From 18 Months of No Revenue to $48K MRR: How Oliver Turned It Around

Oliver, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me, mate.

Always say this, but genuinely really excited to dig into this with you in this conversation. Our goal today, for those of you listening and joining us, is we want to give you a real masterclass on how to genuinely become a solution seller or a recruiter that is really committed to solving genuine solutions for their clients. I was just saying to you before we started this, I think solutions has become a bit of an overused word, something that we easily say, like value. You have to deliver value. So really, today we're going to attempt to really helping you all understand what does selling solutions actually mean in recruitment. How can you go from maybe working on an exclusive contingent basis where you have good relationships and you really want to elevate your relationships to solutions, and you want to be selling more technical, complex solutions, we're going to cover all of that. That's our goal with this today, where you can actually genuinely take away some tangible strategies on how you can do that, how you can achieve that, because trust me, Oliver here has committed to working this way, and you're going to learn a bit about that. So let me know if I get any of this wrong. Let me give you the sort of career highlight reel here and also give everyone a bit of an insight into where you are on your own entrepreneurial journey, because you're in the trenches right now. So over a decade of employed experience, almost like 10 of that working for the Hydrogen Group where you really had exposure to so many things there. Working as a consultant, different markets, going to the US, a bunch of different things. But really where I think when we prepared for this, where things really started to take shape for you was where you really found yourself in this sort of client services role. And you did that solidly for nearly 4 years. And this is where you really then started to get exposure and started to sell solutions. I think some of the highlights that we got here were your biggest statement of work deal that you sold, over $1.5 million with one account, a $370,000 retainer, 18 perm jobs. So, you were in the trenches of doing it there. You then joined another business for a year and a half, and what was really interesting there was your sole job— I've got— I had these metrics written down, which are really cool. Your sole job there, in the client services role, was to generate recurring revenue from clients, increase the net fee income per account across the group, and really focus on any sort of statement of work, multi-hire solutions from existing businesses. So then again, you was doing it there. And then we started the entrepreneurial journey. So January 2023, started Loud Solutions, self-funded, on your own. and for 18 months, we generated no revenue. Let's fast forward because it didn't end there. It didn't end there. I know there was a lot of hard moments in there, but we then ended up actually in the end of the second year. I've been doing this for 2.5 years, so year 2, so the last 6 months, generated $90,000. And that was a recurring revenue contract, which we're going to talk more about on here. And then where we are today, which is really exciting, is today we're at $48,000 monthly recurring revenue. These are 12-month recruitment contracts that Oliver's partnered with companies on. So he's building this type of business. You have a pretty lean business, one full-time employee, another full-time employee due to join, and then you've over this time built a bench of contractors and talent that sort of support you in different ways. That's the highlight reel.

Mate, can I just hire you to do that for me, Hishem Azzouz? That was better than I can do. Good job. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, mate. Yeah. Spot on. I was really lucky, to be honest, in the early part of my career. My time at Hydrogen, I joined, yeah, joined as an associate consultant as most do and got a fantastic opportunity. Hydrogen did a really good job of training their employees at that point. I'm sure they probably do, still do, but what was really unique about that experience is I had the backing of a really big organization but joined a very small team of 2 other individuals to set up the first ever US office in Houston, Texas, which gave me a really unique perspective of, you know, making stuff happen from the ground up right at the start of my career. So yeah, really lucky. Thanks for that highlight reel. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So we wanted to start with like just taking a bit of a step back and actually talking about this word solutions, but But before we do, I think what would be helpful just to sort of round out the sort of context for people, and we'll get into this, we'll make sure that we've gone into a bit of detail on this, but do you want to just very quickly at a high level just go through, I've got it written down here, but do you want to just very share quickly Loud Solutions, the different services that you have? 'Cause I think that would just be helpful. Because I think one of the things that is really interesting about you, and I'll always remember this, when I initially engaged with you, you came back on an email, And you said that you want to be the, uh, number— you want to be known and the number one retention consultancy, not recruitment consultancy. So just tell us very quickly, like, you would— because you have different pillars, different services, just tell us a bit about those and what those are and how you operate a company. Because they would have just heard that you have monthly recurring revenue, that isn't typical. So let's just hear that, and then we'll, we'll take a bit of a step back and then go on this journey around the solutions piece.

I've wanted to have my own business for a long time, so I've had a long time to ponder what I wanted it to be, I guess. But Loud Solutions, we're not just a hiring agency. We solve the entirety of the people problem. And as I said to you, fast forward 5 years, we will be one of the world's leading retention consultancies. I think talent is changing pretty rapidly. Hypergrowth, high growth is, is, is no longer. I think finding top 1-2% in any given industry and discipline is, is here to stay. I think that retaining and engaging your existing employees is going to be number one pain point for most, most founders and managers, uh, and retaining your top employees is going to be top of mind. Um, so yeah, look, I— why did we do it? There was two things that, that stuck out to me when I started the business. I was hell-bent on building a business that as close to 100% of our NFI was coming from recurring revenue. So non-transactional. And then the second question was, how can we build a business that has as close to 100% customer retention or extension ratios? And they were literally the two questions I asked myself, just like, that's it, like, they're the two. I don't want thousands of clients, you know, it's, it's a It's a headache, it doesn't work, it's difficult. And how can I provide a service that's so sticky that customers couldn't imagine their own organizations without cloud solutions? So, that was kind of, that was the beginning, right? And yeah, fast forward to now, it seems a little bit more, cohesive. The first 6 months to a year probably wasn't, uh, it definitely wasn't that. But we offer end-to-end people solutions specifically to the early stage. We have a variety of different services or solutions that we offer, and we split them into, uh, company stages. So if you're a pre-seed or startup, or seed in some instances, We offer things like co-founder search or executive search. We offer capital raise introductions. We are not a capital provider. We do not have dry powder, but we have 5, 6 now partnerships with funds and institutionals that we make introductions to for early-stage organizations to get capital from. We have our kind of core service offering, which we refer to as PLM, People Lifecycle Management, which is a fully embedded service going all the way from HR Ops to Talent Act into employee engagement and performance management. And that's what we're hanging our hat on at the moment. That's what we're driving. And then there's a range of other services that we offer that in reality are created, poised, and positioned to enable us to land, uh, and secure more PLMs. So that would include a growth readiness diagnostic that we do for soon-to-be scaling founders. That's managed and run through by our, our fund partners and VCs. and a range of other services that, yeah, that position us as a thought leader and look to add value as proactively as humanly possible. And that's something else that we'll touch more on, touch more about.

