Freedom and Wealth: How A Recruitment Business That’s Small Can Give You Both with Duncan Cameron

If I was to search in my Outlook for the phrase 'thanks for the update,' that would come up so often, and people appreciate that so much because they just want you to do what you say you're going to do and keep them updated. It's the most simple thing you can do as a recruiter.

Duncan Cameron, the co-founder of Capu Search. 3 years ago, they launched the business, and in that time, they've built a 7-figure recruitment company. They describe their business as purposely small. Success is different for everyone, and building recruitment business is all about what you want that business to do for you and yourself. So this is what you're going to learn in this week's episode: how and why they've built their contract community and why this is the front and center of their business.

If we were to ask people what they get from the community, the things that come up is connection, collaboration, and reliability.

Why they're purposely small and the huge upsides to building a recruitment business structured like this.

One of my biggest gripes with employment is having to ask another adult for time off work. You know, I just think if, if you're working hard enough, you're happy with the outcomes, you should be able to do what you want, where you want.

And lastly, why doubling down on working with the best contractors in your market will always be the best future-proofing strategy for your contract book.

If you've got a community of contractors that want to work with you, they feel part of something, they want to see you succeed, they're helping you with customer advocacy, they're giving you introductions and referrals, and it sort of just grows just through recommendations. And that's again based on the quality of the relationships we've worked hard to build.

Enjoy this week's episode. Duncan, welcome to the pod.

Thank you very much.

Fresh off the Manchester Marathon.

Yes.

How are the legs?

Sore. Yeah, but proud.

Yeah, I love that. How was— have you done marathons before? Right.

Did London last year.

So that was your second?

It was my third. So I did London, 2017, wasn't a runner at that point, and then I've just been a runner ever since. I basically just lost weight ever since. I've got skinnier and skinnier, but the times have got faster every time.

You've got the, the runner, the running frame, running bug. What was the other marathon that you did then?

So I did London twice and then Manchester. Yeah, we basically couldn't get into London this year, so we did Manchester instead.

London, one like abroad?

Well, ran it with Becca this year and straight away at the finish line, are you going to do it again? And she's like, it's too soon for that, too soon. But next day she's got ideas about Paris, Copenhagen. We've become that couple.

Yeah, I love that. It's like become a huge thing that I feel like, the running culture.

As soon as you turn 30, everyone around you just starts running marathons. I'm either going to do it or not.

So yeah, love it. So really excited to unpack this entrepreneurial journey that you've been on with your business partner Nathan for the last 3 and a bit years. Yeah, obviously we've sort of spoken in— I feel like over the last couple of years we've like crossed paths in different places. Like we saw each other at a Steve Bartlett event, didn't we? Like podcast event. Um, really enjoyed seeing like outside looking in in terms of like the content and the brand that you guys have built. But I think, um, why I was also, as we were talking before this, like also really excited to unpack this journey with you is because I think what you and Nathan have built is, one, a successful recruitment business. But when we— maybe people listen to this, when they think of a successful recruitment business, they might not imagine the type of business that you and Nathan have, right?

Yeah.

In terms of when we think, do you have a successful recruitment business? I think typically you might find yourself thinking about how many offices do you have, how many people do you have in the business, these sorts of things. And I think it's really important with this platform that we don't depict that that is what, you know, that is only what success is, whereas there is so many people in the UK specifically that are in a similar boat to you and Nathan, and sort of in the trenches of trying to build a recruitment business that they're proud of, that's successful in their own right. So I guess why don't we just start, I'm gonna give everyone some, sort of context of like where you guys are at, how things have gone over the last like 3 years. But like, why don't we just start, because I think this is important to yours and Nathan's approach to your business. Yeah. How, when you and Nathan started this business, like how, and it might have changed, but like how would you define success? Like this entrepreneurial journey that we're going on together, like what does success, what does success look like for you guys?

Um, so firstly, it's just do we enjoy what we're doing? I think working in an agency, particularly when you become more experienced, it's easy to get sucked into the management side of the job. I probably did a bit more of that in my previous roles than Nathan. And starting Kapu, the main focus was we wanted to be the people on the phones, we wanted to be customer-facing, and we wanted to work with people that, that we wanted to work with. It was out of choice. So can we build a business where The people that we talk to every day, we enjoy talking to. Obviously, we're both, both have been successful in our previous agencies, so the outcome was never a doubt financially, but the, the main thing that we both got out of it is the freedom. And I think there'll be so many people out there that enjoy working in recruitment but perhaps don't like the practicalities of the environment that they're in, and we've just created that environment that we're happy with. And it's got to a point now where you can either sort of agree the levels of effort you want to put in and then be happy with the consequential outcomes of that effort, or you can agree the outcomes that you want and then make peace with how hard you have to work to get there. And it's that making peace that's important. As long as you're happy with how hard you're working and what you're getting out of it, And because there's two of us in this business, the communication between the two of us— are we always on the same page? Which we are. So 3 years in, we're very happy.

Like, mate, help me understand what freedom is, because I think that's an interesting one, isn't it? Because again, that's different for everyone. But I do think I want more— I want to start my own recruitment business, I want to have more freedom. Yeah, I think there's a certain— I don't— I feel like people assume certain things what that is. It might be working remotely in a different country, or like not having to work as hard. I don't know. Yeah, what does freedom look like for you?

Well, both of those things you could, when you set out, think, right, that's, that's the most important thing, the freedom bit around, um, you work in an agency, maybe you earn 20-30% of what you bill. So do I work as hard and earn 3 or 4 times as much money to myself, or do I have to work 3 or 4 times less to earn the same amount of money. That's one way you could measure it. And I think we've both built as much as we have done in previous agencies and seen the rewards for that. But it's the freedom of just not having a boss. For me personally, one of my biggest gripes with employment is having to ask another adult for time off work. You know, you get your 25 days I just think if you're working hard enough, you're happy with the outcomes, you should be able to do what you want, where you want, and how hard you want. And again, that's success for us. There might be a lot of people that would disagree with that or want to do it in different ways, but for us, that's success.

I think what I'd add to that from my perspective as well, I feel like you'll, may or may not relate to this in terms of how you and Nathan have approached building this business and the things you've done differently, but I think also like freedom of like ideas as well is like a big one for me.

Yeah.

Like being able to, you and Nathan put your heads together and go, I think we can do this better, and then implement in that the following week or giving that a go. I think there's a lot of freedom around that as well, because I know there's a lot of recruiters that I speak to that maybe are those people in the office who are always championing different approaches, are open-minded, want to learn, want to try different things, and can often find themselves just being, just being told no and not having that freedom of trying things that they want to try.

Yeah, it's a great point. I think, um, my, my first job in recruitment, um, I worked at S3, and I mean, I loved my time there. It's a great place to cut your teeth. But when I look back at how my market was split I could only work with companies in the south of England whose business name began with the letters A to I. So it wasn't a market where you could build relationships and follow those relationships. I was restricted to skill sets within a certain pool with a certain set of clients. And we look at how we do business now, like our candidate-led approach, and we can decide what business we transact. If the market changes, which it has done in the last 18 months, we've got the responsibility to change how we approach that and we can make those changes quickly. Like we're a small 2-person agile business. Our strategy is quite clear, but if it needs to change, we can change it quickly.

