Chris Sheard - The importance of people over profit & building a brand which continuously gives back

Welcome to the Recruitment Rollercoaster Podcast. My name's Hishem Azzouz. Today I'm very excited to finally be joined by Chris Sheard. And if you don't know Chris Sheard, he is the founder of SR2, which stands for Socially Responsible Recruitment, and they are a tech specialist agency that are based in Bristol, currently have 18 people in the business. And have been going for just over 2 and a half years. And for those of you that don't know, quite a while ago now I did a podcast with one of Chris's business partners, Alicia Teagle, as well. So Chris, good to finally have you on, mate.

Hey, nice to be on.

Thank you. It's good. Really excited for this. I really do feel like, Chris, that a lot of people, particularly in the Bristol world, would love to know a bit more about the backstory of VSL too, I feel like, because I think it's safe to say that you guys are a brand that people know about in Bristol from a recruitment perspective, which is a really good thing. So I guess first things first, Chris, where I always like to start, how did, how did the Sheardy end up in the world of recruitment?

I guess I'm the same as everyone else, like, you fall into it, don't you? So I was, my kind of career path was going to be a professional golfer, that was my kind of aim and ambition. Okay. I had, kind of from childhood, friends with a guy called Nigel Romana, who's now MD of Opus. He was working at the time with S3. I was kind of trying to become a pro golfer teaching people, but ultimately spending loads of time in a crappy little shop selling Mars bars to golfers. And he was like, I was working weekends, he was kind of earning loads of money, and it was just like, that's kind of how the intrigue got. So he did a recommend a friend to S3. And so kind of he prepped me for the 9s. I did an interview with them. This is going back a long time, like 2007. And I got absolutely hammered for like 6 hours in an S3 interview, like 4 or 5 different stages.

Was this in Bristol?

Yeah, in Bristol. Yeah. If I look back now, I cringe at what they put me through.

But, um, was it like, "Sign me this pen," and like, "Sign me this," all that shit?

Yeah, it was like, "Slide me across the table." One of them did like a car showroom roleplay thing with me where they just like proper try and trip you up and everything. And then I can't remember what order it went in because basically, long story short, I was there for like 6 hours. I didn't get the job at the end. And the kind of feedback was that coming from like golf industry into like an office-based industry, let alone kind of never even done like a 9 to 5, was too much of a gap. So they basically said you're very close, we suggest you go away, get some telesales experience for 6 months and then come and knock on our door again. So I did exactly that. So I kind of quit the golf thing, went to insurance sales for like 6 months to the day, just selling like car, was it car, home insurance?

Yeah, that's what I did.

Yeah. And then it was easy really, because I was obviously super transactional. Yeah, massively, just purely on price. Like the call would come from a ticket. So like I was hungry because I had a point to prove to go back. So like everyone else was just plodding along. So like I literally, 6 months to the day it was, I emailed him my sales figures, was top of the board. I was like, right, consider me now. And then I got the job second time round basically. But in that, in that time, in that 6 months of me doing that, Nigel had left S3 and gone somewhere else. But by the time I did get the job, my—

So what was it that point then where you're like, sales is something that I actually like the idea of.

I don't know if it was that. It was like, the appeal at the time was probably the money. And I said I was earning like proper peanuts in the golf thing. I was like 700 quid a month or something like that, way for working and living at home and stuff. So it's probably initially the money, and I kind of went into it not really knowing what it was all about. In truth.

Yeah, fair enough.

Other than what I've been told. So, yeah, probably initially the money, if I'm being honest.

Okay, so just to frame up then. So first job in recruitment for one of the sort of most renowned brands. Had a lot of people that worked at S3 on this podcast that sort of really speak highly of the unique culture that they created and these types of things. So for everyone listening, so your first job in recruitment was there and you, how long did you work there for?

About 10, 11 months in the end.

Okay, 10, 11 months, not even a year, first year. And then after that, joined Opus.

Yeah, so basically my direct manager, a guy called Ryan Speed, who's sales director still at Opus, he kind of was my mentor when I started at S3, so Futures. So he kind of, I don't know if I should say this, but he kind of grabbed me for a bit and said, look, I'm going and I've got a new opportunity and I'd kind of like you to to bring you with them, basically. So all of us were in the bar having a beer.

Okay, so frame up then. So 11 months es free, and then how many years was it at Opus?

6.

Okay, 6 years, and then round about 4 years at Randstad after that, before you set up SR2, yeah? So pretty much it was like 10, 11 years of working employed as a biller as a recruiter, billing manager, whatever, before you started SRT, yeah? Okay, so just a few key things. For me, I really want to dig into sort of the 2.5-year journey so far in SRT, but just a few things. So first things first, I have to ask you, what's your opinion looking back into what that culture was like at S3? What were the sort of key things that stuck with you, or looking back now that had a big impact on you?

I think for me, back in the day, back then S3 was like well known as being like the best for training. So I think obviously there's loads and loads of businesses open. Darren was at S3, loads of people within that business, loads of other businesses, recruitment have kind of spun out from people from S3. So they were always really well renowned for training.

Yeah.

And suddenly the general gist was go there, earn your stripes, and then people would either spin out their own companies and try and earn a bit more money or go elsewhere and earn better commissions. So, the appeal for me was the kind of training aspect and getting the kind of building blocks. But the culture was, yeah, say at the start, like, stuff you would cringe at, some of the stuff that used to go on, like not shaving. Like, if you went in with a beard, it was like, there's the bick, mate, go and shave it. Or if you had, um, if you had like a pocket on your— this is obviously shirt and tie environment— if you had a pocket on your shirt, it was like, like, ripped off. So, love Belgium.

What about, yeah, but like in terms of like, I don't know, because a lot of people say sort of the things that I learned there is stuff that I've used now and like just really speak highly of. Just basically what's really been common is that the standards, or like this, the standards that everyone sort of worked towards and held themselves to were extremely high, which encouraged everyone to level up their game. And that's sort of a common thing that's come out of it. When we've spoken about it.

Yeah, 100%. So standards and quality of everything that goes on. I think if I look at the business now, for me, and exactly again what I've done previously, it's like the vertical market focus, having your niche, having a number of postcodes that you focus on. That's like tried and tested in pretty much any successful recruitment business, and that's only obviously where I learned that, and that's stayed with me throughout. I've never been anything to do anything different, and that's and what they were strong at.

So when you then obviously joined Opus, which again, obviously from what I don't know the whole story, but in terms of Bristol, Opus, in terms of the recruitment market in Bristol, I feel like Opus go hand in hand in that, in terms of it's typically a business that you think of. So I guess on the Opus journey then, was it the typical route of join there with a year's experience and then just sort of climbed up the ranks to sort of a leader role? Was you then leading a team by the time you left?

Yeah, exactly that. So we started day one, there was literally about 5, 6 of us, and literally starting it from ground zero, really, on the day we opened the doors. Yeah, so literally starting it from day one, and Darren, the owner's kind of aim and ambition was always to grow it really fast. So I think even in my In my 6 years, we've grown from 4 or 5 of us up to over 100. They're now like, yeah, they're now like plus 200 different countries and stuff like that. So 2012, I went to London and opened the first office or the second office for Opus, the first office outside of Bristol.

Yeah.

And I had that experience, but ultimately I just didn't like London basically. So I did 18 months, moved back to Bristol and then it was kind of, right, what's my options now, basically?

