The Contract Founder's Transformation: Stew Wallace on Going from Chaos to £45K Weekly GP

- Stu, welcome to the pod. - Thanks mate. - Pretty much only five years ago, you started your business with 10 grand in the bank. No, well, shares that were maturing at S3. So 10 grand, baby number two on the way. And also started this with your wife. - What made you pull the trigger? Why then was it the time to take that leap into starting your business journey? - Look, I've been at S3 for like five and a half years at that point. The destination was from the beginning, was always to try and get to the top and be the person that was running the most weekly GP. During that COVID period, about going over it, it was the point where my book reached like the highest point. And it was also when there was a rapid decline of everybody else's. So some could say I've hit it by default or some could say that it was just a pit the right market, whatever you want to say. But at that stage, the destination was almost not as good as the journey as cliche is, it sounds. You know, I had a ton of contractors. It was just like a revolving door. Personally, now looking back on it, I didn't manage the book as well as I could. There was some like three months contracts in there. There was some six months, there was nine months, but you know, it wasn't governed correctly by myself, which means it felt like a revolving door. I needed administrative support. Unfortunately, I didn't get it at the time. And I remember billing like 100K in December of 2020 and being absolutely slapped with tax, nearly having a heart attack at the age of 27 or whatever it wasn't thinking, you know what, this is just not worth it. So I decided from that point on and it was other things as well in terms of I was always looking to change things, processes, improvements, like the compliance was just taking forever at the time. And inside of a huge corporation is so much red tape you just can't change things. All them things sort of collectively, I decided, do you know what, yeah, I think I'm gonna go out on my own. So I spoke to my wife and she's an executionist. Like she just, no fear, like just go for it. And I'm just a little bit more, you know, a little bit more on the cautious side because I just reached the point that was trying to get to. But then I thought to myself, just like, you know, it's a bit of a football analogy, but like a top striker, right? If you leave when everything that you hit goes in, you know, when you move on to your next club or your next, you next destination, you confidence is up. A lot of people what I've seen in the past is they've left when the chips are down. So for me, I decided to leave when I was on top, which is on about March, April time, if you can remember. Baby number two was on the way in about five months time. And I was like, if this second baby arrives, I'm just gonna be institutionalized and be locked in this business forever. So yeah, we decided to make the jump. - Love it. I don't think it's ever a perfect time, but I'd love to see the data on the number of people that started a recruitment business whilst then having their first baby or like there is definitely it. I almost feel like for some people, it's like now or never almost. - Yeah, I think so. It's weird because, you know, on one side, they say that, you know, you get a lot of founders and they've got, and I can realise that even when I'm staying away like, I've got so much energy to give because I've got no responsibilities almost. It's just me, no huge commitment. So you can work right into the evening. Obviously with children, things do change and you've got other commitments now, you've got other priorities, but it really does drive a different side to you. And it also, especially from somebody that like socialising like being out there, I wasn't able to do that as much. So the energy went into the business and it went into creating and at night time, like I'm a night time creative person. So between the hours of seven o'clock to like 11 at night, is where all the creativity was coming out. So designing the brand and even the initial phases and just getting involved, you know, real basic versions on Canveron, just creating something was like super exciting. - If me and you met for a coffee around that, initial period of you launch it and I said, "Right, Steve, congrats on what's the business, what's the plan?" What would you have said to me? What were the intentions? To reduce my tax in half. And if I'm completely honest with you, the biggest reason was for me and the wife to settle together. And I was like, "Look, even if I run a half of what I'm running now and control all my administrative processes, yeah, we can make a real decent amount of money. We'll go for lunch at 12, you know, we'll drop the kids at daycare. It'll be nice, we'll have a couple of scoops. It'll be really good. We'll enjoy life. I'll go to the gym. Everything will be flexible. But you know, things change and it depends on how ambitious you are. And I also think, when you really care about, when you are building something of your own, the care level is just different. I also felt like I was given a second chance because I'd built the book that I wanted to inside of a corporation. And there was things, there was flaws with it that, you know, on me that I'd built myself. So being able to go in my own, I was starting again. So we took 10K shares, I had 10K in shares with the Nesfery. They were about to mature, but I took that out and that's what we started the business with. Just providing a client with just a cradle to grave real good personal service that they just wanted more. Now I appreciate your sharing that because I speak to a lot of founders and I know, it's a really obvious piece of advice to give other people, which is truly know what you want. But that is sometimes really hard to arrive at. And it's great to hear that's maybe where it started, but things have changed, which we're going to go into, right, with the business of your building now, the infrastructure that you build, where things are going. But it's just great to hear you be honest about that in terms of building a business that can support my family and good money. But that doesn't mean that it has to be that, that's your intention for the whole time, right? And it can change. So what we wanted to go into, because in that initial period, as you said, you managed to build your client list from scratch with no database up to circa 10K, we could do people like month five by the time the baby got here. And when I asked you about this in terms of the how, you then start talking to me about how we can go about building a contract but from nothing and how you build your market within S3 was you can draw it all back to one CV. Yeah. Talk to a bit about this. I know this will be helpful for people. I know this will also be something that you're actively coaching and helping the team at Construct with now. How can we build a contract book from one CV? So specifically, just to talk about how it happened in the first place, in I was dropped into S3 onto a desk. Here you go. Crack on with it. It was offshore wind, actually, and it was in renewables. Back in 2015. And it was it was mad busy, but it was just very limited jobs and so many candidates from there. I ended up picking into onshore wind. It was slightly a bit more of a niche. And it was like candid at short. So I realized, again, we had hardly any CVs on the database. And fast track then doing really well in that patch of onshore wind and only having a minimal amount of clients to deal with. It got to the point where that industry was a bit on the down sort of like 15 months into my career. And I'd built like a really key account already. And they asked me to basically work some specific roles in Southern Ireland, right, in the south of Ireland. They wanted specific experience so they can't have come from the UK. And we had no CVs on the system. So this is a client request, this always. This was a client request, yeah. So we had no CVs on the database. We had one CV, I think, at the time. So I had to start from there and straight away call the candidate, try and take as many referrals as possible. And pretty much from there, I had to use a job board that was pretty much inactive. Nobody really used it. I had to scrape loads of historical data manually. There wasn't all these AI tools. I pretty much had to rip all the CVs off, go through them. And you know, some of the CVs, I remember dated back to like 2006 and 2007 sort of that these guys even still working. I think LinkedIn was prominent, but it wasn't as prominent back then people were using it as much as it is now. So it really was creating the 300 plan. And that's what I'll come on to, right? So effectively to start a successful contract book in my opinion on what we teach a construct is the 300 plan. So the idea is that it's all about numbers. So in my world, I am going to create an Excel, okay? An Excel spreadsheet. And I'm going to have 300 candidates that are in my spot, okay? To go step back to even get them 300 candidates in the first place, it's about speaking to every single candidate. First of all, trying to build a really good relationship with them because that is why we're there in the first place, right? And it's about, from every call, especially when you can place multiple of these positions in, you know, on one project, it's about finding out who are the best people that you've worked around in the past? Who would you actually recommend? And just on that point, what I always used to see is the natural reaction for somebody, if you ask them something, usually is, oh, I don't really know anybody, but I always think it's the way that you ask somebody to actually get the right answer. And I think it's just even like your tone of voice, how much you emphasize what you're trying to get out of it. So, for example, you get people that will say, do you have any recommendations? They'll just ask you that straight question. And the thing is, I can't think of anybody off the top of my head and that's the natural objection. But