Founders of Method Resourcing - building their very own million pound start up agency in 18 months.

Welcome to the Recruitment Rollercoaster podcast. My name is Hishem Azzouz. Today I am in sunny Bristol, and I'm, uh, you're both from Bristol, aren't you?

Born and bred.

Born and bred. I'm joined by Jack Cole on my left and Tom Hurley, who's in front of me, um, who are both the founders of a recruitment business called Method Resourcing. Hashtag follow the method.

Hashtag follow the method.

Thanks for joining me, guys.

Um, thanks for having us.

Excited. So as I was saying to you before, I haven't had— I haven't done this with, uh, two other people for a while. We should put some new kit. Yeah, this is exciting. Um, so obviously we are going to spend quite a bit of time talking about your journey so far in starting your own recruitment business, but where I always like to start is how the hell did, uh, both of you end up in the world of recruitment? Let's start there.

Uh, I'll go first. Uh, in short, never had the intention of getting into recruitment. Um, wanted to be a police officer. Really? Yeah, originally wanted to be a police officer, but basically didn't want to go in at like the age of 18 years old, wanted to get a bit of life experience. So, um, like most people, ended up working in sales, doing door-to-door sales. Um, absolutely hated it for like the first—

what did you sell?

Gas, electric, oil cover, door-to-door, door-to-door.

I mean, that's grim.

Scottish and Southern Energy.

Wow.

Um, it was, it was all character building. I mean, I was quite like a shy individual at that time, and I didn't think sales was going to work for me. But, um, you know, first 6 months, absolutely hated it, but then kind of got in a groove, started to enjoy it, and then started to make some decent money. Um, I was made redundant, which kind of felt like a really convenient time because I was actually looking to leave after about 18 months.

Um, but you did door-to-door for 18 months? Yeah, mate. Fair play, mate. That's a long old time, that, mate.

Yeah, yeah, that's a lot.

So that's like a life sentence for door-to-door.

That is, it is pretty much, because like normally it's like, because you end up in those like weird pyramid schemes, don't you?

Uh, yeah, I actually, I was on the rare one though. I actually had a basic salary, £12,000 a year. Yeah. Rolling in it.

Because at 14, mate, that's a lot of money, isn't it?

Yeah. Well, yeah.

Do you feel like that definitely gave you like a good grounding though?

Yeah, it was a good confidence boost knowing how to like just overcome objection. And actually taught me to be like an opportunist. Sounds like really strange, but like if it was raining, instead of being sat in the car waiting like for it to like the rain to cool off, I'll just stick myself out in the rain so I'm still on a doorstep. People then go, oh, young, like, 17-year-old lad, he's getting wet, let's bring him inside. As soon as I was in the house, then I'm in a position where I can then just have like a deeper conversation. Yeah, 9 times out of 10, I then end up like actually just signing them up. So, um, I think that like it was the early years of just being able to like, you know, be an opportunist and then like capitalize on it.

I think when you get into sales as well, I think it's for me, once you're in sales and you actually give it a good old crack, I can never now be in a job where Dave next to me does the same job and it's not sales, and like we get paid the same, but he's half-assing it and I'm doing— do you know what I mean? Doing something. So like being able to actually like earn what you put in, I don't know, once I experienced that, I was like, there's no way I'm doing a job that isn't sales, you know what I mean? Yeah.

So yeah, basically went from doing that, got made redundant, walked into Office Angels to get a sales job that they were advertising at the time, uh, and then walked out of a job in recruitment.

Sold you the dream.

Yeah, pretty much.

What about you, Tom?

I actually got declined the job at Office Angels.

Did you?

Yeah, which is probably an embarrassing fact, but, you know, it's part of my recruitment journey. Journey, that's the one, yeah. I was like most, I did a degree in sports coaching, absolutely useless. Shock. Shock. And yeah, I didn't know what I was going to do. I was going to go into teaching, the usual kind of stuff. And actually my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, her, uh, her flatmate's, uh, boyfriend worked for Office Angels. He said, why don't you go for an interview at Office Angels? So I rocked up in a pair of sandals, shorts, and a t-shirt, like a typical student.

Oh wow.

And basically laughed out the, um, laughed out the room.

Um, well, you literally walked in, I was like, have you got any jobs?

Pretty much, yeah.

Oh wow.

Pretty much. So obviously didn't get a job there. And then, um, I interviewed with Progressive in Bristol and G2, uh, and yeah, started working for G2 14 years ago.

But I'm assuming, obviously what I know about them, you definitely didn't go there in sandals. Absolutely Yeah, you'd have got laughed out.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Okay, so, um, for both of you then, what was your perception of recruitment at that point, out of interest? I was interested in that.

I didn't really—

I didn't really have one.

Like, really?

No, because I think, like, like, you— I suppose when you hear about recruitment initially, it's all about, like, money and fast cars and all that kind of stuff. But at that particular time, for me, it was just— I just needed a job. Um, and, like, it was the first job I got offered, and it wasn't until I actually got into the industry that I started to really understand what it was about, uh, and how difficult it was. But obviously the rewards you can get from it. Okay.

Did you have a— what was your perception?

Uh, to be fair, the guys at Office Angels were like really good at just like setting the boundaries, the expectation of what the role was all about. Um, because I initially gone in for something completely different.

Yeah.

So, um, it was like a real education piece, and I actually was like, yeah, I like the manager. Yeah, I bought into him. Um, and like the way he just sold it to me, I was like, yeah, just, just makes sense to go in and do that. Um, I like the fact that it was, you know, really sales-focused, and it wasn't kind of like the administrative HR side of things, which sometimes like recruitment can get perceived.

Yeah. So how long have you both been in recruitment now since then?

Uh, it's my 14th year.

14th year?

Yeah, yeah, 9 years now.

Yeah, 9 years. Long old time, that.

It's a long old time.

Yeah, it's a long time. So I guess what I always like to talk to people about, because it definitely is one of the most challenging parts of getting into recruitment, is your first 12 months. So just to set the scene, was— did you go into a perm or con—

like, so yeah, if we're talking like Office Angels, it was like perm.

Was it perm?

Yeah.

What about you, Tom? Was it contract?

Yeah, I did perm for 18 months and then flipped over to contract for, what, 11? Yeah, 11 and a half years.

Cast back to your first year then, talk to us a bit about that. Was it challenging for either of you? How was the first 12 months?

I tell you what, it was like a completely different type of recruitment to what we obviously do now. But like, I think there's some really good lessons there because like Office Angels, you're recruiting for office managers, secretaries, PAs, customer service, sales. You had so many different, um, I guess like verticals that you're trying to recruit for. It taught you how to like recruit like really quickly across all those different areas. But what it didn't give you is then like the candidate relationship or the candidate management, um, because you could never use that candidate really more than say like twice.

Yeah.

Um, so, um, what it taught me was just like, you know, working a job with that pace, with that urgency, and hopefully then kind of—

How did you do billions-wise tonight? Was it all right?

Uh, I've done £150,000 my first year, which isn't bad, but it was a fairly warm desk in Bristol which had been worked by like, you know, a million consultants previously. So it was a good candidate pool, good client pool. Um, yeah, it was, it was more of a case of like just like putting the placements into the businesses already there. So it wasn't really kind of like proper recruitment. I'd say that like the time I actually become like a proper recruiter is when I actually joined Opus, which was like 18 months later.

Fair enough. What about you, Tom? How were your first 12 months?

It was tough. Like really tough. Yeah. So, so I walked into G2, I think, as like the 4th or 5th member. Oh wow. You're walking into an office, right? You've got James Gough and Simon Gillings, who are probably some of the top billers S3 and Progressive have ever seen. Charlie Walker doing half a million quid a year on contracts. It's a pretty daunting thing, but tough. But like, I learned a hell of a lot.

Really?

A hell of a lot. Yeah.

What was challenging about that first year then?

Just think like you just go through, you go through like real emotions, don't you? Like, you know, you can have like a real high and a real low. It can change by the hour. I think what I learned though is ultimately like you've got to be super positive.

Yeah.

Like hard work for me was the thing that got me through my first year.

Really?

Yeah, definitely.

Work ethic.

I just figured, yeah, like, you know, it's quite old school, but I think if you were to— back in my early days, I used to think if I worked harder than the person to the right or to the left of me, I put myself in a position to potentially give myself more opportunities, um, which has probably changed a little bit now. But I think for me, that was, that was, that was how I kind of attacked my first year.

Then just around that, just quickly, just because I think a lot of people listening may be around that part, and I think I always get messages around people saying like, oh, how can I get better at managing those? Yeah, but good times, bad times. I'm sure obviously now you have your own businesses. Yeah, even more so. But absolutely, anything that you got better at in that first year?

