Gareth Morris - 20 years in recruitment, innovating and growing a successful, values-led business

Welcome to the Recruitment Rollercoaster podcast. My name is Hishem Azzouz, and today I'm really excited to be joined by Gareth Morris, who is the CEO of Evolution Recruitment Solutions, who are an international tech recruitment business with offices in the UK, Germany, Singapore, Australia, have circa 160 people in the business. And have been going for 20 years. Gareth, thank you for joining me.

It's nice to be here.

How have you been over the last couple of weeks? What's been going on for you?

Yeah, good. I mean, really proud of the response from everyone that works for the business. Everybody has been mobilized and can work from home due to a great effort from the IT team. And, you know, people are up for the fight. They're working hard. And they're doing their best in difficult circumstances. Love that.

So we are going to do our utmost to uncover and unpack the last 20 years. Obviously, you've been in the recruitment industry for a while, to say the least.

Yeah.

So I'm excited to sort of uncover the journey that you have been on. But where I always like to start on this podcast is how did Gareth enter the world of recruitment? Let's start there.

Okay, I graduated from Sheffield Hallam University with a business studies degree and great dreams to start a business. And I realized that although I've got theoretical knowledge of business from the degree, I actually haven't got any practical experience of anything but bar working in a bar. So all through my degree, I used to chat to my best friend at university, a guy called Nick Elliott, about starting a business, dreaming of what we're going to do and how we're going to start a business when we've finished our degree. So it's the summer holidays after the degree, I'm living back at home, and my mum says, you need to get a job. And for any graduate that's, you know, just left university, that's a bit of a shock, isn't it, to be honest? So I think from memory, Nick had gone traveling, and so I looked in the back of the Manchester Evening News and I saw this advert and it said entrepreneurial people wanted, highly motivated, great OTE, fast-moving industry, it recruitment. I just thought, that advert sounds like me.

So what year was this, Gareth?

Uh, now you're asking. Uh, '97, '98, that sort of time.

Okay.

Um, so I rung them up and, um, you know, pretty naive, that didn't have a CV, and they said, well, come for an interview. So I went for an interview, met 4 people, and liked the sound of recruitment and what it was all about. And they invited me back for a second interview down in London, and they said, there's just one thing, we need you to actually write a CV. So that was the first CV that I wrote, went down to Computer Futures head office and got offered the job. And yeah, that was the start of my career in recruitment.

And just for everyone's benefit, how long did you work there for before you started Evolution?

2 years.

2 years. Okay.

Yeah.

Obviously Computer Futures is part of the S3 brand, right?

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah. So obviously we're going to have a real focus on Evolution, but just really quickly, always curious to sort of hear and ask around people's experience in working in for S3, just because it's been the spawn of so many recruitment entrepreneurs and recruitment businesses, I guess. How would you round up your experience and how would you describe the environment you was in in those 2 years?

Oh, it was really good, great fun. You know, I just graduated from university and I was working with a lot of like-minded people. I think that I worked in the Wilmslow office and there was a lot of people that were degree-educated, bright, and highly motivated, and to be around that, in that environment, was just really, really good fun. I think some of the, you know, more negative stories you might hear about S3, I didn't see really any of that in my time there, and maybe that was something that was a culture in perhaps other offices, but certainly not up in Wilmslow. So yeah, good fun, work hard, play hard, give you a great grounding in recruitment, and, you know, you're having the time of your life. You're young, you're free, single, and you're working with other people who are similar to you. So what's not to like?

Living the dream in Wilmslow.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Okay, so clearly always, obviously, already had this sort of thought when you was at uni, thinking about starting your own business.

Yeah.

So I guess thinking back then, what do you think gave you the confidence to start your own recruitment business? How did that come about?

I just always wanted to start my own business growing up, so I can't really explain to you why. I used to be really into sport and, you know, I'd go past sports shops on the way home and think, I'd like to own one of those one day. And then at university, we had to do a placement year. And I applied for a number of jobs and I got a job in marketing for Avesta Steel in Sheffield. I just thought, that sounds really dull. Marketing steel. It sounds— if you think recruitment's tough, that sounds really, really challenging. So what I did is I went to the university and said, do you know what? There's only so many placements. I've got this placement through you guys. I want to start my own business and someone else can have my place at Vestas Steel in Sheffield. And they kind of said, well, no one's ever done that before. I said, well, my best friend at the time was a locksmith and he wanted to start his own business. He had locksmithing skills, I had 2 years of a business studies degree, and, you know, truth be known, probably knew very little about anything. But we started that business in that placement year. So Amazing. Yeah, I sold my half of the business back to him for the princely sum of £5,000 and then went back to university for my final year flush with an extra £5,000 in my pocket.