for me, it's like, look, I almost explain what I'm going into before I actually ask the question. So I'm like, look, I understand from, obviously, from the time that you've been doing your role, you must have worked around some great people in the marketplace. Now, obviously, I know sometimes from, you know, from the top of the head, it's difficult to think of anybody, but just from, say, these four projects, who are the probably the best guys that you can think of that actually worked alongside you or for one of the other companies in the supply chain? Who would you say was the best people? And I feel like when you emphasize things a little bit better, you get more of a response. - Yeah, I'm telling you. - So I never struggled to get referrals. And so every time I'd speak to say 10 candidates in a day, I'd be aiming to almost double up that candidate database by having another 10 referrals by the end of the day. So that just repetitively. - So when you say just quickly, no, when you say referrals, there might be different types of referrals, but with this example, you're talking about candidates referring other people who are saying they're great. - Yes. So the other candidate, so at the moment, when you start with, it's a completely blank market. You don't have any candidates or one or two. How do you then take that from not to 300 without even being able to access a job board? And that's what I did from start to finish. So from there, you've obviously got the 300 plan, right? [BLANK_AUDIO] numbers game. So I knew in my head if I get 300 candelots on an Excel, I build a solid relationship with them and regularly meeting them and working out exactly what they're looking for in the marketplace and by building a relationship with them and giving the majority of time of giving them information on what's going on, what projects are becoming live, who's paying the best rates, finding out just personal stuff about them that they can come back to me and even if they've got a job offer that I will support them to try and get them the best possible rate and package for themselves that they was able to give me intel and I worked out out of them 300 candelots if they was able to give me three to five hiring managers from their previous contract roles, then that Excel was worth about £720,000 a year. Now let me break it down. So I worked out if I placed 10% of them 300 people in a numbers game, I'm like 10%, 30 people, it'd be worth £720 a year at 500 weekly GP. Even at the beginning, that was kind of my aim. I always start hiring. I'm like, if I placed 5% of them, you know, at 500 weekly GP, you know, I'm building 7.5 grand a week. So for me, it was always about every week, you know, apart from the standard KPIs around calls, meetings, pulling the correct intel, obviously you send out all that kind of stuff. For me, it was a numbers game of just looking at the two lists building, right? On our systems now, it's like your hiring pool and your talent pool, then three things together because your job as a contract recruiter, right? That's not people overcomplicate it. Your job is to build a talent pool on one side and a hiring pool on the other that reflects them to and match them together. And it sounds easy, but that is the job. And if you stay in that, you know, less is more. If you stay in that pool of talent long enough and keep building relationships, a door will open. If you speak to the right hiring managers in that market, a door will open and you'll have the ability to match them to together. People overcomplicate it. Where have you found, because you'll be helping people on the construction in our with this? Where do people typically go wrong, then? Where do they fall short of that? If you're saying that it's fairly simple, where is it that you've often see people make mistakes will go wrong with that concept? I think there's a quite a few different areas. I think that their systems are not set out correctly. Sometimes which I've seen in the past is the have candidates that are looking for permanent opportunities who are specifically talking about contracts. Because I've made these mistakes. You want more all the time and you need more candidates. You don't realise that the goal is sat in the 300 that you've got. Because effectively, you know, even I feel like I spoke to all the 300. There was no way I was getting around to all them all the time, right? They'd be the regular 30 to 50 that I'd probably speak to. And the rest, you know, they'd get hit with obviously job opportunities via an email or whatever. I think that's a mistake is people want to always add more. And through that, then it starts getting messy. You can't identify the 25 to 50 that you really need to be zoning into in order to then place. So that's one part. They get lost in the process of like how contract works. They forget how they got the job on in the first place, which is building a relationship. All starts with the candidate for me. They always did. Building a relationship with the candidate, making sure that you know what they want. When are they finishing on the job? How, you know, what's their typical package that they're looking for? What location are they looking for? The ins and outs of the candidate, where they previously worked before, would they go back all these key points and they go straight to the client and they go in then to the client without no product. So there is a mismatch, but you've kind of got to do both simultaneously. You've got to be able to speak to candidates consistently and speak to clients because in contract recruitment, it's about speed and it's about efficiency and it's about quality. When a client comes to you as a contract recruiter and says, I am looking for X and you can't provide ACV minimal within on the call. For me, you're not in the spot. You're not in the right space because you shouldn't have to go out and search. That's almost to be that's permanent contracts. They're hiring you and paying a premium is because you've got somebody already and you should know exactly what they're looking for through the intel that you've already gathered over the years. Tell me about cradle to grave delivery. What does that mean for you? How would you define that cradle to grave delivery? What do you mean by that? We'll get back to the episode in just a moment, but first I want to tell you about one of our long-term partners, SourceWell. Something I hear again and again when I'm speaking to founders and agency leaders is that most teams are not short on effort. They're short on context. When outreach, dialers, notes, follow-ups and data sits across multiple tools, your recruits are always working from a partial picture. Deal slip through the cracks, follow-ups get missed and admin eats the day. That's really where SourceWell comes in. You might already know them as an outreach and automation tool, but over the last year they've built out something much bigger. The AI recruitment platform designed specifically for grown recruitment agencies who want to run a more profitable business, not just manage their desks. They have a really simple idea. 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Let's get back to the conversation. Cradle to grave sort of service, especially when you work in a role. I think it's starting from even the initial job spec, right? So from the initial job spec, making sure that all the details are taken that you know, they're absolutely necessary, but it's done in the shortest space of time because at the end of the day, a lot of the hiring managers, you don't want to spend 30 minutes on a call and not going to sit here and say that I haven't had to go back because I missed information. It happens, right? But when you're talking about what does a A1 service look like, it's nailing the job spec completely and having that confidence to say to the client at the time, "Look, if you can't give me this time, whatever it might take, even I'm going to make it short and sweet, I can't work this role for you because it's a knock on effect." It all starts with the holy grail, right? So starting out with the job spec, then going out to the market and everything being super efficient. So working in a specific manner. So for example, if you've got like a contract role and you probably know two or three people already, but you're obviously, you're aiming to get five CVs over to the client because there's the standard. You want to be doing things like a chronological order. So you want to be putting like a post out on LinkedIn. You want to be emailing obviously your database. What's that channel that you've got set up? You want to be making sure you're basically wanting things to be working in the background right before then you start making your calls. It's all like an efficient order. Then you start making your calls, you go through everything, you've got your screening calls and you're going through the job spec with them. You're able to get the candidate exactly what the time scale is in terms of the CV feedbacks happening tomorrow at three o'clock and the interviews are happening just a day after and the offer process is going to be within the next 24 hours and you're going to be starting if everything's done correctly and then boarding one week from time from there. So everything is just really clearly set out. Then once you've obviously screened the candidates and you've gone through the motions with that, the CVs are going across. In the process of that, you're obviously taking references on the candidates, right? This is where I see consultants fall down a little bit is because when they first start, they're like, I've got a job, I've got a job to start working a couple of roles. Then the work, the job, the main aim and the head is just to fill the job. But what they're not thinking about is inside of that job opportunity, there is five candidates that you've got to put forward to try and get your three interviews on a job. And out of five candidates, each candidate has three references that you can take. There's these 15 business development opportunities right there. So, and at the start of the week, if