From Struggling Recruiter to Top Biller to Entrepreneur: The Hard Lessons From Liam’s Journey

(upbeat music) - Liam, welcome to the podcast. - Hey, how's it going? - Glad I managed to catch you. - What's in the UK? - Yeah. - It's good to be back in the city to be honest. Like, as much as I love the vibe, being back in London is different energy here to be fair. - But kindly managed to do when we got two strikers. But we got here. - Got it. - So I was saying to you before this, when people found out that it was happening on the pod, there's a lot of people that were looking forward to hearing this story. And clearly you built a great reputation for yourself, which is absolutely awesome to see to hear. So our real goal with this conversation is we've got two chapters, really, haven't we? - Yeah. - And you're very much in this second chapter, but this first chapter was five years at a business called Opus, where you really built all your experience, your success, as a contract recruiter. So we're gonna talk about what we felt like we did really well there. And then the second part of this chapter, you're still very much in the trenches of now, is you're on this entrepreneurial journey. You've moved your life to Dubai, you're building a business there. And that's also then a result of you doing more and more business in the UAE, as well, let alone just having your business there and your life there. And I'm gonna talk about the realities of that, what's been hard, 'cause it definitely hasn't been all plain sailing this entrepreneurial journey, so we're gonna get stuck into it. So to give everyone a bit of context, for anyone that may not know who you are, your story, but yeah, as I said earlier, five years at Opus, contract recruitment through and through, so your world, your ecosystem was JavaScript inside the M25. Firstly, you openly said to me, it wasn't like the perfect start, like I think, after a year in your weekly GP, as a contract, but it was just under 2K. I did speak to Jack, your manager, to sort of also confirm this, 'cause I know you said it to me. Not that I didn't believe you. But Jack, I just spoke to Liam, he said, 'cause you also wasn't sure, was it, 'cause in terms of you being out of the business, right? - Yeah, yeah. - But you still very much, you hold the contract still, so your contract book at his peak, June 2021, was 32 and a half weekly GP, around 50 runners, across 15, 16 clients. And then you left that business in June 2023, to start this entrepreneurial journey, you saved 100K, that was your sort of next chapter fund, to move to the buyer, start your business. And then we've then got dollars, 'cause we're gonna go to UAE, you're operating in dollars. So first year, it's been yourself, but recently brought on your brother, but first year dollars wise, 180,000 in your first year, 'cause you've ended up doing a lot more perm basically, compared to contracted in the past. Second year, 308K, and that was also your first year, doing a lot more business in the UAE, as well as not being more of a focus. I know Connolly is around three, you're currently average between 60, 70K, $1,000 per month, so should finish strong this year, but around 500K is the plan. And you brought your, do you say twin brother? - No, no, not twin brother. - Oh, you should see him, he looks completely different. - That's what I thought, you're on hair, blue eyes, but brother, yeah, brother, yeah. - I know now it's around 70% of your business, your revenue's coming from the UAE market, 90% perm, and then your 30% UK business as well, to give everyone some context. Let's just get straight into this opus journey. So there's a few things that we wanna talk about. I think why don't we just first start with, like this first year, like a lot of people's charisma agreement, it wasn't just a straight line, it wasn't like start, and then you just keep working hard and it's success, success. But I even got, we'll pull it up on the screen, but I'll text a few people to be like, "I'm sitting down with Liam, "what have you got to say, what stories have you got?" But Nigel from opus sent me the first year leaderboard of contract week. - Oh, I mean, you are like down in that. You're like, you're like, you're pretty far down in that. - Yeah, yeah. - Probably the bottom. - You wasn't the bottom, but you was like down, it was around the 1800 mark I got in there. So let's just first talk about, like if me and you were to me at the end of that first year, I know you're big inch of personal development which we're gonna get into, and that was a game changer for you. But if me and you just met up towards the end of your first year, and I said, "I'll Liam, how's your crewman going?" Like, how would you've described your experience in that first year? Like, how would you be talking about what was your mindset then? - I'll just say it was so tough. I think it was incredibly tough because obviously I wasn't doing the numbers that I wanted to be doing, but I saw other people doing it. So just to kind of give you some context when I first walked into that office on our very first day, JP, obviously, we've had on the podcast previously, right? He was gonna be my line manager, the person that I reported into. And I think I would have been, what, 22, 23, he was just a year older, or two years older. And on the board, it had all your billings, your earnings, or everything like that. And I basically walked in and saw that he was earning like 150 grand a year. And for me, someone that had come from a background where it's like living in Lincolnshire, single parent family, earns like 20 grand a year sort of thing. Like, that was insane to me. So I always knew that there was the possibility of earning a lot of money. But after the first year, I felt like it just wasn't happening. And I was, I've constantly like calling back to my family, like I don't know if it's gonna work out. Like I don't know if I can survive. I'm in London, it's so expensive here and all that kind of stuff. So I was super, super stressed, but I just knew that if I worked super hard, that was what the possibility was. Just out of interest. Do you remember like how it sold to you? Like I'm assuming part of this out was, this is where you can get to it. But was you also sold how hard it would be? Probably not as hard it was as easy. It's like, even just applying for jobs right. When I was at uni, I did international business management. And I really wanted to be a business consultant. That was kind of like the end goal post uni. Now when I was going through jobs on LinkedIn, sorry, on Indeed, I saw that there was recruitment consultant under the same sort of bracket as business consultancy. But the OTE on those jobs post was like 70, 80 grand. And that was way higher than what jobs at PWC, for example, was paying in your first year. So I always thought, wow, where are people making so much money? Easy. But I never realised how hard it would be for sure. That was my experience getting into recruitment. But I think there's enough stories on him now that people can listen to to know how hard it is. But fair to say, didn't have the perfect first year. Looking back, any like real standout lessons or parts of the job that you felt like, you know what? That's what I wasn't quite getting right. Or was it just a matter of you putting the inputs in, you was doing the volume. It was just as you got more and more reps, you become better at doing the thing essentially. I don't know, is there anything on reflection that you felt like, you know, actually, it was those sorts of things that just took me a while to get the hang of? You know, you can follow the process, which is great. But I don't think I was connecting the dots in between why you was following that process. So the blueprint of whatever the KPIs and targets you had to hit. I understood that. But when you actually connect the process together, I think I lost that connection part. And look, I mean, to be fair, I think in the first year, I'm not going to say, oh, God, I was super unlucky. But there was lots of things that didn't work out in your favour that maybe some people it might or whatever, right? So I think, yeah, it's a difficult one. I think I was just a bit rubbish at connecting the dots in the first few months, like thinking about your recruitment career, I suppose. Are you pleased that you had that first year where it didn't go to plan? Or would your rather had the first year? Well, I'm sure there's people there that had that success early on. It's honestly so funny you say that because I feel like at the time I hated it. And I was in a nice way jealous of everybody else that started when we were always used to starting cohorts. And everyone was doing a lot, lot better on me and earning a lot, lot more money than me. But I'm so happy that it worked out in that way because I really learned all the hard lessons first, like the deals that they're going through, the kind of that's that drop out, and the work ethic from the start because I think if you sometimes jump into a recruitment and this is what I saw when people joined OPA or other places as well, I think that when you join, maybe you get a few deals over line very, very quickly, you don't know what it's actually taken to make that happen and it's a little bit fluky. So I knew how hard it was to make it happen. So I didn't become lazy or whatever, right? I knew how hard it was. And I think that makes a big difference. If you don't have a successful start in recruitment, but you work incredibly hard, you do everything you should do, then I think it will 100% work out in the end. Yeah, I think it just makes it harder when you're doing the same things that got you the results, but then the second six months, you're doing the exact same thing that you don't get in the results. That's just way harder to sort of swallow overcome my field like versus you're doing the same thing and you still haven't quite got the results that you after. I remember when I started, I remember a lot of people said to me, "Look, you're doing the right thing. It's going to take you 12 months." The first year in recruitment is always the hardest. So in my head, I was thinking 12 months, 12 months. As soon as that 12 month period over then, you're going to be all right. I feel like anyone that knew you, the success you'd had, if they were thinking about right, I'm going to be sitting down with you. They're going to want to know how you was able to achieve some of these things. And when we prepared for this, we tried to really distill it down into what those houses are. So I want to start with what you described as, it seemed not really one of your first principles, which was this sort of idea that basically, it comes to this relationship's part, doesn't it? I feel like. So you've got this famous piece that I think you said that you always said which was, I wanted people to feel like that they were shopping with friends not being salty. Yeah. So just tell us a bit about what that meant to you, why you did that to be important, why that's a sort of principle that I'm sure you live by now. Yeah. But why did you feel like that ended up being a rule sort of pillar to your success? Yeah, I think that was a bit of a game change because I feel like, especially