Okay. So just a quick one then. What I'm keen to just sort of get your thoughts on, and then there might be a few things go into this. But what I'm always interested to know is sort of why, why Chris Sheard got the opportunities he did in a growing business when no doubt competition is high, loads of people coming in into the business, it was growing. So I guess what I'm always interested in, I'd like to think a lot of people that listen to this want to be the best version of themselves, want to maximize their recruitment career. So I'm just always interested on so Chris joined the business, 4 or 5 people, and then it's grown to 100 or so by the time you left. Why did you manage to climb the ranks, or why did you manage to sort of get those opportunities where you got to open an office, experience that? What made you get those opportunities, do you think?

So I think being a founder definitely helped, and having that ambition. I think because we grew so fast, I was probably asked to do things far quicker than you would in a normal, either more established company. So like reality, I was managing people after certainly probably 12 months at Opus because it was like, we need someone to manage all these people that's coming in. So we all have to kind of step up to the plate and start managing people far quicker than you normally would. So I think I had a certain interest. I was far more interested in doing that than I was just sitting there and billing and making loads of money.

So was that always the case?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've always kind of been far more motivated by seeing other people get success than I was myself. I was a steady biller. I was never like a superstar. I got to principal at Opus, which you have to do 200K to do in 12 months. But I had to get the calculator out to make sure I'd hit that 200K. I was straight up, straight up. I wasn't like, yeah, I've done that easily.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'd got to a certain level of principal and the next step, either you just get your head down and bill and maybe get resources in and do more, or you go down the management route. By that point, I was managing anyway, but you kind of have to in a fast-growing business.

Yeah, sure. Okay. So maybe this can also relate to SR2, maybe even your time at Randstad then. But I think a real challenge is that sort of transition from billing to management. So I guess I'm sure you learned a lot during that or through that at Randstad or even now or Opus. Like, what were the sort of, looking back, some of the key learnings on that then? Because I think that's a real challenge for a lot of billers that find themselves in a management role. What are some of the things that you found difficult or you learned during that period?

Yeah, I think number one, you kind of mentioned find yourself in a management role. I think too often, as everyone knows in our industry, just because you're a good biller does not mean you're going to be a good manager. So we have seen people that kind of could be relatively average at billing, could be great managers. So I think Time management is always the obvious one. So it's kind of, you've got to be really rigid in terms of protecting that time. But I think from a business owner point of view and the things that I've learned over time is kind of having a realistic number of people that that person can manage before something has to give. So being a hands-on biller and then growing a team around you and still being expected to bill. Once your team hits like 7, 8+ people, it's almost something's got to give somewhere along the line. It's either the support to the team or it's your own billings. Compromised to that. So I can particularly, as we've grown SR2, I've been really conscious of that balance.

Yeah, that's interesting that you've noticed that.

Okay, so I think that's the key lesson. It's always just time management.

Yeah, okay, cool. So, um, what— let's, let's get into SR2 then, because obviously, so Randstad, sorry, another big brand, um, and then you worked there for, was it 3 and a bit years, right? You said?

Yeah, 3 and a half years.

3 and a half years. And then was that just a straight management role or was it billing or?

So I left Opus after 6 years, but I came back from London, looked at what the opportunities were and then started to kind of get the itch to kind of set my own business up. So I nearly, I left Opus with the intention of setting up my own business with my friend at Opus at the time. Things didn't work out and I was kind of left in a position where I was like, right, what is my next move going to be? So it was either going to be set up on my own and continue the route that I'd kind of planned with my friend friend, but I'd be on my own and obviously contractually I couldn't take anyone from Ape because I've been there for 6 years. So that was one option and I just kind of weighed up what my other options were if I went to a different agency. So Randstad is obviously a huge, massive corporate company. I'd worked for a startup for 6 years. So there's a sales manager role, oversee the whole office in Bristol. They had the London tech operation and Bristol wasn't necessarily doing as well as they would want it to, which they were quite transparent about. So for me, it was a case of I've got the opportunity to maybe almost prove to my myself at that time, that I could run a whole office per management contract, but without the risks with it being on renter's money as opposed to mine, effectively.

So how many people did you lead?

So grew it at peak, so I think it was like 38 people. I started with about 10. I dropped that down to 5 pretty much, and then grew that back up from 5 to 38 in about 2 and a half years.

Really?

Yeah, so good journey and quite rapid, but I was able to— they had the cash flow to do it, obviously.

Yeah, okay, let's just talk about that for a sec and then we'll segue into SRT. Just sort of learnings on the leadership side, which I think people will get value out of.

What—

but besides, obviously, yeah, the cash that you just mentioned, of course, I'm assuming the brand helped as well, but how— what were some of the key factors that enabled you to sort of grow the numbers by that, do you think?

I guess Randstad is a very different beast. So it is a corporate company. So I'm not at all a corporate person. So I think personally it took some adjustment to get from a startup. Opus has grown so fast, it was at times a little bit kind of, you're flying by the seat of your pants a little bit, just holding on as it grew so quickly. Whereas it was a lot slower paced in Randstad and a bit of a corporate kind of machine that took a bit of turning to get it kind of where we needed to get to, but I think the aim and my task was always to kind of turn it around and start growing it quite aggressively, so that was always the kind of the brief that I had to do, but that was probably the first 6 months of analyzing who I inherited, what the business was, what was good, what was bad, what I needed to change, etc., before we could grow it, but they were— the managing director I was reporting into kind of gave me complete carte blanche to do what I wanted with that business. So it was a complete change of culture, complete change of personnel for the people that were within that business. It had gone from an account-led, quite stale business ultimately, and I was trying to reinvent it into a new business, kind of 360 contract and perm type environment, but very new business generation led. So there were a lot of people that have been there for some, like, 20 years, were part of the furniture there, and I was trying to come in as a young lad trying to teach a new trick. So it was an interesting experience, but a really positive experience in terms of my own kind of growth.

Yeah, I mean, it seems like obviously you had it in mind, you want to start your own business. So it seems like you just ended up taking the sort of the great, really great path on learning in a startup, growing business, grew quickly, billing, then leading, and then you've got the experience of joining a sort of big corporate, the way that you just described it there. So I guess, so I guess it seems like you sort of soaked up some great experience to sort of give you the confidence to go, right, SR2, that this is sort of how I'm going to do it, learning from what I did. So just before we go into that, what would you say the main differences then in working for a corporate compared to a business like Opus or a business like you are now? Would you say? Pros and cons, would you say?

Pro, 100%, the fact that Darren was in the office, he was always very present, Darren, the owner of that business, whereas you compare that with a corporate, even though I was sales manager running that whole office, it was very top-down. So, those examples I could give you where all of a sudden you get announced out of nowhere that you're changing the commission structure and you've got to roll it out to everyone. And I'm looking at it thinking, oh, that'd be great. This is not a good change of commission structure. Like, people are going to leave. And it's like, yeah, you go and deliver it in the best possible way you can and try and put some sort of shine on it. So it's like things, things like that. And one of my co-founders, Steve Roberts, was exactly that. He— I took him into the business at Randstad. He was my top perm biller, growing him, like, developed him to be just a bit of a machine he was. And change the commission structure and he was completely hamstrung and it would have cost him thousands and he left the business.

Yeah. So yeah, okay.

I think just things like that, you have no— you have— do you have any control of your own destiny basically? Whereas I think with a short— with a smaller company, you can have at least a conversation if those type of changes need to be made, then at least you can have a— give your opinion on them, should we say, and maybe have some impact on the decision, whereas you've got no chance in a corporate.

Okay, interesting. So, okay, so, and then in terms of— so let's talk about the journey that you've been on over the sort of last 2 and a half years. What did you make sure that you wanted to have in place or do or had planned that sort of you learned from it not quite working out with your friend previously, or what you sort of took from Rammstein, Opus, whatever? What were sort of the things that you wanted, the non-negotiables for you when approaching or planning on starting SRT then that you make sure that you've got in place?