somebody said to somebody, well, you know, if you could get on the call with 15 hiring managers and it's going to be warm and you could convert into a meeting or a job, you would take it effectively. You've got a reason to do it. So at that stage, you're doing that. Now, that sounds like the perfect model. Sometimes you've got to be in and out and quick and you need probably to take one to make sure. But I always tried to make sure that you're in that process. That's what I was doing. So you take the references, they go across to the client, you get your CV feedback booked in, your book, obviously the candidates in for interview. Hopefully you've got the three out of the five from there. Then the interviews take place. You manage the interviews just so it's really slick. Everything's in the managers diary. You've got the CVs attached to the calendar invites, interview, confirmations have gone out to the candidates. Everything just looks uniform and slick from there. Once the client has decided to hopefully, I used to try and get them to offer all three in an order to say, okay, which one would you take? Because you always need your backups that when you go them through the offer process is where things really break down. How quickly then can you obtain number one that the author and the client say information and also then obtain all the candidate information terms and compliance and documentation or if it is especially in the European market, how quickly can you get payroll information and all the simulations done via the umbrella companies in different jurisdictions. So we always tend to do that prior. Once you've gone through that process, you've been able to offer the candidate, obtain all the documentation and then it's about the onboarding process from there is because that's when it really really starts, like you've done the deal now, but like getting the candidate, especially we've asked stuff, you know, we might get somebody that's from Poland that were taking them to Denmark or somebody from Ireland and were taking them to Sweden or, you know, wherever it might be. And there's a lot of things to think about, like taxation, logistics, what's the cost going to be from them, even just getting to the airport, the airport then, you know, the flying, how long's the flight? All the miniature details that really matter to the candidate, we really tried to nail that piece and the candidate feels like, wow, everything has been taken care of. I know exactly what I'm doing, even little things because I hope I'm always learning, right? I remember doing something and the candidate turned up, you know, late flight went into his, it was a remote place, didn't have like tea and coffee in his apartment. I was like, wow, I've got a loan from this. So straight away now, I'm like, when we speak to the clients, that look, can we have tea and coffee and some bread, even just in his apartment waiting for her. Yeah. And it's little things that turn up and it's, you know, and it's just there for at least I can make a cup of tea and have some talks before I even say something. So it's the small details that really matter. Obviously, once you've got the candidates to say, we used to set up WhatsApp groups as well with like, with the client and candidates, where everything's just coordinated, here's the parking arrangement. So everything is just so detailed that everybody's on the same page. And then once that happens, it's about managing the time sheet process, making sure that they can coordinate the time sheet on a Friday, the manager can sign it off. And then it's even comes down to the next bit, which is like, which drove me insane as suppose when I was part of a big corporate because I wasn't involved in it. It's like the bill inside. It's like purchase orders and even getting paid. So especially what was just me and Meg's at the beginning, you know, to be honest, we kind of fell a little bit out of that and we're getting back into it again now through because we've gone through like a transition of growth. But it's like really building a personal relationship with their AP team. So as soon as we got the first payment, we sent like a basket of like biscuits and stuff to their AP team. I promise you, we got paid on time every week. So we just built a relationship like nobody calls and does a team's meeting. AP is an accounts payable. Yeah. Nobody builds relationships to the back office. Everyone's after the hiring manager, but AP teams, I can't payable teams. They're the ones who pay the bills, right? So why we're not building relationships with them? So we just built relationships at every part of a business that we could, yeah, we could almost lean on them when we needed to. That's really good to hear when you talk there from start to finish. Why you can see there how all of that stuff and there would have been more in there. There's so many small details as you said. And that's also how much you have to pay attention to all the small things. Great, many disciplined. Why I think this is also really important for people to hear you talk about that is if you, because I know you're into this stuff now as well, is if you get really good at doing what you just did, that makes it then way more easier to recognize where the inefficiencies are, where we can put AI in, where we can put technology in it. If you've actually thought about what does an absolute world class experience look like from taking a contractor job to that contractor starting in the first day days. So it's really cool here and you talk about that because clearly you've really thought about it. I actually did a session, obviously, in part of a coaching group, which is the impact board, we have Chris, Tristan and Rich, some shout out to them guys. I did a session with Rich actually on just processes from start to finish. So from the initial like way back before even, we've even got a job spec almost getting the clients attention and where can we create moments of wow, every given opportunity, how do we create moments of like a great product like Apple does like everything's a bit quite exercise. Like if you haven't done that, that's why I wanted to highlight it because even if you're a recruiter employed, you can do that. There might be elements that like you had you as limited to where you can influence, but still I think that's a really good exercise is really thinking about what do you actually understand what a world class experience with it like what we are sparring to and when you're breaking that down. I think that's a really good thing to do. I just wanted to ask you then before we got into this, the first couple years of building construct was because I'm sure you've seen it because we're talking about zero to one. Getting contract right from all of the conversations I've had just seems to be way more of a longer term investment, can take more time to really get it rocking. From what you've seen, if I join your business tomorrow, I guess it might depend on market, but I'll ask anyway, you can tell me what you think. So if I join your business tomorrow and I'm coming with all the work ethic, all of that, what do you think are sort of realistic milestones of me going from zero to one in contract? How long does it connect take? I don't know what you view your first milestone. Is it two and a half way, okay, with G.P. a lot, how long have you found it sort of take if I do all these things correctly to build up my contract book? I know it really very, but how do you think about that from what you've seen? For our own individual case studies in the business, I think it's not one size fits all. Obviously, like you said, it depends on the person, but it heavily depends on obviously in the market that you choose. It's also the setup right because I think that we've got, we've made them mistakes. We've put somebody that's brand new onto a brand new market. Which you guys haven't even done before. Yeah, we haven't even done before. We've kind of touched on it. We made a place to couple of roles. It's not like completely, but it's like, it takes a specific, really specific type of person to basically build a market from absolute scratch, especially I think in this, you know, in this world at the moment, people are after income pretty quickly because it's quite expensive. So I think in the right patch, you can easily get up to, well, our guys have got up to one K within, I'd say probably three, four months. So to depend on the market, you can get up to one K between three or four months, depending on the, you know, the deals that you're doing. I think our time to first deal was like 43 days, I think, but it also depends on the quality of it because at the beginning, again, you tend to do deals that in five, six months time after that that you probably look back on and you're like, they weren't the greatest of the deal. So you don't always get the best at first, but, you know, just as even a case study, one of my guys Cameron, who came in and he's only a year into the business now, he's really nine K from a standing start. Yeah. You know, so it can be done and shout to Cameron because he's you know, he's brilliant. I appreciate you showing that because I know, particularly for those companies that are trying to build contracts, I know just from a lot of my conversation, I'm going to take a lot more money than you expected and longer time wise. Yeah. It's good to talk about that. Should we talk about the first couple of years then because I know there's a lot of learnings in here, wasn't there? Yeah. Because as we can clearly hear, you're someone that big on the craft individual contributor, like you've got that track record, you built things in contract, but you know, as the years, in the first couple of years went on, that skill set isn't then it's a different skill set to then being an entrepreneur business owner, right? Which is what we're figuring out, which a lot of recruitment founders have to how do you describe those first three years really figuring out figuring out what works what they've done. There's been some great wins in there, right? You obviously had the wears