From Reset to $6M: The Strategy, Standards, and Pivots That Rebuilt LHi Austin with Jack Eldridge

Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you for having me.

It's been great getting to know you. Have our event tomorrow that you're part of as well. So you've been on a pretty interesting journey. I shared something this morning on LinkedIn around how I think a career in recruitment is one of the best careers out there. One of those factors is it can literally take you anywhere in the world.

You can, from Basel and New York to Texas.

Exactly. So I'm sure you've seen this with people that you speak to, but one of the things that has really been consistent over the last 2 years is the amount of like UK firms that want to go into the US or already in the US are doing it from the UK. But it will probably be on the business plan of a lot of companies to try and get boots on the ground in the US. So that's why I was really looking forward to sit down with you, because to give everyone a bit of context, you've been in the LHR Group that has a number of different brands within that group for nearly 10 years. You've been at that business for circa 10 years, joined in 2016.

During the Euros.

And you've had a lot of experience in the US specifically. So started a big chunk of that in New York.

Mhm.

But what we're really going to drill into is since 2020 you've been in Austin, been building out the Austin office. So to give everyone a bit of a timeline there, because that's what we're going to drill into in terms of how that's gone, what we've learned, what we've had to learn the hard way. You came over to Austin September 2020, there's a small team of you, 4 or 5 people, and then from that point 2021 was your first full year, did circa $1.8 million Still around 5 people. That year was all around being very client-first, client-centric. How many accounts can we be working with that we're doing 10+ deals with, which I'm gonna talk about.

Mm-hmm.

2022, you'd circa $3.5 million, around 13 heads, still all perm. In terms of the brands that we had at this point, we had Piper Maddox, which is renewables brand. We had Lawrence Harvey, which is tech, is your tech brand.

Yep.

2023, circa $4.2 million, around 18 heads. Then we added the Harper Harrison, which is now one of your brands, which is built environment. Also then started to think about contract. Then 2024, so last year, $5.2 million, circa 21 heads. Officially launched contracts are part of that revenue number is around $500K contracts, and that's under the Pipermatics brand. And then year to date, tracking run rate, $6 million, around 24, 25 heads. Contract have a target of $1.5 million. Now that's a big priority. Got about 70% of the team who are Americans, rest is British. And we've got a few things that have happened that we're going to drill into, but we've got a bit of a timeline there. So what we wanted to do is really just go through some of the important moments of things that we feel like has helped you get to where you are today is the goal.

For sure.

So why don't we just start? Because I found this interesting. And I think there might be some elements that people can learn from here because if people are coming over to the US, this might be top of mind. So you said to me when you went into that room, it didn't feel like an LHI office.

The Austin office, you mean?

The Austin office, yeah. When you first got there, that's something you shared with me, it was like, it doesn't feel like an LHI office. So tell me what you meant by that or what were the things that gave you that feeling because if people successful and come over here, they're gonna want to keep that, what they feel like they've done well in wherever they are, UK, Europe, whatever. They're gonna be thinking, how can we make the core elements of what makes us us in a new location? What is it that you saw?

Our ex-CEO, Jim Daniels, used to call it the LHI stardust. That's his phrase for it, right around when you walk in an LHI office, wherever it's in Berlin, Munich, London, Manchester, LA, Miami, New York, or Austin, it should have that sense. You should feel like you're in an LHI office, not just because of the writing or the pictures on the wall. It should feel somewhat LHI. I remember when I first walked into the London office back in 2015, probably when I was interviewing, and it was night in from the company that I was at the time. You could just feel the energy, the sense that people were all in it together. For me, when I went to Austin, I'd just come up through New York for for nearly 5 years, seeing it grow from 0 to about 60 by the time I left. I'd seen what they had built and what LHI in the US could be. Going into Austin, we'd launched LA as well at that point. That was probably about 30 or 40, another pretty well-established office at the time. And Austin had got, or had tried to have been kicked off basically as COVID hit. It was being run by the MD of the US at that point. So I know he probably had bigger fish to fry than just kick off a small team here in Austin. It hadn't quite got off the ground. It was just a small room, tiny office, as every office in the US starts. Didn't have that feel that it should, and it was all men as well, so there was no diversity in the hiring at that point. So there was a few things there that probably had to get fixed or changed.

Just out of interest, because obviously that isn't something you can just change like that, is it? What are the things that you brought forward, or the real top of mind of things are like, this is what we really need to stay true to, that you can control, that you want to make sure is there in the long term? Because you're not going to be able to just instantly make it an LHI office, are you? So what were the fundamental things you're like, right, we need to be doing this, we need to be doing these things? Because they probably stuck with you over the long period of time. Absolutely.

And I think there's still things that we put in place 5 years ago that we still do now. I remember learning a lot of lessons from the period in New York and then being able to apply that when I got here. But there was certain fundamental processes or LHI standards or LHI basics as we call them. 4 or 5 key things that are part of your day-to-day and part of the processes that you do in your job. That just weren't there. There was no weekly flow in terms of how you get a team together at the start of the week, you agree what you're going to try and achieve. There was no sort of quarterly goals or yearly goals. So it's basically like a rebuild from the ground up in terms of creating a team, creating a philosophy, creating a culture. And it needed some new hiring, it needed some injection of personalities in the space as well. That initial period from September to March was around me scrapping it, restarting.

Love that.

Yeah, we can get into the specifics of those things.

Yeah, give me the 4 or 5 things you said. So, because quarterly, the They're boring.

I mean, the boring processes. These are the practical things that I know you like your people to take away at their desk, but they're baseline things that should make your job easier. So there's periods in New York where things might be a bit out of kilter. You might have a load of jobs, but the delivery isn't there, or you might have a load of offers, but you're not closing as many as you should. Over the years, we've developed certain processes to make sure that we're delivering the output that it should. So real baseline level things like job confirmation emails that you send to your clients as a receipt of a contract before you start a search. Certain ways that you put together your client preparation email template before interviews, the way that you do your candidate preparation. There's real baseline things that just weren't being done. Job coverage trackers. So what process do you follow when you kick off a search? Things like that. How do you track your BD? So yeah, there's about 5 or 6 things there that we had to implement. And then that flow of the week was, for me, probably the most important thing because actually we'll get into it.

