How Firing 60% of Clients Helped Ed Bray Build a $2M US Recruitment Business

(silence) - Ed, welcome to the podcast. - Good to be here. - Nice to get to sit down with you. - Hopefully you don't mind me saying this, but I know you shared with me that this isn't your sort of bag. - Not at all, no. - I always like to look at people's links and get some inspiration and I think that matches up. I think it seems like you've been posting a bit more recently, but bar your post around everything you've learned since building this US team being over here, hadn't posted for about six months. - Sounds about right. - Under the radar guy. - Exactly. - Yeah, shit done. (laughing) - But you're here today because you have been on an interesting journey. I'm sure you may or may not be aware, but I'm just meeting more and more recruitment companies now that are based out of the UK, that just serve the US or it's on a lot of people's business plans. - Yeah. - So our goal here really is twofold. We want to talk a bit about this career that you've been on, what you've learned in the hard way, because you've been in a particular position, which I'm sure you'll see this in a rama, but by far the consistent skill gap that we see in recruitment teams is that sales capability. So you've been in a very particular position where you're out there, client facing, you're in a business development role from the get-go. You've been involved in delivery managing that, but really the role that you're in now is what I believe is playing to your strengths, which is out there visiting clients, doing BD. And I think a lot of people would say that isn't their strongest suit. So we're going to talk a bit about how you've got better at that, because I know Fed say you wasn't amazing at the start. - No, not at all. Not at all. So we're going to talk about how you were able to do that. And then we're going to dig into, you moved your life over here, Jan 22 in Austin, particularly. So we're going to talk a bit about this journey that you're beating on in building the US office. And now why you feel like you've really built the foundations, where it's probably the strongest it's ever been to build on. And what you believe is behind that is the goal. - Let's get into it. - So your world, let me know if I'm wrong here. Obviously we're definitely going to talk about GTM search. I probably give us people a bit of an idea, but your world is going to market. So is that everything from, do you do the sort of venture level SDR stuff all the way up to CRO? - Yeah, everything from SDR, CRO, customer success, marketing, anything in that full remit of GTM we do. - Okay. - So pure BD role. So let's just paint a bit of a picture. So 2018 joined Arama. So if me and you were to meet then, and I said, I'd like tell me about your job. Like what did your job in tail? - Yeah, I was making your kid straight out of school who didn't know what he really wanted to do, but joined Arama because of Paul and really saw the vision of what I thought we could get to. It was a lot of old fashioned co-calling dials. It was a numbers game back then. It was ever made the most dials was the most successful. So for the first six, nine months, it was just in a out seven, making more dials, sending more emails than anyone else. And that was really my first year in recruitment. - We can get into the ground like how I told you, it's the sort of how that people love. What was we trying to achieve with these calls? Was it just to get, was your goal just to book meetings and then something else would join that meeting? Would you then get on the meeting just how? - Yeah, it was honestly just to get the brand out there. Arama at the time don't even be founded for maybe two, three years. We were still pretty fresh. Paul had done a little work at CD before. And it was really we're trying to create something and we're trying to create our name in the industry. The more people that I referenced Arama with, the more times people heard about Arama and the consistent outreach, the more we started to become familiar. And that then led us to win business. More consistently over and over time. So I think fundamentally it was get the name out there and just have conversations. I didn't know what I didn't know at the time. I looked back at some of my messages that I sent far six years ago and I laughed at bad data, but I still did them. And now I can talk to people and joke about them. But it was that foundation 18 months that really led me to Arama today. - Let's just get into this for a sec 'cause I think I'd be interested for people to hear. So you said to me that like you're not calling these companies or horror managers decision makers with a salesperson or a candidate, are you, 'cause we'll talk about it, but never expect you to tell me. - No, once, no. So that's what I mean. So even in this context was the goal of it to do an introductory call, hey my name's Ed, I'm, you know, what for Arama we do this? Like was that the intention of? - The goal was an intro meeting to get on with Pull. And it was how do I, like an SDR and software sales world, how do I get a bite is what we call them. And I used to be targeted on bites back then. I think it was four or five bites a week. And those bites often 90% of them turn to nothing. But it was how can I get a bite, get them on a Zoom or a call with Pull and then really tell them the Arama story. And only then did we start to win a load of customers. Even back then I won a bunch of customers, but they weren't the right customers 'cause they didn't know who we were. It was just cold outreach, potluck. We were fighting with real-father agencies and fun enough we did no work in them. U.S. from Legette, that really wasn't it. It was all U.S. I was trying to do a lot of them here, but I was having a lot more success in the U.S. A lot less recruiters out there. The market was more penetrable. And actually, historically as a business, we've always done 85 to 90% of our revenue out there. - Was you spending most your time calling, emailing, LinkedIn DMing, was it like a fair amount across all of it, what did you find yourself doing most of? - It was a lot across all of it. I had the most success from LinkedIn Connect messages. That to me back then it just worked. That and then follow up texts, call call voicemails, you know, I always say to the team, like why do we do it? Why do we leave them? And yeah, they may listen to them, but 90% of the time they won't. But it gives you a warm touch point when you then go to text them. Hey, just left your voicemail, reaching out because of XYZ. So that to me was where I had the most success, actually the most knows from text responses, and most yeses from LinkedIn DMs, but it's all changed now. - Just final bit on this dependent bit of a pitch for people, because I think you'll be closer to this because of the word you're recruiting. Whenever I've met people that recruit in a similar space to you, or we've done some really great stuff with the guys that run a convict and we have a meeting they do, it's like a sales agency. Whenever they've worked with recruitment companies, they've always been shocked at what recruitment companies believe around the volume required to hit targets. Or so you're gonna be closer to see even more. Just gives a bit of an idea of volume here because I do feel like I'm sure you've seen it when you've then seen people join the business and stuff volume around this time period, like what are we actually doing? 'Cause I think that'll paint a pitch to people. - Volume seven years ago, six years ago, five years ago, is very different to volume now. - Okay. - Well, when I was making my name, it was 50, 60 Colt, cause of the day, it was reached out to 300 people a week or on LinkedIn ad notes, get as many emails that cross as I could 50 a day. And I remember at the time being frustrated, cause it was just painstaking. And it was just repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. But back then to me, it was a massive numbers game. Beating now is so much more strategic and we, I'm sure, touch it later. But I have a very different way of beating now than I did seven years ago. - Now, I appreciate your sharing, 'cause I think some even in today's world, if you're starting out, I think people can underestimate the volume required to get to the point that we're gonna talk about. - I said this to you when we were speaking earlier. The work you do in, or you put in from a BD standpoint, it never goes away. Like, I send messages now to people and I haven't sent them messages in six years. And I refer back to the shitty message I sent five, six years ago and sort of laugh. And that's the beauty of BD. It's nothing wasted. The outreach can always then lead to something further down the line. So if I'm starting off, if I was doing this again, as an 18 year old, for me, it'd be a numbers game. If I can out cool, I can out email, I can out message. Everyone else doing what I do. I'm gonna be more successful. - So I always like to ask people if they've had like pivoted moments. So should we talk about this first one that you spoke to me about? So I actually text Paul about this, 'cause I wanna try and get a bit of an inside scoop wherever it if I know someone in the business. Then I'll try and do that 'cause I think it helps paint a bit of a picture. But there was this dinner, wasn't there? So tell us a bit about the context here. What was your perspective when we had a sit down dinner was just talked to us a bit about? - Yeah, it was September 23, 2020. I remember it. Paul, another leader at the time, took me out for dinner at a goucho in the city. And I didn't really know what to expect. I was doing okay at the business. I was making more calls, I was making more dials. I'd actually done, I think, zero revenue at the time in my first year. So one account that we hadn't done business in them. And they basically sat me down and sort of said, do what the FU doing here. There's no real potential. You're just turning up for the sake of turning up. You've got so much opportunity here. You just gotta go and seize it. And they could have all right, and it got rid of me there and there and then and just said, hey, it's not working out. You're not showing us what you want. But they believed in me. - Was you surprised to hear that? - That they saw the potential in you. - I don't know, looking back at it, I think, or I was the first time I've ever worked with. It was the first corporate job that I'd done. So I didn't really know how it worked. I was always very close with Paul and others in the group. So I knew they had my back. But it was sort of a shock in the system that, hey, Ed, you need to step up or you're sort of gone. 