanded talent?

SPEAKER_02 20:01

That's a great question. So I've thought a lot about this, and I do want to scale my business to a point where I have other rainmakers in my business right now. I'm the primary raymaker, but I do want to bring some additional folks on. Um, you know, I I don't know, I haven't really nailed down on what that looks like yet, whether it's it's it's global or it's stateside. Um, you know, I do have global help right now. I'm very, very beneficial. But uh it's interesting how fast the world's changing, right? Um but I I do I do really enjoy mentoring people and bringing people up to speed and teaching them a skill. So that's uh I you know I think that can be a very it's a very impactful business. You get to really change people's lives. That's my favorite thing about this, and you get to make a lot of money doing it. So um, you know, I want my firm to be seen as the the you know the the firm to you know reach out to and if they have a need in the vascular space, uh in a few tangent uh you know areas around that. But uh, you know, I really do want to be a partner, and whether that is just market intelligence or how how do you go to market with things, I some of my favorite uh recs I've worked recently have in startups and they're looking for just a very specific type of person. And hey, can you help me build this training platform? And I love that, that energizes me. So just being that go-to person, like, okay, she'll she'll get it done, you know.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

No, I love it. And and so uh let's talk about this. We're talking to a sales audience, sales to CEO is for sales professionals who want to start their own business. But there's a lot of things when you think about that. You're comfortable, you're you got security of a job, you know, uh, you got finances, you gotta figure this out. You you gotta you know, you know, you gotta replace your income, or it's very difficult to do this. And by the way, on my next podcast, we're gonna have uh Benetrance, and we're gonna talk about uh how to finance a business, you know, and so most of all these buy businesses are finances, and I know you bootstrapped your own. What are some words of wisdom? If I'm a sales professional, I want to start my own business, I'm a little Afraid to do it. What words of wisdom give you give them the get them over uh the hump to to achieving their vision of their future and achieving of the life they want?

SPEAKER_02 22:12

Well, I think that a lot of this comes down to aligning yourself with the right people. Um, there's a saying that's saying that if you get on the wrong train and you go too far, it's best to get off that train very quickly so you can on the right train and make it further. So I think you go further with the right people. So I would say seek out a good, you know, network or whatever whatever coaching resource that you need in order to get accomplish that. Um I also think that you have to embrace the suck. Know that that beginning it sucks. It's tough. It's tough.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

Choose your pain.

SPEAKER_02 22:46

Yeah. So it is it's tough to get up and running, but once it's there, it's so much fun. And you you gotta think about it. It's uh anytime you begin something, whether it's a new job or anything, there's always gonna be a pain there. But what what what's greater? You know, what what what's what's the greater out of this? You know, it's kind of like that saying, like, would you rather you know being in debt's painful, but you know, uh it w I forget what that saying is, but it's there there is a pain, there are painful parts to everything, and you have to choose the pain that you want to see that long-term success.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

Yeah. And and and then Rebecca, congratulations, number one, on the success of uh success of expanded talent. Congratulations on the vision for your future. Getting married. So you see now this whole future that's just opened up for you. That can be anything that you want. Yeah, you can grow, build, and scale, and you know, it's not five years down the road, sell and buy that island in Fiji if you want to with your business, which would never had an opportunity to be there if you chose to stay where you are. So, number one, huge congratulations. Uh number two, thanks for being such a great part of the recruiting and staffing industry as well. You bend over backwards to helping everybody, and you're just a wonderful human being helping the industry itself. So thanks a lot. I really appreciate it. And thanks for being here. So, everybody, this is another edition of obviously sales to CEO. This this episode is on choose your pain. One is you can choose the pain and stay where you're at and put up with the pain of having your own making money for the man, not yourself, not achieving your vision, or go through a little bit of pain initially to start your own business. I look forward to seeing your success and helping you start your own business, and I look forward to seeing you next time on Sales to CEO. I'm John Bartos. I look forward to your success.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

Thank you for joining us for another episode of the Sales to CEO podcast. If you enjoyed the conversation, please share the episode with other new entrepreneurs, leave us a positive review, and subscribe to Sales to CEO on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Sales to CEO is hosted by John Bartos, produced by Erin Bartos, and managed by Laura Novak. We're happy to support your journey as you start building your own business.