Yeah, let's do that. Cause I think that'll be really helpful for people cuz some people don't have rhythm, or maybe sometimes they're consistent with it, sometimes they're not. So give us that rhythm because that would make sense. Then you're implementing some of the processes that work, and maybe everyone was doing slightly different things, or there wasn't certain things that people should be doing. And then, like you said, this is the most important. So yeah, give us the sort of operating cadence.

So I remember you wanted how it is now, 5 years down the line.

Start, and then we can talk about how it is today.

Because when you start, things are a little little clunky and you learned a lot over the 5 years. I remember looking back when you and I met the other week and it was, I can look back at the sales meetings and the sort of things I was driving 5 years ago. For me, the whole thing I wanted to create was a room that felt, and it is a bit cheesy, but it's fine. It was around positivity, preparation, and proactivity. I love the alliteration. 3 Bs. And you could tie in real baseline level things around those things, right? So, and I remember there's a place in Austin called Perry's that do cheap pork chops on Fridays. So it used to be positivity and preparation for pork chops was the first like monthly thing we used to drive. That's just part of what you expect the room to feel like. But the preparation was, and I learned this again from New York, not leaving a Friday until achieved. You've gone through your preparation checklist. You know what you're coming into on a Monday. Have you got 15 calls booked in? Have you got your Monday and Tuesday blocked out in advance of your Wednesday catch-up? So getting some real tight ways of working around your 2-day sprints type of thing in a week. And putting some responsibility on the individuals to make sure that they're doing that. That for me was always key. And the proactivity, mate, this ties into what my whole philosophy was at that time, which we'll get into as we discuss being the billboard and being the face of your market. You can't be that unless you are being proactive in your approach. We all know reactive recruitment where you're waiting for a response or your emails are not special. Get out there and make that known. So it's around proactivity and incentivizing being more on the front foot and getting out there while being prepared, while implementing these sort of world-class basics that we called them at the time. Again, it is what it is. Creating a room that was positive, prepared, and proactive. And that was the first sort of 6-12 month goal for me. I still value those things massively, but at that period it was, yeah, how can we make that room more of the 3 Ps?

I think that'll be useful for so many people that might find themselves in that position. Even if it's not in the new office, they might look around their team and feel like things have got a bit stagnant, a bit complacent. And there's loads of things there where it's like, actually, you know what, we do need some clear ways of communicating what's expected, what we need to be doing. So I think that'd be really helpful. And then I've just got here, so is this still very much the case now in terms of— because now there's like circa 20 of you, Monday kickoff, goals, pipeline, focus accounts, Friday sales meeting, and then monthly reviews, and then there's some other bits that you might do quarterly. Is that typically the Yeah, pretty much.

And I'm still obviously run the office now, but over that period we've developed some really promising and high-performing leaders as well. Mm-hmm. Ross Lewis, who runs Piper Maddox. We've got Ben Reeves, who oversees Harrison, Jordan and Kenny. We've got another layer under Ross in Dom and Lauren and Sam Dobbins. These people also need the autonomy to try and create ways of doing it themselves. I still like to give a steer on a blueprint or a framework for what we've seen be successful in the past. Now go and put your own spin on it. I've taken a step back to allow those individuals to put their own stamp on their teams. My responsibilities in terms of maintaining that consistency is having a North Star for each quarter. This year, for example, they're all a little bit cheesy, but that's fine. You have to lean into that. In my experience in America, I feel like I keep jumping ahead, but in America specifically, you'll find that the individuals you hire from schools want to be super proud of where they're from, the school they went to, the college sports team. Even where they work. So if you can tie all of this in and lean into this positivity, it's not what you want. You have to get creative with it. So even this year, I think Q1 was all around untapping your potential, right? And there was a quarter one incentive. This is what I'm in charge of. It was like boat day. We were going on the lake or whatever. Part of that Q1 was being better than you were in Q1 last year and showing that you can complete a Rubik's Cube. Oh my gosh. And then I think quarter two and three we combined, and that was around It's preparation. You have to, see, I've gone back to 5 years ago and dipped into my playbook from year 1. That was around making sure that each week you've got at least 15 calls booked in for the following week. You had to do X amount of deals, was raising the bar. My role is leaning into things quarterly or periods of the year to give a higher thing that we're aiming towards in line with how the other pods and brands are setting themselves up.

Let's just talk about it 'cause you brought it up. The O'Hara piece, because I've learned a lot from you in preparing for this and talking about it. And I think I shared with you, I started to reach out to people about sitting down with promoting the event. Hopefully it will change over time with what we're doing here, but a lot of my network, as you can imagine, are British people that have come over here, or UK companies that want to come over here.

Yeah.

What I picked up on quite quickly was the amount of people saying that A lot of UK companies that come over here have struggled to grow or scale effectively. Like most people here are small teams, but they have ambitions to grow and want to. So the hiring piece seems interesting and you gave me some really good insights. Let's just talk about this because you are so well positioned to share your experience and you are on this great journey now where you just said that you've got some great people in your business. I know this is really the LHI way where you are you're growing talent and you're giving great opportunities to people to grow within the business. What would you say are the main lessons that you've had to learn the hard way around hiring Americans? Because that seems to be something that a lot of people— you can talk about your experience, but just tell us a bit about, for anyone that wants to effectively grow their teams here, they're a US business, they're gonna have to hire Americans.

And you want to have good American talent. They're amazing. My lessons are, I dunno, I'll probably introduce hundreds, 10 years that I've been here in the US, across New York and Austin. I suppose the one thing that jumps out is there's less like hard nos. I think in my experience in England, and it might be different now— again, I really want to be careful generalizing, saying English people, American people— but from what I remember in England, there were— you'd oftentimes leave a room and be like, yep, absolutely not, or yep, absolutely yes. I don't know if that's the case, but my experience It was like that a good amount. In America, I find that's probably a little less. I don't know why that is specifically, but what I think is that in the colleges and their education system, they have a lot more exposure to like corporate world and ways of working maybe than we do in the UK. So their ability to interview and articulate and impress is I think higher. So sometimes you go in that room and you're more inclined to want to hire these people more often than not, and you end up making quite a lot of mistakes. There is no silver bullet playbook to get this right. You have to figure some of this stuff out, obviously. But my experience, I think I have 4 key things I try and delve into to cut through, whether I just think they're really good at interviewing or whether that's going to apply to being good at recruitment as well. And do you want me to go through those things?

Let's go through that.