Um, I think like it if you're having tough times and you're thirsty, you just got to talk to people. Yeah, because everyone goes through it. There's no— I've not met anyone in my 14 years of recruitment that have gone, yeah, it's been a blast for 14 years, I've never had a low, I've never found it difficult. So I think you've got to talk to the people around you. Yeah, you know, seek advice. And I think in hindsight now, like, don't be too hard on yourself in the first 12 months. Yeah, because you think it's the worst thing in the world if you don't put a job or you don't, you know—

that's true—

hit your target, whatever it may be. But actually it's not. And if you just break things down. Like, I used to obsess around metrics, you know. You know, for some people, you know, metrics aren't in recruiting, but I'm a big believer that they are. But for me, that was a big thing I used to—

what you really worked out what you had to do on a daily basis?

Absolutely, yeah. Well, I think because when you first start out and your first 3 to 6 months, if you're— if all you're purely thinking about is, right, deal, deal, deal, deal, you're going to get disheartened very, very quickly. I used to try and think, and I used to get my guys and Jack exactly to say, my trainees, is to think about, right, what's the activity I need to do in order to get to that point where I get my first interview or for my first job to then ultimately get to your first place.

And they're just as good wins to celebrate.

Absolutely.

You know what I mean?

Absolutely. You've got to celebrate the small wins, otherwise your brain, you know, totally combusts, don't you?

Being around those big builders then earlier on, how much do you learn? How much do you think they impacted you in those first—

um, like a lot, really. But they're also different, really. That's very, very different. Yeah, all very, very different. And I think I'm sure Jack would agree, over the years you've, you're surrounded by different, like, big billers that have all got different backgrounds. Some have done masters at Oxford, some have—

yeah, you know, and then the different approaches.

Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think if you can take a little bit from each one of those and kind of, you know, people recruit in different ways but they have equal—

yeah, I think it's like, yeah, be a sponge, think what— look at what they're doing and then sort of take what you like and put your own spin on things. But I think that's really good advice. Like, if you're listening right now and you are struggling, it's like, one, are you speaking to anyone around you? It's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing to just say, look, I'm struggling with this, but can you help?

Absolutely.

And also, who you learning from as well in those first 12 months? Um, okay, so just to set this in then, Jack, for you, so you worked— obviously your grounding in Office Angels, started there.

Yeah.

And you worked at Opus for how long?

Uh, nearly 6 years.

Over 6 years. And obviously they, they— was there HQ in Bristol? Because like, that's like a—

yes, an original—

it's like Bristol.

Yeah, it's quite renowned brand in Bristol, isn't it? Um, so 6 years.

Yeah. And then left there and then joined—

and then started Method. Yeah. And then Tom, just for everyone listening, so joined G2 quite early on.

Yeah.

So what are they now? They're huge.

Yeah, GTV. Yeah, they're, they're absolutely—

and you're like their 4th, 5th hire?

Well, I was a 4th— I was a 4th hire at G2, or the, or the 5th hire. And then, um, Charlie Walker set up Vivid, which was an offshoot of G2, which is part of the GTV group. And I went to London with him um, to help kind of scale and run that office in London for— was there for quite a while.

Went up against G2, didn't they?

All the time.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's under the same group, but a lot of businesses will spin off businesses.

That is mental, that, because yeah, I've got a bit of context around G2, but, um, I can't remember who it is that I met, but their London office, part of it is G2 and part of it is Vivid.

Yeah.

And they're like direct competitors.

Absolutely.

Yeah, it's mad.

Well, they're in, they're in the same office block but in different rooms. Yeah. Um, you know, you'd go up against like, you'd go up against, you know, someone that you know, and as long as it was healthy, healthy competition, sometimes Yeah, and then I was there first, there for 10 years. So, um, I was a GTV Group top biller, I was Vivintop biller, and then found it quite difficult getting into management to start off with.

Really?

Um, yeah, like you tend to concentrate on yourself, don't you, when you— yeah, you first get into sales.

So what— so you ended up there 10, and then after that you then set on—

yeah, well, no, I moved back to Bristol with my wife and kids.

Okay.

And worked for Opus for 2 and a half years, all right, director there, like learned loads there. Yeah, really great business. And then, yeah, the opportunities, you know, came to set up on my own, uh, and Jack is a co-founder. And yeah, that was 18 months ago.

18 months ago, cool. Yeah. So let's just talk a bit about that sort of journey up to that point.

Yeah.

Um, so just to help me out, so both of you, did you go down the typical like biller, senior consultant, and then you're managing a few people? Did you both do that?

Yeah, so I joined, um, like Opus as a trainee recruiter even though I had like 18 months experience, but I'd never done like IT recruitment. And like my first 6 months were probably the hardest because I was trying to recruit in a way that I'd already— yeah, and actually I kind of had to just like go in, reinvent myself completely from scratch again, um, and just kind of restart my recruitment career. So my first 6 months was actually like really tough, actually, only done like one placement. Really? Um, I still recall to this day, like, my manager, like, 6 months pretty much on the dot, um, said like, you've got to do like 3 deals today, pretty much. And I literally said to him, I was just like, you know what, I'll do that. I actually then done 3 deals that day. Really? Done like 8 or 9 deals that month and then won a ski trip to Chamonix, um, for like the last slot.

Smashed it.

Um, and then like, you know, never turned back. Yeah, from that. So then, but in terms of the like the progression, it was like started there, training, consultant, senior principal, team lead, and then worked my way out to manager. We had like 32 people working for me.

32? Yeah. And then Tom, just—

yeah, really similar side. Yeah, so, um, started off as a recruiter and then worked myself up to team leader and sales manager.

Yeah.

Um, but it's funny, isn't it? I think like that progression, you can really identify what you're good at and what you're, what you're not good at as the, as the sort of progression goes.

So quick one, definitely keen to sort of unwrap that. I think that there's so many things in there that you could probably give a lot of value around for people listening. Just on that point, Jack, that you're just saying, I think if you think of— obviously I'm sure you've experienced it now Like, what would your advice be to people that are listening that maybe have made the move recently or considering a move? Because you hear it all the time where I'm a recruiter, have 2 years under my belt, I go into another recruitment business and I feel like I know how to do recruitment. So I think obviously you had to have some real humility there to be like, I had to reinvent yourself, do you get what I mean? I think, what did you sort of learn around that that I think a lot of people will go through that? I'm sure you may have experienced it now where you hire a recruiter and then be like, yeah, I know how to do recruitment. Yeah, so like, what, what did you learn? What, how did you get better at that? Or how did you—

at first I was like a proud person, I didn't really ask for the help because I was going in with a bit of experience, um, and I didn't want to ask for the help. But I soon realized that actually if I didn't, then it was just— yeah, basically.

So was it just that? It was like, hang on a minute, it was just a bit of a realization of what, what I've been taught, what happened, isn't working?

Yeah, I think it was a bit of like self-reflection really. Like, um, like it's not working, ask for help. And then I just started asking for more help, um, then started to identify like the areas where I'm doing really well in. But then like it was just really, really minor tweaks and changes that then just opened my eyes up of just doing things slightly differently, being a little bit more assertive with certain things I was doing. Um, and like as a result, you know, deals then started to come through.

Um, why didn't you, why didn't you quit in those 6 months? A lot of people might quit.

I don't like losing, to be honest.

Really?

Uh, yeah, I quite like self-critical of like— yeah, um, not failing.

Um, had a point to prove.

Yeah, basically.

Fair enough, mate.

Yeah. What is that point, Jack?

What?

We're going a bit deep. I was just joking.

Um, okay then. And then the markets you was in, was it it, put tech or what was there?

Yeah, I— yeah, well, because we were quite small when I, when I joined G2, I basically mopped up any perm job that was given to me.

Really? Yeah.

So it was one day it would be like a mechanical engineer, the next it would be something else. But it wasn't until I, um, went into contract myself that I actually built my own, built my own desk and did it properly, really.

Really?

Yeah.

And then, and then help me out, Jack. So then did you basically— the journey opens as you're building up your own desk, basically?

Or yeah, I mean, someone done it very briefly for a period of time. So, um, I, even though I was based in Bristol, I was recruiting in the London market. Someone had done it for a very brief period of time, um, done a write on it, but I kind of built it pretty much from scratch.

Really? Yeah. So let's just talk a bit about that, that period of you. Obviously I know you've had to do quite a bit of that at Method now, but I guess again, one of the most sort of common things that I get asked about is business development, winning new business, these sorts of things. So I guess you can talk about it now and how you approach it now, but I guess what, what, what's your— been your experience or what are your thoughts on how people should be approaching new business or the things that you've learned along the way that probably a lot of people fall short on?

