How To Stand Out in Today's Market: Business Development Strategies with Oliver Legg

Hello everyone, a very quick one from me. It would be a massive help to us with our ambition to help as many recruiters as possible. Achieve their goals and also inspire the next generation to choose recruitment as a career if you hit that follow and subscribe button. If you're someone that prefers to learn in a visual way, we've also recently invested a lot in our video podcast experience. So in the show notes, you'll always be able to find the link to watch the video on our YouTube channel and make sure that you hit subscribe so you don't miss a future episode. Thank you so much for supporting the show and enjoy this week's episode. Welcome back to another episode of the Recruitment Mentals podcast. I'm your host, Tisha Mizzis. And on this week's episode, I was joined by Oliver Legg. He's one of the co-founders of every recruitment business called Asperam Search. They specialize in the cyber security space and I've known Oliver for a little while. I really respected the journey that they've been on over the last two years. And in those two years, this is what they've been able to achieve so far. In the second year, they did $1.35 million in revenue and they ended the second year with around five people. Now, we do speak about how they've approached growing their business, their go-to market strategy. They entirely focus on the US market and have done that from the very beginning. So we go into the details on how they've gone about that. But where we really go into the granular on this episode is the tools and smart things that they've invested in that's really helped their team be successful and have the opportunity to stand out in, as we all know, a crowded marketplace. So we talk about their BD strategy that is really enabled them to hit those sorts of numbers, which has really paid off for them. And Oliver gives some really good examples in this conversation as well. So enough from me, let's get into this week's episode. Holly, welcome to the podcast. Good to be here, especially the week of your rebrand as well. Yes, it's exciting. Thanks for making the trip. I appreciate that. Obviously, we've spoken a few times. Obviously, spoken to Joe's work. So I've enjoyed seeing the journey that you guys have gone on. I'm really excited to talk today about this two-year entrepreneurial journey that you and Joe have been on and building your recruitment business together. Just to give everyone listening some immediate context of where you're at, because what we're going to focus on today is very much the last two years, although you've been in recruitment for over six years. So, firstly, you did $1.2 million in net fee income, and it was all, like you said, like, 99 per cent per. Right? Yep. And then, second year was $1.35 million net fee income. And the second year around, like, five people around that. Six people. Six people. And, yeah, that was that end time of net fee income. And then, I guess, the other thing. So it's all still very much per. We did our second contract placement this week. So, yeah. So, two, yeah, yeah, that massive contract book. You've always, and only do the American market. Yep. And that's not, like, just the East Coast. It's like, you do everything you ask. Yeah. And, yeah, all per, as I said, and your niche is cybersecurity. All right. Well, let's have some fun, then. Let's first start with, like, you know, what you really would have had to think about when hiring for your business. Like, what characteristics and traits do you believe make up a highly successful recruiter in today's market? All the reasons that people always give on here are, like, 100 per cent right. So the biggest ones always, what resilience, work ethic, intelligence, like emotional intellect. And it's all 100 per cent right. But, like, what we're really trying to do now is find people that have the underlying drive and mission focus that enables them to come back day after day doing this job. Because, yeah, like, recruitment can be shit sometimes. There's a lot of hours in the day, even the good days, where it's hard. And if you're not driven to really do, like, big things, then there's much easier ways to make, like, 50, 60k, right? Whereas, if you're mission focused on, it could be anything. It could be some people just want to be dripping in like, designing gear, some people want to have nice cars, nice houses. Some people just want to make sure they're providing for their family, their wives never have to work, so they can look after their kids. Like, that's my personal goal for my wife to be able to always look after my children. And that's what she's fully on board with as well. And some people just want to retire early. And like, recruitment's that job where it can make all that happen in a really short time frame. But only if you've got the underlying goal to have resilience and to have that intellect to be able to do it. So I think it's, everything else can be taught as long as people have the underlying drive to make it happen. And what sort of questions do you ask to get to find out that people have that? We got good deep. Because everyone say, yeah, you say, what are you doing it for? And everyone's like, I want to have loads of money, I want to not worry, like, I want to buy a house, that's like the defacto answer. And I think it's about going, it's just going that level deeper and understanding, okay, but why and what and have you actually thought through what you need in order to do that? Whereas if it's just, oh yeah, I want to buy a house. This just, this is that easy answer, right? Whereas if they're like, yeah, I want to do this, I need this amount of money, this is how long I want to do, what need until I do it. It's like, okay, this person's like, they're, they're, they're probably thought through. Yeah, it's like a genuine answer rather than a just easy answer to give. So let's get into this business, Jeremy, then. So, recruitment for wrong. So you and Joe worked with each other in the previous company? Yes. Yes, so Joe hired me as a little green face recruiter, resource. So Joe, how did you progress this else director and then did Joe progress in that business as well, right? Yeah, so it was, it was another really early stage. So, Joe was the first employee of that business. I joined a year later. Yeah, a small firm purely focused on the UK like technical cybersecurity market. But yeah, Joe and I were kind of key parts of helping that business grow. And then we just thought, you know what, we want to do things are we and have our own mark on things. So why don't we just start with like, because you just said that there, like what was the initial strategy for ultimately acquiring clients? Because, you know, that's going to be how you're going to be able to, you know, start making money, working jobs, having vacancies that you can fill. So what was yours and Joe's initial plan on one, the strategy on, you know, how are we going to go about acquiring clients? What's our, you know, go to market strategy. You know, talk to a bit about there on like version one of what, what that looks like. Did you always know you was on the focus on the American market? Like talk to a bit about, you know, how