Today we’d like to introduce you to Hudson Brock.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I discovered my recruiting DNA senior year of college when I convinced my brother and 3 cousins to transfer from 4 different schools to play soccer with me at Covenant College. It was a great experience that helped me identify my passion for team building and resulted in a conference championship – GO SCOTS!
By the time I graduated college, I not only had a degree but also a beautiful wife, daughter and a burning desire to prove myself professionally. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew how to get there – chasing good leaders.
I started chasing one of the best leaders I knew, David Caines, by joining his team at Kenco Logistics. This entailed moving my family across the country to the Greater Los Angeles Area and managing a 410,000sf distribution facility. It was a whirlwind of newness- new city, new job, new industry, new team, new culture. Lots of challenges, lots of growth.
Fast forward two years (or 2,000 iced coffees + 1,000 In-N-Out Burgers), a couple promotions with Kenco and I reached a fork in the road – I loved my team and manager (shout out Chris Svatek), but didn’t see myself climbing the corporate ladder longterm. I called my friend Ted Alling to get his advice and he said, “Dude, you got what it takes to build a company, find a startup that you believe in and hustle, hustle, hustle.” Ted got me HYPED (as he always does) and I began scanning the LA tech scene.
Ted introduced me to his brother, Matt, and we immediately hit it off. Matt struck me as someone with a big vision who genuinely loved what he did. I knew Matt was a recruiter and hoped he could connect me to the top startups in LA. After several heart-to-heart conversations with Matt, it became clear that Matt was the next leader I wanted to chase and that his company, Marius Group, was the startup I had been looking for.
From day one, Matt made it clear that joining his team meant taking the “Red Pill” (Matrix reference) and that once I took the entrepreneurial leap, there was no going back. I’ll never forget my first day at Marius Group. As I made the trek from Burbank to the Marius Group headquarters in Mid-Wilshire, I was driving down Vine St in Hollywood and the words of Bilbo Baggins from the Lord of the Rings rang in my mind, “I think I’m quite ready for another adventure.” This was it. I had taken the leap. Let the adventure begin!
What an adventure it’s been. Over the past year, I’ve been drinking from a firehose – soaking up everything I can from Matt, building alliances with all of the Marius Group partners, working with incredible companies, and representing candidates who are way smarter than me. I couldn’t ask for a better team or a more exhilarating mission. We’re just getting started and I can’t wait to see what the future holds.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Smooth as off-roading in a Prius (I know from experience). We are trailblazing and there is no roadmap, but there is a blueprint- building authentic relationships that allow us to share friends (candidates) with friends (hiring managers).
The best way to explain my entrepreneurial journey is “OODA LOOP”. It is a military combat operations strategy that stands for “Observe, Orient, Decide, Act”. As I have worked to scale our team, I’ve constantly been challenged to learn, pivot, iterate, and adapt. It’s always dynamic. It’s always changing. It’s always day 1. You have to operate out of faith, not fear. You have to practice essentialism. You have to view each day as a 24hr sprint. As we seek to disrupt the recruiting industry we’ve had to learn to fail fast, fail forward, and find the win in every situation. As Jeff Bezos says, we’ve had to be “stubborn in vision; flexible on details.” We experience a lot of delayed gratification, but that’s the hard thing about hard things that inspire us to be excellent. Champions make adjustments, not excuses.
Transitioning from supply chain management to tech recruiting has been a steep learning curve. I’ve had to learn that in tech “Python” isn’t a snake, “Ruby” isn’t a gem and “C++” isn’t a bad test score. I’ve had to learn how startup founders think and how to speak the language of software developers. Most importantly, I’ve had to learn how to help people understand what they want and how to get it.
Please tell us about Marius Group.
Marius Group is a diverse yet unified network of entrepreneurs that hustles as one to build alliances in the war for talent. Our team currently consists of 6 recruiting agencies with a combined 40 years experience connecting top talent and companies. We strive to do recruiting differently by building real relationships that empower people to find and pursue their “why”. Tactical empathy is our superpower and we operate on the Steve Jobs belief that, “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Honestly, I wouldn’t do anything differently. I believe that all things happen for a reason and I’m in my lane, living out my calling.
Contact Info:
- Address: 5757 Wilshire Blvd #940, Los Angeles, CA 90036
- Website: http://www.mariusgroups.com/
- Phone: (310) 287-2400
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mariusgroup/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MariusGroups/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/themariusgroup
Image Credit:
Nina Brock
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