Recruitment for travel nursing is incredibly niche, and today on The Staffing Show, we are joined by the founder and CEO of Wayward Medical Staffing, Jordan Tallman, to discuss his incredible healthcare staffing agency and to hear his expertise in this field. Tuning in, you’ll hear all about Jordan’s career, what led him to the staffing industry, what makes Wayward Medical Staffing so unique, and so much more! We delve into their approach to AI, technology, brand building, and content strategies before discussing what works when it comes to sourcing. Jordan also explains his strategy of giving and shares some insight into what nursing staff think of healthcare staffing agencies. Finally, Jordan answers our rapid-fire questions. To hear all this and more, be sure to press play now!
[0:01:13] David Folwell: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us for another episode of The Staffing Show. Today, I am super excited to be joined by Jordan Tallman, who is the CEO and founder of Wayward Medical. Jordan, thanks so much for joining me on the show today.
[0:01:26] Jordan Tallman: No, thanks for having me, man. If I’m out of breath, I just got done doing push-ups. I want to look good for the podcast, man.
[0:01:33] David Folwell: I love it. Just getting prepped, ready to go. Well, excited to have you on here and jump into what you’re doing in the healthcare staffing front. To kick things off, I always like to dig into a little bit of your background. Could you just tell us a little bit about who you are, how you got into staffing? And then we’ll jump into Wayward Medical and what you guys are doing.
[0:01:49] Jordan Tallman: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think this is a really common thread. Nobody grows up wanting to get into staffing. I have a funny story on how I got into it. I graduated college because my family just pushed me like, “You got to go to college, man. They’re just going to hand you a job once you get out of it.” And so, I was entitled. I felt like I should get a job. And I didn’t. I went on hundreds of interviews, man. I was riding the bus across the whole city, hour and a half drives. Guys on the bus were like, “Man, you’re dressed really sharp.” And I would just be wearing a suit for an interview all the time, right?
And man, I was just like a young, handsome, charismatic kid that I would get through the third round of interviews, and then they would just be like, “We’re going to hire the guy that has experience. Why would we hire you?” And I’m like, “Why do you keep inviting me back?” It was really frustrating. I eventually started working with staffing companies to get me these interviews and find somewhere for me to – I did this for years after college, right? It was really tough. And not jaded whatsoever about the whole situation, if you can tell.
Finally, these staffing companies, they kept asking me like, “Man, you are a charismatic young man. Do you want to be in staffing?” And I kept being like, “No, I don’t want to do sales. Sales sucks.” And eventually I ended up – I got hired at a sales place from a recruiter. I got fired within five days for telling a Donald Trump joke. Big no-no. And then the staffing company that had hired me was like, “Well, dude, I’m not on your side politically whatsoever, but do you want to come work for our company?” And I was like, “I mean, I guess. I’ll try it. I’m tired of delivering pizzas.”
I started working at staffing, and I did pretty well that year. That was really nice. And I ended up leaving them and went to a travel nurse staffing company, and did really well. COVID hit that year. I hate to say that I did really well during a terrible time. But for the market, it was a good time. The government did print a lot of money, and they were giving it to hospitals, and hospitals were giving it to agencies, agencies were giving it to travelers. So, it was a really interesting time.
I started my business during that. I think a lot of people came into the space seeing gold as kind of a gold rush. And then a lot of people have gotten out of the space because it’s really not their thing. Don’t know how to do it when it’s the regular rigmarole, I guess you would say. And I’m very proud of still being in the industry.
And I love travel nursing, man. It’s my passion, for sure. We do critical access hospitals. That’s kind of our niche. And that means for people who aren’t familiar, it’s a hospital in the middle of nowhere. Think a town of 800 people. There’s probably not even a nurse, a doctor that lives in town. We are specialized in basically importing them from other states and bringing in the healthcare.
The community, we’re a big part of the community. And it’s our niche for a few reasons, man. I feel good because I can go there, shake hands, kiss babies, or that whole deal. And man, you feel really appreciated, I guess you would say. It moves the needle for me at the end of the day. But I think why I was successful in it is because a lot of the larger companies, Aya and AMN. There’s just not enough volume for them to work in critical access.