you crafted down what that initially looks like. Our initial strategy was always going to be US because we didn't, we didn't want to get in a way of our restrictions like at all. So we were like, well, the easiest way to do that is focus on a market. We've never even looked at Joe managed to close a five-year-old retainer of, it was just over $140,000. The week before our business actually was incorporated on company's house. So we were having to hold off actually signing the contract until our business was officially a business. So yeah, like he just, yeah, an incredible start in having that in literally the day one that was roles to work. We set out to do the same thing as before just in the US. So kind of technical security roles. And we did that for the first kind of six months, well, no seven, eight months or so. And then I can't remember exactly how it happened, but it was all Joe. And he managed to build a relationship with Sequoia Capital. So like one of the biggest, most prominent VCs. And then they introduced us to one of their security vendor clients who were hiring four go-to-market talent. So sales, sales engineering to build their then-the-all-the-american team. And from that point, we kind of had like almost like a Eureka moment. We were like, right, our pure BD strategy now is going to be focused around building the underlying relationships. The all of the hiring managers and the co-founders of these vendors, the people they actually listen to and the people that are advising. So if we can get in and build relationships with the advisors of these vendors, then we're almost going to be the kind of default partner. And that's the strategy we've been doubling down on ever since. Super interesting to sort of happen organically. Yeah, yeah. Kind of unplanned our businesses now 80, 85% go-to-market focused. That was never the intention. The thought is more technical, right? Yeah. So we do, we do a few. So we still do some security engineering and what we call enterprise security, which we want to build that out. But we've kind of accidentally built a business around the go-to-market side. So we're just investing a lot into that. Well, let's go into that then because the fact that that's been pretty pivotal on being the strives that you double down one. So just for everyone listening just to make sure that this sort of resonates in people understand. So you said there no vendors. What does that mean? So a vendor is a business that builds and then sells a technology like a tool. So they have a normally a software product, often a SaaS product. And then in our world it's very specifically a cyber security product. Which they would then sell to companies? Yeah. Or government. Given it's security, we do quite a lot in the federal government space. So what you're saying is instead of going directly to them because you had that introduction and that success in a advisor or a a PE firm or that type of community introduced it to to the vendor. Why was that such a aha moment? Because you got introduced by them, they're like, "Trust that you straight away." It was a lot more easier to negotiate, good quality times, was there a lot more committed? What is it that you experienced, which made you go, yeah, we should only be really trying to break into accounts this way? - So I'll talk you through the project. It was a four head count project. So three enterprise sales people. And then one enterprise sales director has a build out then Northern American sales team. And bearing in mind, it was a, it was pretty high value project or retained with cancellation clauses and like a fully locked in retained project. You'd expect you'd need to jump through quite a few internal hoops to get that kind of project signed off. And I wouldn't say it was easy, but it was kind of a case of, oh, like we trust you already because you've come through this recommendation. So the VC route has been huge for us. Is it the trust element you guys have experienced then? - That underlying trust. So we, I spoke to a CRO of one of our, it was a new, we didn't play similar, it was a new CRO of one of our clients a couple of months ago. We spoke to him about 10 days after he joined the firm. And he said his first week, he'd had, he reckoned it was about 40 to 50 different bits of outreach purely from recruiters. So you've got emails, phones, text, what's apps, emails that these guys are getting absolutely spammed by. And how the fuck are they gonna choose someone? Like they're probably just not, they're just gonna ignore people. But who are they gonna listen to? They're gonna listen to their advisor, their investor, the person that's integral into their business. So if they come in and they say, oh, well, you need to hire salespeople, this is the firm you need to use. They're gonna trust that, especially in the market at the moment. There's so much noise, like a lot of the 180 recruiters and now being told, well, you've got a BD target on your head, you've got to go out and do your own outreach. They may or may not have been taught how to do that properly. So what you've got is you've got a huge amount more people trying to win the roles and speeds and managers than ever before. And if you aren't doing anything differently and if you haven't got like a genuine differentiator, then how on earth are you gonna shine through the noise? So I think that's really important. I think it's important businesses provide those tools to their consultants. - Yeah, I can agree more. Would you mind if we just focused on the VCPs, 'cause that's gonna be in pivotal. And then we can talk about the tools that you guys have really worked on developing in your business that you found to be really effective as you've been on this journey for the last two years. So you had that great experience, and you're like, we have to, you know, this would be great if we had more introductions and more companies that we could work with because they're trusted as immediately. How did you then go about increasing the number of VCs that viewed you as one of their recommendations or one of their trusted partners when it comes to hiring and talent and people? Like how did you initially think about how are we gonna get more VCs like that to be on board of us and introduce us like what was the initial approach? - A massive slog of outreach. And a massive slog of trying to get our name in front of these people, utilizing any existing relationships that we had. And so we, we, we, I say we again, it's so, so Joe does most of the BD. So he focuses very, very heavily between him and I, he does most of the sales aspect. He was been doing that flat out for probably a year, year and a half now. And I'd say at the start of this year is when it really started paying dividends. So there was a long, long slog of just not really getting much for it and almost, almost starting to, to doubt it and, and being like is, 'cause they're not quick wins. It's not a case of, I'm gonna call this hire man here and I might actually pick up a role off the back of one phone call. So it's been a lot more time investment, but just doing it remotely, I don't think would be effective. So we invest a huge amount of time and money into getting in front of these businesses. So we do multiple trips to