when you're focusing on one niche, if you know everybody in that niche and you make them your friend, let's say for example, right, I've got a really good relationship with the client and we've got a number of candidates at interview stage. You're then as a friend giving that client advice on who do you think the best for that job? We've vetted these candidates out, we've had them through the process. And rather than me at the end of the process, trying to sell in this candidate again or whatever, it's more of a look, this is who I think is best for you. And when you go shopping with friends, right, you want to buy a new t-shirt, you say, which one do you prefer? Do you prefer the black one or the white one? You guys are going to take your friends' opinion on that quite seriously. So that's where I really started generating that sort of thing from and also from a candidate side. If I'm building deep relationship with candidates in my market, the same contract has placed them in roles again and again and again. If I had that candidate forward for a new role and maybe they had another opportunity for another recruiter whether it was a right or wrong one, they would take my guidance basically because they trusted me as a friend to be able to select the right role for them. So I think that's where that came from. And then we spoke about this, but I'm always curious, because we hear it so much. Obviously, if we just use the same analogy, like how do we make friends? Yeah. It's not like a one thing, is it? It's like a multitude of experiences, conversations, things that ultimately you do with that other person that then result in you both being able to call each other friends, I guess. But like, I ask you, we hear this word, relationships. Like, how do we build relationships? Like, I don't know how you thought about it. I'm sure you really had to think about that as you're in this UAE stage, because you're like, right, I need to build more relationships. Like, how do you think about that? Like, what would make you go? I have a really good relationship with that person versus I have a OK surface level relationship with this other person. Like, what's the difference? Yeah, I think like, look, in recruitment, you've got the surface level of, I'll help you find a candidate or, you know, I'm going to help you find a new job. And I think it always starts like that. But naturally, I feel like I'm quite a, almost a nosy person. So constantly asking it, what are you up to the weekends? What are you interested in? Everything this outside of recruitment, basically. And I think it kind of goes off the back of that. Some people want to use a recruiter as a recruiter, and that's it. And that's totally fine. But people that were open to, you know, share more information about the relationship. I would really try and capitalize on that. You know, like, remember what they're interested in. Remember when the birthdays are. Remember the kids names, things like that. Which I know is quite common practice. But as you get deeper, you start to almost act like you're texting your friend, right? So you see a meme that's funny. And it relates to something that person, probably it said, you ping on that meme, or there's an event that's happening. Oh, you know, I know you mentioned you was into this. Should we go together? So those are different things as you would, actually with your friends. And just showing genuine interest about that person's life, about their situation, everything around that. I think that really buys you a lot. It's one thing being curious, and like you said, being nosy about those things. But then it's the other part of like, then not using that. It's probably not the right word, but then remembering that. And the one for that when you next have conversations. Like, oh, you said you was going to this. How was it? Like, how did it go? And then it is just all those just little build-up of experiences and knowledge and that you know about that other person. It is so true. And I think people are shocked, because sometimes I wouldn't have actually spoke to that person or met that person even for a few months, for example. And I've mentioned something they've said ages ago. It's completely irrelevant to recruitment. And they get a little bit taken back by it and think, God, this person's really listening, really cared about it. So I think that also helps you stand out as a crueer if that person remembers those things. We've been chatting a lot just on like, what's that? But was that something you didn't I post or no? Because I do think that's like particular part of it. But I do think there's something to be said of like when you're what's happening someone versus like emailing someone. 200% what's up to another level, isn't it? And we've got email and then I try and move everything onto what's happening. It's pretty as possible now, yeah. What did that look like in I post? That might have been a little bit different. Did you like texting people? Was you mindful of that or not really? To be honest, I think more so now, I post it was more phone calls and you were speaking to people on regular basis. And you would message them now and then, but I think more so now than ever. I don't know if that's maybe just the transition in the market as well. People are constantly on WhatsApp more than they are actually trying to call people and things like that. And then I know you mentioned as well, whatever part of this career with opens like, how often was you going at meeting people? Multiple times a week for sure, yeah. Like I'm sure you have mates that you know, you're still very much doing the UK market. But again, I think in this sort of technology AI world that's almost become like competitive advantage again. Like what menu do you do now sitting in front of people? 100% like I was doing it a lot then, but even more so now, I think that people will crave that, especially with the AI things nowadays. Like people will crave that person relationship more than anything else. If you were to say I've had a good month of meetings this month, how many meetings you're actually having in like contracts? Earlier days I was a bit nervous to go out and meet people as much right and then there was COVID so it didn't really happen. But post COVID it was like, yeah, four or five meetings a week in person. Really? Yeah. Okay. Luckily back then I could spend things. So I was often going out for very nice lunches and taking clients and candidates for new experiences. I would actually genuinely pick because I've a bit of a foodie right. I like to go to these nice places. So I'd take these candidates and clients the places they've never been before, which was kind of a bit special for them. So they remembered that experience as well. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Love that. We'll get back to the episode in just a moment. But first, a quick note on one of our long time sponsors, source well. On average, recruiters lose over eight hours a week to admin. Writing notes, updating CRMs, chasing follow ups and bouncing in between tools. That's an entire work day gone. And with that comes misrevenue. That's where source well comes in. Source well is the recruitment productivity platform. Built to help recruiters move faster from first outreach to final placement without workflow friction. And right now you can try two of their most powerful tools completely free. This is the first time that source well doing this. Since I've been working with them, you've always had to partner with them over a period of time. But now you can try their products and see the power of their product entirely for free. And I know they have more and more great products that they're coming out with. So you can try their inbox agent or their note taker. The note taker is going to join your calls, transcribe the conversations, and most importantly create AI powered summaries and actions all logged automatically into your CRM. Or you could try their inbox agent. It's going to automatically draft replies in your tone of voice, automating personalized follow ups. And it gives you real time feedback on your outreach. It's basically like having an AI assistant in your inbox. Whether you use Gmail or Outlook. You can now go and start their free trials by clicking the link in the show notes or head to sourcewell.com/fraud/fraud. Let's get back to the conversation. Trust the process. Let's just talk about this. I've got this email sent to me. Is an internal email. May or may not remember it, but it was from. So I think that opens to do deal emails. Deal emails, yeah. Love that. This is an internal email from Rory, who's the group MD at the time. I'll just read it because I think then we can talk about it. But it's just in case anyone's missing still email. Liam has just hit 30k weekly GP or weekly GP. So I think that's a good thing. Just hit 30k weekly GP a week when start to start. Who's celebrating hitting 10k less than a year ago. He does one of the busiest markets in the group, which is full of competition, but he is relentless. For context, it takes him four days to chase his time sheets while running 25k. He did nine deals last month. He then did four this week. And last month he somehow found the time to be in the green in the core inputs of CC's sendouts, specs and managers added. Yeah. So being in the green is a KPIs piece, right? Please let that sink in. If you feel there are too many KPIs, the guy who will be earning over 300k this year still believes in them and still over-achieves them. And if you don't know Liam, he didn't start very well on the job and was still smashing his inputs back then and never gave up or made excuses. He knuckled down to get better. Well done Liam for raising the bar to dizzying heights and Neil and JP for working with him so closely since day one. I think that's testament, right? And when I met you straight away like, "Oh, that was me. I just, that was more addicted to being at the top of the activity and being in the green." So just talk about this. Like, because I'm sure you see now, you share a lot of content yourself. There's been so much conversation around KPIs and what we should do, shouldn't do. So just talk a bit about why this is so fundamental to your journey and the success that you had. Just to give you some context, right? So the KPIs that we had at O person, I love KPIs. I think it's the best way to measure someone how they operate and what they're previously done and also to predict what they're going to be doing in the future with the deals and process and stuff like that. But we used to do every day, you had to get three leads, right? So it's following this process that I mentioned. I wasn't very good at connecting the dots with originally. But three leads per day. That's the people that are having interviews or very, very good bits of information of people that are hiring or have got projects coming up, right? And then you would add five managers around that. So you put five new managers on the system from the leads that people are interviewing at. And then you would follow up with CCs, right? So business development calls around that. And then you would follow up with 10 CVs ends. So if you followed that process, there's no way that you can't not pull