I think for me, when I was at OPA, certainly, um, and like I still kind of encourage people to do that, like now it's like first 4 weeks you just want to bury yourself into speaking to as many candidates as you can, contract and perm, because you need to know what a good contract CV looks like versus a good perm CV so that if you're in a conversation with a manager, you're able to say, actually, the skill set you're looking for lends itself as a £300-£400 a day contractor versus, you know, the, the perm salary of £40 grand, for example. So, um, and then that way you can obviously just, um, you know, build up what knowledge you've got in the market. I think knowledge is, is key at the end of the day. Like, if you've got knowledge, you've got power, and then you can actually sell off the back of it. Um, the best recruiters I've ever worked with, those are the people that like know their market like the back of their hand.

Really?

Yeah.

I think you've got, you've got like, you fundamentally to build— if you want to be a big builder, you have to build a market, you have to know your market. Otherwise you just spread yourself too thin, you're trying to do too many, too many different things at once. Um, and ultimately, I, I, that's my personal opinion, I just don't think that's scalable really.

What did you end up niching down?

So I did business intelligence and data warehousing initially.

Yeah, did you really double down on that?

Yeah, just double.

Yeah.

And, um, it wasn't until perhaps as I got a little bit more experience that, um, I mean, we were a classic contract builder. We would— I knew my BI market and debt rising market very as well. But, you know, we would land and expand— excuse the cliché— with a client, um, and, you know, network around the different hiring managers, get to know the hiring managers. So, you know, my contract book towards the end of my sort of tenure at Vivid was a real mixture of, you know, testers, devs, project managers, and it was a lot of the business was relationship-led, really. And I think that's the thing that people need to do now. And, and if you can again build out a good market in businesses, you have to have key relationships with key stakeholders. And I think that's something we've developed massively since we set our method. It's not just about— it's about splitting your, your business development between like your reactive and your proactive list. You know, your reactive quick wins, but also having, you know, forging long-term relationships with managers, attending events, running your own events, and making sure you've got, you know, strong relationships.

How do you, in your opinion, like how do you measure if you've got a good relationship with someone?

Uh, that's a good question. Know the names of their kids. Maybe not know the names of the kids, but We talked about this yesterday. I think it's hard. Maybe you can't measure it this way, but I think when you're having unwork-related conversations before you get into work-related conversations is a really good measure of how that person actually knows you.

Yeah.

So some of the best people that Jack and I have worked with, you know, we'll go and meet them for a beer and have a chat about non-work stuff for a good hour before we actually talk about, you know, the nitty-gritty of—

I think it's a good thing to think about.

It depends how much business we've got.

Because it depends if you then get the Facebook friend request. That's when you went to the next level. Yeah, you got two of them.

It's like, obviously when you're thinking long-term and stuff, it's like, it's a good thing to think about, right? Is this, is this going on the right track? What am I keeping? Do you know what I mean?

And, and this is where like you got to be smart when you, when you think about metrics and conversations. And it's like people like, oh, I made 100 calls today. Like, that's, that's not what we're referring to. Like, it's about having a good balance between quality conversations that are going to lead to hopefully, like, you know, repeat business. And, and also about identifying, you know, is this, is this something, you know, what you don't want to do is, is sort of piss off a manager or candidate really, really quickly when actually over time you can forge something that is, you know, more long-term.

Yeah. So did either of you—

sorry for swearing, Hishem.

No, that's fine, mate. You can swear on here, mate. Good problem. So, um, can— did either of you want to become managers? Or was it like because of you build well?

I just wanted to be a director, mate, after about 2 weeks. Yeah, after 2 weeks I was just like, oh, a promotion.

Well, I think that like it's maturity thing. I was like, I always want to be a manager because I assumed that—

that—

or director because I assumed that that was the best job to have.

Yeah.

But actually, like, in reflection, like, you know, being a manager in recruitment, especially a billing manager, like, is fundamentally the hardest job.

Absolutely.

Like most recruiters I know are actually quite selfish individuals.

Yeah, of course.

Um, and like, that does— just because you're a good biller doesn't mean you're going to be a good manager.

Yeah.

And like, I was a good biller, so I assumed I was going to be a good manager. And in actual fact, my first like year as a team lead, I was probably pretty crap, to be fair.

Why was it bad?

Uh, because I was just like— I'd hired like cardboard copies of myself.

And so you'd always want to try and hire someone like you?

I assumed that everyone would basically just follow suit to what I would do, but actually that's not the way that management really works. It wasn't until we actually had like proper leadership training, um, that I actually then like sat back and realized, crap, like, yeah, I've been doing this wrong for like such a long period of time. Um, and then like, you know, just changing a few things. Um, like the biggest one for me was actually like learning how people learn. Okay, like a learning styles questionnaire.

Yeah.

Um, and then they kind of then give you a— gave you a gauge of like how they— people like to learn, and then like the output of that.

That's interesting. Like, so a big learning for you was actually, yeah, understanding how people best learn, and then that means you can deliver the training or whatever in the way that's going to best suit them. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting, because how many people know the best way that they learn? I definitely don't. Okay, well, have you done that questionnaire for your guys?

Yeah, we have.

Yeah, everyone that we've hired, we've actually done the learning styles questionnaire. It's like my thing now. Really?

Yeah.

Because like I saw, like, you know, going from being like fairly average, you know, billings for my team to then like actually, you know, some pretty significant results off the back of it. So it's actually something that like I've just taken with me.

It's great for picking markets as well because you've got some people that learn, you know, they like to fail when they do things and they learn that way. Or people that like to plan, uh, you know, and putting someone on a contract or permanent market, different personalities suit different markets. Yeah, it was a great way to understand how you can develop and—

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Self-analyze yourself as well. Like, I'm a pragmatic— what's it? Pragmatic—

looking at Tom, you're looking at me, mate. You just told him learning styles. Make up a word quick. Oh, I think that's—

no, I think that's a really good— I think that's really good tangible advice. So I guess for you, Tom, did you— so for you, did you again have the same sort of perception that if I was a manager means more money, more responsibility.

That's the question. Yeah, I mean, as a young recruiter, you know, I think my motivations initially was just about recognition.

Really?

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, definitely about, you know, having a good job title, you know, earning as much money as you can. All the fickle stuff actually now isn't that really important to me. Yeah, as a young recruiter, so of course you wanted to be a team leader and a manager really quickly because I'm a team leader or a manager. But yeah, of course, like Jack said, I think that the thing I, thing I find the most difficult for me was just, you have to be— I was quite a selfish recruiter initially in my early years, and you have to think about the people. And actually, if you've got someone working for you, you've got to look after them, you've got to train them, you've got to develop them. And I think it's really important that, you know, if you're going through that process now, if anyone's listening, is that, you know, having two people, um, working together with each other is a lot more effective if you're targeting clients than just one person that's, you know, like a, you know, tunnel vision, like, yeah. Deals, deals, deals, deals.

How did you actually start changing that though? Well, like that, because that must have been a process.

Uh, I had loads of people that didn't want to work for me that left, you know, all that kind of stuff that you think, you know, I got to change what I'm doing. Yeah. Um, so I kind of, I kind of fanged my own way of doing things over time. I wasn't— I didn't have the fortunate, uh, training that Jack did in terms of, you know, learning the styles questionnaires and stuff. It was the— and I wasn't retaining staff, uh, as a, as a trainee, as a trainee manager. It was only when I actually started reflecting, right, what am I doing? Why would would I want to work for myself if I was a trainee?

And then I started thinking, actually, no, that's such a good question to ask yourself, isn't it?

If you're a manager listening, I think that is a good question to ask, though, isn't it?

Great, great thing that Opus done. They sent out, um, like anonymous, like, surveys done by, like, other directors, other managers in the business, in the business, of, like, what their perception was of me.

Really?

And then, like, there's some good stuff in there, but there was, like, some, like, pretty big areas of improvement, really. And it was a— so it was a sobering thought.

I got told I look like a geography teacher, so it wasn't as bad as that, mate. But you still do. History, man.

Yeah.

Okay.

But yeah, it was a bit of like a sobering thought of like, actually, I'm nowhere near as good as like I think I am. Like, I'm miles away from where I want to be. And like, if I want to become a director, I need to change like all of these things about myself. So like Yeah, just like, I guess, like, if you, if you're running a business, maybe like that's a good thing to do.

Okay, so, um, so obviously, Tom, you mentioned obviously you was one of the top billers. Yeah, brand. Why do you think that is?

Uh, why do I think that is?

Uh, what was your best year?

I just stuck at it.

What was your best year?

Uh, about 489. So, and that was in, that was in UK it. So I think if you look at some of the international stuff now, I think, you know, in my opinion, that's where the big money is.

Yeah.