I think what I really take from that is this is the cool thing about entrepreneurship. Like, you can, you can have an idea and you can take an action on it and you have to figure it out. But I think what I really liked there was you really Like you worked backwards from the type of business that you wanted. And then, obviously, you've been on this journey to sort of really build these services and the solutions that fit that. So, I hope that's really helpful context for people. Let's just go into this where maybe everyone can sort of relate because that might feel like a real far reach for some people. But like I said to you, I think the solutions piece is something that is overused. Like, it's something that I want to provide solutions. You have to sell solutions. You have to understand their problems. Like, this is something that we talk about a lot on this podcast, which is why I really wanted to speak to you. So where, where do you feel like, you know, you've been in this environment and you know other people in the industry, you'll know these things. Like, where do you feel like people go wrong when it comes to solution selling? Or like, where do they go wrong when they maybe think about it? Or where do they go wrong when they're trying to make that transition? What comes up for you there? Where do people typically go wrong when it comes to the solutions piece and being a solutions provider, a solution-focused recruitment agency?

So I'd split this into two separate groups. First and foremost, you'd have internal potential pitfalls and external potential pitfalls. So let's start with internal. Number one is stuck in a transactional mindset, right? So thinking too small or too narrow is, is the number one issue that I would probably see is that's consistent across recruitment as a marketplace. Number 2, having the same bonus structure in place to sell solutions and to sell contingent, it's a massive mistake. They're totally different businesses and therefore need to be compensated accordingly. For example, a sales cycle for selling a large statement of work is incomparable to selling a contingent search in a specific niche, in a specific location. It's just totally different. So you need to have a think about how to separate that if you want to be successful. Third, having the business processes and structure in place for solutions. Separate to contingent. How are you actually going to deliver to these solutions that you're selling? What are the business processes to actually obtain these solutions? Again, totally different to acquiring contingent-specific work. Um, and the final piece, I guess, that I'd add to that is Selling solutions and your other services in the same breath is a huge mistake, a huge pitfall. So let's make that easy to digest. If you're selling contingent and a retained solution to the same client in the same situation, it's very, very difficult to land the retained solution. I'm sure almost everyone listening has run into that.

And just quickly to pause, how come?

I mean, think about it logically, right? So Hishem, you're a client. You're right, mate. How's it going? Yeah, I can help you with this particular search you've got going on. Either you pay me 25% of the fee in 3 months' time or you 'You have to pay me 20 grand now and then 20 grand at the end.' 'Last one, please.' 'Which one do you want to do?' Yeah, right. Obviously. Me too. Even selling it, I'm like, 'Oh, just do contingent. It's probably better for you, to be honest, mate.' And I get that it's not as simple as that, right? There's a lot of complexities into positioning yourself, um, to in essence get money up front for providing a service, right? And I'm not just saying this one particular, um, yeah, mindset or, or even change is going to fix that, but it's going to help a lot if you go into that conversation and you say, you're right, Hishem, how's it going? Cool, yeah, I can definitely help you with that. Um, I need 20 grand now. 'And then you can pay the remainder at the end.' That's it. That's just how we work. You'd say, 'Well, what about contingent?' 'We don't do that for this, sorry.' 'Oh, all right.' Again, preface: you're not going to win all of your business by just not talking about contingent, right? But I think it's a really simple fix that people would be quite surprised about how much it would actually help if they just stopped talking about additional services in the same breath of solutions. Now I've gone down the retained, the retained kind of arc there. There's a lot more to it, but I think that's a big, big area of where people go.

That's a good example. Like just to sort of emphasize that, I think you like from a lot of the conversations I've had, whatever the solution is, like we could be talking about statement of work, we could be talking about your, your service and how you structure it retained. I think anyone that I speak to that works more consistently in that way and that's sort of where they want to end up, like you did, you committed to working, wanting to work this way with companies. Whenever I do sit down or speak to people, typically they'll say, there isn't any other option of working with us when we go through it. So, like that is something that comes up a lot. I think also then, I don't know what you think about this, just very quickly to sort of close down that point, I think what you can also then end up running into is you also could end up positioning that retain service, which for the most part is probably going to have different mechanisms in there that should be more useful, valuable, solve more problems beyond getting that person that they need, so it's a more valuable service. Cheaper price. And they use it as a— they sort of use the cost mechanism to be like, look, contingent, it's going to be 30%, but if we work in this way together, we're going to do more, we're going to do more work, we're going to deliver more things, but it's going to be 8% less. I think that can also end up happening when you're doing it in the same breath, when you're doing it in the same presentation or approach.

