Abi Dunn - Resilience, a good marketing strategy & not following traditional sales tactics

Welcome to the Recruitment Mentors Podcast. My name is Hishem Azzouz. Today I'm very excited to be joined by Abbie Dunn, who is the founder of 68 People, or also known as the Hospitality Crusader. Abbie has worked in recruitment and specifically within the hospitality sector for over 20 years, uh, and for the last 2 years Abbie has been growing her own recruitment business that supports hospitality businesses across the North. Abbie, thank you for joining me.

Thank you very much for having me.

Excited to unpack what it's been like for a recruitment business owner that serves the hospitality sector. To say the least, I'm interested to hear how this has been. But where I want to start is, in your opinion, what characteristics and traits do you think make up a highly successful recruitment consultant?

Well, I definitely think I've seen people with different traits be successful in different ways. I think for me personally, it's about empathy and about totally being able to understand how somebody else feels, whether that's a candidate, a client, you know, anybody. I think that is number one priority. Great recruiters can do that. You know, and I think maybe more importantly, what I think is not a great recruiter, and that's somebody who's purely driven by, you know, a placement or purely driven by a fee. And I know that's probably anti-recruiter, isn't it? But I think this is, in my mind, the best people that I've worked with have got a really high emotional intelligence and understand, you know, that kind of care and compassionate side about, you know, looking after somebody. This is about changing someone's life, finding someone a dream job, you know, solving one of the greatest problems the client might have. So I think it's somebody who sees it like that as opposed to a piece of data. Generally talking about intelligence, I think memory plays a massive role, doesn't it? We don't really talk about it too much, but if you can remember people— I know we've all got these flashy databases, but having a great memory is like genius.

Definitely helps, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's when I see the difference between kind of, you know, good recruiters and great recruiters, that you can just pull from the back, "Oh God, I remember them," you know, "I remember them from years ago." And it also links into empathy, because if you remember somebody from years ago, you know, you can make them feel good about, you know, getting in touch, going, "Oh, do you remember when we spoke?" And they feel great, and, you know, it all kind of connects together. But yeah, empathy for me is massively up there.

Interesting. Do you think it can be just what you're talking about in terms of having an impact, helping change people's lives? Do you think it can be, you can, like recruiters can be just be driven by that at the beginning of their career? Because I think it does evolve, doesn't it? Like, and I think a lot of businesses, if I went into a recruitment interview for a recruitment job and I just led with It's change people's lives.

Yeah, of course, you've got to be, you've got to understand your numbers. Don't get me wrong, you know, I've worked for businesses where numbers come first, and there's a part to play, isn't there? You have to understand where you are so that you could improve, you know, there's no getting away from that. You have to measure everything that you do, whether you measure the, you know, there's the softer stuff on the experience side and the quality of what you're doing, or whether you're just measuring revenue. But, you know, you have to be driven and motivated by a target completely, but I think recruiters are a product of how they've been managed, and if you're purely managed by that number, you will behave like that, and you'll behave— and that's what's potentially given recruitment some of the bad reputation that it has, that historically people were driven by targets and revenue, and, you know, at the cost of everything else really. Of course there has to be a combination, you know, we can't just be, you know, nice lovely airy-fairy people skipping around finding people jobs, you know, you've got to improve and you've got to measure everything that you do so that you can improve. You know, I'm a massive believer of that and that's my entire career, I was lucky enough to learn that pretty early on, that there's, you know, what's the point in having any kind of something to work towards unless you can measure its success? And I think potentially it's where a lot of companies, maybe outside of recruitment, you know, don't do as well as they could do because they put in these great initiatives, but there's no measurements for success in there. I also think they can't only be monetary measurements, you've got to have other measurements within there as well. But yeah, interesting.

So, from what I can see, so you've actually worked in the hospitality industry before you entered recruitment into hospitality?

Yeah, and I do consider myself probably more a hospitality person than I do a recruiter, you know, I have to say. I started collecting glasses as a student, probably slightly reluctantly, and grew with the business from there. And by the time I'd graduated, ran a site on Revolution, actually on Oxford Road. And when I look back now, I think, God, I was kind of 21 and they were putting me in charge of this, you know, kind of million-pound turnover business. That was when I look back now, I think, crikey, I remember taking on, like, for example, taking on my team to Amsterdam, which was very unwise. But yeah, so I've been a hospitality person kind of through and through, and it got to a point where I didn't want to work weekends anymore. I travelled around the country with Inventive Leisure and almost got fired really for not wanting to work weekends anymore because that's prerequisite for running bars. And luckily my HR director said, well, you know, if you go off and get some recruitment experience, you know, we might be in a position where you can come back and recruit for us internally. So I did that, I left and worked for an agency in Leeds called SVB. I had a wonderful kind of 18 months with those guys and then went back into Revolution as their in-house recruiter. So And I suppose that makes, you know, I think it's helped me so much to have that in-house role. You know, I've seen both sides of it and I've seen how, you know, the budget constraints of clients, I've seen how recruiters kind of can approach you and treat you and what I didn't like and what I did like. And that, you know, has led to me creating ultimately what, you know, the business that I want to have now.