So where did this entrepreneurial sort of mind— like, what was your parents like? Was it— was you in an interesting environment growing up?

Yeah, good question. No, I love my mum and dad dearly and they were brilliant parents, very supportive, never really trying to tell me what to do. They only gave me one piece of advice, and the one piece of advice they said is, you can do anything you want in life, just don't be a teacher. So they were both teachers and probably felt that, you know, although the holidays were good and everything else, it maybe hadn't given them the lifestyle that they would have hoped. But, you know, obviously when they were growing up, a stable, steady job with a decent pension was what people wanted. So yeah, they certainly weren't entrepreneurial. But what they did do is encourage me. So if they want— if I wanted to do something, they'd never say, oh no, you can't do that. Yeah.

You wasn't worried about failing or giving things a go, which is half of it, right?

Not at all.

Because I think if you think back then, like, how was entrepreneurial the cool thing to do? Probably not. It was the thing that you just said, getting a steady job. Pension. So I think that's just really interesting that you had that sort of innate motivation.

Yeah, it never just appealed to me. I think reading, you know, Richard Branson's books, possibly, you know, maybe as a teenager, thinking, God, that sounds exciting, you know, running record labels and airlines and things like that. That maybe whetted my appetite. But I think it was just something I always wanted to do and always thought I could do, really. Yeah, so it's just always been in me.

So, obviously, you started Evolution Recruitment in 2000, right? Yeah. Okay, so just paint the picture very quickly, like, what was the landscape of the IT recruitment market at that point?

Well, there'd been this new thing called the internet, and, you know, I remember someone in the Wilmslow office starting a patch called the internet. That's what they did. That was their That was their market. And I remember kind of going on a few client visits and these companies saying, yeah, we're 20 people now, but in 2 years' time we're going to have 100 people. And there was the dot-com boom and there was a bubble where these businesses were worth a huge amount of money. And being young and relatively naive, I didn't think, you know, the dot-com boom was going to become a dot-com bust. So I thought, this is a great chance to start a business. You know, we, Evolution, initially were specialized in internet, e-commerce, and new media. That was our kind of strapline. And, um, about probably 12 months in, uh, the dot-com boom was rapidly followed by the dot-com bust, and, uh, we, we diversified out into, you know, it recruitment rather than just specializing in e-commerce, internet, and, and new media.

And just quickly, just for everyone listening in context, so obviously started that business with a couple of other people.

Yeah, so Nick Elliott, my business partner and CFO, and a friend of mine at the time who was working in recruitment, the three of us started the business and it was in the cellar of my house. We had to, we kind of got the cellar tanked and fitted out and it was so damp down there that we actually had to kind of lock the paper away in a sealed container. And we did a year working literally underground with no real light, pretty damp, but it was a great time. It was fun. And I think, you know, when we got the very first cheque through the post for our first placement, it was a kind of great source of celebration. And I think that first year was about, can we make this successful enough to move out and get our own office, get a proper office with windows and everything and sunlight? So we managed to do that after about 12 months. But in 2001, obviously September 11th happened, and anyone who was working in the industry at the time, it definitely hit demand. I'm not sure whether it was officially a recession, but there was an awful, you know, there's a lot of companies that stopped recruiting and the third business partner at that point was getting married and decided that he wanted a steady job and an income and moved out of the recruitment industry. And then, yeah, Nick and I cracked on.

So going into the sort of second year and if we just sort of break it down, I guess, into sort of early years of evolution. So I had that experience in year 1 where the dot-com bust, got out the cellar, obviously ended up being you and Nick. I guess sort of obviously, obviously the fact that, I mean, you're in the real top percent of recruitment businesses in terms of size. So I guess in those early days of evolution, like what, obviously the mindset at that point was get out the cellar, but did you and Nick have these sort of big vision conversations of what this business could be, or what was the sort of mindset early on, on what the intention was for the business? Was it a business you wanted to grow, or was it just year by year focus on that?