So number one is every person that you've ever had on this podcast will say the same thing, that they're gonna look for good work ethic. That's probably the first and foremost thing that we're looking for. And everybody has their own ways of testing that, whether that's asking what's the hardest you've ever worked and how does that apply to this?

Oh, work ethic's also, yeah.

And it's absolutely. Second thing I'd look for is a solution-oriented, right, versus a problem-oriented mindset. And I think that can sometimes cut through trained really well to interview because they're gonna come and say the right thing. They're gonna try and show that they are X, Y, Z. But if you can ask and delve in a little bit deeper in terms of how they've gone about— that's right.

So like, do you wanna find out if someone has an experience that they're looking at, like it happened because there was a problem with it versus how can I solve a solution or a problem?

Again, there's levels of question that you can figure out for yourself to try and identify that. It's really hard to have a one-size-fits-all, but for me, I'm looking for that trait in somebody.

Mm-hmm.

And then the third one would be somewhat coachability. Can they articulate or can they remember what they've learned? Yeah. So oftentimes I'll try and implement, or I'll try and say one or two hints and tips about recruitment, maybe on the first interaction, and then are they remembering that on the second or third interview? So it shows an aptitude and they can apply industry-level skills to the process. And then the fourth one will be around positive communication. So yeah, those are 4 key things I look for when I'm interviewing American.

And typically, has your— it might have evolved, but typically I think you said it's evolved over time, but obviously you've hired people straight out of college. Or has that changed a bit in terms of trying to get people that have a bit of experience or working experience or I don't know, how has that been?

We've had some of our most successful stories. Kids that have joined us straight from school. Well, they're not kids, they're 22, 23, right? But they've come straight from school, and within 2, 3 years, they're managing large teams. They've hit Dubai trips, they've had Rolexes bought for them. And there's 2 or 3 in Austin now that are prime examples of that. And actually, they was all from Indiana, and they referred each other's friends in. So we were hiring all of these ones from the Indiana school. For me, it was always, there's enough ability in the grads coming out of school in America that if you invest properly within a pretty short timeframe, they can become some of your shining lights. That is the LHI way, something that we pride ourselves on, right? Versus having to go externally and for manager or team leads all the time, it's can we develop internally? I think the talent pool in America is really primed for that, but you've gotta identify the right people. More importantly, this is the point I wanted to make on hiring in the US. How do you identify who's good? You'll have that same challenge. There's a high level of expectation. From these guys coming out of school to the company that they're joining, that that company can provide them a world that is gonna develop them. If you are a company coming out from the UK launching in the US, we made this mistake for years. We didn't Americanize. On all of our boards, it still had pound signs. We didn't adapt our programs to the US. It was still how we used to do it in London. And that's fine, 'cause that's how it's gonna be for most companies launching here. Pretty quickly you've probably got to try and make those— are you providing a platform for these individuals coming from really good schools that can add value to your business? Because if you're not, they just won't join you. There is a lot of competition even in Austin. When we first launched in Austin in 2019, there was a handful of UK companies here trying to, trying to get going. A few are still here, a few aren't. Now there's probably more than ever sort of 5, 6 person companies all going after the same talent. How you can differentiate yourself is by acknowledging that American talent do need a different platform to succeed, in my opinion, than UK individuals.

Yeah, I think you gave me a really good nugget since sitting down with you, which I've shared with other people, which has resonated with them, which is the pride part and the parents part. Because like, I think we spoke about it when I was starting my career, there's no way that my mum and dad would have influenced where I went if they wanted to. Yeah, it was just no, I don't think so. Like, if my mum and dad said, I think you should join this company, that was nowhere near even the conversation. I think we said about it, didn't we, like, when we're almost— particularly for people that get into recruitment, that are given an opportunity, it's like, I'll take that £18 grand starting salary and get going. You're giving me the opportunity, do you know what I mean? But That was a really interesting insight.

Mindset's a bit different because I don't know why, and again, generalizing, cuz not everybody's the same, but in my experience, what I have seen is that the schools these American individuals are going to are very expensive. They have a level of expectation that they go and achieve XYZ when they— see, I say Z now— when they leave school. Oftentimes their parents are very much involved in that decision, so they'll research you and your business. They'll play a big factor in whether their kid joins LHI or wherever. This is something that we've done very well recently, hiring American heads to make sure that we're completely set up for American training. We have onboarding programs that are now way further advanced than we were when we first joined. It used to be, come and sit on the desk with me and teach you how to do recruitment. Obviously it's not that anymore. You have to professionalize your environment and provide them, I think, on a week-to-week basis a room that they want to be in. Like, I think I wrote this down when I was doing a bit of prep, that you are responsible just as much for proving to them that you were the right place for them to choose to come and work, just as much as they are for proving that you were right for hiring them.

Yeah, I think just— and then just to round this out, because I think there's some really good lessons in there— is when you can turn around and point to people and say, we've got these people in the business where they're exactly where you are today and this is where they now are with the business, then that's going to massively help in terms of having those internal success stories. You've got to try and work towards that, going from 0 to 1 in terms of no American people in your business, no entry-level talent, to then having 1 or 2 people that have succeeded with you. That is going to be the hardest part. But then when you do have that, you can actually point at the evidence. You can say, Jack joined us, this is where he's at, this is what he achieved with us. And that's going to massively, again, be able to help you achieve if you do want to grow your business over here. Get great entry-level talent.

100%. It will pay you back within 2 or 3 years if you get it right. Um, that can be a short-term fix and we know what we're getting, but if you really want to scale longer term, having those ex-stories from Americans is really important. And we have, we involved them in the interview process as well. So Bailey, she'll be involved in the interview process a lot of the time and talk to individuals about her story and her journey and be able to answer questions at a peer level, which is a good experience for the interviewers.

Definitely. It's one thing saying this is what we can provide, but coupling that with this is what we can provide you and here's an example is just a whole different ball game.

Yeah.

Right. So let's talk a bit about gone through hiring, and I know that people really struggle with. Let's talk about the journey you've been on, particularly around building a robust office in terms of the different markets. So talk, like, I think I really like the way that you frame this. Why was there a real emphasis as you were building out this office around having 5 core accounts and these core accounts would be companies you can forecast 10+ placements with? Like, why did that, when we prepared for this, that seemed like a real focus in terms of strategy and what you wanted to do. I'm sure that still plays out now in terms of people's desks and the different brands. How many core accounts do we have? Let's talk a bit about this. Why was there a real emphasis on that in terms of the early days on, on building this office?

