Success Strategies for Contract Recruitment: Lessons From Million Pound Biller Sam Ingwell

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 the show. My name is Keesha Nazuz. And on this week's episode, I was joined by Sam Inglow from Opus Recruitment Solutions. Sam's based out in Australia and over the last six years, he has dominated the testing market in Sydney. And in this conversation, we break down how Sam has gone about growing his book year on year with his best year Billingswise being 1.6 million. And we talk about how he's gone about it. How has he built this market? How has he built relationship? How has he become world class guaranteeing his contracts extend? How has he become exceptional opening up doors? How has he protected his contract? But so much value in this conversation and Sam does a really good job of breaking things down, being honest and talking about his journey. So all of you can benefit and hopefully continue to excel in your own careers with Sam's wisdom. Let's get into this week's episode. Sam, welcome to the podcast. Looking forward to this. Nice to have someone from Australia. There's a lot of people that listen to this that live in Australia. So hopefully we can bring some more Australian recruitment stories on here. I think I've sort of neglected Aussie's this year. I'm not going to lie and come to the heaping on the podcast. So you're changing that. So thank you for being on it. I'm so, so happy to be here, mate. Honestly, I'm really sending Australia. There we go. Today we're going to break down your journey. You are a successful contract recruiter. And as I said to you, I think just for whatever reason, I found myself into being way more perm recruiters on this podcast compared to contract, looking to change that and you're part of that. So as we always do, I want to start with a bit of a career highlight reel. So if I get any of this wrong, you're going to have to let me know and correct me. Yeah. We'll do. We'll do. So let's just do billing because I know you've also gave me the sort of whiteboard number as well, but we'll just do billings. Yeah. That's okay. So just a bit of context. You found yourself moving to Australia in six and a bit years ago, 2017. You moved out, right? Correct. Yeah. Your dad moved over there for work. You had worked in recruitment for like a year. And then you found yourself in Australia and then you've been working for Opus ever since your world. I think you described to me as like a super niche. You actually described it as boring. Unsexy. It's not so exact. It's the testing market, right? Yeah, it's the market that not many people really touch in a definitely a market that people give to their rookies and juniors. And yeah, look, it's not that sexy, but somehow I made it work. So yeah. So test the market all in Sydney, right? Or not? Yeah. Yeah. So all in Sydney and all contracts for the entire tenya. So yeah, it's been very specific. But yeah, cool. So 2018, this is the the highlight real then. So we got 2018. Billings wise that year, $253k. This is Australian dollars, right? This is all Aussie dollars. Okay, cool. So $250, free grand 2018, 2019, $434 grand, $2750 grand, 2021. You broke the million mark, 1.128 million, and then 2022, 1.6 million. That was your best year today. And then this year, your on track to do, you've done 719ish so far, probably going to be on track to do just shy of a million Billings wise. Yeah. Is that all right? That is pretty much it in an eye show, yeah? That's the highlight real. Okay, cool. So we're going to break this down. But before we start then, I'd love to get your take on what you believe are the common traits characteristics habits of successful contract recruiters in today's market. Let's start there. Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, you've interviewed loads of guests and everyone says a lot of the kind of same things, right? But I think, particularly in the, you know, in the contract recruitment space, I think, I think being a problem solver is absolutely number one in terms of a kind of key trait that makes up someone who can hunt projects and can, you know, provide the right solution to a problem or a project. So I'd say that's probably number one or top three, I'd say, competitiveness. I've never met anyone who's a top biller who's not wanting to outdo competition, whether it be internally on the leaderboard or whether it be the guy that you, you know, stalk on LinkedIn, who you know, does the same market kind of thing, you know what I mean? So I think competitiveness definitely comes into play. And I think ultimately, you know, if you're going to do really well in recruitment, it's, it's quite a thankless career in some respects because you might have loads of setbacks and you might do loads of the same input and not get the same output. So being really hungry to succeed and want into build something special is definitely a key trait that I think it not just contract recruiters, but recruiters overall need to have, you know, you need to want to take ownership and build something really special and have a USP. Love that. So let's touch on, I think, because I saw your, I was just going through some of your LinkedIn posts before this and I saw that not too long ago you got your Australian citizenship, right? That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. After six or so years, I mean, to be honest, I was, I've always felt a bit guilty talking about my citizenship and my, you basically have a thing called permanent residency out here and a lot of my friends, you know, have spend years, you know, trying to get their PR, but I was super lucky. I came out here when I was 19 20 and I basically was just giving a PR through my dad. So it was nice to get citizenship, but, you know, I feel a bit guilty about getting it because I didn't have to work as hard as other people, I guess. So why I wanted to just just start that, I think it's a big part of the, the journey and there's a lot of people who are based in the UK that find themselves maybe speaking to people about potentially taking their skillset and career over to Australia. So would you mind just talking a bit about, you moved over there with family, right? Compared to, I feel like a lot of people move over there without their family and go over there on their own. So you were just saying just before we started on this, you, you did find it a bit difficult to start if I may say that. Like do you want to just talk a bit about how you found that initial period when you moved over? It was, it was a hard time to be honest because I kind of, I kind of dropped everything back in the UK and look, I had done a year of, I want to kind of call it Boiler Room Recruitment back in the UK, which was, you know, quite literally a hundred dials a day chasing direct ads. I was actually a, like a, a rookie or a junior who was, kind of like a resourcing role for, you know, a senior team leader in this very, very small company of like 10 people. And every day I just kind of go through Adverts and Call People. So in that environment, it was quite cutthroat. And, you know, if you made a tier at the wrong time a day, you know, you'd kind of be looked at funny. Anyway, so I kind of took that mentality out here to Australia. And I didn't quite realise being a young naive, you know, 19, 20-year-old. I didn't quite realise that Australia is a little bit different. People are a little bit, you know, a little bit more easy going, a bit more friendly out here. And even though the office was, you know, full of quite just English and Irish people because that's recruitment, right? I kind of bought this mentality of, of hard ways of doing things and not kind of looking at the relationships internally or externally. And I was kind of trying to, you know, fight for myself at the start. And that didn't work well for me. So, you know, I had to basically relearn recruitment. And I had to just clean slate, take on everyone's advice, be a sponge and adapt. Because if I continue the same way that I was in the UK and being a young naive hungry kid who just, you know, wants to be the best in her money, taking that mentality to Australia just didn't quite work. So, yeah, I had to really change. But I'm glad that I took on advice and did that. And I guess I'm quite happy to be where I'm at now. And if I didn't take on that, you know, advice and constructive criticism, I certainly wouldn't be sitting here, mate. And what about personally? How did you find adapting to that? Yeah, personally, it was quite tough because like I came out here like I didn't really know anyone. So, you know, my