Yeah, I think we've always tried to think ahead and look ahead. So probably when we were, you know, a tiny business with 2 or 3 people, we tried to think like a 10-person business. When we're a 10-person business, we try to think like a 30-person business. When we're a 30-person business, trying to think like a 50-person person business, etc. So yeah, we were always trying to plan ahead of what we'd need to put in place to make the business successful at the next stage. And I think we probably always invested the money and the profits of the business back in the business to try and grow a great company. That was always, always the goal, really, to try and grow something significant and sizable. So I think, you know, on day one, did we start with the end in mind? We're going to be operating in 4 countries and have 160 people. No, we've not. It has been an incremental journey, but I think it's always trying to look to the next stage and what you need to put in place now to make that happen.

And I think that's, I think that's where a lot of people, that's the challenge that a lot of people have. I'm sure you now have plenty, have had plenty of conversations with other recruitment business owners, but yeah, from the conversations I have, it's, it's It's the opposite way round. It's, we'll do that when we get to 15 heads or we'll do that when we hit this certain milestone. But very early on, you was doing what was required before you got to that point. So did that really enable you then? Yeah. So that really enabled you to scale or obviously grow the business because that's how you're thinking about it.

We just reinvested in the business. We weren't greedy ourselves or, you know, some people that you meet, they have a little bit of success and suddenly they've got the flash car and everything else. It's, you know, if you're going to grow something sustainable in the long term, you've got to reinvest your time, your effort, and your money back in that business and make it stronger. It's like if you're going to build a house, you have to build it on solid foundations. You know, you can't skimp on your foundations, otherwise the whole house will fall down. So that's been the mentality that we've always had, really.

So what was one— what was the sort of maybe early years then of Evolution? What was sort of one of the maybe a couple, the sort of first real key milestone that, obviously the first one getting out of the cellar, obviously, but the first couple of years, obviously, what was the sort of first milestone where maybe you turned around to Nick and was like, right, we're really onto something here, or sort of where was the point where he was like, right, let's really push on, or we've got to a great point here, because obviously after year one, you had to change slightly, it recruitment ended up being you and Nick, but what was the sort of first key milestone, I guess, early on in Evolution that really sort of motivated you guys?

Or— it's a good question. I think we were, we were lucky in that we ended up hiring a number of people who had some recruitment experience that maybe we'd worked with previously, or that had worked at companies that we knew of. And even though it was never part of a plan, we probably ended up with 6 or 7 people who knew how to do the job. And what that allowed was the kind of owners and founders to take some time to work on the business rather than in the business, because there was other people that could generate fees. So, yeah, I think I remember doing our first £100,000 month and thinking, wow, that's amazing. You know, that is— we are starting to get somewhere here. Because if you multiply that out, that's over £1 million over a year, and you think we've actually got a business. So I think it was getting those group of people that could actually do the job, and that freed up time to work on the business rather than in the business.

What was the rough timeline of that? Because again, I think that's one of the common challenges, right? And, and why a huge percentage of recruitment businesses in the UK are sub-10 staff. It's because Gareth Morris, the recruitment business owner, doesn't get those people in early or isn't having the mindset of making myself redundant so I can do more on the, on the business. So I guess, what was the timeline of that? Was it over a 3, 4, 5 year period where you've got that opportunity to have more of a— get your head above the water and think about on the business?

Yeah, it's a good question. Yeah, I don't think it was immediate. I do think it did take a little bit of time. I'd probably say 2 or 3 years, something like that. So we probably ended up with perhaps 10 people in the business. And it meant that, as I say, we could work on the business rather than in the business.

Okay. So let's just talk about that for a second, because I'd love to sort of just try and sort of think about what your mindset was at that point. So obviously a couple of years in, under, obviously under 5 years old. Got people in there billing, giving yourself more time to focus on the business. So I guess we're sort of coming up towards 2003 to 2005, right? Yeah. So I guess at that point, what was the mindset on how you're going to grow this business? Was it the typical, let's get 5 more recruiters in, hopefully that means we'll do £200K a month and then keep growing it like that? Or obviously, what were the sort of things that you were thinking about at that point to get you to the next part?

I think the one of the catalysts was it's very difficult to grow a meaningful size recruitment business by only hiring people that have experience, because there's just not huge numbers of good quality people that are looking to join small businesses, you know. Um, people—

where was your base?

