From Zero to £500K+ in 9 Months: Nicholas’s Proven Strategies For Success

Nicholas, welcome to the pod. Hi. Uh, I'm looking forward to this.

Yeah, me too.

Obviously you're coming up to a year in this entrepreneurial journey, having your business, um, for nearly 12 months, which you launched in September 2023. So today we're gonna really talk about what you've been up to in this first 12 months. I think there's, there's plenty to be proud about. And also, in preparation for this, I think you've got some really interesting perspectives, takes, which I think a lot of people are going to be interested in.

Yeah, I hope so.

Um, but to give everyone some immediate context, so before, before you launch your, uh, business, you worked in recruitment for what, nearly 6 years?

Yeah, yeah, about that. 5 years.

5 years. It was like 2 companies, right? One company for a long period. And another company, and then you launched Ever Hire. Obviously you partnered with RecruitHub as well. Yeah, to launch Ever Hire.

Yeah, shout out Edmund Blog.

Um, so you went down that route, and then I guess just to give people— let me know if I get any of this, this wrong, okay? But in terms of the career highlights so far, so you gave me the, the quarter, the recent quarter review notes. So since launching, then since launching, you've done just over 500K in revenue. 9 months, you've averaged nearly $60K per month. Your billing, personal billings out of that, um, $536,000 has been $343,000. With 9 months of that, yourself averaging just under $40K. There's 6 consultants in the business. Obviously we were just talking before, but you've got 2 full-time employees in Sweden because your niche and focus is Sweden currently. Um, and your big goal going into hopefully the end of the year is you want to try and reach that, that million milestone.

Yeah, yeah. And I wouldn't say hopefully, it's, uh, yeah, something that we will do.

Yeah, love that. So I think the, the things that I wanted to get straight into was when we, when we prepared for this, something that you was really passionate about was, like I put here, you're dead set on being a specialist. And I think I don't know if you agree, but I feel like that's a quite overused term in recruitment, I'd say, in terms of having a niche, being specialist. But the way that you were talking about it was you have to be really specialist, you have to be dedicated to that. So why don't we start there? Because I feel like when you did speak to me about this, everything starts from here in terms of you getting anywhere near these performance numbers. You wouldn't— you probably wouldn't get there if you wasn't a dedicated specialist. So why don't we start there? Like, how would you describe being a specialist? Like, what does that look like?

Well, yeah, it's quite an overly overused word, and especially like niche, my specialism. Yes, it's very overused, you're right. But like we say, to get to big numbers and to lead a business and to have successful consultants, it's important that not just the business, but each consultant's also got their own specialism. In my view, a true specialist is someone that understands their market thoroughly. So for us, where we work with civil engineering, that's knowing the businesses that work within them. How are the businesses structured? Who are the key people? What are the projects they work with? What are the different types of projects? What are the different types of companies that might be involved in those projects? What are the different types of candidates that would be needed at each different section of that project? And yeah, you'll find, well, what we've found is that from having a true specialist focus, like, we get requests all the time for work that isn't within our specialism. I have no problem in saying no to that. Not in a way that's rude, but just to stick to what our specialism and the values of the business is. But yeah, it's really kind of thoroughly understanding the niche that you're recruiting for and everything that's involved within that.

How hard was it? Was it quite easy for you to say? Because when you go out on your own, it is hard to say no to potential money coming into the bank account, right? I do speak to a lot of founders, and when they start, that can be quite hard. I don't know if you found that. It sounds like maybe it's quite set on like, this is, this is my game plan, this is what I want to focus on. So did you find it easier at the start because you knew what the game plan was, or did you initially have to maybe say yes a bit out of The way I saw it is now that we start, it's like a blank slate, clean slate.

And when I was working at previous businesses and was starting as a trainee, yeah, I did make mistakes and probably signed clients that weren't the best clients to work with. They didn't have the best processes. My candidates weren't super keen on working there. So I kind of viewed it as an opportunity to start again from zero. So we did really focus on only signing customers within our niche, within our specialism that we wanted to work with. 'cause effectively we are not gonna get that opportunity again where it's a brand new brand. We've got zero customers. Like, yeah, maybe that's a scary thing, zero customers, but we saw it more as, okay, this is an opportunity where we can build a portfolio of very, very good clients that are within our specialism, that have good processes, that our candidates want to work with, that have the best projects. So no, it wasn't really too much of a fear to turn the work away.

So how long does it take? So if I join your business tomorrow, yeah, and I'm excited about joining your business because of your approach, you're a specialist, I'm quite excited by that, like how long are you telling me it takes to be a true specialist?

I mean, you inherit part of that from being with us, so we're going to be kind of instilling that ethos in you, teaching that what that means from day one, getting you in front of customers customers that we work with, taking you out to the projects that we work with so you can kind of learn firsthand about that. In my, in my opinion, I am against people saying that they're specialists until they've done at least 12 months. Yeah, don't get me wrong, you'll be billing with us in 8 weeks and you'll be selling retainers within 12 weeks, but I'm not super confident about people going around banding that they're, they're a specialist within anything really under 12 months.

And what, what can I do to like speed up that process besides doing the things that you just said? Like, you know, can I speed up— if I'm listening to this and I really see the, the value in becoming a specialist, committing to that, um, like what have you seen the best consultants that maybe go that extra step besides being a sponge Speaking to, you know, candidates, customers, like observing all of that, taking it all in, like what else can I do to speed that up?

Yeah, for me it's quite simple. Like I'm just obsessed with what I do. I enjoy what we do. I love the projects we work with. I love the clients that we work with and I genuinely find what the candidates, what the candidates do interesting. The consultants that I've worked with that have sped up that process Really what they've been doing is just making sure that they're obsessed with what they're doing. Like, recruitment is such an overused term, but you get out what you put in. So if you're willing to just say, look, for the next 6 months, I'm gonna just— I'm gonna dedicate everything to this. I'm gonna read about it, I'm gonna learn about it, I'm gonna speak to 10, 15 people a day about it. Anytime I hear something that I'm not sure of, I'm not just going to note it down and go, okay, this person works with XYZ, you don't know what XYZ is, how much are you probing on that? Question, question, question, question, question, question. A lot of the time these people don't get asked about their jobs. It's not like they're going home and their family are there like, oh, tell me about your day for the 600th time, and they're there listing off everything that they've done. So when there is someone taking a genuine interest in what they do, asking questions and being open and honest, and look, I am new to this, but I really want to learn, I really want to know, you'll be amazed at how many people are happy to kind of give you all of the ins and outs and all of the inside details.