Yes. And I think that, yeah, I think there's a lot of freedom in that as well, which I personally really like. So let's just paint a picture then for people. And if I get any of this wrong, let me know. But timeline so far. So obviously started Capoo 3 years ago with your business partner Nathan. I put here lifelong friends, both actually worked at S3, both contract recruit— recruitment backgrounds. From day one, the sort of goal was to build a contract business. Yeah. In terms of how that's played out, typically over the last 3 years, your revenue has been like 70% contract, 30% perm.

Yeah.

And I've got here predominantly UK business, some EU clients, but most of it is being done in the UK. And then I've got just a bit of a timeline here of how the business has got on. So if I get anything wrong, let me know. So I've got revenue timeline, first year gross profit, £500K. I think I put here you had around 30 contractors around that. Yeah, in that year. Year 2 gross profit was £1.2m. I think max contractors at one point was around 50. And then year 3 was slightly more. So GP of £1.3m, again max around 50 contractors. And the big thing here which we're going to talk about is how what you and Nathan have done a really good job of is like the quality of contractors. So when you were speaking about how the market made some changes, what you guys experienced was your contractors were being kept on, and what massively helped you in year 3 was the percentage of extensions that your contractors were getting. And I think this matches up with how you've really taken that community candidate-led approach as well. So why don't we, why don't we just unpack these last 3 years? And so let's start with the first year. Like, what were you surprised by in that first year?

How many people wanted to help as a startup and as an independent business to recruiters. We wanted to make a lot of noise when we launched, so we had quite a lot of marketing videos made at the start. We were present on LinkedIn every day. We were really consistent with that and we'd built— we'd sort of built this community for 7 years before calling it what it was. And so many people wanted to see us succeed. They wanted to work with us. We had a lot of inbound business, and that was partly a reflection of where our sectors were at the time. So we were recruiting to medtech and diagnostics off the back of COVID That was in the spotlight. There was a lot of investment going on. So we launched the business at a perfect time, but we also had to capitalize on that opportunity as a, as a new business. People knew who we were, but what were we trying to do with Kapu? So that first year we were really grateful, but also really surprised about how much inbound came in. And then we just had to really match that with the quality of our activity, making sure we're building new clients, adding new candidates into the community when they were at the right level. And we've said the longer we've recruited, our talent pool's actually got smaller. Because you know who you want to work with, but there's also a lot of people who you would choose not to for one reason or another. And as long as we keep working with the same people, we know we're going to do business.

It is— I do think when you go out on your own, we always hear in recruitment the importance of building relationships, but I think that's when they really become in the spotlight of like how good your relationships are. I feel like 'Cause if you do have great relationships with people and they see that you go out on your own, then in one way or another, they'll either let you know if there's anything that they can do to help you, they will. And also these relationships come to fruition in terms of things actually happening. I don't know if you've experienced that, but I feel like that's always like a real good test of like how good relationships are, your network is, when you go out on your own, 'cause you'll see who's actually willing to help.

[Speaker] Yeah, and I think that's also the basics of building a contract. Contract book. You, uh, and I'm sure we'll talk about it, but if you've got 20 clients and you've got one contractor in each, I'd look at that as good spread, but you're not developing those accounts. So you've got a contractor at each of those clients that should be your eyes and ears telling you things that are going on. You speak to this manager, there's a role there. So if you've got a community of contractors that want to work with you, they feel part of something, they want to see you succeed, they're helping you with customer advocacy, they're giving you introductions and referrals, and, and it sort of just grows just through recommendations. And that's again based on the quality of the relationships we've, we've worked hard to build.

And what was like— also, whenever I speak to contract recruiters, the thing you have even more pain when leaving because you're walking away from like guaranteed— if you've got a contract book, you know you know, what your paycheck is likely to be once you build it up, these things. So there's a lot more to walk away from.

Yeah.

So how long did it— like, did you have to— I can't remember if you mentioned this when we prepared for this, but did you initially find yourself doing perm work over contract? Or like, how did that initially— because I'm assuming obviously you had some covenants that you had to navigate. Like, how long did it take before you did your first placement?

Yeah, so I, um, well, we both had 6 months, and again, that's quite common for the industry. And say to everyone that asks. It sort of forces you to do new business, and that's not a bad thing because if you trust the quality of your relationships that will come back in the future, in the time where you've been focusing on new business, it's just all bonuses on top. But I think the— I forgot what the question was.

Did you, because of that, did you find yourself doing like more perm work?

Oh, sorry. Yeah, personally I did. Yeah, I felt like Nathan— the, the kind of contract book that we were looking to build was more aligned to what Nathan had been doing previously, whereas in my previous role I was, I was focusing more on quite senior interims. So I was rebuilding a lot of connections with the level of contractor we were targeting to build a book out, and in the meantime establishing relationships with new businesses going through the perm route. Because in previous companies we always just did contract, but contract piggybacked off the back of perm relationships. Every company recruits perm. So if you've got a high-performing perm team that's working and opening doors in a lot of businesses, contract piggybacks off the back of that. So if we could then focus on senior relationships, senior perm placements that would then become our hiring managers, that's only going to end up supporting the contract business as that grows.

That makes sense. And how long do you remember that first deal that you did? How long did it take?

What was my first deal? I actually can't remember. I remember our first invoice getting paid. It was like off, off the first weekly GP. I think £900 landed in the account and we were dancing around Nathan's kitchen like, we've actually created something here, we're making money.

Yes, it's unreal. Things like that.

Yeah.

Uh, I always have to ask because it is maybe slightly different with contract, but I think oftentimes— would you say when you was employed you had the commercial awareness around like payment dates and like things like that? Because I think that's often sometimes missed of like when you're employed and then you make a placement, you put the number against your name. Yeah, right, sweet, I'm getting that paid this month. Yeah. Some companies pay you when the invoice is sent out. Some companies pay you when they've actually had the invoice paid. Yeah. I think there's always a common lesson when I speak to founders around, oh shit, actually there's sometimes a lot of energy that is required to actually get paid. How did you find that whole—

well, I think, um, as an industry, so medtech for us, working at S3, we were on the same sales floor as public sector team. Notoriously bad payers, the NHS. So you could see invoices going 100, 120 days unpaid, and our part of the business was always very good. So we would usually have 14 or 30-day payment terms. And although in that kind of business you'd never be involved in chasing it, you'd be aware of it because you'd maybe need to get involved at some point. So that was also part of the confidence of, right, we know we've got a solid client base, we know they're good payers, we've got a good community of contractors. Why shouldn't this work as a business? But obviously we've had to get involved at some point. But this is— we work with Sonovate And for us, you know, the convenience of Sonovate has always been very good over the last 3 years. We see them as an extension of our business. So anything in terms of credit control and chasing and stuff like that, that's kind of their job. It doesn't affect how quickly our contractors get paid, doesn't affect how quickly we get paid. And if we do need to get involved, it's kind of at the last point of escalation and then it's sorted quite quickly.

Yeah.

So we've never really, fortunately, in the last 3 years experience that on the contract side. And then perm, we invoice direct and generally people pay us.

Yeah, nice. Yeah, it's always an interesting lesson for some, uh, for founders sometimes when, when I speak to them. Uh, I'd love to get your take on like when you and Nathan were thinking about building a great contract book, like how, how do you think about that? Because of the way that you're talking about it, it seems like very intentional you're thinking about building this, um, business around like a great contract book. So I'd love to hear your take on like, what are the pillars of a great contract book from your, from your perspective?