Sorry, we were based at that stage in Warrington, so we'd moved from—

in Warrington as well?

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I think I read a book called The E-Myth, and I'm reading that at the moment. Yeah, it's a really, really good book, and it's saying that most people that start businesses aren't truly entrepreneurs. For example, most plumbing businesses are started by people that enjoy plumbing, and then they don't particularly enjoy running the business. Therefore, the business doesn't really grow.

That's kind of the premise of this, the sort of technician, the manager, and the entrepreneur.

Correct.

You end up being just a technician and just doing the work.

You wear 3 hats effectively.

Yeah.

So, um, the— I think one of the things that sticks with me from that book is that even if you aren't going to franchise your business, pretend you're going to franchise your business and write everything down that you do that you think makes you successful, or as though you were going to charge someone for that information, as with the franchise. And I think What we did do, and right, right from the seller, I remember writing out like copious amounts of training notes on how to do recruitment. And I think that if you can get a process which you can teach to other people and teach to people that have no prior recruitment experience, then you're on the road to scaling your business. I think it, it's very difficult to scale a recruitment business if you're only hiring people with experience. You've got to be able to train and develop, um, trainees and people that have never done the job before. And, and to do that, you need to break down what you're doing and what you can do successfully into an easy-to-follow process for, for other people.

So you really— so at that early period, you really started sort of, I guess, cultivating the Evolution Way.

Documenting. Yeah. You know, we were—

And when you, when you say document, just quickly, just to be really clear, are we talking about this is how you do business development? When you get a job, these are the questions you ask. When you get a candidate, this is what you do on the system. Like, are we talking like that? Yeah. Yeah.

So we, I remember, yeah, cocky, taking me back now, but a lot of the early training I wrote and it was around recruitment skills. It was around technical knowledge of your market, so understanding something about IT, and then there was the system skills, so there was a CRM system or database, and, and I think you had to try and transfer skills in all three areas to people to help them to be successful, and I think at the beginning of someone's career, the clearer guide you can give people of how to be successful in the job, the better they're going to be. Now obviously, once you're 6 months in, once you're 12 months in, people can start to put their own stamp on it and to innovate and to try different things. But I think when you first start in a role and someone genuinely has never done a job before, you know, just asking them to get on and give it a go is just going to be a recipe for disaster, really.

Again, I think that's, I think it's the process part. Again, you're doing things that before you technically maybe needed them, because you could have said to those 10 people, get on the phone and I'll help you as you go, right? But you were documenting it. So I love that. So sort of Gareth early on, on the business was, right, I really need to document. If we get 2 new people that don't have recruitment experience, they need to know exactly how to do things when they come through that door, right?

Okay.

Cool. So I guess, so then, just quickly then, what about during this period, obviously coming up to 2005, around the sort of first 5-year mark, obviously getting towards the sort of recession in '08, I guess, like, what was it recruitment back then? Because was LinkedIn, when, when was it, when did LinkedIn happen? Because that's obviously a bit of a milestone.

It's a good question. It's a really good question. I think that— I think LinkedIn was starting to become popular before the credit crunch and before the downturn in 2007, 2008, but probably really became big afterwards, after that. And it was mainly job board orientated before that, really. Yeah.

Oh, 2002. Sorry, I just Googled it. So 2002 they started.

Okay. Yeah. But I don't think it was massive in the UK.

Because what, looking back then, would you like, because obviously, would you say it was less crowded? Like it was quite, quite easier. Like, could you, as you said, it was more job board orientated. Did you have to be obviously not as niche as you probably have to be now?

Yeah, I'll just go backwards for you really. When I was at Computer Futures, the way you attracted candidates was to advertise in the back of physical magazines. You used to have to write your adverts 10 days before it went to press, by which time the jobs were filled. And, you know, Computer Futures, to their credit, dominated the advertising. They bought an awful lot of advertising in Computer Weekly and computing magazines, so we had a lot of candidates. So, you know, in terms of going to market to the client side, you had a lot of product, you know, you had a lot of people for them, so they kind of, they kind of had to work with you. And then what happened was when the internet came along, and you got job boards like JobServe and Jobsite and, and those types of companies. It democratized, um, recruitment, and it meant that you could start up a business from your cellar or from your bedroom. And if you advertised on these job boards or you logged on to their CV databases, you could actually get access to some of the people that the Computer Futures or the Hayes or whoever the that the dominant players were at the time had access to. So I think LinkedIn is just a natural continuation of that. So the internet definitely allowed us to start our business up because, you know, advertising in trade press was thousands and thousands of pounds. Advertising on job boards was hundreds of pounds. So it helped us, but obviously it helped lots of other people as well. So it meant, you know, if you've got an awful lot of competitors then the only way to combat that really is to specialize in, in a particular area and be the best in the world at something. Um, and I think, you know, that's really important for, for any recruiter starting out is try to be a specialist in a particular market rather than try and be a jack of all trades. Um, you know, and accept that you're not going to work with every client and you're not going to be able to help every candidate but be absolutely brilliant in the area that you choose to focus and specialize in.