Um, And what year was that? That would have been— what are we now, 2019? So that would have probably been 2012. Yeah, 2013. Um, but I think I just, I just stuck at it. Like, it sounds silly, but I didn't have any other options. Like, I did it, like, did a university degree and it was, it was an all right one. I had a good time at uni, but, you know, I wasn't going to go and work.

Yeah, what's the—

you see, or be a doctor.

Yeah.

Uh, I had, you know, I could be a doctor, man. But, um, you know, I didn't have a choice and I was just— and I, you know, and I had a point— I felt like I had a point to prove, so I just got on with it. And I think like, you know, you've got to— that was, that was my thing. And I saw you went through a lot of lows, you know, and suddenly you start seeing the money and it becomes more comfortable and you start learning the job and then it becomes second nature really.

But what did you do? Was there many— so I think obviously what's interesting for you, mate, is obviously quite early on you got sort of exposure to some people that are obviously hitting some big numbers.

Yeah.

So I think a lot, a lot of the questions I, I get or people send messages me, uh, send messages to me is, Hishem, I'm at the sort of 200 mark or 150 mark, can't break the 200K mark. Yeah, 250. How can I— I want some advice on breaking that much, you know what I mean? So yeah, was that quite, um, in your sort of form was quite normal to hit those sort of numbers?

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

Oh yeah, I mean, that must be such—

so those, those figures now, if you look at the GTV group now, I mean, they're doing 6, 7, 8, 9, 900K. Um, the way my advice to those people is always bring on new business.

Always bring on new business.

Always, always bring on new. What's the stat? You like your stats, Jack, innit?

You lose 14% of your book.

There we go.

Year on year, unless you don't continue to do stuff.

You just got to bring on new businesses because, you know, you can— you've got 35 contractors, you're like, yeah, great, job done, you know, get 40, 50 grand a month. Suddenly you send your contractors go and you start bringing your managers again. They're like, well, we're not hiring, you've just filled all the positions you've got. So got to bring on, got to bring on new business.

Did you experience a big jump then in billings, or was it, was it quite a sort of continuous increase for that year, or, uh, no, it's just relatively—

no, I— no, not— it wasn't like— there wasn't one thing that I in particular that really that I did that— it was just a contribution of just, of just hard graft, really.

What about you, Joe? What was your best year, mate?

Uh, my best year was actually when I like set up Method.

Really?

Yeah, yeah, that's all right.

From stand and start, like, that's impressive.

So what was the first year? What did you do first year?

Like, pretty much since like my first full year in Opus, it's been a bit— it's been between like 200, 250. I've been pretty consistent, so I've never done like the figures that Tom's done, but I was always a perm recruiter up until pretty much like doing some contract stuff with Method.

Yeah.

Um, so yeah, for like the last like 7-ish, well, 8 years really, it's been pretty much like 200, 250. Yeah, I think best is about like 270.

Really? So you've done that at Method?

Yeah.

That's not bad, is it?

That's not too bad, but that was contract and perm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and what have been some of the sort of learnings for you then, mate, in your experience? And again, I think obviously you say those numbers, they're not quite big as Tom, but like consistently hitting those numbers, that's, that's decent. Do you want me to consistently hit those types of numbers? Yeah. What are some of the key things for you that you think have impacted that or contributed to that?

I think it's just like the mix of like your activity around reactive and like proactive business, um, and just like not like just sat there thinking you've, you've made it because you've had one year.

Yes.

And done, you've done like 200 grand, um, and you've got your accounts because like your accounts soon dry up, things can change like the, you know, like the wind. Like our top 3 clients from last year, not hired this year.

That's really interesting.

I've done a single placement with them. Now if we just sat on that, like, again, it's back to you.

Yeah, that's about—

it was about 3, probably about 280K of our first year's GP.

They—

none of them have hired this year. That's crazy. Yeah. And we're what, we are 8 months into the year. We do June to June.

So yeah, I like—

for me, yeah, that's really interesting.

Yeah, I just always make sure I'm getting out at least like once or twice a month down to London, meet as many candidates or clients as possible, just make sure you've got a good mix of like reactive and proactive, like business development.

Um, and just to clarify for people listening, what, what do you deem as reactive and proactive?

So reactive being like you've got an interview lead, direct advert, something you're chasing down that it like someone's hiring now. Yeah, kind of you're chasing your tail a little bit for that. Um, proactive being, um, you know, you know that they hire, you know they hire, and it's going to take you potentially 3, 6, 12 months 4 years again, you know.

Out of interest, Tom, because again quite a few people ask me this, like, what did, what did your day look like when you was bidding that sort of money, mate? Was it pretty militant?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was. Yeah, yeah, talk to me.

I still use it.

I still use it. Yes, when I sat in, in that office on my own, literally with no clients, no candidates, an empty database, I went back to the same day plan I had when I started recruitment.

What was the day plan, mate? Talk to me.

Oh God, right. So I'd get in in the morning and I would, uh, call all my hot leads, all my managers, uh, pre-9 o'clock. Yeah, because of course they're all arriving, having a coffee, looking at BBC Sport, having a chit chat. They go into meetings at 9, so try and get all that done really early. I then do my reactive manager list probably between, uh, 10 and 11. So that would be like a target client I'd wanted to get into, you know, message on LinkedIn, all that kind of stuff. And then I'd lead gen. Hopefully no candidates are listening. I lead gen them for a couple of hours, talking to candidates, my candidates that I know, what's going on in the market. Yeah. Then I would again go back to probably chasing those leads between 10 and 1, have my lunch, and then I'd repeat in the afternoon.

Really?

Yeah, which is pretty boring. But, you know, for me, again, it was just— I like routine, and I think that's how I learned, was some routine, because I knew where I was against my target or what I was, what I was looking to achieve.

And you worked out that if you did that and you had X amount of conversations, that's just, that's just how I did it.

I'm not saying it's right for everybody, but for me, a lot of people are interested in how to structure their day, and a lot of people don't structure their day because as a contract consultant, right, you know, you might not do— you might not pull your first job for 3 months. So how do you know if you're improving? You know, again, in my opinion, how do you know if you're improving in the first 3 months if you've got no way of measuring it? I, you know, I think it's very, very difficult to do.

Um, have both of you always want to start your own business?

Um, not— it was only probably the, the second half of my, my 7 to 14 years in recruitment where I wanted to.

Yeah, really?

I just— having seen, having seen other people that I thought I was as good at, as good as— yeah, yeah, uh, doing it, I thought, yeah, it's easy, why not? Yeah, give it a go. Yeah, make loads of money. Yeah, it's easy peasy. But it's not.

What about you, Jack?

I think they're like, you always like the idea of running your own business because when you're younger, you just assume like, if you run your own business, you've got more money than everyone else. That's just like a maturity thing again. Maybe because I grew up in peace, not the same job. But yeah, I think it was like when I become like a manager and then like I was, you know, becoming much better at like managing people, people buying into me. I was still bidding, bidding good money. And yeah, it's just like you just want to do something for yourself sometimes, don't you?

How did you two meet? Opus?

Yeah.

Or did you know each other?

Oh no, about Opus. Yeah.

Really?

Tom's got a good story about that.

So when I moved back from— when I moved back from— I mean, you obviously, you live in Eastbourne, but you live in London now. It's like, you know, it's like in London you've got these like wicked pubs and restaurants around. You go out for really nice drinks after work. Well, I joined Opus and their local was an Italian restaurant. And I'd only been there for a week, so I thought, I know, I'll go and meet everyone and, you know, get to know everyone, real make an effort. So I walked into this Italian. At first I was a bit of a snob. I thought, what is this place? And these guys had all been on Lunch Club. So I'm at the bar like Norman Nomad somewhere, like introducing myself to everyone. And then the big oaf Jack arrives, bounds, comes bounding in like there's like the sea parts and he comes flying through, hugs me, gives me this big smooch on the cheek. He was like, all right mate, I'm Jack, how are you? Yeah, lovely to meet you, mate. Absolutely smashed. I thought to myself like, oh my God, what have I done? Who is this guy? Um, but yeah, I guess, yeah, we've always just gotten really well from them.

Really?

Yeah.

Well, and then did you ever— did he work in your team or did you work on his team?

Yeah, so yeah, so Jack worked for me for about a year. Really? Uh, yeah. And, um, we just— yeah, we always got really well, like socialized outside of work, probably like not as much as we do now. Yeah. But I think that's what was quite great about it is we work really well to each other because we're quite different in the way we approach different things.

Okay. So then where did the conversation of you starting Method also happen? In the pub?

Outside a restrictive covenant parents, just to make that clear. No, it wasn't. So I left in May and I was chatting to different investors and a company in Bristol made me an offer to go and join them, but I thought, I'm like, if I'm never— I'm not gonna do it now, I'm never gonna do it. And I was like, right, who is the best person to come and join as a co-founder? And it was so big JC. So we met for a— met for some granola. I think Jack was on his one of his healthy health kicks at that point, and a latte. And he said, yeah, we talked about it, and then yeah, we just, yeah, plotted it.