that join you that still with you now, who's like your top bit left. So there's always great things that happen, but there's also a lot of hard stuff in there. How would you describe those first couple of years building construct you think? Do you know what? Really tough? Yeah. Really tough, mentally, really tough. I think that, you know, it seems like the best thing to do to go out on your own, but even starting back at the beginning when we first started getting back to that 10k mark in like four and a half months, standing in start with I had to go out to new clients because obviously the, you know, my, yeah, coming in. Yeah. So I just remember like reaching at milestone, I kept ringing my old, my old manager, right? He was a good friend of mine, really good guy. Yeah, shout out, Adam Grondin by the way. And I remember calling him quite a lot when I was doing a placement and like just that pat on the back that I used to get. And then I think it got to, it didn't even need to say it, right? But it's got to a point where I like, you don't work for me anymore. And you're also working in the same space. So, you know, you're kind of taking food off my table almost. So I think once that kind of happened, and then I remember that I do remember like, cause I was in my back garden and I was like, put the phone down. I was thinking, you know, me and me, I'm working together and she was more back office, but you know, I never had that other salesperson that was really bouncing off. And it kind of really hit home that how much you really do love that environment. You really do miss the recognition of doing placements, doing something just, you know, I'm always about, I was comparing stuff to sport, but it's not just a way, it's not like just winning. It's about the way that you win. And it's like how you get great boxes, you know, they just win on points and it's a bit, but then you get like people who can show well or people that are knock out artists and just it's great to watch off. Styler plays in football. And I used to like winning in smart ways and really doing placements that were just a bit outside of the box or flipping things around the last minute, taking somebody from another agency, like I had nobody to share that with. And it was a real big moment for me and a big realization. So from there, then we went obviously, I decided that look, I'm either going to just really live as like a lifestyle business and almost just forget now, this is just a, like a monetary vehicle or I was going to have to build. And I was owning good money at that point, right? It's just me, my legs splitting the tax in half, both working together and say splitting the tax in half. It's just because the income was collectively shared. And FHM, I said, so do you feel like just on that? Did you have the light? Did you achieve the sort of last, I just think, was you doing the drop offs and that? I don't know. Yeah, I did. It just, it wasn't me. It just wasn't me. Like I was, I was doing it. And I was living a great, you know, it was, it was great. And we was going to pop out of black for breakfast in the morning in Manchester and then going by and like, it was the first time I was able, even I was, I was free, but we had, you know, bills and whatever to pay. I had a lot more cash at that point. And I was, went for a bit of a spending spray and I went into that flannels and I'm going to have an X and I'm like, oh, just doesn't mean shit really. I'm still ringing your manager, sending it down the day. Yeah, exactly. So for me, it was bigger than that. And actually, you start to realize that money is the byproduct of purpose and doing well. So we decided, look, we're going to start building. So the usual stuff, you know, we hired somebody at part time, genuinely part time that came to a house for a few drinks and to did the recruitment and were like you know, I'll ban it. to start, we've got some roles to fill. And then it started from there, then we hired an administrator that was basically an ops manager that did absolutely everything. And she did a great job actually. She was, so when you realize now, you've split up every single back office piece from finance to compliance. And this person did it all, but you know, at a smaller scale. So we did that. We brought in obviously Wesley, who's been, yeah, still with me now, great guy. And she looked about five people at the end of year one. I got here around 16, 20, correct. Did you, he's about some palm does as well. Yeah, some permed deals doing a bit of mixed back, no real like where we're going. Just we're going to try and do it. It was still lifestyle, but earning some money along the way went through that. I think we've got to point before I was getting married, right? We kind of looked around and I just didn't see in the group of people that we had at the time that this was going to build to culture. Wasn't right. Something was just grinding on me. And we were, we were profitable, right? Yeah. Just wasn't, I couldn't see us building. So we cut back to pretty much me, Wes and the opposite. So we've got to hear you. So basically didn't up to that around year two, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, three. Yeah. You grew to like six. You carried on with that trailer for less grow team, all of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Grue to like six, seven people tried rookies, seniors, used red to red, but then, yeah, you was like, maybe feeling like this inside looking around. So which is why you then had a bit of a reset. We'll get back to the episode in just a moment, but first I want to tell you about one of our partners, Atlas and specifically highlight one of their most anticipated feature drops from their customers today, magic search. We all know that the CV only tells half the story and now Atlas can fill in the rest with magic search. It helps you find the right people faster than ever. Every word to candidate shares in an interview, every salary mentioned on a call, every skill or experience tucked away in an email, Atlas captures it, enriches it and makes it searchable by talking to their platform. Ask Atlas who talked about wanting a short commute or who shared that they're planning to move abroad next year, and it's instantly going to find you answers and the right people. It basically means no more filters, no clicking around only clear results from actual conversations. It's going to be the easiest way to uncover the hitting value in your database and turn every past interaction into future placements. But instead of just hearing it from me about the impact of moving over to Atlas, have a listen to Chris who made the move. Since we've been using Atlas since the start of the year, we've had back to back record quarters and our EBIT does over 40% of the moment, which is pretty unheard of in recruitment, especially in UK. That's down to a lot of what Atlas has created. So yeah, the time back to consultants, the conversations that you can have with your clients now, the detailed feedback of finding information, a click of buttons. Obviously, we've integrated WhatsApp extension as well. So all of the WhatsApp discussions that we have with candidates and clients go straight into the CRM. That was a big game changer for us. So you've just heard from another happy Atlas customer who made the switch. If you really don't want to get left behind and ensure you're partnered with the right platform to fuel your entire business, then make sure you do not miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive recruitment mentors podcast listener offer at recruitmentvattelis.com/recreementmentalspogcast or just hit the link. All right, let's get back into the conversation. We didn't have a hiring strategy. We didn't have a training plan on the academy for anybody to come into. So it was, you know, looking back at it, I take full responsibility from the learning procedure. I never, it's free. I was never a manager. I was always just a top biller and if they say as far as it sounds, top billers are always the best managers. I was really just learning that I was just learning on the ropes, like, you know, it was kind of one of them situations. So unfortunately, there was a few casualties in terms of not having a training platform to people to just come in and grow. You know, the hiring people a bit more experienced that just were slightly different. So what we were looking for or didn't have, you know, that weren't trained the right way that we were looking for. So we were still profitable, but it just wasn't going in the direction that we felt. You fell out of your D-don't. Yeah. Yeah. So many people, I appreciate you sharing that because so many people relate to that. I think I mentioned it to you, but I do think I'm glad you shared how you felt when you was experiencing wins, but didn't have anyone to share that with because I know a lot of people struggle with that and it can maybe catch them off guard. Maybe that how much they enjoyed that or would miss it. And then what it sounds like, feel free to correct me here, but I speak to a lot of founders where they get to a point where they are in good money. They've got money in the bank. They're profitable. And it's almost like, well, I guess I should use that money to try and grow my business. And it's coming from that place of like hiring people in versus, let's build a process. Let's really figure out what a non-negotiable is. I just those types of things is what it sounded like is like you had this opportunity. Let's reinvest in the business and bring people on. I'm sure we'd be able to figure out versus let's try maybe reverse engineer of like where we want to maybe get to what type of people we want in it sounds like. Yeah. I think the starting point is you've got to know where you want to go. Right. We were basically got in the car with no destination. So you know, we're just driving around. It's just trying to make it work. That's basically what it is. So hiring people seem like the right thing to do to try and fill more jobs, but there's no like actual how we're going to do this. No systems processes, no