Okay, well, we'll cover the boring bit first. Yeah, because, uh, we launched a month before IR35 came in. Okay, so it was something that we had to be aware of, and it impacted different industries in different ways. And we broke down the kind of projects that we would typically work on and then just kind of ran IR35 assessments against them ourselves to be confident that most of the projects that we work on would fall outside IR35, which is what most contractors want. If you educate clients in the right way, they were still happy to work in that way. We work with IR35 Shield, so the compliance that is the foundation of our contract book was spot on from day one. Nice. And we actually use that as a really big USP. Um, because it was at a time where a lot of companies didn't really know what to do with it. So we started off really positive on that respect. And then the kind of placements that we make, um, you know, are people putting in 40 hours a week? Are they on 6, 12-month contracts? Are they likely to extend? If you've got a majority of your contract book like that, you're going to build. If you're placing contractors that are doing ad hoc hours here and there, your utilization on your, your contract book is very up and down. You can't really predict your revenue. So if we were to do a 6-month placement contract with each piece, £600 a week, you would expect that to bill around £15,000, £16,000 over 6 months. So we would track the utilization of that where it comes to the end of the 6 months. Has it, has it only billed £12,000? Why was that? Has he taken a holiday? Was he not doing the hours? Has it billed more? Um, because you can, you can have a contract weekly GP, but if you're not actually billing that, you're not making as much as you think. So we just targeted the kind of projects, the kind of skill sets that we knew were going to form a very solid scalable contract book.

Yeah, so you reverse engineer— you reverse engineered from that. So it sounds like the type— yeah, the types of projects that go in line with the things that you mentioned, and then downstream from that as well is then the type of contractors that you're going to be working with or are going to be involved in these types of projects. So that is a way, smarter way of doing that in terms of reverse engineering.

And on that, we're not doing that from standing start guessing that would work. That's based on 7 years previous experience working on those projects where you've got a client that needed 20 contractors for an audit remediation. You're putting teams of contractors in, so that's a likely project that will happen somewhere else. So that's, that's the golden ticket project for us. If a company fails an audit or is preparing for an audit and we've got case studies where we've put in teams of 20, 30, 40 contractors, these are contractors that will work together before. This links into the community element of it. And that is what a solid contract book is.

And what does like a good spread look like? Um, I'm sure you've seen good, bad, or like, I don't know, I'm sure you've been vulnerable in the past. Yeah, you've had to learn the hard lesson of one of your big clients, we had a lot of contractors no longer extend or whatever. I hear that a lot. So like, what, how have you thought about that over the years? Like, what does a good spread look like? Or, and also, when do you think, oh, we need to sort of probably take action here, we're maybe looking a bit vulnerable?

Yeah, so spread, spread over the last 3 years has been a, a really good account for us would be a client with 5 to 10 contractors in. And that doesn't happen overnight. That's— you place a couple, you add more in, you add more in, they extend, and then you know they're eventually going to start to phase out. If you could have 1 or 2 of them, and then you've got clients that have maybe got 2 to 5, and then you've got smaller businesses that have got 1s and 2s, that's a good spread. I would love to say we've got a client that has 30 contractors, but that kind of project for us just hasn't come along yet.

Yeah, I'd really like the way that you're thinking about this. Why don't we go into— because correct me if I'm wrong here, but I do feel like what's fundamental to what you and Nathan have built so far, and maybe even throughout your career, is like at the root cause of the success. A big part of it is like the contractor piece. And that being like having really good quality contractors. I wanted to start and just get your thoughts on like how, like, how do you think what makes a great contractor compared to like an average one? Do you know what I mean? Like, what, what is that? Does that look like— obviously, yeah, I don't know, just interested to get your take on that because I'm sure you've learned that over time. Like, what, what makes a great contractor over like an average one? Okay.

I think it's almost the same as if you think, well, what's the difference between a good recruiter and a great recruiter? Because competence is obviously important, but only gets you so far. If you're doing that with a level of reliability and then some enthusiasm as well, and you're a good people person, all of those softer skills added on top of you good at what you do makes a great contractor. and we'll reference every contractor we work with. And fortunately, we've got contractors that have done 3, 4, 5 in a row for us. So the references are our own clients. Um, and the quick way to, to do a reference on a contractor is, would you work with them again? And if the answer is yes, you think, okay, well, they've done their job. This is someone that we want to represent Capu. Um, and as long as we're putting the right people in the right jobs and we know they can deliver, then there's no worries. We could, we could have— with the quality of contractors we work with, we could easily have 100 contractors work for us, and, and Nathan and I could manage that because good contractors are easy to manage. It's the ones where they're perhaps not quite in the right job or took a bad reference and you're not quite sure, and you've put them into a job— that takes more time out of a recruiter's day to manage it. So if it just comes back to, have we referenced them properly? Are we putting in the right kind of job? Is it someone that's got the soft skills to parachute them into a business that's going to get people on side and deliver? That's a great contractor.

And like, how is it really, contractors, are they typically good contractors? They're typically really happy for you to go, yeah, Duncan, more than happy for you to speak to so-and-so. Yeah, is that a bit of a red flag if they make that difficult? Um, willing to have a reference?

I, uh, I posted about this on LinkedIn the other day about, um, I asked the guy if I could take a reference and he asked why, and I just said, have you ever bought a box of eggs without opening the lid and checking first? He's like, yeah, makes sense, fair enough. Like, why, why would you not check? Um, and when you break that down, it's so simple, but you as a contractor, you're as good as your last project. Or if we're putting someone forward for a particular role and they did that project a couple of years ago and it's a really good reference that's going to back up their application, if they did a good job, why can't I go and speak to them? And I do think that the, again, the consistency of working with me and, uh, me and Nathan, they, they know why we're asking, um, and it's to help them get the job. We're not 6 months into recruitment where we're asking for references because we want to go and flip it and BD that person, or we're stripping them for manager names. I do think that happens a lot, but we can only speak for ourselves. It's just we're taking the reference because we want to work with you, but we won't until we, we get that reference.

And, uh, typically people are happy to give that. Yeah, hiring managers and stuff. Yeah, because it is— it, is it just a simple question of 'Spoke to so-and-so or potentially working with so-and-so. Is that someone that you'd happily work with again?' Is that what the reference call is?

That's the quickest way you could do it. Like, we've got a more formal reference form where, you know, what were they brought in to do? What were the deliverables? How did they deliver against the brief? How did they interact with your customers externally versus internally? How did they manage upwards, sideways, downwards, whatever it is?

Right, just so you get that full picture as well.

Yeah, it's a relevant—

the reference will be shaped based on what we And by just doing a good job of that, just curious, I know you said you don't do it, which obviously a lot of recruiters will do it to then flip into BD opportunities. By you doing a good job of that and asking good quality questions, has that naturally led to, oh, actually we're looking for people like that, or we will? Yeah. Has it naturally led to that?

Yeah. And either through reference calls or you're speaking to senior candidates about their own situation if you can demonstrate how you represent a candidate, whether that's a contractor or a permanent candidate, if that person then has a need, they'll think, well, these guys seem to know what they're doing. Then it flips itself. We've got so many clients that have become contractors or contractors that have then taken a perm job and become a hiring manager. That's, that's the point. If you're not doing that, then you're missing a trick. There's so many, so many deals to be done and relationships to be built by flipping candidates and clients, but not doing it intentionally. It's just through relationship building.