I mean, other than the real obvious answer, I think again, I'd come up in a New York office that was really successful. We'd also made a lot of mistakes along the way, but ultimately it was a really high-performing group of people when I left. So I was quite lucky that I could look and take some learns from that period when I came and was fully responsible for Austin. For me, some of the key lessons was around not running before you can walk or getting better before you push to get bigger. Part of being better for me was having core hiring triggers that we should hit before we went and pressed play on bringing new people in. And actually looking around UK companies that have been here over the last few years, I know personally some that I'm going through those challenges now and maybe not having those robust hiring plans or hiring triggers before they then go and, and layer a load of people on top. For me, one of the key parts of that was having repeatable business and key accounts where we could bank. So yeah, if you got 4 or 5 accounts where you're doing 10 placements, if they're an average of $30K deals and you got $300K accounts, you got 5 of them, you got $1.5 million banked. So it's like, can you build around that? You absolutely can. So for us it was, can we go to market and identify companies where there's gonna be higher volume? It was as simple as that really, because then I knew that once we got to 3, we could then go scale to X amount. Once we got to 5, we could then scale to X amount. That was how I wanted to make sure we weren't gonna have to take 3 steps forward and then 2 steps back.

Yeah.

So it was held to being pretty small for a longer period of time to build the robustness to then go and launch off.

That makes complete sense because it's gonna be harder if you are trying to bring people into an environment where there isn't consistency or there isn't actual forecastable revenue. You're gonna be putting more pressure on these people when they come in. That makes complete sense as to why you made that the focus. Before we add any more headcount, we know we wanna grow this office, we have ambitions for it. Before we can do that confidently, let's really make sure we've got forecastable revenue. The amount of teams and companies that I speak to where the real problem is there is no consistency. Mm. And I'm sure you've seen this in your career. Let's forecast how many placements we're gonna make over the next 6 months. And a lot of people probably struggle to do that, or they're saying it but not with a lot of confidence. What do you think is really behind recruiters just doing ones and twos and not being able to win accounts or get anywhere near 10+ placements with an account? Because you probably had to help people with that.

I think it's perhaps lack of knowing that you can. Again, not to generalize, but my experience in the UK was, was fun. It was successful, you know, in the tech recruitment market back then. It's so different from how clients perceive you in the US. We have an opportunity here to go and win 5 clients where we're gonna do 10+ placements cuz they trust us enough to do so. If I'd never been in New York, come straight to Austin, maybe that wouldn't have been the play. But I knew that it was possible because of what I'd seen happen and what I'd done in New York. I think first and foremost, it's understanding that when you're in the room with a client, you've gotta prove why you're in the room. Getting in the room is hard in the first place, but when you're in there, the opportunities for what you can do with that business or with that client or that person is, I think, huge. So not settling for We just work with this one business unit and this one hiring manager. It's how you position yourself as a solution to their business problems, not just, you know, I can hire you a data scientist in a week's time, you know.

Do you think it's fair to say, because I have heard that from people that have maybe gone from UK market or Europe markets to the US market, it can be harder, maybe take longer to break into accounts, but when you do break into account, the potential of that account could be way larger. Is that fair?

Yeah, that's definitely. I think there's different ways to do it, right? We went down the route of creating different models and ways of working with businesses. We do a bit of contingent recruitment and a lot of retained business. We developed ways of working with clients that incentivize higher volume, subscription models. Talent pipeline model was one we did back in the day. We now have embedded solutions. Probably the most popular one we do at the minute is like packaging up team builds and doing like project retainers. Slightly discounted rates, but that's not really the key sell for it. It's more so like working with one exclusive partner, trusting us with your business problems across multiple areas, not having to go to multiple different recruitment partners. We have 180 consultants across the US that we can tap into and get more resource to focus on your search or your project. If you can position that correctly and meet with key stakeholders, and also here in the US, what I've found, it's still, it's quite like a full contact sport.

What's that mean?

You gotta go and meet these people. Right. And I agree, like in America as well, it's, and, and in the UK to be fair, it's get out there and meet these people, create new relationships, go and play golf, become an asset to these people. And I think if you are impressive enough and trustworthy enough for them to trust you with their business's problems, you will open up, you'll just naturally open up conversations to, can we build you a whole team? Can you pay us a subscription quarterly to run your recruitment, and you got to lean into that because the opportunity is there. And obviously it's probably a different skill set from how you sell that to how you're just selling one candidate over the phone. It's quite a different approach.

Yeah, Ed, who I sat down with whilst here, he's got a rule basically where he doesn't work with any company or hiring manager unless they meet face to face.

Yeah, all right, he made that a rule. There's probably some—

he's like, no, like, I've put that He basically said the data, obviously there's gonna be loads of things that go into it, but it was like, we looked at the data, they just went through a whole journey. They just had a lot of clients that they were working with that they had work with, but it just wasn't committed. And they basically called a lot of their jobs and their clients and ended up with way less, but doing way more. They ended up with 6 that they can do 10+ with.

Nice.

And they looked at the data and everyone that they've met, they've just done a way better job with and better things have happened. It's interesting that you say that.

To me, I actually really Agree with that. I think this year specifically, because as I'd alluded to, some great leaders coming through in my office that has allowed me to probably carve a third of my role this year to just be client-facing again. And it's been excellent. I've been on a lot of trips. My wife and 2-year-old have been to Africa. I've probably gone and met our top 20 clients in Austin face-to-face. Yeah, like golf days, went to their launches and stuff and really been involved in that face-to-face. And it's helped not just because of me, but with the consultants. I've really helped us. Develop better relationship with those clients that's then created more accounts for us. And that's been a really good use of my time and been fun too.

Something I wanted to ask you was, cuz you are in a really interesting position where you work for a business that has different brands in different markets. Mm-hmm. I just wanted to ask you nonetheless, because when we sat down, you were like, yeah, par, Harparison, that wouldn't work. It's candidate-led. Piper Medics, relationship-led. That's how that works. How can people get a better grasp and understanding of what works in their market and industry? Because not everyone has the benefit of seeing like, oh, that really works in that team, but doesn't work in my team. Because a lot of people might just do the same sort of ecosystem. So I was just interested to get your take on that in terms of how can we get better at understanding what really works in our market? What, what doesn't, because you really spoke about that in an interesting way where you can really see that in a different manner in the different markets and they do operate in a different way.

