From Traditional Exec Search to Multi‑Million Retained Deals with Blaine Daws

About this episode

What if the process for hiring a data center technician isn’t so different from hiring a CEO?

In this episode, we sit down with Blaine Daws, co‑founder of WNTD, to unpack how a specialist firm launched two weeks before lockdown and still went on to build multi‑million retained partnerships at the heart of AI infrastructure. The through‑line is sharp: act like an advisor, not an order taker, and anchor everything to outcomes your clients can measure.

Blaine explains why many classical search firms miss the mark - global handoffs, legacy methods, and a reliance on brand over real market depth. He flips the script with SLAs tied to delivery (not meetings) and a discovery process that surfaces the real problem before proposing a solution. We dig into the questions that win trust fast: why the role exists, what’s failed so far, what competitors are paying, and what “good” looks like in a defined timeframe - plus the courage required to qualify out. Saying no to 70% of opportunities isn’t arrogance; it’s what protects outcomes and keeps focus on partners who value accountability.

From the first retained win to a full build‑out, Blaine shows how organizational design unlocks scale: mapping the next 12–36 months of hiring, sequencing roles across regions and levels, and aligning diversity goals with the actual talent supply. We also break down the “engine” behind consistent delivery - specialist teams, evolving tools, certifications, and a tech stack that increases precision without diluting the human conversation. In a market where one hiring mistake can cost billions, this is how retained search earns its seat.

You’ll leave with concrete takeaways on how to sell and deliver retained beyond the C‑suite, when to introduce SLAs, how to kill the “purple squirrel” with data, and how to turn a single search into a program without sliding into generic RPO.

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