the US to Tel Aviv. We hold round table dinners with, with founders with VCs. It's a case of just setting yourself aside from just cold email or phone outreach. Like, call calling absolutely has its place and it's still really, really effective. But you gotta kind of supplement it with other initiatives as well. - So what was Joe finding so difficult then? So are you saying they're sorry, like, you know, was he struggling to get more introductions into other vendors or, you know, I was curious on like, how many other more VCs have you managed to build good relationships with? - So I'd say that now we are, we're in the cybersecurity space for go-to-market positions. I'd say we're the go-to of probably about seven or eight VCs now. - So what did you find most difficult to be in those rooms of those people to get the chance of being seen as the recommendation? - So it's track record and obviously it's hard to build a track record without a track record. So it's finding one that will give you, almost give you a shot. And then once you've got that case study, you double down on it. And you, I mean, you like crunch base is amazing, right? 'Cause you can go on crunch base and our Angelica, our operations lady, she's building out like a Google Sheet Market map that literally they was us to see. Well, right, we've worked with this vendor, or this end user, whatever kind of client it is, who invests in them? Because normally if it's a VC funded firm, there's, I mean, let's say their series B or C, like there's gonna be potentially over 10 different investors, potentially even more than that, over the years that have been involved in that company. And you can then see what other companies has this individual investor then been involved in. So you're then taking one successful project, and you're able to use that as an end to potentially multiple multiple firms, all from one ultimate relationship that's really credible because it's been involved with the VC. - This podcast is proudly sponsored by SourceBaker. And today I wanted to talk to you about sales opportunities and how SourceBaker can help, because are you tired of the competition beating you to new sales opportunities? Do you want to make more placements from your existing resources? Who doesn't? 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So especially when now we're doing a lot more work in Tel Aviv in Israel. So there's a huge tech and in particular, huge cybersecurity community in Israel. It's an awesome area to work, because everyone knows everyone and everyone has an underlying trust of each other because they've all come out of the military together. But the moment you do something wrong or the moment you fail on a project, it's also spreads throughout that community. So we had a project that in hindsight, we shouldn't have taken. So we had a DevOps security company that was, I think it was a director of marketing search and they refused to give us manager contacts. They refused to give us a proper briefing call. I really can't remember why we even said, "Oh yeah, we'll get you some resumes." But we didn't put proper effort into it. So well, we tried to win another company and they said, "Oh, what other Israeli firms have you worked with?" We gave these names, "Oh, well, I'll call the founder of this firm." And what does he say? He's like, "Oh yeah, we worked that one and they didn't deliver." So we've now ruined, well, I wouldn't say ruined, but we've made it so much harder to break into this other client because of a project that we didn't even put proper time into. And that then stems down to having really, really high standards with what roles you decide to work, whether you're an individual recruiter, whether you're a business owner, and especially at the moment where roles are not as easy to come by, like don't lower your standards in terms of what you're willing to put time into. Like being willing to say, "Well, unfortunately, we weren't able to work on this if we aren't able to do that. This is part of the process and the important part of it. If they're not willing to listen to your take your advice, then chances of feeling that are gonna be, it's just gonna be really difficult, right?" Just find a bit on the VCPs. So sat down with, like we're Jamie Weetz, who also does similar market and spoke about this. What he found was, I don't know if you've seen this for Joe, you and Joe's spoken about it, but what he found was when he did getting agreement in place that they were one of the companies that they would recommend from a hiring and talent acquisition standpoint, he thought the floodgates would be opened, it wasn't. (laughs) So there's one thing, you know, being in the room and, you know, right, we're happy to recommend you. And then I'm assuming you guys are like, you're absolutely buzzing. Guys, we just got a really big VC, largely they invested in 30 different cybersecurity vendors. Like this could be huge for us. And then there's just tumbleweed in terms of, the emails going, hey Joe, we've just invested in this company or this part of our portfolio really needs support with this. So what then had to happen to maximize relationships like one, did you guys experience that and two, what have you, what have Joe had to be really good at in terms of like, okay, we've worked really fucking hard to be in the room, to be recommended. Now what we're doing to really maximize the opportunity that we've been given. - So then it's cultivating the relationship, literally making sure that you're in really regular conversations with them. Again, it really ties into the events and actually seeing these people and people in person. So in Tel Aviv, we held two lunches. We did a founders lunch and then we also did a VC lunch. And we had, I think it was about 13 or 14 individual VCs from different and very high profile cybersecurity investors. And these are companies that Joe has been in contact with for a long time. And now things are starting to happen. So this is far from a like get rich quick in recruitment BD scheme. It's not, but when it does pay off, and as I say, it's been starting to pay off the beginning of this year, it's gonna be massive. So we recently got onto the, and this was off the back of two successful projects with the end vendors that we did actually win directly with the vendors themselves. So the VC wasn't involved. And we're now on what they call the platform or the value creation platform, that one of the largest corporate VCs provide to their vendors. So now when you go onto that platform because of Vendonies of Service, you've got Asperon's name on there. So if you need a recruitment, then if you need go to Market Recruitment, these the guys that you can't speak to. But it takes time. We still not had any benefit or roles come off the back of being on that platform yet, but we will. So I think the main thing is just investing in these longer term strategies and just having the belief that they are gonna pay off whilst you're all also trying to do your normal outreach and generate direct wins as well. That's what I was gonna say, this is great that you've had this overarching long-term strategy, which hopefully you can continue building. But what have you and Joe had to really double down on in the short term