infrastructure really. So that's kind of where it fell down. And would you mind sharing? Because like you said, you take full responsibility, which like it's great to hear you talk about in that way. But just for people listening, that might be in that position right now. Two things really I'd love you to share. Was there like an ongoing niggle that you felt that was like something's not right. I need to make a decision or was it like a point where like right, I just need to rip the band off him and make a decision. And then two, how did you feel after you made that decision? Because there might be people listening right now that are in that, you know, all the people that were there at that time, you know, I've got great respect for and alike as a person. But in terms of what we were trying to build at construct, the culture, the behavior, it was behavior, the behavior was just wrong. It was like the construct like behavior and culture is like striving to do more consistently, always trying to outperform our competitors and to make sure that high performance is like that the peak of exactly what we're doing. And it just wasn't. And I was trying to instill it, but sometimes people are just not built like that. And I could just feel it from I was trying to get more out of what they wanted in the business. You wanted it more than that. I wanted it more than them. Yeah, better put them there. So I went on for a little while. Did it when you? Yeah, I went on. So it went on for a little while. And so at the point of where when we caught, and I was getting married, it was kind of the milestone. It's quite a funny story. It's a because, you know, it was just me and Wes there. We started to have a bit of fun with it. We started to go traveling right across Europe. I won't mention the stories on the air, but we had some really good times. We're doing really good numbers just because we didn't brought it back. Yeah, just brought it back. Me and Wes were just going out working together. Yeah, really good partnership meeting all our clients. Everything that's today is from the work that we did together at that point. We were relentless right every, you know, every day. You know, Wes, what man, we mentioned at that time. Now he's not driving like that anymore, but he had a little, you know, he had a little red banger that he called the bug at the time. And you know, he weren't in that much ink of any was just growing. I won't tell you the car is in now, but he's, you know, it was just quite funny to look back at them stories at the time when we was just in that building phase. But then it got to a point where I got married now. I kept pushing it back to say, because I was quite enjoying myself and the pressure had almost gone again. And then I started to think, do I really want to build now? We're making good money again. I've got the right and man like that. I'm speaking to and bouncing off and buzzing off. But he was the person that generally pushed me to grow because when you've got really good people, they will not rest on something that they don't want for their career. And he was like, looks to it, weddings happen now. I'm not working with you from a rest of my life. Just me and you like, I'm just not doing it like we need to start growing. And I was at right Wes. And he was the person that's constantly, they say it's a lot, but really good people, really pushing. Sometimes it's uncomfortable, right? It can be uncomfortable because they demand a lot of you, but they demand from people, the senior people on business now, but especially from him at that point was definitely the stick that I needed. Because I'm like, well, put me back in that zone again. I've got to go and write, well, if we carry on like this, he's just going to want to do something or just go somewhere else because he wants to be built and wants to be a, is a people person, be around people. I could have happily probably stayed in that zone at the time, but thankfully we didn't. And we decided that right, we're going to start growing again. And this time we started to use rectorx. We also brought in two other people, one of them obviously being Sarah Hartley came just an immense hire for us because again, it was another senior person who's got more experience than me, esteretrained absolute powerhouse. And when she came into the business then, it was like that lifting moment of going, all right, okay, we're starting to build a little bit here, but then we fell into the same trap again. And then we used a rectorx and we started hiring to like senior consultants. What are you mainly trying to do different this time round? Because obviously, you're hesitant for a reason. I guess I'm assuming part of it was like how it went last time, how maybe hard it was or parts you didn't like about it. Some of the things we're going to go through in terms of what we've been really putting in place over the last 12, 18 months. Yes. But just at this stage, I know you've said you brought on people, but were you trying to approach it differently or not? So do you know what? It seemed at the time that we were trying to, so all we said is, so this is the, we said we're going to try and hire, and we're going to hire better people now. Okay. Right. We made a bar hire for people to join. That's it. And that's what we thought we did. And we got specific contract recruiters and we tried to get the demographic right and all this kind of things. But it failed again. And it failed again because we had no training process in place. We still didn't have those things. We still didn't have the training process in place. A lot of the structure wasn't there. We still did like a company trip. And it was great within these things. But it was the behavior. The people that we had. the behavior was wrong. So whether they could do recruitment or not, we started to realize this is where we went to. After we lost that then second part cohort almost, we decided we either take you brand new, never done recruitment before, but I've got the right behaviors for us and represent the right values or you're the cream of the crop. And we don't hire anybody in between that's loose just hanging around the industry that's been on a bit of a roundabout and that was our real key model now. And that's what we're going to work towards. This kind of brings us into where it big things started to change, right? Yeah, around 2023, brought in Sarah, as you said. Around this point as well, let's just make this clear. You guys were doing well, 2530K with KGP. You know, you was doing well, but you're still trying to figure out this bit and then maybe now we're in the 2024 piece work. But that's also then when you engaged like Chris at the impact board, for example, when we're starting to build things a bit differently with some of these lessons, as you said, when we parted, so it was all kind of happened at the same time. So that that cohort we just mentioned, we had somebody leave that was with us, that good friends and, you know, good friend of mine now, but probably just didn't match up in terms of what they were after and what we demanded in terms of like, we're very like fun place to work, but you've got our almost want to be a killer, right? You've got to really want to be getting it every day. And you've got to like the language of like what we're trying to achieve. And if you kind of somebody just wants a relaxed environment, just to sit back, we partied ways with somebody and then slowly after that, somebody else, then we part of that cohort decided to leave the first person that left us because most times it was like, maybe let people go. Yeah, I would let people go. And then on the exit interview, they said, I don't see the vision that he's trying to build and I don't think that they're going to get there. That person that said to you said it to someone else said it to you. Yeah, said it in the exit interview. How do I know you feel? Yeah, it made me feel like a piece of shit, to be perfectly honest with you. But I am why though? Because you felt like you did them a disservice or you because it felt like a bit of a that just that journey of trying to get over the beginning part of trying to get over a certain amount of heads at the beginning bit. It's so difficult that you almost sometimes don't believe it's going to happen. And that's what happened. I felt at the point that was a bit in sinking sand, the operational, the infrastructure, things just weren't right. I just brought in Jay and though, that was kind of the, it was my head of people. It was amazing. That was a bit of a safe haven. And I was like, right, what we're going to do here. And then we again, we're still doing good numbers from a sales perspective, but it's about trying to grow on that how we go into grow. Then obviously it's not one ingredient to make in a great cake. Right. There's multiple ingredients and the impact board and then Jay are coming in. And then having obviously somebody leave, I felt like we were getting slightly back on track to where we're trying to grow and grow something. The person that was in my ops team, I brought in somebody else to replace her at the time because she was just thinking of leaving and then end up keeping them both together. And for whatever happened at that point, I was away on holiday on vacation and they were basically doing the full back office function. They both pretty much left at the same time while I was away one other one week notice period. So effectively, I found myself being eight and a bit hours away, whatever, with no back office function or the sales contract business on a contract business and all the sales guys going, what's going on? I've got an outpour of £225. So like, when we say, oh, let's just be clear, what do these people do? Was it from on board contractors, compliance? What is it that would fall the core responsibility? It's because no, this is then what you're being getting. Yeah. So general administration, compliance, so sort of not the documentation for candidates, contracts, finances, doing AP AR. So I can't receivable, I can't pay up all billing time. And she's dealing with the account. So