entire social group was coming from the office really. And in the first six months, you know, I didn't really have, I was kind of living with parents and on a low basic salary, not earning much. I didn't really know where to go or what to do. So, I'd kind of attached to the kind of social groups at work and, you know, see, you know, if I can make friends or friends or friends. So, it certainly took a while. But I think after about six months, I kind of found my feet and, you know, made some good mates within the office. And I was quite lucky in the fact that I had shout to Mike who is my kind of lead, my manager at the time. And he took me to that me under his wing and show me the way. And yeah, it's been pretty good ever since, but it wasn't without its struggles, I'll be honest with you. - So to round that out then, for anyone that's listening, just one or two things, I guess, firstly, if I'm listening to this right now, I've worked in the UK recruitment market, I've got a good number of years under my belt, I have a degree, there's a genuine opportunity for me to go to Australia. What do you think, or what have you found yourself giving advice to people that come over to, I'm sure that happens now still, what are some of the things that you find these people have to unlearn quite quickly a lot of the time when they're sort of coming to the Australia market of interest? - Yeah, I mean, I think in particular, I think the UK market, obviously, it's very saturated, so it can be quite transactional. I mean, I'm not saying it's not relationship driven because anyone who's done well in recruitment has to have relationships right, but I feel like you could get away in the UK of being quite transactional and just being a pure hunter and not really caring about how it reflects on you or how it reflects on your brand. So I think coming out to Australia, you've got to realise that it's a much smaller market. Everyone knows everyone, so you've got to make sure you're best behaviour and you're looking good, your brand's good, and that you're creating relationships because in Australia, I think it can take a much longer time to break into a client and develop that relationship. Whereas in the UK, people are keen on a bit of spot business and then I'm not going to take you cool for a year, and that's just how it is. So definitely the relationship mentality out here is a lot more longer term, and it takes a lot longer to break people down and get cozy with them, you know? - And then secondly, what about personally, if I'm a friend of yours, I've got some recruitment experience, I've got a degree, I've got rectal rights telling me about how I can take my skillset to Australia. How are you describing working on Australia living, living in Australia to me? What does that sound like? What are the things that you maybe highlight to people that are true and maybe also some of the things that are maybe difficult or challenges maybe? - I mean, people say that it rains less out here and that's not true. - When it rains, it fucking pours. It's just a little bit different in the UK you get a bit drizzled here, you get an absolutely thunderstorm. So look, but on the other side, you know, the weather's amazing, the sun's good, and I think the work life balance out here is really something that a lot of people from the UK move out here for, right? A lot of my colleagues and friends live in Bondile, or Kudgy, which is literally on the beach. So in the summer, let's say you finish up at four o'clock or you've just walked out the meeting, let's go to the beach. So it's definitely a different lifestyle out here, and I find that people work quite hard in their core hours so that they can have that balance, whereas I found in the UK, it was, I guess you could say kind of like a constant burnout. I mean, I was only a junior in the UK, but I'd be working such ridiculous hours and getting nothing out of it, and it's just a constant reset rinse and repeat, go drinking on the weekend. So I think here's a bit more of a balance, which is certainly attractive for a crew, this mate. - Yeah, I know it means nothing. Unfortunately in the UK, you can't do your core hours and then find yourself down the beach, because it would be too cold or the weather won't be right, so you find yourself getting on the bus. - I think for a lot of recruiters that obviously come out here as well, there's a lot of options and a lot of choice. When I came out here, for example, I came via a wreck to wreck, really good guy, and he gave me a load of different options and every company that I'd interviewed had a completely different way of doing things, which I found interesting. I found that over here, there's some companies that are very marketing driven. There's some companies out here that are soon tied, but there's very rare. But there's a lot of different kinds of agencies out here, so that was quite interesting when I came here, like I was, I probably interviewed with, I want to say six, seven, eight agencies, and every single agency was so different in their approach and their belief system. That was quite interesting when I moved out as well. - Yeah, look, this is what I love about recruitment. It's a genuine career. You're building skills that you can apply to future different industries, careers that are really helpful in life, but also it's a skill set that you can take across the world. It's unbelievable whilst also earning some good money if you work hard and do the right things. So in terms of this testing market then, how intentional was that? Was that already like a market that Opus had done a bit in, talked to me just a bit about it? 'Cause I guess I just want to start by just getting your take on how important it is to have a niche and focus, 'cause clearly that's been pivotal in your career testing, just testing, just Sydney. Yeah, talk to us a bit about this patch and this intentional niche that you have. A very quick word on our sponsors, OneUp Sales. The topic that I want to discuss today, regarding OneUp Sales, is a really crucial aspect of any successful recruitment business, data visibility. Are your consultants reaching their targets? Where can they improve? What does good actually look like? These might be things that you're thinking about this time of year. That's where OneUp Sales are amazing partners come in. 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They could be a great partner for a lot of you going into next year. - It was already a semi-established market. So we had two guys on it before I came for a couple of years, I'm gonna say, so we had a guy doing perm, a guy doing contracts. So when I came in, I took over my manager's patch, which was Sydney, but it was never crazily built. There was no super huge relationships that would give you any more than two contractors. So it wasn't exactly a standing start, but there was a bit that I could build from, a few relationships that I could leverage. I mean, yeah, the tester market's an interesting one because when you spoke to Elliot on that podcast about JavaScript, Dev Recruitment, it's very much, it's a product that you're selling, right? Developers, a sexy bits of products, especially really good ones, you can market them really well. It's an absolute flip side with the testing market because there is thousands of testers out there. Like, it is so hard to manage, it's so hard to even organize. Like, when people ask me how I organize my stuff, I'm like, it's all in my head. Like, I just, I can't really describe how I, how I've kind of, how I've kind of worked all out, but it's very different in the sense that, let's say you were to spec out a CV of a tester, you're gonna get no buyback. You might even get one email, but the email's probably gonna say that we're not hiring right now, or we've got a vendor that does it half the price. So when it comes to the testing market, it's all about understanding the projects, their pain points, and how you can bring in resources to kind of give room for the other skill sets to really succeed. So, for example, in a project team, you might have a few developers, and then maybe those developers are doing the testing themselves, and that's taken 30% their time. Why not bring a tester in, and my cell to people is, well, let's bring a tester in, how about an automation tester who can automate all the testing? And therefore, your devs can focus on what they've actually been hired to do. So yeah, look, testing is, it's massive, it covers every market. For example, let's say you've got JavaScript developers, and DevOps engineers, and data analysts, my testers can sit across everything. So