to make sure you got cash flow and all those things going as well? - Good email sequencing. So this is where just the really good sales strategies come through. So really good email sequencing, definitely heavy on the cold calling still. Like I'm a true believer that those old school sales tactics still work like anyone that says cold call instead. So don't believe me in the slightest. We are still able to have very good wins in terms of just just getting getting directly through to founders, CROs, CMOs and picking up roles that way. But they're more likely to have a lot more competition. So it's then whistling it down again and being like, "Well, I've won this role, but do I actually want to put time into it?" Or is it more worth my time to carry on searching for a better quality role that I'm more likely to fill? - So on that, America's so big. How did you initially have a bit of a focus or target or did you not? Because it's why a lot of companies initially start in certain parts of the US or certain states or, how did you approach that? Because there is so much you can go for like what, that surely could have been overwhelming. - Well, we were in this really fortunate and probably fairly unusual position where we had massive projects on day one. So we already had a big focus. So it was in a company called Neuro. They have these driverless robots that drive around like Texas and California delivering like Domino's pizza and like Kruger. So it was really, really cool. So we had a focus there straight away. So we were building their automotive security team and we then built a client base around that project. So they were looking for remote people. I mean, they could have been in California, but they were also looking for remote people. So it gave the opportunity of right, we're speaking to candidates from day one. So we've got people to flip on day one and we managed to build a decent client base off the back of that. And like these original recruitment strategies, they're still some of the best ways like candidate flipping. - What does that mean? - So being able to speak to us, not even a senior level candidate, any candidate and be thinking, what else can I get from this call? So what can you get? You can get referrals or you can get leads. So every candidate knows someone for some form of role that you have, whether they're actually any good or not is different, but they do know someone that they could recommend to you for something. And they will be able to give you a level of intel into their company, what's going on hiring, who does the hiring when they are hiring? And it's just thinking, I can get that information from every single candidate, every single conversation and just making sure you get it. Especially now there's so many automation tools and so many amazing things that recruiters have that never used to have. It's easy to get away from actually there's some really core activities that are probably the most effective ones that a lot of people then forget to do on a consistent basis. - Is that any financial you think a lot of people forget to do, update the database? (laughs) - We laugh, right, but when you're building out a new market, a new company, you should be excited about that and take that seriously, right? - Absolutely, one of the biggest things and it's become a lot more important this year is just having regimentally high standards and the database is one of those things. And especially newer cruters that are new to the industry, they can go on and say, "Why, why, "you want my back for updating the database?" And it's a case of having clear and actually accurate data. Like six months a year down the line, you'll benefit from that. So when you need to get a manager's number instantly because you've just seen they've got a role and actually you can't because you didn't put that number on the database and now you need to search through your whole outlook, email box, your LinkedIn email box and something that should have taken you 20 seconds has taken you minutes. And it's just a case of those real basics. You can't build a really successful recruitment desk unless you're doing those basic things, right? Every day. - So just a few bits on the US then, then Keen to talk to you a bit about you being a business owner and how you've had to adapt there and how you've approached, you know, grown and building your business. Like you've always, so previously you'd always done the UK market. - We did a tiny bit of the US at the very end. I think I did like three placements into the States, but so yeah, Joe did a few more, but very, very few. - And as I'm sure you've seen, like there's definitely, it's definitely been really popular for the last couple of years of UK companies doing more on the US. Like what's been your experience? You've spoken a lot about, you know, BD strategies, the experiences that you guys have had, but like what have you found to be different over there if anything? Like you just said, you know, just doing really good quality recruitment basics and these things are still so, so effective and really important. So like what have you and Joe found to be different over there if anything? - I don't think it's that different. When you look at people talking about on LinkedIn, like sometimes as I feel there's this mids conception that oh, I'm going to instantly start doing the US market and it's going to be way easier. I'm going to win loads more clients and I'm going to triple my fee. And like yeah, you can triple your fee with each placement you do, but it's still hard. It's no easier and I don't think it's any harder. It's still recruitment. It's just into a brand new market. So I stand by it not being any different. And again, this just comes back to the current climate and the current market. Like if you're not doing something that stands out and gives hiring managers not so much candidates but gives hiring managers a reason to talk to you and genuinely sets you apart from other recruiters that are probably just as good as you at delivering and finding candidates and representing people, then they're not going to talk to you. And there's very few people that actually have something that's a genuinely unique talking point. But one of the tools that we give to all of our consultants is we've got a nonprofit initiative. So we're giving, well, we've got a mentorship and then almost like a scholarship program that's no fee attached to any stage of it. It's completely funded by us. And we have cohorts of candidates that are trying to break into the security industry. We pair them with industry mentors. Again, come back to Angelica. She's kind of running all of that and she is running it like an actual training program. And then we're also paying for their like three core cybersecurity certifications. So instantly, we're able to say to, when someone asks you the question of, OK, but why are you different? Bet that most recruiters don't have a genuinely unique answer to that that doesn't rely on our database or our ability to find candidates or our work ethic. Whereas what we're able to say is, well, if you work with us, then you're actually directly funding early stage cybersecurity careers. And you can actually, especially if you're in person, when you're