based on anything that was collected, even working with the sales team to like produce all the reports. So it was a pretty big function, but it was a function that was mislabeled and it's mislabeled at the beginning when you've never ran like the operational side before and it was just labeled as ops. But it's far more than that. Our operational team now is not that. Well, jump back into the episode in just a moment. But first, I want to shine a light on our partners, raise, who in my opinion are one of the most powerful ways to fund and run your contract book. Raise work with hundreds of agencies across the UK and US from ambitious solar recruiters to fast scaling teams. They ultimately help you unlock cash flow, remove admin headaches and make sure contractors get paid on time every time. So you can stay focused on doing deals and growing your business. Today, I'm joined by Dan Mills from higher, who's going to share how raise has supported his journey and the impact it's had on his growth. Just a few words for Steven, the team at raise as a tight Yorkshireman spending money on anything causes me internal turmoil. But it's one of the few bills I actually don't mind business. But because whenever we watch out, please help at the silly o'clock and whatever time is usually met with a really quick fix. Our laugh from just generally nice people, you want to help. The guys have been instrumental in helping hire build our contract book today and the generally can't thank them all enough. So as you just heard, raise aren't just another finance provider. There are genuine growth partner behind some of the most exciting recruitment agencies out there. If you want to scale your contract book with confidence, keep more of your margin and give your contractors a first class experience. I'd really recommend checking them out. You can book a demo with raise and mention recruitment mentors, podcasts to get 50% off your first month. Hit the link in the show notes or go straight to raisetech.io/RMP. Let's get back into the conversation. And then the other thing we've known, which you really understood me, which I think was a really good lesson. But I put to that point in your mindset was very much, I've hired these people, they're the experts, they know what they're doing. I do sales and I do this. You wasn't really curious about how they did certain aspects of that. So at the beginning of when we first started the business, I set up that with Megs and we built it, right? And we did it right. But then over time, with no processes, you bring somebody in, it starts to dilute, they start to do things in their own way. So basically we had no systems, no processes. Yeah, we did our systems and processes, but it wasn't like somebody else could come in in the morning and pick it up and just take it on. Yeah, like if I went into your business then I said, "Oh, can you talk me through how do these aspects? You wouldn't have been at salmon." Yeah, I could tell you how most things were done, but it was more like the, it was the specific, I could tell you that the outer layer, but how they actually did it. They did it, guys. It was very different. So the people that were involved at the time, they didn't have any playbooks or anything. So when they left, I just got given the back office function that was now a lot larger than when we first did it at the beginning. With a lot more contracts coming through, a lot more issues. It wasn't as clean. Shoulds take it over. I had to take it over. And honestly, it was probably the most stressful point of them up because I still owe all my, there was a lot of questions being asked. At that point, I felt the most pressure because obviously last year we lost the people that we, in like the November December, that thing was mentioned around like the vision and stuff. That's grinding, that's working away. I've got the people around me and I'm starting to, you know, as an owner and a founder, I think people have relates to this paranoia kicks in sometimes and you think, "Oh, people are looking around it. Am I the right person to lead this? What's going on about it?" Even though we're doing numbers like, and then if you have like a average month and then there's nothing going on, there's nothing exciting going on, things just start to eat away at you, especially if you're a person who's really, really cares about trying to grow it. Took over the finance, you took it over. Yeah, took it over and had to pretty much work around the clock. So I had to do a normal job where I could and then I was just doing graveyard shifts to like nine ten o'clock at night because it'd take me forever to do. And I was doing it properly and I was setting up systems and I was cleaning things up. So I went back through every single system and honestly, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Bad the time didn't feel like it. Didn't feel like it. But when I came out the other side and I had Jane compliance and then I hired credit controller and I'm an APAR lady and she was great. And just mentioned before that, I started to discover because for whatever reason I wasn't in the numbers and it was, you know, I just take full responsibility for it because I was more focused on say-als and trying to grow and I was doing a lot of the, I was doing stuff, I was still building at that point. We had like 250K that was overdued and it wasn't even overdued as clients were paying. It was just like, it's just we hadn't invoiced correctly and that really simple things. So, and I actually feel silly now saying it, which is really weird that at that point, that I let it happen. And also I'm just a completely different person like 12 months on like so different that it's so easy to fall into the get because there's so many things to think of. And we managed once we got like 250K back in it. Oh my god, I was like, gee, this is where it's all good because I felt like the bank wasn't growing. So many things to think about. These guys are asking me questions all day. It almost feels like you're a rabbit in the headlight sometimes around trying to grow the business. Can we do it? Where we getting people from? You constantly got to sell the vision. And then if you stop believing it yourself, sometimes people can read that on you. But coming through that really gave me a no-every-erry of the business now. And I think as a CEO and as a founder, you should know every area of the business to a level. It's obviously people, especially that you're bringing to know, take it over and take it to the next level. But as a sort of a as a foundational level, you should know every area of your business and how it operates. Yeah, I really appreciate being honest on that because whenever I sit down with founders of contract businesses, by far one of the consistent things they're sharing with me is how impactful and important that how we're going to call it up. So that's either the businesses to get right. 100%. And the feelings of when it hasn't been right to then when they get someone in that seat or seat to a world class really experiencing the difference. But like you said, really challenging at the time. But the huge benefit that you've now found to come in the out the other side, which you just shared, is then how much more competent you feel in all those areas of the business, which has massively helped for right when you're hiring people in, when you're maybe questioning and challenging how come we haven't got this or that done. So huge bet, all their hard. - 100% massively helped, just so you become an all-rounder CEO founder. - Understanding the processes, the intricacies, like what's going on, the terminology, right? Not shying away from it, as really just helps us to, yeah, look, Cash's king, so I think just understanding that even that whole finance department now, now we've got three people and our finance function now, and we've obviously got so many in compliance, there's so many in operations and people in performance. So, and that was all one role, just to, you know, just to police. - You give people an idea. - Yeah, just to give people an idea. - And then I mean, chucking those while this period, you had Ferd's baby as well. So that was also the mix in that period. I know I know it's tough. - Yeah, just, yeah, it's crazy, I'm not even mentioning that. Yeah, so we had, we had Teddy in the, in the December, and I'm not one for like, you know, sub stories, but it wasn't, you know, it was a bit of a difficult point because he said, I'd just stay in hospital and for like four or five weeks, like, he's in an incubator, so it was a pretty tough time. And then, you know, unfortunately, you know, and the business doesn't stop. So you've just got to continue as they kind of fight through it. So that was a pretty difficult period for us for both me and Megs. And can imagine it's Chris Pressure and a relationship. - Oh, yeah. - Chris, so it's one of the things, but no, I think that through tough times, you gain a lot of strength and character. And I think that I'm sure there'll be tougher times to come because it's just that's the way that the world is. But it really did build a layer of character in me that I didn't know that I had. So over the last 12 months, like, what were some of the first things that you really tried to fix and get sorted then? Was it the finance side of the business? Like, what were there? Because I know the way that you spoke to me about the last 12, 14, 15 months is really transformational for you and the business. So let's talk about that. What were some of the first things that you fixed on the business side? - Bringing in Jaya, first of all, was like, you know, you got pivotal highs along your journey. Jaya was unbelievable once she first came in. She set up a full academy, which meant that straight away. And, you know, just somebody that runs with everything was really quick, just understood the dynamics like really comfortable with, we're not perfect. We're gonna trial stuff and we're gonna, you know, we're gonna work with it. Made me feel really comfortable as well. Understands my management and up managing all most. And we started