100%, right? Because it's logical. Because you— and the reason for that is totally psychological. Basically, if you're talking about these two things in the same breath, you're saying, give me something up front, right, or pay me the entirety at the end. And because you're saying that, you feel like you have to provide more. You're like, oh, I know you're going to give me 10 grand up front, so like, what I'll do is this and that and that and extra. So, actually, it's less overall. The point is they're totally different things. They shouldn't be even thought about, let alone talked about in the same breath. And you've touched on something there, which is what else you can offer when working in this way. That's kind of the beauty of solutions as a whole is when you go above contingent and when you step into the solution world, you can operate as a thought leader. You can operate, you can almost deliver all of the things that you promise you could in contingent, right? Whether that's improving the interview process or talent scorecarding or improving the quality of their hires, right? You're so intertwined and engaged in their business that you can actually be a thought leader. Whereas if it's just contingent, it's contingent, which everyone knows how that is and what that is. Okay, very quickly, because this is a very good question, I want to make sure people are fully aware of it. So we talked about internal potential pitfalls. External potential pitfalls, number one is selling on cost reduction.

So what, so what we're just talking about, and when you— why, why is that external in terms of like how you're, how you're communicating it externally, is what you mean? Like how it's received externally, right? Okay.

Correct. Yes. So, and the answer to that question is, if you're solving a real problem, they'll pay you double. That's like, that's selling on a cost reduction immediately negates the benefit of the solution itself. Um, so you're either, yeah, or it won't work, right? Because they feel like something's amiss. Um, and more often than not if you're selling in that way, you're not really selling against the actual pain point, or you don't understand what that pain point actually is. Um, and people fall into that because they try to fix a problem with a solution that they already have, but in most cases, that's actually hiring, right? Um, but if you go into this and you really want to understand the problem without your own preconceived ideas as a potential outcome, you can go into it and really deep dive into a problem in a more authentic way. So, for example, you know, Mr. and Mrs. Hiring Manager, what's the actual problem here? Okay, well, we're interviewing a lot of candidates, We're bringing them through the interview process and we're just not necessarily landing many. So we're making offers and, you know, our offer-to-hiring ratio is really bad. For example, I'm making it up. But then the real problem there, you dive a little deeper and you'd probably figure out it's not necessarily the quality of the candidates or even providing more candidates. It's fixing the interview process and maybe deep diving a little more into how they're actually managing that process themselves. Right? And again, what's the solution there? Well, maybe you can step in and upskill that hiring manager or the interview team to be more effective in the interview process. That's a great value add. If you could go and offer that to a bunch of customers, would they pay for that? Sure. Ask them. Tell them. Tell them what it is. So the point is finding out the real pain without your own motive in mind. I think people talk a lot about finding the actual pain, but always ask, sure.

So, Oliver, if I can, where, where I wanted to just jump back to is, you know, you said at the beginning around that, that transactional mindset, that's what I just want to go to for a second, because honestly, that's been the most consistent thing that I've heard from recruitment managers or recruitment leaders, where if I'm listening right now and I'm learning from you, I, I want to be able to have those conversations with hiring managers, with leaders, with the executive team about problems, about issues. However, for a lot of people that I speak to, getting out of that frame of mind where you're not there to win a job, or like the main goal here is to win a job which I can place, that just consistently seems to be hard. I hear like consistently. So any thoughts on I guess if we just assume that this person wants to not work in that way or is striving towards working in a different way, or they're in an environment where that's, that's been asked of them, that's expected of them, but they've been very— they've been always used to this sort of transactional pace, this transactional environment where I could take this job spec right now and I could be writing my fee on the board in potentially 4 to 6 weeks' time. Like, how do we— and there's not a silver bullet, it's not going to happen over time, but what comes up for you there? How do we— because I'm sure you've seen this, maybe had to go through it yourself when you was employed, I don't know. What— how do we try and— let's talk about that for a sec because I know that's an issue.

Cool. So, so first and foremost, that's a really big presumption. So I would argue that a lot of people say they are ready or they want to move away from a transactional mindset, I would argue they haven't actually thought about what that means enough. And that is probably one of the determining factors for them, let's call it, slipping back into a transactional service offering. So, so that's kind of top of mind. And I'm not going to be able to unpack that in this session. However, how can you start to be a little bit more solution-focused? Right? That's a good transition. And first and foremost, it's completely individualistic. How you become good at anything, right, needs to be personalized. This is not a one-size-fits-all, that there's 4 steps to this, and then all of a sudden you're selling recurring, recurring rev solutions tomorrow, right? It's not about that, right? You need to figure out, you need to, you need to figure out what you— why you're actually doing this, like, for the business and, and individually. For me, I fell in love with solutions because I, I see it as one of the few ways to actually build a really robust business. Like a sustainable business. I just hated month after month needing to get back up to X to even survive. It's just anxiety-inducing. I don't really have much anxiety, but it's brutal. And I also think it's one of the few ways to really add actual impact into a small customer base. And third and finally, it's probably the only way I would guess to sell a talent company for double-digit multiples. That's not necessarily why I'm doing it, but if you've got 95-100% of, of your revenue coming from recurring, you're a totally different business to one that's only bringing in 40-50% of it. So right off the bat, I knew that I liked solutions, right? And I thought recruitment was really transactional, and I thought, you know, solutions were my way around that. And we've talked about defining your why, like why are you actually doing this in the first place? Um, link back to a recruitment point of view, what are you actually trying to fix in your business? I would guess it's recurring revenue, right? And increasing your recurring revenue. I would guess it's increasing the longevity of, of your client or clients. And I would guess it's linked to the amount of NFR you are getting on a per account basis. Um, and that, by the way, I think is the most under-tracked ratio across the entire market.