And your specialism was IT, IT recruitment?

Yeah, yeah, but obviously within that we have recruiters specializing in particular vertical markets, and, you know, the more specialist that you can go, the better. But if people were starting up businesses now, you know, it is way too general to start a business in, you'd have to take a particular niche in a particular area and say, okay, we're going to try and be the best in the world at this particular area. Because I think there's just too much competition out there now to be a generalist.

Okay. And just quickly, just for context, obviously, I want to sort of talk a bit about what your business looked like going into the sort of financial crash and your experience there. At that, what was you predominantly, perm business, was it contract?

Yeah, predominantly permanent.

Okay.

You know, probably 90% of our net fees were probably through permanent and 10% on contract at the time.

So going into the financial crash then, what did your business look like before that hit?

I would say probably 30, 35 people, something like that. And, you know, it was obviously a long time ago now, pales into insignificance really compared to the coronavirus, but I think we were pretty lean, so we didn't have a big IT department, we didn't have a big marketing department, we didn't have anyone in HR. We had, you know, the owners of the business, and recruiters and some team leaders. So, from memory, we managed to ride out the storm okay, and by that I mean we didn't lose money, so we were still profitable, albeit that may have been a fairly small profit. And I think that's what we did. We just cut our cloth accordingly, and we didn't make anyone redundant. We didn't, you know, ask anyone to leave the business, but obviously we're in recruitment, and if someone isn't making placements month after month after month, Sometimes people make their own decision, don't they, and say, actually, this isn't for me. So probably coming out of that credit crunch and financial crisis, we were left with our best people, but just less people. And very much like a garden, I suppose, if you prune your garden back, it can grow better and, you know, be more productive on the other side.

So obviously going through that, what do you think the learnings through that period, what do you think applies to today? Obviously it's completely different, but like sort of looking back and just talking a bit about sort of that period and that experience, I guess out of that, what happened there, what do you think sort of applies today from what you learned during that period?

Don't panic. You know, people don't want that, that the leader to be panicking or overly worried. I think make sensible, logical decisions, cut out any non-essential costs out of your business, so things that people wouldn't miss if you stopped spending money on them. I think support people and make sure that people know that, you know, we've always been relatively conservative in the way we've run the business, so we do have money in the bank, and let people know that. They need reassurance, but also, if anyone hasn't worked through a recession or a downturn, there is life on the other side. This will not last forever, although it feels like it in lockdown, it won't last forever, and I think, you know, tough times make tough people. And I think if you, your recruiters, and your business can get through this period, you'll probably look back and say it was actually the best thing that ever happened to us because you have to be innovative, you have to change, and you have to kind of seize the day. And what will happen is, you know, the strong will survive, and you'll have a better, stronger foundation to build from albeit there might be a few less people in your business because for some people, you know, it might become too much.

Okay, first 10 years then of Evolution's history then, let's just sort of tie that together. So do, like, where was you? So also got through that, I really like what you said there around the sort of garden analogy. Yeah, came out the other side with even stronger people that you probably felt even more confident to build and grow a business with. So where was you in 2010? How many people? Where was your revenue-wise as well? So I'm assuming it was around 30, 40 people, or where was your revenue-wise and as a business 10 years in?

Do you know what? It's a really good question.

Roughly, I'm not going to hold you to it.