jobs. This is what they told me anyway, right? This is what they told me for the first year when I wasn't doing business. But they said, if you do this, it's going to happen eventually. I wasn't getting the deals over the line to start off with. But my wins internally was that I was beating everybody else on the KPIs. So I knew eventually it was going to happen. So if I then add an extra lead a day if I had an extra CC a day, an extra couple of CVs end a day, how quick can I progress in this business? So I became so addicted to that. And even throughout my whole career, because I even got so obsessed with it, even when trainees that came, and I was four years into the business, and you know, doing 14 deals a month and things like that. Like if there was a trainee that came in and was beating me in my own KPIs, it would make me crazy. So I would stay later. I'll stay nine, 10 o'clock in the office just so I could win that next morning, send out with everybody saying who's in the green, who's in the red. But I loved it because I knew the return investment from that. So I get the competition element. Is it anything else that made you feel good about fixating on that? Was it, it made you feel like, I know I can control this. And if I control this, you've seen enough evidence now where, if I do this, I know whether it's now or in three months time, two months time or longer, the rest will take care of itself. Well, I think that's it, right. So at the end of every week, you kind of got to reveal yourself and how you've done that week. And you might not have done a deal, but you might have done everything around it to make sure that we're dealing with it in. So I think if you look back at yourself at the end of the week, and you've managed to hit all these KPIs, you know you've done a good job. Even if recruitment has some nips and downs and all these things that can happen. So you know you've got that satisfaction yourself that you've done that. So if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out if it does, it does. But you know, if you follow that process long enough, it has to happen. I don't know if you were mindful of this as you started to see a lot more success, but it sounded like you still stayed grounded in doing those inputs that got you there. Yeah. But I think we're going to have to And then when I sat down with top performers who then either maybe had a big hit to their contract book or they had all that success and then it started to go the opposite way was that word complacency. Is that someone that creeps into your mind or is it again just like if you just do this process complacency, it won't happen? Because you could have easily got complacent and not been at the top of the leader board. I think no because I had the fear of not being number one anymore or I had the fear of that contract book job in. When it gets to 30k it's a lot of money coming through and you always want more. What's next? So if that's the way that got me there I had to keep on doing it, trying to get as far as I possibly could. So it's just that fear of like yeah, okay one that competition again and how much that drove you but then also like if you let your foot off the gas what that could then mean to people. And you can really reverse engineer it. We always just have monthly MOTs basically on your book and there is months where maybe I didn't hit it for example and you can really reverse engineer that and you can tell that the six weeks post that you didn't really have a good time. You know what I mean? So if you really just follow the process and if you reverse engineer and you haven't done well then you know why. We've spoken a lot about following the process, doing the reps, inputs. But then did you start to then think about as you got more and more experienced like the quality of those inputs? I don't know because then that I feel like sometimes that can then result in people being like on the come up I had to do all these reps but now I can send five really good sendouts and they're even better than the 10 I used to send. I don't know. Did you think about that or was you like did you feel like you could just combine the both? Yeah, no, 100%. I think naturally as you do the more up to you get better. So the quality gets better. The kind that you find better and things like that. So just as a natural sort of incline it does get better itself. Should we talk about mindset then? So when did you you said here that when you really started to get the taste of the success and reaping the rewards of your hard work, you said like you've fully got obsessed with work and built your life around recruitment. Like a sports person. What does that tell? What does that look like? What did you mean by that? It probably sounds a bit sad but I think once I'd got that taste for success and you know started to earn a lot of money and was hitting big numbers. I got fully absorbed into it and I know that my managers and things believed in me right the first year and maybe I didn't believe in myself so much but once you start seeing the belief yourself and you start seeing the results from it, like I was doubling down on everything I possibly could. So I literally reverse engineered my life around what could I possibly do to make recruitment better. So I think this is when I fell into personal development and when I fell into looking at other people in different industries, you mentioned real estate before but real estate has always been a pretty big one for me. So I found like who the best real estate agents are in sales in the US and things like that and basically read and understood how did they level up, you know, how did they make their job better. So not just following a recruitment process, it was how can you maximise that time in work. And then I ended up doing things like outsourcing all my meals when the office, like we get delivered to me every day so I didn't have to cook any food because I could spend that extra 45 minutes on each meal on recruitment. So I was doing more recruitment right because I loved it so much and it was like how do I recover outside of work? Do I do meditation before inside of work? So you know when I get to work I'm in a better head space. It was everything I could possibly do outside of work to make sure that I could perform best in it. I'm just curious like what are your mates like? Like the day, I don't know. I do feel like there's something to be said, like when you go on that journey, doesn't mean you're mates from that journey as well. Yeah, it's true. And honestly, like so for example, when I first moved to London I didn't really have any friends. And my friends were the guys in the office and we had an amazing group of people in there that was at a similar sort of mindset. So everyone was kind of egging each other on. Everyone was pushing each other to do more. I think external friends, they kind of just left me to it because they knew I was so embedded into every time I would catch up with them. All I wanted to speak about was recruitment. So they probably got a bit sick of me to be honest. Yeah, I don't know. I think I got so embedded into it, let me do that. In that part of the journey, anything that you feel like I spent X and it gave me the best return on what you're trying to get, which was like time-focused. Just like you said, things being optimised around your career was you mentioned around the meals. I can see that probably being out there, but is there anything else that you feel like you got a really good return on? It's a weird one. It's because it's actually a save that I did do. So I think rather than investing into it, and I think I noticed that if I wasn't going out with the usual crowd that maybe you're up and down in recruitment and we were going for beers for four nights a week, I noticed if I didn't do that, my consistency went through the roof, right? Because I was never coming into the office and looking at the screen and thinking, 'Oh, I don't want to do this today, you know?' So it wasn't necessarily a return investment that I got off the back of it, but doing things like that really helped me progress a lot more as well. And do you think you have to just cure us on this? Because I really got obsessed with this stuff when I, because I didn't know what I wanted to do, fell into like sales and then I was just like, I wanted to get my hands on anything that I felt like would help me improve, help me succeed in my career. When I was in that mindset, I sort of found it hard to understand why others wouldn't. Yeah, so true. Like, did you feel like people have to arrive there themselves? I don't know, because I'm sure you've got friends where you like, they've got potential, they maybe just don't, I don't know. Like, do you feel like you have to arrive at that point to go? I really want to just try and invest in myself and be the best version of myself. I think that's what I struggled with a little bit. And again, luckily there was other people in the business that were very much on that type of mindset, but it's difficult because when I got so invested into all that sort of stuff, I couldn't imagine why somebody wouldn't want to pick a book or wouldn't want to do that to make themselves better. But some people just don't, maybe that's like, they'll never change and that's what they'll continuously do. But you kind of get a bit of short fuse with your friends that maybe you previously had that aren't doing that. And that's down to me for just not being so understanding of it, but yeah, completely agree. So should we talk about as much as a pro journey then? Is there any science behind 100K feels like a good number to start this? And let's just start there. Like, was there a reason behind that? You just felt like that would give you a really good buffer. There wasn't necessarily like a point where I was like, look, I'll get 100K and then I'll move. It just kind of all happened at once where it seemed to be a pretty round figure. I had at the time. I was in limbo of, you know, what's next? And then I obviously been to Dubai on holiday. And I love London. I never thought that I would actually leave London. I kind of made me in my career the first few years and had this best time there, but I went to Dubai on holiday, realised it's quite a similar to Dubai. There's lots of stuff going on. And you also have to pay no tax. So that was kind of my thing, right? I had 100 grand and was like, let's give it a shot. I think what you'll see online is always slighting if you're right. You'll only see the good parts versus like the actual trade-offs. And there's always trade-offs. But was there a moment that you was on that holiday where you're like, right, this is where I want to be? Or was it actually just more? Because I know when we spoke right, when you ended up getting the success that you've had, Lorie said earlier in that email, earning over 300K, you're going to be paying a good amount of tax. Yeah, it's on that. So that's the main driver for you, do you feel like? The time that I went to Dubai the first time around, I think I literally just hit under 500 grand that year and I got 200, 250 actually in the bank. And I was like, obviously that's amazing money. But I remember thinking if anybody hits 100 grand a year, like you can do