They do. And don't get me wrong, mate, I've made many mistakes in 10 years, but I'm also lucky enough that you've got 10, 15 years worth of business here that you can lean into for advice. You've got Alex Cohen who runs Piper Maddox, the other office leaders that have been through these challenges as well that we speak, communicate, and share thoughts and data, but ultimately is your decision on how you're gonna shift a playbook for a brand or a team.

Mm-hmm.

And yeah, I think I spoke to you about how in Austin we recently decided the start of last year we moved the LH, which is the tech perm team, into Piper Maddox, our renewables brand. That was a key decision. We had recently pivoted Harper Harrison, our construction and engineering built environment brand. To becoming more of a 180 team. This is pretty new and we're gonna go all in on that engineering space with one client-facing tip of the spear and a bit of a delivery team around that person, those two. Lawrence Harvey, I'd always said, was a blend of high-level spec to market and relationship-driven. So we've got three brands that have three quite different approaches.

I do like that. That's a really good breakdown. Obviously you've got the benefit of seeing the data, what's worked, you can speak to people. But like, have you in the past, say, let's just take Harp Harrison as an example. You shared with me how that market works, what you found is taking product to market and it's very candidate-led. Has there been periods where like, cuz you've seen the other type of stuff that works, the relationship-driven and these types of things that you tried to make that brand work that way?

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, that's what I mean. I'm just curious about that. It's cuz you've seen what also works. How long do you give it?

Do you know what I mean? Don't get me wrong, there's always Saying just relationship-driven is general, right? Because every brand needs to be relationship-driven with the companies that you're targeting. One of my key ways of threading a business is being the billboard and developing a network of senior people in your space. They can be candidates or clients. You should train your individuals to be skilled enough to turn that relationship into whatever gives the most benefit to them and us, right? That's a holistic way of doing your job. Harper Harrison, for example. Still requires a bit of that. I think everything requires being really known in your space. If you are not taking multiple candidates to market to our clients that we have contracts with on a weekly basis, you won't be developing enough interviews to, to do the level of deals that we wanna do. So yeah, I think the reason being is in that industry, in the engineering space, they're all consultancies. They work as consultancies or as partners to construction projects, and they're all quite similar. So incentive for candidates to leave one and move to the other, quite small, unless it's like a big pay rise or whatever. So if the work you put in has generated you an amazing candidate in that space, you should drop everything and get that candidate 5 interviews. So that's, in my opinion, works. Your whole business model, your whole KPIs, your ways of working should be geared around finding an amazing candidate. This sounds so basic.

Mm-hmm. That's fine.

And getting them interviews. Whereas in Piper Maddox, for example, we work in quite senior levels anyway, right? In Piper Maddox. So it's less lower level placements. So all of your relationships could be, that person could be a candidate or a client. So it's more finesse, more thinking behind what that place should be with that relationship. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I got it. So I really think that we're getting into like market stuff here and that's been really I think I was saying, over the last 6-12 months, as a business, as a leader, you've got to be aware of these things. Like, you're looking at what's working, what isn't. You're obviously working with your team, which you think is going to help Harper Harrison achieve what you want it to achieve. As a leader, I feel like you've got to be close to that and make decisions on that, or at least to help build that, versus just put all that onus on the recruiter to figure it out. They're doing certain things and then saying it's not really working, and it's just down to them to figure it out. I do think there's got to be a 100% recruitment leader-led thing. Do you wanna talk a bit about, cause I think this builds quite nicely into it. Obviously you had that story, didn't you? Again, we're getting a bit market specific, but I think people can take the lesson and apply it to their own. But obviously renewables, it's quite government-led is what you shared with me.

It is.

Is that fair?

Yeah. Well, no. Yeah.

I mean, to a certain degree.

You've gotta be aware of certain legislations and bills that the government are revoking or putting in because that will change the landscape of clean fuels versus solar versus wind versus e-mobility. There'll be certain tax breaks that certain niche verticals within renewables will benefit from. Sometimes a law will be passed or a bill will be put in that means projects are not going to be financed in that area. We then know that actually there's probably not going to be too much hiring or there's going to be a rush to complete these projects in the next 18 months. So you've got to be aware of that. Stuff.

You gave me an example where you was doing a lot of work in what, like hydrogen? And it just like got certain things passed as like, hang on a minute, companies aren't incentivized at all to do that. So that's going to be—

yeah, we had spent a good amount of time, not me personally, a couple of individuals in Pythonatics had. It was 45V, was a tax break that companies in hydrogen sector were going to get basically financial benefit from if they were producing X amount hydrogen. That was revoked. So a lot of projects in hydrogen were null and void. We had to quickly make a decision what we were gonna do next. So this wasn't all me getting this data, it was fed to me by the individuals in that team. They'd heard a lot going on in the renewable natural gas space, which is in— so we looked at the data, we heard what we was hearing from the market and made a pretty quick call to move into that space. That was probably March or April last year. And that turned out to be a very good decision, actually.

Yeah, you gotta be able to make those.

Yeah.

Because we said, didn't we, I think you shared with me, like, again, this is quite simplified, may not work in every sort of context, but you said, you're, if you're seeing in your team, you've got the data, if you're seeing your team putting in the exact same inputs, and over a 3-month period, they're getting nowhere near the outcomes that you're used to, probably something you want to double-click into and have a look.

That's on you as a leader or your leadership group to fix that, in my opinion. Because you've hired these people, you've trained them, you believe in them, they're there for a reason. And if their level of input and effort is there and it's just not producing the results that we want, there's obviously something that's not quite right. So you've got to take responsibility for ensuring that your people are working in a world where their work is gonna benefit them. Ultimately your business.

Yeah.

There's so much more information out there these days. I think I saw a comment on one of your videos, I don't know who it was.

Yeah.

But he was saying that, um, I don't know what it is, other markets, you can be distracted by too much information and etc., etc., which is true. But at the same time, as leaders, we've got access to more of that information than ever. And if you're not using that to the benefit of your team, then you're doing your team a disservice. And that's a surefire way to not be first in new hot markets. So in my opinion and my experience, using that information and being on top of that information, having your finger on the pulse as a leader is super important.