I think, well, I was, I'm quite granular in terms of the detail and the things that I wanted in place. I was very clear, like for example, when I started at, well, we have the same issues at Opus to be fair. Sometimes even from like a technology point of view, like I remember we were on like the worst internet ever when I started with Brandstad. We had like 10 people when we scaled it to like 30 people. The internet just wouldn't, it just wasn't good enough. Even like tiny little details of making sure everything was in the right place and we had everything we needed to be successful. But the structure that we use now within S2 is no different in reality to what was set out in S3 in terms of that vertical market focus and niche in terms of individuals, both geographically and kind of vertically within it. So the market structure in terms of what each individual is going to be doing was the same. Working in a corporate was very kind of KPI-driven, so it's very numbers generated. It was all focused on output, output, output, numbers, numbers, numbers, and regardless of kind of what story was behind there. So that's never been me. It's never something I kind of believe in. So there's lots of things I've learned that I knew I didn't want to do. Yeah, kind of things I wanted to avoid for sure. Ultimately, it's just the fundamentals of trying to create a business that I would want to work for myself. So there were things that Rantha did very well, there were things that Opus did very well, and equally there were things that maybe I wouldn't necessarily agree with that was kind of important that I wouldn't want to do in SR2 effectively. But ultimately, strip it back, it's trying to create a business that I would want to work in myself.

Yeah, and I think that's really common, isn't it? So I guess, who— so then, and then just give me a bit of context, or people listening, and then is it— this is a business that you didn't start on your own, right? Or did you?

So I was on a kind of 3-month notice. So when I left Randstad, I obviously had the ambitions to set it up. So once I'd gone, in that time period after I'd gone, Steve had already left, as I said, who was the kind of top perm builder. He'd gone to past his knee. So I'd had a conversation with him and said, look, I'm thinking of setting up my own business. Would you be interested? He was. Once I'd gone, a couple of others or quite a few others had left Randstad in that time as well, two of which are Alicia and Nathaniel. Alicia, who you've had on your podcast previously, she was my first hire as I started to do the rebuild at Randstad. Nathaniel was my second hire. Nathaniel worked alongside Alicia at her previous company. So those were kind of three people that I'd worked with for the best part of two and a half, three years. I trusted them, we worked very well together, I knew what their kind of strengths and weaknesses were. So when we opened the doors of FR2 on day one, there was, pretty much within the first couple of weeks, there was 4 of us there as kind of co-founders that all knew what we were doing, all knew each other, all knew strengths and weaknesses. So we had a really good solid start in terms of the quality of people we had in the business to really get it going from an early stage.

And then, like, how, so like, I think, and then back to sort of the point of wanting to build a business that you wanted to work for, what was the Chris plan on building a business that had an unfair advantage over your competitors? Like, what was the differentiator here, or what was your plan on— how were you planning on making your agency to be different?

I got my— the inspiration for kind of socially responsible recruitment just literally by reading a book on holiday. So I was on holiday reading a book called People Over Profit by a guy called Dale Parches, and he Effectively, I'd always wanted to have my own recruitment agency, but the kind of concept or the USP of that had never been kind of completely clear until I'd read that book. So he, the author, runs a business called Sevenly, which sells apparel for charities. They change the charity every 7 days. They create t-shirts, hoodies with the charity's name on. They sell it. 7% of that profit goes back to the charity, but they switch it every 7 days. Yeah, so it's an American business, very very popular, very successful, and also generates a lot of money for charity. So I just read the book and was like, love the idea, love the concept. And then my brain just started working, thinking, how can I translate that concept into what I like doing, which is it recruitment, effectively. So that's kind of where the idea came from. We give 5% of our profits to charities as opposed to 7%. We change the charity every 12 months as opposed to every 7 days, just because of the legwork involved with it, effectively. So that was kind of when the concept of the business became clear in my head.

And that was one of the differentiating factors.

Yeah, I think we've got quite a few like actual USPs as a business. So I guess we would kind of deliver the business as a community-driven business. So we separate that into the community that we live in, which is kind of Bristol, we're Bristol-based. So we'll give 5% of our profits to charity. We've donated over £25,000 now to charity. Different charities in our first 2 years of business. Everyone within the business was a volunteer with that charity as well, so we're not just writing a cheque and ticking a box and chucking it over a wall and never engaging with that charity. So we actually volunteer, see what impact it's making in the local community, and then we created a group as well called Bristol Technology Volunteers, where there's a huge appetite in the tech community for techies, developers, whatever it may be, that want to give their time back. To charity, but there was no platform for them to do it. So we focus our charity contributions to small local charities in Bristol that would typically raise about £100,000-£150,000 a year in funding. So A, our donation makes a significant contribution to that charity, but B, because they don't raise much funding, their IT systems, their website, their volunteer platforms or organisation for it is literally prehistoric, basically. So we noticed actually we're working and partnering with charities that have got serious IT issues. We've got a load of IT people that we work with in our community that want to volunteer, so why don't we just join the two, basically? So Bristol Technology Volunteers, just, we engage with charities about what would they love to do and improve from an IT point of view. We put that out to people in the tech community, they kind of put their hands up effectively and say, I'll happily go and build changes, a brand new website, and then we just join the dots in the middle and say, right, off you go, go and sort them out effectively. Be. So those are kind of 3 key pillars from a community that we live in. And then the community that we recruit within is obviously it. So that's where we gift a lot of our time and our efforts and finances behind making sure that the tech community is thriving through events and meetups that we do lots of as a business.

Yeah, mate, that's awesome. And so that, they were sort of ideas that you had before you actually opened the doors, or that sort of evolved?

Yeah, I'd be lying if I said we had all of those ideas from day one. So definitely the charity piece and the volunteering piece, that was clear. The tech volunteers came, just evolved in time. Yeah, okay, we'd have those meetings. And then the events, we certainly do more than I'd perhaps planned to, but they just evolved over time. So we started with one in DevOps, which was an area that we do a lot of recruitment in. It was a meetup that had just laid dormant in Bristol. No one had done anything with it for like 6 months. So we just got in touch with the organizer. He basically just said, I don't have the time to do it. If you want to help me out with it and get it going again, then that would be great. So we, we started with that one and we're now involved in like 10 different ones. That's been a complete mix of things, either supporting someone else's one, creating our own ones, or being asked to help out, like complete mix basically.

Okay, really interesting. I'm keen to definitely get sort of, um, just your honest thoughts and perspective on the marketing piece because I think that from what I can see externally, and I know what other people would see, it seems like you've done that really well. So I'm definitely going to ask you around the commercials on that and then how it's actually impacted your business commercially and these types of things. So I guess just real practical things that I want to ask you. Firstly, when you started this business, a lot of people are sort of fearful of taking that initial leap and making that jump. What sort of time, like, what sort of runway did you give yourself in terms of, like, did you sort of work that out or, I don't know, what, 'cause you, I mean, you got 4 people in quite early, which typically doesn't, isn't a typical case of a recruitment business, but is a typical case of those that want to sort of grow quickly. So I'm assuming that Chris's mindset was, this was a business you wanted to grow first and foremost.

Yeah.

What was the runway that you gave yourself? 'Cause I think that's something that I had to come up with and I know people think, should I've got a month of sort of money where I don't need to worry about billings or whatever. What was your mindset towards that? Or what did you have in place?

I think about runway all the time, even more so now with the coronavirus going on. I guess my mindset was always, if I'm going to do it, I want to do it properly. So it was always to build a business that I could scale quite quickly and bring people on that journey with it and get people that are ambitious and want to grow and evolve with their company. So I didn't want to be just me in this little office at home, just in my pants doing stuff. I wanted to—

So you knew that from day one? Yeah.