anything you want in the world. And the reality is you actually probably can. And I think when I got to that stage, I was like, now you can really do anything you want in the world. And the constraints are pretty big when that happens. But there was a moment when I was there and I just, it sounds so cliché. I was literally at this place called Aura Sky Pool and it's basically a pool that's on like the 70th floor or something. You get to see the whole of Dubai at the bottom. And I was sat there and I was like, okay, I have to do this. Whatever I do now from on this point, I have to move to Dubai and I have to make it work. I remember it's so clearly that sort of sinking in. So let's talk about it then. So obviously we had that 100k saved that was very much like moved to Dubai business money. But typically in Dubai, you have to pay for rent upfront. So obviously, you're going from a certain lifestyle, you're like, right, I'm going to live in the Marina. I've worked hard. That's the lifestyle. So what, 45, 50k, that was gone. Yeah. Not gone, but like, you have to pay it upfront. That's the thing. I was getting so excited at this point and obviously I've been living this pretty nice life in London and I heard the real estate market moves incredibly quick there, which it does. Like rentals can go off the market straight away. And I never even viewed this apartment because when I was looking, it was like, look, don't look until you're right, but I didn't really want that. And I'd seen that there's this place up for rent and it had a lovely view over the maroon and all this kind of stuff. And the woman was on the phone to me. The broker in said, look, like even though you're moving in one week's time, you need to secure this deal today. But she said you have to pay in one check. So that was like a big whack upfront. But in my mind, and you walk them on to this because I think it's a lot of like maybe delusion and naivety from me, I didn't really see that as an issue or even obviously it's a lot of money, but I thought, look, I can go and build a 10 grand a week contract book in six months, no problem, like 10 grand a week, no tax. That's very, very, very affordable. So it didn't really seem like a big thing to do at the time. We'll get back to the episode in just a second, but today I'm excited to talk to you about one of our partners, Rayz, who are hands down the best way to fund and manage your contract book. I've had countless people on the podcast over the years singing their praises. Ray supported hundreds of UK and US agencies, large and small in managing their runners. From funding placements, managing time sheets and expenses, ensuring your invoices, collecting payments from your clients and getting contractors paid on time every time. 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They accelerate the growth for the business as we have done and they continue to do across the US and Europe. As we've grown, you know, I'm sure as a business, we've moved on to their new direct model, meaning we're able to tap into incredibly cheap lending and provide working capital to help us to continue to expand. They've been a great partner to us and I can't recommend them highly enough and long made that partnership continue. As you can see, raise is a trusted invoice finance provider powering some of the fastest grown recruitment agencies in the market. You can book a demo with raise and mention the recruitment mentors podcast to enjoy 50% off your first month. You can click the link in the show notes or you can go directly to www.racetech.io/rmp. That's www.racetech.io/rmp to get access to that offer and check out race. Let's get back to the show. And then by this point, just getting to the particulars because I think people will be interested, what had you got sorted in terms of like you being able to work their business? Let's just talk about that. We've spoken about how you've approached it financially to finance a runway that you wanted to give yourself. But what did you have to, because I'm sure you had to learn this, what did you have to get sorted in terms of being able to actually work there, have a business there? Yeah, so it was a massive learning curve and loads of things that I never had done before. I never set up a business before, then all of a sudden I've had to set up a UK LTD and then I've had to set up a business in Dubai. And the way that it works is that my visas attached to the business in Dubai, sorry, so I got a free zone license and how you do that is you have to go over, you have to get your blood test medicals and all that sort of stuff. So that's how you set it up. And again, like, so that costs a lot to jump into that. Yeah, so I think it costs about $8,000 for me to sell my business in Dubai, a class attached to my visa which renews every two years. And then in the UK, obviously like normal standard costs of setting up. But even little things that I was unaware of for example was obviously I had always done contract recruitment for us. That's always what I plan to do. And there's no open finance in Dubai. So you can never get credit lines. So I had to always have the UK business setup as well because if I wanted to use one of the credit businesses, how you pay your contractors, I couldn't do that from Dubai. So there's different things that I had to learn at the time as well. Okay. Did you have a business plan? Not really. I'll be honest, like I wasn't prepped as half as much as I should have been looking back. So if I mean you sat down and you know, I was meeting you up for a coffee before you went to Dubai, what would have been an Asadal, what was the plan with the business? So it was very much, you had, you've got this unwavering stack of evidence of being a successful contract recruiter. It was, you have your covenants, there'll be clients that you can go to after that. But you back yourself, I'm going to go to Dubai and build a contract but then you came market, but I'm going to be basing Dubai. Was that a lot of overarching goal? 100%. Yeah. And I was like, I'd fully believed not doing my selling it to everybody else. All my family, I was like, look, this is amazing. I can do this. And it would happen very, very quickly. That's what obviously I assumed to start off with. But I basically handed in my notice and then moved to Dubai five days later. And I just thought I'd be able to crack on straight away. Obviously with a sickling's coming up here in the middle, but I thought it'd be easy to spin up business quite easily. So when did the feelings of like, oh shit, okay, this might be harder than I thought. When did that start to creep in then? I think you would have got, why wouldn't you have gone there with like just un, like confidence, just got this entire track record, like you're going to back yourself? 100%. And I guess like to paint the picture, that's exactly what I thought. So moved over there. And I thought, look, I've got six months before I can tap into my old network. You know, I've got big accounts or I've got 10, 15, 20 contractors in. That's banked. Like six months time I'm going to be flying. It's okay. But for the first six months, I'm going to have to tap into new markets, see what I can grab and all that sort of stuff. But I thought if it doesn't work out amazingly, it's okay. It's always going to be okay after six months. Ended up pulling a few jobs, which will completely out my usual patch, right? So going against everything about being especially senior niche, I've seen a couple of direct adverts for mobile engineers, which are perm, managed to get them on the phone like third day in the UK, UK remotely from the buy. And it was two permanent jobs, managed to get them exclusively and filled them. So in three weeks, I put, you know, 25, 30K on the board. And I was like, wow, like permanent recruitment is easy. What's going on? Like, why is everyone complaining about it? And then again, massive slap in the face. And I think coming back to the question you asked me earlier, right? Do you think it's sometimes better to not have a good start? 100%. Because I thought after that, this is going to be so easy. Like, I'll coast through it. Do my usual inputs, but everything I've six months to be fine. And it didn't work out like that. I think after the first month, I've really, really struggled. I didn't have any of my previous network, which that's all I'd ever done before. Any of my previous clients didn't really know how to do permanent recruitment and didn't really know contractors and any other market that wasn't JavaScript. So I've really, really struggled for the first six months on new business and mapping out that space. And what is it that you struggled with? Was it just this sort of feeling of, like, I'm doing what I've always done? Yeah. And I'm not getting the results. You know what? I think I'd almost gone against what I'd done previously, which is so silly to do that. Because I had so much structure. And we said before, I was so obsessed in the KPIs, but I wasn't doing that. I'd set up the business. And I'd been, you know, shown all these amazing AI tools and all these different things, which you think, God, these are going to be the silver bullet for me. This is going to make my life so much easier. So I got really hooked on learning about all these platforms and things like that. And I kind of thought that would replace a lot of the hard work that I put in previously, which is completely not the truth. And I wasn't putting the basics in that I originally did to make myself successful in the first place. So what did you end up pulling trigger, not particular tools, I'm not bothered about that, but was you trying to automate things and stream on things and exactly that, trying to automate things, I was trying to use lots of different email, grabbers, email finders where it would send out, you know, email campaigns and all that sort of stuff. What led you to that though? Like, because I told you that I speak to a lot of solar founders, small business owners and I'm a small business owner myself. Yeah. It can grab you, can't it? It's just the idea of like, oh my God, like if I pay this and it solves this problem, that sounds really good. What is it like, grab you? Because like, you've got this whole track record of like, not doing that. I think when I was starting up by myself and I'd reached out to a few different people and said, you know, what CRM using, because we used even just to start off with CRM, we used to think what IDB at OPAS, which is super old school and very input heavy, you did everything yourself, no automation at all, which actually was great. And I think I've reached out to other business owners, I know what techs are using, what CRM's best, you know, I want to try something new. So I started researching all these different tools and obviously they also, you know, the dream, they can do X, Y and Z and it makes it sound like you can now do a recruitment and a real hands-off approach, you'll just, you know, book the client meetings in, pitch the client and send the candidate, it's going to be okay, sort of thing. So yeah, I think I was like super intrigued because it was a complete new world to me. So yeah, that was cool. And it also means that you're then not doing the job. Yeah, exactly. It's