Yeah, I think that's what sometimes people mistake in terms of— you don't have— especially early on, sometimes you can get a bit caught up in thinking you have to know all the answers, and am I going to look stupid, are they expecting me to know all the answers? But actually, from so many people that I've spoken to about this now, there's just so much power in just being curious, having humility, and be like, oh, you know what, that's the first time I've heard about that project. Tell me a bit more about that. And you'd be surprised how many people then actually share that information, right?

Yeah, I still say it today. Like, I'm upfront with people and I say, look, I'll be honest, what you've just said, I don't know what that means. I'm very good at recruitment and that's what I'm good at. But I'll be honest, if you got me to do your job, it would go terribly. I'm not pretending I can do your job. So please, can you educate me on that? Tell me about that. And yeah, people are always happy to.

I love that. So why don't we get into— because what you just mentioned earlier there, I think, uh, if I wasn't to dig into it with you, people be annoyed, which was you saying that you'll be billing in— what did you say? 6 weeks?

8 weeks?

8 weeks, selling retainers in 12.

Yeah, correct.

So I've got here retain solution philosophy. So let's just talk about this because I think— am I right in saying, in looking at my notes, every customer that you have worked with so far, yeah, 100% on a retain basis or RPI? And what was the— what was the— what was your experience of this in the past when you was an employee? Was you working with a lot of companies contingent? Was it mainly retained still?

Yeah, I started all contingent. I didn't even know what retained was. I just thought that's how recruitment was done, like we did the job and then we got paid. And like, that's how I thought it was. And then I can't remember exactly how, but I, I think I saw something about on LinkedIn. I can't remember exactly how But then I was like, what? There's this model where people are charging part of the fee up front and then getting it on, getting the remainder on completion. This sounds great. I was like, this alleviates most of the problems I've got. Like, they're not going to talk to another agency. Like, I know it's a real job. Like, it's more exclusive for the candidates. Um, so yeah, it was like a, whoa, like, why am I not doing this? Um, and then since I found out about it, I remember at the time people kind of saying to me, like, oh, like, yeah, it's hard, like, you won't be able to sell it, like, oh, you've got to do it like this, you've got to do it like that, you've got to do it like this. I thought, well, like, what's the worst that happens? Like, they stay contingent, like, I've got nothing to lose. So then ever from that point, like, my missions has been all retained, just because— not from a selfish point of view, like, not because, oh yeah, we're getting paid up front, look at how great we are. It just means that you can increase the quality of your work so much because you can dedicate more resources to it because you know it's going to be, it's a fee that's real live, it's going to be coming in. Your partnership with the customer is much better. There's an element of trust. They trust you, you trust them. You've got to hold yourself accountable as well, then you can't go around selling retainers and then not delivering for 2 weeks. You're not going to get another one doing that.

That's a quick way to ruin your reputation, isn't it?

Yes.

So why don't we, why don't we dig into the retain piece first and then I'd love to hear your, like, the differences on the, on the, on the RPO piece. So why don't we— you just, you were just honest with us there in terms of you saw things online, different people speaking about it, and then it sounds like you just had to figure out along the way. Whereas now you've, you've— with your business, it's, it's been a long time since then.

Yeah.

So like, let's just think about— I'd love you to just share. So like, if I'm listening to this right now and that seems like alien to me.

Yeah.

Like I've always worked contingent. Maybe I have got some clients that I've done a really good job with, and even though we might not have like an exclusive agreement signed, like, I know that Nicholas has just given me the jobs, for example. So just talk me through what, like, looking back now with how you used to do your sales process, or even like how you'd acquire clients, what, what are some of the fundamental differences? Like, I've got sort of my view from what I keep hearing and speak to people about this, but Like, if, um, I'm in your business now and I join it and I've always worked contingent, what are going to be some of the main differences? I'm going to go like, oh God, that, that's a bit different. Even on the sales process, I don't know where you want to start.

Yeah, well, first of all, the first thing with it is I think everyone needs to like get rid of this big like, oh wow, it's retained. Like, if that's just your standard process, that's your standard process. Like, um, I completely get rid of any like, uh, wow, this is retained, like this is amazing.

Yeah, just, just get rid of that.

Like, that's the way you work. Like, you don't do contingent. I don't even call it retained. I don't— internally, it's not like, oh yeah, let's do retain. That's just our business model. That's how we do it. And I think first we've got to get rid of that, like, if you've got any fear or if you're thinking it's like a big deal, like, to get rid of that whole kind of mindset and realize that that is the way that you work. That's how you're gonna do it. Um, it's also when you're approaching the customer, like, It's really dependent on the kind of relationship that you're trying to establish with them. If when you're going to this customer and you're presenting yourself as like a transactional recruiter, so you let the customer believe that your function is you provide CVs, you arrange interviews, and you fill jobs, that all you're ever going to have is contingent work. You really need to, from day one, like from as soon as you're contacting them, be positioning yourself as, look, I'm a long-term partner. I don't do anything on a one-off basis. Everything we do is, is long-term. Like, we're here to like understand your business, grow with you. Like, the more recruitment we do with you, the better we're going to know your managers, your processes, what you like, what you don't like, and really kind of sell and make sure you are actually doing this long-term relationship with the client. When you're then kind of going into pitching retained, like, it's not— it shouldn't be a thing where you're pitching this crazy solution to the client. Like, our job effectively is to make our client's job easier. Like, they don't want to do recruitment, they haven't got time for it, they don't know how to do it. So you need to make that as simple as possible. One of the things that I did immediately was this 33, 33, 33, charging a third upfront, third on CV submission, third on completion. Like, no one wants to be receiving that many invoices. That is confusing. Like, If you're a junior consultant and you're there trying to pitch retain, you're like, oh yeah, our terms are 25% and then we charge 33% at this point, 33%. I'd be confused. I wouldn't know what I'm doing. So you want to keep that as simple as possible as well. So what we do is our fees are 25%. That's it. Non-negotiable. We don't compete on price. Then 30% upfront, 70% on completion.

Completion being what? Someone accept, like, sign on a contract?

Yeah, I don't invoice on start, invoice on acceptance. Sense. Yeah, 14-day payment terms. Yeah, you've got to be— cash flow is important when you start off.

Yeah, so you've simplified that.