Yeah. So I guess in terms of how I funded the business for kind of complete transparency, when I first left Ocas and was going to start then with my friend, we'd already been to the bank, had a bank loan in place and got funding where I'd prepared. I'd had those meetings with the bank manager, had some kind of business plan presented, et cetera. So I effectively, when I was ready, went back to the same guy.

Okay.

Who I'd let down previously, and I was like, right, now I'm ready. This is what it looks like. So I had funding, a decent-sized funding pot from them. I then took a loan.

Were we talking about 6 figures?

So I borrowed 80 grand, secured my house against a loan with the bank and borrowed £80,000. And I had 20 grand myself and I borrowed 40 grand off my dad. So I had literally 130 grand, basically. A decent chunk. I said, how much runway that gave us? Yeah, probably, probably 12 months if we sat there and didn't do it. Yeah. And that would enable us to be more than comfortable to kind of grow it quite aggressively, which has always been the plan.

Yeah. I mean, that, that, I mean, that isn't, I mean, that is, again, that's clearly come from a place of view, this is a business you want to scale, right? So I guess, okay. So just to frame up then, so end of year 1, How many people did we end up at?

7.

So 7 of you by the end of year 1, and there's 4 of you quite— but 4 of you including you quite early on. And what did you finish on revenue-wise? Or NFI-wise?

So year 1, we turned over just over £2 million. So our GP was £774K in year 1.

Yeah. So let's definitely talk about that because some people— I mean, a lot of recruitment businesses early on don't achieve that, right? So just quickly, I think a big part of this is sort of your mindset, the money that you had and how you was thinking about it. So I guess with all that money then, Chris, I think you hear and see it a lot now where it's like sometimes when people have all this funding, that money, it's just easier to spend. And so I guess what, rather than those that sort of bootstrap it or whatever and more careful with their money because they can't just spend £1,000, £1,000 or whatever. So I guess from your perspective and what you've learned, what were some of the sort of key things that you invested in that really enabled you to hit those numbers and sort of set you up to scale further in year 2? Like I'm talking tools, I'm talking if it maybe a lot of that went into people. I don't know, what were some of the sort of key things that have ended up actually being really good investments?

So 100% tools. So again, in terms of my mindset of doing it properly, I wanted to, I didn't want to be scrimping and saving on job boards or advertising spend or LinkedIn Recruiter, all that type of stuff. So I was very clear that I wanted to make sure you give people, you get the best people you can, which I've had, which I had, and I had the luxury of knowing Alicia, Nathan, Steve, and working with them closely. So get the best people you can, give them the best tools and the best environment you possibly can. The rest should look after themselves in theory. What you don't want to be doing is getting good people and not giving them the tools. You're going to come into problems.

So what were the best tools in your opinion, or what have become like the best tools for you that have been great. So LinkedIn Recruiter, what else have been like really good?

So just standard toolbox thing everyone says, podcasts like Bullhorn was the database, is the CRM we used. Broadbean, a kind of multi-job poster. We used all the job boards, so literally you name it from an IT perspective, there wasn't one that we weren't using from Monster, REIT, all the usual suspects. We had advertisements initially in year one across all of those as well. And that's just some of the investments. Obviously, when you start and you don't have any ROI on anything, so my attitude was, let's just give everyone the best of what they possibly can. And then in year 2, then we're actually looking at what was our return on that. And in hindsight, for example, like CW Jobs, we were spending a fortune on adverts with them and actually our return wasn't that great from it. And we were getting more from our own website than we were from CW, for example. So we could be refining a little bit more further down the line, but certainly in the first 12 months, And I may, looking back, absolutely would have wasted money on certain stuff, but I think it was worthwhile.

And what percent, like, how much did you spend on marketing in that first year, do you think, percentage-wise?

I wouldn't even know off the top of my head. It was chunky.

What would your gut say?

Like, what, across like job boards?

And just like, just if you would, because like, so you said So, like a £2 million turnover, what your profit was. I think one of the things that you guys have done well is the branding, the marketing. So I guess, I don't know, what's your sort of gut saying, like roughly percent, like how much of your, yeah, how much money or percentage-wise did you spend on marketing that sort of definitely would have helped you achieve that? But how much did you roughly spend on marketing, do you reckon, percentage-wise?

I'd say easily £70, £80 grand. Yeah, like comfortably. I think in terms of a— it's a big chunk of what your costs are. And in our world, you can recruit with a telephone, a laptop, and a phone. That's literally all you need in theory. If you want to kind of do it super lean, you can certainly do that. And so it is a big chunk of your costs. And if I was doing it again and starting again, that would be definitely something I would reevaluate in terms of actually what do we need. And for example, now some of the job boards we don't use, we don't advertise across them all because we just weren't getting any response from them.

Yeah, okay, that's interesting though, and I mean, that's a pretty hefty number that, I mean, some recruitment businesses longer, been in business longer, bigger, may have never spent that sort of money on marketing, you know what I mean? So I guess, how much thought did you put into your brand? So you had the narrative, you had the charity, the social responsible, which I think is awesome. Was that the only sort of part of, I don't know, was that the only part of the brand that you thought of? Because I think like from the face of it, it seems like, I don't know, you've tried to be a bit different. Like if you look at your website, you've got like dogs everywhere and like just different, like, do you know what I mean? So I guess how much did you think about the marketing of SRT besides the narrative and the story of the social responsible piece, or was that the main piece?

So I think things like that when we're starting out. So if you— again, it goes back from my point of view to doing things properly. So I'm not good at marketing, I'm not good at branding, that's not my strength. So yes, I had the narrative behind— I came up with a name in terms of SR2, Socially Responsible Recruitment. Once I had that and had the ethos in terms of what I was trying to create, I then went to experts and went to, you know, outsource that to a a designer, a brand person said, right, this is what I'm trying to create. Go ahead and come up with some branding behind it. And they came up with 4 or 5 different ideas. The narrative behind the dogs and stuff was the one that stood out to me because I wanted to do something different. There's no point from my point of view in just being another agency that's doing exactly the same, like just pointless.

Yeah.

So we're very clear in terms of wanting to try and maybe do something a bit risky or standing out from the crowd, certainly. So even like the content and the copy on our website, that's not been written by me. Yeah, yeah, of course.

But I think, I think a lot of people, it's a second thought, it's a second thought, like you going through that, you know what I mean? I think this is what I'm going to go into now, which I was keen to ask you, Chris, because I think this is, from what I'm understanding and know about your business, is probably what you've done well is that, I don't know, the conversations you may or may have had with other sort of recruitment business owners is that typically sometimes people can fall in the mindset of like, I'll do, I'll do that when I get to such and such this milestone, or I'll do that, I'll worry about that when I get to 'x heads' or 'when I get to x profit.' But clearly you're someone that had the mindset of 'I'm gonna do it from day one' or 'do it as early as possible, do it properly.' Do you get what I mean? So I think that's why I just wanted to talk about that, because some, someone might have gone through that process after they've, they've done it for a year. And did you get what I mean? So I guess what were some of the— so I guess just to frame it up as well and help me, so was Chris's role like, was you just focused, was you billing, or was you just, was your role very much like make and maximise the people and get the most out of the people you bring into the business?

No, I mean, day one I was billing, so I hadn't kind of been hands-on on the tools trying to bring money in for like 5, probably 5, maybe 6 years. Ramstad was completely hands-off, Opus towards the end in London was largely hands-off. So certainly 5 years, whereas when we started with SL2, there was 4 of us. We had a database, we had literally an empty Bullhorn with nothing on there. We had to like, it was just roll up your sleeves and try and get on it. So I, first 12 months, build a giant £75,000 something. But I mean, because like, the first 6 months is very much like, let's all just go after it and build what we can as much as we can. And then once we kind of found our feet, we had some clients paying invoices, we could see where we were.