Yeah, that's an amazing experience to pick up and gather all that context so you can really view what you do and offer from the client's perspective because you've been in their shoes, right? So that's amazing. I guess, what are the most common misconceptions about working in hospitality, out of interest, if you've been there? Because for me, it's like, I don't know, I— one, I respect anyone that does because, as you said, it's weekends, it's really tough work. Long hours, unsociable hours. I don't know, what are the common misconceptions about working in hospitality?

Well, I think even when I was, you know, kind of a general manager of these multi-million pound businesses, you know, I still had potential, you know, my family kind of, you know, when you— is this a real job? I'm like, yeah, it's a real job. You know, you are, you're an accountant, you're a marketeer, you know, you're a business manager, you're a people manager, you're a leader. You know, there's huge skill involved in managing any hospitality business, but I think there's a preconception that you don't necessarily need a qualification, but I think that's a positive thing. You know, there is a direct route from bartender to board level without any qualification, and, you know, that's pretty incredible. And I think the people within hospitality are kind of so resilient. There's a lot of fun in hospitality, a lot of fun, and historically I think people who do come out of hospitality and potentially try other sectors, it's a challenge because you're used to dealing with these really kind of high-energy, very positive, and actually very clever people. When I became a training and development manager for Revolution, We did quite an interesting exercise with some psychometric profiles, and my boss probably still remembers this because it cost him a lot of money, but I persuaded him to kind of get all our general managers psychometrically profiled, presuming that we'd find a behavioural pattern between managers. We were looking for, you know, we presumed it would be this kind of influence or dominance, whatever it might be that we're looking for, and we thought we'd find compliance. Anyway, we didn't find any behavioural pattern between any general manager, it was all over the place. But then we tested mental horsepower, and actually then what we found was there's a real key correlation between high-performing managers and mental horsepower. So there was where people were doing really well, they were kind of 75th+ percentile in these mental horsepower tests. So I suppose my point is we've proven it wasn't necessarily about behaviour, it was kind of ultimately intelligence that was— and it sounds quite obvious, but you know, and there were so many people within our businesses that were, you know, they maybe dropped out of degrees or, you know, well, I think that's a big part in hospitality. You kind of get into it and then you drop out of your, you know, chosen degree because you find this great amazing job with amazing team and, you know, you're up all night working and partying afterwards and then, you know, you kind of— degree goes by the wayside, but But I certainly met the best people and the most kind of intelligent people in hospitality, for sure.

Hmm, interesting. That's sort of what came up for me. I think probably there's a perception that it's easy to get into and there may not be highly skilled people. Yeah, so, okay, so worked in recruitment for, yeah, as you said, 18 months, then went back into hospitality industry, then left the hospitality industry. Right. Then it looks like you worked for 2 different agencies over a 5-year period. So what gave you the confidence, Abbie, to start your own recruitment business? I think there's a lot of people that think, well, have that thought process of, well, why can't I? Wouldn't it be great if I can make, do all these billings for myself? Yeah. What gave you the confidence to take the leap?

Well, I suppose I need to say initially it was a very difficult decision. I worked with Rory from Bee Recruitment and, you know, we worked together for a lot of years and it was kind of like a self-employed— I was set up as a self-employed person, so that's how his business works and we work under kind of his brand. And so I worked with him for about 4 and a half years and it allowed me to have my children and kind of have the flexibility that I needed. I suppose it just got to a point where I wanted to do something on my own. I wanted to be creative and create a brand. In terms of what gave me the confidence, I've always been someone to take risks, and I think I'm very much on the 'what's the worst that can happen?' What is the worst that can happen? At the time I had 3 children, and I suppose it was quite high risk because you go from a fairly regular kind of billing and then you kind of start again. But I built relationships up and of course you make use of those relationships. But I think it is what I've learned about anything from having my own business, you have to take risks and you then, you know, you kind of, you know, it's like when you, I went to a client meeting a couple of weeks ago and they were asking me if I could do something and I've never actually done it before, but Obviously my ultimate answer was, yeah, of course. And you come out of the meeting and you're like, okay, let's work out how to do that now. But then that's what you do, you kind of build around it and you just keep going. And I met two ladies when I first set up on my own, from a— called Katie Green and Nikki, who helped, who kind of set up— they I went on one of their courses and I learned a lot about mindset and they really, really helped me. I did a program with those ladies and they were absolutely fantastic and they certainly helped me kind of mentally just know that as long as I had these things in place, you know, then that's how you move forward. Sorry, say that again.

I was just gonna say that was gonna be my question. Question for you, I'd be like, where did this mindset of willingness to be uncomfortable, say yes, then work it out, take risks come from?