talking about that, you can see like a noticeable like changing people. They're like, OK, well, and it allows you that conversation. So I think the most important thing in today's market is making sure that you've got something that allows you to get the foot in the door. Because if all you're doing is sending cold emails and all you're doing is doing cold calls, just NPCing or just specking in candidates, there's probably 20 other people doing the same with candidates that are just as good as yours. So you need something that allows you to stand out and allows you to get on the phone and give them give you that time to talk about your services. And what are the other tools that you guys have found right then besides an unprofit, mentoring? I love that initiative, that's great. So it's all self-serving isn't it? It's in line with what you guys are doing, trying to get more people into the industry, like just really goes in line with the mission and the industry that you're serving. But obviously what are the other tools that you found to be effective? So they're the main ones, that and the VC route, and being able to leverage some really, really high profile recommendations within the cyber security ecosystem, they're the biggest things. I think I'm going to say the podcast completely forgot the podcast. I've got that podcast as well. Yeah, I'm sitting here in this room and I've forgotten about the podcast. Doesn't know you guys have put a lot of effort into that. Yeah, no you're right. How did I miss the podcast? So yeah, the podcast has been huge. So we haven't even been doing it that long. So it was this year in terms of published, I think we're like episode 30 or something. So it's not been going that long. But we've got it to the stage where we've got the PR companies that represent big security vendors, well-known security vendors reaching out to us asking to get their clients on. So we're actually getting like proactive requests for people to come on it, because there's underlying business value to these people coming on our podcast. So like we didn't expect that to happen, like we started it as almost like a bit of fun and to be able to have those conversations. I mean, we might have just got back from Vegas by the time this episode goes live, but we're out at a big security conference in Vegas at the beginning of August. And we've got something planned around the podcast for that week that again, I won't say what it is, just in case this goes out before they go out. But we've got some things that just we haven't seen being done by other people, because there's a lot of recruitment podcasts out there. There's a lot of really good ones. So again, it's trying to think, well, what do I do to elevate that part? I think it's just trying to stand out at every single thing you do. So how does that help you guys? Is it that you can reach out to people and say, hey, we've got this. Would you be interested? How does it work in practice? Are you making sure that every time you have maybe a prep call, you speak to them as like, this is what we do as a business, this is what we have, like, how does it turn into business? So directly, we don't use the podcast as a bd pitch opportunity, because I'm sure a lot of people do. I think the moment you do that, it almost becomes false and it becomes okay, so you just have an underlying agenda of having me here. It's like, if after this, I mean, maybe you're going to. But if after this, you pull me into room, you're like, right, here's a 10 minute demo on recruitment mentors on Hexen. This was purely just so you could have an opportunity to pitch me to get my business. And it almost like makes a relationship and the whole recording soon bit false, right, if that were to happen. So that's not how we use it. It's relationships. It's been able to know that actually I can now call you. And we've done this thing together where I reckon you'll now answer a call to me and we can have a conversation where at a time it makes sense, like we can then talk about the business side of this. And we can talk about how we can have a commercial agreement. But I don't think doing it in an intake call or before or after the podcast is the right thing to do. Very quick one from me. Vinceri are one of our podcast partners. And Vinceri, if you don't know already, are an all in one recruitment agency software. And I wanted to tell you a bit about the different parts of their product. And today I want to tell you about intelligence. 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We've covered a lot of the details on like, I'm assuming all of these types of things have equated to why you were able to do a million back to back in terms of net fee income, right? So, how have you had to grow up as a business owner in these past two years? Because being an employee, growing someone else's business is different to you and Joe running your own business. So, I think someone that you said to me on the prep call, which is quite interesting. So, you said, by the second year, there's like six of you said, didn't you? Right, yeah. So, I think you said to me on the prep call, it was like the opposite of what I normally hear, which was, I think you said, "Crem'n'f I'm wrong." I felt like I tried to get away from being in the business too quickly, and you was so set on only working on the business. Whereas a lot of recruit known as the I speak to feel like they're too much in it and want more time on it. I don't know how recent this has been, but like you were saying to me that, "Yeah, I think we actually went too far that way." So, why don't we start there, like what's been, where did that come from and what were you trying to do, which maybe now you're actually having a bit of a different approach to it? So, towards, well, probably middle towards, like Q3, Q4 last year, so 2022, we'd built a really, really strong client base. The market was absolutely flying. And it was a consistent client base. Joe and I were very much focused on the vast majority of business we were able to pick up and we were able to win. Let's pass it straight down. So, let's give it to our consultants. Let's spread it out and let's build the business that way. I'm sure you know Mike Watman, absolutely brilliant. But I think we probably took one of the things he said a little bit too, too literally. And in terms of the world, as a business owner, you want to concentrate on working on rather than in. And I think we just took, we took a bit too much of a step away. In the goal of being able to kind of really feed and feel the growth by passing the roles down. I think that, what that probably did is bearing in mind we've technically higher in people as 360 consultants. Is it might have created slightly the wrong mindset in terms of, oh, like now we should be expecting these positions. Give a couple of examples. So, Tanya, one of our senior consultants, she was able to win, there was about $155,000 worth of retained work, which she successfully filled off the back of a trip to the US, a trip to San Francisco, completely new business. And one of our other other senior consultants, Brody, like he, he's on track for Target this year, which is a very good thing to say given this market, I think for a lot of, for a lot of