How long did it take?

So we, first deal took literally just less than a month, which is, believe it or not, me.

Well, you haven't got that.

Yeah, I actually got that first one away. Yeah. It was a crap deal. It was a pretty crap deal. But anyway, they all count. That was the first one. Our first invoice that went out the door, it's quite funny looking back in preparation for this, our first invoice went out the door was a 100% rebate job. After the first week. We placed like an IT support female in some company in Gloucestershire, and she started on like a Wednesday, and then we come in on a Monday morning— bear in mind, it's the first invoice we've sent out because my guy didn't start until the next year, until 2018— and they were like, yeah, we've had her in, we've had to get rid of her because she'd literally taken her company laptop home on the weekend and was on material that she shouldn't have been on, basically. So they had to get rid of her. So we're like, okay, don't worry about paying that invoice. That was the first one. So yeah, it kind of went from there.

And then after that, then did it— because I feel like what I've sort of gathered from you is that your role is very much more about really focusing on the business.

Yeah, 100%. So I would say certainly the first 6 months was all about, well, let's get the wheels turning. Yeah, get some money and get some things turning. Once we built up our client base and stuff like that and you can see things were moving in the right direction, it then very much went on to operational, strategical stuff. Hiring has been obviously a huge aspect of what we're doing, to make sure we're getting the right people into the business. So our first hire was like after 6 months. I think the first person started in April, which is 5 or 6 months after we started.

Yeah.

So we finished the first year with 7, 7 as a headcount.

Yeah. Okay, cool. So I guess, so then, so then was it from like 6 months onwards where like your sort of role had then gone into like very much strategic on the business? And I'm sure you dabbled in it every now and again, but it's been a lot more focused on the business. And was that always the plan? Because obviously that's clear.

Yeah, 100%. And I think that's enabled us to grow quite fast, I would say, because my strength never was— as I said at the start, I was never like a mega biller. That's not my place, you know what I mean? So this kind of doesn't benefit the business for me just to be on the tools and year 3 still trying to bundle through £150K, yeah, it was just kind of no point in that. So I think the quicker we could do that, the quicker we could start to scale the business and put things in place to do so. But equally, I said I was really fortunate having Alicia, Nate, and Steve from the outset. They're all very experienced, very good billers, very good at what they do. They could crack on with that and look after the sales side of things, then I could actually focus on the business.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, That makes sense that that's had an impact. I guess just a quick one before we sort of go into that journey then is, did you— did everyone know that? Like, did you over-communicate that, look guys, you know, I'm not the best biller, I will— I'm rolling up my sleeves, let's do this, but just so you all know, this is sort of where I want to be? Because I feel like that's important.

Yeah, it's probably pretty obvious after a few months. Yeah, from the outset. I mean, they've worked with me around, so they knew what my role was and what my strengths were in terms of what we did there. So that was very much the ambition. So there was never any questions of that. And as we had no one from a back office point of view, so anything in terms of invoicing and payroll and all that sort of malarkey, that was me. I was everything back office, everything marketing, everything operations, all that sort of stuff. As you grow and as it gets bigger and more stuff's going on, there's more moving parts, it starts to suck up a lot of time. So I was gradually being like eased away from it naturally just because of all the other things that were going on. Even events and stuff like that take time organizing and the logistics of them. It all takes time.

Yeah, sure. Okay. Now I just think that that's interesting because I think a lot of businesses that are at that sort of size, the business owner typically just really feels like that they're never going to be able to sort of get their head above the water and be on the business. But I think clearly what you've done well is made sure that, one, you communicate that that's what your plan is going to be, and also you get the people around you to do what obviously they're great at in terms of billing, sales, blah, blah, blah, and you pick up the rest. So I guess let's really talk about that journey then in growing this business. So it seems like year one had a great platform then to grow this business further. I guess, what was sort of going into year 2 then, Chris? What were some of the sort of key learnings? I mean, clearly had a good, great, good start, right? Which helps, which no doubt fills you with confidence.

Yes.

So I guess, what were the sort of key learnings going into that year 2 where you're like, right, we did this really well in year 1, or this is a big part as to why we managed to get to where we did in year 1 that you're like, right, we need to build on this now and What was your sort of mindset going into year 2?

It was very much— so we finished year 2 on 16 people, so the kind of focus was definitely headcount growth in terms of what we're doing is working, the brand was landing really well with clients and customers, we were finding it pretty easy, I would say, to win new business and bring customers on. It was attracting kind of lots of interest to the meetups and events we'd started doing again, it's kind of been working really well for us. So there was nothing that we weren't like year 2, like, all right, let's drop that, let's spend a bit more time doing this. It was just a case of let's double down and do more of the same of what we're doing. And so we went, we never tried to reinvent the wheel. I think it's really easy to overcomplicate recruitment. It's actually quite a simple thing. It was just like, let's do the basics well, let's give people the right environment to work in and get the best out of people. Let's just work our backsides off and kind of build it from there. So there was nothing revolutionary we did in year 2 that we hadn't already begun in year 1. It was just more of the same. So more of the other things that we were doing, more— there were more events, there was more of a focus on Women Rock that Alicia was kind of doing successfully in terms of diversity inclusion stuff. There was just— it was just more of the same.

Yeah, okay. So I mean, whenever we've spoken, I feel like what you've been good at is really being able to hire good people for your recruitment business. And also, and that's obviously a real common challenge for a lot of recruitment businesses, right? So I guess let's definitely talk about that for a second in terms of your learnings through that, because it seems like that obviously your past, you've probably learned so much in just getting better at sort of what to look out for, what not to look for. And these types of things. So I guess, and to tie in with that, well, actually, no, yeah, let's just focus on that. I guess, like, in terms of going from basically doubling the headcount, which a lot of people struggle to do and struggle to push past that 9, 10 headcount mark, etc. Like, what was you just, did you just like, did you just hire one after the other? Did you hire a group of people together? What was the actual hiring strategy? Was your mentality of we're always hiring, you're always meeting people? What was the mindset?

So I've never, I think I've only ever hired 2 people at one time in terms of 2 people starting on the same day, where the strategy was always to go for experienced people.

Interesting.

Because we just, I didn't have the time.

I was gonna say, you didn't have the training.

No, we didn't have the time, we didn't have any of the stuff, I didn't have the time to train people from scratch in terms of there's the phone, this is how you dial a phone number, we just didn't have the capability to do it or the time to do it, the capability. But that was definitely a strategy. So our kind of sweet spot has been people that are like 3 months to 12 months experience. So people that have maybe gone into a company and it's not been the right culture fit or haven't maybe necessarily seen any success at all. And then we've maybe picked them up as like job 2, basically.

Yeah.

So those are people that you don't need to teach the fundamentals to. But they're also people that maybe aren't stuck in their ways or thinking, oh, well, we used to do it like that. They're the kind of people that are still open, still want to learn, still hungry because if they failed somewhere else but still want to make a success of it in recruitment, then they've still got some fire in their belly as well. So the vast majority, I'd say over half of the people in our office are those people that would fit into that second job type category, 3 months, 12 months, experience.

So how did you get these people? Like, did you use Rec2Recs? Did you—

No, so I've only used Rec2Recs once in 2 and a half years. Not because I wouldn't, but because I think I'm probably super busy on LinkedIn in terms of, like, I would say, like, just nosy. I think hiring and finding people and getting people interested in interviewing is probably, I would say, my main strength. So how are you doing that? So I would always, even now, like once a week I'll go on the job boards and I'll do kind of like what recruiters are on the job boards over the last week. So I've picked up a couple of people that from that means they've either put the CV up thinking I'm not happy.