But also on top of that, they’re really tough to place nurses over there. You can’t find housing. If a nurse is going to come work a 13-week contract, there’s no places for them to stay. And so there’s a lot more effort, elbow grease, networking that comes along. Not only once you make the placement, but after you make the placement, you have to go do networking on the housing side. That’s where we kind of have built our niche and what we’re known for, the way we’re medical staffing.
[0:05:21] David Folwell: That’s awesome. Super specialized on the critical access side of it. What are some of the challenges that come along with that?
[0:05:27] Jordan Tallman: Yeah. I mean –
[0:05:28] David Folwell: One of them?
[0:05:28] Jordan Tallman: Yeah. The housing for sure. Yeah. Yeah. It’s tough, man. There are ragtag teams of people who are in the middle of nowhere. You could have – it’s typically like a freestanding ER. And if somebody’s climbing a mountain, gets stuck, a helicopter grabs them and drops them off at this ER. And they need to have people who are ready. But they can’t just be – it’s very low volume, I guess you would say. Not many patients come in every single day. But when patients do come in, you need somebody who’s incredibly ready to knock it out. And so not every nurse is confident in their skill set enough to be the only nurse working to handle some of these traumas, I guess you would say.
[0:06:11] David Folwell: You’re in the places where it’s one nurse.
[0:06:13] Jordan Tallman: Yeah, exactly. You have to find a really special nurse who wants to be bored, is happy with just sitting there all day, but also has the skill set to do this. It’s a tough find. A lot of nurses don’t want to do it. But there’s this diehard niche of critical access nurses that absolutely love it.
[0:06:31] David Folwell: Love it. That’s awesome. And Jordan, I know one of the things that you guys have been very nimble and forward-looking in terms of how you guys are adopting tech. I know you’re trying a lot of different things, and I feel like every podcast we jump into what’s going on in AI. What are some of the tech plays you guys have made that have been successful? What are the AI elements that have been useful? Why don’t you tell us a little bit about how you’re approaching staffing from a tech perspective?
[0:06:54] Jordan Tallman: Yeah, definitely. I mean, on the AI front, I don’t know if this is a hot take or if everyone’s kind of feeling this way, but I think it’s this great, awesome toy that we’re looking for a use for right now where it should solve a specific problem and then everyone goes, “Oh my gosh, this is so valuable.”
I think I use a lot of ChatGPT, Grok, stuff like that to enhance my personal working abilities. And working on marketing and getting messaging out there. Doing some Canva stuff, it helps me a lot on just decreasing my learning curve, basically. But as far as recruiter productivity, I just haven’t seen – maybe an AI agent would be cool for that. But as far as staffing goes, man, I haven’t seen anything that’s been mind-blowing. And so I’m demoing stuff. I’m open. I want it to be super awesome. But I think a lot of companies are purchasing these demos, implementing what’s going on, and then just kind of unimpressed, and then ending with the products.
And I think we’re at the very beginning of AI, and we’ll see how it goes, and it’ll develop. Somebody will find something, I think. Right? That’s the idea. I’m just kind of waiting for the winners to win, and then I’ll go see them at the finish line and buy the product then. It’ll be more expensive, but it’ll be worth it at the time. I’m excited for that.
[0:08:13] David Folwell: Yeah, absolutely. One of the other areas, kind of adjacent to the tech side of it, but from a digital marketing perspective, I know you’re doing a lot on the personal branding and Wayward side of it from a YouTube perspective. Can you walk me through some of what your approach is to building the Wayward brand?
[0:08:30] Jordan Tallman: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I watch a lot of Alex Hormozi. Shout out to entrepreneurs out there. I know everyone’s a fan of him. And I’m just trying to – I mean, I love his style, right? He’s constantly give, give, give. And then, hopefully, people will return eventually, right?
And so what I’m trying to do is provide as much knowledge and know-how as I possibly can, pull the curtain back on the industry in how travel nursing works, so that nurses can take that information and win for themselves. Right? I think there’s a lot of complaints on Reddit, Facebook, all over online about bad recruiters, bad agencies. They don’t know what’s happening. And I think there’s just a knowledge gap there. And so I feel like if I can help close that gap, then people will appreciate that. And then they’ll know what my name is. They don’t even have to work with me originally, but maybe sometime down the next five years, when they’re traveling, they’ll come see what critical access is all about, and figure it out.