We'll get back to the episode in just one minute, but today I'm excited to talk to you about one of our partners, Firefish, the recruitment CRM that accelerates data-driven growth. The problem with most recruitment CRMs is that they are just a database of records, meaning they become just one of the many tools that recruiters use every day. Like with all systems, the records are only as good as the data being captured. Our sponsors Firefish know that for agencies to win faster, data needs to be at the heart of their business, making your CRM the single source of truth. With over 10,000 records created and updated every day and 85% of placements from existing candidates, Firefish enables recruiters to enrich and engage their data, equipping you with real-time insights needed to win faster. To learn more about Firefish and take advantage of an exclusive Recruitment Mentors Podcast offer, make sure you click the link in the show notes. And mention the Recruitment Mentors podcast when speaking to the Firefish team. And just to get granular here for a sec, just curious to get your thoughts on this because, um, thinking of a conversation I had with a guy called Elliot Jones who was also— who basically broke down how he built his, um, contract book in the US. And one of the things, again, talking about the importance of getting the contract to the candidate side bit right. Something that he said that always sort of sticks out with me, and what I want to get your take on, is he said how like okay contract recruiters will, when they're qualifying contractors or working contractors and they're speaking to them about the previous projects they've been on and these types of things, will stop when they say like, I was on this contract and this is what I was brought in to do and this is what we did. But what he's really had to get, um, so like feature and advantage, and then the thing that he's really worked on helps his colleagues with is making sure that they then really get the contracts to talk about the benefit that that had on the project, like the actual outcomes that that generated. Yeah, I don't know if that makes sense, but when you were talking there about managing upwards, sidewards, communicating with your team externally, I feel you've probably thought about this and maybe even just do this subconsciously now, but I think is something really useful for contract recruiters who want to get better is, I don't know if you found this in your career, but sometimes people can just stop when Duncan says, yeah, I was on this project, this is what the project was about, this is why I was involved, and then it just stops there. Whereas, yeah, great contract recruiters go, okay, and what, what was the impact of you doing that for the stakeholders or on the project? Yeah, that makes sense.

Or what was the impact if you didn't do that? Yeah, because that's kind of how you, you sell contracts. Like, we We go out searching for problems because we know the, the contractor network that we've got is the solution to that problem. So if we can demonstrate again through the references that we've taken a pain point that a client can relate to, and then what the benefit was of bringing in a contractor— because you can just look at a contractor and think that's expensive, but what's the cost of not bringing in a contractor or someone with that level of experience? And any value of bringing in a contract, particularly for the projects that we work on, should be cost neutral as a minimum. Because if that contractor doesn't do that piece of work and that product gets pulled from the market, how much commercially are you going to lose as a business? So it's tapping into the issues for them personally, but as a business, and then how the solution of a contractor is the right option.

Yeah, so that is a big part then, isn't it? And would you say, because I remember Elliot saying this, would you say a sign of a great contractor is probably good at like communicating that, or like thinks about that in terms of like the benefit part?

Yeah, is that fair? Yeah, it's either us communicating that on their behalf, or I find contractor interviews shouldn't just be a ask me some questions about my experience. It should be can the contractor see how they can help that business, and then come up with ideas with what those deliverables should look like? Are they then accountable for delivering? And that all links into IR35. If they're just being hired to do a job and be told how to do it, that kind of falls quite close to inside IR35. If you're working with very good subject matter experts that perhaps that company doesn't have those skills internally, there's a level of reliance and trust on that person to do what they need to do. And that's what that interview process is for. Can they, can they demonstrate that?

Yeah, that is, that is super interesting. Tell us a bit about the Kapoo community then, because I know this is something you're really passionate about, and this ties into building a network of really great contractors. So like, talk to me, because if I'm honest, when you were telling me about this, I was, I was sort of thinking like, why? I know I have met contract recruiters that do similar things, or, you know, think about their contract contract network in this way, but I feel like you've, you've really tried to build something great here and maybe try different things. So like, talk me, talk me through the Kapu community and like the intention behind it and like why you've taken this approach. Okay.

So I suppose if we were to ask people what they get from the community, the things that come up is connection. Collaboration and reliability. And that's through meaningful interactions with me and Nathan, but also each other. So beyond us going to South Wales and taking 10 or 15 contractors out for dinner, and then we do it again in 6 months' time, they're seeing each other, they're building— because a lot of these people are independent contractors like us. They've left the day-to-day workforce where you've got an office full of colleagues. So you want to feel part of something, and this extends to our clients as well. So we've been really intentional with our marketing. If you go to our website, you see me and Nathan. All of our video content, it's me and Nathan. We're both very present on LinkedIn, and the community appreciates that consistency. It's always us. If you call Kapu, one of us is going to pick up the phone. And with the community, you've got to remember that we launched just after the third lockdown. So people were craving this, ourselves included, even down to the welcome packs, the merch, like people want it. And I think a testament of what we've built and why people feel like part of something is our first sort of official in-person event was the Capo Awards in December. And we had 60 people travel from all over the UK, people flying in from Scotland on a Friday night in December to be at this event where we were talking about the market. We had the awards, we had a couple of speakers on wealth management and the finance side. Toye, who we used to work with at S3, did a talk about the power of community. It's just that they're not just a database of contractors. We're trying to be more than that. And we feel like we're only getting started with that because in 3 years, to say we've done one official in-person event, you might think, I thought you would have done more. But now we've done that and we've proved that it works and people want to be a part of it, they'll just keep getting better.

But I'm sure, like, you describe it as community before that actual event, right? So it's like all the other things that you did around that, that's just one of the ways that you can facilitate or like bring to life you're part of this, right?

Yeah.

Like, do you, do you have like a group WhatsApp? I don't know, like, how do you—

can we— we thought about it. I suppose it's just, um, this is the next thing. We spoke about this in December. What do they want from it now? Because to become a part of the Kapu community, we have to have either worked with you before or placed for the first time. You know, you, you get your Kapu water bottle and stuff, your notepad, when you, when you join. Like, you're in now, you're in the club. but what do they want to get out of it? Because everyone found the event in London really valuable. People are reconnecting from previous events that we've done, like the meals and stuff. Um, and we have spoken about a platform, you know, what would that, what would that look like? Does it need to just be a community WhatsApp group? Do we have individuals within the community that want to participate in leading on certain things? Um, can we look at development, training? We're a two-person business intentionally But me personally, I think Nathan would say the same. We look at our contractors almost like our employees. So what else can we do for them? What are the benefits package for the Capri community? What would that look like? So this is where we're excited about what it could become because there is some momentum now. But we don't just want to guess what people want. We're trying to get them involved in shaping what it looks like in the future.

Anything that they shared with you that you may be surprised by that maybe you and Nathan didn't think of in terms of like what they'd love to get out of I think people just want to see people in person.

It is those in-person events. And what do we center that around? Is that just a social thing? Do we get more people come in and talk? Because I think they appreciate the topics of conversation that we have because it's partly technical, it's partly around people's job searches and the softer side of that. People are all in the same boat here. So I think it's just bringing people together.