Okay, so you always look in?

Yeah, always look in. LinkedIn, I said I'll always kind of message people directly if ever anyone looks at me on LinkedIn locally who I think might be of interest, then I would follow up with a message and be like, I wouldn't be like, oh, hey, I've seen you look at my profile, but it's like you start some level of engagement in terms of a conversation.

Okay.

And the amount of times if I haven't done that, you then see that person's left that company and has gone somewhere else. And I'm like, damn, that's why they were looking. But I think you should always be interviewing whether you're hiring or not, in my opinion, because I think you can gain so much more from it in terms of what's going on in the marketplace. And even if you're interviewing people you might not think could be the perfect fit for your business, A, they might end up being, but B, even if you don't, you can still get some sort of nugget of information that might then lead to a good hire.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, yeah. So you've always been proactive and I think the way you've ended up structuring your business and the people who got into it is enabled because I think that's what business owners don't have the time to do. That is like, that is obviously you have to do other stuff. It's not, completely takes your full bandwidth for what Chris does, but I'm sure that's a good chunk of your time and what you're doing, especially if you have those obviously aggressive numbers and you're spending a lot of time on that. So I guess, I mean, from— no, sorry, go on. What were you going to say?

I was just going to say, I think the brand has been far more kind of powerful than maybe I would have first thought as well. So we do get a lot of people, a lot of like some, a lot of our people have just applied directly or emailed.

Yeah. So that was going to be my next thing.

Emailed like info@ and mailbox.

Why do you think that is?

I think it's just like, for me, it's just like, I think if we certainly come across, and I would hope we come across as just authentic in terms of what we do. So our industry doesn't have the greatest reputation. Everyone knows that there are some great people in our industry, but equally, and same as any industry, you know, we're, we're, we're tarred with the kind of estate agent, car salesman type mentality. So I think if you can create something that stands out is authentic and genuine to show that actually you're not a dickhead, you care about what you do, you care about your industry and want to make a positive impact in it, you will stand out. So I think those— it kind of goes back to creating a business that I would want to work in myself. So the no cap— our culture is really good, and I think that we're good at kind of transferring that culture through our social channels, for example. I've had plenty of people come towards an interview and be like, like, what is it actually like to work there? Sometimes it looks a bit too good to be true. It's something I've heard like countless times.

That's what, that's what I mean. That was my next thing, because I think that's what you've done, you guys have done well, strategically or not strategically. I think it's probably a mixture of both, it sounds like, that you, you just, you guys just got good at communicating what you guys are up to, what you're like online. And ultimately, I think when I look at you and your team and your business, I think from a internal standpoint, I think you guys just look really human. And I think there's just so many recruitment businesses that don't look human and they're so worried about sort of how they come across and all this. But you guys, yeah, it's the authentic piece. But I guess that was my next thing, Chris, because I think having met a couple of people from your business, I think that's all great if you can do that. But if that doesn't translate into actual real life, then it's fucking pointless. So I guess you must have been instrumental along with obviously the early people that joined you on So what was the strategy or how have you sort of cultivated that culture? I guess a big part of that is making sure that the people you're bringing in show indicators or show things that are in line. Like, what have you done to ensure that people are adding to the culture rather than taking away from it?

Yes, I think 100% my mindset would always be— I mean, obviously people have their own intricacies and their own little quirks naturally, but I think people's core beliefs and fundamentals in terms of what good recruitment looks like or what they're like as a person needs to fit into our culture. So I've interviewed like even like top billers at other companies, like 250+ billers. I've interviewed a couple examples I could think of and great billers and the numbers commercially would clearly obviously add up, but culturally they just wouldn't fit into our business and I might add a 250 biller, but I'm going to lose $300K, $120K bullets, commercially it wouldn't make sense. I would always put our culture ahead of, and our people ahead of kind of anything commercially from that point of view. So I think we've been very good at finding the right type of characters that aren't your stereotypical recruitment type people. Anyone that's kind of interested in purely themselves and just interested in how much money's in their bank and just not going to fit into our business. They just wouldn't be hired. They wouldn't fit. So we're very kind of picky, I would say, in terms of who we do hire and who does kind of make it into the day one. And I think it's worked.

And was you always like that, or is that something that you just had to become really strict on?

It's very different when you're spending your own money, number one. So, like, I can think of ramp-up days where the objective was grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. I was given a a P&L and targets which are really super aggressive and they might be like 45 people and I'm looking at it and thinking, oh, I've only got 20 people. So I've got to get 25 people into my business ASAP in order to hit that target. I don't really think I'm ever going to hit. So you can almost be like pulling in different directions. So I can look back at people I hired there and you just think, okay, that was a mistake. And just naturally with experience, you learn as you go in terms of what's going to fit, what's going to work. And I still don't get everything right. No one, I don't think.

We hire people, you're never going to get everything right.

I think our success rate with FR2 has been like really high, our retention has been really high, so we've lost in 31 months, so just over 2 and a half years, we've lost 6 people, 3 people have resigned, one of those is to go and become a chef and 2 went internally at one of our clients. So I've never left, I've never lost anyone to another recruitment agency and the other 3 people I kind of exited because they weren't kind of up to standard at intrude effectively. So our attention's been pretty good, but even you still make mistakes. I'm sure I'll still make further ones in the future. I think we're quite picky in terms of who we go for and making sure that culture fit is always right for us, for the business.

So let's just talk about that for a sec then, and leading up to now as well. What things have you done? Because that's the other part actually, then keeping the good people in your business. And I think that can be quite challenging when you're in a sort of smaller growing business. Because obviously everyone wants career progression, everyone wants to know that there's great opportunities in the business that they're in, and sometimes that can be quite hard to understand or think about how you can make your employees think or understand what the opportunities are. So I guess, what do you think are the things that you guys have done well or implemented that have really impacted the retention of your good people, do you think?

Number one, just obviously treat people in the right way, number one. So we certainly don't pay the world's greatest salaries. I'm sure there's companies that will have kind of bigger wallets than us, but we've got really good and competitive commission structure. We kind of are as flexible as possible in terms of late starts, early finishes, creating that environment where we don't have KPI, we don't manage by numbers, we give people autonomy, we give them the tools to be as successful as it can be. We obviously support people, but in terms of day-to-day, it's very much the kind of ethos is set people up in the right way and then just give people the autonomy to go about their job in the way they want to. And if people are on the same page in terms of having that ambition to want to be successful and do a decent job and you create the right environment for them to thrive, then ultimately, why would people want to leave your business if they're seeing success? Where that will always be the same in terms of as we grow and everyone we hire fits into that culture. Now, we've got more junior people, as I said, how we would manage and motivate, should we say, more junior people might be different to more seniors, but we've hired some really successful principal people that have come in and done a great job and that literally wouldn't ever have any conversations in terms of day-to-day other than kind of what anything needs, people need support with. So I think culturally it is very much a case of just treat people like adults, treat people with respect, Give them the environment they need to thrive and kind of let them, give them the space to do so.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? But so many people probably don't just think about it that way. So how did you finish in year 2 then, Chris, in terms of, so you got, you had obviously said that it got to about 17 heads. Well, obviously we're always keen to understand profitability and what that means because headcount isn't always the right barometer of how well the recruitment business is doing. How did you finish up year 2 then?

So end of 2019, we did £3.341 million turnover. That was £1.315 million in GP, and that was just over £1 million in perm GP. And then we did £257,000 in contract GP, and that was 16 heads.