Well, I kind of think anything else is boring, you know, if I'm, you know, I'm really thinking right now, but I don't think I worry about too much. And you know, what is the worst that can happen? And it's not as if I'm financially supported by anybody, you know, that's not my comfort blanket. I haven't got that. 'You know, this is on me, and if I cock it up, you know, the stakes are high.' But I just have a belief that I won't. And that is by maybe just saying it out loud and then planting in your subconscious that that's how you believe. You know, I'd love to say I've read loads of books and I kind of meditate, you know, and I am really bad at some of these things that I was One of the things I was worried you're going to ask me about is, you know, kind of well-being stuff and all these good things that people do like yoga and meditation, and I'm crap at that, you know, I really am. Like, I'm, you know, I'm not good at kind of self-help or well-being, and it's something that I need to get better at, but I have an unwavering belief that I won't fail. I don't know where it's come from.

My mum. I think that's what truly matters though, isn't it? It's having that grounding of Yeah, like whatever happens, I'm really confident I can make it work and carry on.

I think tested, don't get me wrong, the last few months, the last few weeks in particular, that has been tested. But I think if, you know, it sounds really cocky, doesn't it? But if I can't do it, nobody can. And, you know, why would I be any worse at it than anybody else? You know, and I've been very lucky, like, you know, in education-wise and, you know, have my mum constantly pushing me, you know, I know I'm lucky and I'm very grateful for all that and that's definitely given me the confidence.

I think, look, what I take from that, which I absolutely love, is what you're also saying there is like Abbie Dunne is completely responsible and accountable to herself to make this happen.

100%. I love, my favourite principle is cause and effect and, you know, I meet all the time people where the world is happening to them and, you know, there's nothing that they can do about it. This is, you know, woe me. I have people in my own family like that. But I've never felt like that. I believe that everything was completely within my control, and only then, you know, can I influence it and do something about it. And that's hard to teach other people though, I think, because, you know, even my husband is not great at it. You know, he gets frustrated by things and, you know, kind of would be the first to blame someone else for it happening. I'm like, just take responsibility, come on. Hopefully he's not going to watch this back.

I think, no, no, you're right. It sounds really simple, doesn't it? But I think it's actually really empowering when you truly believe that. And you're right, you can't push that and impose that on people. That isn't a way for them to take responsibility sometimes. And I've had to learn this when I've sort of come to my own realizations that, well, actually I'm in complete control here and I have full responsibility. And then if my girlfriend might have some of those moments where she's pointing the finger at this or something, and then it's easy for us to jump straight away with like, well, look, what's the point in focusing on that? You can't control that. They don't need that sometimes.

Yeah, I know.

For me, it's more about leading by example. It's more about— do you get what I mean? If Abby shows— like, I'm sure over the last 6, 8 months, she's been completely in awe of how you've taken responsibility, and you could have sat there and gone, coronavirus this, government this, and it's more about sort of leading the way. And then you have those moments where it's like, well, look, this is what I've been talking about, right? Take responsibility. And that's where you have sometimes more of those breakthroughs rather than every time they go, God save that person who's cut me off in the traffic when I'm driving. So, well, what's the point in focusing on that?

Yeah.

Yeah. So to finalize that then, like what What advice would you give Abbie Dunn at the beginning of this journey of starting your recruitment business, knowing what you know now? What would you say to yourself?

What would I say to myself? I— this sounds really bad, doesn't it? But I don't look back and have things that I should have done differently. Is that really bad? I'm quite a positive person, as you might have seen, and, you know, I did— it's probably easy for me to say what would I say to other people, maybe, because there's a couple of things I did really well. That was I didn't look at what anybody else did. I didn't, you know, I didn't get concerned about competitors. I didn't— they didn't even come into my sphere of thought at all, and they don't. And that's not arrogant, that's just I feel better if I don't, because I do start to maybe glimpse at what someone else is doing. I'm like, you know, should I be doing it? And it's not good for you. It's not good for you. So certainly that. And then, you know, I set up with this really clear purpose, and that is something that I think if anybody is setting up, that would be what I would advise, you know, people to come up with and to stick by and to kind of be unfaulted. And that's helped me certainly through the last you know, 6 months and the most difficult time of the last few weeks more than anything.

Yeah, why does that help? Because I think a lot of people talk about the importance of company values, purpose, but like, how would you articulate, like, why is that important and why has that helped you?

I think it helps me know constantly why I'm doing things and it helps you make every decision. It's easy to make decisions in your business if your purpose is really clear, so Our purpose is to change lives, to shape the industry, and to disrupt recruitment. So there's 3 elements to it. One is basically kind of candidate-driven, changing lives and finding people great jobs. Shaping the industry is the client part of it, you know, making recruitment in our clients better by giving them the right people. And then disrupting recruitment is kind of doing things, you know, that might not necessarily have been done before. And it just clarifies everything for us, and it makes it not about money. And I think that's where a lot of recruitment businesses, you know, will find it difficult or come across, in my opinion, wrong, because their purpose is making money, and that's never been my purpose. That will be an output of my success, without a doubt, but it's never, it's never at the forefront of what, you know, it's never my first thought. It's, it's a nice output.