Part of the job. Obviously it's less about the exact market you're in and more about the sort of principles and what people can take into their own ecosystem. You've got a good example of that, right? In terms of making a slight adjacent move. Which then resulted in year 1, that being a 7-figure revenue stream.

That was the clean fuels.

Yeah. Was that just because people connected with senior people in the market a lot and kept hearing X consistently, or it kept coming up? What led to you or the team going, we need to put some resources, we need to put some focus into this? Because it was a brand new market within your ecosystem.

We had, I'd say stumbled is probably the wrong word. Client that we were targeting for hydrogen that we were pretty close with that decided they were going to launch it was like 8 big RNG projects that they wanted us to help with.

What's RNG?

Renewable natural gas.

Yeah.

We went and met them to gather a lot of information on what this world looks like. We ended up placing a bunch of contractors in, and then off the back of that was like, right, this seems like a strong enough industry and there's enough excitement about it that we should bring in another 2 or 3 individuals, make it a 4-person team and go at it. It was the highest performing team, maybe the highest performing pod in Austin, maybe one of the highest performing pods across the whole LHR business last year. Because we was there very, very early. I think we only had like one other competitor that we knew, like recruitment firm that were operating in that space as well. We met them at a conference actually. That was, that was fun. But yeah, so first thing there is you build a team with tangible inputs. Obviously some KPIs are what we targeting this group to achieve over a 2 or 3 month period. That's a good enough sample size for you to analyze all of that input that's gone into this space. I've been involved in meeting some clients too. You've then got a solid enough sample size and level of information and data to make a proper decision. So yeah, don't make them overnight, but I think that was enough there for us to be like, yeah, this is an area that we want to go after.

It might really vary depending on what like market, but I think straight away people might be thinking what are the inputs you'd like to track? And that would probably be a good insight for people. You went to this client, had a bit of this experience. What is it that you targeted with them? Was it getting X number of meetings with people? Was it CVs out, what were the things that you really like to track that then you can use and go, okay, because we've seen this, I think let's put more energy into this over the next 3 months versus no.

So when it was just one individual that we moved into it, and it was 2 actually at the beginning, I'd be targeting them on a week. There'd be a shared spreadsheet or shared area of the database that we want to use where we just track commercial information. So there might be leads, it might be we're hearing about this project, we're hearing about company that hires contractors. Hearing about this company got financing, whatever it might be. So you're tracking that on a weekly basis. We're trying to populate that with like 20 pieces of information each a week minimum.

Nice.

You are then building your PTR group, which is like your golden senior network.

PTR, what's that? What's that stand for?

That stands for these people potential to recruit. So they can be either a candidate or a client.

Mm-hmm.

We're growing that by 10 or 15 a week. We are taking one top candidate to market a week minimum. And then you build that enough over a period of time to make a decision. Yeah. It's quality over quantity for sure. Like those numbers I just said there are not anything crazy. You should be able to easily hit, but it's, is there the quality conversations? Are you putting quality people in your ptr group? Are we generating quality commercial information? I'd rather have 10 solid relationships than 50 people that just don't know who you are.

You know? But what would make you go, this has got really good potential? Is it then the quality of the information, the quality of the people you're getting in your network, but then also the bites that we're getting and the return that we're getting for the input.

So you'd be, we'd be, actually I know you're tomorrow's event sponsor by the way, The Sourcewell, right? It plays a big part in that because back a few years ago, if you were saying let's take 1 or 2 amazing candidates to market, you know, in a specific way, take a long time. You know, if you wanna get out to that 50, 100 companies, maybe a little less at that period, to be honest. But Now that's obviously operating for you in the background. You can test how many bites you're getting off of that prior to introduction.

Mm-hmm.

You can test how many of these senior people that are going into your ptr network are hiring.

Mm-hmm.

How many of them are talking to you about hiring in the space?

Mm-hmm.

The bites that you're getting, the level of information, level of leads, the excitement in the space, how much finance is going into it.

Nice.

So when all of those things are giving you green ticks, you should probably take it seriously. Yeah.

I love that. What I wanted to ask you, just because it's come up a few times, it definitely seems a bit of a theme here from people that I'm spending time with, which is this PTR thing you're mentioning. Some people might call it, like I interviewed someone this week that broke this down slightly different, but similar in terms of your golden circle. Do you, like, speaking to senior people in the market, do we feel like we need to have something to talk to them about? To grow that. I think what I'm sort of picking up on when I'm speaking to people is maybe people in the US are more open to networking and speaking to people at that senior level.

I'm pretty sure so.

Because what I'm talking about here is, do we feel like it might just help people? Some people can do that really wrong, reaching out to people like you with like a fake job, a fake opportunity, just to get you interested. There'll be loads of people that are doing that. Is that necessary? Is that required to achieve the same outcome, which is grow a network with great senior people that are now connected with you that you might be able to help at some point?

No. And you're just gonna damage your reputation. Like, especially if you're trying to connect with senior people, they're not stupid. You can do more harm than good if you get that wrong. And there's a high chance of getting that wrong. You need to do the billboard analogy, right? Again, I know it's cheesy, but the whole concept was, especially in America, you see 'em all the time, like the real estate agents. I forgot what they're called. Estate agents in England. Big face, big number next to a highway. So why are they spending tens or hundreds of thousands a year to have that billboard next to the A35? So when anybody wants to sell a house or buy a house, they might remember Hishem's face and Hishem's number. So we don't have billboards, but the concept is right. We can create billboards by what we are doing. Who are we approaching? How are we doing it? And even better, we can choose the people that are seeing out billboards, right? So that's the sort of training I'll do with people coming on to grasp the concept of the more people you know in your space, the better it's gonna be for you longer term. And you don't need a fake job. You waste a lot of time doing it that way too. So you need to, or I try and teach individuals to be confident enough to run with just an intro call. And you probably send out an email first and follow it up. But this person picks up the phone, it's how are you within the first 10 seconds? Wanting them to know that there's value to be had in this conversation. I've found a lot of success in doing it this way, which is you're sort of opening that call by telling them that I specialize in running searches in renewable natural gas. I'm approaching you for a specific reason. I'm so glad you answered. There's 3 things I wanna talk to you about actually, John. One, I run searches for some of the biggest and best companies in the US, some of which you might be interested in. I'm building teams for companies like Harley-Davidson or X, Y, and do the same for you. And 3, Been a bit of a weird candidate market out there this year, isn't it? I'm really interested in how you've approached those challenges. So let's swap some notes. Which one would you want to talk about? You got 15 minutes to me tomorrow. If you get that call right and you give your grads from school the ability and the confidence to run that call, they will book in meetings. And then you've been honest at the beginning that you're trying to talk about all of these 3 things. Where do you want to start? And then it just tees it up way, I think, for a better conversation.