16 heads. Okay. So it all sounds great, growing, doing the right thing, but what have been the biggest challenges for you, Chris? Mindful of that we've spoken a lot about the positives and like what have been, I could even talk about now if it's now, but what have been the biggest challenges for you and things?

Yeah. There's not, I was thinking about this obviously in preparation, there isn't like one thing I could think of and be like, there are little things I could think of like operationally I've got wrong. So the big, there's probably two big things that stand out for me which cost us money ultimately who are IT and infrastructure from day one. I just, I didn't, I relied on someone that I thought I could rely on in terms of the provider I went to. And it took me probably 9 or 10 months of pain to realize that actually I was getting completely fleeced in terms of, I must have wasted 10, I was just paying at least double what I should have and could have been paying. And the solution was crap anyway. So our infrastructure wasn't what it was. And that was just my naivety, only going to one supplier. I knew them, I thought they'd do a decent job. They didn't. So that cost probably easily 10 grand to us. And then I think the second lesson would have 100% been around our terms of business. So obviously, as every company starts, you kind of, your terms of business ultimately end up being a lot of mishmash of perhaps where you've worked previously and what you like and what you don't like. So they're kind of fudged together. I can— yeah, so basically they just weren't that strong. So we probably had— I think when you're, when you're a startup and you're a new business, there are the vast majority of people want to help you, want to support you, and will do everything, go out their way to make sure that you grow and you survive, which is amazing. On the flip side of that, there probably is a smaller portion of people that will take advantage, and I think We've probably had 5 or 6 now, like, absolutely blatant backdoor situations. And then when it actually comes to the crunch and I've looked at our terms of business and you're like, actually, there's no way in the world that should be allowed to happen. But then you like actually look at the black and white from a legal point of view with a solicitor and you look at your terms and you're like, actually, these are pony. Like, they don't make sense. Like, they're just not going to stand up. That's been a lesson. So we've reinvested and had solicitors.

Would you have done that at the beginning then?

Well, yes, probably cost me £40,000-50,000 in fees that we should have had that we haven't. Yeah.

Yeah. It's interesting. Someone messaged me about that. Sounds like really mundane and boring, but someone just messaged me like, have you got any content? I spoke to them about terms of business because I think it's things like you just said can happen. And sort of, as you said, it can be a mishmash at the beginning. It's like people like you're sort of bit naive. I've probably been, I'll be honest, I only actually got my clients to sign a contract 3 months ago. Before that, I was just sending invoices in a PDF document. I go, yeah, Hishem will do that. So you're sort of, I don't know, because you ended up, I don't know, people just like, yeah, Chris sounds great and we'll do it. And yeah, like you have probably way more incidences where they get, you do get paid and it's all good. But it's those couple that happened, we're like, fuck, yeah, we definitely need to get this sorted.

Yeah. And you never know until you need it.

Until you need it.

Yeah. Like, as I said, we—

So would you swallow the payment and get it done sooner rather than later, would be the advice?

Yeah. I mean, it worked out okay for us because equally, it is kind of a learning process. So we have things like, kind of decent tip in terms of our rebate period with a free replacement. So that enabled us from a cash flow point of view as we were growing to not be shelling out if we did. I mean, we had less than 3% of our placements in our time have actually been a rebate. It's not a huge issue as a business, we've got really good kind of retention in terms of our placements, but it did mean that if something did go wrong, then we weren't actually having to give cash back out of the cash flow. We were just having to go back to square one and kind of work again. So there were some intricacies of them that have worked really well. So, but I mean, certainly if I could do it again, I would definitely kind of do the boring legwork and get them done properly as we have now done. But other than those two things, those are probably the two standout things where I could physically go, they cost money.

Yeah, yeah, fair. Okay. So as we come to the end of this then, Chris, what's been going on in your world over the last 8 to 12 weeks or 8-ish weeks? What, how Obviously, you've been really open and honest with us on where you got to in the business, year 2, you're halfway into your third year, probably sort of bit frustrated because I've heard it so many times over the last couple of weeks, we had our best quarter, was on the plan to do this, this, this. I'm sure you've sort of fell into that, I guess. What's been going on in your world over the last 8 weeks?

As you said, we'd had February was our best month ever. We'd then had March and we'd done another 22% of it. So we literally had February and March best, both from an invoice and a kind of new business point of view. So we're in a good spot. And then obviously it landed. So we, I feel like where we are now, like we're in a good spot as a business. So we had to make some kind of difficult decisions, certainly most difficult decisions we've had to make since starting the business. So—

What did you have to do?

Like what? So I think we were quickly, quite quickly, to get people working from home and be fully remote. And then we did that as a business as a whole for certainly a couple of weeks, but then obviously once the furlough situation— so I've put 8, so we're 18 people, 8 people are on furlough, which was either the more junior people in the business, office manager, like back office support, resource junior people or one person that just recently switched markets, so the kind of patch wasn't established enough for them to kind of have a decent client base that would still be hiring. So that was a difficult position. Obviously, we are effectively a self-funded startup. So yes, we've had a lot of success, I think, in hindsight. So for example, the business loan I took was a 3-year loan that we paid off in 2 years. The money I borrowed off my dad was a 3-year loan that I paid off in 18 months. As a business, we were debt-free. But I was really keen to try and pay them off as quickly as possible, which then has an impact on what cash you've got within your business. So naturally, my first thought was, let's look at the cash flow. Like, you can run a business on a loss for quite some time, but you're only going to run out of cash once. So once the severity of the situation happened, a furlough had to be done, and then we made the decision of those that were left, we were going to defer commission payments because our commission structure is very good. We're shelling out £35,000-£40,000 a month in commission. It's a big way of us kind of adding to the runway effectively. So we made the decision to the guys that we would just, we'd still pay them, but we'd just defer that commission and not be paying it out until—

How was that received?

Amazingly, like I said, it was obviously not a conversation I would want to be having with them, but I think if ever there's anything like that, we just kind of walked them through the thought process. I'm perfectly transparent in terms of this is our this is our position as a business, this is our thought process behind why we're doing it, the end goal is that we protect the business and then there's still a job here for you at the end of it. I think the way it's played out, as I said, everyone took it really well, there's literally no question marks. One of the lads, Jack, I remember messaged me when I was kind of walking back to the car, well, like a 50-minute walk back to the car that night, and it was about 8 o'clock one time I was walking back after sharing the message and the next day we were all fully remote. So it's kind of the last opportunity I had of everyone being all together. So it's obviously not a good conversation you want to be having with people, but Jack had messaged me saying, "100% the right thing to do, like, they're protecting the business, making sure we're here, like, no hesitation about 100%." I was just literally sat in the car park in my car just waiting like a little baby. Yeah, it was tough.

How did you— because I think I think the challenge then, a lot of sort of what I've been speaking to people is then getting that balance with the people that are working. Do you know what I mean? Like, have you then been open and honest about are they getting their commission deferred or have they had to take— do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

How have you balanced that? Because I think that's where sometimes there could be friction and then Jack might have gone, I know what we have to do, but it's a bit unfair to the guys that are working. Do you know what I mean? How did you approach that?

Same for everyone.

Yeah, see, that's the thing. Yeah, fair.

Yeah, it's got— so everyone on furlough has been topped up. So we paid the extra 20%, so everyone's got 100% of salary. The deferred commission's been for everyone, whether you're on furlough or not. Everyone will also get that money, so it's not as if we're saying, right, we're just canceling commission, we're protecting it. They will get that money. Everyone has the confidence and knows in the business that we're gonna do so. So yeah, I'm the same with any decision that needs to be made. You can't do something for one and not for everyone. It's gotta be the same for everyone, otherwise you're just gonna get yourself problems. And that goes back to your, the kind of authenticity of having open, honest conversation and communication with people. If you tell people how it is and there's no lies, then you're not going to get yourself caught out further down the line.