so silly, but I think, you know, you think to yourself, when you get hooked on these new business books and stuff, right? It says, you know, as a business owner, you need to be working on the business, working in the business, take a seat back and it was only me in the business. So there's no one to look after, but I think that was my headset, head, head, head space, sorry. Like you have your brother now, like what does he look like now in terms of like what tools that you have? Because I've met quite a lot of people recently where they end up going on that rabbit hole. Again, there's loads of reasons, I'd be loads of examples when that did really work for people and that's the examples when it doesn't, but a lot of the people I've spoken to, they just went too far down that rabbit hole, didn't end up quite getting the results that they're after. They'll be loads of different reasons for that, but then they've just ended up really scaling it back where they've then really ended up getting a lot more wins and actually enjoyed it more. It's probably back to the stuff that we were talking about earlier. So what does that look like today for you? So all I will actually use now is Bullhorn CRM, which is okay and then source well. The liturant. That's it. Yeah. Just keep it super simple. Yeah. Let's talk a bit more about this first year then. Like, did you feel like you was trying to bar the automation technology stuff? Is there anything else that you feel like you was doing on reflection really differently? Or not? I think again, not having a real niche. I think that started off with the six month period where I couldn't speak to my niche that I previously had. So I was trying different areas, picking up rod them jobs here and there. So I was not specialising in anything, which definitely affected the process. And then post that six month period, it didn't really come back. The market of the contractors that I thought I would have and these clients that I previously had, it never really reappeared because six months have come round. I'm calling up all the other contractors and they're like, we've been at our work for months. The clients I spoke to were saying, oh no, we've had to let everybody go and it's a really, really tough time for us. So in that six month window, the contract market. 2020 free. Yeah, certainly. I'm a big believer you create your own market, but I think that a lot of people had really struggled if they're looking at UK contract market. It was on its arse. So they're not panicked even more really. And then it got to the end of the first year. And that's when I was like, wow, I'm nowhere near where I need to be. Everything that I'd learned previously, or the kind that it said I'd previously really struggling as well. What do I do now sort of thing? So that's when you really had to reflect. So how did you feel about that first year? Obviously, it wasn't what you thought it would be, what you wanted it to be. But that 180, that mainly came from Purndale's. Or yeah, pretty much all Purnm. I think I had two or three contract runners and that was pretty much about it. Just on that, is there anything that you really, I know you said at the start like you had that sort of early win? Anything because you would have spent more time doing it now and I know you do more of it now, but anything in that first period going from your background that you were surprised by in terms of that was more harder or maybe even easier on the perm side. Yeah, I think perm stuff, it's not too far off when you get used to it, right? It's not too dissimilar. But I think one thing that I also did really struggle with, it's definitely worth mentioning is that I'd gone from working in this big business and with amazing people around me and major management team and stuff like that. And you kind of get get used to having that soundboard around you, having that team of support around you. And I'd literally just gone to Dubai, had no friends, no family, no connections, zero, no one else around me. And I really actually struggled with a lack of people supporting me around me, or even given you a, you know, you've had a bad day, don't worry about it, it's fine. Like everything was going from my head like all the time, that was stripping through, and stuff like that. So I really struggled with that. I didn't really know how to do contracts properly. I didn't know how to do anything else but recruitment because again, back at Opus, they had the team of doing all the back office stuff. So I'd really got into a rabbit hole of the confidence is, is getting worse. I'm not you're doing my old successful habits. And I really struggled to not have that team around me. Yeah, because that, that was going to be the other part that wanted to make sure that we spoke about, which was like you started your business there, but you also moved your life there. Yeah. So just talk to us about that for a second, because I think this is us talking about the trade-offs here. Like, okay, we can go on LinkedIn and we can see the exciting part and where you probably felt good about yourself was those early days of like guys I moved to Dubai, starting a business journey. And that's all exciting. I'm sure you've got loads of kudos, all of that. But then it might be two weeks, it might be four weeks, but that just all dies out. Yeah. It's just you in the apartment, in the marine, they've been like, right, I've got her, make some money, I've got her back myself. So just talk to a bit more about that. So what is it that you struggled with? Was it, obviously again, I think of my own journey when I started on my own. It really is all you think about. So I can imagine that I still struggle with it now. Like if I ever have days off, you feel like you've got time to make up. Yeah. So see, we can talk about the personal side, but just tell us a bit more about that. Was it that you struggled with? Was it that, if you wasn't spending time working, especially because you wasn't seeing the success, you felt bad about it, did you find it hard to put yourself out there socialised when you feel like your business wasn't doing as well as you thought? Yeah. I think that's exactly it, right? It's a vicious cycle because I didn't want to go out and meet new friends because the business wasn't where I was at, where I wanted it to be. So I thought, I have to work harder, I have to work harder. But then when it's not really working out to the extent that you want it to be, even when you do take time off, you feel super paranoid about it, or when you try to switch off all that's going through your brain, it's work, work, work and things like that. And I think, again, I had no one to bounce these ideas off too. So can you not speak to anyone? Does that know, maybe, I didn't feel open to be honest with? I spoke to my girlfriend at the time and said, look, this is going not as well as I wanted, but her knowledge and recruitment is probably not so. So now you just got to sort out the counteroffers, man. Do you know what I mean? And obviously, I feel like I couldn't really reach out to my old staff and things like that because essentially, even though they're friends at that point, it's not, it's competition to a certain extent, right? So I wasn't sure what type of that we would be like. But yeah, it was difficult. Just hard, yeah. I think moving away for the first time is hard for anybody. And then when you're starting to set up a business for the first time in a brand new area, I think that makes it even harder. Just keeping it really brittle and you can talk about your whole time there, you're still living there now. What on the life, your life being there? What would you say of the main trade-offs a bit in Dubai would you say? Obviously talking about how hard it's been and I'm sure things have evolved. I know you've made more friends and built your sort of network of people. But from your experience so far, what would you say of the main trade-offs in terms of living there from your experience? Trade-offs, again, as you're not close to your friends or family on the weekends, what do you do apart from work if you've not got anyone to go hang around with basically, especially in the early days? Apart from that, there's not that many aspects. Really? It's a pretty good place to be. Okay, well, I've been having this conversation. So what about people, a lot of people said to me, obviously, weathers great. But there's also real periods of the year where it's like unbearable. Yeah, it's crazy heart. So the past few months, it's very, very heart like 40s, 50s every single day. I like the heat though. So I feel like I cope with it quite well. Okay. A lot of people leave the buying things like that. But honestly, I feel like if I look back to when I was going to the tube in London in the morning and I'd turn up with wet socks because I've stepped in a puddle like I can trade that off of 405 degrees. Yeah, that's fair. A real quick one from me and we'll get straight back into the conversation. Some of you may or may not be aware that I am also the founder of a business called Hector. Hector is an all-in-one training platform for recruitment founders to maximise team performance. The reason why I'm sharing this with you is because if you are someone that is enjoying this podcast week after week, you might even share this podcast with your colleagues, then I'd love to connect with you. Our training platform is powered by top performers delivering practical training for today's market. We believe training a lot of the time in the recruitment industry is dated, is stale, is delivered by people that did it 5, 10, 15 years ago. And we are completely going against that. So a lot of the people that you're able to learn on this podcast, you're able to learn even more from at Hector. So if you'd love to find out more about how we could potentially help you get more out of your people, ramp up their performance more quickly, then please connect with me on LinkedIn or click the link in the show notes where you'll be able to book a call with us. Let's get straight back into the episode. The only other things that have been consistent, I would say, is you always hear about how safe it is in these top six areas. But if we're thinking about trade-offs and keeping it real, like you said earlier then, do you feel like if you were to just, I haven't actually been there, like I need to go. So I'm just talking from what people shared with me. But do you feel like as you're there, you can get caught up in, like there's always other people doing better than you? Yeah, 100%. You can get sort of sucked into that. Yeah, of course. I feel like the buy is made from, you know, flashy things and quick wins and everyone seems like they're doing extremely well on face value. So you always get caught up in that. And I think that's also why some people don't succeed because they get caught up in that. Maybe they earn a bit of money, then they spend on nice things. And I think that is very much the world of the buy. And then what, you know, you're in London now. And again, I haven't been this from conversations. But I think maybe also things that you can take for granted here is like the history and like you can feel that. I don't know. You can tell me. Like is that