Interview with Paul Dinte, CEO, Dinte Executive Search

Paul Dinte came to the US 30 years ago to start an executive search business knowing nobody, knowing no companies, having no clients and having no candidates. From there he built a thriving global executive search firm. Listen to this interview to learn how he did it.

Host - Carl Grant
Producer - Seth Grant

Transcript

Carl Grant: 0:00

Welcome to rainmakers. This is a podcast about business development, what I got into business development, nobody told me how to do what I do today. And I lead business development for one of the leading law firms in the world. And I just wish there was something out there. But when I was getting started to tell me how to do this, so I decided, I'm going to be the guy who's going to teach people how to do this. And I'm not going to do it. Just spouting off what I know to do. I'm going to talk to the best in the business across industries to find out how various professionals go about developing business. And today, we're going to be talking to Paul Dinte. He is CEO of Dinte, Executive Search. Welcome, Paul, thank you for joining us today.

Paul Dinte: 0:51

Oh, thank you so much for having me. Pleasure to be here.

Carl Grant: 0:54

Now Paul, got started in Australia and would you spent the first half of your life there, and then you move to the US and, and he's really a global guy, is how I got to know him. And well, I think I think we got to know each other. When you called me up and invited me to speak at one of your meetings of your global partners. Do you remember that?

Paul Dinte: 1:19

Oh, absolutely. I'll never forget, in fact, he came and spoke to us about business development

Carl Grant: 1:23

Thats exactly what I did. And it was really interesting, because I came in and gave my philosophy of how I do it, I do it. And I talked about giving, not receiving, give, give, give, and and you'll receive more than you you could ever dream or imagine. And there were maybe two guys in the room that said that that kind of did the same thing. And they said, you know, they're overwhelmed with the amount of business they have, they couldn't handle it. And so you've interacted with a lot of people who do executive search around the world. And and I want to just get some nuggets of wisdom about international executive search and what works and what doesn't work.

Paul Dinte: 2:04

Oh, fabulous. You know, it's interesting, you know, when he reached out to me and said that, you know, you're putting on this podcast about Rainmakers. You know, I was thinking that the notion of Rainmakers are really curious term because it connotes sales and revenue generation as the main event. Yeah, I think you know, my belief is that being a Rainmaker is really a product of being more of a diagnostic problem solving business leader, you know, no matter no matter what professional walk of life you choose to pursue. And, you know, as you know, you may not know, but in my own walk of life, you know, I began my career in Australia as an accountant. And some people might think, well, that's the furthest proficient from sales and revenue recognition, because, you know, accounting send historical event, we actually count analyze documents, sales and revenue generation of others. But what I realized early on, is that my source of energy is from people and not numbers. And I think I really enjoyed Carl learning about other people's stories, because everyone has a story, you know, everyone grew up somewhere, everyone went somewhere, everyone had a coincidence that took them somewhere else. And I always found it interesting, you know, to learn and to listen from others. So, you know, when I came to the United States, almost 30 years ago, you know, I sort of stumbled into executive search, I actually came here with an Australian executive search company, to start their business in the US. And so people think of search people who have these wealth of networks and contexts and relationships that have been doing for years. Well, I actually came here knowing nobody, knowing no companies, having no clients and having no candidates.

Carl Grant: 3:49

Wow, now, that's daunting. I've gone into New York City where I didn't, I didn't know anybody, and I'm used to walking into a room and knowing half the people in the room. And it's, it's overwhelming to walk into a situation like that. How did you go about developing your first first relationships?

Paul Dinte: 4:07

Well, you know, the, the, the key for me was, you know, I'm always a person who not only is excited about the people I know, but more excited about the people I'm yet to meet. And so what I did in my first few months is I basically, you know, met with a few people who became some mentors for me and helping me to sort of navigate the market space. And, you know, I would get meetings and go and talk to people and learn about their businesses and learn about, you know, especially the washington dc arena. And it became very clear very quickly that this market space was, you know, a centerpiece for defense, government contracting technology. And so I started to meet some people along the way. And I'll never forget, I had one situation where I went and met with Chief Human reach Officer of a public company. And I got introduced to him by someone who suggested I go meet with him. And I went met with him. And after about 10 or 15 minutes, he leaned into his left hand draw. And he pulled out a wall of business cards with a rubber band around them. And he said to me, let me just understand you just hopped off the boat, you don't know anybody. These cuts, here are all my executive search relationships. Wow, I'm not sure why I would work with you. Well, I must have said something because about a month or two later, he called me up and he said, we have a Vice President of Engineering role based in Los Angeles, and I'm going to give you a shot. And not only do you give us a shot, but over the next four years, he gave us 35 searches.