'Cause I'm like, I'm miles bedding everyone. And they were like, don't compare yourself to everything else doing your role. Compare yourself to your potential ability. And it was that step there that changed my career, my life today. And I locked up both of them at the time because when and they're right, they could have said, hey, enough's enough for me, Vaughan. I said to Paul, like, what are your perspectives of this moment? And he said, yeah, like, by this point, you hadn't built much at all in year one. Like you said, but he was a curious, intelligent, built a knowledge. And I knew he'd become great, but he gave you a very clear choice. Sometimes I feel like I'm sure you've seen this now when people that you've managed supported. When you end up in that manager seat, you can't really feel frustrating 'cause you can see this in people. So I think sometimes this is almost required. I'm sure when you've been in that leadership seat, manager seat, and I'm in that seat, sometimes it can be frustrating that it has to get to that sort of point for something to change. But sometimes it is required. So he said, the choice was, continuing training this like a job will start training and like a career. Exactly that. And, you know, I've had that conversation with many people since. And a lot just still treat it like a job, 'cause they don't see the bigger picture. And I tell everyone that we interview in higher and I sort of draw a graph on a whiteboard. And on what axis it's, you know, how good you want to be and in the other it's work ethic and time and it's just a straight line diagonal line like that. Well class at the top and goods here because we hope to hire no one less than good and they ask everyone where do they want to be on on that graph. Most people put somewhere in the middle they want to work harder and be quite good. Actually most people don't do that and it takes a real set person to say you know what I'm going to work really hard at the start when I'm still down here and ultimately you're going to slowly get up that diagonal further and further towards the world class but it doesn't take any less hard work. In recruitment in particular since I've been to the US a lot of think they can be great in world class but put in no effort and time and those are the ones that frustrate me and will go on to it and I think that's why we've had a couple resets in the US and so we are now in a position of actual people that want to be here and they know where they want to be on that diagonal line and it makes life and work much more enjoyable. Is there anything that you believe because of all the experience that you have now helping others if we're doing the reps we're doing the volume is there anything that you feel like you could have done better to improve the outcome of that first year. I think the most important thing was you willing to put in the effort at the volume so for people listening that might be in that right now they'd hopefully quite like to get some of the success in that year when I feel like they're putting in the volume. Do you think there's anything that because you would have got better over time? 100% confidence was one of the big things. You know when I first started I used to run out and make all my cold calls in a phone booth. Really? Yeah so just go out and do them in a phone booth and just knock them out because I was nervous there were lots of more senior people me in the office I was like am I saying the right thing? Am I speaking too fast? And it drives me mad to this day when people still go out of the office. You're saying does that drive me? You're saying that? You've got a small office in Austin and I get it I'm quite loud so that they say that but I'm like we can't help and Paul and others at the time couldn't help me if I wasn't in the office so for me the biggest thing would be make all your mistakes do all your success do it in the office in front of people. Yeah that's interesting. So to build on that I'm putting you on a spot here but like anything that you think they would have picked up on quite quickly or because you would have got better at this if that you were making these calls were doing these reps in the office what do you think would have been those standout coaching opportunities in that first year was it overall just confidence was it confidence one I think sounding like you know what you talked about so you know whether you're six weeks in you're five years in having that confidence you know when we're speaking to people we're generally really good at what we do we've scaled some of the best startups that have ever existed you guys should want to use us you don't know why it's but you should actually want to come and use us and for me I think the big thing really was when you start making call calls and you start doing it sounding familiar having a real good macro perspective of what's going on in the space in the world where you can start to name drop because you have a 30 second conversation with a leader two weeks ago you can say oh yeah I spoke to X two weeks ago you know who knows them because they worked together three years ago so the more conversations you have the more inquisitive you are on the space you start ending people sentences and know what they're going to say before they do it and that just oozes confidence and like you know what you're talking about I get why people would struggle with that at the beginning yeah let me know what you think about this because I'm sure you've tried to help people with this hopefully if you're an organisation and you're early on they've got a good track record hopefully so let's assume that yeah sometimes people don't realise that they can borrow that and sometimes they're looking in their own like I don't have that track record I haven't done those things but actually it's about like you just said borrowing what a rimer have done and that's where you can get that confidence and look you're on this journey you can borrow that but you're on the journey of building your own credentials but it's okay to borrow that credibility from your company I remember getting pulled out six times out of ten saying how come you've done this you've been there for four or five months and then that to me was a win because they've responded they clearly liked what they saw they engage with it and then it's up to me and Paul to compose a really compelling message says hey this is what we've done I personally haven't done this this is what we've done as a team this is the team that you're working with let's jump on a call and dig into this further so I massively would say lean in to whoever's track record you've got I'm sure most people do it you know I see messages from recruiters that clients send me saying are these guys reached out and I know for a fact they've never worked with X company because they worked there in their previous company or you know whatever it is so why you win businesses and why you keep business more importantly is you're really good and that's the most important thing that I was for down on in say to people is if you win business that's actually the easy part the hard part is keeping the business and making sure you get that a business on an exclusive on a retained on a committed whatever it is that's what's hard so I think that's a really good insight for people in terms of borrowing that where it makes sense to I don't think you need to lie I don't think because then that's just going to go effect your confidence most likely or you're going to feel like a bit of a fool and go yeah it's just not worth it long time we'll get back to the episode in just a moment but before we do I want to tell you about one of our sponsors CapEx currency now doing business internationally should be exciting not stressful but too often traditional banks make it expensive and complicated to move money across borders that's why so many recruitment 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they'll look after you and you'll definitely get an exclusive offer so go over to capexcurrency.com and see how much you could save let's get back to the episode how obsessive was you with like market and industry and like at least having a bit of an understanding and a grasp of what's going on. Yeah I remember back in 2019 when I first went to these events called cubicon and it's cubanetti it's cloud infrastructure dev apps and I try to learn all this stuff and it just was way above my pay. And I realized then and I started winning lots of business winning lots of customers I actually didn't need to know what they did what I need to do is tell a really good story around it and you know we're speaking to sales guys or customer success you learn what they want to hear and a customer says they probably care less about the technology and the product they care more about the churn rates what are their renewals sales guys care about the opportunity and the W2 and who they're working for. Sales engineers and more technical folk probably more so on the product but actually what I learned is like a tell a really good story what was important to them and that's what mattered you know those people that in our office that know way more than me about selling customers that worked with that I've worked with two three years but that never was the factor that said to me oh I don't know because the first question I say is who don't know the answer to that? Speak to the hire manager he's the best person to give you an answer and if they're bought into everything I said they're going to want to speak to the hiring manager. How do you feel about that advice and in terms of really knowing your market inside that? Do you think that's important? I think there's knowing who the customers are and having a high level what they do so you know we do a lot of working cloud infrastructure data knowing who all the data players are and what they high level do that's really important because it gives credibility when you're speaking to someone of our competitor or about what's going on in the market they were just acquired by X like knowing that I think is really important. Knowing the ins and outs of every single vendor that's in there and what they do and why they differentiate to me I've never done it my team don't do it I don't think that's what makes you win all those business but it's more understanding through your conversations and nuances of what VP sales care about because you're speaking to them and understanding what they care about is what they're discovering down on that. You need to have some context on the space you know if you're working in observability right you need to know the 5 6 7 tier 1 observability startups that's important because that gives you credibility on why they may beat them or lose to them but you should know that because you've spoken to the hiring manager and the hiring manager has given you there a minute layman's terms on what they do and why they win. Because I do feel like sometimes you can fall in that trap car and you're like feeling like you have to know everything which is what I wanted to. The first question I asked her home manager was layman's terms what do you guys do? Break it down to me so I had no clue what you're doing it wasn't technical break it down to me. Much harder to do than people realize. Much harder than I should realize. But it shows you that if the hiring manager can't do it then we're really going to struggle as an agency