Revenue, £10 million maybe. Okay. Something like that. I think one of the things that we did do in the financial crisis is we invested in training. So we've made the decision that if the job's about to get a lot harder for people, we need to invest in training them. And we got a full-time trainer into the business. So, you know, that early work that I put in creating training documentation and everything else, this is part of scaling your business. Hire someone who's better than you at doing that particular part of the job. So, you know, I was okay at it, and, um, you know, I, I definitely helped a number of people early on in their career be successful. But if you've got someone whose job it is full-time and they're a training and development expert, they're going to do a better job than me. So we, we invested in, in training, and I think we got our first Investors in People certification back in 2009. So at a time where everyone else was probably cutting their training teams, budgets, departments, etc., we were just investing a little bit more in that because that's interesting. We knew that the job was going to be difficult for people and we needed to support them in that.

So just quickly on, on that, because I think this period has also highlighted that, and I think that's been quite a few of the conversations that I've had with recruitment business owners. I guess just very quickly, if you were to summarize, you investing then on learning and development and while actually recognizing that it is going to be tough on the other side of this.

Yeah.

How did that decision on investing in your people and training enable your staff or how did it have an impact as they bounced back? I guess it'd be good to get your experience on that because there might be some similarities for people.

Yeah, I think it's supporting the people that are doing the job on the front line while it's tough. So even just someone to do a coaching session, to listen, to understand, to empathize, is, is good. Um, but what it allowed that person to do that we brought in in that training role was really to learn the business and learn more about recruitment. And then as we started to come out of that financial crisis, that person understood recruitment more, so it allowed us to recruit trainees because the person understood the process, they understood what, what recruitment was and how it all worked. And then, you know, we'd recruit groups of trainees, put them through training school, give them support, give them training, give them development, and obviously, you know, a percentage of those would, would come out as successful and decent recruiters on the other side.

Okay, so those first 10 years then, just quickly, and then let's sort of move into the next decade.

Yeah.

Knowing what we know now, what do you wish sort of you knew going into those first 10 years or the first couple of years? Do you think that you wish you—

Crikey, a lot. I think, you know, you've got to bear in mind I was 25 when we started the business. So, you know, I was pretty young as a person, pretty inexperienced as a recruiter, and had to learn an awful lot on the job. So, um, what would have done differently? Um, perhaps invested more time quicker in somebody to work full-time in a training role to then allow us to recruit a bigger volume of trainees. Yeah, exactly, because I think if you really want to get your business moving, you've got to accept that you need to train people who have never done the job before and help them to be successful. And that is quite complicated. There's a lot to learn, you know, it's People say things like, oh, recruitment is not rocket science. Well, I would argue that in this day and age, with all the tools that you've got available and all the competition that's out there, it probably is rocket science. So, you know, don't underestimate what you find easy yourself as a recruiter is actually really challenging to train and develop other people in. And don't underestimate that challenge. And perhaps if we'd started that process a little bit earlier then we'd have been a bit further on after 10 years.

Do you think, I don't know, like, I know it's not because I'm thinking again, that's another sort of real big challenge as to what prevents growth for recruitment businesses. So I guess, I don't know, do you reckon that you could put a bit of a trigger on when you should hire an internal trainer or is it just as soon as you could afford it? Consider having some sort of internal training resource.

Yeah, as soon as possible. Yeah, either that or, you know, if you've started the business as, uh, you know, 2 or 3 of you, it might be that one of you has a passion for doing that. So it doesn't have to be a new hire, or it might be somebody in your business who's a good recruiter, um, that maybe gets more of a thrill by other people making placements than making placements themselves. So it's maybe giving them a an option, a career development opportunity, and moving them into a, you know, a training and development role. But I think if you are going to scale up your business, you have to train people to do the job if you want them to do it well and do it successfully. That would be my experience.

Okay, so going into the next decade then, because I'm sure— I'm assuming at that point you was like, wow, first 10 years in business. I mean, firstly, that's that's an amazing length of time, right? So I'm sure there would have been some sort of like, right, then on the next decade, this is our vision and this is what we're thinking. I guess what was the mindset sort of of you and your business partners going into the sort of 11th and the future of that after those 10 years?

I think it was that, you know, the financial crisis where we kind of realised our long-term goals for the business. I don't think we're going to realize these just being a UK-based recruitment business.

Really?

Yeah. And I think there was very much— there was a lot of talk at the time about the power shifting from the West to the East and that China was going to become the, you know, the biggest economy and the most dominant player. And I think we realized that we needed to expand out.

Diversification.

Yeah, outside of the UK. So I think from memory, we had probably about 50-odd people on board when we started opening overseas offices, first in Germany and then in Singapore and then in Australia. And I think what it does is provide—

What was the timeline on that? Sorry, just quickly before I forget, roughly.