something that, again, we're talking about trade-offs, just things that, like do you feel like that? Sometimes you can sense that. That it's like this is all like. Yeah. It's all a soul that I don't know. That's what sometimes people would say to me. You are right. And I feel like it is a complete bubble. So I feel like every soft you do need to leave to kind of get back to reality a little bit. And back to the history stuff completely. Like everything there is very flashy, new glass buildings and all that sort of stuff. We're here. You know, we're walking around and there's loads more. I want to say there's no culture because everybody there is from different places. So you get to see other people's cultures and live that with them. But I know what you mean. It is like that a little bit. And then you never think that Putin's a better one. I asked someone this recently. It was like something he was like driving there. He was like, no, you just can't drive there. It's horrible. Because I was on high awesome. I was like, because he moved his family there. I was like, what's the main reasons why and what would you say the trade-offs? Because I'm curious. That's what I would understand. The driving is weird one. So for my experience, right? So I actually just before I got to uni, I passed my driving test. And I never got a car at university. I moved straight to London and never had a car here. So I'd gone through this eight, ten year period of actually never owning a car or driving a car the day after I passed my test. So when I got to the bar, then I got a car. It was crazy. The lanes on the motorways are six, five or six lanes either side. But you've got people. The majority of the cars on there are very, very heavily populated with taxi drivers. So you've got taxi drivers, sorry, from Pakistan, from India, places like that. And maybe not even been on roads with the lines on them. So everybody is just like this. That's just how you see accidents all the time. Yeah, really. What was mindset going into year two? You felt like clearly things got a bit more better. Yeah. So I think one of the other lessons we've spoken about, no silver bullet and tech automation, basics when, spoke about this is the thing, right, when you start this on Spray or Journey and it's your business, like if you're not up there mentally, then that impacts the business, right? Yeah. That's one of the hardest things, but it's also the coolest thing because you know you can turn things around and you're in control of that. Yeah. But that isolation, the mindset piece, that was harder than you expected. And then needing to stick to an issue instead of maybe just saying yes more than maybe you should and staying focused is a way lost a bit. So like going into year two, what was the main focus? I know then we want to talk about this UAE market piece because that's seen quite important on year two. But what was the mindset going into year two? What were the sort of important changes that you wanted to make? Yeah, so I obviously got to the end of year one and thought this isn't really going the way that I wanted it to be. And I always compare myself to previous numbers, right? I feel like it's, you know, at the successful point again, so you're hitting your previous numbers. I didn't see that happening for me working the UK from there. So obviously I'm sat in the buy that seems to be the most active place in the world right now. And I'd followed a different recruitment agencies in the region and they was posting lists of jobs like super high volume. And I thought I need to get my hands on this, but I'd always been a bit worried about it because you hear the scarce stories of people don't pay their invoices on time in the buy, you know. The market is very weird. It's like the world west and it very much is to a certain extent. But I come to a point where I had to pivot if I wanted to try and, you know, make this business successful. I needed to pivot. So end of the first year I reached out to a guy called Justin McGuire who really like helped me reshape my business and mindset on learning how to do the market in the buy, which is very different to the UK. So that helped me massively. Well, some of the things that you would just die into are awesome. We've had Justin on because he's done that market for so long. Yeah, you know, I see a lot of business there. Exactly right. I've seen him on LinkedIn as like the guy that's been in the buy longest in terms of the recruitment. So were the dying questions that you just really wanted to ask him that might be interesting for you to share? I think I just wanted to know, is it like the UK, you know, am I going to get arrested if I don't have a contract correctly? And I'm going to get put in the buy jail because you hear these horror stories, it's super strict, right? When it's actually way further away from the truth than that. And I just wanted someone to tell me and give me the confidence that if you've done that in the UK, 100% you can do that in the UAE. It's not that different. It's different, but it's not recruitment recruitment at the end of the day. So I wanted to just ask him, how do I set up? How do I track clients here? You know, how do I break into the market as quickly as possible? because at this point it was starting from ground zero again. How can I excel as fast as I can in that market? - And did you have any financial pressures or was you sweet? - Yeah, 100%. So I think it actually got to the point right at the end of the first year. - 'Cause I'm assuming you didn't renew your marina but part of the marina maybe? - Well, I did to be fair, it was all right. But that was part of the stress. - That was like, shit, I've got this rent coming up. Luckily, they managed to let me pay it in three installments if I don't know. - Oh no, yeah. Didn't have to close the deal this time. But I've got to the point where it was looking back at like the big transition. I think I'd been doing the market for six months of my covenant period in the UK then a full year at having a stab at it. So it was like one year, six months into the business, maybe a little bit less. And it came to Christmas time basically. And this is probably one of the toughest times because I was actually out due a lot of money from UK invoices like 60 grand. And that was at the time, there's a lot of money 'cause I was like moving into the new year, I wanna start a new market. You know, I wanna invest into different things. I wanna hire people. I wanna push this business on. But I was also owed a lot of money at the same time. So I was thinking God, like, what am I gonna do here? And I was maybe going back to the UK and I also felt a bit embarrassed to go back to the UK 'cause I'm painting this amazing picture of, I'm gonna do X, Y and Z in the bind. It's not really happened just yet. So yeah, I was a bit frustrated and obviously a bit stressed at that time. - It is something that some people have looked like getting paid. - Yeah. - It's not something you think about when you're employing about OPs as a engagement voices page. You just put the deal up. - 100%. And I think I'd got so used to that because as long as that time sheet was approved at OPs, you got paid your commission, whether that client had paid or not. So I never understood like the background of the business so much and even in contract recruitment, you know what you're getting every single month, right? Because you've got that reoccurring revenue and I was living in the world of Perm where even if you do deal as you might not got paid them for three months, if they don't pay for another three months then holy shit, that's a long time. - Literally. So we made this pivot and I think that's really good lesson for people because sometimes people are reluctant to do that or you can just sort of just hope things to turn around because it's always worked. But I think the more people that I sit down with that have been successful, oftentimes there are these pivots. Sometimes they're big, sometimes they're smaller but it is something you have to be mindful of. So you made this pivot and then really focused on not just doing business in the UK but really made more of this transition to do more in the UAE. So given some things then that you've had to learn the hardware like what was like the plan to start getting clients, starting and getting in with businesses, I think I got written down here so you decided to niche down by industry. Right, so you start to focus on more fintech and AI. Makes sense with some of those loads of investments going on there. And then again, anyone that I've interviewed that has done this market, same in Australia as well, we start hearing this word even more like relationship driven face to face it's who you know. So just talked to a bit about what was the initial game plan then to start getting more clients based in the UAE that you could actually go and see what was the initial game plan. Yeah, so I think game plan was look like how can I get myself in front of the best clients in the market and the fintech space and the best candidates in the market in that space. And I guess yeah, just to give you some context on the market in Dubai, it's not as big as the UK. No where near as big as the UK. So say for example in the UK I specialize in JavaScript. In my opinion, if you just focused in JavaScript in the UAE you wouldn't be able to hit numbers anywhere near it because there's just not that many people and the salary is a little bit lower. So you'd have to do crazy volume. So the reason why we picked the fintech and AI niche was because that's the most invested sectors in Dubai and they're really sort of pushing that as an economy. So if we niche down in sector, you can kind of win these clients in the fintech space and then build everything from the top to bottom rather than focusing that one niche in tech. Yeah, so you made that your focus. So then how do we start getting in front of these people? John Nutella's about this story that you tell me about showing up to an office of dates. Yeah, so about this story. That was my, there's a client that I could get in leads for basically. So I was like five days into my full transition into the market. So I spoke to a few different businesses and things like that and I'd sand out that this one client was a consultancy that put people into digital transformation projects in the government and thinking like, a government's where all the money is here. Like these are big projects, big, big head count volume. So I spoke to some of the lead engineers on this project and they basically said, look, we're hiring so much people but we can't hire quick enough. Everybody else is leaving because they've got such a high work in demand so they couldn't keep hiring people quick enough. And a lot of things are run through HR there. So I called the head of people and he kind of kept putting the phone down on me and I was trying to pitch and tell him that we could help with that service. And I figured out, I knew there's a great client to have because of these projects they work on. So I figured out where his office was. And it's like a thing in Dubai, where if you buy someone these fancy stuff to me, do you look at these things? Like it's like a gift you would give somebody. So