and build an academy, which meant that we could look at now hiring people, right? So I would talk about the operational cycle, you know, simultaneously looking this out, is now we had an academy to bring people in. And actually, we've got a way of training people, right? So that was being built. Then we looked at, right, okay. So we've got this operation call it in terms of credit control, accounts receivable, accounts payable, billing, time sheets, compliance. How does it all fit into each other? So we designed the process and we worked out exactly who should be doing what and where. Everything's got playbooks for exactly how you should do it. Each country across Europe has got a playbook and everything was designed initially on, I was like a docky sign style platform, it's pandered up, everything was designed. So everything was just in line that when you do a place in here, this is how it's born. Systems, processes, everything now has just become systems and process driven for everything. So everything we do, there's a playbook that's designed and it's stored and it's saved and we've got a process. So it's like that, but for thousands, I feel like thousands of just small little details across the business that then that are up to being a sales process or an onboarding process or a compliance process for Germany or a compliance process for Sweden. Any of all we always did things compliant, it was very much back of the fact that it's someone new, someone knew the information, but if someone was to leave tomorrow, where would that information be stored? So I'd say the last 12 months have been pivotal in terms of designing the infrastructure. So designing the ecosystem is like, you know, we call it an ecosystem that constructs in the middle and around the orbit is you kind of like your, you know, your finance, your people and performance, your operations, your revops, your sales team. So looking at what systems, processes, tech, the each parts of this ecosystem need in order to optimal perform. We're not perfect and we're not there. Going for a really big CRM transition at the moment and a couple of cool things, but I think just being in the detail of processes, stepping back from the blue stuff, which I call the revenue generating stuff for pretty much a whole year, in my opinion, and a backlog of strategy and systems to really focus on that for a whole 12 month period is why we're now almost caught up now to where we should be. And how are you able to have so much as time to do that? Obviously you had Wezen seat, you had the, obviously you hired in and brought people in that are in those leadership seats, is that why you was able to do that? Yeah, 100%. So because of the people, right? Because we've got some great top billers. So the bill in, stupid amounts of money at Wheatley GP that allowed us and the understood that in order for us to be able to grow, I need to focus my time here. And again, it's just about selling the vision of look guys, if I'm in the weeds every day and working in the business, I can't work on it. So we've got to do a bit of give and take. And obviously we look after everybody at Construct anyway. And it's obviously I believe that the guys could see the vision. Yeah, I think for me it was just getting the buy-in from the senior leadership team, which they did. And now it's really starting to pay off. Yeah, I can totally see how going through all of that can massively help get all these parts right. So out of interest then, what would you have hired it? What would you have mainly done differently then on the infrastructure side for this contract business? I know you had an agreement with your wife for supporting those things, but if we were to hire a ring or how would you have gone from zero to one on that side of the business, how would you do it differently with everything that you've done? If we're starting again. Yeah, if you were to-- We're just writing out a clear process to begin with. How does it work? So from scratch, if I was designing it again, I'd be off at any business now. It's all about your systems and processes and how does it work. How can you automate it? Do you need somebody involved in there if you do? I'd start off with the most manual process and how does it work. So from the sale and the offering and the onboarding process to designing what system it goes into, how it comes out the other side in terms of contracts who handles them, the speed of it, software you're using through to the time sheet systems and the processes, and then ultimately then the billing is just actually identifying the full process and having it documented and working out, where can you minimize human error? Because they're the sort of tasks that AI really should take over with. I'm not a massive advocate for AI taking all humans' jobs, because I think we're people business and I like dealing with people. But in them's administrative task where people can make mistakes. Like I always say to my back office team, like the compliances. As far as it sounds like, the goalkeeper, right? That the sales guys can hit six shots and then miss a couple and no one's just clapping them still. He lets one in. He makes one mistake. He's the goalkeeper and he's so I definitely remove human error. Yeah, but obviously that also then, because he was honest of us, that also requires you really understand all of that processes and stuff you really need to get up. You need to know all of that first, don't you? Yeah, of course. But basically get under the body, get in the weeds and understand the full process as well as that. So as well as being able to have the time and space for that, put a lot of the time energy into the process systems on the business. How you've then also seen your role in terms of how else you can really impact the business is this sort of rain making account development, right? Tell us a bit about that, because that is something that I feel like businesses at your stage found as I speak to. I think personally that's absolutely the thing that you should remain, versus being in the weeds of the living the contract deal, doing those bits. I think this should remain part of your job for a good amount of time. I don't know if it'll ever go away. I think it's one of the high leverage things that you can go out there building the brand, getting in front of customers, because it also means that you really understand what your customers want. You can tell me about that. How do you view this sort of rain making account development part, because it's not just all process that you do, is it? I think you're absolutely bang on. I think that for anybody founder or senior level, I think building relationships with senior stakeholders is absolutely paramount to the business you've got to be, and you've also got to be seen to be driving from things have changed, right? Nobody wants to see someone that's sat in the tower. So I think that you get a lot of respect. So without going into what we can get from it, you get a lot of respect from your. - Like credibility. - credibility like yesterday, even just, I've been away, obviously on the road, coming down here to be the podcast, and the amount that I've got done and I document everything, we've got a team's chat, it's blowing up all the time and wins. I put it in there, what was it eight o'clock last night? Like listen guys, this is what I've done on the road. It's like you are leading from the front, right? I suppose how do I do it? So from the top, so I do a lot on social media, so in terms of LinkedIn. So creating a personal brand for me has been massive, and it's something that I focus on, and deliberate with what I'm trying to achieve, and the audience I'm trying to reach out to. What you find is that at this level, it's getting your face out there, going to events, trying to organize events, speaking to these key stakeholders that you know that are active in the industry, and a lot of it at this level now that I find is not directly calling people anymore, right? A lot of it is messaging. Like we're messaging first for quite a bit, and it's mostly giving. It's giving them information. It's giving them, I don't know, what's going on next. Like everybody's in the same boat, like we work in advanced construction. A lot of the companies we're working with, they wanna know where the next big project's gonna be kicking off, where can they tender for a project, who are the main players, the next event. So we can provide this information to them, so it's like trying to stay ahead of the curve and just being like a thought leader in the industry, and then through building relationships and speaking to them, and just general chats and finding more about them, it's almost a soft like, look, we've been speaking for like two or three weeks, do you wanna have a quick intro? I actually wanna tell you what we do, and it's so easy to almost close that they're already on the call saying to you nine times out of 10, I've seen what you guys are doing, and it looks really good, you know, whether they need somebody to know or not, but just this year, a long I've opened up some huge accounts just by even this morning opened up a huge account just by that same method posting really good content out when people like the content reaching back out to them, speaking to them about normal things and things in the industry, how are they finding the market should we have a chart? It's not genuinely isn't rocket science. Might still be figuring this out, I don't know, but when I do speak to founders who are at this sort of stage right now, because right, let me not forget this wrong, but like team today, so you've got like 12 people, right? Six Billers, ops, combats. 