representing them in the market in the right way. No that's a good point. You said like potty. this chat as well, you really just started to get obsessed. Yeah. Just paying it as a bit of a picture there. Like, what did that look like? Because it seemed like that then led to. Obviously it was all the, you know, you wasn't showing up and just half-arsing it here. Like, you put in the red for a little while. No, I put it in the hours. So, and because this led to one of your first big wins. It was a lot more sporadic before that. It was, let me ping a hundred different companies and just reference and sort of copy and paste and say, "Oh, we worked with XYZ that we had done." But maybe they were red, but maybe they weren't because they had the same keywords in what they did. And that's a lot more targeted. It was, "Okay, let's pick 50 customers and go hard." You know, really deep, really wide at every single person there. And really try and penetrate them top down, bottom up. Didn't really matter. But it was that being obsessive. But it was more to be honest seeing it as a career. Okay, I've done this for a year and a half at that point. Or two years, nearly. Let's stop pissing around and let's really try and set something up here because I saw people were doing and what they were writing. I was like, "I want a piece of that." So why was you sitting two AM and four AM alarms then? Was that for calls? That was when I was really in the midst of a couple big accounts. - Right. - All in the US, some West Coast. So working with some big roles. And to me, I was so obsessed that if I didn't respond to something that night that day, I knew it would take a day and a half, two days. And back then, I was chasing the dollar so hard. You know, I actually got to sleep thinking about how much commission I was going to make here and there. So at 2 AM, I said alarm to respond to any emails that I may have missed and four AM did the same thing. So I knew they weren't going to be back online 'cause they're in the West Coast. They're West Coast. 'Til 4 PM sometimes, West Coast time, and then that slows everything down. But I wasn't just doing emails, I was making calls. Emma Paul telling me, "Do you need to stop doing this?" Like it's unhealthy and I was like, "No, I loved it." Because there was nothing more impressive than, I was 19, 20 at the time, than CROs and VP of sales. What are you doing up at 4 AM? I'm like, "I've got to make this happen." Like that to me, those three, four, five, six months. And to Thao, I had an awesome three months and then went on a bender for three months. And it's the worst thing I could have done. But it's the, you know, it's the, you go from having done nothing to super high and it's like, "Where would I do with all this?" What did that, not the bender, but what? When you say went from this to that, why tell us a bit of an idea in terms of, how to earn ends. 400K in Billings, pounds in three months. Right. Which was whatever it was, 400 and something, plus it in commission. And then the following three months, I did 16 grand in Billings. And that's absolutely nothing. Right. But it showed me what can happen if you take your foot off the gas. And everyone says like that. That was obviously a big, big roller coaster. And then since then, it was very much flat line after that. But I sort of got it out of the system and said, "Wow, okay, this can change my life if I really give everything and stay obsessed and here we are six years later." So if you were speaking to someone who was in a similar journey and they just had maybe a big win like that, are you saying? You've got to enjoy it. Okay. You work so hard, you have got to enjoy it. There's a level of enjoyment that you could sort of go to. Up to you, but this is what I learned. But you're definitely not going to say like, don't do exactly what I did, but definitely. I took my mates out. You know, in 1920, and I had a life-changing money, I took my mates out. We went on holiday together for two weeks. We had crazy dinners and had a lot of fun. There's some great memories. And it was just after COVID as well. So it was very different times. But that's also why I could get really obsessive because there was nothing I could do for. I couldn't leave the house, couldn't see your mates. It was just work, work, work, work, what else the day. So you've got to celebrate the wins. And I said to the guys in the office, some of them had records, paychecks in the last two, three months. I something nice that you remember what you bought with your first big paycheck. It doesn't have to be a good pair of shoes. It could be a watch. It could be whatever a new car, but buy something that you can look back on and think, that's why I do this. And I do think that's really important. Just tell us a bit about this first big win then, because I feel like sometimes we need these breaks, don't we, when we're building our careers. So just tell us a bit about that because I feel like you said earlier, there's one thing, getting a meeting, getting a job on, whatever. But then I think it really then comes down to really maximising that, keeping these clients. Because I've got here, yeah, one of the first big wins that you got, which then resulted, long term in doing 40, 50 placements with this company, which is a count. Just tell us a bit about this break, because it seemed quite pivotal again in your career because then it's all of a sudden, you're not borrowing a track record, you're going, we did this for X Company. That's a whole different ball game than it seemed like that really then led to be a bit of a domino bit. Again, that's on you to really maximise that. Yeah, it's funny that that particular customer had met in person a year before. We did nothing with them. And it was just bad account at the time. They weren't the right business for us. We didn't do a great job. And then I co-witched out to them a year later, also just after that meeting, well, they didn't know I had with the guys. And said, hey, let's catch up. I went and met them and Manchester. And they gave me a shot. You know, they didn't need to. It was luck at the time. They gave me a shot, but I said to them, no one's going to work harder. No one's going to do more than me in this account. And I did 30 placements pretty quickly in six or a month there, which then snowballed on to a lot more success. And actually, that account pivoted to loads of my success in multiple different accounts because where leaders left to and when or where they interviewed to and joined somewhere else. But it was someone giving me a shot and me saying, guys, no one's going to work harder than this. I'm going to be so obsessive and live and breathe at the time. And that's what I did. Just to get Granola for a set then, and then we'll get into this sort of Austin journey. Just on that, because we would have heard this on the pull cost before, and you probably help people with this now. You worked really hard to get that win. Yeah. To get that case study, to get that person, that champion, to vouch for you. How do we really leverage that as much as possible? Is it as simple as, okay, I've just got this success story with X Company? Let me just look at who their five direct competitors are. I reach out to all of them and say, hey, just done this through a competitor. We should chat. I can do it for you like. How do you view this? That was a lot at the start. Okay. What I did, it's less so now. We're much more referenceable people, I know who we are. But it's still, hey, we did XYZ, these three companies last two, three years. They're a similar world looking for a similar profile. Let's find some time to speak. Typically, we have an intro, we can have a win. But if I go back to anyone who's starting out at PD and gets their first win as a customer or two wins as a customer, you've got to think, if someone else is also working with them, that may be customer 10, 15, 20 for them. It may not be that important, but if it's customer one and two, three, four, five, for you, give them everything. Because you'll be competing maybe against someone who doesn't really know the home into that well. It's not such an important account for them. So you know if you give them everything in your first couple of customers, you've got a good shot of winning them and turning them from nobody's to coaches to champions, and that can then be your luck to set up your career for success. Do you think that playbook still plays out now? Yeah, I think it does. I really do. The market is very competitive. It's also big enough for loads of different players in the market. But there's multiple times we come up with accounts that we know there's two or three agencies in it. And now we won't work with them a year and a half, two years ago, we would have done. And if that was me as a 19 year old, two and a half, two years ago, they could be great customers now 'cause no one would have worked harder. I'd be more relentless than anyone else and I've made sure got shit done. And that attitude, I still think very much applies because most companies are like a 15, 20 if they're decent size, different customers at any given period of time. You've just got one. You work on it hard. It's a real good shot though. Create a great relationship with the hiring manager. You do great work and then success continues. And then tell us a bit about when as part of this journey, maybe it was when you moved your life to Austin, but I think somebody who said to me as well as you're talking about the different strategies here was you was very intentional about future leaders. When did you sort of be intentional about that? 'Cause I think if I'm honest, this is something that more time I spend with people that are building in the US or successful in the US. Same play but probably can apply in a mere UK. But it does seem to be very driven by just really doubling down on building a really tight network of senior people or insert X job title of the type of people that you believe you can help now are in the future. And really getting around those people, really speaking to these people consistently, figuring out how you can help them beyond I've got a job for you, Ed, like way beyond that. But that's in quite intentional. When did you make it, what inspired you to make that move? That's exactly it. We had a round table dinner, probably four, five years ago where this first came up. And we come up with a lot of great ideas as most businesses do and a lot then don't get implemented because you get busy and stuff happens. I've always had a real obsession with customers and individuals. I used to put up job ads for VPs of sales roles that I knew about, so VPs would apply it and I'd catch up with them and speak to them. And I knew we were working on some stuff in the space that I wasn't personally working on, but I just wanted VPs to come and apply to me so I could speak to them about potential ops that we did have. And some of my best customers, I didn't work with for three, four years. And a couple of them, I'd still call real close champions 'cause they intro me in the African-American Center, but I've never done any work with them. But I've always been there, I've always been happy to spend 30, 45 minutes with them. I'm ever in their city, I'll take them out for dinner, I'll meet them, I'll spend time with them. And I think one of the biggest things I did, which I started doing back in 2021 was, whenever I spoke to someone, you know, I found out their worst names, I found out their kids' names, found out what they liked doing. If I was the birth day of the wedding anniversary, it popped up in conversation. I always noted it down on my phone, in the notes section on an iPhone. So whenever they called, I'd always catch up with them and say, "Oh, how's Erica or how's Amy or whatever?" Because I knew it and they're like, "Oh, you know, sadly, they're like, that sort of stuff doing." So the more you can build a relationship with them outside of work and you get to know who they are, do they like fish and do they like shooting? What football team do they support? All that stuff compounds year after year after year and for one of our biggest customers now, I had never started working with them until the start of this year, but I felt like I knew this guy incredibly well. 