Yeah, it is. For me, what I've really experienced in my short career so far is that when you actually generally, what you're talking about, when you actually genuinely have a mindset of giving more than you take, yeah, you end up taking more anyway. Yeah, like, yeah, because it comes to you, right? So it's what you're talking about, is that, well, actually, when we actually have this really clear north star, it helps us make decisions, it helps us understand why we do it, And actually, when we actually really just focus on that, the outcome of financial, supporting my family, hitting our targets, it's just a prerequisite. It happens.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yeah.

So let's just talk a bit about for the next 5 or so minutes around like the first year, right?

Yeah.

Because I'm sure that I mean, like a lot of people going into 2020, right? This is our year going to grow on what we've done for the first year. And then obviously we've all been having to deal with adversity. So I guess, how was that first year for you then? So you had the belief, you had a clear purpose, and how would you describe your first year in being a recruitment business owner?

Yeah, I mean, I loved it, you know. We possibly grew too fast. I probably added headcount on slightly too fast. There's one thing that I regret. There you go. That's— I probably grew grew a bit fast. I got overexcited about maybe having this bigger business or having a perception of this bigger business than I had and added headcount a bit too soon. But, you know, we set up in January '19 and, you know, our sales built month on month right up until February this year. And so, yeah, it was all it was all great. We were doing kind of team events away in the Lake District. We were doing, you know, we were being approached by clients. We were getting loads of comments about our marketing, and, you know, it was great. The team were, and they are now, but, you know, super, super engaged. And, you know, that was really important to me. And, you know, and I think that one of the, you know, some of the team came directly from hospitality and kind of, so they were very junior from a recruitment sense, i.e., they'd not done it before, but that meant that, you know, we had this team of quite junior recruiters, but actually who was so passionate about what we were doing and had the right, you know, the right frame of mind, and, you know, teaching people recruitment from scratch is actually amazing. It's hard work, but it's amazing. So yeah, we had a great time. We had a great first birthday party, and all was going swimmingly.

What did you do revenue-wise in your first year?

Well, so it's— for our first year, we did €400K, which— so I suppose as an individual recruiter, I'd previously worked and not being far off that. I think my last year as an individual recruiter before that, I dropped quite significantly. I was working from home, I'd lost my kind of mojo. I don't even know how 400K compares to other people. I don't know whether that's good or bad.

No, it's just good context for people. But I guess, like, some of the things that I gather when I was preparing for this was you really advocated that a lot of your— and let me know if this is true, but a lot of your business has come through referrals or recommendations, right?

Yeah.

So you're talking about people commenting on your marketing, you've got right people involved that have the right passion, etc.

Yeah.

But so, so sort of hearing about getting referrals, recommendations is really common, right, for recruitment businesses to say, look, we grow by word of mouth. But like, in that first year, um, and yeah, up to your first birthday, like, what would you say was the most effective way of driving business through referrals?

Well, I think I had relationships with people, some existing relationships, but also relationships that I'd taken from working for a company like Revolution. You'd had so many people that had come through there and then gone on to set up other businesses, so I was lucky in that sense as well. But I think we set up incentives, you know, we set up incentives around referrals. We took, we made a point of taking testimonials at any point that we could and promoting them. You know, so if you go onto our website or any of the information that we send out to people, it has, you know, I'm a big believer in kind of transparency, and maybe to my detriment, I don't know, but you know, it has who our clients are and who 'Which specific person within that business has said this about us?' And we shouted out about that. But obviously referrals was a part of it, but I also think that, you know, people just came to us because we promoted a brand that people wanted to be a part of. And people actually— we got quite a lot of phone calls wanting table bookings, which for me was fine because people thought we were a restaurant, and I was like, I'm cool with that. If our branding makes us look like a restaurant, that's fine. So, you know, and I think we— people wanted to be a part of it and wanted to kind of hear more about what we were doing. So, yeah, and it obviously feels a bit like a long time ago because we haven't operated like that now since February, and that's probably the sad thing about it.

Yeah, so just let's talk about what's been going on from February, but just before we do, yeah, I think you may have, may not have seen this. I mean, I saw one of the things that you met up with sort of, um, competition and network of other hospitality recruiters. I'm assuming you've got a bit of an insight, but, um, like how much, like what, what did the strategy look like for building your brand as a recruitment business? Because I think this has become more and more important. It's something that recruiters don't know how to do themselves. Recruiters are actually way more encouraged to be part of a recruitment business that values marketing and branding because they know how much it can help. Like, what were the sort of maybe 2, 3 core things that you got right with your branding that really helped that maybe people could benefit from listening?