And like, where, where do contract recruiters go wrong in building a community, a networking community of contractors that contractors can trust them and they feel like they're part of something? Or like, yeah, like obviously we're talking about what you guys really care about and what you're trying to build, but like, from, from your— throughout your career, where have you seen people go wrong here? Because it almost feels like as I'm having this conversation it does, it does sound very, like, obvious, if you get what I mean. Like, why wouldn't you as a contract recruiter really lean into, like, trying to just add, like, a lot of value to these types of people beyond getting them their next contract? Yeah, do you know what I mean? Like, it does seem very obvious. Like, why, where do people go wrong with this? Like, why is this not, yeah, I think practice.

I would say we've been fortunate because we've had to work hard, but, um, And you can sometimes be a victim of your own successes. Say the, the market has shifted over the last 12 to 18 months, and there's been particular things in the medtech industry that have happened that have meant there's been a slight drop-off in demand for contractors at the moment. So, um, and that, that's where recruiters step up. It's all well and good, you've got contractors in contract, you can call them every week, every other week, catch up How's the wife? How's the kids? What are you doing at the weekend? It's when they're looking for their next role that you need to step up and add value, find them the next job. And if you can't find them the next job, are you at least demonstrating that you're doing everything that you can? Because the most simple thing in recruitment in general, whether it's perm or contract, is are you doing what you say you're going to do and are you keeping people updated? The communication piece. Is so important. I think I said to you when we spoke last time, if I was to search in my Outlook for the phrase 'thanks for the update,' that would come up so often. It was so often, and people appreciate that so much because they just want you to do what you say you're going to do and keep them updated. It's the most simple thing you can do as a recruiter, and maybe some, some people overlook it because they've got too many things going on do they actually care? They're just trying to get the deal done. If we have a, if we have a contractor that finishes for us, obviously we'd love to find them their next project, but it doesn't always happen. There's other good agencies out there. We don't work with every client, so we shake their hand, thank them for their hard work. We'll keep in touch, and hopefully we'll work with you again in the future. It's sort of removing yourself from the emotional outcome of doing deals and recruitment. You're just We're here for a long time, so are they. We'll continue working with each other. Simple as that.

Yeah, I think, yeah, it is, it is just doing those simple things consistently over a long period of time, isn't it? Yeah, easier said than done. Do you want to talk to me a bit about like a common conversation that you said that you have is speaking and advising? And again, this is probably what a great contractor does is advising and speaking to people in your industry who maybe have always typically been in a permanent position that are maybe open to exploring becoming a contractor, um, and like that consultative conversation around like what that would look like, why it would it be right for you, would it not. Like, tell me a bit about that because I do think that's interesting because has that throughout your career or maybe just more so in the last 3 years. Has that happened quite a lot where you've ended up placing people that you had that consultative conversation, you advise on, like, actually, from, you know, with some of your expertise, the top things that you've worked on, I actually think you'd make a great contractor. These are the reasons why. We've also then also spoke about why do you want to go down that path, these things. I think that matches up. Has that led to like a lot of placements? Yeah.

And where we've got a pool of contractors that we know have a track record as contractors that we want to work with again and again, there is always space to add new people in. Um, if you do your due diligence, you do your references, do they have the right sort of profile? So that conversation with people in permanent jobs can happen quite organically. It's somebody that you've been working with maybe as a hiring manager, or they've just been a contact in the industry that's just always been in perm. Or more often than not, they've worked closely with a contractor via Capu and they've said, look, if you're considering it, have a chat with Duncan, have a chat with Nathan, just see what they say. And it's a really enjoyable conversation to have because you need to work out at what stage in that journey are they. Is this the first conversation they're ever having about moving from perm to contract and they know nothing? Or do they know what IR35 means? Do they know how to set up a limited company? Because you can build a lot of that up and think it's more work than it is, and you can maybe talk yourself out of doing it. So that call, we're just trying to share a bit of reassurance and experience that we know what we're doing to help them. So the, the two main things in that call is firstly their personal situation. So switching from perm to contract can be very different, um, it's maybe seem a bit more risky. I don't think it is, But are you able to travel? Are you able to travel and stay away during the week? Have you got young children? Have you got financial commitments like a mortgage where you feel like you need the security of a salary? What's your relationship like with your partner? So everyone's personal situation is different. They need to square that away. And then if that's a tick, what are the services you're going to offer? So if you now start to treat yourself as a, as a business, What are you a subject matter expert in? If you look at your CV, what case studies have you got? What services are you going to offer? We help candidates switch from a, a quite perm CV to a consulting profile because that's what we would then use to go and represent them in the market. So personal situation, um, what skills are you going to offer and is there a demand for that? And that's, that's what they need to get out of that first call.

I love that, that's a really good breakdown. And what might this What— again, it might be industry-specific, but I'm just curious, like, what might those services sound like out of interest? Or is it quite project-specific? Or like, what?

So an example would be for us, um, you've got a perm quality manager or quality regulatory manager that has implemented quality management systems. So for us, that's a very big contract project. You've got a startup company that needs to implement a QMS, you would engage a consultant to do that.

Right.

But there's— is there a lot of demand for that? Yes. Is there a lot of contractors offering that service? Yes. So you're also moving into quite a saturated market. So what else have you got? Have you got software experience? Can we focus on that? Because that's becoming more of a need. So we link our market knowledge into advising them on market conditions. Is now a good time to move into contracting? The demand's dropped off a little bit. So people are struggling to get contracts where they perhaps wouldn't have done in the past. So is this the right time for you? You've definitely got the profile for contracting, but is the market in the right place for it right now? So it's just trying to give them as much advice as possible.

It just sounds like just really advisory and like it'd be very hard for me if you, if me and you have that conversation, regardless of what happens in the long term, I'd be confident that at some point I might ask your help for something or when I decide to take the plunge, why would I not then speak to you, right? Yeah. Because that sounds like just really, really helpful and like consultative. What, just because you've, you've mentioned it, like what, what instantly becomes top of mind when you start seeing like the traction for contractors drop off? Like you said, like obviously you've been in the game for a long time, you know, there might be people listening that are in the trenches right now where this is the first time that over the last 6-12 months they're really seeing things drop off in their markets. Like where where does your mind go? Or like, what sort of things do you really make sure that you remain focused on when, yeah, you start to see a bit of a shift in terms of, like you just said, like contractors maybe not getting as much opportunity as they normally would? Or, um, yeah, like not as many projects that you're hearing about? Like, where, where does your mind go out of interest? Because I'm sure you've seen the peaks and troughs, right?

A couple of times, yeah. But I think through experience, you just have to remain focused on the basics. As long as we're having enough quality conversations with people in senior positions that potentially hire, and then we're providing value to our contractor community, that, that's kind of all we can do in the simplest form. Obviously you can break down the KPIs and kind of activity you're going out meeting people, but in a quieter market, it's a great time to be building new relationships. And spending that time going out and meeting people. What can we do with our existing clients? Have we got as much out of those as possible and are we serving them in the right way? And just remaining calm. We haven't forgotten how to recruit just because the market's a little bit quieter. And you can stand out. And I've had this feedback from a couple of clients where the CEO would say, I've reached out to you to run these 3 searches for me. I'm getting absolutely peppered by other recruiters at the moment. I can tell it's quiet because the amount of cold emails I'm getting have gone through the roof now. Like, we don't do that and we don't just want to be another email in someone's inbox that's just going to get ignored or deleted. It's, are we focusing on the right content to the right people, the right conversations, and the kind of contractor pool that we want to be looking after? It's like just the basics.