'Cause for four years, I'd probably spoken to him on the phone for 20, 40 different hours and just really got to know him. Like if I'm in your team right now, I do the go-to market. And maybe I've been tasked with focusing on, I don't know, SDR leaders or heads of sales. What kind of agree would you put this strategy in? If I'm going to say, okay, Ed, so what my plan is, is I'm going to make sure that I map all of the, as many AIs as possible that could potentially become heads of sales or whatever the next step. Is that something that I should be doing over, you know, long period of time? Is that like a longer term play? We'll get back to the episode in just a moment, but first, a quick note on one of our long-time sponsors, SourceWell. On average, recruiters lose over eight hours a week to admin. Writing notes, update and CRMs, chasing follow-ups, and bouncing in between tools. That's an entire workday gone. And with that comes misrevenue. That's where SourceWell comes in. 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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/free trial. That's sourcewell.com/free trial. Let's get back to the conversation. It's a much longer-term play, and it's harder now than it was five years ago. If we look at the companies that we target and think pedigree-wise back then, you've had MongoDB, AppDynamics, Snowflake. There are three becomings that you thought, anyone who's an RD there, or who's on the Upbridge Project, who's been there for four or five years, has a great shot of being a VP Summer-Ears. And we've seen it. Loads of them went off to Harness. Loads of them went off to Grafano-Lad. Loads of them went off to Windsorff. And they were all sort of top NDEs or RDs back at these shots back in the day. Because of AI and the world that's moving, there's a lot more of these leaders that are much more dispersed. But if you look at most of the best companies out there right now, in AI, ML, data infrastructure, they've typically all got a leader that's somewhat come from one of those types of companies where they were successful. And that's down to the level of training. And it goes back to the Blade Logic, PTC, BMC Days, which produces multitude of great leaders, medic leaders under John McMahon, that then went on to form what are some of the best software startups today? I guess it depends on market dynamics. Market dynamics, you know, that PTC, BMC Blade Logic, ecosystem, it still exists, but it's very different now. A lot of those leaders are much older, they've sort of semi-retired, they're on their last two gigs. But if you look at where they worked before and the leaders that they worked underneath, those leaders have all gone on to be, not all, but the majority have gone on to be very successful, VPs are saying LCR rows themselves. Just to round that part out then. So if I'm in my particular market, if I'm aware of a cluster of up to maybe 10 to 20 companies that have got a great reputation for some of these types of things, you think it probably is a pretty solid strategy if that's in your ecosystem to try and build and connect to me, as many people as possible, that if their career keeps going on the right direction, could be future leaders. Because if you feel like, you know, you've met people in their well-trained and insert whatever, then other companies are going to view it like that as well. 100% and also they'll move up within. If they're early, if their seed series A, there is B, and they're a director right now, they haven't got any head count, but you constantly stay close to them, you give them market knowledge, you say, "Hey, FYI, this guy's looking "in case you're interested." They're going to be a VP at some point, whether it's this gig or another gig. They remember that. The beauty of now is there's so many more leaders that have gone on a much wider breadth of companies, that the opportunity to do that even more is so much greater. And then what would be, like just sure, it might be coming back to the sort of little things, like you said, but these people no doubt will be inundated, whether it be not just recruiters, but people were in to ask for time because they feel like they could maybe help them, TA people with other companies. Like, how can we break through the noise there? Yeah, it's really tough. And it's really tough if you haven't gotten in. If you're doing this pure cold, it's tough. Usually what worked really well for me was if I had a job or I knew the company Rama had a job that I was working on, whether this person was right or not, I'd reach out to them and say, "Hey, we're working on this. "It'll give you really interesting. "Not sure if you'd be a fit, "but we'd love to find some time to speak." If they don't respond, they don't respond. But you do the same at a rep level, and again, it's a numbers game. I probably send over my time thousands of these messages out, to the leaders that I thought could be interesting. Maybe I've got a 5-10% response rate. So again, you don't need many to create a large pool of real strong customer base that can, as we'll talk to you when I'm sure, give you plenty of revenue to be successful. So your numbers go very much back to numbers, peace. Final bit, which came up quite a lot, and then we'll get into this Austin journey. I think I said to you, it comes up when I sit down with people like you that recruit in your space. Just tell us about in layman's terms, having champions or building a champion network. Because this does come up a lot. Just tell us like your perspective of that and what that means to you, because that came up quite a lot as well and prepared for this. Yeah, I think everyone has a different definition of champion. Mine is very much when someone will do something for me without me knowing or behind my back for the better of myself or the company. So it happens the whole time where we get introduced into somebody because they need a lot of help. I don't know who introduced me or Paul or Arama. Someone's done that for us and it will come back to us and also, okay, great. That's a true champion when they're selling on other half without expecting anything in return. I would say I have hundreds more coaches than I do champions and I thought three coaches. Yeah, so if we look at when I was three, four years ago, I thought I had loads of champions because I spoke to loads of people, people liked me. I had done a lot of work for them. But actually, you asked them to do something. They were like, I can't make the intro. No, I don't know that. Maybe in six months time. And I changed them from champions to coaches. And coaches is, you know, in a software sales or the coaches typically, someone who's going to sell for you because they need something in return. So, director of sales is going to say, "Hey, use Arama, they're great, but he desperately needs to hire," which is why he's doing that. A champion may be the VP of sales that you're not going to recruit for or the CRO who champions it to the CFA or the CEO saying, "We must use Arama." And the difference there is, the CRO has got some direct correspondence to what the success of the business does, but it's not their primary need. And a lot of people think they've got champions, but they've just got a lot of coaches. Why coach? Because I feel like that implies that it's a work because they're typically not at that top of the food chain. Right. A coach probably can't get through to the EB. So the EB, economic bar. So, the person who's got the sign off on terms on making the hire, the coach probably doesn't have enough to leverage the EB. A champion who's at that top level might do. And if they're a champion and we need 25% terms, they're going to make it happen because they desperately need us and want to work with us. If it's a coach, maybe they push back and say, "Now we can't do it. We're stuck at 20." Okay, interesting. Have most of your champions been built by doing something where you've both benefited it's been a successful partnership or actually as they come from, you may be not getting the end outcome for them. And is she just doing a really good job? Why don't you take time to really create champions? It's not a. I could fill 10 rolls with this customer tomorrow. It doesn't mean the guy I'm working with a champion. It takes time, it's more trust than the things where you can have really tough conversations with each other, both good and bad. And ultimately, it's very much on, again, if I want to ask them something and I know they're going to get nothing in return and they're going to do it, that to me is a true champion. And most don't get to that. You have very few champions. You know, you probably have 100 coaches, 10 champions. And that's sort of, if you can turn a lot of those coaches into champions with time with trust, and also giving them stuff when we don't want anything in return. Now, if I see someone's on the market and I'm not working with XYZ, I'll say, hey, they're on the market, maybe we're reaching out. So it's a very much given and take, but for me, it's just time thing. It's super interesting, I think, again, someone that a lot more recruits can be intentional about. I've always sort of said this to people, and I've sat down where people like you are. Do you think the sort of knowledge, access, people that you can learn from, and you'll see, I think, definitely gives you. Still probably makes it hard because you're like, being relationship-selling to people that understand this stuff, that, you know, interesting sales methodologies, one to learn. But I do think you get exposure to, like, really bleeding-edge salespeople. So I do think that's a great advantage to being, you'll see, like, these terms and things that you're talking about aren't typical. And there's a lot of people now that are trying to bring these methodologies into recruitment companies. I've