Carl Grant: 5:43

Wow. What did you say? Well, how did you how did you clever?

Paul Dinte: 5:48

it something crazy, like you know, put another shrimp on the barbie or something. But I think I really said something along the lines of, I'd really love an opportunity to help you, and really love and opportunities to support you. And if you think this may be just like a homework assignment I can do for you to give you some insights to the market, I'd be more than thrilled to do that. And so it's being able to connect with people, you know, where you can help them and you can support them. And I think what I've realized in executive search is that, you know, executives, the best executive search, people aren't rainmakers, per se, or on sales or BD people, but they're problem solvers. And when you solve problems for people or clients or corporations, the byproduct of that is building this intimate trust, this intimate relationship. They share with you so much about not only themselves, but they companies. And then all of a sudden, being a Rainmaker is just a byproduct of great work.

Carl Grant: 6:57

That's interesting, Paul, because I, you know, what I find so fascinating about doing these podcasts interviews is, is my guests, like, you just did shine light on stuff that I do that I don't even realize I do. Because people tell me, I'm good at doing this stuff. But I'm like, what is it that I do? Like, I don't even I don't really get it, I just do what I do. Right? It's natural. And I do the same thing. So I was reaching out, I normally don't reach out cold. But nowadays, we're you know, we're coming to the tail end of this COVID shutdown, you know, reaching out on LinkedIn is not so odd anymore, right? Because you just can't walk up and meet somebody in person, like, like the good old days. And so as I'm reaching out to CEOs, entrepreneurs, I'm looking at what they're doing. And I'm asking, I'm not, I'm not pitching them on what we do. But I'm, I'm looking at what they're trying to do. And I, and I'm saying, send me some information on your business. So I can see if I think I could be helpful to you. And that seems to resonate with people, they they get back to you like they want help. And granted, in the end, I'm supposed to sell legal services, but that'll come if I solve their problems, they're obviously they're gonna come back to me when they have, you know, a term sheet or whatever it is they have to deal with. So I think I think that is you just unlocked a nugget right there that I didn't even realize I did. And that's brilliant.

Paul Dinte: 8:22

So I think, you know, I think along those lines called, you know, we're both you know, if people would look at what we do, they would say, Oh, you both have different businesses, but we're actually all in the same business. We're in the business of trying to figure out how to solve our clients biggest problems. And people don't often, at least in executive search, have the conversations with clients about solving their biggest problems, they more often than not have the conversations along the lines of, you know, tell me if you've got an empty box on your organization chart that I can fill. Yeah, very transactional, right. I think what I found in executive search is the best people we can hire to our company, are people who are problem solvers. So we tend to hire people who are more, you know, strategy oriented, they understand the market, they understand where the market is going, as opposed to transactional recruiters. different businesses, but where we operate, we were at the top end of the food chain. link with CEOs, we're dealing with boards, you know, we're conducting searches to bring in leaders to run companies or build companies or leverage companies. And so if you can't have a business discussion, if you can't dialogue around them with the things that are really, you know, impacting their ability to move forward, then you're never going to catch them. And you're never going to develop the trust and they're going to see you differently. And so, you know, my experience in executive search is it's really, it's, it's pretty simple. You know, truck trust is established and relationships develop, you know, for both the immediacy but also for many, many years to come. You talk about COVID 19 people in their caves, um, you know, we conducted a search for a client earlier this year. And it was defined the president of a global company. The role was based in California, but more than 50% of the work was being done outside the United States. And one of the candidates that I met in the course of that search who did not get the job. And as you can imagine, when we do a search, and we're doing a search for president or CEO of a company, we're talking to another 40, 50, 60, CEOs of other companies, one of them gets the job. But our goal is to create relationship with all of them throughout the process. And then what happens as happened to me this week, one of the candidates who didn't get the job, called me up and said, He's coming to DC for a week for meetings, and he'd like to meet with me, you know, escaped my cave, and I went down. I had lunch with him in DC on Tuesday of this week. And he's already talking to us about how we develop such a great relationship and trust during the course of our search that he wants us to help him build his leadership team out. So it's how you interact with people. And it's how you deal with people. But I think you know, the notion of of Rainmaker is just a byproduct of everything else, if you focused on being a Rainmaker and being a salesperson, that's not what this is about. And clearly, that's not what you're about on the Carl?