my testers might work on some JavaScript stuff. They might do some integration stuff, and DevOps, they might test some data. So it's a really broad patch, but it's a patch that people don't really wanna touch. And that's kind of where I've done well. I've made a name for myself in this place, and it works out well for me in the end, despite it being so big and hard to operate in, and foggy at times, it's an interesting space. - And do you think you would have got to where you got to if you also did some of the dev contract staff or different things, or did you stay really religious with the niche and focus of testing, and do you think that's important? - I always stay very true to kind of, like, I'm really big on my brand, right? So like, I really wanna make sure that on LinkedIn, I'm engaging with people, and I'm connecting to people in my space. I wanna make sure that when I'm selling to clients, they know that I'm really serious about testing, which is kind of unusual, because not many recruiters are coming to them and saying, hey, all I do is testing. Like, let's talk about what social using, how much money you're spending on licenses, like, other recruiters are doing this. They're not understanding the complexities around it. So, I guess, for my selling point to work, and to be an SME in my market, if I did other markets, it wouldn't quite work. There's not to say, though, that I haven't jumped to opportunities, right? I have found fellow jobs, which might be the occasional sales force, or PLC, or developer, or something like that, that nobody in my company at the time might have had a desk for, and guess what, I'm gonna work it after hours, and I'm gonna hopefully place that, because I'm all about opportunity, I'm all about seeking anything that I can, I'm gonna give it a go, but ultimately I'm putting 99% of my time into that core market because I believe in it. You mentioned SME there. This is something that we hear a lot. I'm interested to get you taken. I think that's really evident when I was going through your LinkedIn content. I think that really comes across. You're talking about people asking me what I think of the market. Here's my take. You're commenting on the contract or rates and the things that aren't competitive and why. I think you've done a really good job with that. I think that's probably something that people. I'm sure you've heard in the office the importance of being a subject matter expert. I just want your take for people listening. With what you know now, if you were to start this market again, what would be your route to becoming a subject matter expert as quickly as possible? Is it. I'm going to speak to as many candidates as possible. Be a sponge. Ask open questions. Really try and download as much information as possible. Is it I'm going to be reading X type of content? I'm going to make sure all of the content that I'm reading is going to be about this. What do you believe to be the quickest route to being and becoming a subject matter expert? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, ultimately it is about volume at the start, especially if you're starting outright. I mean, it really is about candidate calls. And obviously, in my opinion, when you put a number on it and say, "I'm going to aim for 10 candidate calls today," or something like that, it's not enough. You need to be doing 30 candidate calls in the morning. You need to really have this absolute volume. And the thing is with the testing market, because it's so broad, is some calls might be really low quality and you might not learn much from those calls. But the calls when. As soon as you can kind of recognise the really skilled guys, the really connected guys, you really want to engage with them and have a real conversation with them and learn more like I ask contractors and people in testing all the time. Like, if I see a new framework or a new tool or something that I don't know about, I'm always going to ask them to teach me about it. And that more times than none, they're always going to explain. So I think it's really key to kind of learn about the tool and learn about the different projects and stuff like that. You know, that gives you a lot of credibility when you're speaking to clients because I might go into a call with a client and there might be a smaller company and might have committed to like some sort of commercial tool that costs them like 50k a month. And I'm going to challenge them and be like, "Hold on, I spoke to a contract the other day." And they said that you can use this tool and it's free. What have you thought about this? So it gives me the ability to kind of challenge contractors and clients as to what info I'm getting and that enables me to have way more engaging conversations than, "Hi, I specialise in this space, how big is your team when you're hiring?" Like, you want to dive a little bit deeper and I'm a big believer in just challenging everyone and using what you found out to then even if it might be the wrong kind of thing to use, I want to see how they react and it just creates conversation, you know? So you're saying a lot of the way to do it is through contracts conversations? Totally, yeah, yeah. I think contracts conversations, I mean, ultimately you want to be figuring out with contractors what kind of tools they're using, what's good, what's not, what are the advantages and disadvantages and then that can lead you on to all sorts of other useful information that you're going to use to obviously build your market, you know, such as hot leads or what projects are coming up or what kind of information you should really be going at. So let me actually listen because this is quite common when I've spoke to contract recruiters and it's something that their managers will most likely be saying to a lot of people listening. So how the way that I like to frame this is what did Sam's contract to call conversations where the intention was to gather information, build credibility, build relationships, do the things that you're talking about so then you can use the things that you learn to challenge people from, you know, when you're speaking to clients, these different things. What did your cool sound like where maybe you weren't doing a very good job of that compared to how they sound now? Like was it really transactional and it was very obvious that you was just asking questions because you knew there are questions that you needed to ask. Like I don't know, just give us a bit of an insight into what these maybe cool sound like because it might help people understand where they can improve these calls to get more out of them to build relationships better, whatever they look like. Yeah, I mean, it's all about obviously using kind of open-ended questions and eliminating the ability for them to have a dry conversation and say yes or no. Obviously referencing other things that you, you know, that you've learned from another contractor if they're using X tool while using Y tool, explain like let's have a chat about that. And I think at the start, obviously it was definitely a numbers game and it's I think a lot of people get trained to, you know, you do that kind of funnel technique and you just ask questions, qualify them, you know, watch your rate, watch your expected rate, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And sometimes you miss the kind of really good snippets of information. So I think as well, you know, bring into those calls useful information, even just giving them a little bit of something before they give you something just, you know, having some common market information and just saying, hey, have you heard about this? And that can really start a decent conversation with a contractor that might be within a target client and might ultimately be a key for you to find your way into that business. So I really believe in keeping, you know, I hate it when people say, you know, I work with the top 5% candidates or 10% because you can't quantify that, right? But just speaking to the best people based on where they're working, what they're doing and their reputations and digging as deep as you can and getting to know them and checking in on them. Like, I call a lot of the top people in my space just for catch ups every couple of weeks, you know, if they're looking or, you know, how's it going? And those relationships will ultimately, ultimately, you know, enable me to find out more about where they're working or if they move to another company, you know, they might spill the beans and give me a bit of information about how they got there, you know, what the go is when they're