learned so much off the list that I've worked with, both personal and just had a go about business. I look at how they act, how they respond, how they deal when we push them on stuff, and they're response rating. The more and more you're having these conversations, the more you learn. You know, I was always that 15, 16-year-old kid that would rather speak to the parents and my mates, you know, to find out, how could I learn more, or how could they help me benefit me? And that sort of has continued on through. And the more inquisitive you are, if you've got time or someone to utilize it as much as possible. Pick up on how they react, how they talk, and what I've figured is, there's a lot of great leaders out there. There's also a little shell in there. who think they're great. I remember thinking back in 2021, 2022, I was working with a couple of leaders who thought, wow, these guys are incredible. And the more I spent time with them, I actually just, they're just not. But they sail the right things, but they then don't implement. And the great sales leaders, they'll implement it as well as say. So should we talk about another pivotal moment, which was you fired six percent of your client base. Yep. Two years ago. We moved our life to Austin in 2022, right? Yep. Oh, no, sorry, sorry, Jan 2023. Sorry. Jan 2023, we came out and originally set up in 2022. Got you. We then, or a managed remote for six, no months, when I waited for the visa and then fully came out then. And as well, I fully came out and Jan 2023, we sat down and said, what are we sort of, what are we doing? We've done, we've had some success. We've had some things there. Like we've done better. You know, we did some good revenue in that sort of first year remote, but it was just very much hero selling. And it was like, we don't have time to do that anymore. What is hero selling, man? It was me doing all the work with a team who were sort of just resourcing me, but I wasn't helping them get better. I wasn't spending enough time with them to develop them. They were sort of just SDRs for me so we could go and do well. And it's been a lot of that for the last year and a half, two years. And it was really probably about a year and a bit ago that we said, okay, then we got rid of another 50 percent of our client base and we were working with four or five, but we were working, they were all champions or maybe three with champions one with the coach at the time. And they'd give us everything. We'd give them everything in return. They'd give us everything. And what I mean gives everything, I mean time, I mean feedback, resource to really be successful and do a good job. Let's just paint a bit of a picture here. When we say we fired six percent of our client base, like what is our base like? It gave you done placements with them. We done placements with them. A lot of contingent work across the US and Europe, but maybe there were three other agencies or two other agencies. And I'll fill right with them. It was 20 percent. And we were like, well, why are we doing that? If we can double down on customers that are paying us at the front, or we've got a real committed relationship with them, got it exclusive and we can expand that and we can double down. We're going to do way more over new. And we've doubled revenue every year to the US today. I'm curious what that looked like because I'm sure it wasn't just a blast of the email out saying like, you know, you work like this. No, we sat down face to face like this. Or we had a Zoom with them and said, hey, this is what we're moving to. These are the models. Do you want to continue this partnership or not? Some said yes. Some said no. The ones that said no. Goodbye. Simple as that. And I was like at the time of psych. Here we go. You know, revenue is going to real take a hit here. But actually, what it did was it meant we were more laser focused. We were more obsessed with the clients that we were working with. And we've just doubled down on them. And it was actually a lot of very successful. So what is the main benefit to doing that? Is it just the fact that the time and focus at your and energy you put into things you felt like it was reciprocated? And there's actually joint success there versus maybe putting the same time and energy and not getting the return or it was that we could forecast. You know, we knew if we were working 10 roles or the average fee size of 30 is K, there was three and a K there. And we could do 80 but if we felt 80% because they felt a couple and turn the or whatever it was, we could actually start to predict what we were trying to do and achieve. And you didn't have that pretty good. We didn't have that pretty good because we were working with 40 different customers, 30 different customers. And it was one in here, one in there, two in there. And it was just we could sort of call it caboy recruiting. It was just do revenue where we can, which arguably worked right when we were first trying to get to the US and we wanted revenue on the board. But it wasn't sustainable. And we talked about it. It's, you know, about building the foundations are on sand, rubble or rock. And year one was sand. Year two was a bit of sand and rubble. Year three was sort of more rubble rock. And now we're year four. It's very much a rock based foundation where we're now working in the US with five customers, but we've got revenue and the management upwards of a million. And we know that if we feel even 70% of that, you know, let's be generous here in our average deal cycle. Let's say 10 weeks and we do that five times a year, 70% of a million, 700 times by five, 3.5 million. And suddenly you break those numbers down and you think, okay, well, that's pretty impressive growth. I actually don't think we need to do that this year to have a great year. I'd much rather increased by 1.5 X. But actually we build it in the real sustainable, scalable way that allows us to execute, you know, more successfully, more efficiently. Deal size goes up. Deal length goes down. And suddenly we're sort of at the rate isn't really humming at a decent tempo. When I speak to recruiters that maybe are used to working in alignment, like you called it a bit of a cowboy environment or just get revenue wherever possible. The way that you're talking about it there, most of the stuff that you spoke about there is how that benefits you. I think sometimes what people struggle with if they know the benefit to them, but they don't know the benefit to the customer. She's talked a bit about there because this way of working won't work just if it's like, you know, it just all benefits ed right. So no, let's just talk about it because that's also important because this is about how it really benefits the customer, not just how it benefits a rimer and you being able to predictably forecast your revenue. 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. They're passionate about helping you to keep more of your hard earned margin, making sure that you can focus on what's important, winning more business and growing revenue with a piece of mind that all of the admin is taken care of by Rayz. But rather here at them from me, why don't you hear from one of our previous guests on the show, Pat Wates from Coltek on how Rayz has supported their huge growth and international expansion since 2020. Rayz have been a key partner in our success over the last four years. The 100 day off, father's second to none. The service to the offer makes you feel like they truly are an extension of your team rather than an outsourced partner. We have quite significantly as a business and we're not able to move as fast as we have without knowing that our clients and candidates are looked after from on board in to contracts out to invoice in, time sheets, payments, Rayz have got all of that covered for us and they was asked to grow the bill. They accelerate the growth for the business as we have done and they continue to do across to US and Europe. As we've grown, you know, and mature 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 how to continue to expand. They've been a great partner to us and a calm, recommend them highly enough and long made that partnership continue. As you can see, Rayz is a trusted invoice finance provider, powering some of the fastest growing recruitment agencies in the market. You can book a demo with Rayz and mention the recruitment mentors podcast to enjoy 5% 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 Rayz. Let's get back to the show. Yeah, it benefits the individual as well tremendously. They create close relationships with the customers themselves. They speak to them more often, they speak to them more frequently. They understand their business better because they're selling it and telling the story of it 10 times a day rather than 10 times a week. They really can understand that. They then understand if we do it right and they're in a certain space and they're focusing more on the data world or the infrastructure world, they then become more familiar with the companies in their space. From an employee standpoint, it's way better. If they're working on more predictable revenue, they're going to build more, they're going to earn more, they're going to create more coaches in the space because they'll spend more time with the individuals. From a customer standpoint, we've started this thing called GTM Search. If you look at the great exec search firms of the world and how they operate very meticulously in the detail, it's all research-driven. They don't engage in a search to maybe a week after research and then you look at traditional contingent firm, it's speed. It's how do we get CVs in? How do we get CVs out here? We've really trying to combine the two and we call it to our customers GTM Search. You'll get two, three days of really detailed research identification. You'll see all our research. Everyone who we think on paper can do this role that we've discussed. Those are the paper profiles. We put them into a long list. We then write notes on them. We score them out of one to ten or one to fifteen, depending on what index we decide with the customer. The customer knows that given the brief they've given us, the only people who can do this role are on that Excel spreadsheet. That gives the customer confidence. It means they can focus on what's important, which is probably revenue and retention of staff and scaling the business. They know that if we're doing our job properly, every week they're going to have four of interviews and it's just monotony. It just keeps happening. They can free up their headspace, which is directly a lot of hiring managers. A lot of the headspace is taken up. I need to recruit these. We've got this revenue number. I have to do this. XYZ takes a lot of headspace. Our job with the GTM Search, what do we put in place is to really say, "Hey, free up the headspace at Evercruiting. We've got that. We're fully accountable. We're in partnership. You focus on what's important in the rest of the business." How come you have this rule about only being able to work with