Carl Grant: 11:31

No, it's the opposite. Right? It's the opposite. So So talk to me a little bit about the global nature of what you do. You are chairman of IC partners, I believe that's the group I spoke with. And so you've been plugged into this for a long time, how does that global the global relationship stuff work? I, I'm just we're just starting to go global. I mean, we're in several countries, and I'm starting to hire international people. And so I'm interested in this global aspect of what you do.

Paul Dinte: 11:57

Yes. So So we, we have a presence in about 50 countries around the world. And, you know, we some 500 plus executive search consultants, and, you know, one of the greatest and most important things that we can do in a global economy is support our clients no matter where they are in the world. And so we have many clients who will say to us things like, um, you know, we need to find a lever to run our company in the UK, or in Australia, or in Korea, um, you've done great work for us in the United States, can you help us bring a leader to run a business somewhere else in the world. And so, through having a global platform, we can collaborate without partners in local markets, and then we can figure out how we're going to support our client to solve that problem. And whether that, you know, is partnering with them in another location, or whether that's having them support us in some aspects of the search, um, you know, we've done work all over the world in, you know, we find that, you know, for the most part, you know, a client relationship in the United States that we might have developed, you know, if they have a company somewhere else in the world, they still want us to engage with them, they want to have it done elsewhere, because we understand the culture, chemistry and style of the organization. So, you know, this global platform that we have, and Dinte has been part of it for about 20 years now. And I had the chance to be the global chairman for about three years. And in that process, not only did I get to learn more about each of our global partners, but I learned so much about how people build relationships across the world. And it's pretty uncanny Carl because most people have similar experiences. And I think that, you know, to your point, you know, trust is established, you know, with with relationships that are built over time, sometimes people think, Oh, well, okay, I think I'll go into business today, and I'll become a business development executive. But you have to work at it. And you have to evolve it. And you have,

Carl Grant: 14:15

Let's talk about that. I so so we've got about a minute left here, Paul, for the young person or the student, who maybe the accountant who's, who's decided that he or she doesn't want to be an accountant. And they're listening to this right now. And they say, Well, I want to do what he does. Where do they start?

Paul Dinte: 14:32

So, you know, the notion that I live by is if you're gonna eat an elephant, it's one bite at a time. And what I mean by that, it's a bunch of little steps. You know, you can't wave a magic wand and all of a sudden, boom, you're this, but I think I would, I would encourage, you know, you know, early generation, you know, professionals who are looking to build Long Lasting, you know, careers in some form of relationship development or business development is to identify a role with an organization that's going to expose them to client centric organizations. And I think, you know, in professional services in particular, you know, whether you're a wolf firm, an accounting firm and executive search firm, or anything else similar to that, you know, you're going to be going into an organization or consulting firm, you're going to go into an organization, where business is done by working with a whole variety of different kinds of clients. Because in that experience, you first learn about different industries, different sectors of the market, you'll meet people along the way. And and I think, you know, with respect to, you know, my own experiences, and I'm sure, you know, this may resonate with you Carl is that, you know, when I first started in executive search, I couldn't get to meet with the CEOs, the companies, I couldn't get the boards of the companies, you know, I was 32 years old, you know, no one's gonna take me serious. So what I decided to do was take a long term view, and I started meeting with middle and senior middle management people. What some 2030 years later, those people are the CEOs running the companies of the United States of America, exactly. Go to invest and you got to grow as they grow. And that's it trust gets evolved and developed. That's what I would encourage.

Carl Grant: 16:21

All that was great advice. I want to thank you so much for joining us today on Rainmakers, Paul dinty CEO dinty Executive Search.