Sorry, sorry, I buy then. What is that?

So everyone's going to be different. I don't know. I would love to see what the industry average is, but both of my previous employers, the amount of revenue, the average amount of revenue on a 12-month basis that you would get in across all of your customers is shockingly low. Right. It's like I think in both cases it was below $40,000. I think, right? It might even have been less. I can't necessarily remember. But it's absurdly, exceedingly low. So again, going back to why I started Loud Solutions, right? It's like, that sounds like the opposite of the business I want to build. I'd much rather have 10 customers that are getting me everything, and there's risks to that as well. But Again, that's my why. Figure out your why is the point. Now the question is, how do you become actually good at solution selling? So first figure out why you're even interested, right? And then top of mind for me is adapt a problem-solving mindset. Identify what your clients actually need. Not just, not just what they're asking for, right, or what you can offer. Like, what are they, what are they actually needing? Focus on long-term solutions rather than quick fixes, right? If you can fix a problem in, in 30 days, it's probably not a solution, okay? And ask the right questions to uncover actual hidden pain points. With no agenda. Like, remove the mask of talent as best you possibly can. Um, shift from contingent solution, solution-based selling. So that means don't just sell placements, okay? Instead, focus on actual services that add value. For example, I think the industry, the recruitment industry, uh, overlooks some of the value they can— they could offer effective immediately. Things like hiring processes, things like talent evaluation, things like retention programs. I would argue that recruitment actually has a really good understanding of how to retain talent, probably better than some of our, our actual customers do. Um, and look at ways that you can bundle them into recurring revenues. Right, and projects and programs, all with long-term partnerships in mind. Think beyond talent, right? Hiring should be an outcome of a good solution or partnership, not the entirety of it, in my opinion. Um, what else is top of mind? Something that I am thinking a lot about at the moment is proactive value-add, or specifically proactive service offerings. Um, at Loud Solutions, we've got 50+ clients, I think, at the moment that we have either made a placement for or have introduced to a funding partner free of charge on a deferred payment basis.

What does that mean? So, deferred payment, what do you mean?

That tells you how actual— actually crazy I am, because we've done that on a deferred payment. And yeah, 18 months went by and the mortgage was pretty tight.

So what would you mean? Give me an example. What do you mean? Like you introduce someone and then deferred payment? What do you mean? You don't have to pay me for it.

So there's a range of— I'm trying to crack down on this a little bit before this goes to the wide world and everyone comes to me for a CEO search.

What do you mean? I just want to make sure we're on the same page. What would the deferred payment in?

So help customer with senior or critical hire, fill that role or multiple roles, um, and payment would be owed either on a funding round or a success metric to the business.

Interesting. So that—

and this is going to be too extreme for many Right. But I've taken this to the extreme that I truly believe that making a placement isn't, it isn't, it isn't really the service that I'm offering. I'm so confident that what we do goes so far beyond that, that I'm almost using that as a justification for a customer to use us in the future.

Yeah. So let me— I just want to circle back a sec. So because it— because I have some thoughts on this. So we sort of said there around really adopting a problem-solving mindset.

Yeah.

Making that commitment around, uh, provide— like, yeah, ultimately selling a different solution which isn't contingent.

Yeah.

Which you spoke about. You have to be committed to that. So no longer contingent is an option. Yeah. And then like you said there, you've then consistently thinking about how can you deliver value in different ways to different companies that at some point you might work with. What I wanted to come back to, what was this first point, and I just want to get a bit tactical here as we sort of maybe go delve a bit more into the, the how around getting closer to maybe selling your first retainer or selling your first multi-hire solution, insert whatever solution that you want. I've seen this time and time again. You can tell me what you think, but it comes from this first point, which is I've found that come recruiters that get into a position where they are selling different solutions, they don't work with their companies on a contingent basis. So they could be working with them retained, it could be working some of the ways that Oliver said today, uh, it's all downstream from conducting good quality discovery meetings, discovery calls, whatever you want to call them. That, that's sort of what my thesis is. And the reason for that is because it basically means that you conduct a meeting, you conduct a call where you don't talk about the job and you don't talk about the person that they need, and you spend the entire time, like you said, which I really like the insight you're giving here, is you, you ask questions around things that isn't about the service that you give them. You, you ask them questions around commercials, around the business, around how do we get here in the first point, why are you even looking to hire this person, where are you trying to get to, what happened last time, what, what whatever. But I think— I don't know what you think about this, but I, I— that's what I think. I think if there's one thing that you used to do after this podcast, it was to commit to understanding how you can book discovery calls, discovery meetings where you don't talk about the job or a job or jobs, and you talk about the things that come under this adopting a problem-solving mindset.

Yeah, yeah, mate, I, I love it. So Shit, how long do we have, man? At this point, my customers don't come to us for hiring. They come to us because they're stuck, really. And that's perfect for me. I'll take it a step further. So we have designed something that we call a GRD or a Growth Readiness Diagnostic. Which is an evaluation for a soon-to-be scaling founder to assess where they are right now, where they're trying to go, what potential blind spots they have, and a clear, concise action plan. Simple as that.

Um, and you conduct this for them? Like, they, they give you this, right?

Yep.

So something like that.