hiring. So keeping contractors close is really, really key. And making sure that you're having really open conversations and not just qualifying them is super important. It's as important as a BD call, really. Have you just, because the way that you're, have you read the, are you much of a reader or no? I mean, I'm embarrassed to say it, but I haven't read a book since school. Okay, fair. Have you come across the challenger sale? No, I haven't, though. That's, I'm reading out the moment. You should, you should definitely, because the way that you're talking is very much in line with the methodology of, do they do it podcast? No, there'll be an audio book, yeah, that you should definitely check out, because I think it's, it sort of describes how you're approaching selling, which is the way that you're talking about challenging people in the market on how they do things, offering them insights using your subject matter expertise, rather than, yeah, I think it's something I thought you might have read it just the way you're talking, but no, I mean, it just kind of, I just think it's the thing that makes sense, because like I think everyone, like the way that you need to differentiate yourself is like everyone's going in and telling people that they're specialists and it just holds no weight, but if you can actually have a chat with people and dig a bit deeper than, you know, if anything in, in itself, that's selling, right? I mean, it's given take, mate, you know? No, yeah, totally. So something that I'm sort of learning and picking up and I feel like you're talking about there is there any science behind getting good understanding and knowing what a great world class contractor looks like? It might be market dependent, but is there any science behind that that you found just really helps you be like, this is a top class contractor because when I interviewed Elia, that seemed to be really quite pivotal, because if you're very aware that you're dealing with some of the best contractors in your space, they're going to be working on the best projects or like projects that I don't know, yeah, talk to me a bit about that. Is there any science behind how I can get better at understanding more quickly what a great, when I'm speaking to a great contractor, what a great contractor looks like? You know what it really is, is people that are actually really good contractors and people that do good candidates in general are engaging when you speak to them. Time and time again, I speak to so many candidates and if they can't get past the whole, how are you today kind of, if they're boring me after a minute, I'm not that engaged in they're quite obviously not going to do very well in a business environment. So ultimately the people that are engaging in actually decent speak to end up working for the best companies and working with the best projects because sea level people, business people want to deal with people that can actually communicate on a human level. So obviously it's hard when you know you've got a load of CVs, you know it's very churn and burn, but as soon as you start having one of those really engaging conversations, you just feel this spark inside of you and you're like, nice, all right, let's talk, let's talk. So it takes a few, what is it? You've got to kiss a few frogs, right? Okay, that's interesting. So talk to me about it seems quite common, but how fundamental has it been for you to acquire leads information, market information from your contractors that then impacts the projects that you win, that you get involved on the sites that you win? Like how have you gone about that? Has that been really impactful as part of this journey? And how can we get better at that for people listening? Yeah, I mean, I think you've always got to have your eye on the money, right? Every conversation needs to have some sort of outcome where you're getting a bit of actionable information. And I think we're a lot of new recruiters for sure, or people that you know tend to be I guess mediocre billers is they're focused on the outcome of filling their job and they forget that every single call they're making, regardless of it's a contract for a BD call, like everything holds value every bit of information you can action, no matter how big or small it might be. So if it's information about what project might be happening next or what kind of thing they're using, where they're seeing people moving to, or even just having a chat to them about, oh, you know, our other recruiters calling you like what they're talking about, they've been talking about that company again that's hiring. And I think going into conversations as well, and it does take a bit of practice, but obviously when people start out they they ask pretty black and white questions like [BLANK_AUDIO] Are you into them? Like instead of asking something like that, just joke with them and if you know that like a well-known company, let's just say it's Barclay's Bank for the UK listeners out there. And you know that Barclay's Bank is hiring people with that skill set. Instead of asking them, are you interviewing at the moment, say, oh, is Barclay's wrong either? But then he recruits Barclay's wrong you yet. And then that just starts a conversation about where they might be getting calls from and that information can then become leads, right? So I think approaching things very conversationaly and being really human with your approach is very key to getting information that you can then action. - And how important, again, this seems like another really important thing. It might not be the case 'cause you said a lot of the things are in your head but market mapping, what we're saying about that. (dramatic music) A very quick word on our sponsors, Vinceree, before we get back into the episode, as they have a special winter offer that I want to make you all aware of, this offer is only available until the 20th of December. So if you like the sound of this, then make sure you get taking action before then. If you are not happy with your current CRM, don't settle, switch to Vinceree for zero implementation fees, plus you'll get a gift of your choice. Video interviews, 500, three minutes per month, which is normally 99 pounds per month, time sheet processing at one pound per worker, which is normally five pound per worker per month, or recruits the agency website. First, three months free, which is typically normally between 700 to 35 pounds to 3,900 dependent on the chosen package. If you also mentioned that you listen to the podcast, you'll also get an additional three months as a listener of this podcast. So if you want to make the most of this offer, you've got until the 20th of December, to get all of those benefits, check out the link in the show notes. Go to Vinceree. - Yeah, I mean, look, market mapping is, it's essentially like project information, hot leads, cold leads, I'm a massive believer and in basically cold leads. So when I started out, they printed out this A4 sheet of paper with like 25 rows on it with, you know, name of the candidate, who their manager is, which company they work for, which company they're interviewing out, whatever. And I'd kind of just started out getting really religious with that. And what I do is in the morning, I'd kind of, I'd aim to get about three, maybe four of them completed. That would probably be, I don't know, let's call it 10 to 15, maybe 20 candidates, depending on how many leads or cold leads I might be getting. And I'll write down every single person, even if I don't connect to them, I'll write down their cold leads. Because ultimately, if this looks like a contract, so it's probably going to be a company that hires contractors. So I was a massive believer in terms of market mapping, you need to make sure that you're spreading your seed real wide. Because I think a lot of recruiters can get really fixated on those big enterprise clients that are always hiring, right? And they just want to dig into them. But the truth is, it takes, you know, recruiters years and years and so many different angles to get into these clients. So basically with these cold lead sheets, when you're getting information, you need to be able to look at those cold lead sheets at some point during your day, look at all of those companies and make sure that you have a contact point in each company. And then when you revisit those leads, do you have another contact point? Have you sent them a CV? Have you emailed them? Have you linked in message to them? Have you tried to call them? So I'm a big believer in multiple contact points across a wide market. But that's not to say that you shouldn't also focus energy into target clients that'll be silly to not do right. But I think where a lot of people for sure is, and that's how we start talking, is I disagree with people that say, you need five clients to build a million dollars. Because I think I, I think I'd like 23 clients from a build a million dollars, right? So spreading your seed means that you have way more relationships and you have way less risk. 