Yeah, so simplify that part, um, and then it also really comes down to like, is the customer receptive to kind of that kind of model? Like, there's enough customers out there with, with great companies that will need your services. Like, there's no point like flogging ice to the Eskimos. Like, if they've got a incredible internal team where they're filling all their jobs and they don't need any recruitment support and it's all going great. Like, is it really something that's going to benefit your customer? But there's plenty of customers out there that don't have that solution. So when we're working with the client, we're simplifying it as much as possible. We're doing all of the standard stuff like you'd expect, like getting the right profiles, arranging the interviews. But then we also then commit to like very, very strict like deliverable timeframes with our customers when we're working in this way. So like from taking the job that we are delivering a full shortlist of 3 to 5 candidates in 48 hours. So that's not negotiable. Yeah. And that's not contract, that's perm. Like we work like contract but doing perm.

And what's deemed as like a shortlist? These people said, yeah, Nicholas, I'm gonna have to consider that job. Is it people that you've mapped out or that you've already, do you know what I mean?

Yeah, no.

What do you mean?

So the biggest thing that I drive really is quality. Like And not saying I expect people to do stuff at the same quality as me or another senior consultant, as long as they can look at the work they've done and say, yeah, you know what, I've done that at the highest level of quality I can, I'm happy. Like, whatever their highest level of quality is, I'm happy with that. But for us, the full shortlist, again, to make sure it's at a high level of quality, is 3 to 5 fully qualified candidates submitted with interview notes and 2 references.

Really?

Yeah.

So 3 to 5 people?

Yeah.

48 hours.

Yeah, but you can do that by being a specialist. If you're taking on new jobs all the time where you don't know anyone, like, and it's a new search each time, you're not able to do that. But again, that comes back into that specialist piece, that it's all intertwined. Like, if you are a specialist in what you do, like, you should know already who the 3 to 5 people are that could be suitable for that job. You should have already had conversations with them. You probably already referenced them. And then it— yeah, kind of all plays into each other.

Whilst we take a short break, I wanted to take a moment to chat to you about one of our amazing partners, Sourcewell, the industry-leading recruitment engagement platform. I'm using myself and I don't know what I would do without it. From building personalized messaging cadences across a variety of channels to automating follow-ups and data tracking straight back into my CRM, it's really made an impact in streamlining my workflow and most importantly accelerating my sales results. My favorite feature by far is the live feed. By being able to see in real time who's engaging with your campaigns, it enables me to prioritize my outreach with the most engaged prospects, which helps me get way more out of what I put in. So I'm going to be honest, if you haven't got Sourcewell and you're a recruiter, I really believe you're at a disadvantage. To find out more and see the platform in action, make sure you click the link in the show notes and mention the Recruitment Mentors Podcast. Because you listen to this podcast, you're going to be able to get access to an exclusive offer: free 50 phone credits, 50 email credits, which is at the value of circa £500 per user. So make sure you mention the Recruitment Mentors podcast and click the link in the show notes.

I don't know how you feel about this, but that bit that you said at the beginning about, um, understanding the, the customer— do they have needs? Have they got challenges? Do they even need a solution like this? One of the— I don't know how you view this, but one of the biggest differences that I've found with recruiters that work on a contingent basis versus retained is the sales process, and that being really like two parts. There might be a few other sort of checkpoints, but I think if you were to speak to someone that works on a contingent basis, it involves a lot of the time chasing hot leads, calling people with live jobs, and it's very much, I'm trying to get Nicholas to say to me that he's happy to receive CVs from me and these things. But actually, from a lot of the recruiters that I've met, and when we've digged into this on the training side, it's actually more about really making sure that you have that first step where you're actually able to uncover, like, do they even need a solution like this? What are their challenges? What have they run into in the past? So do you, do you have that? Because I feel like that, that's where sometimes I think whenever we've done training on this, and a lot of the people that attend the training work on a contingent basis it can feel so far from them because that, that isn't— that process or that sales process is very different to like how they normally do things.

Yeah.

So I don't know, I don't know like what you think about that, but like surely if you're going to sell this solution effectively, you've— there's a bit before where you learn and understand like what, you know, how are things working in their business right now, who— do you know what I mean?

Yeah. Well, I'd say probably about 60% of the time spent on that, to be honest with you, like our process for selling this will normally follow 5 points. One, identify, like, are they relevant? Are they right for us to be working with? Are they within our market? Are they within our niche? Once you've identified a potential client, you then got to engage them. Like, they don't know who you are. Like, they might not know your brand, might not know your business, you might be a complete stranger. Identify, um, engage, um, 10% of your time as well, then qualify. Like, this is 60% of the time, right? Like, I, I would be furious if, um, anyone within my organization started trying to sell stuff without, um, qualifying the, the company first. It's like first hallmark of like a poor salesperson. It's just, we're amazing because of this, we do that, we do this, we do this, we can do that, we can do this, we've done that for your competitors. Like, They don't care. Once you've qualified it, then propose a solution, which is effectively, as long as you've done the first bits right, basically reading back all their problems as a solution because you can offer that. And then finally close. Like, this should almost close itself. Like, there's no such thing as this big, you know, like Jordan Belfort Wolf of Wall Street close where you're on the phone like, oh my God, I've just done a £200,000 deal. Like, it doesn't work like that. You close consistently throughout the whole process so that at the end it's just a formality. That's what I mean.

So that's the call qualifier piece, which I think a lot of— like, if you look back when you did continuing recruitment, how much was you qualifying? It was— you were just mainly just qualifying the actual job that they had, right? Yeah, it wasn't— you wasn't qualifying because, like, when you're having those conversations, you tell me, but like, you're probably more trying to find out how good are they. This is a— I don't know how you feel about this, but on a recent training we did, that it was a really good way of putting it where He was saying on a retained basis, what problems do you solve? And are you solving talent attraction problems or talent assessment problems? And he was like, what I'm really focused on is talent assessment problems. Because when you're then qualifying these companies and you're finding out what does your recruitment process look like, and you learn that 40% of people that they get to final stage, they don't close or they don't get the people that they want. Like it's more about how are you assessing people and the people that you do hire, how many of them are staying with you? And like you're having more of those conversations. So I don't know on the qualifier piece, what, what are some of the non-negotiables there in terms of what you're trying to qualify? Because I think that'll be helpful for people because they can start bringing this into the, you know, we want to try and get more information from these clients that can then help us go, well, you know, you told me this, this is why I think we should work this way.

Yeah. So, so for me with the qualification, it's all mainly driven around like pains, like what, what they're like, you're saying what their problems, what can we help solve? Some of the things that we've done that could solve customers, they're not getting good branding out to the market. So what can we do that's one step higher to set us from our competition? All right, we'll create a value proposition, a nice one-page document. It says all the great things about the business and everyone we speak to gets sent it. Oh, they, another pain. They don't have enough time to do the initial screening. No problem. We'll increase our process for you. And we'll remove the need for you to do first stage interviews. So then you can remove that from your process. Better experience for the candidate, better experience for you. Um, it's really kind of digging all, all on the pains, like what can we actually do to alleviate problems from their side and make their job and career easier?