someone if you meet the face to face? We'll horse that back. Something I put in about a year ago. It's myself and the team. I deal with both of us sometimes. I'm going to play in every week, every week, pretty much at the moment because it's very easy. Now that everything's on zoom, you sit down with a hire manager and you say, "Okay, talk to me about the business. Why is the hire needed? Who are you guys? You don't actually get to know who they are as individuals." The market's so crowded now. There's so many different companies saying XYZ or recruiting for the same type of profile. For me, and there is no joint arama, I believed in poor. I believed in poor people. vision. And I think it's super important because a lot of individuals won't see the hiring managers face to face. To be able to say, we've had dinner, we've had lunch. He's married. I had a lunch last week with a customer and I found that he immigrated from Ethiopia. And he came here and he's married and two kids and he's been on this journey. And as soon as you create that story and people let their guard down slightly over lunch or dinner, you get to know who they are as a person. And for me, the most powerful question I'll ever ask a home manager and I do it. 99% of the time is, what's your story? And they'll always start talking, they start talking about work and they said, no, what's your life story? Give me the two, three minutes of who you are. And then they're okay. They went to college here. They did this. This is why they did this. They got married at 25. They had kids at 28. And suddenly you start to learn who they are. And to me, that's just as important to my team as when you're selling the story of the customer. Who are they going to work for? Are they going to go into war for every day? Hopefully for the next two, three, four years and until some ex happens. And you think you can just really grasp that and understand that story where more effectively if we're doing that hand that chat in person. Yeah. And people are way more comfortable. And once you open up and they've given you an hour and a half, as soon as you get 30, 45 minutes, maybe an hour. But that is the majority of that is work talk, because people want to get on with the search quickly and start filling roles. My team will fly and fly out to San Francisco in the day. First flight in at 5am and last flight at 7pm. And they'll go spend two hours with the team at lunch and then 45 minutes in their offices. And that is more valuable for them, for their development, but two, so they understand they get to see the office, they get to meet some of the team, which you don't get to do if you're just on Zoom. I think that's a really powerful question to ask people. And basically what you're saying now, that translates to them when you're going to market it, you can confidently effectively communicate this elderly that you're going to be working with, what they're about, where this all came like that downstream from that. 100%. And you can start to see the hours of person and you can see their tells. They haven't responded to a candidate profile. You probably know why. It's probably no good, because you know who they are as a person. In this world where, you know, every seat, there is a, there is a company, it's trying to hire the same seller, same VP of sales, the same director of sales. When you can say, hey, this is the home manager, this is what it's about. This is his beliefs, his ambitions, what his previous team members speak about him or think about him. It adds another cutting edge, a narrative that most don't get, especially when everything's done over Zoom. Having that sort of principle is it also led to like you missing out on stuff, because they're like, I'm a speaker's hover search firm, and like, we don't need to meet. I just feel like it's going to slow things down. Yeah, and I'd say, do that's totally fine. No worries, we're not the right agency for you. And I'm super okay with that now. A year ago, I would have never have said that a year and a half ago, I would have let you know, that's fine, don't worry about it. Now, it's just, if it means I have to fly in a day and you can't create, I will fly to New York Chicago, 70s, the road is in the US, in a day for a 45 in a meeting, then fly home. Okay. If you can't create that time for me, the same thing to be a partnership that we want to be in. I know you've sort of painted a picture for us, but what is it that drastically changed? Like, that isn't that long ago, hour and a half where you were the guy on. If I said that to you and I was a top tier client of yours. Yeah. And I said, look, Ed, I think, look, I want to work with you guys, I've heard great things about Obama. Yeah, I want to work with you guys. Like, I feel like I've shared my story. I don't understand why I need to meet you. Let's just get cracking, let's get going. And then you're like, look, I'm going to make this is really important. I need to meet you. And I feel like, yeah, it creates a bit of friction. And before you would have gone, okay, let's do it. But now you're like, no, this is important to us. And then you can talk about why. What is it that drastically changed it? Like, you must have seen enough to be like, if we don't do this or when we do make this extra time investment collectively, long time everything's way better. Like, what is it that really changed it? So since we've met the customers face to face, we haven't lost a customer. So the churn for us is a lot lower. I'll send our existing customers pre this. I've then gone on to meet the ones that I haven't. We haven't done as well with them. So whether that's actual the relationship or not because of that, but it's something that we've looked at every customer worked with this year, we've met face to face or I've met face to face or pull or some of the team. I think when you set that rule, it's really important that I don't break it because as soon as I break it once, it's really easy to break it again. Yeah. And actually, if it means I've got to go on a flight last thing on Friday and then get back Saturday, well, it's the rule that I put in place. And as long as we keep that rule going, and customers can give up 30, 45 minutes at the time. So you've just seen it in the data, a lot of time later. Just later. Yeah. Okay. And maybe it isn't that, but there's also something for it. Well, a lot of the officers in the hubs were building, they're back in San Francisco, they're in Boston, they're in New York. So actually getting in, seeing the office, understanding the other types of people in the office, the culture, the vibe, that in itself is fun. And I say to the team, it's the fun part of the job. You get to travel to Corsair, it is a meet really great leaders. It's also great for the team. The team speaking to try and manage us face to face and these EP's are sales and these CROs of sub-successful organizations. And for them, it's a great opportunity to learn and get better. I just think it would be such a mixture of loads of different things. My other thoughts on it as well. I think it's way easier to ignore someone, not get back to someone if you haven't met them. I don't know, there's just some, it's like a small thing. I don't know what you think about that. But for example, now, me and you spent some time with each other. If I was to call you versus maybe we had some text messages and maybe I had one Zoom call with you, I feel like you're just less likely to avoid me or at least get back to me. I'm sorry, you think about that. There's just something, there's just something about. What's the human nature? You want to help. And if someone calls you, you're like, I shot you a message a year and a half ago, it's you ignore. But if I shut you one now, there's a higher variety you'll respond. But it's the same if we did this over Zoom. We could do this over Zoom. And I'm sure it'd be good. But you don't create that relationship and that person would have just being in the same room as someone, seeing their mannerism, seeing how they operate, how they talk. You just don't get that. Yeah, it's just, it is just an extra percent of edge. It is. And it's, we're talking small percentage here. And at the level that we're at and some of the top funds are at, it's small margins that make you win or lose. And if that's the reason why this customer chose us or not, because we went out and spent a day with them and they give us that role and exclusive or they say, no, we want you guys to do this. And it's a three four grand investment. And it's worth every penny. Have you also had a question around like what other search firms have you met over the last 12 months? So you've done a lot of work. Always. Yeah. You know, we always do. What's been the typical answer since you've been put this rule in place. The big thing with exact search firms and search firms in our world, you know, the artist knows the diverse, the truth, the river eras is often when they go and they've used these for for top level hires. And that's fine. You know, if they're willing to spend 150 grand minimum for 100 grand minimum fee. Okay, great. None of them do the GTM stuff. So if we can show and improve to them how could we art the GTM stuff. And we are this cost effective and we're slightly more cost effective than some of the top exact search firms. But they're going to get me and my team rather than someone who they won't know it than the exact search firms. Then they're going to give us a shot on the next draw. And we partner with some exact search firms that plug us in when the time's right because they know that if they've taken equity in their business, they need a really strong GTM build out team. And that's when we can come in and a lot of the exact search firms take equity in the businesses they're agreeable. I've heard that. That's quite smart interest and play that. Really interesting play. So just to be clear for everyone, because I have heard that from Speed to Fue, different people that some of these search firms and I'm sure there'll be some UK firms as well. But like, yeah, basically part of the proposition or how we work together is almost like, look, we're literally invested in the success of your business. So it's a win-win. So rather than, I don't know, you'll probably know more than me, rather than being like, this is what the typical fee structure is and how it works. Actually, it's like let's talk about getting a green equity in your business. Usually it's a split of fee, you know, a percentage of your fixed fee and equity. But it does mean it means they're truly invested, right? It's because we've taken a percentage we've missed out on 100k of cash, let's say, to take 150k worth of equity. We're super invested in this. But it also means that when the GTN buildout comes and it's not something they do, they know they need a really strong GTN partner who can come in and build out fast bid at successfully because it means they can have a faster return on their investment, maybe it's an acquisition, maybe whatever it is. And that's where, again, the world's big enough for