And you're— so you're 18 months in. Yeah. So obviously, obviously happy to share that. Obviously, but you've been back to start that. Is that all cool to talk a bit about that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I guess So 18 months in, first, just to help for everyone listening, first 12 months you two. Yeah.

And then we, uh, we had Cece, uh, who came and were— we think we hired her in October as a resourcer.

Yeah.

Um, and then we hired a couple of other people that probably, uh, no fault of her— well, yeah, I suppose taking responsibility was we probably hired the wrong people.

Yeah, yeah, fair enough.

Um, and now we're up to 6 with, uh, yeah, with, with 2 people joining in January. So cool.

So I guess let's just talk a bit about the first 12 months. That must— like, it's just you two. How, how, how hap— how glad are you that you've done it with each other, if you get what I mean? Like, not just, just Tom on your own or Jack on your own. How are you pleased that you did it? Yeah, really?

Definitely.

Yeah, like, there isn't anyone else I don't think I would have gone into business with. Yeah.

Cheers, mate.

Yeah.

Um, but what do you think has been the benefits of doing it together?

I think for me, like, I knew that I had some areas that I needed to work on. Yeah. And I wanted to surround myself with someone that kind of could give me those areas to, to work on. Yeah. Like, Tom was that person. Like, we worked really well together in Opus. Didn't get a chance to, like, work as closely together, but yeah, this was a good opportunity to— for, you know, selfishly for me to kind of, you know, bridge a couple of gaps from a skill set level. Um, and the fact that, like, we're pretty honest and, like, transparent with each other, we get on really well. Like Tom's a bit of a more of a theorist reflector. I'm a bit more of like where my heart and my Stephen go for things. But, you know, in the end we come to like good mutual agreements. Yeah, pretty much all decisions. Probably had like 2 or 3 lovers' tiffs in the 18 months that we've been going. I remember the first one, literally, I stormed out the office, went to a client meeting, and I saw Tom at a bus stop and we just looked at each other and gave each other a hug.

That was it. You know, when you come off a holiday and you're like, right, what's going on? You know, and I could tell Jack I was like, give me some space. It was like, no, what's going on here? What's going on there? And in hindsight, it's exactly what I shouldn't have done. But you have a week off and you've got all these ideas in your head, haven't you? You're like, barge in and—

What have been some of the, again, thinking about what have been some of the benefits to you, Tom, starting with another person?

Just having a sounding board and just, I don't know, like I can be quite hard on myself and so can Jack, hard on himself. But actually we kept things pretty light for the first year. I think it's 'cause we did so well. Like we had a phenomenal first year. Um, it couldn't have gone any better really. So we didn't really have, until probably the end of our first year, anything negative to, to, to deal with really. So we had a pretty good first year.

So then what did you turn over in the first year?

Uh, we did £1.2 million in our first year.

Yeah, not bad.

That is not bad from a standard start. Yeah. And I, I've been, I've been a hands-on recruiter for about 4 years. Um, so literally picking up—

so you was about back on the tools.

Yeah, it was weird. Before you know it, I had an offer in my second week. Really? 14K fee. Yeah. And the candidate didn't take it. I was bringing it up, Tom was convinced.

He was just like, mate, cool, cool, cool, this candidate. I was just like, it's not going to take it. He's like, he's going to take it. I was like, he's not going to take it.

Oh mate, it was horrific.

What, and he did or didn't?

No, he didn't take it, mate. Job wasn't right for him anyway, so yeah.

Um, and then as we were talking about you starting together and stuff like that, I think, um, so a couple of my clients actually start their own recruitment business being backed by someone. I think anyone listening that is thinking about starting a recruitment business will definitely think about, could I get someone involved? Because how someone obviously jump-start this business or whatever. I guess from your experience being backed to start your own recruitment business, firstly, what would you say have been the benefits of having that sort of relationship to kickstart things?

How's that for me personally? I, I'll be really honest. I didn't want to lie in bed at night and, you know, know that I had my house on the line against, yeah, against the business I was doing. So I just knew that wasn't good for me as a person. Yeah, sort of the way I'm, the way I'm wired and stuff. So I think if anyone's looking for investor, like, meet as many of them as you can. You don't need to, you know, you don't need to pick any of them, but I think you can get a lot of insight and pick someone that you get on with.

Yeah, that was my next question. Like, what if people do get an investment? What should they sort of think about?

Yeah, I mean, most, I, I find most recruiters are quite cynical, aren't they? Because they're like, right, this, you know, they're gonna take my money. Yeah. Uh, I know they do as well, but you've got to find someone that you trust. I think, you know, meet them, meet multiple times. I'd meet them socially, I'd meet him in a work environment. Yeah, I mean, formally, informally, which is, which is what I did. And I think the back we've got has been— they've committed to everything we've, we've asked for. And I think, again, I think you need to try and find that balance between a backer that wants to get involved but also leaves you to do your own, your own thing, hands off, like, you know We speak to our backer once a month, but we've made every decision ourselves.

I think that's the part that people are a bit worried about, aren't they, that they'd lose that.

Yeah.

What have been some of the benefits for you, Jack, do you think?

I think like the benefits, not for me personally, but just like as a company, it means that like we were able to grow a contract book pretty much like from day one.

Yeah.

Whereas like if you're solely your own money, yeah, you're not going to be in a position to bankroll a contractor. Um, and you know, some companies want 90-day payment terms. Like, you're not gonna pay a contractor for 90 days to then get like— so the benefit of that is, is that you've got your contract book, which means that actually you can kind of scale quicker. So I think that like, that's, that's probably one of the biggest benefits for us, for sure.

Well, the money I had saved when I looked at doing it, I mean, that would have gone in about a month, really, 2 months. Oh yeah.

And why is that then? What would you expect?

You know, you've got, you know, again, if you're doing contract business, which you want to do, okay, one, it's just, it's It's just cash flow. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, call yourself back to, as you said there, then in the office, just you two.

Yeah. Yeah.

In the office. No one on the database? No. Nothing?

No.

Well, obviously you just spoke about your day plan, but where the hell do you— where did you start?

Uh, I can't— I tell you, I basically rang everyone I'd ever worked with.

Yeah.

Uh, outside my restrictive covenants period. Uh, and I just said, listen, I've set up um, I, I, you know, back me, you know, just— I went down the whole, um, not so like feel sorry for me sort of thing, but, you know, back an underdog. I was like, back a startup, set up on my own, work with you years ago. People I'd placed, people I'd worked with, anyone that I knew who had a relationship with me of some sort, I was just like, work with me. And we found that people, I just, you know, got involved in our journey and bought into everything that we were trying to do.

Really?

Um, yeah. And it's been It's been phenomenal, really, like the relationships we've had.

How do you—

I was like a rabbit in headlights because I joined like Tom like 3 weeks like after.

Yeah.

And he's there just smashing through the phone calls like no tomorrow.

And I was just like, honestly, I don't know what the fuck.

Really?

He walked in like, all right, let's go. In about an hour he just went pale.

Really?

Why?

Why did you go pale?

Like Tom, like for like the last part of like my career at Opus, like I wasn't really kind of winning new business, uh, and I was just like, where the hell do I start here?

Yeah, yeah.

Candidates and I know nothing. Like Tom, I literally got my LinkedIn, uh, and just went through every single person on LinkedIn, uh, who I'd like worked with as a candidate, as a client previously, and just like reached, reached out to them and just let them know that like what was happening. And, um, yeah, just like, you know, told them the reasons why we were setting up, what the like the objective is, um, people bought into the story and yeah, um You know, what we found is that actually a lot of people prefer to work with like a smaller business because they feel like the business is that they're given to you is going to be looked after rather than just having, you know, another recruitment agency dealing with like just any other. Yeah.

Did you guys have a business plan?

Uh, uh, I thought like you being backed, that would have meant that you had to have more structure. And, uh, you know, a lot of the investors I met were like, you know, like, we didn't— don't necessarily need— everything goes out the window, like, super quickly. Yeah, you mean— I'm sure, again, I'm sure people disagree, but when you're— if you're generating business yourself, right, you follow your nose, don't you?

Yeah, yeah, we came—

we came across a client, um, that Jack had worked with who we did probably about $100K with.

Really?

We had no idea that— that was like week 3 or week 4. I had no idea that we'd work with them. So suddenly we started doing this certain type of work really, really quickly. So I did— we did like a year forecast of what we want to do in our first year.

Yeah.

Um, which we absolutely smashed. But I don't know, we— yeah, we didn't—

so did you not know the sort of market he was going to go for then?