recruiters. And about 80% of that is independently 360. So, I think it was just then that kind of shift in the mindset of actually Joe and Oli are going to come back on to working in the business. Not completely, I wouldn't call myself like a 100% full-time recruiter, he can't be, but I think it was important to kind of get back to being hands on. Also from the, like the enjoyment perspective, like missed recruiting, miss speaking to candidates and closing candidates. And that buzz of like, I've just like closed an absolute belter. So I think it was important for everyone that Joe and I just become, we've probably steps a bit further than we should have done. Let's get, let's get, let's get back to really driving it from the, from the front rather than trying to kind of feed it from, from the back. How did you go about changing that mindset, because I literally spoke to a recruitment company other day that felt the exact same where they've got a team of people who have got used to being given roles, event good money, but now trying to drive them to pick up their own business will be motivated to do that. And they're struggling to do that or just on that motivate, because they're like, "Oh, now Oli will sort me out, he'll get you pulled roll through." Or Joe's going to pull roll, Joe can just do more BD. How did you go about starting to change that? Getting closer to like KPIs and getting closer to metrics. And like we're far from a traditional like boiler room, KPIs shop where it's like, "All right, you have to do three hours of cool times before you go home or you have to send 10 CVs if you want to leave on a Friday." Like we're far from that, but we do have a big emphasis now on these are the metrics that you should be hitting if you're going to be building a successful 360 desk. One of the other things that we've learned over the last 18 months of actually having a team is what kind of meeting structure do we want? And what kind of management structure do we want? And it's taking quite a long time and quite a lot of like chopping and changing to settle on where we're at now, but we're pretty confident now that we've locked it down and it's working. So we have like weekly pledges at the start of the week. Love that word. Weekly pledges. Yeah, we do keep objectives, but I actually really like that word. Weekly pledges. So that's on the Monday. on a Monday, and the pledges are separate from the KPIs, because the KPIs, well, this is what I kind of need to be doing. - So what good looks like? - Yeah, whereas the pledge is, like this is what I'm actually aiming to do, this is the meaning, and this is the context behind the KPIs. So for example, I'm gonna deliver X number of CVs to this specific role. I'm going to try and convert this specific prospect I've been speaking to. And then I'm gonna do this type of specific outlet. Let's say you're doing a NPC, so most spec out, I'm specifically sending this candidate to X number of this type of business. And then it's really easy to then be like, "Okay, we'll halfway through the week, right, where are we at?" - Do you have another me and on Wednesday? - Yep, so another me and on Wednesday, where we're just kind of taking stop on right where are we at. And things changed, like you might have had a new role coming. So it also enables you to kind of recalibrate on what the priorities are for the week. And then on a Friday, it's then a case of, there's 20% left of the week, right? Like still an important day. It's right, what have we got left to do? So let's make sure we drive that forward. And we literally, since we've kind of locked in on that structure, there's been such a difference in the team. And also in terms of them feeling a bit more ownership and a bit more responsibility over the pledges, which in turn help achieve the KPIs. - I really love that. We do something similar. It's taken from its forecast to be fair. Weekly Qjectives on the Monday of Wednesday, pit stop session, how are we on track with things? And then Friday don't have a meeting, but very much sort of communicating the morning. When you do like the more management stuff as well in terms of one-on-ones, these types of things, you do that weekly or? - So we do one-on-ones. So I tend to do the one-on-ones, which is straight after the morning kickoff, the Monday kickoff meeting. We always do a one-to-one. So that's then much more around, well, what, what are you actually, because you don't want to be sitting on a team meeting, listening to someone else's incredibly detailed granular plan, which if you've got a reasonable size team, like you're sitting there for an hour and only like 10% of the meetings relevant to you, so you've switched off. So we try and keep the team kickoffs like very much short to the point. And then the one-on-ones go into much more detail of, right, what do you need to do? And what do you need from me and what do you need from Joe to enable you to do that? So we found that works as well, but it's been a lot of shopping and changing. And it's definitely created some, up until the last couple of months, it's definitely created some kind of inconsistency, because it's probably like, oh fuck, Joe and all of you have another great idea on how to do our weekly structure. But it's so impactful when you get those, right? Yeah, and I feel with it now. It's just taken a bit of time. But we came from a business where there was nothing. Like there was a Monday meeting, like AAM on a Monday where we talk about activity. And that was it. We've been learning all of this as we go. Like we're not like, I mean, was it Sam, Sam Perry from Salt or Soda? You had him on Oli Perry? Oli Perry, yeah, yeah, that's it. Like their structure is great. And we took a lot from that in terms of actually, you know what, the structure that we're now creating actually seems aligned with what a really successful business is doing. So it gave a bit of confidence in terms of actually, I think we've got it right now. It's just about, like, we're talking about driving performance, right? And there's got to be that element of people having autonomy and wanting to achieve the performance. And then from a leadership management perspective, holding people account or having ways of a honking accountable, whilst also then having systems in place in the business to help these people to perform better, right? And one of them is getting people out for the week, helping them understand what their priorities are, these things. Just to round this out then, what are the important KPIs in your business then? You know, what have they ended up being? I don't know if they've evolved. Like what's like the dashboard, you know, what's on those metrics of the dashboard that you look like in terms of, that you look at, which, you know, identify what good looks like out of interest and just curious. So the most important things that we care about is first intuice per week and then BD engagements per week and BD engagements, which is defined by three things. So we define a BD engagement as either a new pitch. So you've actually had a sit down like pitch cool with a prospect. You have either won a new qualified role or you have signed a terms of business. So what that means and the reason we've done it is too, is really you