Yeah, and that'd be really helpful for people. 'Cause that has just come up so much and I know there'll be people listening and they'll be looking around the office right now and there will just be people that will just be doing like fake job candidate flips. I just, like you've said, I can just talk from my position. I just don't think that's beneficial in the long term. You don't think it's required when you can approach like that and get the same outcome.

You can create other reasons to call as well. Use conferences. But we share so much information in HR across all of our brands because we are employee owned and working towards our next financial event. The big thing for us is collaboration and we call it being goosey. I'll tell you why later. But we'll often see, I did that last week, I had a bit of free time. I wanted to start connecting with some C-level people in renewables. I saw a COO role sent round from one of our guys in New York, and I can then take that COO role. Just to approach COOs. If they're good, I'll send them, but it's not a fake job. It's giving me a chance to use that as a conversation starter. So I'd also say sharing of information like that across your business can lead to giving people more reasons to create a reason to call.

Yeah. I mean, I think that's really good. The feeling that I'm getting is I think a lot of people will, this will be one of their core strategies, if I'm honest, in terms of what we're talking about here. I just want to double-click on it for a sec. Because you'll be helping your team with this. How, if I did what you just said and then I booked a call with X person, how do I make sure that that's a really good call versus a bad one?

Yeah, you can waste a lot of time doing fake jobs.

Yeah. Let's talk about that. You gave some really good examples. I think that'll be really useful for people. But then how do we make sure, me and you have time, I want to really deliver on my promise. I feel like that's a way to build trust in the long term. From what you've said, look, we get these good people in our corner, like really great things can happen in the long term. What do we need to make sure we do to make sure that you, Jack, the person I speak to, gets off that call and go, that was a good use of my time, versus that was just a recruiter trying to get information from me and grow my network and it was like more for them than me?

We— the trainings I do as well is on the benefits to them versus the benefits to us. We'll go over this quite regularly so people know what they can give on these calls, even on initial conversations. There's multiple ways that you can waste time with this strategy. One is you're just talking to the wrong people. The people you're trying to have this conversation with, you, they've gotta be intelligently thought out. Are these companies actually hiring? Are they people that are in a space that have influence? Are they in a company that we know we want to work with? Otherwise you're just talking to random people for a reason. Trust me, when we train it, I'm less concerned about the, the—

But you gotta be intentional with that.

For sure. And then that's where you're still generating your lead, you're still utilizing all of your sources to gather information. Then you might find the COO of that company that they're hiring, then you're just going at the top level rather than 3 notches down.

Mm-hmm.

You run this call and then you might not have picked up the level of information that you need to pick up. So we have 6 or 7 key questions, commercial information gathering questions.

Mm-hmm.

If you get 5 of them answered, you can log it as a client call. Against your, against that. So it'll show as a new business call 'cause you're generating enough information from it. I'm not gonna go through all of those questions. I can figure them myself. It's things like who runs the P&L, how big was the team when you joined? How big is it now? Have you ever worked with recruiters? So, so you can get enough of that information. You're building a good enough case about that business and that person that you know next time you call them, you, how you're gonna go about it. Mm-hmm. And what we're giving them, so for me it's name dropping. As a leader of a business, that person you're talking to, they're gonna care about what their competitors are doing, what hiring's happening in that space. We've all got LinkedIn Insights now. You can see growth and decreased growth of companies. We can talk about that. You can talk about conferences coming up. You can talk about placements you just made. That's enough benefit that that person's gonna be like, oh, this, Hishem knows what he's talking about. That's, that's good information for me to have. So leading with relevant name dropping information. Showing that you're abreast of what's going on in terms of legislations being passed, conferences coming up, talking about somebody that they should know, all of those sort of key things. If you're doing enough of that, that person's gonna get off the call and know that Hishem is a good person to know. And that is enough. I think I said to you as well, it's like bare minimum is they had a positive experience. So throughout your life, I say this when I'm training, so you've had interactions with so many people, you've met teachers, coaches, dentists, whatever that you've had to have interactions with. Which ones do you remember? Do you remember the ones that made you feel happy or was a bit different or gave you something? Be that one that they remember.

Yeah, so true. I really like that framing.

And if you do that enough times, all of a sudden you've got 10, 20 people that are senior in your space that like you, that you can then call them and be honest about. Look, Joan, I've got a candidate that I really want to introduce to your business, or I see the area of your business is hiring. Did you know that we do project retainers or subscription services? Let me come see you and talk you through it. And then it's easier to book those meetings. That's really helpful.

I sat down with a guy called Elliot involved with HubScale, and they've created a community in cybersecurity. He spoke to two execs in the same industry working for direct competitors, and they didn't know each other, and he thought that was mad. If you're having these conversations, then it's also recognizing that, yes, I can connect these people, I can make sure these people do know each other, and then there's loads of different things that you can do with that, let alone the outcome of potentially working with these organizations and companies. There might not be a perfect answer to this, but just curious from what you've seen, if this is one of my core strategies as a recruiter, what's like timeline of getting the outcomes that we want? Like working with companies? I'm just curious.

Yeah.

Because if we're doing the intentional part, we're speaking to the right people, we get good information. Sometimes it can happen really quickly and it's like, right, I expect so-and-so needs to get on there.

It doesn't always have to be the strategy though. It should always be your underlying strategy. If there's an amazing lead, an amazing candidate, you might just go in with a bit more front. This is why I'm calling you because I know you're hiring. I've got a candidate. Just run that sort of call. You'll make the decision based on the information you've got. Running PTO or the billboard type strategy, you get quick wins and long-term plays too. It just depends on the timing. It depends on the skill level of the person having the call, depends on the need. So you can't really, there's not really an answer to it.

But you, yeah, it probably is one of your underlying principles behind your desk and being a successful—

saying you're always— and it's, is the work you are doing benefiting you this time next year? Doing that means you in 12 months, are generating this network that will benefit you down the line and hopefully quick.