Yeah, we knew what— yeah, all of that stuff. Yeah.

But around the brand numbers, pretty much Tom's done like BI data stuff, let's go after that. I've done testing.

Yeah.

Like, let's just give ourselves the best chance of success and just go after the two markets where we've got the relationships, we've got the candidates, we've got the networks. Go at it and let's see how well we do at it. Um, and really quickly we were starting to bring on some like decent business. Um, and it was almost like you don't want to bite off too much more than what you can chew. Yeah. Other— their clients are going, oh, can you help us on this? Can you help us on this? But like sometimes you've got to say no to business.

That's something you learn.

Definitely. Yeah.

Because early on you're very prone to go yes, yes, yes, yes.

You lose, you lose your brand, you lose your, um, like the quality of the work you're doing.

Yeah.

Like your brand dilutes really quickly.

And isn't a lot— I've experienced this myself start my own thing now. And like, for me, obviously it was the first time I actually had to say no.

And it was—

yeah, it's not like— because when you work for someone, it's a bit more easier to say no, I, I feel like. But saying no when it's your own business, like, well, a bit odd, isn't it? Yeah, it's a bit weird.

Yeah, it's yours.

Clients will respect you more though.

Yeah, no, totally.

Yeah.

So would you go back and do anything different, do you think?

System work? Yeah, probably system work. Well, like, we, we, you know, because, because we, uh 'Cause we got off the ground so quickly with doing plenty of placements, is we probably didn't register stuff like we should have done as quickly as we should have, which we addressed probably by month 8 or 9. I don't know, I think maybe the way we, I know we spoke about it earlier, I think I was quite conscious when we spoke to people, it's like the first thing to say to you, how many heads you got now, how many hires you've got, and I think perhaps we, We just got drawn into that, right? We've got to hire loads of people. Yeah, maybe we should have done that slightly different way, but you've gone—

would you have done anything different, Jack, do you think, going back, starting?

Uh, no, like, I think like year one was like a really good year for us. Yeah, the learning curve is like certainly been year two. Um, would we do things different? Yeah, we've had like a few learning curves, like one of them being like don't hire purely based on ability. You've got a higher base on like culture fit with a blend of an ability for sure. Yeah, but like if someone's like, there's a few red flags around, like they're like the culture fit, like don't hire them.

Yeah.

So I think that's probably like one of the biggest like ones that we've learned from.

Just to finalize that then, if I'm listening right now and I'm like in those first 3 months starting on my own, what would you say?

When you're hiring someone?

No, no. So if I'm listening right now and yeah, I'm 3 months into I want to start my own recruitment business, what are we saying to these people?

Concentrate on getting your sales going. Yeah, yeah. Like, we were— I had 3 months off work, so I got all the website up and running. That was all done. The branding was all designed before we got going. But from day one, just about, about sales, because I think you can— yeah, you can— well, you don't have a business unless you're generating cash, do you?

Yeah.

You can have the best culture in the world, you can have all this great stuff around it, you know, LinkedIn profile and stuff. Ultimately, if you've got no cash to go through your business And also your stress levels are a lot lower when you're, when you've got business coming in. So I think that's, that would be my biggest piece of advice.

I guess if I'm going from like a certain angle, it's like making sure you've got your day plans, like, like Tom would say. Yeah, plan the night before so when you come in, you know exactly what you're doing.

Yeah.

Um, I'm a big believer on like mobile to mobile phone calls to hiring managers, like pre-9 o'clock. We used to have like 9 before 9. Yeah, um, it's all about just like setting the pace and the tone for the day. If you're having 4 or 5 good conversations before 9 o'clock, like that wave of like positivity and energy that will just continue throughout the rest of the day.

Yeah.

If you get in and you're like, your pace and urgency is sit down, grab a coffee, scroll through the news articles, have a little flick through Facebook, like you're not, you're never gonna be like, you're never gonna be making money. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I think so.

And it's just having that intensity, and I just like, I have that intensity like the entire day. I don't really like to have like any low moments.

Yeah.

But then at least when I get home, I know that like I've had a good day.

You've had a good day.

We do have fun, by the way, though.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But like, we do have fun.

So, so year one, it seems like it went pretty well then.

Yeah.

So, but, but there was the learning there then, the hiring for your business.

Yeah, it's just, it's, it's like, if, if anyone's— I'm sure lots of people have gone through it— if anyone's doing it, it's really difficult because you wanna like— we were very conscious of not creating a male-oriented boiler house room environment.

Didn't—

we didn't want that. Yeah, so our first hire, we made sure it was a girl. Yeah, we wanted to do that straight away to try and break down any barriers. Um, you know, our office now is, is like an eclectic— we're like the recruitment version of The Inbetweeners. Like, we always refer to ourselves— we've got real different backgrounds, real different— yeah, we will. Yeah, yeah, cheers, mate. But we got like a real different I mean, like, everyone's so different, and that's something you consciously— 100%, really.

And why have you done that?

Because we, we, we didn't want to— you see a lot of people saying we want to change, like, change recruitment and stuff. We don't want to do it. We just make— want to make fundamentally the method and our approach to recruitment to be as slick as possible, to make sure if a client gives us a job, like, we're done. But what we, what we did, were very, were very conscious of doing, is making sure we didn't have an environment where it was just full of blokes, loads of little Toms. Yeah, exactly. We didn't, we didn't want And, you know, it might take slightly longer perhaps to build that environment. You might, you know, kiss a few frogs, as they say. But it's— for me, for scalability, you've got to do that. Yeah, you've got to do that.

Like, people buy from different people at the end of the day. Like, what works for me might not necessarily work for Rich or for Nicola. I think you've got to have like a diverse, like, I guess, like number of employees because their approach to doing business development is going to be be, you know, different from person to person. Um, and we've had like, you know, people that I've been trying to get in with years, for years, that, um, you know, those guys are coming, got much less experience than me, but they're just approached a little bit softer, a little bit different. So actually they've had the engagement that I have been trying to get.

So how have you, how have you got better at— for the— because again, it is a real challenge. I hear about it all the time. But how have the both of you got better at hiring? But obviously you're always prone to making the wrong hire, but What are some of the sort of non-negotiables now maybe that you look in people when you're considering them to join Method?

Or you've got, you've got, you've got to be able to enjoy their company, I think, especially in a small environment. It's that, you know, we've had scenarios recently where we've been, you know, we've met big billers that want to join us, but, you know, quite frankly, they've not been quite right for us and we've said no to them. Yeah, we've actually opted to hire people that are, you know, far less experienced but they're people that we can enjoy going out for a drink with, working with, have a laugh with and stuff. And I think that's my biggest learn. It's like you're spending 10 hours, 11 hours a day with people. You've got to enjoy that.

You've got to enjoy that company. Yeah.

Yeah. I think that like my friend Dan Lewis, he basically worked with me at Opus, went to Australia and he set up like this Australian office and like, and they're like, they went from like 2 people to now like 100 people over then like I went to him, I asked him for advice because, you know, learn from that in the early years, ask for advice because we're essentially doing a couple of things wrong. He said, your first 10 people, mate, he was like, you've got to be able to take them for a pint. Like, if you don't, if you can't go for a pint with them, he's like, you don't hire them no matter how good they are. And I kind of took that on board and like, actually it's worked pretty well. Just like, really just like taking that simple approach. Like, if you can't go for a pint with them or socialise with them, like, don't ever hire them. And I think that'll change, like, as you scale.

Yeah, yeah, of course. But I think right now, I think they get like many, like, subcultures. But certainly for like the first, like, 10 hires, um, it's your nucleus, isn't it? Like, if you really have a solid 10 people that live and breathe what you're about and what you want it to be, then they've got to buy—

like, you know, where are— you know, going back to like what makes a good manager and stuff, is that what I want to work for me. Like, if you're hiring these people, they've got— they've got to buy— firstly, buy into method, most importantly, but also buy into us and Jack as founders of business. So yeah, you've got to buy people that buy into you that you can enjoy, you know, both work, work and, and like, and social, socializing with them as well.

And then what, what's been your— again, I know you, we were talking about earlier, but sort of your view on having a business. Is it something that you've— both of you have known, right, it's just us two, but we know we want it to be bigger than just us two, do you know what I mean? Like, has it always been something that you've wanted to grow and get people involved in?

Yeah, well, we, we always, we refer to our— the six now as the original 6.

Really?

In an ideal situation, you know, in 10 years' time, the original 6 will still be here. Like, that might not happen, you know. Yeah, yeah, anything could happen.

But this is a business that you want— you want more people involved.

Yeah.

Has that always been the way, or has that evolved in the last 18 months, do you think?

I'd like— for me personally, and I think Tom's on the same wavelength, it's like, I don't want it to be like a 200-300 person business.