[0:09:25] David Folwell: It sounds like you’re digging into kind of explaining what critical access is. Could you tell us a little bit about how would you describe your content strategy and your go-to-market? What type of content is working for you today?
[0:09:37] Jordan Tallman: Yeah, I mean I just launched my YouTube channel, and I’ve been getting some notoriety from that. I’m really surprised. I’ve got three 300, 400 views on some of my videos, which I’m really excited about. I got a couple of thousand views on the TikTok-type content that I’ve been posting. I think the shorts just work like that. But yeah, I need to start really upping the production, I think, to see exactly which is working best.
But I’ve got a video about Vivian, which is the number one job board in our industry, and it’s why a lot of the jobs are fake. And it’s really just mostly about the tech side of how things work. And nurses are expecting it to be like open jobs, up-to-date hiring right now. And a lot of times, they just aren’t like that. Kind of pulling the curtain back on the industry.
[0:10:19] David Folwell: Tell us what was your video about on Vivian? How did you – I’d love to know –
[0:10:23] Jordan Tallman: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. The title is 90% of jobs on Vivian are fake. And functionally –
[0:10:30] David Folwell: Yeah.
[0:10:31] Jordan Tallman: Right. Yeah. Vivian messaged me pretty much immediately after I released that the second day. Yeah, I’m going to do a follow-up podcast with them, hopefully, soon. We’re trying to get it scheduled on our calendars right now. I sent them the questions, everything. Very excited. Yeah. And the claim seems like clickbait, but it’s actually true.
The reason why it’s 90% fake is because nurses don’t have their profiles built with the agencies. A nurse that already is with the agency that has that job already gets submitted immediately because they have kind of a Disney fast pass with their recruiter. So they get to skip the line. By the time that you’ve clicked apply, literally 80 people from 10 different agencies have already been applied to that job. Functionally, it’s fake. While, actually, it is like a real serious job that does have a need, you have no shot at getting it because you’re not prepared, and you kind of don’t know what’s going on.
Not only that, but there’s also a lot of like, “The job’s actually closed.” The job was real, then it closed, but it’s still posted. And in 24 hours, it’ll get taken down because that’s the nature of just the technology.
[0:11:34] David Folwell: Yeah. And is that the kind of natural turnover on the job market and jobs as well? I mean, it’s like there’s just a rapid – they pop up, they go down.
[0:11:41] Jordan Tallman: They’re really fast. Yeah, they’re really fast.
[0:11:44] David Folwell: Yeah. From a sourcing perspective, what are you seeing work?
[0:11:48] Jordan Tallman: Yeah, I think nurses are really tired of the outreach. They’re just like, “Stop calling me.” We see complaints all the time, man. Cold calls suck. Text me. And then they don’t want to text you back. And it’s like, as a salesperson, well, how the heck am I supposed to make a dollar here? What do I do? So, I’m trying this new way out of going to YouTube and trying to do inbound leads, right? I know, Dave, you’re super familiar with inbound because you’ve been to the conferences, and you’ve won some awards on that side.
[0:12:18] David Folwell: Yep. Still, it’s funny. It was, gosh, 2000– I don’t know when HubSpot came out with the whole inbound methodology. But it had to be around 2008, maybe. And I think I got the certification in 2010. Maybe ’11. But it has been still the way. So, it’s changed, but it’s still the way.
[0:12:39] Jordan Tallman: Well, what did you learn in 2008? What was the certification that you got? Because you won that award, actually. You beat out hundreds of agencies.
[0:12:47] David Folwell: Yeah. Our award was – when I was running a marketing agency, I was the channel partner of the year. Basically, we were delivering a lot of inbound marketing growth for the customers that we were working with. And we were one of the better, more involved channel partners in terms of what we were doing at that stage. We were doing content, lead gen, but a lot of how do you position a brand as an authority in the market. Kind of what you were doing on YouTube today, we were doing through blogs back in the – or maybe it was 2012, 2013, around that area.
[0:13:23] Jordan Tallman: Blogs, man. Yeah.