I don't know if I had a strategy when I set up, but the things that I got right, I think it was as soon as anybody starts selling to me, I switch off to it. Okay, so that kind of traditional language, even if— and maybe it's within hospitality people don't want it, or whether it's any sector, I don't know— but I couldn't bring myself to be calling people and saying, "So, how's business?" You know, it doesn't feel natural to me. And I know there'll be people listening to this going, "Well, that's what sales is." So I'm anti-sales to a certain, you know, traditional selling techniques, You know, the word selling technique in itself, you know, it makes me quiver. So I wanted to push, I pushed why we were doing it. So I know it's, you know, famously Simon Sinek's bag, isn't it? But, you know, I pushed why we were doing it. That's basically all I did. I pushed why we were doing it and to some extent how we were doing it. I never ever pushed what we were doing. I never mentioned our database. I never mentioned our process. It's boring, you know, it's really boring. So I pushed to, you know, our ways of working. We've got these 8 ways of working, and I pushed out our purpose, and I invested in, like, you know, I found these, a company called Lit Marketing, and who were starting out themselves, and so a lot of the branding and the design work You know, probably looks like we invested a lot more money than we did in it. You know, we were paying, you know, we were kind of getting some nice stuff designed and it might have been £50 or £100, you know, it wasn't huge investments, but it looks great. And even me sitting on Canva doing something, it looks shit. So, you know, put some investment into that, really, really looks good. And actually people have come to us and gone, "Oh God, who does your design?" I'm like, "Oh, it's this Lit Marketing, they're brilliant, aren't they?" You know, but, and I can't thank them enough, but they were, you know, they weren't a big marketing agency. They were led by my own creativity, but I couldn't do the design part, but I knew what looked right and what didn't. So I think investing in that side of it really helped. I forgot what your question was. Did I answer it?

No, no, no, I really like that. So no, I really like that. It's back to purpose, why, and lead with that from a brand perspective, not, Yeah, and obviously it's also helped from you as a business owner perspective. And then I actually really like that insight that actually there are a lot of small growing businesses out there. Try and speak to those and build relationships there. They actually, yeah, it can work for both parties, right? So I actually really like that. If you're a business owner, sometimes it's easy to be like, oh, I need all this, like all bells, all whistles, marketing strategy and stuff. Well, actually there's probably a lot of people out there that, are on a similar journey to you that could probably help you on the marketing side that would mean that you don't have to invest as much straight away. So I really like that.

And I think we invest— I put a lot of time personally into our social media. So our social media account until fairly recently was run by myself. And I think that really helped, you know, so the tone of voice was me. And I think as soon as you pass it on to somebody else, that can get diluted. I'm a big believer that if you're a founder starting a recruitment business, that should be controlled by you. It should be your thoughts and feelings, and that helps set the entire tone of voice of your business. And that then, you know, we all speak the same language in the business. I think if I asked now anybody within the team to take over the social media, they would write it, you know, in a way that reflects our tone of voice as a business. But I know it's sometimes difficult as a recruiter to think, right, what have I got to say about recruitment? Because it's quite a dry subject matter, you know, what can I post on a grid every day about recruitment? I think that will be challenging. That's why it's easy, easier for us because we've made it sector-focused as opposed to recruitment-focused. We do talk about recruitment sometimes, of course we do, but it's sector-focused. And putting that kind of, you know, my entire thinking about it all was that this isn't, again, wasn't about driving revenue and wasn't about opportunity. It was about how can we help our sector? How can we make, you know, that recruitment better within our sector? And that shows through our social media, and that's helped us build the brand.

I love that. Thanks, Abby. Share with us what you was feeling and what was going through your mind when February started to happen. And because at the beginning of this, like, for me personally, I had, um, so I had a live podcast event lined up in March, um, over 200 people paid to go there. I remember having those conversations where it was— I sent an email around like 'Who is not going to come because of this COVID thing?' Right? And then that drastically changed within a week, right? In terms of the messaging from everyone, blah, blah, blah. So, like, just start by going there. Like, what would you— like, how did you feel? What was going through your mind when you started thinking, 'Oh my God, this isn't a 2-week thing,' which a lot of us thought it might be?

Yeah, I definitely didn't see it coming. And I definitely I think I took a— it hit me when I took one client phone call and the recruitment manager said, look, I'm sorry, we're not going to pay this invoice until this all settles down. And I was like, what? Why? You know, what are you talking about? And obviously, and then I suppose it just seemed to happen so quickly then that it was phone call after phone call after phone call, you know, of clients changing plans, you know. So within, I'd say, 48 hours— and well, what we'd done, it was the Northern Bar Show as well, and we'd, um, it was— they were on the edge as to whether this was going ahead or not going ahead. So we'd actually, um, put in furniture into the show, we'd got all our stalls set out, um, and then literally it was pulled very last minute the day before. So then I was like, 'Ah, these big guys are pulling stuff.' And it wasn't just the fact that future work was cancelled within this 48-hour period, it was that candidates that had already started were being let go, candidates that were currently in process all fell away, and then anything for the future fell away. And this is pre-furlough scheme, so we kind of sat there and You know, very sadly, and I've got super emotional about COVID once, and this was in March when it was just so shocking. You know, we were all just so like, what the hell? Because the business had gone from this, you know, we'd had one of our best months in February, our best month, and then dropped to nothing in March. It was just so bizarre. And we all sat around the table, kind of all crying, and weirdly enough, our contract for our office— we were moving offices— and it was to end on the 31st of March. So not only were we kind of sat basically dissolving the business, we were packing up the office physically as well. So it's like the most depressing day ever. And there wasn't a furlough scheme, so, you know, so I— as everything cascaded, suddenly I was like, right, okay, we've got no jobs, No candidates, no one paying invoices. This is laying off people immediately. You know, this wasn't a big enough business to say, okay, we can pay salaries for 3 months. Oh, and there's another regret: I should have saved my money. When he said, what would I reflect back on it, I should have saved my money and built up a bigger buffer. But yeah, so March kind of changed everything, and yeah, I suppose the rest is history on that. And I think within hospitality, it's, you know, obviously you've got to have a certain amount of fight, and our fight was directed into helping the sector because we couldn't really help ourselves. You know, whatever anybody is listening to this and they think, if everybody's letting people go, everybody, the good, the bad, you know, everyone, the opportunity for recruiters doesn't exist really. It's not as if, you know, you sell harder and you find those opportunities. There wasn't any opportunity, it was completely hibernated until July when bars and restaurants reopened and lo and behold, you know, we had our September revenue was back to our February revenue. So we had this real lovely sense of, oh, this is going well. And then obviously it's dropped off a cliff again, sadly. But like I said, to the emotion that I felt about it in March, I've become numb to it now because, you know, I know we spoke about cause and effect and being able to make sure you have influence, but this is a bugger, you know. I can't— this is again, suddenly everything's going— how do you have no revenue, then your best best month ever, then no revenue. Like, you know, yeah.