Yeah.

Um, no, I'd rather have it as like a 20, 25, maybe 30, but like everyone's performing at like the highest level. Um, and like when I joined Opus, we were like small, like 30, 40 people. Everyone was pretty much that, and they were the most enjoyable years for me, really. I just wanted to kind of maybe like recreate that but without skating it beyond. But like, who knows, you know? It's easy to say that and then next thing you know—

yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Do you Do you feel like you've got a grasp of what, like, your culture— I was talking about this the other day, like, do you know what I mean? That's an interesting one, isn't it? Everyone talks about culture, but do you, do you feel like you have a cult you've built?

I think I would say we've got the finished article yet at all, but like, you know, I don't think you ever can, can you? Yeah, I think culture, like, culture evolves, isn't it? I think we definitely got, like, we definitely now with the, with the original 6, you know, they weren't the original 6, but they're the 6 people that we've got who I believe that we're going to build the business on. We've got a wicked, wicked culture there. They buy into us.

Let's face it, they're not buying into like this office.

But that's—

but it's like the spit and sawdust of a startup. Like, we didn't want someone to join us for the reason because we've got a nice swanky office.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, it's interesting, we had, we had an opportunity to do that, but we made the conscious decision to stay where we are because we wanted people to come in and look around and be like, wow, this isn't the greatest, but like, this, this person's joining Method, I can become a good recruiter.

Yeah.

And that's fundamentally for us, is that, you know, if you join, people work for us, we can teach you to be a good recruiter. You know, we might not have, you know, a ping pong table or a dog, or we have a robotic dog, but, um, you know, we might not have that at the moment, but, you know, we will teach you to be a good recruiter.

Yeah, yeah. And obviously if you've got people bought into you guys and all that, then that's it.

Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So last 18 months then I mean, we were speaking about downs and stuff. Yeah, let's talk about some of the challenges. It's been pretty positive, had a good first year. Let's talk about— because it's not all roses, is it? What, what's been some of the biggest challenges for the both of you since starting this business?

Um, going on holiday and leaving me.

Yeah.

Have you had much holiday?

I work less hours working and running Method than I've ever worked.

Less, really?

Yeah, just because when you're in, like, you're effective, aren't you? Oh yeah.

But how come either of you, if you both get on holiday, like, how comfortable was you not being in the business every day? Do you know what I mean? How was that?

Oh, it was amazing, man. I was lying by a pool in Portugal. But did you find it difficult though? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're right, of course you're on your phones and stuff, but I think—

I find it hard to switch off. Tom's like, Jack, put down your phone, you're on holiday.

Enjoy it.

Yeah, like, yeah, but how's that deal coming?

Yeah, but I think like, you know, you've got to trust your— like, you trust each other and stuff. I think for me that the hardest, the hardest thing I've found is, is hiring, getting it right, retaining your staff.

Yeah.

Um, making sure everyone's happy. I think for me on a personal level, it's, you know, you look at your sales board, you've not got deals on there. Yeah. You need to put deals on there. You need to make sure you train in your, your new starters. You need to make sure they're buying into method. You've then got to write your L&D program, you know. Yeah, yeah. And I think as we move into our second year, the responsibility is then on Jack and I to make sure we're carving our roles out in the right way to make sure, right, well, he—

but you've both had to be really willing to do different things, but you're aware that that's gonna—

just gotta do what you've got to do what you need to do.

The good thing about me and Tom is like, Tom knows like my strengths and my weaknesses and vice versa, and we can kind of work off of that. I think that like, thing that sometimes we're a bit privy to, in which we're still like on a learning curve, is like we're a bit too face down sometimes. We're just worried about doing a deal, getting some money on the board. Actually, sometimes you need to lift your head up and think, okay, what is like the wider strategy, the wider picture here, um, that we're trying to achieve? Like, the rest will look after itself. Yeah, because you've got to trust the employees to, to do the, like, the activity whilst me and Tom can focus on some of the other stuff. So that's this learning curve that, you know, we're going through at the moment.

And then again, just, just, I know, so we were talking about this, um, before the podcast, Tom, but I think just for people listening who are early on, like, you obviously, you were talking about you've got, you're like quite grateful that you've got quite a good network of people that you can lean on and have a bit of a sounding board. Like, how valuable has that been, do you think? Like, having people that have sort of walked the—

I like, it's really like recruiters, you can be your friend, friends with other recruiters.

It's funny, isn't it?

Like, there's this misconception that, oh yeah, he's a recruiter, I can't take money out of your pocket. Yeah, it's ridiculous. Like like, you— there are lots of startups in Bristol that, you know, we, we know of people that we've spoken to, um, like people from G2 and Vivid that have opened their own companies and run their own offices. Like, we— everyone speaks to each other. It might be a simple call of like, I'm thinking of hiring this person, is it a good idea? You give them a 5-minute overview of what the situation is and they just give you that.

So I think anyone listening, like, like, be willing to sort of reach out to people. Like, you'd be surprised how many people we're willing to help.

Absolutely.

We, as Jack said earlier, like everyone, we found that everyone wants to support startup and like help you with your journey, whether it's, you know, branding or whether it's reaching out to like an old trainer that, you know, used to deal with, hey, you know, I'd speak to Hannah about you before I've even spoken to you and all that kind of stuff. Everyone wants to help you out.

Yeah. How, um, talking about a bit about challenges and things like that, how has, since having your own business, how has it impacted your personal relationships? Um, because you both have partners in recruitment, which I think—

oh mate, yeah, has it impacted your personal relationship? True story.

Like, how, how— yeah, like our relationships, like outside, also like just your personal relationships, your mates, your girlfriends, wife, whatever, like, do you know what I mean? Because there are things that people don't really leave each other alone, mate.

Yeah, it's like Friday, like, oh, what are you doing tonight? Do you want to come around for a takeaway?

I, I'm—

I—

oh God, it sounds really cliché. I genuinely, yeah, like, on my kids' life, I'm at my happiest now, okay, than I've ever been in the industry because like we're in control of what we're doing. Like previous companies, you know, billing more money and making more money, but you're at the mercy of other people. Yeah, yeah, you can't— you know, someone can come in one day and go, right, we're doing this, we're changing that. You're like, well, hang on second, we're on the shop floor. Yeah, we're marshalling the troops, you know, what are you doing? Yeah. And I think we are, we're in control of that. And for, for me personally, the way I'm wired, that is super important. Yeah.

Uh, but then, but then in terms of your— obviously you have a young family, so like how's that been in terms of running the business?

It's like, you know, you message Jack and say I'm going to be in at 9 o'clock, mainly to drop, you know, yeah, drop Harry to school or whatever. It's like, yeah, no worries. Or Because ultimately, like, if you, you know, it's the old saying, is it's like you put into it what you get out of it. Yeah, that is exactly it. If like we're, if we're not representing Method as the way we want to represent it, then our staff aren't going to do it. Um, you know, if they need, if they need to go and do things, we let them do it. Um, you know, it's— I wouldn't say we're promoting 4-day weeks or that kind of stuff, but at the moment anyway. But like, you know, we'll— I, we— Jack and I listen to Simon Sinek quite a lot, and he's always like, autonomy, purpose, and mastery are the, the 3 biggest motivators for people. And if we can give people autonomy to, and trust them to master something, and they've got a purpose of why they're here, then hopefully they'll buy into that, which makes our life a lot easier, really.

What about you, Jack? And if— because I think the reason why I asked is because, like, again, there'll be recruiters listening, thinking about starting their own business, and typically the things that they may not think about is the relationship with their partner and how that's going to be and stuff like that, you know what I mean? Or I don't know, I just thought if, uh, yeah, I used to work like every hour underneath the sun.

It stressed me out. Um, I, I generally work less hours than I've ever before. I've got a gym that's next door, go to the gym at lunchtime, just like clears my mind. It's actually where I do the best thinking, is actually in the gym at lunch. I then come back, just refresh, revise, and then go again. It's like just, uh, just dividing up your day a little bit. Um, and yeah, but we've been, we've been quite fortunate so far.

Like, I think as we get bigger, I always find as a manager, when your team gets bigger, you've got more things to think about. You've had relatively small teams at the moment, so yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's business to think about, but I think as we get bigger and we start trying to scale it, I think that's where it becomes— there's more to think about then, isn't there? There's more like plates to spin.

And anything— and then to sort of finalize this, I guess, anything that you guys do now on a weekly or just, just now is quite habitual to you to help you get through the tough times? And obviously because now it's on your both of your shoulders, and if anything goes wrong, but anything that you do that—

it's a good pub across the road, Penny, we're not making chips.