Um, yeah, so that's, yeah, so that, that's the types of conversations we need to be having. And then you can then start saying, well, when we work this way, these are the things that we're going to include in there which should help some of the things.

Yeah, I, I don't believe in giving the same each one of our customers and yeah, I mean, we've signed 16 accounts. These aren't like spot, we don't do spot business, don't do transactional business. 16 clients in the space of, what is it now, 10 months, 9 months, something like that. But every single thing that we do for each customer is unique. Like, it's not, we don't do like a blanket, here's how, this is Everhire, here's how we do it. They're really like, okay, how do you do things and how can we integrate into your process and benefit what you're already doing? I don't believe in going around and telling clients, here's how you do recruitment, this is our way, it's right, do it like this. Like, we should be improving and benefiting their processes to make their job easier.

So what, just give us an example of like what might be different from one client to another, just like a straightforward example.

Some, some people, one client might have a deadline for getting the candidates in by their customer, so all they care about is having the team on site. So our main focus is just getting available people on the site straight away. Okay. One other customer might have been having problems with their client where the quality of the work wasn't high enough from their side. So instead we'll do a lot more on the technical screening and the technical analysis and making sure that they've worked with that client before and they can, yeah, offer what their client needs.

So, okay, nice. So let— I want to go into the RPO piece because I'm curious to, um, understand it. And all right, let's just get into it then. So like, how would you, how would you, uh, exp— how would you define the difference from what we've just said? So working in that way, which is, um, qualifying and understanding the problems and challenges that they have, you then propose a solution where you can fix some of those problems. And for us to work in that way 'Uh, we, you know, you're going to pay a third on commencement, and then we start, you know, figuring out and solving some of these problems. And then, uh, when you get the people or peoples that you need, you can— you're then going to pay the rest on completion.' What, like, so is that— are you finding in that— is that normally like ones and two, one and two hires? And then RPO, is it more volume? Like, what's the main difference?

No, I'll be honest, some customers we've got where we— again, all our terms standard are retained. Like, we don't have contingent terms. So like all of our clients work in that way, and we might do 10 placements with them in that way, and there might never be a need or demand for like an RPI solution. So again, like I mentioned, we're not going to go and sell them something that they don't need or want. But with everyone we work with, we have like a customer journey that we want to take the customer on from, from day one, and the end goal of that is to be an RPO. So the retained piece and working in that way and getting them experience. That all is part of a customer journey leading to this end RPO solution. And when you're— with the RPO solution, I mean, that's got to have all the bells and whistles. That's got to be the absolute best that you can possibly do. So with ours, again, it's unique to each customer. We recently just sold one for, I think it's $175,000. But that includes having one of our consultants working in the client's office every day, us doing the technical screening, creating value propositions, managing all the recruitment processes, having a lovely online portal where all the CVs are managed. It's a complete kind of solution where we are doing everything, that we are effectively like their employees. Well, not me, but the people working on it, they feel like it's their employees. Yeah.

And what would you say are the biggest 1 to 3 challenges or pains for an organisation that would result in them really considering that solution? Because I'm sure it's slightly different.

Yeah, for us, it's one, if there's a need to hire, like if they've got a deadline. So if they've got a deadline where they need to fill all of these positions, that we will take on that risk and we will contractually sign, we will fill the positions by this time. I mean, it's, yeah. Pretty ballsy because you've got to commit to it.

And it's just because in your market there's certain projects that need to like— they're sticking to a schedule.

Yeah, yeah.

If they haven't got the engineers or whatever, they're getting millions.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, so, so one of the pains is like they, they're not confident that they're going to be able to get the people that they need to stay on track with a project where the repercussions are if we don't have the people in the right seats, they're losing loads.

Yeah.

Okay, so that's one.

And secondly, if they're like new in the market, if it's not their specialism, if they've come from outside of Sweden, if they're, uh, German, Spanish, French, whatever contractor, and they don't understand the market and don't know how it works. That's, that's another one. Um, and then the third biggest pain, um, I'll probably say it's something like where they don't have the resources internally to like deliver on that. Like they've got a HR team of 3, but they need to hire 20 positions, and the HR team already doing all the other things, and the line managers are already busy and no one wants to do it, kind of thing.

It's lack of resources.

Yeah, so I do think that a lot of these companies, people don't like doing recruitment. And I mean, I love it, I think it's great, so I have no problem.

Yeah, it's a challenge for a lot of people, isn't it? Um, and how— again, I know it might vary, but typically what does the pricing model look like? Is it like a set fee for like over a certain project Mum, so like, you want all my secrets? No, but I know it, I know it varies, but like, how is it typically structured price-wise then? Because it's going to be different.

So just one thing, just with price, as you mentioned, like, I don't believe on competing on price.

Okay.

And I will turn— if, if the only thing that the customer wants is the lowest cost, that I've said multiple times to clients, like, look, I can give you a list of 5 agencies right now that are cheaper than us. I have no problem if that's your main concern to go and work with them. But I can promise you in 6 months you'll be coming back to us having gone, oh yeah, we spent all that money, but now we need to, we haven't got any results. Can we do it again? It's going to end up costing you a lot more. But yeah, competing on price, absolute no-no. Like, I don't believe, because you're just going to drive your quality down. Like, the more you compete on price, the worse your quality gets. But the model for how we've, if I take the latest one, for example, that we've done, One, yes, we will put a discount in there. If a client's giving you 15, 20, 25 positions at once, I mean, it's a bit of a piss take if you're not giving them some form of discounts. Yeah, we will apply a small reduction against it. How I normally would structure it is say there's 20 positions, we'll agree on what an average salary is for each of the 20 positions. So whatever that may be, we'll then take that Yeah, by the number of positions and create an average salary across all, say, 25 positions. Yeah, I'll then do that by our normal fee, so 25% or maybe slightly less because they're doing more. But no, I do it by the normal fees, and then I'd apply like a 10 or 20% discount on that. But yeah, you don't really want to get into the, the, that cost— that if an RPI is driven purely just on cost, like in my opinion, it's not very good RPO.

How, how are they paying that?

Uh, I would have 50% upfront, and then I'd have some measurables that are agreed with a client, like, okay, after hire, 10%, 25%, and then after hire, 50% on commencement.

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of upfront work.