'Cause the likelihood of all 23 clients saying we're kind of our contractors, it's a lot less than five, isn't it? Do you have any sort of system to market map then? You mentioned the cold lead sheet, which is just to make that clear, that's just a living, breathing list of companies that you know have had a contractor in the past, or at some point, do you have any system around market mapping? - It's kind of annoying, we've got this really old database system thing from like 15, 20 years ago that is literally, I don't even know if it's operating on a floppy disk or what, but I'm used to using it, right? So we have an ability on this system to obviously tag up managers with skill codes, which I'm sure most recruiters have an SRM. So obviously I'm gonna tag up skill codes, but look, if I could go and redo it today and I could rebuild the market, I'd skill code it beautifully because there's so many people I've worked with who do it so bloody well. The problem is with me is my market was so wide, it was so clouded that it was just impossible to start trying to skill code everything because everything already was automatically coded and there was tens of thousands of bit of data. So I found that really tough, but the way that I managed to kind of juggle stuff was put things in my calendar, just real simple, just to remind myself to chase leads. We had a little column on our thing which is called spec jobs, which is, well, I didn't put my hot leads and my hot project information. So every day I'd be referencing that, not once a day, but I'd be referencing that up to maybe three or four times a day because I'm a big believer in the fact that you can't just go at leads at one angle. If you go at one lead at one angle, it's not gonna crack for a long, long time, right? So I had some sort of system, but it was messy and if I could redo it, I'd have a beautifully skill coded database and I'd have everything tagged up so that I could just search everything. But unfortunately, I died. - That wasn't the case, okay. Just to round this bit out, I feel like we spoke about the contract aside quite a bit. So if I'm listening to this and I'm two years in, like in my first two years of my contract recruitment journey, and I ask you, Sam, what are the one to two or one to three activities habits that I should absolutely just be dialed in on work on every single day, getting better at, that you feel like would really enable me to build a successful foundation to become a really great, successful contract recruiter in the long term. What are those things? One to three things that you'd be like, if you keep really focused on this, he's doing that every single day, trying to get better at it, I think you'll be all right. - Yeah, I mean, ultimately, it's making sure that you are going at your market properly and you're being a workhorse. So you need to be making sure that you're not leaving any stone unturned. So a lot of times, we can get carried away and ignore a cold lead. Even if it's a cold lead one day, that's going to come back around and full circle and it might deliver you a job in the future. So being really focused on making sure that your inputs are double everyone else in that room. You need to make sure that you are putting in a lot of effort, a lot of candidates calls, but then as importantly, a lot of client calls. And I mean, from a client call perspective, the second thing would be discover and create a USP because there is a lot of people in the market, particularly in those dev markets or those really highly contested markets where everyone's coming with the same cell, I'm a specialist, I've got a great database, I've got the people, you've got to figure out what is your USP and how, why is a client going to use you over someone else, right? And it can be as simple as just asking a client, how do you like to work, mate? I ask clients all the time, like, all right, look, I get it, you probably, I level with them, I'm like, look, I get it, you probably get a load of recruits calling you. Like, how can I be the guy that you remember? Like, how can I make a difference? And just put it to them, let them tell you. So trying to stand out, obviously, in a competitive market, making sure that your cell's a little bit different and just being an absolute workhorse and not leaving any stone unturned is definitely my advice I give to anyone starting out. Nice. I definitely know how I would just said, obviously some of the things that you said when we prepare for this, that you're passionate about is that you're big on the hunter mentality, right? What I really want to talk to you about, which I think I've really enjoyed listening to, say, is about how you challenge the people that you speak to, you uncover problems, which I really like. So I want to ask you about that. But I think also, like, what a smart way to discover and understand the type of service that people aren't getting or want to get by asking them those sorts of questions that you just mentioned. So when it might have changed, but what have been the sort of common things that these people said to you that Sam, you know what? This is what I feel like I don't get from the recruitment partner that we've used quite a lot of the times if you were able to do this or if you were able to offer this or if you were able to deliver this for us, that would actually go a long way. So in my mind, just bringing about to what you just said there, 'cause I think that's really smart. What were some of the common responses that you got from these people that said, if you do this, then actually that would be really valuable to us. What were some of the things that you picked up? - Yeah, I mean, look, it's definitely in my market in particular, there's a lot of really, I face off against a lot of vendors that are definitely, you know, a lot of them are overseas, Singapore, India, etc. are Philippines. So a conversation I have with a lot of clients who might be, you know, using an offshore vendor is, all right, I get it. You're probably saving on costs. I understand that from a commercial point of view, your sea levels are looking at and thinking, great, we're saving money. But what is the cost to you guys when that project isn't delivered to the quality that you're expecting? You know, what kind of control do you have over the outcome to the quality? Are you finding that your team's getting frustrated because they don't have embedded quality engineers to drive your products and your projects, right? So I always try and dig a bit deeper than, all right, we need someone, it's more like, okay, but what's the knock on effect? And if you were to do this, what's gonna be the benefit and what's going to be the the negative to it. You've kind of got a, and a lot of times, like clients will tell me, we're using this other vendor and they're offshore and they're cheap and whatever, and they're stern about it, but I keep on top of them, and then six months later, you notice that they come full circle and they come back and they go, yeah, you're right, they totally fucked up. We need some people on the ground now. - So, what you're talking about there are how you challenge them on the problems that they have, right? So, you're talking about, okay, so you're doing it this way at the moment, the quality of challenging that, but sorry, what I was asking you was, you know, when you said you was asking people directly, what is it that you'd want from a recruitment partner? What is it that you did to a really valuable? I know you're talking about the problem is there, 'cause I mentioned that, but I was just curious to hear from you like, when you was asking that direct question, 'cause you were saying that's one of the ways that you can discover your USPs, like what did you find to be the common response to? Sam, you know what, if you do this for us or we work this way or you give us this, that'll actually be really valuable to us. - Yeah, a lot of the time, funnily enough, and you know, clients say us through recruiters all the time is just be softened your approach, leave me alone for a bit. And I think, you know, when you start an out and you're really hungry and you really want clients and want business, like