us all to play in. There's enough agency, there's enough search firms for us all to be very successful. We've what we've spoken about then, it seems like what really makes you feel like we've built this US team on foundations now is I really respect you being really transparent because I think people can really just take a lot from this where you were just willing to be like, "No, actually, let's just stick with the clients that we have the most success with that we really enjoy working with." You're going to some great stats around actually, you know, we work with 10 customers, this is actually the amount of opportunity that we have versus working with 30 different companies. So it sounds like that's been like a real bedrock of like why this is now foundational to growing this Austin office because now you're actually trying to then get someone who's like head delivery because you're going to be that sort of head of growth on the BD side doing what you do best. But it sounds like that's really the backbone of you believing. We've got really strong foundations now and we're clear on what we want to be, what we want to be known for, where we say no, where we say yes, is that sort of fair? Yeah, I'm pretty old school with how I look at recruiting. And I look at the team we've got now and I think every one of these people has got a real opportunity to create. Life-changing, money, you know, skills and be on a journey here for the next four or five years. I've never once been able to say that before and that's because we get a shift in both that but a shift in hiring as well. Half the team I wouldn't have spoken to a year and a half ago because they didn't come from our wild, they didn't come from our ecosystem. They didn't, you know, know when you have the software world and go to market, maybe they came from engineering. You know, one of them worked was, so we're engineering her from American Airlines, but she was the best at what she did at that. So we thought, okay, let's bring the best people in from any recruitment vertical and teach them go to market sats. It's not complicated. It just takes time to learn. But what we do isn't rocket science. Now, at the end, they were recruiters. And if you can recruit and be ready, really successful in one industry, and you can bring those raw traits and skills across another. You can also be very successful. It also really seems like having clarity on also this GTM search piece, how you're under work with companies. Super helpful. All that as well, because a lot of it, I've got here what like 90% of the oil work now is committed. Yeah, it's all committed. They'll work on a GTM search. There's a couple of one customer that hasn't moved off yet onto it yet. But everything else is, you know, we're hiring a delivery as we speak to come in and really own the delivery function, because our team just focused on delivery by self-pollower and Jack and a couple others in the business to do all the growth, and they just focus on delivery. So it really focuses them on the world, what they can get good at, and there's great opportunity. So it sounds like all of that really is the equation behind, like we've got some really solid foundations and that to grow on. Yeah. Just to give people some interest and perspective of this GTM search, I've got to hear them enough again and this wrong. But you mentioned it earlier, so let's say that we initiate a GTM search. I know it might really vary, but typically is that for one higher is it each search will have their own search within it. So if it's an A, you know, it'll have a search, if it's an SE, it'll have its own search, if it's an SDR, have its own search. You know, follow this process. It will follow this process, but typically you win in like a variety of like multiple searches or does it? I know it really varies. A lot of the seed series A stuff, it's land and expand. So we'll do a couple of highs here and then they'll hit their revenue targets and then expand further and further. Right. So I mean, it's more big buildouts, you know, we've got some big 20 person buildouts right now, both in Europe and the US because of champions that are joined and they'll all follow GTM search. So I've got here a free day research brand. Yeah, I think so earlier. So that's okay. I need this VP of sales. That's where we need to start free day research brand long list of 50 to 150 people. Yeah, long list, it really depends on it could be more, it could be less, but the research is the most important part. If we look at recruiting companies in the whole, what makes us different to another out there? You know, we recruiters, a lot of us have worked in the same leaders in the past. We're doing the same sort of outreach. We're sending emails, we're sending texts, we're sending ad notes, we're co-calling, how do we get in front of more people? And actually, the research and identification of all the profiles is for me the most important thing now. I would never would have thought that I would be saying that two years ago because it was just speed, get people in, but we just use a LinkedIn for that. Just LinkedIn, yeah. And now it's okay. Well, the customer does X. Let's find every single one that could be relatable to them. Every single company out there that we think is the right type of company, the persona they sell to, whoever it is, they could be a fit for a customer. And that's really deep dive in and see okay, who all the individuals at those companies. So it's a bottom, but as a long list, team does just people that we believe from my expertise could do this job. Could do the job. These people have been interested or you spoke into it. It's long list is anyone who we think could do the job on paper. Then the short list is once we've introduced five or six people that can then do the job that we've spoken to that are interested. So you've done this long list and then we're then going to be doing the strategic outreach attention outreach. And we'll run all the outreach through our customer. We'll say hey, would you do this? Would you change this? Would you proposition it this way? Or can we say this? And they give us the sign off. So then we know they know what we're saying. We're all agreed again. Okay, this is what we're going to do. This is how we're going to go to market every customer as a slash channel. If we're working multiple different roles, multiple different home managers, multiple different slash channels, slackers become one of our biggest tools now as a business. Then you do the first agent review. Are you taking on that responsibility? Are you? We'll run them through the entire process. We'll pre-agree an outline of what the interview process should be. We'll mutually agree it. We'll agree what each interview I should interview for in each stage. We'll put a score card next to that associated to that because a lot of our hiring managers don't know what they need to interview for. If you're looking for a sales rep at the VP of sales, then you speak to the SCM manager. You speak to an AE, then you speak to the CRO again. They're all probably asking similar questions. So let's break it down and say, okay, this is what you need to focus on in this interview and score it. Right? When you're typically speaking to companies about working this way, like typically we've found that things just aren't consistent in the process that are some of those different things. Like because it sounds like really that's what you end up, I can imagine that's what you end up selling a lot of the time. A lot of it is the process. And what we say to them is you're not paying us for a hire or an individual, you're paying us for a process. So if we can run a really great process with five, six individuals, seven individuals in it at any given time, you're going to hire one. That's the end product. But you're actually paying us for us to get those five, six in process before you make the hire. And I've got here a time to hire a 62 to 47 days. Yeah, it's dramatically reduced. But I think it's almost as well from what I've won, I sit down and people and break this down on the agenda that you've been on. It's almost like the customer should perceive, okay, they might get to the outcome more quickly, but they get to the end of the outcome more quickly and they also get to the end of the outcome going, that was the best possible in like hiring process that we could have done. And we're happy with it. And that's why we do it. It's the process. That's why we say it's the process. Because they know at the end of it, they've made the right decision. They've spoken to enough candidates that have got them to the decision. Versus you put in some CVs in front of them. Exactly. And then go in, Ed, is this the best? Yeah. We can do it all. We can show them every outreach we've done, every message we've sent, everyone we've spoken to, the reasons why that are interested, why they are. And everything is meticulously mapped, detailed or orientated. And they can see it. And for a lot of CROs and first time founders and first time VP of sales, they don't really know what they're looking for. And they really need to have a really strong tight process where a lot of education goes on. Because again, they don't know what they don't know. We've seen it's hundreds of times. But then it could be their first time. And then you know, you said earlier around keeping clients and they've got things here around, so we're running quarterly reviews as needed, like we're, it's then that other like the post office. Yeah, every customer has a quarterly review. We sent into every high manager work with plus the CEO, founder, some more send to the investors that we work with so they can see okay, time to hire, how many hours we've made, how many interviews they've done, who was the bottleneck on the interviews? Because the SC manager took 60 days to hire every other home manager at 45. And it gives them complete visibility into the hiring. And suddenly that SC manager next quarter is going to be the fastest to hire because he's just been called out on a very standard quarterly review. And then just to like round this out then, like I honestly think particularly people and recruiters that listen to this podcast for the most part are like here and you talk about how you're working, the time you're getting, how involved that you get, how much you can influence, how much the customers are listening to you. I'd like to think for the most part recruiters would go, that sounds like a way better, you know, you're not working, is it limiting beliefs, is it, do you know what I mean? Like what is it, because you'll be interviewing potential people now that don't exactly work in this one. Yeah, we're going to be going, look, we've been on a journey, we now work in this way. What is it that you think for the most part you can just talk from your own experience to a whole people back? Because you was that, that was painstaking. When we first started implementing, it was tough. We lost a bunch of customers, the customers didn't quite understand what we were asking them to do