And then so what I'm taking from that then is, yeah, obviously like we all went through, really emotional. What, like, how can this happen? What the hell's going on? Processing it basically. Like, is this real life? We've got Boris Johnson on the telly. I feel like I'm in a video game. Like, what is, what is going on, right? And then, but so then, so the way you took responsibility was right, recruitment, let's put that aside for a second because as you said, the good, bad, the ugly, they're letting people go, there's no opportunities there. Well, let's channel all our energy into helping our industry. Why didn't you quit? Why didn't you go, right, I'm just like— because a lot of people would have gone, yeah, I'll wait until this blows over. Or like you said, firstly, it seems like maybe didn't have the financials for you to go, right, I'm just going to put my feet up and spend time with the kids for the next 3-4 months, but like, why didn't you quit, Abi?

I think I felt as though I had a bit of a duty to people to, you know, to show strength and to show positivity and to show innovation. Again, that sounds a bit nobbish, but I meant to our candidates really, because they were, you know, losing jobs left, right, and centre, and wanted to show, okay, right, let's help and let's show what we're made of, really. And so we adapted the business to supporting the industry and it's helped keep me sane, certainly, because I felt I've had some purpose during that time. Because we haven't taken any rent. We started building revenue again from July when people started paying all the invoices, but that whole time in between, no revenue. So from recruitment, we pivoted and looked at things. I delivered lots of training to people, so we did kind of run mentoring schemes. There was other little bits of revenue that we took, but nothing that could you know, compared to what we'd been billing previously. But yeah, certainly I felt as though not only did we have a duty, but we also had the ability to bring people together because we had relationships with a lot of people across the city, you know, specifically Manchester, and, you know, we had relationships with lots of clients, and so, you know, we could have that influence. You know, one of the We did lots of different things. Obviously, one of the greatest things I'm really proud of is the No More No Shows campaign. You know, which—

Just talk about that for a sec, because I wrote a question around that. So I just want to highlight generally, like, I think it's amazing. Again, you really showcase your mental resilience there, where— and I think this will do— yeah, I think it'll make or break people, this period, right? Where you've gone straight to what can we do to serve? Okay, well, what other things can we offer our clients and our network that is centered around them? If that's mentoring, if it's training, if it's putting people together, right? But yeah, so I definitely wanted to ask you about that. So like, it looks like you've been, you've given hospitality a voice, or you try to give hospitality a voice, right? Which I think is amazing outside looking in. But one of the greatest things that you're proud of, as you just said, is the No More No Shows. Just give, talk us a bit about that, how that came about and what impact it had.