14 work 14. So yeah, so what I wanted to ask you was, how are you, might still be figuring out in terms of like you open up these accounts, how do you then still manage? How much of them that revenue and everything goes straight to the console one versus some to stew still? I don't know, how have you managed that? You might be thinking like splits in a bit of a different way. So I reign make and I don't take a percentage. I always discuss it with my senior leadership team because I trust what they say, right? At the beginning for a period, I was still taking splits because I was like active in there, but it's my job to reign make for the business. And do you know what, if that immediately would make people lazy, then it's probably not the right business to, you know, the people are in. We have splits across the business and it works really well, really well. I know you've had somebody on there recently talking about it. It was a very similar thing. 25% for pulling the job. 25% for managing the candidate. 25% for managing the client. Managing the client. Exactly. So it's exactly the same. And it works like a treat, but for me going out there, I just want to see the business do well. And I'm great at opening doors, continuing relationships, but I'm the door open. I've always been the door open. I've always brought up in good in the past. I just thought of the capacity now to start filling all the job roles, but the guys getting, got some great harvesters as well, just going and like the almost wrap the business up then the building relationships. And certainly so it works like a treat. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah. Because I know that's something that founders will be like you thought about it, right? Maybe at the start, it was remained how it was, but then you've obviously got to a point you've positioned it in a certain way. And Tony, we're actually, we don't need the split there. The whole goal is you might have some expectations. You pass it on. This is what happens. I don't know, but I know founders would be thinking about that at your stage. Yeah, it is. I think you've just got a rashi senior leadership team for me. If you trust them, then what would it feel like? And I think that on a certain size, if there's like a founder and maybe a two or three people, you know, you're probably well within your rights, almost to take it. But I think that once you become like a, I'm not saying it's not a business like, you know, at that stage, but you start feeling like a real business when you're going over 10 people, you're at 14 or whatever, you know, and you're still taking splits on stuff, even though you're not. And sometimes, you know, we can go into it, but people think you're, you know, you're rich and you're driving around and the role is writing it. But actually, most of them when he's been invested back into the business, they still see that as like, you know, you're taking, you know, they feel like you're taking money from them. Are you really need that 25% as a founder? Yeah, I just think it, like you said earlier, it's the reason why it's something you've got a figure out is because you do want to balance it with you don't want to then be able to team that expect exactly to like what, what things have stew pulled in this week, do you know what I mean? Yeah. It's just like that balance of that. And then also at the same time, because I'm sure you've interviewed people like this where they'll say that they build X and then you double click into it. And it's like, hang on a minute, you're founder opened up all those doors. Yeah. You actually didn't because you then don't want to have people that write the full fear against their names, starts inflating their ego, but actually we know that they didn't actually open up that account. You know, I mean, there's a few things got a balance. I know. Of course you are. Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, look, it's not an easy thing to do. I do agree with you that you can't just give things to people. So we are really like clear with splits in the business. So everybody else, it's like there is no like, I've seen it before and someone goes, oh, I don't need a split. I'm like, you take the split because that's how it works. No matter, no matter what, you have to take the split. If that's what happened because you know, you get sometimes I could stop bill. It doesn't need it. And they don't, they might not want to take the split from like a rookie. I'm like, you have to take it or you're going to give it, you're going to give it to him. Sometimes what I'm seeing is from my point of view is the remake that I'm doing, I'm not going trying to pull a job. I'm going to try and open up a big door and I'm trying to kick the door off. It's not necessarily like, I'm just trying to pull like a simple job for somebody. I'm almost trying to open up an account that's a bit longer term. So it's like, it's a bit more of a bigger project. Yes, they might be a job through it. But usually I will have one of the senior principles jumping on that anyway to get the knowledge. Yeah, I know. So now then with this sort of transformation and being through what, you know, you come into your five years in business, going into the next year, like what for you now, you really, because I know you're in preparing for this, what's really hard to get the business where it is to their infrastructure. I know you feel like we've got an infrastructure to a point where you could easily handle another 10, 15 recruiters in this infrastructure. Yeah. What are you now really focusing on doubling down on or really prioritising that you think is going to keep making you guys going in the direction that you want? What are you remaining really focused on prioritising now? We're really doubling down on our training. We're doubling down on our academy, our foundations course. And then we basically built now courses all the way to five years, because we've obviously seen there's a massive gap between consultants, you know, from like 18 months to three years, they always seem to leave because the train is not continuous. So Jay has done an amazing job at that. We're doubling down obviously in our training. We're doubling down on how do we actually market ourselves? How do we actually sell business? We're doubling down on what is our ICP? In this market right now, who is our target audience? So we're doing, we're going to be doing a little bit of work with a marketing agency and that really cleaning things up around business that's like over to like contacts we've not messaged you within 12 weeks like, okay, they sit with marketing really clear splits around like where our recruitment salespeople are supposed to be and where our marketing team is supposed to be and then almost having them work inside by side. So it's like we're not missing a trick because you know, at the moment, they're still gaps. So doubling down on that and doubling down on all our tech and systems. So obviously we just integrated over to Bologn and now we've got AI phone software and different pieces of tech and we've got complied software resourceful. We're just at the moment now we're integrating everything in there. So we want to double down on tech software, trying to make sure that we've got the slickest system possible. I think the biggest thing is is just make sure we're going out there and offering our customers the red carpet service, doubling down on that. So doubling down everything right. So there's a lot of things to consider. Love it. I think what's so cool about who you talk through all of this is think about all those things. Any describe what you're focusing on compared to like where we started the conversation right. It's what's really hard about entrepreneurship, but it also makes it great, which is all of this, all the learnings and things that you go through and really cool to now hear all these things we've got in place. What sort of next and most of all like where you've had to really work hard to get the business ready to a point where it's just stronger than ever and it can handle more people coming into it and clearly here and you talk, you just feel really confident in where it's going more clearer than ever. People work hard to get there, right? So hopefully I think there'll be some good things there for people to take on that might be in that messy period that's finding it hard, but if you're willing to work through that learn, you know, take some of the things that they've heard from you today, absolutely they can get to that point where there'll be new challenges, but hopefully you've got that clarity. You feel much stronger in your infrastructure, your own ability and you can get back to hope for that passion and really enjoying the journey because it's hard when you're in that, the weeds and it's messy and it's just hard and you can sometimes feel like giving up and is it worth it. But I think, yeah, just really love the honesty around this conversation so I appreciate you sharing it and joining me on the port. Thank you, mate. That is a wrap for this week's episode. Thank you so much for spending time with me today and if you've gotten value from this conversation or conversations in the past, we can see in the back end a lot of you listen but may not yet be subscribed. The subscribe button, it massively helps the show and you'll be joining a community of recruiters that truly are dedicated to continuous improvement and one of the ways they do that is by listening to the show every single week. Now you may not know this but I'm also the founder of a business called Hector. We're an online training platform for growing recruitment businesses. Ultimately, we help you get your new hires billing faster. We make your team performance predictable. The cool thing that we're doing at Hector is that all of our training on our platform is delivered by the types of people that you listen to on the show. People that are very much in the trenches today, current top performers, sharing exactly the playbooks and strategies that they're using to succeed in today's market. So your team can take those insights, not have to learn the hard way and apply them to their own desk. So if ever you are reviewing how you're upscaling your team, we are trying to solve the issues and challenges around inconsistent performance. Maybe worth checking us out. You can drop me a DM directly on LinkedIn. We can go over to our website, this is Hector.com and book in a cool with me there. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you next week.