Yeah, I hear— honestly, I hear this time and time again, and like, people really need to underline it. Like, you need to understand what your basics look like, because all those things that I'm sure you'd put under that category are things that are in your control, and they're the things that you really want to make sure that you're really dialed into and you're doing consistently day in, day out. Yeah. And also something you mentioned there which I find really interesting, just because Recently I've been preparing for our live podcast event in Manchester, and the sort of headline topic is like how to be a top performer no matter the market, basically. And again, something that was brought up there was what you're talking about— your network, meeting people. And are you doing everything there? Are you, you know, getting that face time, meeting people? And a number of them have mentioned how important that is. And I think particularly in today's world, it can be very easy to just lean into jumping on a video call, a Teams call. But both of them said, like, if you were to look at how many people you had a face-to-face meeting with last year and then the percentage of people that you're working with the following year, it'd be an interesting stat, right? Because I'm sure it'd be a pretty strong correlation.

Definitely.

And I think that can almost— I don't know, that can almost give you like a competitive advantage to lean into that. Because as you said what can often happen is you end up trying to speak to these people when, like, you need something, which is what you're talking about there, right? And that's very obvious.

Yeah.

Um, but really, can you consistently be leaning into trying to connect with people, build your network, really work on those relationships? Um, and in the long term, that is going to play out.

And going to the, the start of the call, we were talking about freedom and the freedom to choose what our activity looks like. I've kind of felt sorry for some competitors in the last 12 months where, you know, someone is in their first, second year in recruitment and there's pressure on them from the manager to, to be adding managers or speccing out CVs and stuff because I know that activity isn't well received and that they're just doing it because they're trying to meet target or they're underperforming. We're not in that environment. And with the experience that we've got, we know what to focus on. And we've got the freedom to do that. Nathan and I can look at the market and say, okay, those kind of projects have dropped off because a decision was made to extend a deadline by 3 years so companies have more time to deliver that piece of work. Everyone knows that. So what other projects can that pool of contractors work on? And are we now having that conversation with clients? But where else is the demand, what are the skill sets within our clients, is now a priority. We're not in an agency where I only recruit QA roles or I only recruit reg. We've got more flexibility to serve the clients that we have based on what their needs are. And we have the— I believe we have the credibility and experience to just back that up and deliver regardless what the project is. So maybe we've got more freedom versus our competitors.

And you also see then have that community network to get this information, to learn about it, right? And like you said, you like the— for sure, the best contract recruiters I've interviewed on here, a common theme is like they do, they follow problems or they're hunting for problems, right? Because that's what it sounds like you're doing there, is like, okay, this has happened in our industry, what downstream from that, what does that now mean for the types of people that we work with, right? Because I'm sure that's what you've been figuring out. Where are there likely going to be more projects? Where are the other issues now?

Yeah, right.

And you've got to follow those. Yeah. So let's talk about the actual business itself then. Like, how— I'm like curious, like, how have you and Nathan remained on the same page? Like, what does that look like over the last 3 years? Like, do you each year have a bit of a like review of like, right, are we still on the same page? We still want the same things? Because that, that can be difficult sometimes, right? Like, sometimes you might think, I really want to go down this path. You've got a business partner that might be thinking something different.

Yeah.

How have you and Nathan worked on that and sort of ensured that you've both got clarity on like what you want Kapu to be and stay true to that?

Yeah, well, I think the, the main bit of that is did we want to scale or not? Because we didn't at the start and we continue to be on the same page with that. And that is a— it's not an unspoken conversation because we, we do talk about it, but not often because we know that we don't want to do that. We've created the business in the way that we want It's profitable, gives us freedom, and we can see where it's going. So that is the main thing to be on the same page with. Life has changed in 3 years. Nathan's got a 16-month-old son now. So again, that has been something that wasn't on the cards when we first started the business. But, you know, we're both in our 30s now. I've got married. Like, life changes. And is the business serving us? Nathan's moving to Dubai in September, but we'll just continue to work the UK market remotely. We should be able to do these things because that was the whole point of setting up the business.

Yeah, I think it's that two things there. One, like, there's so much— and this is something I'm always trying to make sure that I've got clarity on— but when I do speak to founders, when sometimes they are having issues or challenges with like how to approach things, what to do next, or what should my next move be, it often derives from not having clarity on like what they want the business to be. And I think that is like so important. And that, that can change, right? Just because of how you and they think about it now doesn't mean it's exactly going to be the same in like 5 years' time.

Yeah.

But what you do have both— what you both have clarity on is like, like you said, which is the second part, which I really like the way that you framed it, is how do we want this business to serve us? Yeah, right. And I think that's, that's like if you're listening to this and you're in those shoes, it's like, have you— if we were to ask you now, what, how do you want your business to serve you? And like, what do you want your business to look like? Have you got complete clarity on that? Have you got it written down? Do you, can you confidently answer that? Because if you can't, you're trying to make decisions around your business without really knowing where you want to end up. And that, that makes things a lot more difficult, right?

Yeah. And whether you are in a senior position in someone else's business, or you're a co-founder where you've got different views on the business that you're growing. So many people sleepwalk through a career that they didn't actually want. Um, and I, I think that's such a topic that isn't spoken about because from the outside people look successful, but is that what you actually want? And there's statistics around how hard it is to sell a recruitment business. So if you're going into it thinking, I just want to build something and sell it, like, what's the probability of that? How long is it going to take? And if you're just focused on the exit of selling a business in 10 or 15 years' time, you've got to enjoy those 10 or 15 years. And that's the bit that I keep coming back to when I think about Kapu and how we've done it. I enjoy my working time with Kapu, but what that business has allowed me to do is enjoy just every day, like, personally as well. There's no sort of work-related stress. I'm thinking, I've just got to do this for a few more years, then we're going to sell it and I can never recruit again. I've just built a business with Nathan that we enjoy working in, and it allows us to do what we want outside of work.

Do you think you could have done on your own?

A lot of people do it. I personally don't think I'd have enjoyed it as much, and I don't think Nathan would have done either. There's so many benefits to doing it with someone. You share the lows, you sit in the mud together, You dance around the kitchen when you get your first invoice. And with the experience that we've got, like combined 20 years now in medtech, that adds so much weight when we're talking to clients and how we actually deliver on work. It's just more fun. If anyone's thinking about doing it, and there's a lot of independent recruiters out there that maybe would go and hire someone that then works for them, do they care as much as them? They are an employee at the end of the day. Having co-founders on the same page is worth its weight in gold.

And if, like, just curious what you— how you'd think about this or how you'd approach it. Spoke about how important it is in terms of, like, yeah, the type of business that you want. Like, if I am listening to this and I am a solo founder, which a lot of people are, what would be some of the, the questions that you think they should be asking themselves to try and understand and discover? Like, okay, how do I want this business to serve me? What are some of those questions you think they should really have clarity on or should think about answering and thinking about?