Yeah, because as an agency, you're committing a hell of a lot to that. Like, that could be 3, 4, 5, 6 consultants. You could need to have someone in their office and cover the costs for that. You could, um, yeah, all of the marketing. Like, I don't do the marketing, I need to pay someone to do that. Like, there's a lot of cost from the agency side, so it's got to be financially viable.

And how have you balanced— like, you're a small team right now, so like, is that not a bit scary to be like, are we gonna have the— obviously you're not stupid, but that's something that sometimes the worry isn't it, is like, we're gonna get committed to this I don't know, like balancing like the resource to that, because that, that's something you've got to juggle as well, isn't it? In terms of like, how many, how many people in my team are then going to be working on that? And then what does that mean for the rest of the business? Like, how have you thought about that and juggling that to make sure that you have enough resource to actually deliver on that?

Yeah, well, one, you've got to make sure you don't take on too much work. Yeah. So like, if you have, if you, if you have got too much, like if you, if you are at capacity, like you can't take on any more work, first of all. Secondly, you've got to make sure again that it's within your niche. Like, a lot of this stuff just comes back to being a specialist. Like, we already— when, when we won this 20-position, um, RPO, like, we already knew, like, names are in our head, like, for each position, who we should have, who we should have. It's not, it's not like a new search. It's that stuff that we've been doing for years.

Um, but why didn't you give me what would be like The— and I know you might be flexible with it, but that— this example, what would be the— what would the Ever Hire team look like? Could it be like— so you've said one consultant will be with them every day of the week, so that's, that's one person in the team. And then what does the rest of the team look like that would just support in that project?

So, so with something like this, I'm, I'm still a billing manager. Like, we're not at scale yet where I can just swan about and just manage managers, and I don't think that's something I'd ever really do, to be honest. But So I'll help with it, I'll do a lot of senior positions. Then we've got two other, um, like 360s, but yeah, they're working as delivery more on it, working on it full time. So it's about four, four consultants looking at it.

Three, three more that would probably be dedicated, then you're like impacting where you can. You'll be, you'll be then thinking about the next RPO project or winning more business, right?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Okay, fair. And you think that's like, like fairly a good amount of people that if they're at a good level they should be able to deliver on that over— and what's the time period?

Uh, 3, 4 months.

Oh wow, okay.

Yeah, which for me is fine. Nice. Yeah, what, 5 positions a month? Like, come on.

Okay, so like, nice. Let's, um, let's talk about this passion you have around using the phone. Yeah, because you was— you was, uh, you're big on this, right?

Yeah, I hate LinkedIn recruiter.

Yeah, so let's just tell us a bit about your perspective of this, because basically for For people listening, the context was when we're preparing for this, um, I might get you to share like your, your future, uh, what you think the future might look like. But you're very—

I'm a conspiracy—

you're, you're very, you're very anti— I think safe to say a lot of people in today's world rely on LinkedIn too heavily, which is obviously why you've— you're really passionate about going the other way. You can give us some of the reasons for that, but you know, some of the things you shared were like, yeah, they're, they're building data not on your database. You know, a lot of people just stay within LinkedIn Recruiter, um, and you're just big on like not being reliant on sending in-mails, LinkedIn messages to achieve the results. So what, like, why, why are you big on like— because your, your team doesn't have LinkedIn Recruiter?

No one does, and I'll never ever do it. No. Yeah, LinkedIn still call me like every day trying to sell me it.

So tell me, why are you so— why are you like dead set on this? Why are you so passionate about this first?

Well, one, one thing that I've always had this ethos, like, if everyone's doing something, like, you should probably be doing the thing that everyone isn't. And like, right now everyone is messaging through LinkedIn Recruiter, everyone is rinsing it. So like, it— like, you've got to do something different, stand out. Um, as a manager, for like anyone managing, like, one, like, all your, all your consultants are doing is building a database for LinkedIn. Like, they're just building all these lovely shortlists for LinkedIn, like, for LinkedIn to use. You're getting no data on your system. System and you're basically just producing people that are really, really— yeah, don't get me wrong, they're probably great at doing the messaging, but are they sitting there and waiting for that person to reply? Like, I know my consultants, instead of sitting there and waiting for that person to reply, they haven't got that option. They're calling them up directly. And now with so many people like just doing messaging and waiting for them to come back, who's good? Who's going to get that candidate? The one sat there waiting 2 weeks for them to reply, or my consultant who's just calling them calling them up directly.

So that's why you're dead certain?

Yeah, and also like I'm pretty certain that LinkedIn aren't stupid, they're probably cleverer than me, you, everyone listening, um, maybe not everyone listening, but they're definitely cleverer than me. But, um, there's going to be a time where they come out with this new AI software and they'll go to companies and say, oh look, we've got millions of shortlists that have been like very kindly made for us by all the recruiters all over the world instead of paying recruiter X £30,000 a month, why don't you just pay us LinkedIn £10,000 a month and our AI software will message all of the candidates, schedule all the interviews, blah blah blah, and you can have unlimited and do as much as you want. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, that hasn't happened, but that's what I think is going to happen.

Yeah, but yeah, you, you just, you're dead set on like not being overly reliant on LinkedIn.

I think it builds the wrong characteristics in recruiters. Like, yeah, it is scary cold calling, but Like, once you get in the habit of it and it's just the way you work, like, you do well. I've got one consultant that cold calls through Microsoft Teams.

Yeah, this is wild.

He is an absolute animal.

Right, so did you say— give us the context here, because I thought this was wild when you said it, so you can explain that.

So, um, if you haven't got a phone number, like, a lot— so you can't find the phone number, like, every single recruiter knows how to work out an email. Yeah, we've all got stuff that can do it, but a lot of the time, last name dot first name dot last name at company.com.se.dk, whatever. So if he hasn't got the phone number for him, he'll just go on Teams. I don't know if people know you can do this, but at the top on the search bar, you just type in the email address, bang, video call. And a lot of the time, these people will answer and just be so like, what is going on? Then bang.

What is he saying though?

He's just doing his pitch. He's getting into it. He's obviously got a good pitch. But, uh, yeah, no, just, um, the thing that I drive all the consultants are on, on pitching is that no one really cares, like, who you are or, or your business or all of this. Uh, I don't believe in that. Like, all you need to do on that pitch is that why should they speak to you? What benefits? Tell— get the benefits of them talking to you. Just them, them, them, them, them, them, them. Like, don't worry about yourself. Don't worry about No one cares about company, no one cares about job title, no one cares about this, that, this, and that. All they care about is that what are you— what can you do for them? Why should they talk to you? So his whole pitch is basically just listing why, why this, this, uh, person should hang up.