I bought a packet of those and I bought him some correct chai which is basically Indian tea, right? He's an Indian guy. And then I bought him a book, "Keep person of influence." It's one of my favorite books, right? And I basically wrote this handwritten letter and said, look, I've seen you, how do people at this business, you've been the region at all the top businesses for 15 years. I really see you as a keep person of influence in this space blah, blah, blah. So I turned up his office and said, look, I've got a meeting with his name's Mucosa. I said, look, I've got a meeting with this guy. And she looked at his calendar and said, look, you're not got a meeting book like you've not got this scheduled. And I said, oh, no, he said, come down, don't worry about it. It's fine sort of thing. And she said, OK, let me speak to him, take a seat. So I went inside in the reception room for 20, 30 minutes. And then the lady came back on my section and said, look, you're not meant to be here. You're not arranged to see him. So you're going to have to leave. And then I left this packet of gifts and letters and things all that and said, look, OK, fair enough. But could you please give this gift to him? So yeah, I left the office, left it two or three days later, didn't hear anything. Like I text him so I was going to have you get-- I was nervous. I would have never by the way done this in London. I think because I didn't know anybody, I had nothing to lose. I didn't know anybody in the office, whatever happens happens. And then yeah, got a call three days later with 15 jobs. And I was like, oh my god, this isn't how that is. Oh, what was that call guy? How did it go? It was just really friendly, straight away. Super friendly, like, laughed at me and was like, thank you so much. Like, this is really-- because I'd left on that note saying, look, I've obviously gone above and beyond here to try and get you as a client, best believe that I will go above and beyond to find you the right candidates for your business. So he called me off the back of that and said, let's give it a go. I'm going to send that bin a clamp for you. Yeah. That's a mixed story of that. Talked to us a bit about, because you said something to me which stuck out to me was you said your experience, and you'll probably get better at this. And I've heard this before where a lot of people were like timewasters. Yeah. Tell us a bit about this. I don't know what that looks like or what you remember that, but tell us a bit about that from your experience. I think the buyers, like I said before, it's a bit of a word where there's people from everywhere. People are trying to set up businesses and a lot of businesses that look on face value that they've got. They've got hundreds of people. They probably only have three or four. It's just kind of like the phase file that you see online. So you can constantly speak to a client and they might say, yes, we've got these huge projects going on. And I've been to Saudi and done the same. And they make you sound super excited. Like we've got these 50, 60 highs we need to do next year. Is it in person? Yeah. They're saying it directly to you. And I fully believe it. But it just, I don't know, often it, often. And not it kind of willed down to nothing. A lot of people will interview candidates, window shoppers, they'll sign your terms and everything like that. You'll do everything. And then they'll just, that's it. Don't hear back from them. Really? It's crazy. It's so weird. I don't understand why you would do that, to be honest. But it happens a lot like across the industry there. So how have we got better at preventing that? Or I don't know. Is it just something that you become better at picking up on? Or do you sort of try and give them some things that they have to do to test the commitment? Naturally, I've got better at testing the commitment. You can kind of see the signs a little bit more now. But also just be a bit more aware of it. But to be honest, I think that's part and parcel of the game there. So we've had to operate the slightly different model of how we work. And just to give you an example, I target myself to pull 20 jobs a month, minimum. Knowing that full well only maybe six will get filled. So it's a big volume game. And you've just got to bank on 60% of it, not actually going in. So I think you've just part and parcel of it. And that's how you've got to attack it. I've all worked with you. Dean is a pull job. Just that, because you just said that. Yeah, pull jobs like fully qualified interview slots, salary, budget, whatever it is, and then availability. So exactly as you would in the UK and follow the same process, but often not it just to work out. Those 14 jobs, what are you putting that money down to? I guess to paint the picture a little bit more. When you normally work with a client, it's very rarely just give you one job. A lot of companies are scaling quite aggressively, or they want to add head count a lot. So normally when you break into a client, they'll give you five jobs off the bat. So maybe you'll feel want to do it there, and they say, oh, you know, forget about the others. But they've had these big audacious hiring plans. So you might fill a few of them, but the rest of them kind of just disappear. When it comes to reality of actually doing it. So that's why it is. It's not like, if I was working with 20 different clients, and only 14 of them, sorry, only six of them went in, that seems like a massive time waste. But you are still getting the rubs over the line and placement's over the line, but just not to the volume that they've told you. It's going to happen. Right, I've got you. If we got back to basics, or if you had to tweet those, like again, you've got to sometimes really understand how your market works. So we're doing targeted specs, is that working? How, what do the sort of basics look like for you in this market now? No, you're still figuring it out. But what do you feel like is really helping you today? I would say the relationships there is super important. I think there's a lot of noise in the buy. And I think that you've got to really go and meet these people. So my KPIs are very driven around person interaction. Or, for example, I'll tell you what they are. It's two podcasts a month with clients, whether it's people we already have, or prospect clients they want to bring on. Four in person meetings a week. And then off the back of that would do, add aim to do 35 new BD calls, 80 sendouts a week in each market, UK and then UAE. Yeah, and that's the process. I'll suddenly follow to do that. Is the goal to be 100% new A or like I'm assuming? Because now we're doing more. Or like there's a reason why it's more like, do you see there's a good opportunity for you to do really well in this market? It's a very, very good market. If you're getting with the right clients, you believe relationships. Because it seems to be when you break into them, then you do a good job. They'll stay with you for a long time. There is a lot of loyalty when it gets to that point. As we grow, because of the way we're really trying to build these relationships in person a lot more. Naturally, I think more will just grow in the UAE because it's harder to do that remotely from the UK. So I think we really capitalized on that market and then would look probably to go elsewhere, the States or something instead of the UK eventually. - How have you found Juggling, UAE and the UK market? Obviously, the time difference isn't actually a troture. - Yeah, it's not a troture. So at the moment it's three hours and then sometimes it goes to four hours when they're like savings or on whatever, but it's actually okay because I can start three or four hours early and do the UAE market and then switch on to the UK a little bit later. Most of the UK stuff that I'm doing now to be honest with you, it's like previous relationships. It's not too much outbound driven. It's what we've made the rest of it in the past, yeah. - Because what we're saying about we're gonna become an absolutely high-flung contract. Recruit again what we're saying. - Well, actually think about that. It's what you've literally, yeah, you're like doing many puns. - I know, but there's not really a contract market. It's not the same there. It's difficult. I would love to. - I'm really curious of it. - It really kills me. I absolutely love it. Like it's such a different thing. I wish so much that we could and I feel like eventually when we hope to go to the States and things like that, I really wanna build that contract back up. But in the UAE it's very difficult again if we go back to the lines of credit. If you're placing 40, 50 contractors on to site, your payroll and those contractors and then the payment terms in the UAE might say 14 days, but it might be six months if they don't wanna pay you one time, that's how it is. You've got a lot of money outstanding there. So so many businesses will just sink. And in terms of visas, it's very hard to get visas set up on a freelance basis in the buy. I think they're moving into a better way of doing it, but at the moment as an employer, you have to pay for everybody's relocation costs a lot of the time if they're in tech or whatever, or pay for their visas, their family visas. - This is an upfront cost. - Yeah, so it's a lot of all across if you're only one that person for three, six months. - Yeah, that makes sense. So should we get into, we've been super honest here, but like you just said there, so like 'cause I asked you like what are some of the sort of market troops? You said one of them there, no credit checks, open finance, must visit offices to assess legitimacy. So if you had any rubbish stories, like I think I've heard that a lot where people don't get paid. - Yeah. - Have you unfortunately had that? - Yeah, yeah, like even the first few places that I made in that market took six months to get them paid. - Really? - Yeah, which is a pain. I think it actually turns out that the government, you know, bodies and projects are the worst because you know, you were a little tap hole in the market basically, and I think they don't really care, but it's better if you're scaling smaller businesses, you've got better relationships with the overseas in that area than you can kind of-- - You can then trust them for the invoice. - You can leverage that a bit better. - So what, no major horror stories then? It seemed like you've had some rubbish experiences. - Just on payment terms. I mean, there's been some like funny stories you turn up to an office and you go for a meeting and the guy like Roxam Pinto's office got amazing view and then he's just like, like it's up to cigarette or a cigar in the meeting and it's like, what's going on? That's wild. (laughing) I remember going back and thinking, what's just happened there? And I said to somebody else, they're like, yeah, it's just how it is. It's crazy. - And then, okay, so payment terms unpredictable. And if it's for people to be mindful of there, then like, is there anything you'd now do to try and help prevent that? Are you sending, if you've got it in your contract where we'll send you an invoice on acceptance of contract or I don't know, is there anything that you've now put in place that helps you