Yep, we run through it together. There's two options. This is a paid service, by the way— $500 for an hour or $2,000 for 5 hours. It's used by our, by our funding fund partners in the due diligence, so they're actually using this data during the due diligence to assess whether or not they're fundable. Um, doesn't have to be— it can be an organization that isn't getting funding, it's by the by. The whole point of that test is, well, there's two reasons for that evaluation. Number one is, and top priority, is for us to come in and look like and act like a thought leader. Come in as an adult in an adult-to-adult manner, right? And show and prove that we're here not just to add tactical value by providing talent. Yes, we can do that. But it's to understand and add value immediately into the entire organization. Tell me more about that. What problems are you thinking about? What pitfalls are you not looking at? Where do you stack against your competitors? What's your actual action plan for the next 6 months, and how can we help you get there? That's a powerful meeting. Right, and that is the position of almost all of our business development, proactive business development anyway. I would also add, not that we have loads of customers, but all of our customers so far are from existing customer referrals. That's something else that we're, yeah, all in on. But the GRD, You use this information as you see fit, right? The point of that is, A, to be a thought leader, and B, to actually obtain information that you can then utilize to go and design and create a solution that is actually meaningful for that particular client. But there's no point having a conversation with a client and being like, oh, we're the best at insert X niche hiring, right? And the founder CEO is like, great, I couldn't care less really, when his real problem is we're only hiring 1 or 2 over the next 12 months. But actually top of mind is how do I elevate the 10 people I do have from B players to A players? Recruitment leaders might be looking at that and thinking, "Well, I'm not an L&D company." Well, why not? What's stopping you from being that? What's stopping you from being a consultant? Like, you have coached all of your grad hires from the last decade right into what they are now. Why take some of that learning and use it external? That's not the point, right? The point is A test like that and an evaluation actually allows you to understand true pain points and design a solution specific to every individual customer you speak with.

What would be— obviously not going to get you to share the IP here, stuff that people pay for— but what would be like some of the categories, for example, that you would get data on? Like hiring might be one of them, or people might be one of them. Is it then operations? Is it— I don't know, like, you know what I mean?

What would be some of the categories that Yeah, so we, we do a full company-wide department, uh, overview. So everything from ops, depending on the industry, to scientific, to technical. We look at the company vision, objectives. We then do a real deep dive into each department, which is kind of the secret sauce, um, for the individual, for the organizations that get that far, then get an actual score, an assessment linked to other organizations at their stages, and then they get a score linked to their viability and scalability. It's— that is then, you know, redesigned into this is what you have to focus on the next 30 days, this is what you should focus on next 60, and this is a good outcome from the next 90.

Because my— where my mind goes almost is like, can you just take what you've shared there and sort of, you know, maybe not try and get to that point, that might not be a goal of yours, but actually could you take that same principle and apply it to your discovery calls? Like doing that diagnostic on that call, right? Because I'm sure— because how do you— because your sales process, like Do you have some sort of call, which I'm assuming is quite discovery-led, that then goes, well, actually, from what we spoke about here, my best suggestion is going to be that you complete our growth diagnostic, or I don't know, like, is that what is the typical sales process in?

So, yes, absolutely. You could. The point is, and your original point stands, a really good evaluation and diagnostic as early as humanly possible in the process is absolutely mandatory. I'm sure everyone else is— maybe they're not, and I'm just shit at business development, but it's really difficult to actually get meetings at the moment, right? Like, top of the sales funnel is a massive challenge. And we are using our GRD as actually the hook in our business development. So rather than, "All right, Dave, you've just got seed. I'm consultancy/recruitment company 4512 today that's reached out to you. We can help you with your hiring." It's, We have a growth readiness diagnostic for you to evaluate how ready you are to scale over the next 12 months. Let's evaluate what your priorities should be and uncover what your blind spots are effective immediately. And that, I don't care who you are, that's much more powerful than, let's jump on a call to figure out what, you know, what you might need in in the future. If you can, if you're good enough, and if your cold calling actually works and you get through to the right person and the actual decision maker, can you, can you do that diagnostic and deep dive then and there? Yeah, absolutely, 100%. Um, I find it to be more effective when it's pre-scheduled and pre-booked and paid for because you get 100% of people's time rather than 30% of it.

This is what I was going to ask you, because I know this is something that people will run into, and you're sort of talking about it here, but I wanted to get your sort of take on it. And it feels like you're— it sounds like you're sort of figuring it out. But I do think one of the— let's just say we, we over— we, we've sort of overcome that hurdle of the mindset piece where we understand why we want to work this way, why we want to work with our customers this way. We want more predictability. I want to work with less clients but more meaningful client relationships. Insert your sort of why there. OK, we're now getting into the process. Well, in order for me to do that, I need to really get a better understanding of how we can help these organizations. What actually are their issues beyond I need a software developer tomorrow? So we're then thinking about discovery. I know that's something I need to do. I need to uncover problems. I need to not think about quick fix. Fixes, and I need to get time with these people to, like you said, uncover these things. However, as you just pointed out, these organizations, these decision makers, these hiring managers will be inundated with sales messaging, uh, candidate profiles that might be interested at the right time, insert whatever type of sort of sales activity, right? So what I'm leading up to here is how do you think about— and it seems like you're using the Growth Diagnostic to help with this, but what would your sort of advice be to people around how can they make it compelling enough for the hiring manager, for that decision maker, to want to give you that time, to want to speak to you about not jobs, not hiring, but about issues, about challenges, when they're so used to the transact— that transactional piece, and be like, what have you got for me, Oliver? Yeah, I'm happy to have a call, send over the CV. Do you know what I mean? Like, how— like, I don't know if you thought about that. It seems like maybe you're figuring it out, but how— because I do think that's part of the issue here, is like, how do we make it compelling enough? How do we— why is it worth their time? How do we make it compelling enough for them to go, you Yeah, Oliver, happy to jump on with the frame that we're not there to talk about hiring and I've got a candidate for you, which is what a lot of these people are so used to.