So I've seen a tweet from a friend of mine, Antonia, who works for Gusteau's restaurants, and she tweeted about when people had gone back to restaurants, I think they had 6K of no-show bookings, people no-showing that weekend, and I thought that is horrendous after the journey that people have been on. I delivered all this manager training and just you just knew what these guys were going through. They were nervous, they were, you know, there was so much going on for them, but they were excited as well, and to set up for service and have everything ready to go, and then to have people no-show, you know, when you're at reduced capacity anyway, it was just horrendous, and I felt really passionate about, you know, about saying to customers, you know, what the hell are you doing? You know, this is not cool. We knew that we couldn't have a client-facing campaign because we couldn't influence the technology that they use or the process that they use, but we could influence customers. So I remember, I think we were allowed out and stuff at that time, I remember sat in the little boozer at the back of Albert Schloss and coming up with the artwork with some friends. Antonio and I met and knew that the message had to be really simple. We had a conversation that said, look, if 100 people share this tile, which was 3 steps, you know, rebook and, you know, we still love you, but make sure you let us know. And we thought if 100 people share this, then we've done our job. So we did it in a thunderclap style. So we asked kind of operators and hospitality people in the sector to share this tile at one specific time, it was 10 o'clock one morning, and at the same time I think luckily for us, you know, celebrity chefs were talking about no-shows, so Tom Courage was talking about it, and you know, Simon Wolf was talking about it, so it was kind of like a perfect storm, but the beauty of being a recruiter in it, which you don't say very often maybe, but was that it wasn't another company. We didn't put our branding on it, which I think was the reason it was so successful. But we also didn't— we weren't another company. If an operator had come up with this idea, for example, Antonio from Gusto, if it was Gusto's idea, that would have been very difficult for other operators to get behind it. So the fact that it was a third party, you know, was great. And I'm really proud of the fact that we didn't put our branding on it. Because actually then we might not have got some of the press that, you know, but I don't think it would have been as successful, you know, and it, we ended up, people shared the tile and it couldn't have gone better in terms of the results of it. I think we had 12.5 million Twitter impressions, you know, we had a billboard, you know, The Manc put billboards up for us, sorry, put a massive piece up for us in Manchester and one of the high, one of the, I can't remember the building name, but we got 450 billboards across Manchester and London. We had a double-page spread in The Observer. We were on BBC, we were on Channel 5, we were on Channel 4. So it was, you know, it couldn't have gone better as far as a campaign. And actually, my friends who work in marketing were like, how much did you spend on this campaign? And I think it's £450 on, you know, and they were like, oh my God, you know, this is, this is unbelievable. And, you know, we had an influence, and I'm so proud of it. You know, and I think, you know, whether it was temporarily or not, from a recruitment perspective, made that move from recruiter into, you know, a voice that should be heard in the sector. And, you know, that's what I always want to do, and I don't think it's easy for recruiters to do that, but that's, you know, we did that with that campaign, which was, you know, great, and I'm really proud of it.

Yeah, I remember seeing that. I think that's Amazing. I think that's obviously one of the most amazing things about the world we live in today. Social media gets a lot of bad press, but also at the same time, when it's for good, it can, it can generally have a real impact really quickly and it can reach millions of people. So look, what I'd love for you to share then, so like what have been like your personally, like, biggest challenges then, Abbie? So we've spoken about how you've pivoted, you've sort of channelled your energy, but like, for you personally, what's been your biggest challenge? I can imagine that you've got to be Abbie Dunne, the hospitality crusader, you've got to show up for your team, and then you've got to be on-point mum as well for 3 kids in your family. That must be difficult. Like, what have been the biggest challenges for you?

Yeah, I think when you've got it, when everything is going on in terms of the kids and homeschooling and you've got it all kind of coming together, it's difficult to be, to know whether to be kind of average at everything or be great at homeschooling and not great at work, or be great at work and not great, you know, so that was difficult, you know, finding that balance certainly, but I think the, you know, the last few weeks have probably been the toughest where it's where the revenues dropped off again and you kind of feel as though, God, have I got any fight left? Have I, you know, I've fought and I don't think you can argue with the fact that I've fought from every angle and to then, you know, to then be affected by the curfew, to then be affected by Tier 3 where we're in now, is very, is difficult, is difficult to, you know, I've had to let some of my team go and that's been horrendous because I made them a promise and I've not been able to keep it, and that's the saddest thing about it. I kind of went into March thinking, right, whatever happens, especially when we had the furlough scheme, we'll get through this. I sent them cards during lockdown saying we'll get through this, I sent them bonsai trees, and I've not been able to do that, so that's very, very hard. And it is, you know, as much as all this sounds quite positive, I'm not 100% sure whether, you know, this business will survive this, you know, the next few months. It's very— unfortunately, I am, you know, at the mercy of government regulations, and I'm not trying to blame somebody else for that, but I, you know, if hospitality doesn't open or doesn't take revenue, then I don't have a business either. But I'm also very kind of pragmatic about that and the fact that, okay, well, you know, we might have to consider making some very tough decisions early next year, but, you know, we'll come back as whatever we might come back as, or, you know, that's worst, worst case scenario. But, you know, definitely just, you have to just keep moving forward. But yeah, it's not all Rosie and all these wonderful things that's been happening and it's been great, but I have to be honest and say, of course I'm worried about whether this business as it exists, the 68 people, will get through the next few months. I'd be naive not to be worried, but I still have the ultimate belief that I will be successful in something, whatever that might be in the future.

Yeah, I love that and I have no doubt either. I guess to sort of put that together? What do you think is going— what sort of thing have you learned either about yourself or your business that you think will stick with you in 2021 and beyond?

Well, I've learned I really like writing. I've started as a way to kind of get everything down and maybe get it out of my head. I've started writing kind of different articles and blog things, and I've loved that. So that's, you know, I didn't think I was good at writing. I didn't, you know, or wouldn't have thought that I was a writer, but I really, really enjoyed doing that, and I've had some really good feedback on it. So that's something I've learned in this whole time. Yeah, you can find new things that you, you know, you didn't know you were good at.