[0:13:24] David Folwell: Yeah. Now, everything’s short videos, right? Depending on the audience. Depending on the audience. Yeah, it’s transitioned. Jordan, I know you’re big on inbound as well. Tell me a little bit about how you’re approaching inbound. What are you doing to drive people and educate the audience?
[0:13:42] Jordan Tallman: Yeah, I think my favorite thing that I have going on right now, and don’t laugh at me, man, but I have a newsletter. I know I say that, and everyone’s like, “Yeah, probably sucks. Why would I ever subscribe to this?” But I promise that it doesn’t suck. It’s for nurses. And it’s designed actually to make them sound smarter and cooler at the nurses’ station. So, it’s kind of a taste newsletter.
I am scrolling memes. I’m deep into the nursing culture, as I’m doing recruiting. I’m on Facebook, Reddit, all these things. And so, I’m just kind of collecting, as I go throughout my day working, all these kind of hilarious bits, and a little bit of wisdom as well. And so, I try to put just five things every week that I see into a quick two-second newsletter. But we’ve had incredible results, man. Normally, on a lot of email marketing campaigns, you get a 2%, 3% open rate with cold emails. And dude, I’m getting like a 40% open rate kind of consistently.
[0:14:37] David Folwell: That’s amazing. That is incredible engagement. You’re dialed in on the content and what people are paying attention to. I mean, it’s rare to hear people talk about getting into the Reddit travel nursing forums, which I’ve spent some time in there. And if you’re listening to this and you are in travel nurse staffing and you have not been to the Reddit forums, I highly recommend you spend a few minutes there to understand what’s going on in the market and how people are viewing recruiting. It can be impactful to get kind of that level of understanding of it.
[0:15:05] Jordan Tallman: Yeah, building something that they can appreciate. If you go in there and just try to recruit, you’re going to get tore up, right? That’s not – yeah. You got to go in there and help them, and they will appreciate it. They will like you. You will earn loyalty by actually helping them, but that doesn’t mean that they’re going to come work for you. You just got to go help. And that’s the Alex Hormozi thing, right? It’s just like provide value. And then eventually people will want to. It’s like the law of reciprocation. They will try to reciprocate at some point, but they have to do it on their own terms. It’s definitely the long play. It’s not going to get you a contract tomorrow.
[0:15:40] David Folwell: Yeah. I mean, I feel like the inbound is build trust, build awareness, build authority, and do it in a way that’s honest and educational, and can be really impactful when you’re doing that. How do you kind of balance what you’re giving out there freely and still hitting recruiter goals? Do you have a balance on that front, or are you more just focused on the give?
[0:15:59] Jordan Tallman: There’s like no balance, man. It’s 100% just give, give, give. We do get some leads that come in, but I’m not tracking like, “Oh, am I getting enough in return for the stuff that I’m giving?” No, it’s just Santa Claus all day, right? It’s December. We’re just giving. And then people will love Santa Claus in return, right? And that’s the thing.
[0:16:16] David Folwell: And where is the newsletter? How do people get to it?
[0:16:19] Jordan Tallman: Yeah, the newsletter’s on waywardmedical.com. You just go check it out. There’s a link. Sign up. I’ve got it in my email signature as well. But we’ve been pretty successful. We’ve got only, I think, 2,000 subscribers right now. That’s my next thing is trying to build that into something. I don’t know how to get more subscribers, man. Maybe we could talk after the podcast. How do you get subscribers?
[0:16:39] David Folwell: Well, you keep doing what you’re doing. Get word of mouth. Make valuable things. What type of content is – any core messages, underlying messages that you’re seeing kind of at the Reddit strategic level of like, “This is what travel nurses think of healthcare staffing firms?” Or any insights that maybe are non-obvious to people in healthcare staffing?
[0:17:01] Jordan Tallman: Man, I don’t know if it’s non-obvious. I think it’s obvious to everyone. It’s just like nobody’s executing, if that makes sense. The travel nurses just don’t know what the hell’s going on. I hate to say that, man, but this is why they’re pissed off all the time because they don’t understand how the machine works, right? And the recruiters that they’re working with are not only not telling them how the machine works, they’re lying to them. They’re saying completely different things that are not even machine adjacent, if that makes sense. They’re just completely making stuff up. And it’s frustrating from a nurse perspective.