Yeah, really good question. For me, it comes down to proactively providing services. What can you give to them proactively that actually might help them immediately? Right, and maybe it's not as far as providing a candidate for them, maybe that's too extreme, right? But what else can you do? Like, do you have a talent scorecard internally that you use? Like, is that something that's low charge, easy effort to provide? I'm not doing anything that hundreds of people aren't already doing, right? But we're walking into the new age of give, give, give, give before you get. And if in your business development strategy at the moment, in the first couple of points of any point, any sequence is tell me a problem, right? Or let's jump on a call for you to tell me how I can fix your problem. You're not going to get anywhere.

It's not going to work.

It's just not like you're not. It didn't work 4 years ago. Right? It's definitely not going to work today. So figure out a way of adding some value and being memorable immediately. And I would argue being really aggressive with that. Like, what could really push the boundary? What could you provide someone that you've never spoken to before, that you've never met before, that could genuinely add value to their life and their business based on the information that you have? You have already immediately.

It's a good thing to ponder, isn't it? It's a good thing to think about.

100%, right? That's because the real question you're asking is how do you stand out from the crowd, right? And yeah, shit, I don't have the answer to that. Like, it's, it's 2025, man. Like, it is difficult. Like, if unless you've got 100,000 followers on LinkedIn, even at that point, I don't know. So you've got to be proactive, man. You've got to actually do what you're saying you're going to do, which is proactively provide value, like help these people and help these organizations as quickly as you possibly can.

I think that's a really good sort of thought experiment. What can I give them that they would find useful immediately? What I also like about that is You sort of again like position yourself as someone that isn't just talking about maybe the typical things that they're used to sort of getting. Something that sort of stuck with me recently, I don't really think about this, to sort of round this out is, well, you can tell me actually, you know, in this game that you're in, if you said top of funnel has been a challenge, so do you do the typical things you would have done throughout your career? Do you, you know, profile talent and take that to targeted companies, you do that or no, as one of your channels? Okay. Um, the reason why I bring that up is like, for, for me, I think whenever I sit down with recruitment leaders, companies, high performers, like, I'm a big believer— this came from a guy called, uh, uh, Jamie, which, um, I really like— is like, when it comes to business development, everything that we do works, it just doesn't work every time. And I think there's, there's going to be different channels, they're going to be different mechanisms that you can use, right? It's about understanding what really works in your industry and for the, the type of work that you want to do. So let— and I do believe for the most part, not all, I, I haven't sat down with every single recruiter, but for the most part, like, presenting really, uh, skilled individuals that have experience of solving company problems and presenting that to companies that you've heard or know or potentially have those problems where you're saying, hey, Oliver, keep hearing or can see that you've raised this, you've raised this money. And for most companies that I speak to that don't end up getting the most out of the investment, it's because they didn't have someone in this finance team or insert whatever. Wondered if you'd be interested in potentially speak to someone like this, and there's a candidate profile there or whatever. Like, for the most part, that does work for a lot of people as like an opener. But what I'm building up to here is, I had someone involved with one of our live podcasts, a guy called Nicholas, who I had on the show, and he'll be with you on this. Like, he's approaching it in a different way, but he's obsessed with taking customers on that customer journey, and he's really thought about that. And something that he said just stuck with me is, like, for him, if he will use that as a top of funnel approach, and this may be something that you could maybe consider, right? But he uses that as a way to be very targeted, open up doors. But what he makes very clear from the outset, if they get any sort of interaction, any sort of nibble, is he makes it very clear, hey Oliver, this is 10%, maybe even 5% of what we can do for your business. This is great that you're potentially interested in speaking to this person. By the way, this is like, 5% of our service and how we can help your organisation. Would you be against jumping on and, you know, talking to us a bit more about actually how we can have more of an impact here? Don't know what you think about that, but that's just another sort of, I guess, like perspective on how you can position yourself of like, like you said, you've got an example of can you give them something that can instantly impact, or can you maybe do some of the things that other people are using, but really try and make clear at any possible point that we don't just give you talent, like there's other things that we can do, then it's going to be down to you, right, to be able to showcase that.

Yeah, correct. At all times. Look, as I've said already, right, I'm, I'm taking that to the extreme. I'm not necessarily providing talent summaries or CVs at an early stage. But in a later stage, I'm going to the extreme of saying, yeah, I think this person's right for you. You should hire them. And hire them from us. No charge. But yeah, totally. This is 5% of what we can do to add value. And P.S., if you like this person, right, then you're going to work with us on a PLM, right? For a 12-month contract. And Jamie's probably right. All business development works, not all, but it doesn't work all the time. Then dive a little deeper to that, which is what is working at what times and why. And look, it's 2025. You're going to have to start being creative with this. If you're not being proactive, if you're not being creative with your outreach, you're just going to get lost. Like, not only are you going to come second, but you're going to be an afterthought. And that's a big part of what we do, is go above and beyond, right? Not just in our service model, but in everything that we do, where we try to be as proactively proactive as humanly possible across so many different areas that it's almost impossible for them to look elsewhere when the time is right for them to actually scale, whether it's one hire or 100 hires.