So it would be very similar to the conversation that we have with people in permanent roles considering going into contracting because it's that point in your career where you feel like you've got enough experience. So what change are you trying to make? If you, if you want to move into contracting, what services are you going to offer? So if you want to start your own agency, what you're going to focus on, what you're going to be different, what you're going to be famous for. Does it suit your personal situation? So it's a very similar conversation to that, but also what you're trying to get out of it. What is the end goal? And that's a hard question to answer because most people that would be considering starting their own agency will have a few years of experience. They're growing up personally, life changes, so that will always change. But at the point of making the decision of going out on your own, what do you want it to look like? And whether that's with a co-founder or on your own, just keep reviewing that.

Whilst we take a short break, I wanted to take a moment to chat to you about one of our amazing partners, Sourcewell, the industry-leading recruitment engagement platform. I'm using myself and I don't know what I would do without it. From building personalized messaging cadences across a variety of channels to automating follow-ups and data tracking straight back into my CRM. It's really made an impact in streamlining my workflow and most importantly, accelerating my sales results. My favorite feature by far is the live feed. By being able to see in real time who's engaging with your campaigns, it enables me to prioritize my outreach with the most engaged prospects, which helps me get way more out of what I put in. So I'm gonna be honest, if you haven't got Sourcewell and you're a recruiter, I really believe you're at a disadvantage. To find out more and see the platform in action, make sure you click the link in the show notes and mention the Recruitment Mentors Podcast. Because you listen to this podcast, you're going to be able to get access to an exclusive offer: free 50 phone credits, 50 email credits, which is at the value of circa £500 per user. So make sure you mention the Recruitment Mentors Podcast and click the link in the show notes. Talk to me a bit about, um, because I thought this was really interesting. I think again just goes hand in hand with like how you guys have approached things. So two things I want to make sure that we talk about because I thought it'd be really interesting for people. So I've got here— I might have this— let me know if I've got this wrong, by the way. Um, you've got, I think, uh, okay, so I've got Richard, financial expert, wealth advisor, and then you've got Neil, accountant, proactive. Yeah, can we just talk about these things, um, before we finish? Because I thought this is really interesting. Why don't we start with— because I think it goes hand in hand with like how you built your business— let's talk about Neil first. Because like the way that you spoke about Neil was like he, like, he's been excellent basically. And like you really view Neil as like an integral part of your business. So talk to us a bit about like why Neil has been so impactful, um, and tell us a bit about that. Because I think again I think for people listening who have their own business, it could really give them some insights on the impact of having someone like Neil in their business, particularly if they have a contract business.

Yeah, he's going to love this. Get some business off the back of it. So we set up just with an accountancy service bookkeeping for the first year, and it was fit for purpose because it was cheap. But then they started missing deadlines and penalty fees and stuff. And it just got to the point where the service that we were giving to our clients wasn't matched internally by the service we were getting from our accountants. It was kind of like, we're trying to build a, a power team here where our accountants are dropping the ball, and that doesn't suit the rest of the business. So again, through a recommendation, so someone that I trusted that has his own agency recommended Neil, had a chat with Neil, and just straight away the value that he added to us in that 20-minute introductory call as we were coming to the end of our first year in business just was so much more than we'd had in the 12 months previous from our, our other accountants. Um, so we switched straight away.

On what sort of things? Was it just like personal advice and things?

Yeah, just stupid things like the naivety of you come to the end of your first year, you've done well, so you took a bit of money out the business that didn't need to, and then you've got to pay tax on it. And he just said like Why have you done that? So just little things like that. And I see Neil as our CFO. He's an extension of our business. There's a lot of administrative stuff that I was doing in that first year in terms of reporting the utilization stuff that we were looking at, looking at all of our sonovate timesheets and predicting our revenue and stuff like that. They do all of that for us now and like we pay them what they're worth and we appreciate the value that they give us. But it's just given us so much clarity on where the business is at, where it's performing, what we need to be aware of. And then that just links so closely into what are we trying to get out of the business? Because this is the plan, but is the performance backing up that plan? And he's shown us that it is. And before we didn't have that.

And when do you think— everyone's on their own journey with this, but like, you know, when you start the whole bookkeeping piece, like you experience, that might be just like what's required. But yeah, when do you think would be what needs to happen maybe internally, or when should I be thinking about, could it be really valuable for me to have a more like proactive accountant on this side? Because I do think even Uh, my, myself, I have some really good accountants where there's been some lessons along the way and then they've been more proactive. I'll give them some feedback and then it's been a lot more helpful. But when you're a business owner, if it's just you or you and one other person, oftentimes either of you may not be— would you— both of you may not say like you're really good at like the finance side of things. One of you might be better at it than the other, but if you have an external expert to say like, these are your goals, this is what cash flow should look like, etc., etc. That's like really valuable because it's one less thing to think about.

Yeah, and you're paying for that service, you're more likely to, to listen to what they're telling you.

Yeah, exactly.

Just working out yourself. Okay, that's good to know.

Yeah, exactly. And also, like, for me, I think as well, a big part of this entrepreneurial journey is like you do learn a lot. And like, if you have someone like Neil that you're describing, you can also learn a lot from them that's just going to help you overall in terms of better understand you know, when and why you should take dividends over these things, or whatever it may be, right, in terms of actually learning. But like, when— I don't know, from your experience, do you think you should have worked with Neil straight out the gate, or actually was it worthwhile having that initial experience? Like, when should I start thinking about having a bit more of like a proactive accountant?

I think from a, from a recruitment perspective, if you're growing a contract book, get a good accountant because there's so many invoices going through. Sonovate we pay a majority of our contractors on a weekly basis. So that's weekly invoices for 30, 40, 50 contractors a week. Some are being paid late, some aren't. Just, are they fully utilised? There's so much data to look at there that it's helpful to know. So if the intention is to build a contract book, get a good accountant, get someone like Neil as early as you can, I would say, because the, the switch, although we weren't involved in it, that it wasn't, it wasn't necessarily pain-free to move from one to another. They had to then get up to speed with a year's worth of business and transactions and understand how it worked, how I was tracking things. If you were to just do that from the start, you kind of just leave them to it. I think if you're building a perm business and you're just sending invoices through Xero or whatever, you're doing it yourself, maybe less of a need. But we felt like it was a role in itself that we could outsource where we didn't just need an accountant to do an end-of-year tax return. We needed him to be doing things on a regular basis, and that's the service that we've got.

Yeah, that makes sense. But I think if you're on the perm side, I think this brings them into the next bit. And I guess, like, disclaimer, this isn't like financial advice, is probably worth saying. But I think I found this really cool when you spoke about this. I've spoke to a couple of recruitment companies where they've invested in like financial advice because I think as an industry we're really good at championing how much money you can earn and like that being the environment you can do, but maybe not as good on offering at least educational support or just advice for younger people in our industry on like what might be a good idea to do with the money that you're earning, right? Um, so talk to us a bit about that, about Richard. So I've got here Richard, financial expert, wealth advisor. Like, why, why is this person involved in your business? What was the thinking here?

So again, recommendation. So we were introduced to Rich through Neil. So again, there was that consistency across our business where Neil could feed information into Rich. Rich could then advise us based on the information that Neil had given us based on the plan that we wanted to execute. So it just, it made sense to have that as the team. But what Rich has done has unlock the potential of what are we doing this for now? What is the end goal? Is he reviewing that on a consistent basis? And to be honest, are pensions sexy? Not really. Should people be doing them? In our opinion, it was a yes. So we've started to do that with Rich. Again, it's tax efficient as business owners to do that. But that's just given us, whereas Neil gives us retrospective clarity on how we're performing, and then that links into the day-to-day activity. Rich is giving us clarity on the outcomes of that performance and what that means for our futures. So again, it's just, it didn't make sense to have one and not the other.