Yeah, I’m trying to accomplish X, and you’re taking me on this huge path circuitous not to X. Help me figure out how to get to X. That’s what they need. And so they need recruiters who can be transparent. A lot of people say don’t talk about the bill rates. But dude, I think everybody kind of understands business is business. If it’s a $100 bill rate, you get paid 85. I keep 15. They understand that you are providing a service, you are providing malpractice insurance, you’re finding them a job, you’re taking care of them. Well, hopefully, you’re taking care of them. I know not everybody’s taking care of them. That’s a thing, man. Yeah, I think people are just – there’s that knowledge gap out there, and that’s why the YouTube channel is attempting to address that knowledge gap.
[0:18:15] David Folwell: Yeah, it is definitely – I mean, I think we’re in the era of transparency when it comes to everything, really. I mean, it’s consumerization of business, it’s the Yelp reviews, it’s the how’s your brand rated. And I think that the healthcare staffing, specifically, with all of the changes, the ups and downs, the brands that are winning, they’re relationship-focused. They’re focused on transparency. They’re focused on – it sounds like you’re approaching that from an agency perspective as well, where you’re explaining what goes into it, how the machine works, more than trying to be gray and maximize the gross profit or gross margin on every account.
[0:18:50] Jordan Tallman: Yeah. I think people appreciate being treated like adults, like they’re intelligent. I mean, especially nurses, they are intelligent. I know recently they had this thing passed where it says they’re not professionals anymore. They don’t like that. This is not like a big – they don’t appreciate this, right? If someone is treating them with respect, then respect is given, and then respect is earned, right? And so if you treat them with respect, they’ll give right back to you.
[0:19:14] David Folwell: Yeah, that’s great. Is there any closing comments? Anything that you want to share with the audience before we jump into the speed round?
[0:19:20] Jordan Tallman: Oh, the speed round. That’s sounds so exciting. No, no. Just travel nursing, critical access. I’m just saying buzzwords now. Let’s go for it, man.
[0:19:32] David Folwell: All right. Why don’t you tell us what is a book that you’ve given most as a gift and why?
[0:19:38] Jordan Tallman: Oh, man. I’ve got three books on my bookshelf. I don’t know if anybody can see me pointing here. I’ve never done this before. There we go. Never Eat Alone which is an excellent networking book. Who Not How, which is Benjamin Hardy and Dan something, or other. Anyway, that’s my favorite book is Who Not How.
The whole concept of Who Not How is not adopting a new skill set and doing the whole learning curve. It’s just finding the guy that already mastered it and then teaming up with him. Right? The guy who wrote the book, Benjamin Hardy, is excellent at writing books. But the guy who he teamed up with, I think it’s Dan Sullivan, is not a book writer, but he has lots of incredibly valuable knowledge. And so, when they team up, you can make a million dollars because their skill set aligned nicely. So that’s why that’s one of my favorite books. I’m not that good on the sales side. I’m very good on the recruiting side, and that’s why I hired a salesperson, because I was struggling with sales. Now I don’t have to because I found my who, not my how.
[0:20:32] David Folwell: That’s a great book. And also, all of the Dan Sullivan series are all fantastic. Good recommendation. What advice do you wish someone had given you before you entered the staffing industry?
[0:20:44] Jordan Tallman: Man, you’re going to get your heart broken a lot. Yeah, just put an iron dome around your heart or something. I feel I still honestly overinvest in people and still am disappointed more often than I wish that I was. But yeah, I mean, it’s gotten easier as time goes on. The more volume that you produce, the less hard the heartbreaks are. I think the lesson of volume would have been the number one thing that people should have told me when I started out.
[0:21:14] David Folwell: Awesome. Great insights there. And Jordan, I really appreciate having you on the show today. Super excited for the conversation and what you guys are doing with Wayward, the YouTube channel, the newsletter. And one more time, so people want to get on the newsletter, waywardmedical.com.
[0:21:29] Jordan Tallman: Yeah, the newsletter is called Five for the Road. It’s designed to make nurses sound smarter and cooler at the nurses’ station. And it works, guys. It’s a newsletter that doesn’t suck. I promise.
[0:21:39] David Folwell: I love it. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for being on, Jordan.
[0:21:42] Jordan Tallman: Cheers.