Yeah. And I think obviously one of the things that you shared with us on this is that obviously clearly something you're really passionate and proud about is the culture and the people you have in the business. How have you gone about— again, I think that's been a real common challenge for people, like, so you've got the bench of people on furlough, you've got the bench people working. How do you ensure that there isn't that sort of divide of sort of fucking out, like, from the people that are working. It's all right for them, they're watching Netflix all day, watching Tiger King all day, it's all right compared to the guys on furlough, you know what I mean, thinking about fucking how they've got the call-up, I didn't, I'm not good enough. I think that's an interesting balance, right? So I guess, what have been some of the things that you've done to make sure that there's still that togetherness and the culture that you've worked really hard to do, but remotely?

So I guess our ultimate goal was just to try and replicate the normal office environment and culture as much as as possible remotely. So I've certainly never had any conversations from any friction between furloughed people versus non-furloughed people, but that kind of goes back to hiring the right type of people.

Yeah, exactly. For sure.

So that's never, certainly never been shared with myself. Like we do things as a group, as in everyone in the business. So every Friday afternoon, we'll do the kind of Teams video stuff and do like we did racing last week, or we'll do because as every business is doing. So we do, everyone at least once a week is doing everything as a team to kind of keep that mentality together and keep sharing what's going on. And we'll do like a round robin, 30 seconds, what you've done for your week. And also let people talk about what they've done at work, or vice versa. If people have watched Netflix all day, then that's what we do.

Yeah, fair. And what's been, um, because I think that the other sort of— I've been speaking to a business owner about this, uh, this week. I think the other balance in that is then like Have you like communicated any expectation of your staff who are on furlough? Do you know what I mean? Because I think it's even— I think it's going to be a valid question, which is, what did you get up to on furlough? Even from like a me recruiter and I'm working with talent and they're on furlough, I mean, that's going to be an interview— that's going to be an interview question. What do you do on furlough? So like, I don't know, have you put any expectations on— look, it'd be great, guys, if you could do this, like, you know, you've seen all these self-development learning, blah blah blah. What's been your approach on that?

So we keep in touch with them regularly, so it's not as if they're just kind of furloughed and we don't talk to them for 10 weeks or whatever. They were sent kind of from day one, we put together like the things that they could do, so whether that's Skillshare, I think I coined your phrase from one of your things about keeping Match fit, whether that be Skillshare stuff, whether that be personal branding, we sent out reading lists, or people to follow, books to read, that type of stuff. So just people, still people can keep engaging. Quite a lot of people have done that. One of the guys I was talking to yesterday has started to learn Python programming and he's trying to create a commission calculator for us when we return. So everyone can just pump it like stuff out. Some people have took it, other people are flat out doing Courtney Black fitness sessions and they're going to come back ripped to pieces, I think. So like there's no pressure on what people want to do. We're engaging with them. If they want to do self-learning, great. If they don't, then no pressure. You do what you want to get. You're never going to get this opportunity again, are you?

So yeah, yeah, no, fair. I think, yes, it is optional. I think that there's just a challenge there where you, like, if you put someone on furlough and then expect them to, like, use that all that time productively and efficiently, not sure about that. Yes, yes, I think, but it's been a challenge. So I guess, okay, so I guess, look, think obviously as we went through this talking about your business journey up until now, what I know, obviously when we, before we put this in, you were sort of, you was really keen to, you really felt like you haven't achieved a whole lot and wanted to sort of wait until you reach certain milestones. But I guess sort of a lot of people hear the sort of numbers you're hitting, the thing that they may see online, what you're doing, blah, blah, blah. And then we'll really sort of have a perception of that you guys are doing really well. But I guess from your experience and the learnings over the last 2 and a bit years, what do you think has sort of been really important that's enabled you to sort of build the platform and sort of have 2 and hopefully another 3rd successful year, do you think? What have been the sort of key things that have really enabled you to do that, would you say, to sort of wrap this up?

100% just the people. Yeah, I think like we, like our kind of ethos is very much people over profit. So you put your people first, hire. It doesn't matter how good our brand was, if we could still have SRT, if we had rubbish people in the team and the business, we would do rubbish. It's that simple. So it's the quality of people that you hire, the quality of people, and then retaining and motivating and keeping those people happy is the absolute key in what we do. So I think for us to keep scaling and keep growing and reach our ambitions, then it is all about identifying more and more and more of these kind of good people that are going to fit with our ethos and stuff. But it doesn't— for me, it doesn't matter what you do with your business in terms of your sets and stuff. It's about making your people as good as they can be and hiring the best people you possibly can. That's the name of the game for me. Hmm.

I think— Where would you like to see SR2? What's the sort of vision in the next 2.5 years then?

So there's kind of lots of things on our agenda at the moment. So still growing. So I think our kind of aim with Bristol would be to get Bristol to kind of 40, 50 people. We've started as of 2020 doing Europe. So we've started a kind of Berlin function and we're starting to build out. So Steve, one of our co-founders, is doing that. We're launching a new product in the next couple of, like, early June called FR2 Scale, which is going to be like a subscription service to our clients. And so we're, we are kind of diversifying our offering. We've talked about on the statement of work and consultancy piece as well. So I'm very conscious of not trying to kind of do too much. Yeah. But equally, there are lots of things that we want to be doing as a business. I think we've been quite successful with trying new things, and if it doesn't work, just fail fast with it. So there's lots of things that we're now doing that maybe weren't in the business plan at the start that have been really successful. So there's lots of new different things in the pipeline of various stages that are exciting, but ultimately they all lend itself to growing and growing the business, growing the headcount, obviously, as you say, growing the extra GP that we're doing.

Love that. So what— before I ask you the last question, what are you most excited about what are you most excited to do after COVID, after we get out of lockdown? What are you most excited about?

Well, work-wise or not?

Just whatever, whatever comes up for you, personal, professional.

I guess personal, I've got my wife's pregnant at the moment, so we've got a 3-year-old, stupidly just got a puppy, and then now we've got a newborn on the way on July 4th. So that's pretty much number one priority at the moment. Certainly from a personal point of view, and then I think from a professional point of view, it's just getting everyone back in the office and trying to get some level of normality together. I think it's like, you do miss that. I think everyone said that in our office, like everyone just misses that camaraderie in the office and being around people all the time, because I'd say our culture is strong, so people do then miss it. Yeah, that's absolutely key.

It's going to be a challenge fitting everyone in the office with a 2-meter distance, isn't it?

Yeah, I think we're going to do like half and half and do 3 on site, 2 from home.

Yeah, I suppose a lot of people don't think of that. Last question, Chris. So if you could communicate to every single recruiter out there, they'd listen, they'd take on your advice, it could be a word, a phrase, a sentence, what would you say to the people if they were listening? What would Chris say?

What's that, from a new starter point of view?

Just in general, like if you could communicate to every single recruiter out there that would take on your advice and listen, what would your message be?

I was about to say don't be a dickhead. I think just like, it's just be yourself, like be authentic. I think if you are being yourself, you're naturally being authentic and people will buy in. If people buy from people, people will buy into you more. You'll be more genuine and just naturally be more authentic. I think too many people try and either be someone they're not, or companies will try and create like recruitment robots out of people. Like for me, it's just like, be yourself, be authentic, and people will naturally tend to gravitate more towards that than someone who's trying to put on a show or be someone that they're not, I think.

No, awesome, Chris. Honestly, been a pleasure. I'm really excited to see where you guys are in the next 2 and a half years. Definitely have to do this again, hopefully face to face. And, but now it's been an absolute pleasure, Chris. Thank you.

Cool. No worries.