should always be aiming to have one pitch per week. But if you're sitting there on a Thursday or a Friday and you're like, "Oh, I've not been able to do any success "or BD, you can still go back through "and you can chase all of the people that have outstanding terms "that for whatever reason haven't got back to you." So you've got an opportunity to still achieve it there. But you've also got an opportunity to go back through all of your existing managers, all of your existing client base and potentially pick up a role. So we thought it's unrealistic to have just two pitches per week because if it's the end of the week, you probably can't immediately get a proper BD pitch. But you can spend an hour calling your all of your existing clients and you can win a role. So we're still making it achievable towards the end of the week with minimal time left. - So BD engagement and first interviews? - First interviews. And then we measure loads of other stuff obviously. But you see those as like the lead domino to get into the outcomes. - Absolutely. If you're consistently doing, well, we target it as a minimum of three in our market, that's fine for us. A minimum of three first interviews on qualified roles per week, like you're doing deals. - 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 maximize 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 five, 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. And it's where you'll be able to book a call thus. Let's get straight back into the episode. How else have you had to evolve as a business owner and have evolved that mindset? What else have you really had to learn on the job or get better at or improve on? Now we've spoken about BD strategies, how you've gone about that. We've spoken about driving performance, managing people. What else have you and Joe really had to, maybe you've been surprised by, or how are you? How are we else have you had to, yeah, that current grow up as a business owner? So all the back office bits that you have zero exposure to, as a recruiter, you have absolutely no idea what or how much goes on in the background. And we launched our business through Recruheub, so Edmund and the team, and they're fantastic. So they provide all of the technology, all of the tech stack and all of the tech support behind that. And then they also provide these, we didn't take investment from them, they provide the platform and the back office support. So all of that being in one place is a massive help, but there's still so much you have to do. So just payroll, looking through finance, like the tax side of things, like making configuration changes to Vincere or Sourceware or Sourcebreaker, like all of these things that they take ages, like calling the bank. We've spent an hour and a half on the phone, so to why is trying to sort out an issue with our USD card for our trip to San Francisco a couple of months ago. And it's like, I've just lost an hour and a half of my time to sort out a bank card. And it's all those little things that add up. And if we were to launch again, I'd make this one of our very first hires and that's operation. The single most impactful hire to the whole business and to Joe and I has been Angelica or Operations Lady. So what she does and what she's able to do late in terms of the podcast and in terms of a lot of the stuff that was bogging Joe and I down is huge. So I definitely make that as like beyond like your first two actual recruiters. I'd be hiring operations and I'd be building that underlying infrastructure that enables you to go. So playbooks, training, I still need to do a lot of this, but like flowcharts of exact processes that enable you to not have to do one-on-one training for every single step of the process. So there's loads of stuff that should be done in person, like the sales aspect and the actual candidate and the talent and the client management. That should all be done by person. But then there's loads of stuff like, the tools and the processing, the sequencing. You can almost automate the training of that just by spending the time to build it out in the first place. It's just doing all the upfront work that then you can use multiple times until it's a bit outdated. You don't truly realize that and so you've done it manually six, seven times and you're like, I could have just done this once. I was just curious on what you view makes up the infrastructure to help you guys grow whatever that looks like. So you've said playbooks, systems and processes, how we do things, training. What else do you view in that journey of like, these are the things that we need to invest time in, get done, that we're going to fan ourselves for in a year, two years, three years time? I mean, everything you said are the main ones. It's just, it's doing it properly. So like a lot of the things like we did, but we did them half-assed and they weren't actually usable. So they weren't, they weren't complete. So when we tried to use them, it was then, actually, there's still loads of gaps missing. So now I need to go back and redo it manually. And then I also need to redo the actual, like the playbook. So I think it's just that upfront time, especially as you're growing and like you're still trying to generate revenue to keep the lights on. It's really hard to set aside a few days to do something that's not generating you revenue in the remote immediate future. But if you are looking to scale and hire a lot, then it will, you'll, you'll thank yourself like a few months down the line. Use the word playbook there. Obviously, I feel like because of the world that you guys are in that, that's fairly normal language. So like for me, you know, when I think of the word playbook and how I've used that in my business, we've got a sales playbook, we've got a customer success playbook, we're building a marketing playbook. So from a sales standpoint, if you go into our sales playbook, you're going to be able to see our sales process, you're going to be able to see our talk contracts and scripts for the different parts of the sales process. You're going to be able to see our case studies, our testimonials, etc, etc. What does playbook mean for you because you sort of chucked that in there and not everyone will aware of that. So like when you say playbook, what does that consist of? The playbooks is part of this, but we've got like an internal internet. So we've got, and we call it a knowledge base. So we've got a Sony, so really good tool. It's designed to be whatever you need as a consultant, you can go and find it there. So it's everything from case studies, like search strings. It works, we don't need them, actually got source breaker, that one's not an void, but there's also like every form of like document. So rather than ask like shout out to the office, I was anyone got a candidate call sheet or has anyone got a qualification sheet, whatever it might be. Like everyone just knows, it's in one place and that's a huge help. But then within that is the playbook. So we have, I mean you could call it training, playbooks are training, but I think it's more specific because the way I view a playbook is I could hand this to you and say go and read this and action it and you should be able to do it. Yeah, it's like how we do