Yeah. I think it's just really important about like how you set yourself up for the week. So always have like a Monday morning meeting first thing, like find out what businesses is going on. We can like deconstruct that, like the things that are about to happen for, for the week. Um, and like I think it's really important just about like the setup for the week. We have a catch-up on a Wednesday, see how the week's going, and a catch-up on a Friday, um, so that we can then plan, you know, ahead. So I think that's like—

I have— I don't know what— there's one, there's one thing actually, it's like which I wasn't very good at, it's like, like talk about like having a business plan. Like we now have a, um, a long-term BDP B plan, which is the RTTS stuff that Jack's doing. Like, that's, that's going to hopefully soundproof our business in 6 to 12 months' time. It's a long-term business development plan where we're holding these big events that Jack's running. Yeah, that's hopefully going to cement those big-term relationships. I think that's something that for me, I think, is certainly will soundproof the business moving forward.

So obviously both you've been in recruitment for a while. As we finish this then, where, where do you see recruitment going? Where is this all going, do you think?

Like, for me, like, recruitment's changed a lot since, like, I've got in it, especially on the technical recruitment side. Roles have become a lot more technical. Recruiters need to become a lot more technical.

Yeah.

I think if you need to survive to be a good recruiter, if you're doing IT recruitment more specifically, you need to really understand, like, the discipline that you're operating within.

Yeah.

So, like, one thing that, like, as Tom just, like, started to touch upon, is, like, we had an objective of setting up with Method of, like, being a recruitment business, but investing into like the technical communities that we're operating in. There's already a ton of like meetups already happening. So let's not copy what other people are already doing. But I identified there was a bit of like a spot in the market to create a roundtable event specifically engineered for kind of like thought leaders and innovators in my testing space. Yeah, in a roundtable format. So to bounce the idea off a couple of people that I really respect and trust in the market they were like, love the idea of that. Like, I've been to a couple of things similar, but like nothing the way that you described it.

Yeah, sure.

So we went ahead with that, done the first one, um, 2 weeks ago, partnered with, uh, Just Eat on it, which is, you know, one of our clients. And, um, yeah, it was a great event. Yeah, it wasn't your traditional presentation, one person talking for 2 hours. Uh, we broke people down.

So if you don't actually like living and breathing your market, you have to—

Yeah, 100%. And yeah, like as Tom said, like long-term, like business strategy is to use that as like you're part of your longer-term proactive business development. But yeah, like to anyone, just know your market, like in terms of like your candidates, know your clients, know your tech, and then that will then give you like the competitive advantage. Or yeah, the competitive advantage and like the respect of like the people you're speaking with as well.

What about you, Tom? Where do you see recruitment going? You've been in the game for a while.

Oh, it's a tough one, isn't it? Yeah. Like Jack said, it's definitely, definitely changed. I think there's way more tech around than there's ever been.

Yeah.

And I think choosing the right tech platforms to work with or partner with is super important. But I think ultimately for me, like, and I'm a bit of a dinosaur with this sort of thing, is you've got to embrace all that new stuff. You have to do it, otherwise you're going to get left behind. But for me, it's like relationships are just like— still, they're all fundamentally like, if you've got a good relationship with someone, you can have— everything can change and you evolve and you change what you're doing. But if you've got a good relationship with someone, I think for me that's the most important thing.

What have been some of the— just on that note, I remember quite a few people asked me this— what's been some of the, uh, as you said, there's so much tech right now, what's been some of the sort of best tech that you've implemented in your business that had quite a good impact?

Uh, LinkedIn, I'd have thought.

Really?

Yeah, we, we've got two LinkedIn recruiter licenses, which for a startup to, you know, we're investing a lot of money in that. But yeah, we get a lot of our candidates from, from LinkedIn.

Yeah.

But there's things like Candidate ID and various other bits and bobs. We've used Sourcebreaker as well, which is, which is wicked.

Yeah.

Um, and what we, what we've got is, is, um, you know, we run a, um, every quarter the guys get, uh, we invest a percentage of our profit back into L&D and training.

Yeah.

So the guys want a certain level, a certain piece of technology, and we use that money to invest and to bring it in.

So why did you decide to do that? Because I think that's such a good idea when you tell me about this. So 1% of your profits towards investing in the people.

Yeah, I just, I guess like, I, we, we wanted to hire people that are good at recruitment. So we want people that are trained well, that have access to the best tech, like within reason. Yeah, I'm not going to get bankrupt to do it. So we, we had the idea of, well, every quarter if you can invest a percentage of your GP into the revenue that the guys create, they then go away and choose who they want to bring in. Yeah. And for that, for, for whatever reason it may be, that's why you're here. Like, the guys noticed you on LinkedIn, Jack reached out to you, we all sat down and talked about, right, what do we want to spend that money on? And obviously it was you. So yeah, well done, mate. You work, mate.

So I think that's a great thing though. I don't know how many, many, I don't know how many people, I don't think many startups do it.

Might be wrong.

But as we finish then, what are you guys, uh, before I ask you the last question, what are you guys excited about that you want to shout about? What's going on in the Method world?

Um, well, we started talking about it a little bit with like the RTCS, like the roundtable. Yeah, it was, it was such a good like success with the first one. Um, we're going to be running that every 3 months, so there's some continuity between like the, the meetups that are happening. Um, people actually wanted it to be happening on a monthly basis. Yeah, the fact is like it just absorbs too much of your time to do on a monthly basis, but is it a good additional bolt-on to the services that we're already offering? And then we've replicated that event for engineering leaders and now data engineering leaders. So I think for us, it's like, again, like that medium to long-term business development strategy is definitely kind of doing that. And I think it's just more about like we've got a really strong team that are relatively junior at the moment, but like there's some good—

You're excited by them.

So what I'm excited about is like getting every single one of them and like not, not just building like a career, but like a career where they'll become like a future director in the business where they can then start to build their own teams. And then we can then— me and Tom can retire.

And we're also moving into a new office next week, which like for me is something I'm super proud of.

Big milestone.

This has been, this has been amazing here. And like, you know, I like the story of of starting off in a, you know, God, our backers are going to get annoyed by saying it's a shit office, but in a smaller office, you know, where there's nothing great about it. So we're moving into a really beautiful office in Clifton, um, next, next Thursday, hopefully. That's a big commitment, right? Yeah, we've got— yeah, we've gone, we've gone, you know, balls out really. And, but, but I guess it gives us the ability to scale, which is a sign that, like, we don't, you know, we don't want just a little small team. We want to—

because again, I think being in the environment where you feel like you can't scale, it definitely impacts your decision-making. Yeah, of course. You know what I mean?

Yeah, of course.

If you're making that investment and you're like, you know what, there's— we can definitely scale and grow in this size business, then that's—

so like the point you made, this is an investment. Like, it's, it's not, it's not for our ego, it's an investment back into the business. So we're investing money for— money for L&D, for training for the guys.

Yeah.

And we're investing in an office so we can give the guys a better environment to work in and also an opportunity to hire more people. So, so you're going to get an office dog?

No.

Okay.

But like, we might do.

But for like the team, like they all like, if they see that we're moving into a new office, that they see—

Part of that journey.

Yeah, part of that journey. They know that actually things are like, we're not just full of hot air. We're not just promising things that then never we're delivering against. It's like we're promising things, we're delivering against it. They'll then buy into us even more and hopefully, you know, they'll do more deals in return.

More deals, please.

Yeah.

Final question before we finish, mate. All right. So Basically, you can answer this question with a phrase, a sentence, but the question is, if you can, uh, if you could communicate to every single recruiter out there, they'd take on your advice, they'd implement it—

I know, I know what I'm gonna say. I don't know if it's the right thing or not.

No, mate, you gotta be honest. What would you say? I know what you're gonna say.

Say that question again.

So if you could, if you could communicate to every single recruiter out there and they'd listen to Jack, they'd take on your advice, they'd implement it tomorrow, What comes to mind? Phrase, a sentence? What would you say to these people?

Like, for them to like build a successful career, basically.

What do you mean?

What do you mean? It's not a complicated question, mate.

Yeah, like, what would you say? Go on then, Tom, you start.

My one phrase is— this might go down badly—

go on.

Pick up the phone.

Pick up the phone.

Okay. Yeah, like, I was gonna say that, like, in a few more words. But, um, yeah, like, I, I'd mirror that.

It's like, you, to build— like, that's, that is all about relationships.

And that is, for me, don't fall into the trap of being the modern-day recruiter where you're just relying solely on email contact. Like, I've seen that. I've seen some people actually be pretty good at it, but like, you're limiting yourself.

That's the balance between—

I think they're like, if you want to be a really good recruiter, you need to put yourself into more of like the thought leadership space longer term. Um, like otherwise, like, you always just be kind of like an average recruiter.

That's a long phrase, that, mate.

It's been a pleasure. Cool, thank you.

Cheers, mate.