How does he, uh, how does he open those up? Like, I'm sure he's got to surely just call out straight away and be like, yeah, yeah, I know this is absolutely bizarre and I'm calling you on Teams, we've never spoken before. Yeah, is it something like that? Or like, what's—

yeah, it's a no normally quite brash. Like, you've got, you've got, you've got, you've got to be, first of all, like, a big smile. Like, don't, don't be calling them like, hello, how are you? No, they're gonna, they're gonna hang up straight away. But, um, yeah, a bit like big smile, happy there. Like, look, I know I've called you on Teams, I'm sorry to do that. I know no one's ever probably done that before, but I really, really, really wanted to speak to you. Can I tell you why?

Right, literally as simple as that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We'll get back to the episode in just one minute, but today I'm excited to talk to you about one of our partners, Firefish, the recruitment CRM that accelerates data-driven growth. The problem with most recruitment CRMs is that they are just a database of records, meaning they become just one of the many tools that recruiters use every day. Like with all systems, the records are only as good as the data being captured. Our sponsors Firefish know that for agencies to win faster Data needs to be at the heart of their business, making your CRM the single source of truth. With over 10,000 records created and updated every day and 85% of placements from existing candidates, Firefish enables recruiters to enrich and engage their data, equipping you with real-time insights needed to win faster. To learn more about Firefish and take advantage of an exclusive Recruitment Mentors podcast offer. Make sure you click the link in the show notes and mention the Recruitment Mentors podcast when speaking to the Firefish team.

The other thing that you told me about which I found hard to believe was the switchboard stuff. You have to tell me that, because like you said, if you're— because like, what, what, like, you can tell me in terms of what is typically the best sources for you and the team to get these great candidates, and you know, you have to know the market So you've just said one there that one of the team uses in terms of Teams, but you told me when we prepared for this you were calling company switchboards and you're doing it that way. I'm assuming referrals is going to be one as well.

Oh, referrals is gold standard, like that's number one always. So if, yeah, absolutely, if I want the whole business to be built on referrals if possible, but realistically can't do that.

Tell me, tell me about the switchboard thing because I think people would be very dead set on this being like completely dead, doesn't work.

What do you mean, calling up and asking to be put through to the candidate? Yeah, yeah, it works. I'm sat here now. What's the time? Um, 10:15. I guarantee you my consultants are doing it as we talk. And they're—

tell me about the switchball game then, the approach. So what we're saying is, you— one of the ways that you successfully get candidates to work with you guys or be open to— because like, what is the goal there? Is it to find out if Nicholas is open to hearing about engineering opportunities? Because I'm assuming they're not gonna— they're not gonna be like, 'Yeah, yeah, like tell me about that job now,' and like, do you know what I mean? Like, what is the goal of that, those switchboard calls?

Yeah, so just to be clear on it, because I don't want people to think we've just got like this magic Yellow Pages in our minds where we know all the people. We will look on LinkedIn at people that might be relevant, but we don't do the message. Just to be clear, we will find sometimes people through LinkedIn. Our main thing, as I said, is referrals, but with that, we will sometimes see people on there and call them. But yeah, we'll call up the switchboards. Gatekeepers in Scandinavia are a lot different to the rest of Europe. As long as you've got a fairly good reason and you're confident, like you can get through.

What is a fairly good reason?

If I, if say if you were to gatekeeper, be like, hi, I'm currently working with Per on a project. Could you please put me through to him? Yeah, and I'll put you through.

Okay.

Or just something with a bit of confidence and they'll get you through. Or a lot of the time we just ask the switchboards for their direct phone numbers.

'Um, I'm trying to reach so-and-so. Have you got their direct dial there?' Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And then, okay, so you get put through. What are we saying? Like, what are we doing on that? Because this person is not expecting your call. It's that they might be at work. Yeah, I'm assuming they are.

Yeah, normally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, you're ringing them on the work—

that's wild. Like, that's, that's awkward for them, right?

Uh, yeah, but again, it's like, I believe you've got 15 seconds, if that, to explain who you are, which again, like I say, is, is very minor. Like, that should be like Hi, I'm Nicholas. Like, yeah, don't worry, not hi, I'm Nicholas, I've found the CEO, blah blah. No one cares. Yeah, um, why you're calling, but most importantly, why should they speak to you? Like, you need a big, big, big reason for why they should speak to you. Say, um, you're a project manager working on a bridge project, for example. That all I'm going to be doing in my pitch is call, telling you why I'm calling you, and the reason being I'm working with this in another incredible bridge project. Look, I know you're not actively looking for something right now, 'Even if this one doesn't be right for you, I know I'm going to be a great contact for you in the future. Like, when have you got 10 minutes we can speak?' And it's always leading to that close, close, close.

That's all it is, 10 minutes.

Yeah, not trying to like do a mad qualification with them when they're like sat there with their colleagues having a coffee, but giving them a good enough reason to then spend another 10 minutes with you. And then of course that 10 minutes ends up being 15, then 20, and then you can ring them again, and then you've got the process.

What do you reckon the hit rate is of like people being like, yeah, Nicholas, happy to give you 10 minutes?

For me?

So like if you were to make 10 calls?

Yeah, of those types of calls. Me personally?

Yeah, how many?

9 out of 10.

Nah, really?

Yeah, honestly, yeah, yeah.

I just, I just, I need to see it, I think. Yeah, I need to see that in action. Yeah, yeah, because I just feel like I happily do it for you.

I bet it all, it all comes.

The only, the only reason why I feel like that is because it's just so like When you're called at work and someone's trying to then— I know you're not selling them a job, you're just saying that I think I'm a good contact.

These are all preconceived misconceptions. Okay. These are all things people put into their heads. Oh, this might not work out. And that's why people end up not cold calling. Like, I truly believe the only thing that's ever going to limit me or any of my consultants is my own mind. Like, no, I get that. They're not telling me not to ring them. Like, there's no one there stop it, like holding my hand back from picking up the phone and pressing the numbers. That's all just preconceived misconceptions. And if you can get rid of that, like, then you'll have much, you'll have much, much, much more success.

And what— where does this also take shape on the, the customer side? So you— are a lot of your, like, maybe initial meetings that you get booked, stuff like that, is a lot of that being happening?

Yeah, all of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's all like I never— I don't believe in selling blind, so we're not selling anything on these first cold calls. I just— to be clear, like, we're not trying to sell anything. It's all just about getting the opportunity to be in front of them. And then when we are in front of them, again, we're not selling. Like, we're listening to them, getting them to talk as much as we can. Like, yeah, that old phrase, like, two ears, one mouth. Like, you've got to follow that.