I love that. So one of the things that I saw you write was, and I think this ties in quite nicely around you being quite honest with us and going, look, I've given this a real good fight, but look, I can't be naive and we're going to face challenges and we're going to do our utmost to survive. But one of the things that we spoke about and this article was around what you might end up doing is helping hospitality professionals maybe not go into hospitality.

Yeah, maybe.

Right? Unfortunately. Like, because it— yeah, because these professionals, again, it's— I'm sure you— of course you can relate, right? It's like, well, I'm a bit of a crossroads here. I've done everything I can to hold on to my career in hospitality, but I need to put myself first and maybe I do need to upskill myself or try this. So I guess the article that I saw, I think it was shared— I can't remember the exact outlet, but it was about why hospitality professionals would could be and why they could be amazing hires, right? And I've heard before, obviously, like you said, when you've hired people for your own business, makes even, makes even more sense that they have the context of working in hospitality. But I've heard numerous times from recruitment business owners that getting people from maybe hospitality backgrounds is good. They've got that resilience, they've worked long hours, those types of things. But like, why could hospitality professionals be amazing hires, even for recruitment businesses or just in general, would you say?

Well, I think if anybody's considering it, there's a podcast by one of the Tony Robbins podcasts that features Danny Meyer, who owns a wonderful restaurant business in New York, and he asks the audience— it's an interview, maybe not a podcast— but he asks the audience how many people work in hospitality, and obviously only a few put their hand up, but he challenges them, he's like, no, you're wrong, you know, everybody works in hospitality. Because actually hospitality is 49% of what everyone does, you know, making people feel good is part of an accountant's job, it's part of a lawyer's job, it's part of everyone's job, so with that in mind, you know, these guys are going to get to that halfway mark before you're teaching them whatever technical skills they might need, you know, that service part of something, and again going back to the empathy of putting yourself in someone else's shoes is what hospitality people will absolutely nail. And I think I mentioned in there, people are very positive in the sector. There's no— we don't have overtime, we don't have long-term sick, we don't— we talk in a different way. There's no— I don't think you'd get complaints about things. Obviously there's good and bad in every sector, but you know, if you meet a great hospitality person, the energy, the positivity, that graft is amazing, but certainly that service part, let's face it, exists in every sector and we should use hospitality people as much as we can.

I love that, and look, I don't want to impose Abby Dunn turned her business into hospitality direct-to-ret business, but if anyone is listening and like they want to connect with you and talk, like, no doubt you will know some amazing people that no doubt are having to really think about and reflect on their career, right? So if you are listening right now and go, you know what, we do have growth plans and we have taken on people from hospitality in the background, 100%, get in touch with them. Whatever comes of that comes of that, right? That's what I definitely encourage. I wanted to make sure we spoke about that. Look, I just, I've got 5 final questions for you.

Okay.

But I just want to say, honestly, I think it's amazing how you've approached this and you really showcased your mindset, resilience. Um, and from outside looking in, I think it's amazing some of the things that you've done to really give your industry a voice, which I think is one of the amazing things that recruitment— the recruitment industry can do for their sectors, right? They know so many people, they're so well connected, and recruiters have every right to be that voice and that forum that champions their industry.

Yeah, so true. Yeah.

So I have 5 questions for you.

Okay.

So the first question is, if you could change the industry, the recruitment industry, what would you improve?

Selling, selling techniques, awful selling techniques.

Nice. The second question, if you don't read, that's fine, we can work it out. But what book have you read that has had the biggest impact on you?

No, I do read. I did a lot of reading in my earlier career, but I would say probably 7 Habits. I love 7 Habits. It's a go-to book. You know, I struggle to find one that's better than that.

Yeah, no, that is a really good book. This ties into your writing passion, but if you could write a LinkedIn post that could be seen by every single recruitment consultant across the world, what would you want it to say?

Um, every recruitment consultant in the world, um, oh, I am to stop— and I can't do it yet, and I, I'm, I'm working on it— but just let's stop the industry completely doing any form of contingent recruitment. If I could eradicate that and so that nobody is doing any work for nothing, and it'd be sort of a post around that.

I like it. What did you spend your first biggest commission paycheck on?

Oh, in my own— when I was in the agency, cracking—

well, never agency, your own business. What comes to mind when you think Yeah, I treated myself after.

Yeah, I spend money on kind of experiences, so holidays and hospitality. So yeah, definitely, when my husband and I go away, we sometimes go away with our in-laws and then they can babysit the kids while we bugger off to somewhere even nicer than we've booked for 2 days. So it'd be something like that, with, you know, some kind of luxury 2-day break would always be what I'd spend any commission on.

I like it. And then final question is, what's the ultimate goal for your recruitment career?

To change the perception that recruiters have in my sector. I don't know if it's in every sector, but you know, stick to what I know. I'd love to come out of this, as we said, as a voice for the sector and someone to be you know, heard rather than, you know, you're just a recruiter. And that's what I'd love to kind of leave, you know, when I retire, that's what I'd love to have done.

Amazing, Abbie, it's been an absolute pleasure.

Thank you so much for having me, I've really enjoyed it, thank you.