because there's a bit of feedback they have to do on the Excel sheets and filling some stuff in. And it was painful when it was tough and the customer's churned at the right style of it because they didn't get it. And it was much more meaner, educating them well enough and laying it out. And it's actually, guys, if we want to partner at setting clear expectations at the start, and those are the most valuable thing I could ever do in any partnership now is, this is what you can expect from us, this is what we expect from you. And they agree to that, do they agree to it? So then when I say to them, "X, Y, Z, you need to do this because you agreed, they then go on and do it." But for other people out there, I think the hardest thing is getting customers to commit into it and buy into it because most don't, most don't want to. And that's the big difference is, if your contingent shop is not going to work because they're working with two or three agencies and all they care about is speed and profiles and speak to enough people. So not only work through a true partnership with the customer where you know you've got an exclusive, where you've got a committed retained and you can spend some time with them, you can go out and visit them, you can sit down with them and walk them through this entire process. I did it with a founder last week in San Francisco, three hours, me and one of their investors, we just sat down, we walked them through the process and originally they needed a CRO. We actually, having been through that process, they actually don't need a CRO. They need a VP of sales and a VP of CS. But I wouldn't have got that if I just jumped on a Zoom with them. I said, "Great, what's the brief of the CRO? I'll fly out and meet you next week. We can have dinner and let's kick it off." Because we walked them through exactly what he wants, why he wants it, what he's thinking, first time founder. And we've come to this conclusion. It's a way better solution for where they are as a business and the revenue goes into hit next year. So what I heard there, then, do you feel like maybe people aren't willing to go through that initial pain to maybe get to the end outcome where they'd like to? They see a CRO, they think 100 grand fee, great, let's jump on it straight away, let's do it. Actually, it probably will fail. People laugh for they say, "Well, what would you do for work?" And it's recruiter, right? And she, we do a lot of consulting these days. I spent more time consulting with fans and advising them on what we think they should do because XYZ and understanding their revenue, their cat, whatever it is that's super important. And when you're a founder trying to get from one to five million, it's not just about hiring a bunch of sales reps or a VP of sales. Let's break it down. What made you feel like the pain was worth it? Do you know what I mean? To like, because you really had to say, you must have, like, served my best customers who have done a huge amount of revenue with in the past because you worked them in a contingent way. They worked them in a new hiring manager, they didn't want to move to this model at XYZ. That was a tough, they'll just swallow it at the time. But I was very much saying for the great to good. I felt like, okay. And it was more because I could see what it would do for the delivery team and the team that I was working with. Like before, it was very sporadic. They didn't know if they were going to close this deal because they didn't have control. And I was doing really well because running the US and we had great revenue and I was making loads of money. But the actual team went and then sort of stood back and sort of, this is what I think being a leader is, if you go into leadership and it's why I'm actually transitioning out of it as such, it's really important to know what you want to achieve and why you're doing what you're doing. And the team now are doing way more revenue individually because of the model that we've moved to, where before was a lot of me. I knew the hiring manager so I could, so we talked them into this deal here and there and I knew what strings to pull. And the team didn't because they didn't have that relationship. Now every person within the team has all the weekly courses. the home and just they run, they account, manage the accounts, they're in charge of it and that wouldn't have happened if we were doing what we were doing a year and a half ago. I appreciate you being transparent with that. That must have been tough to sort of hear like because you obviously would have pointed all the evidence or done such a good job and still then reluctant to move to, I'm sure there were some lessons in there though. Yeah, I mean it's the best thing ever did is we've done as a business. We were just so we built on rubble. We now got real strong work foundations with key core customers and every time we speak to them they know the process they're going to have to go through if they want to work with us. Was it just getting to that zero to one that we really then just gave you that? Revenue took a hit to start. Up April this year, March this year was pretty slow on March last year, April now, our year runs April as March but then we suddenly saw huge June, big May huge June because it took time to get the ramped up and the customers did buy into it. It took them 45, 60 days to really buy in for us to start doing a great job and then we just saw it. Absolutely. The total effect of deals falling in and it's down to the process. And then that really then gave you that belief, that conviction to be like this is why we need to work customers this way. And don't get me wrong, you still get me wrong. We've got great customers speaking to them and they say no, we just can't buy into it. Because there's some of the most exciting setups out there and we've got to say no. And they're looking at us, why are you saying no and that's the way we've been in place. And as much as it hurts right now and it's long term success for short term pain. Now I appreciate being transparent with it because I think people would take a lot from that and if they want to get to the outcome that we've spoken about the way that you're working with customers and have a lot more predictability around just the whole process, not just like your pipeline, then like you just said there, you have to sign up for that initial pain. So that's the difference being a leader and not being a leader. If I was an IC and just billing and just running way in little one person team, it matters less and less right because it's just you, you know what's going on, you're in with all the higher managers, you've got their relationships. But when you've got other people, seven, six, seven people relying on you to know what's going on and the biggest bottleneck before was me because everyone's like, we didn't what's going on, we're weighing on it. And that was the biggest line that I heard for the last year, we're weighing on it because I had 20 customers, I was managing and running everything and it was just bottlenecked. And we sat down with the team and I said to them, what do they want from a delivery leader? And they listed one to six, seven different things out. And I was like, guys, I maybe want to do those things. And it was that point that said, okay, it's now it's really time to bring in a head of delivery, which we're trying to have for right now and come in and just own delivery, own delivery, own account management. But they've really got to want to teach. They really want to want to be a learner and help develop and get this team pushing forward because everyone there has got great raw ingredients. But we're a really junior team. No one's got more than two years experience in our world. Love it. Well, I think generally like I'm just a huge advocate of a crew and recruitment because of what we've learned today. Like if you think of where you was since that dinner and that conversation. And like even now the learning hasn't stopped, right? You're still going to be learning a ton. But I really commend you for one having the humility to go actually know what I'm maybe not the the best lead in this position to take as well. I know that we get to then just again, I love the like the learnings and the humility around actually let's actually it's going to potentially benefit me person the long run. But you would have I'm sure taken a bit of a hit personally financially and these things. So I think there's just so many lessons in here and yeah, you would have learned so much and likely feel like you're still learning and you've moved your life to Austin as well through this platform of recruitment. I just think it's mega. There's very few jobs in the world that anyone as an 18 and 10 year old can then be sitting here in this chair seven years later and have done what I've done what loads of others have done in this world. Like if you give it everything the opportunity is crazy to go out and you know be managing a team of seven eight you know doing multi millions in revenue and then actually for me to step back and say you know what guys I've taken it this far someone else can take it on the two and a half to five to seven million journey in the US and I'll focus on something else and you know as someone told me it's 19 year old kid I could sit here and check the handoff you know every day of the week and the opportunities that I've done and the work we've done as a business and there's a long way to go but there's loads to learn and a Graham who's on the podcast you know a couple months back and he's a real strong mentor to me and the injuries and that came out was because I said to Paul the founder here I need to learn more I need to do more and how do I get more knowledgeable around the space around recruiting in a whole around life and I have a session with Graham they want every two weeks and if I didn't ask Paul or push Paul probably wouldn't have happened and I look at people out there in different worlds and roles saying and if you're feeling stagnant or you want to do more just push because every founder business leader has got a mentor of their own that they've worked with or you know can introduce you to it and have conversations with and as you said earlier we speak to some incredibly successful people it can be way more successful than I'll ever be all right but you can learn 1% off what they do or half a percent it's going to make you better love it thanks for joining me appreciate it 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 a 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 is 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 the mark the thing that's really cool about what we're doing of 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 a 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 time learning when they know they're learning from people that are 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-missive on LinkedIn connect me on LinkedIn directly and I'd love to connect with you and to find out if we can help you get more out of your people.