And just, just on that really quickly, we spoke about the importance of understanding pain's problems. What if I'm on your target client list right now? What, what are like the problems that you're leading with? Because that's key. So like, I have that in my own pitch in terms of the problems that I lead with, because that's in for— that's me being informed of like what I think the problems are for you. So it will be things like, um, you know, I'm speaking to a lot of recruitment founders at the moment that keep running into one of three problems. One of them being they're struggling to get their new hires up to speed quickly, which is resulting in not enough profitability as quickly as they'd like. Or a lot of people I'm speaking to are having a real lack of— their team have a real lack of confidence around business development, which means a lot of the clients are only being won by the founder or 20% of the team, etc. Like, you have to like figure out what those problems and pains are for it to actually resonate. So what are the ones that you're typically leading with then? Because you've got to be pretty dialed on that.

Yeah, well, again, coming back to the niche, all of this will come from your niche. Yeah, if you know your market, you know what the companies are suffering from. For us, it's normally being able to find people that are highly skilled enough with specialist certifications for the type of works that we do, local language speakers who have worked on the previous types of projects, and then second, thirdly, being able to attract them and retain them.

Retain them. Bosh. Yeah, perfect.

Love that.

Talk me through, so how the— like, you've obviously— you're on this entrepreneurial journey, so you are— like, we're talking a lot about the recruitment stuff, right? But that, that's sort of where you're at. That's how you can have one of the biggest impacts in the business. But I think what you're gonna have to keep growing up with is how can you get more out of the team, you know, make smart business decisions. How are you thinking about scaling? One of the things that I really liked as well that you spoke about was your like dashboard and how you think about that, because I think this is also overlooked. Like, you're gonna be a lot more confident growing your business if you've got a lot more clarity on like the data and like when you should maybe hire and these types of things, right?

Yeah.

So tell me about— yeah, I've got here, talk me through Nick's performance dashboard. Like, why, why are these certain things on this list here? Like, what all you care about?

Yeah.

And things you probably pay very close attention to which determines you look into hiring more people? Are people performing?

Yeah, yeah. So I don't believe in driving on metrics that don't matter. So like our dashboard, the, the fit— the only things that I really care about and that we drive on are leads, leads converted into opportunities, interviews, and revenue. Because in my opinion, that is quality work.

Like, so wait, say that again.

So you've got leads, leads, leads converted into—

what's defined as a lead?

A job posted, a candidate's told you like, oh, this person's hiring now, or one of your existing customers has said, oh, my colleague might need this. Like, the lead then becomes an opportunity when you call that person, like, either through the switchboard—

these convert to opportunities.

Yeah, yeah, through the switchboard on Teams, however you want to do it. And then you book an actual, like, Teams or face-to-face meeting with them to then—

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, so yeah, that's all you're converting there. Maybe that's like at the top end, right, in terms of You get, if you're always getting good quality information, good leads.

But just on the leads, I'm not saying leads don't just have to be new business. I am happy if people had leads with existing customers or like, oh, okay, like my existing client has said that they'll need this in a month. Cool. Get that on.

Right. Cool. Yeah. I got you. And then, and then you're measuring from all of that information, leads that they're gathering, what's the percentage they're converting that into actual opportunity?

Uh, it's not as— I'll be honest, it's not as high as I like right at the minute. It's probably about—

but that's what you're measuring though?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's about 30%. So every 10— 30, 40%. Yeah, so every 10 leads, 3 or 4 meetings converted. Yeah.

And then what? And then it's CV, and then what is it, interviews?

Interviews. Yeah, we did, we did used to look at CVs as well, but again, I've just got rid of that because I think it promotes the wrong behaviour.

So it's a number of first interviews?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because what, why should you promote spamming out CVs if you're not getting interviews.

Yeah, for sure. And then revenue there, that's what's on your dashboard?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it.

Yeah, so that's what you're always looking at, are the team performing where they should be, or like—

because it's— because we used to have all of like what you'd expect: contacts added, candidates added, um, client calls, candidate calls. But then it's quite easy, in my opinion, to make your dashboard look good, but you're not actually having anything. Like, yeah, you might have added 100% of your candidate target, 110% of your contact target. You've done all your candidate calls and you've done all your contact calls. But then when you actually look at it, you might have just been getting zero outcome. It might be, it might be, yeah, no results from it whatsoever. And then, yeah, that bit all looks great, but then the bits that actually matter aren't having any, any positive impact. And I feel like as a manager and a leader, like, my job is to promote the best possible behaviours from our consultants and to ensure them as much success as possible. But letting them think that recruitment's all about just adding loads of candidates and adding loads of contacts and sending CVs and not getting interviews, like, that ain't it. Like, they should be driven on quality outcomes. So yeah, get converting leads into opportunities. If— reason I don't have jobs on there, because if you're getting the interviews, you've obviously got the jobs. Like, you can't, you can't get the interviews without having the jobs and, and, and, uh, sending the CVs. I feel like the leads and the opportunities are the key bit of getting that on. But then, yeah, after that, all the other stuff should happen, and then the interviews should be there.

So what, what do you think, what else, like, what's been more, more challenging for you than maybe you expected being on the, on this business journey? Do you think, like, you obviously back yourself as a recruiter, right? But, you know, from us speaking, you've got big goals for this business. You've already grown quite a bit. Yeah, it's like, how is it—

fastest ever growth within recruiters.

Has there been anything that, um, what's been more challenging than you expected, do you think, in this first year?

Good question. You said you'd get me to do this, but I haven't actually had time to look back and reflect a lot of the time. Um, for me, it's not being able to grow as quickly as I want. Like, I want that— I want a team of 30, 40 people now, but obviously can't do that. So being able to just kind of be like, well, like, we need to like put the brakes on a bit and do this first and then do that. But it's been a bit of a learn, to be honest, is having like all of the correct structure and process within the company at the beginning. So important. Like, even even if you're a 2 or 3 person business, I have everything set up correctly so that you've then got the, the, the kind of model and, and the core fundamentals of your business. You can just keep grinding, grinding, grinding. You're much better off to get everything set up correctly, a 2 or 3 person headcount where it's easy, then massively grow to 10, 20 people and not have that core kind of foundation in place and then have this issue. But now you've got it 20 times over because you've got 20 members of staff. Such an important—

yeah, such a great mindset to have, like have systems systems and processes of a 15-person company before you're a 15-person company, right?