things. Yeah, and what's been working, like what's working and how you do things. So like yeah, that's why I was interested in how you viewed it. One of the main ones we have is the like the cold email outreach and not just email, the cold outreach for sales and the process and the structure and then kind of bring in source well and exactly this is how you should be structuring your outreach and that's what we're getting the good responses from. So yeah, it works, but it takes time. It takes time to build, but you can quickly build. Yeah. So it honestly is crazy to me that like the Sonya group, Crimin teams and small group of Crimin businesses won't have anything like that. We didn't have anything. We had a phone and a links in recruiter license and email and like some job boards and beyond that there was no, we didn't come from an environment where there was any form of training, there was any form of structure. It literally was a case of like vegetargett going to do it. Our bosses were great in terms of if you're going to ask them something, they'd always give you the advice. But there was no like set. This is how we do things and especially as we grow and as we continue to build, I think it's so important. Yeah, so it's crazy just because so like for me, I don't know what you think about this, but like if you're listening to this right now and you have nothing like that, that's fine. What we're saying is like use the people around you. This is what I think is such a missed opportunity. If I think of when I was in the business I was in as eight people, the top performer that's sat next to me, like I didn't know what was working for them. Like they could be specking out a candidate in a certain way using a certain subject line using certain personalization that could help me fucking open up doors and I have no clue about it. I have no idea about it. So I think for me, when I speak to companies, they have nothing like that. Like I say one, I think that's a missed opportunity. I've seen your team ever asked your top performers like what's working for them and why they think it's working for them and it is that knowledge being passed around the office because if it isn't, why would you not use that information that's in your four walls? And like if you want to just try and get better at bringing that out, a good just first step, you don't have to build a playbook, right? Because a good first step is get time in the diary with the team and let's all go around the as a group and just share what one thing is really working for me right now on the sales side or on qualifying, whatever it may be. Within GoToMarket, there's a few different areas and each of our team have a, they're not set to it, but they have their areas that they gravitate towards. And they're quite different. Like if you're qualifying a marketing role and you're doing it well, you need to know, you need to get different information to if you're qualifying a sales role. We ask the team, we ask their input because I don't know that much about marketing, whereas people in the business know no huge amounts about it. And we then build out, well, these are the things that are important to a hiring manager. These are the things that are important to a candidate when hiring for sales people, when hiring for sales engineering people, when hiring for marketing people. So now if you, like we could give you the qualification sheet for sales and even if you'd never qualified a sales rock for you would be able to qualify someone to the absolute max just by asking the questions that are on the playbook. So that's so valuable, right? What's on the horizon then for you guys? We move into to Bournemouth. We're, yeah, we've had a big, big change in the business the last two months. We've made the decision to shut the Crawley office. So Joe's always lived down there. And I think we realized that actually the two founders only seeing each other once a week in an office-based firm originally didn't just, just there it just wasn't quite, it wasn't quite clicking. There was never major issues, but it was just like we're not as effective as we could be. So we now very much have a remote and flexible first environment. We've still got the office in Crawley at the moment. When that shuts, it will be a case of the team can very much work remote. We just asked them to come down and everyone be together a few days out of the month. And yeah, we're going to be growing significantly down there. It was part of I think when it's difficult to get blinded by it, but when you realize that something's not necessarily clicking as it should and when you realize that there's a way to be more effective, even if it has some element of like business impact, like positive or negative, you just got to do it because we as expected, we had a bit of fall out from that decision. Of course we did. We've just told people we're shutting the local office and we move in 100 miles down on the South Coast. But I think it's that bigger picture of Joe and I know that for him and I, being back together is going to transform and make us so, so, so much more effective. And the people that are on board with that, they realize that it's going to make things so much better for them as well. I mean, in terms of what opportunity we'll be able to provide them. I wonder if this is Joe's grand plan all along. Yeah, maybe. He's just been a waiting to track me down. So what are you guys doubling down on then over the next, you know, to me, like a lot of people said, it's been a difficult start. What are you and Joe really focusing on and doubling down on making sure you have really high standards around the end this year on a positive? So yeah, I mean, where you mentioned standards, huge emphasis on high standards in every aspect to the business, huge aspects of accountability to those standards as well as we have been doubling down on the nonprofit initiative with doubling down on the trips will get people on planes as often as they can be effective getting on planes to the US or to Israel or to to WAPAC if they wanted to build an APAT desk and very much focusing on on on higher and experienced remote talent across the UK and then trainee talent or experienced talent down on the South Coast. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Thank you. Likewise mate, thank you very much. Well done on making it to the very end of the episode. I hope you enjoyed it. It's done my very best to try and level up this podcast that will hopefully mean that you can take even more learnings from these conversations and apply it to your own recruitment career. So cool ways, if there are any particular topics that you would love me to cover with future guests then please get in touch with me, the best place to reach me is on LinkedIn, send me a message, what would you love me to cover with future guests? If you have enjoyed the podcast then it would be amazing if you could leave a honest review in your favourite podcast, streaming platform that will simply mean that we're able to reach more people with this podcast. I hope you enjoyed it and don't forget to subscribe completely free on your favourite podcast streaming platforms and we'll be back next week with a new episode of the Recruitment Mentals. for cost.