get paid more quickly? - I always push for that. Like paid on acceptance, actually quite hard to get signed off, to be honest with you. But we always offer, if you pay on time in that first two weeks, we'll give you a five percent discount credit on the next invoice. - Nice. - You'd like to give-- - Just trying to incentivize it. - You're trying to incentivize them to pay on time. - Yeah, exactly. This would be a continuous journey we're learning. But I've got here, obviously, because we're doing perm, typical, you've sent me typical fee that you, from your experience, when you speak to companies and they've maybe used recruitment agencies, 9.3% or one month of their salary. You said there's normally what they will say to you is like, well, we normally play a percentage of their, we normally play their first month of salary. - Yeah. - Tots was a bit about this. - So that's one of the biggest, I guess, learning curves for me, that we had when we first went to the UAE is that it's a bit of an education game when you have intercelled clients and actually teach them what a good quality process looks like. Because the way the bias geographically-ocated right, you've got into your impact stand very closely. So you've got these agencies that are providing solutions for candidates at 9.3%. So that works out right that their one month salary of the year works out as 9.3% fee. So you're often speaking to clients and telling them that, you're, oh no, we charge 20% and they're like, absolutely not. We're paying less than half than that at the moment. But I have to say, how good is that process? What does that process looks like? How long has it taken to fill that role? So that's one of the biggest pushbacks is cost. It's a big race to the bottom there. - And then typically when you, obviously not always, but typically when you dig into that, it's like it's taken too long quality of people coming for one grade. - Yeah. - It's those typical things, hiring processes and more tight. - Exactly. And I think that a lot of companies will, you know, Google, big recruitment agencies and stuff like that. And they're not actually specialists. It's complete generalist. The same person would be working on a tech role, a finance role, a cleaning role, anything. They're literally just recruiters. It's super generalist. And then just something, again, I'm just a massive advocate of when you build a career in recruitment, like you build so many skills. - Yeah. - And obviously something that you've had to then learn is like you're dealing with so many different cultures. - Yeah. - Aren't you right doing business, which, again, I think that's a really cool skill to build, right? So yeah, I'm sure how you learn how to do business with someone who's arabic to Egyptian to a next-part living there. It's gonna be different. - Yeah. - And one of the most fun learning processes, actually, because in London, you're probably gonna deal with people that are from UK or Europe, et cetera, whether it's a completely mixed bag. I don't think I've actually, don't think we've had one British client or one British higher manager. - Really? - Yeah. And if anything, you had to learn the hardware that people really don't like. - So I think especially in the arabic world, if you're really chasing them up, like sometimes in the UK, I'd probably go a bit OTT, like really hounding them. If you get hounded, that's it. They'll just ignore you. And they'll never, ever, ever come back. Even if you've got a candidate final stage, if they feel like you're being too pushy, or too salesy, that's it. - Relationships gone. - Yeah, they don't like the whole sales bill. - Yeah. - Let's sort of round this out then, like, obviously, boy, you're braver on. - Yeah. - How are you, I'm assuming you wouldn't have done that if you feel like we're on a good trajectory. So what are you really continuing to focus on, double down on that you think is gonna continue to, keep helping you going the right way? 'Cause I think when you have been turning it around and improving ultimately outcomes that you want, - Yeah. - You know, you've done some interesting things like, I know 'cause this finance piece that we've spoken about you invested in having someone in finance support your business. - Yeah. - As like a hire. Then gone big on marketing. You mentioned the podcast there. So you launched your own podcast that I know's really been helping. So been investing, getting a marketing person in the business. Then your brother joined this year. - Yeah. - So what are we really doubling down on to continue to really feel good about where things are going and also what you think's gonna enable you to keep moving the business in the right direction? - Yeah, so I think coming back to what has worked really well in the buy market is more of a, for us right now a bit of a 180 split because as I mentioned before, you have to pull up a lot of jobs to fill jobs right. So I think you have to have someone who's very, very beady focused on 180 models worked really, really well. The reason why I did this is that I always wanted to be in a position where I could help change people's lives. Like that's what happened to me at Opus. You know, I'd gone from living in the Linkshire whatever and then moved to London and was earning crazy money. I could really like help my family with that. So and I felt super loyal to them and super driven because of that. So I really wanted to be able to hire people that are junior recruiters, follow them on a process, put them in a 180 situation where they're delivering to start off with to get used to that and then we can help change people's lives as well. That's like been a huge thing for me. So my brother for example was like an electrician working on a building site two months ago and now he's in the buy, work delivering on projects like done $70,000 in closed areas in the last two months which is amazing. So I think what we'll do is scale that up. Like add a few more delivery consultants that are junior, you know, haven't had any exposure to recruitment or sales but just have a really hard drive and want to do something amazing for themselves. And then as they're then ready to go into three six to recruitment consultants will slowly do that, slowly bring them into 360 and then kind of keep that conveyor belt going. I'm not really an erase of headcount but I feel like we've managed to gain a lot of good market share very quickly because of the podcast because we've niche down so quickly. So we're getting a lot of business in through that and then eventually obviously scale off the back of that and as these guys turn into leaders and things like that. So we've got this loyal team of hopefully, like young hungry people. - So yeah, it does really sound like you've just had to learn all these things a hard way. And then from what I've learned here, the good thing is if you keep doing those things when you do laments relationships that do pay off, it isn't like ones and twos, it's like five, 10, 15, so. - Exactly that. So people when you do a recant of a client you've got that trust, they'll work with you for a long time and it is like 15, 20 highs at the time as well. Just like anything, the more you do something, the better that you get, but even more so in this, like if you think about it, you haven't been really focused on that UA market for that long really. - Yeah, 12 months pretty much. - It's not long as it. So think about all the people that maybe you've had the old conversation with you learn a bit about that you're then going to continue to learn more about maybe doing more with in another 12 months. Like it should just keep hopefully snowballing. - Exactly. - You just got to keep doubling down on those things. Love it. - Generally, I really appreciate your transparency and honestly, I really admire the fact that you could have very easily been like, nah, like this is not for me. Like you've got stuff to look back to and be like, I was earning so much money. I don't know just about that, but like it's just everything with that, the success, what it was achieving. Like there's a man, I'm sure that happens, right? But you've made changes, you stuck with it, you know, you've now even got it to put in the way you've got really co-option into bringing a brother on, which I'm sure felt good and going to continue to feel great the more opportunities that he has and how he grows. So I'm sure there was more moments that you felt like quitting or wanting to and you haven't. So like I know you're going to be feeling like there's way more that we need to be doing and need to crack on that. That's how I always feel like. But I think yeah, you should be really proud of how you've continued to crack on make changes, learn. I'm sure things are going to continue to go in that direction. You're going to have bumps along the way. Hopefully you keep getting paid. But you've learnt so much. I really appreciate coming on here. You've kept it really real and honest. I know so many people will learn from not only this opus grid that you had, but also this entrepreneurial journey that you're on. So it's appreciated. Awesome. Absolutely. Thanks. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode. I hope there were plenty of golden nuggets for you to take away. As you know, I'm your host here of the recruitment mentors podcast. But I'm also the founder of recruitment mentors. We're an online subscription based learning and education platform. We're on a mission to help thousands of recruiters achieve their professional goals and successfully progress their careers through modern and engaging online learning. So if you're a recruitment business owner listening to this, there's a good chance that you value self development, personal development. You're trying to develop a culture of continuous improvement. But we've partnered with a number of grown recruitment companies who were struggling to understand how they can invest more in their people, how they can upskill them more quickly without spending more time, without having to spend thousands of pounds of external trainers, and we've ended up being a really great fit, modern fit for recruitment teams. We can ultimately help you get more out of your teams by giving your people access to modern and engaging online learning, which they can access on demand. The thing that's really cool about what we're doing at recruitment mentors is that all of the people that your teams are able to learn from and the people that are delivering the learning content are people that are in roll right now. They're billing. They're actively facing the challenges that your teams are and the lot of the time they're amongst the top performers within their companies. Which means your teams are going to be way more confident to learn and spend on their learning when they know they're learning from people. They're doing it right now, have been there and done it. There's nothing worse than feeling like training is not relevant and not current. The best place to find out more about recruitment mentors and if we can help you accelerate your team's performance is a semi-missage on LinkedIn, connect with me on LinkedIn directly and I'd love to connect with you and find out if we can help you get more outwards to your people.