So let's, let's segue this into this entrepreneurial journey. Like, hopefully that whole segment there, for those of you that aren't in an environment where it is your own business, you can you know, just try these things tomorrow. There should be some really good principles there. Like, tomorrow you can start being more curious about the issues and the, uh, top-of-mind problems that hiring managers and companies that you deal with have. Um, and can you adopt more of a solutions-focused mindset? Trust me, not every company, but for the most part, if your manager, leader sees that you're doing that, you're being more commercially minded, trust me, that hopefully for the most part, that isn't going to be seen as a bad thing. That's going to be seen as a real positive thing, and it can lead to a lot of cool stuff. I spoke to someone yesterday who framed it in a really cool way where we were talking a bit about how we can elevate our services from contingent to retained, and he had this really powerful reframe which I really liked from a guy called, um, Fraser, where he said like, I've never liked calling it executive search because when you say that, it's sort of it sort of makes you feel a bit out of reach.

Well, you immediately think of the big guys. People are like, oh, that's going to be 100 grand, and you're probably filling the CEO role.

And that might be so far from where you're at today. And actually, he likes to position it as leadership recruitment. And then what he also said to build on that, which I really like, which we're talking about here, which I'm sure you've taken real joy in— and I want to go into this entrepreneurial bit with you is that it can really result in you having a lot more interesting conversations, if that's something that you want. Like, if you do adopt this sort of mindset and this journey that you're on, you can really find yourself building really cool relationships, having really interesting, uh, uh, conversations, learning really cool stuff beyond— way beyond— has this person got the 'Yes, okay, I'll interview them.' Do you know what I mean? I think that is actually the cool thing downstream from it. If that's something you want, if that's something you're curious about, I wanna, yeah, like that personally would excite me, but that's a bit different. I'm on an entrepreneurial journey, and I do think that sort of goes a bit hand in hand with that. But there will be plenty of people listening here that don't wanna have their own business. They are employed. They wanna build a great career. And why not do that whilst then building really interesting, you know, relationships, having interesting conversations? I think downstream from this stuff that we're talking about, it will result in that and hopefully enjoy your job more. Now, if you have more consistency, and I think that's quite cool, why not aim for that?

Totally, mate. I, I, I totally agree. It's just a quick segue here, right, is I, I fell into this whole game because I did a, I did a training at my first employer on selling salary surveys. Like that, like that was what I did 11 years ago. I was like, hang on, this is Fucking great. What? I can take this to a client and they can pay me 15 grand because I know all the salaries they have. Now, you're not going to be able to do that today because obviously the world's changed a little bit, but like selling that was just the beginning, right, to one of my largest clients that I ever had, right? Doing these small things in a solution-minded manner is the tip of the iceberg, right? Because you can actually infiltrate an organization in the most positive manner and operate in an adult-to-adult environment. And that's the end goal. And it's enjoyable. I totally agree with you, right? If there's some more junior or even, you know, middling part of their career consultants, like, this stuff is really fun. Like, it's really cool to get on a, on a conversation with a client and be like, talk to me, like, what, what actual problems do you have, right? And how can we, how can we figure out a way to solve them? Like, that's way more engaging for me anyway. Maybe I'm, maybe I'm mental, but that's way more engaging for me than just talking about a particular hire that they need to have. And don't get me wrong, you can still do that. Still solve that problem. But that's a feature in a much bigger world that if some people just allow themselves to think a little bit bigger, I think that their eyes are going to open pretty wide.

What I want to make sure we talk about here is how did you stay so— I mean, you'll tell us about on, outside of Canaan, on paper, you didn't see any form of like quote-unquote proper success until 19, 18 months into this business journey. I'm sure if me and you sat down when you started this company, I would have heard things like, yeah, 6-month runway, mate, should hopefully be doing my first deal in the first couple of months, whatever. Like, how, how did you— you can tell us like Did you, did you stay committed to the, to this plan that you had, this vision that you had in your head to only work in a certain way? Did you sort of potentially get pulled in different directions and maybe you did say, yeah, you know, actually I'll work on that software developer role and, you know, get some revenue in and I'll get back to what— like, just talk to me about this because I know having spoken to so many founders, one of the hardest things is saying no to business, to potential work, to potential money when it's your company, it's very different. Because, because what can you trade that you— what can you trade when you— when it's your own business, particularly when it's just on your own? Time. You will trade that for fun. It's your business. I'm working on my business, like I'm an entrepreneur, like, yeah, that's fine, I'll do that. So talk to us about this. 18 months, that is a, that is a long time. That's, that is so— that is a long time, man. Like, how did we come out the other side of that? How did you prevail?

Yeah, man, way too long. So many fuck-ups along the way. And I wish that I could stand here today and just be like, it was the mission and it was the vision and I never wavered and, you know, it was perfect. Yeah, it wasn't like that at all. I mean, the first 6 months really were just such a shit show. Like, every single possible pitfall and error you can possibly fall into, I did. I didn't have the solution and product nailed down, was doing little bits of everything all over the world in no specific market, trying to do a quick deal here or there on a contingent basis. And yeah, look back after 6 months and I was like, fuck, pipeline is nonexistent, let alone poor. But it's all stages, right? It's the foundation of what we have now built and what I wanted to start was always there. It was always build a business based on recurring revenue with customers we can grow alongside over a long period of time. Like, that's it. It's never necessarily wavered. My energy and time and focus, all over the shop short term for sure. It's still probably too all over the shop now.

What do you mean by that? What, you're susceptible to being more distracted? What do you mean?