you go and add it in your trains kind of like, you know, call them every other week and spec them and whatnot. Instead, they might turn around and be like, you know what, I'd really appreciate it if you could just send me some market rates and a bit more information about the kind of clients that you've worked with so that when I am ready, I know that I can reach out and I've got something that I can refer to when I call you. So I've had this kind of, this like PDF document of kind of like case studies with clients and the kind of things that we've done and achieved. And this is just a small kind of a three, four page PDF that, you know, I'll just swing out to clients instead of a specsy, or something, 'cause it might in my market, you know, specsy v's don't get much traction. So, you know, understanding kind of what kind of approach they want is really important. Even as simple things like, look, let me just understand, do you prefer emails or calls mate because a lot of the time, there's some people in this world who find it quite offensive to get like a text message out the blue and the blue. But in my head, I'm texting people all the time. I'm texting clients and candidates all the time. Like, I don't find that weird, but some clients don't like that, right? So sometimes you need to just listen to, all right, how do they like to communicate? What's their approach? Are they kind of a high energy or a low energy person? Like, how are we gonna bounce off each other here and you gotta kind of feel them out a little bit? So, yeah, it's really important to get that right because if you take the wrong approach with the client, you're gonna be knocking on that door and ultimately you're just gonna piss them off. - So let's keep building on this sort of hunter mentality because you shared with me sometimes that you found people, give up on leads too soon, can sort of get complacent with just like sending emails, not making the most out of calling people and you even shared with me what you're known for. I mean, you mentioned that the cold leads there is calling and specifically calling cold leads or cold calling, right? I was like asking this, what did Sam's cold cool sound like early on compared to how they sound now? How they're different? - Very different. - So how do they sound at the start? - At the very start, like, I was given a script to my first company and then it was very similar when I started out. It was very much like, you call someone up and you're like, hi, I'm especially so crude. I'm calling from this company and that's pretty much it or you might try and I'm working with this candidate you're hiring and then they just say no and then you kind of knew to objection handling and then you just kind of your tail goes between your legs and you're like, oh shit. (laughing) So it's definitely changed in that sense. I've kind of over the years, I've tried a lot of things, I'll be honest, I think it's a lot of A and B testing, you've got to try a lot of different sales approaches and call call approaches and find what kind of works for you and the thing is like the same call call might not work with two clients, you've got to mix things up and mix up your approach because if you just keep on calling someone saying, hi, I'm a specialist, they don't give a shit. You have to really find a way to engage them. - How would they sound this year then? 'Cause I agree, you've got to keep experimenting, right? I think that's so true. But like, how, 'cause I'm sure there's some like, the way that you do it is a lot different now and there's a reason behind why you do it, the way that you do it, you're saying you're challenging them, give them some insight. So what might it sound like now if you give me a call? - Look, first things first is like agreeable statements are huge, right? So when I do a call call or even just a call to chase anything or even if I structure an email, I always want to open my statement with some agreeable statements. So I want to basically go in and be like, look, I notice the call out the bloom and I won't waste your time. I understand that you're currently hiring in this space and let's be honest, it's pretty tough. And I want to basically say some things that in their head they're gonna go, yep, yep, I agree with that. And then I've actually got them hooked a little bit to listen to a little bit of an elevator pitch 'cause if you don't say something that they agree with psychologically they're gonna go, ask is just another sales call? I'm not that interested. So if you say and you level with them, look, I know that you're hiring the space. I know that you need these specific resources and look, let's be honest, it can be challenging to find them because I know myself, I actually hired a project last week to do this and it was really tough. Look, I've got some people that might be able to help you with this, but I just want to understand a bit more about where you're at and just keep it really open, like have a conversation rather than going in with the sell, often works out better, I find. - Yeah, nice. And I think what again, what you're doing at the beginning of that is your sort of showcasing of credibility by, that might not always land, but when it does land with people, like you said, they're going, oh, like this guy understands what we're going for, understands what we've made of faced and that again, rather than just being told that you're a specialist, the person that's calling you as a specialist and whatever, that doesn't really mean anything, but the things that you're mentioning will actually mean something to someone if it's the right person that have experienced some of the challenges or things that you're discussing. So it's like credibility again. (dramatic music) 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 notes where you'll be able to book a call with us. Let's get straight back into the episode. Yeah, and I think it's exactly the way that I structure my emails as well. I see people all the time who start out recruitment and they send a big email cell that might be three paragraphs. And the reality is nobody's going to read that. As you would open a cold call, open it with two very quick and snappy agreeable statements that they can agree with and they can level with, and then go into a very quick one or two sentence bit about how you could help, and ask them when they're available. Not are they available? When are they available? Let's talk. Go in with agreeable statements and psychologically, you're going to get a better hit rate, better response, and that's for a call call or for an email. What's been, and I'm sure there's been sort of ebbs and flows, but for you Sam, throughout your career and building this market, what's been the most consistent way that you've landed great clients that have had good projects? What's been the most consistent way for you in terms of landing clients? Yeah, it's a really good question because obviously everyone wants that cash cow, right? Everyone wants the golden ticket or a couple, right? Ultimately it's about persistence and it's about approaching a client from several different angles. I mean, obviously when you're going into a client, you want to make sure that you understand the organizational structure. You know who your, I guess you could say that your low level decision makers are that might be a technical or a test lead. And ultimately who's the guy that's signing off their budget? That might be a manager, a development manager, a test manager, and then who's above that? The engineering director and then the sea level and whatnot, you want to make sure that you're starting to make in-roars with everyone. I normally find it starts at the bottom so it will start with those leads or even contractors within those businesses. And what you want to do is you obviously just want to network around them and you don't want to be salesy with your approach, but you can approach all of these leaders and people in the business. You've got to remember that they are not committed to that client forever. They at some point will be searching for a job. So it's worth their time to chat with you because you are an SME, you know, you're a market expert and they might want to know about rates in the market or who's hiring. So have a chat with them about that and then once you've given them some, ask them a bit about, hey, look, I actually got a lead. I'm not sure which team it was, but it says it was using this tech. Can you help me out? Or, you know, how about let's me and when you meet them, can you ask them to draw you out an org structure? Like give me an org