Love that. So we're on a pretty good run here in terms of what we're doing with this Austin office. We've touched on different things. I think you've shared a really good account of the different moves that you made, different strategies that you have. It's really clear in terms of what you're building in that office, you know, how you can win in your markets. I'm just curious to hear from your point of view, what are you really doubling down on? Now work that we're doing today that we feel like we're gonna benefit from in 12 months' time that is gonna keep you going in the right direction? Because we like seeing year-on-year growth, don't we? Yeah, absolutely. So what, no, we've, there's probably, it might just be more of the same, more the couple elements that really played out. Like what is it that you are really doubling down on to make sure that we're in an even better position months from now? Yeah. In Soston office with this business that you're building.

I'll share a bit and I think if you have a do a podcast with Ben and our new co-CEO talking about their vision for the group long term. For me in Austin Houses, we've been through a bit of change actually. Throughout that change, we've managed to still continue Green Arrows every year for the last 5 years, which I'm really, really proud of. And even with less people last year than the year before. This year, the thing I'm happiest with is the foundation that we've built and the leaders that have come through. Talk to you about Ross Lewis and the level under him that are super talented and high potential leaders as well. So We have a real clear thought-out plan of 4 or 5 key areas in Piper Medics that we are going all in on. We have the new 180 model in Harper Harrison that I'm feeling super confident about. And then we have a contract book in tech that is excellent and it's just one person doing it. I don't know if we need to double down on that or not. I just let him keep doing his thing.

Mm-hmm.

That's Jordan. He was the top bidder of the whole LHI globally last year. So for me it's, How do we continue to introduce more of our new solutions? We are looking at becoming more of a talent solutions provider than just contingent or retained recruitment business. I want to continue to play a key part in introducing our embedded model, our subscription model, and wrapping more clients up or benefiting more clients across more holistically their business than, than maybe just 5 or 10 placements. I'm doubling down on that. And on the development of the leaders that are here. They say a great leader should get to a point where they make themselves redundant. I don't think I'm there yet, but I think the team that we have—

You're on that track.

Definitely good. There's some really talented people in there, and I'd like to get to a point where that might be the case. But for now, it's continuing. We've probably got ahead of next year's plans early. Now, we normally would talk about this stuff in November. We've made all the changes and the structural changes.

Executing, not up and down.

So it's already in place. They're gonna have all of Q4 to have a run at next year.

I'm assuming that's because you've just seen what's happened in the data, everything that's going on, it's just executing.

It's information and decisions offered to me by Ross and others. We think about it, collaborate and make these things happen. This is a team effort for us to be in a position where we are now.

Mm-hmm.

And it's the health, by far the healthiest and the most excited I've been about Austin in, in the 5 years that I've been here.

Yeah, that's class. Cause you've been on some journey, like you said, going into that small room, 4 or 5 people. Being like, we don't have the LHI stardust to how you're talking about it now. Obviously you had to go through a lot of iterations, a lot of learnings, a lot of lessons. But I think that's what we're always trying to work towards, right? When we're leading businesses, leading teams, just having clarity on like, if we do this, it should play out and then it just comes down to executing.

Yeah.

Which is the hard part. But it's really great to hear that. And I've said this to a few people now, as a recruiter, if we're talking about a recruiter, their career now. If you join an organization, if you join a team, if you join a business that has this stuff, clarity on it, like what we're doing, where we're going, this is what we're going to be doing, versus, Jack, join the business, you'll be surrounded by high performers, like we'll just support you whatever you want to do, like we'll, we'll make sure you succeed. I think the former is where you're going to stack the odds in your favor to really achieve a lot of success, achieve your goals.

100%.

Because I feel like I'd rather be in an environment where the leadership team would be like, this is why we're doubling down on it, this is what we're doing. And then it is just on me to execute.

Right. And again, always overcommunicate as a leader and be, just be honest and genuine. Even if there's just 5 of you in a small industrious WeWork room right now, still have that Friday get-together, be the focal point for the group. It adds so much value. Clarity is what you're saying to the people that are around you. It has more value than I think you know. Yeah, there's been periods maybe when I haven't been as good at that. And upon reflection, 3, 4 years ago, probably as good at that as I am now. I think it adds so much to the room, the culture, the goals of the office, the motivation.

Yeah. And I do really think what we're talking about here is on the leadership team and the business personally. I've met a few leaders recently where they've realized they've got like 5 different individual businesses under the same banner. So we're talking about strategy here, leading by the front, the market, what we're doing. Like I can tell when you're talking about there, like there's some real conviction on that. And I just know I'd rather join an environment like that versus you're just gonna be in a silo, we'll support you.

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

Don't get me wrong, there's a place for each team, each brand having their own goals for sure. But as a leader of a group, it's your responsibility to tie that all together. So one thing I think we do very well, LHI in general really, is intertwining sort of the goals of the global business, which is now an employee-owned trust. We have certain goals we're trying to achieve as a group versus the goals of the US, Boston, Piper Maddox or Hal Parison versus the goals of clean fuels versus the goals of the individual. So it's like, how can you intertwine all of those things? And again, you've got to lean into, in my opinion, having individuals share their own goals and motivations with the group. End of month sales meetings, I'll have a theme for the year. This year is one person will come up and they'll talk about when they followed Life's Green Lights, which is Matthew McConaughey.

Yeah.

And found themselves in the situation where they had to be better, and how did they step up to it. Someone will come up and talk about that once, twice a month. Sometimes it gets quite personal, quite open. But I think when you have individuals comfortable enough sharing those personal goals and feelings, it does intertwine that group. It makes it easier to layer on your recruitment. So I've always lent into that side of it, or more so these days.

What a journey. Probably feel like just getting started really. And that can always feel like that. But from where you was to where you are now, got real clarity on where you're going, what you need to double down on, what you need to execute on. I think it's class.

Thank you.

Come a long way.

It's unreal. No, it's been good. No, it is just beginning. I don't necessarily look at pure headcount, but we're probably in a position now where we can introduce a lot more people into that business over the next couple of years and make it even more exciting. It is good. It's fun. And I get a lot of satisfaction from looking at the people in that office going and doing great things and stepping up and That's what we've been doing.

I appreciate sharing all the lessons because I know you've had to learn them the hard way. Yeah, we'll continue to learn, no doubt. Thanks for joining me on the pod.

Appreciate it, mate. I'll talk about it more tomorrow.