I mean, super dyslexic, ADHD, and super excitable extrovert, right? That's a dangerous combination of just like, "Fuck it, oh, there's something shiny over there, that looks really awesome!" And I've got much better. I have got much better at it, but There's responsibilities now that, for a variety of reasons, that allow me— and I've improved as a human, but, yeah, there's processes that I have in place and habits I have in place that limit the amount that that happens. But, yeah, over the last 2 and a bit years, yes, it's happened a lot. I was lucky. Because I had, I have two really good advisors, one of which has kind of been with me since the start, who after a basically a complete meltdown after year one really helped refocus me and what I'm doing. And 18 months came around and you get your first customer and then you think, Yeah, again, we've done it. Let's go and look at some other shiny things because that's fixed and we'll probably have 20 live clients on that model in 3 months. And then lo and behold, you don't. Yeah, it wasn't a straightforward journey, right? There was a lot of ups and downs. And I think specifically middle of 2024 was a big turning point for me and for the business. I often talked about just getting one, right, in the early days. And the model that we have complements that. So, that was the focus, and that has been the focus. And yeah, there's been a lot of wrong turns, and through those wrong turns, you learn, right? And it's not a trait I would wish on anyone, but yeah, I learned from doing. Making the mistakes early on has hopefully helped me to limit making more of them at this point. And we're still learning. The honest reality is we're still super early. What we're doing is very difficult, and there's not a simple answer to a lot of elements. But the last, yeah, let's call it 6 months specifically, we've really done a good job of redefining my focus, redefining what we do as a business. And yeah, look, end of this quarter, we look really good to have close to €110,000 monthly recurring with 3 full-time employees. So yeah, I mean, is that success? I guess I'd say so. Right? Did I want it to take as long as it has? Absolutely not. But I think along the way, yeah, a new normal and perspective and presence comes along. And bottom line, I love it. I love what I'm doing. I love working for myself, but I really love supporting our clients in a really engaged and, yeah, elevated manner, which is what we're doing.

I'm going to put you on the spot here, but I know it's, it's really, if I'm honest, probably one of the best ways that people can learn from this show. And what I'm putting you on the spot on is whatever time period, like if I say to you now, what were the top 1, 2, 3. We want, we want the mistake highlight reel. Like, what, what were the standout mistakes that you feel like you made? You may have reflected or not, whatever comes to mind. But what were those standout mistakes that you're like, fucking idiot, like, why did I do that? Or why did I not understand that I shouldn't have done that earlier? Like, give us some of those.

Okay. How long do you have?

Top 3, whatever comes up for you, whatever you feel like in this moment were some of those biggest mistakes.

From a personal level, don't fucking be an absolute booze hound and a loose twat all the time. Number 1. But that's a personal bridge that I can happily say I've now improved on and continue to work on. But from a business point of view, First, get good people around you for sure. Being a solo founder isn't glamorous and isn't cool. It's not fun. Get people around you that you trust. Get people around you that push you and improve you. Get different people's points of view as well. Yeah, if you're a recruitment leader, great, but get someone who has no idea about recruitment to have a look at your business and ask them to swap your business. You'd be astounded at what they find. Just that you think is normal because you've done it for 10 years, and then someone else comes in and is like, why the fuck do you do that? Shit, actually, I genuinely don't know. Mess up highlight reel. Early days, I was all companies, all sizes, all geographics, all niches. Mainly just because I was sick of everyone talking about how ultra-niche they were. And I was like, it can't be that hard to build a business not on a niche. Turns out it is, for sure. Can confirm for anyone that is thinking about it. Yeah, did that for far too long. Mess up highlight reel. I think it's difficult because I would say being stubborn and, well, let's call it drive, right, is a superpower, but it's also kryptonite at the same time. You need to understand when what you're doing isn't necessarily working. And the faster you can fail and pivot and change, the better this is going to work for everyone. And let's link that back to the listeners. If off the back of this, you're like, "Okay, cool. Let's start thinking about some other services or solutions we can maybe speak to our existing customer base about." Find out what doesn't work before you figure out what does work. Because it's way easier to go and fail than it is to win. So, go and do 4 different projects and work out which 2 are absolutely shit the bed, right? And then focus on the other 2 and figure out how to improve them. Yeah, I'll just keep rambling on now, so I'll leave that there.

It's helpful. Look, Oliver, I really appreciate you being super transparent. I think, you know, we are like, ever since I've met you, I could sort of tell how passionate you are around the solutions piece. And I think, you know, this sort of story of how, you know, you just figured it out, obviously, but, you know, you stayed really committed and you're starting to really reap the rewards of that. I know you're going to feel like you're just getting started, got way more to improve, way more to learn. Which is obviously absolutely the case, but I think there's one thing saying that we, I wanna build a recruitment business with recurring revenue and clients that work with us for a long time. There's one thing saying that, right, and there's a whole nother thing saying no, being distracted, saying yes to, you know, a bit of contingent work here and there. But you've stuck it out, and I'm sure there's, going to be plenty that you're going to run into more challenges. But what I always find, which I always have to try and remind myself, is I can ask you it now. I'm sure that you wouldn't change those 18 months because of everything else that you learned.

No, I, I definitely wouldn't, in all seriousness, because it's, it's, it's a critical factor for getting us to where we are now and, and also for getting me to where I am as an individual, but as an actual human being, I evolved more than I ever have in those particular 18 months. So yeah, I appreciate that. And yes, saying no, saying no or getting a no, right, is definitely just pushing you towards an eventual yes. So, the other piece to this is just don't stop, just keep doing it, like, whatever it is, just keep going with it and keep iterating and keep improving. And if one of the foundations is have fun as you're doing it, then eventually one day it'll figure itself out, hopefully faster than it took for me. But most people listening are probably much smarter than I am, so they won't have any issues.

Love it, Oliver. Appreciate you. Thanks for coming on, man.

Mate, thanks for having me. Been an absolute pleasure. Thanks, Hishem.