Yeah.

What are some of the fun— like, what are some of the core bits there, do you think? Obviously, I'm assuming maybe RecruitHub have helped with some of this. Obviously, you get, you know, the infrastructure you get, you know, that, that's part of it. But like, what would you say if I'm like— just give us some of the, the core bits that you think should make up— like, you, if you get these things right sooner rather than later, it's only going to help you in 12, 24 months' time if you want to grow, right? What do some of those things look like?

So, bit— I'll say one, I'll do it in two sides. One for employee side, like people within your business. One for like the business structure. Um, for like your business structure, you need slick, like streamlined invoicing, like easy to access, easy to get all of the financial data, easy to see your numbers, and then your forecasting is easy. Um, get a good bank account that can kind of help, like make sure it's tailored to like what you need, like can it do international transfers? Can it do whatever? The fees, right? Is it, is it, is it okay? Um, and then yeah, just make sure you've got all the best systems that you can, like, and that you can afford. And don't— but don't think you need every single system that's out there. Just get the ones that are applicable for you. Um, then with the kind of consultant side, I said the most important thing, especially as a new business when you're hiring them, like, what does that actual 12 weeks of them joining look like? Like, what, what is that like? Like, you, you're not a big massive corporate company where you've got all of the infrastructure behind you, but don't view that as a, as a, as a weakness. In my opinion, that's a strength. Rather than just flinging trainees around to this person, that person, this person, yeah, you're going to do that with them, that with them. That's really, really, really a great opportunity to have that really kind of, you know, that one-to-one and like quite, quite close, like onboarding. But yeah, with that, make sure that these kind of first 12 weeks are very well set up and you're doing absolutely everything you can as a leader to ensure success for those consultants. For me, like, that meant, right, looking back, reflecting, what am I actually good at? What am I not so good at? What am I probably not going to do the best job in the world on? What will I do a great job on? And then the thing that I'm probably not going to do a great job on for them, or not have enough time to, I will get the relevant thing or relevant person in to do that for me. For example, we've got two trainers that we use, both for different things. I still do some of the training. I'm kind of, yeah, really, really work on making sure that that first 12 weeks is structured. I mean, yes, making sure that we've got everything we can for the consultants.

Yeah, no, that's such good advice because I think that, that's also overlooked, isn't it? Because like you said, you can fall into the trap of like, we don't have that internal infrastructure, so yeah, I can only map out the first week and that's all I can do. But actually there's so much that you can, and I've really tried to take that seriously, and that's what we're really trying to help the, the companies with that we work with. It is so surprising, like I speak to so many recruitment companies where they literally just have like the first 2 weeks planned and then it's just like Nicholas, you've got to learn on the job, basically, and just fail flat on your face.

Yeah.

And I'm sure a big part of those 12 weeks is you have to do the reps, right? You have to do the job. But what can you make sure that you make time for and do that can hopefully help them learn more quickly from those, from doing the job? And how can I get them to change their behaviors more quickly with the things that we're going to cover in those first 12 weeks and really map that out?

Yeah. And I think it's also important that what your kind of values and ethos is as the founder of the business. Like, for me, I— there's two key things that I'd like, non-negotiable for me each day. The first thing is, have I at least done one thing to help or develop every single consultant within my company, which I can do at the size of our business right now? I won't be able to do it forever, so I might as well do it as much as I can now while it's still possible. And then two, have I done at least one thing to progress my business? And I feel like having, having that, like, just, yeah, being the consult— like, the consultants are more important than me in my opinion. Like, the consultants are the, the most important thing in that business. Like, without the consultants, I'd just be like on my own, like probably in my spare bedroom, like where back where we started. So yeah, that's got to be the number one focus for like any leader or manager or business owner or whatever, like What are you doing every single day to help develop and nurture and improve your consultants?

And then one thing that you're doing to move the business forward. Yeah, that's so important. Yeah, we were saying just before we started this, it's so easy to like get to the end of the day and like you haven't ticked that off because you were just pulled in so many different directions and you were just doing things. But how many things do you actually get done that are moving the business forward, right? Yeah, it's so, so important.

Yeah, it personally to do that, and I'd have everyone do the same. Like, day plans are fairly basic, but everyone's got them. But I only believe on driving on that revenue-generating activities, like nothing that's a glory activity, or nothing that's not gonna like push their desk forward or the business forward. So each day, like, I will have 3 things that I know that these are the key things for me today. Like, no matter what happens, no matter what gets thrown at me, like, these are the 3 things that I need to do. And at the end of the day, if I've done them, like, I know I've had a good day.

Yeah. And if you're listening right now and you don't know what those 3 things are, you just learn what you need to do. Yeah. Figure out what those 3 things are, because a lot of people don't know what those 3 things are.

But it's individual for each person. But yeah, it's just like, are they revenue-generating activities? Like, and what is a revenue-generating activity? It's something that is going to make you revenue in the immediate impact. Yeah. It's not something where it's a glory metric, like—

Okay, nice. We're finishing in a second. Yes. Hey, sorry, we're just doing another call at the moment. If you can wait in the main reception, I'll come and get you at the time. That's okay.

Thank you.

All right. Must be wrapping up, mate.

Yeah, no worries. So then really, at least—

Yeah, no, that's all right, mate. Revenue generating activities. What is a revenue generating activity?

Yeah, so it's something that's going to drive your desk for a lot of revenue generating creating activity. In my opinion, it's not like— here's the difference— it's not mapping 10 candidates that are relevant. It's, I will speak with the 10 candidates that are relevant and get their CVs and get them on board. I'm not gonna cold call a company, or I'm not going to speak to these 5 people. I'm gonna book a meeting with these 5 people. Um, and yeah, it's different. It's different for each person, but it's got to be revenue generating, not just like something that you could do whether you want to or Look, Nicholas, it's been an absolute pleasure.

I think, um, love your mindset. I love how, like, you can just tell how much you believe you're gonna, um, just the self-belief you have. Yeah, which I think is really inspiring. And also just really excited to see where you're on another, you know, 12, 24 months. But you should definitely, you know, definitely give yourself a bit of a pat on the back. I know you said you don't like doing that, or you're not very good at doing that. Yeah, yeah, obviously team effort, but Yeah, just like, I think it's just great that you're willing to, like, this is a great thing about having your own business. You can try different things. You can do things in a different way. And I always respect that. And I'm always trying to take that into my own business. I think it's great that you're really, you know, this is how we're going to try and do things. This is what I think can work and doing things differently. So love it. Thanks for coming on.

Thank you for having me. Thanks very much.