map mate. Give me an org map mate. (laughing) Give me an org map. It's crazy how we did a bit of training on this where we're talking about expanding accounts and one of the attempts was ask the direct question, do you have an org chart? Like it and you'd be surprised on the people say yes. How many times have people gone, "Yeah, you go mate." "Oh, I like who draw out." Is that happening a lot? I've never had anyone say that. If you're as soon as you sit in front of someone and you bought them an outpick alone, I guarantee they are going to give you that organ. Yeah. So all different angles, like you said, you're speaking to people that mate, "I'm going to be there forever. You're giving again, then you're asking." But again, it's smart the way you're asking. People like to help people, right? So again, you're leading with, "Can you help me?" Like I've heard this or someone said, "This is atroo or is this going on?" You're then, yeah, like it's different rather than working through your lead questions that your manager's gone, you're going, "Yeah, it's just going to be sound a lot more unnatural, isn't it?" If you're just asking those direct questions. Yeah, you're almost, I mean, obviously, it's natural for humans to help humans, but like it's like you don't want to go in smelling like a salesman, you don't want to go in smelling like a recruiter. You want to come in like a friendly face who could help them in the future. And ultimately, you're going to form a relationship with them and you're going to scratch each other's backs. And I say that to people in my space all the time, like, "Look, you work with this company, I'll be honest. I've been knocking on their door for five years. I'm not even going to talk to you about recruitment, mate, because I'm not interested in you." But let's get to know each other because you might move one day, and the likelihood is you will. So I want you to be my friend when you move to that next company, right? So it's all about thinking long term, right? Have you ever had some proper big hits to your contract book? Because it looks like it's sort of grown. It's just sort of gone on like a sort of awkward trajectory, really. Like obviously you heard, obviously, it's interview Dalia and he got absolutely wiped. Because I want to speak to you about how does Sam think about protecting his book? Because I think that's another thing, isn't it? Oh, nice. So it's taught to me a bit about that. One, like have you ever had any, have you coming on a Monday and have gone, Sam? Look, we were testing for this piece of tech, and now we don't need it. And now you had like 15 contractors. I don't know if you ever had any like big moments like that. Yeah, I mean, look, I've had similar kind of things that I've been pretty fortunate in the fact that in my space, they do tend to stay for a little bit longer than perhaps in a dev space, which is obviously nice, but it might take me a while to place them or to actually get that work on. In terms of drop, I mean, I've had, you know, some of my A clients basically saying that they, one of my big clients actually at the start of this year, basically said to me, yeah, we've overspent by a few million dollars. I don't think we can keep these contracts anymore. So yeah, I think I had about 10 people roll off at the start this year. It is what it is, man. I mean, I've had cases of clients let and go a few contractors here and there throughout my career. And the way I've always thought about it is the market goes and ebbs and flows. It's like a stock market or whatever. Like you can't just go like that, but even if you're going like up, it upward structurally, there's always going to be peaks and troughs. So look, I'm not going to lie to you when I first started out and I kind of reach the milestone of like, I remember when like 10k a week was like the OG amount to get to and I remember reaching that and just coming into the office one day. The thing I had a few bs the night before and I kind of put my feet up and went, yeah, I'm the fucking man. And I, little did I know, little did I know that you can do a lot better than that. But at the time, I felt pretty good and I had a few hits early on where it would take me backwards and I just learned, all right, look, this book isn't forever. You got humbled, mate. Yeah, I got humbled. But I guess in terms of like the way that I protected it and I've actually fucked up massively on this is like one thing that my CEO is now the CRO crazed. He told me that I've just got to start being better with speaking to my contractors who work for me. And I found that really tough when I was on my kind of build phase up to like 55 contractors in 2021, 2022 because there's so many fucking people to look after. I just had no idea how I would keep track of them. So being able to do regular checking calls and I set this up and I lost a few contractors where I didn't like, I didn't even know they're finishing and like, they just kind of fell off and I was like, shit, like, how have I not kept on top of this? Like, what the hell? And I remember coming in one day and I was really embarrassed and he pulled me aside and he told me off and he was like, look, mate, you need to be on top of your contractors because this shit doesn't fly. And I was like, why do you think he wasn't? Was it just you just didn't know how to comprehend now? You could stay in touch with all these people. Mate, to be honest, it was, yeah, 55 people is a lot of people to check in with every two weeks. On top of that, I was going through a phase where I'd never been this busy before and I never had that many jobs on to juggerloat once. So ultimately, yeah, like, I just, I had to remember the importance of like, it's as important to extending keep your current contractors as it is to do a new deal. Like, my mentality this year, it's been a bit of a slow year. I have been full force in making sure contracts are happy, extending them and making sure that my existing profit is staying there because the new stuff, the new deals, yeah, looks good, you know, writing up new deals, you know, makes you feel a bit better, but, you know, I need to make sure that I'm protecting what I've already got, right? So big learn for me and something that I've changed at the back end of last year. So yeah, and I just want to say as well, I hired a kind of delivery consultant, guy called Logan, absolute legend, I hired him in 2022, you said. It's a 2022, right? And having him help me so much because he could free up my time. He could check him on the contractors. I could focus on the client stuff and we just did a bit of a balancing act and that was really key. I feel that point, it was just you, right? Oh mate, it was no, man. Yeah, I think I'd got up to something like 40k and 50 or contractors on my own and then they'd basically forced me to hire a delivery consultant. I was saying I was just going to do it on my own. And then they were like, dude, you need someone else to like make sure that this is going to plan. And I'm so grateful. I did take him on and he did really well. So if you were to write down the perfect client spread that you think would make you feel really, it would make you really easy to sleep at night knowing that your profit is probably going to have the best chance of remaining the same or at least not being completely wiped by a big percentage. What, what that client's spread looked like in terms of how many clients that you're working with or that you have contractors with, talk to us a bit about that. It's so hard to put a finger on it because I think every market is so different, right? Particularly in my market, I mean, having a large client spreads pretty good, to be honest with you because I like to spread my wrist. Let's just how I've always done my business. You place with 19 clients in 2022. Your best year, it says on the piece of paper that you shared with me. I can't remember the rest of the time. Yeah, what you shared with me, yeah, I've got it up. There's 19 clients placed, not including extensions. So that'll be, yeah, in that year. Right, right. Yeah. So, look, I think client spread can be debatable. Right? I mean, I came in on your links in post saying, this is Bollocks, you can't make a million of those with five clients, I'd be pretty nervous going to sleep and I'd reduce five clients because as soon as the taps turn off, like that could be one fifth of your revenue gone. So I think I'd be pretty comfortable having anywhere between 10 and 20 clients, depending on how much I'm looking to make, how big my book is, how many runners I've got. But I think having a good spread of perhaps one to three cash cows, a load of B clients and a couple of one off C clients is probably a decent spread to have. In 2021, you had 25 clients placed with it says on her. Yeah, what's interesting as well is looking at these, obviously I'm not going to say the clients on here, obviously, but what is interesting is there are, there are a lot of like ones and twos and freeze and there's only like a couple, there's a couple like, so 2022, for example, there's like 1516, 1419, 16 and then the rest of like ones and twos in terms of contractors, which is interesting, right? So again, you sort of also spread the amount of clients that you have more than like two or three contractors with as well. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think it wasn't really intentional. I mean, ultimately, like I was always looking at my shoulder. There was another consultant who I worked with and she had like literally two clients with like four-week contractors. She was always beating me and I always thought, fuck, I really want one of that. But you know, when the market turns sour and one of those clients turns the tap off, you know, not so good. So yeah, I think I just, I think I just naturally, I think with my market, it just took me to a wide spread. And I think that kind of came with the way that I built my business then anyway, because as I said at the start, the cool like I'm a big believer in making sure that you're spread in terms of communication, you're not just focusing on those a sexy clients. Somebody's got a service, the other things, right? And they are golden at opportunities when they come. So and ultimately with these little one-off placements or placements where you've done two placements in the client, I find that you can have quite a lot of clients that you want a lot of control because perhaps they don't really hire you in this space often or perhaps they don't have a panel and it can be quite an easy win. So I think for building your business, you need to make sure that you're keeping your eyes on these clients. And what I wanted to ask you as well is, because looking at these years, there always seems to be a lot of extensions, like looking at these different numbers, like 2022, 66 extensions, 48 placements, 2021, 39 extensions. Is there a science behind getting extensions? Is there a science behind that? Is it staying in touch with your contractors, understanding what's going on, like asking the other, no, is there a science behind getting extensions? Yeah, I mean, that's yours to be honest. So in terms of extensions, look, I mean, you need to make sure that you're on the ball really, really early, like you need to be thinking about extensions three months out. So like 12 weeks out, you need to start thinking about, all right, is this person going to extend, or are we going to have to mark it them out and get them to another client? So what I do is, I'm going to start thinking about the extensions. I speak to both clients and the contractors at the three month period. So 12 weeks, probably then again, I'll remind them at 10 weeks. Then at eight weeks, I'm going to start to get really serious and be like, look, you know, we really need to sort this out because I'm not going to be trying to get a sea level to sign off with a week to go. That's just not how I do my business. I've got reputation here. The contractors got to pay their mortgage like we have to be adults here. So I make sure that I follow up on email, on calls, everything, and I'm very thorough in terms of am I extending these guys because this is your revenue. You have to protect your revenue and a lot of people get really focused on that new business and they forget that this is still your money and this is your benchmark that you build from. What are you asking the client because I'm assuming they're only extending if they feel like they need them, right? Are you like they're not just extending it because like Sam's telling me to. No, no, I hope not. So like what are you asking? Are you because again with your approach, I'm assuming you're going, how's the project looking? Spelt to the contractor says there's still quite a lot to be working through. There's a lot coming through. You know, do you expect to need this sort of quality of testing to still be done in another six months. Like what are you actually asking the client? I'm being pretty straight up. So I just want to black and white arms are like I need like I'm telling the client that you need to let me know if you're not going to extend that contractor rather than are you going to. Right. It's more like if you don't extend this person, this human being, I have to make sure that they're earning money, right? So it is my job, unfortunately, as much I want to help you as a client, I have to make sure that they're going to go and have a job somewhere else because if you don't let me know, they are going on the market. So I will use that with clients and that does get a response. So to round this out then, for a lot of people they've had a difficult year this year, do you want to just share anything on like your experience of like you've been doing this for a long time now, right? The testing market Sydney, you've been smashing it out. Back it for a long time, man. So how does Sam think about remaining consistent, not getting complacent, how has Sam approached more often than not being really engaged in and what you're doing? I'm sure there's been days where you're like, "Fucking hell, I've had enough for this tested market." But like, talk to us a bit about that for people listening that might be three years and not six years in. I think you've got to remember that this is one of the most rewarding jobs in the world, right? I mean, it can be very thankless, but if you start to get it right and you start to see little wins, little wins build up and the feeling you get when you earn that big paycheck and you know, you're going on the holidays you want and you buy that car and all that kind of good stuff. You have to remember that that comes from consistency and work in your arse off because you know, you don't get things free these days, right? You can't just sit there and expect to earn that half a million a year. It's not going to happen. So it comes down to work ethic for sure and it comes down to remembering that it's not a rocket ship, it's going to take time. I mean, some of the best clients that I ever got took me years and years of knocking on the door to actually get and now one client I had like, "Oh, I still have todays, he's a great guy" and he used to work at a target of mine and I never got a shot there. And then he start his own consultancy. He calls me up out the blue one day and he says, "May you are the most persistent fucker I know. I want you to recruit me." And that's literally how we have beers now and laugh about how I was just so fucking persistent. But he thought to himself, he was like, "If this guy's this persistent we're trying to work with me, imagine the service he's going to give me when I need candidates like today or tomorrow, you know what I mean?" It's really important to just remember that you need to remain consistent. And I think one thing as well is, and it's still a work in progress for me, but you need to focus on yourself outside of work as well. I think it's genuinely important especially when you're finding a hard work to make sure that you've got a healthy enough routine because I remember when I started out like we'd be drinking on a Tuesday or Wednesday and you come in with a hangover. Oh wow. Terrific, right? For the number of Tuesday. Yeah, some weeks I'm not going to lie. I was 21 years old though, what were we doing in New City? Yeah, no judgment mate. But look, as I've got I guess a bit older and learnt about balance, I think, having a gym routine, having walking the dog, clearing your head, chatting to your partner, stuff like that can really help take that work stress and it can recharge you to come in and be a bit hungry the next day because if you just keep going at it and then you use our colours to release or something like that, you're just going to burn out. And when you burn out, it takes a while to get over that. Love it. Well Sam, look, it's been an absolute pleasure. Who does to you on everything that you've built so far, I'm sure there's going to be more, more success to come. So thank you so much for joining me on the pod. Thank you very much, mate. Pleasure. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode. I hope there were plenty of golden nuggets for you to take away. 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