Yeah, and I think it's super smart, particularly when you're in the seat of like having your own business, if it's just you, one other person, like again Like, yeah, I'm sure it just gives you and Nathan clarity on like why you're building what you're doing and like just, yeah, just have a lot more of a clearer vision of like what, how this business can serve you. That I think that is the underlying thing, right?

On, on that, I would say, uh, we are, unless things change, we're, we're at peace with the fact that we're not growing a recruitment business to sell. So is it serving us day to day, but is it also performing? Are we making the right decisions so that in the future when, say, we don't want to recruit anymore, we've been successful enough and made the right decisions where we can phase ourselves out of it? It's like, uh, I don't know, if I had a Ferrari parked on the driveway of a massive house that I didn't need, would I be spending my money in the right way knowing that at some point if I don't pick up the phone or if Nathan doesn't pick up the phone, we're not making money. So we've set up a two-person professional business that we feel is well received in the market, but the performance of that business— we're making the right decisions around setting ourselves up in the future.

It's just very grown up.

Rich always says to us, he does say, he's like, the conversations we're having, you're 10 years ahead of a lot of people that start, you know, that penny drop moment of 'How long am I going to work for? Am I setting myself up? What's my pension pot?' And he kind of instigated that, we've just followed him. But yeah, we feel like we're making the right decisions.

And do you feel really confident that, because I think this is what people need to understand or make sure that there's also this perspective out there, that recruitment can be a vehicle to get you to where you want to financially, or can be a vehicle to enable you to hopefully most of the time enjoy the work that you're doing. But what you're talking about here is we're not viewing recruitment being like the typical, I'm scaling a recruitment business, hiring loads of grads, doing all that. But actually what you're talking about here is, you know, you're leveraging all the experience that you've taken whilst being employed, you've then gone on this entrepreneurial journey you've really got clarity on the type of business that you want. You want the business to serve you, and this recruitment business is ultimately acting as the vehicle to help you get to like your personal goals. Yeah, right. And I think this is really important that hopefully more and more people can view it like that. And because I think oftentimes when I speak to independent founders, it's hard, right? And you can feel stuck. It's like, oh my God, am I going to do this forever? I'm going to be, you know, speccing out candidates forever or whatever it may be. But I think the way that you guys have done things, and I'm sure there's been plenty of challenges along the way, but why I really like this is you're always giving yourself an opportunity to have clarity on like how this business can serve you. Yeah, I think this is super smart, but I think it's like something that could— should be like spoken about more, because if you do have that clarity, I'm sure like it then enables you to like enjoy the journey more. Yeah.

Exactly. It's not— there's, there's no, there's no sense of urgency to think, oh, we need to do this by the end of the year because that's when we, we want to stop. It's just, are we enjoying what we're doing, um, and is that serving us, as we keep saying? Um, so then it is just about enjoying it.

And if you get it right, you can do things that you can feel more comfortable about making decisions that it sounds like Nathan's made, which is I'm thinking about moving our life to Dubai. Yeah, like it'd be way more difficult to be at peace with that if maybe you haven't got a lot— if you haven't got all these other bits in place. Yeah, do you know what I mean?

Yeah. So we've got to a point now where, uh, we, we talk about— talk about ambition because that is a word that means different things to different people. And we're ambitious individuals But that doesn't— that extends beyond recruitment. So we're ambitious in terms of what we want to do with Kapu, but at the same time, we've built something that we feel like we just need to maintain now and just improve in areas like the Kapu community. And we'd always like to be busier. I think like we've both been busier in the past. Kapu is high-performing currently, but we feel like we can get more out of it. But it's not like we have to go into this new financial year thinking, right, we need to double again and then the year after that we need to double again. It's like, are we happy with the work that we're doing at the level that we're doing it? And how can we be more efficient? How can we improve the service? Because I feel like you kind of cracked the code in so many ways. Let's not fuck this up now.

Yeah. And like to round us out then, like with what you're talking about there. How, how have you got better at sort of, um, how do I say, because I'm, I am aware of this with the podcast and, and what it, how it might make people feel who listen, because you even mentioned this, right, in terms of like, how do you make sure that you stay true to that and not get lost in like maybe seeing your peers and like comparing. Yeah, do you know what I mean? Like, how do you have— yeah, make sure that you stay true to that and not get lost in like, oh shit, maybe are we doing it wrong, or should we be growing? Or when you catch up with some of your old colleagues and they talk about how, you know, they've done X, do you know what I mean? Like, how do you not get lost in the— on the comparison, or thinking, shit, should we be doing this instead?

I think it's just like an internal it's an internal thing just around happiness and just, are we happy with what we're doing? And I think that we are. Like, comparison is a— it's an interesting one. Running marathons, there's always going to be someone that's going to run a marathon quicker. There's always going to be someone that's going to build more than you in recruitment or build a bigger business. But are you clear on what you're trying to get out of it? And it's a purely internal thing.

Yeah. And I think what we're talking about there is self-awareness, right? So I think that that's got to be— if you got to this point in the conversation and you have your own recruitment business, it's like, have you got clarity on that? Because if you haven't, that's probably one of the root causes of maybe why some days you feel really disheartened or like finding things really difficult. We're not saying, you know, by you having that clarity, that isn't going to make everything easy, but it does make the decisions you make. And yeah, like maybe not getting lost in like, should I be doing this, should I be doing that?

Um, with, uh, with LinkedIn on that point as well, because recruiters that are active on LinkedIn— my LinkedIn is very much focused on the medtech industry, but through you and others, there are feeds into the recruitment industry. And I don't know, perhaps a lot of independent recruiters aren't as active or active at all on LinkedIn, and they're delivering the, the level of work that they're happy with and they've almost checked out of the industry in terms of engaging with recruitment. They've just got their little world that they deliver on. They're happy. And I'm sure there's so many independent recruiters that would say the same. They got into recruitment, got good at it, but then just wanted to do it for themselves. And they've kind of exited the world of recruitment, but, but just delivering their own small bit. We do that, but we're also very active on LinkedIn, so we're more visible than a lot of others. Our size, I would say.

So yeah, so you're saying that you— there may be less stuff out there that tells that story, basically? Yeah, yeah. And there's— there is a lot more out there that tells a story of we've won these awards, we've scared— yeah, yeah.

Like, if, if we're comparing ourselves to a lot of what we see, um, in the recruitment world, it is 3 years ago we launched, we're now at 50 people, we've got 2 offices in America. That is the comparison. Um, and we don't compare ourselves to that, and we're happy with that. But, um, where are the independent recruiters that are working from home, billing over a million, and working from anywhere? Because there'll be so many great examples of that, and it's trying to shine a spotlight on that.

Yeah. And that's what we're trying to do here, right? And I think you've done a great job of that, and also a big part of why I wanted you to come on. So I think, yeah, I really respect everything that you guys have built so far. And if I'm gonna say, there's even things that I can take away myself. So yeah, I think, um, amazing work so far.

Thank you.

And, um, a huge thanks for coming on the pod.

I've really enjoyed it. Thank you.