I think Germany has been open for around 10 years now. Singapore, probably 7 years. Australia, about 5 years.

So, okay. So there was clearly a real motivation then to diversify the Evolution brand into not just a UK business then, off the back of the financial crisis.

Yeah, yeah, I think, I think we just thought this is too risky to just, you know, purely be a UK IT recruitment business. So that was kind of the, the thing that stimulated us. And, and a nice story in terms of our German office, so Many, many years ago, we had a guy that joined us as a placement student. So he was— if you do a degree in Europe, you have to do a placement as part of your degree. And if you speak any sort of English, you tend to go and do it in an English-speaking country because it's a good skill for them to have. So he came over and worked for us, and you couldn't actually pay them wages. It was kind of a strange system where you had to pay them, I think, expenses, really. I think it was £600 a month you could pay people. And he came over and worked for us for, I think it was 9 months. But he spoke very, very good English. And in that time, he made some placements and he was actually pretty good at the job. So he finished his degree and then came back and joined us full-time as an employee of the UK business. And he did a couple of years working the UK market. But as the German. And then he, his then wife got pregnant and wanted to move back to Germany. So he moved back to Germany around the time of the credit crunch. We kept in contact, and then probably 6 to 9 months later, as we're starting to come out of it, we said, you know, you've always wanted to start your own business, and we've always wanted to, you know, expand Evolution outside the UK. How about starting something for us in Germany. So this guy that joined us as a placement student has now ended up being MD of our German business. So, you know, our purpose as a company is to help people and organizations realize their potential, and he's a great example of someone that, you know, was a student that did a 6-month placement and then became an MD with a stake in his own business in Germany.

So let's just talk about the international expansion piece. And that was going to be my first question around sort of what the strategy was. So you just shared a great story on how, obviously, basically what you had there was someone that soaked up the UK culture, sort of understood what the Evolution Way was. And then I feel like you'd be pretty confident that he'd be able to replicate that or understand what your purpose and mission is as a business, which meant that there's a good chance he could recreate that. In another country. So I guess, obviously, we could combine all the sort of countries here that you've gone into, but I guess, what was the plan or what was the strategy on how you were going to sort of penetrate these markets, these international markets? Has it always been you got someone from the UK office and they started to work obviously in these other international markets and then they went over there? I guess, what was— how did you approach it?

Well, Germany was a little bit of a unique situation, really, and I think it would be difficult for other companies to replicate. But what I would say with regards to the other offices is you've got to find a great person to set it up. I think, you know, the success of that office is going to be probably 80 to 90% down to that person.

That person.

So find someone that you trust, find someone that shares your values, and find someone with local market knowledge experience. So, you know, probably has been working in that market, ideally 5 years, you know, they've got some relationships, they've got some knowledge of which companies hire and which companies are easy to recruit for and which are more challenging. And then what we did was took that local person, and then a business partner at the time would then go out to those offices and spend you know, up to a couple of years out there to make sure the Evolution DNA was over in the office as well. Yeah, absolutely. So I would say someone with local market knowledge is a must, and somebody with your DNA teamed up would be the best.

Because I think that's the challenge, right? Because if I'm speaking to a recruiter in Singapore, like, obviously you said trust, right? Obviously if they haven't worked for Evolution before and it's a new hire, you're backing them to do it. Do you get what I mean? Obviously, it can be quite hard to get that right, or you're worried about getting that right because obviously, as you said, 89% of the success of that would be down to that person. So I guess, what was the sell then? Because obviously they'd have most of the leverage. Like, if I'm a local person, know the market, and sort of I'm speaking to you as a UK recruitment business and saying, look, what was the opportunity for me? And sort of what did you make sure you saw in that person for you to go, yeah, this is the person we want to head up our Singapore or Australian office?

I think that we made sure that there were share options available for those people in those offices based on hitting targets, because obviously they're integral to that office and you want them to be tied into the long-term success. So that's one way to, you know, to make sure that people are loyal and are there for the long term.

How did you structure that? Just really simply, just because I think sometimes there can be just a lot of smoke and mirrors with, yeah, you can get shares, equity or whatever. But how did you— like, if I'm thinking about opening an American office and I'm speaking to someone at the moment or whatever, what was it like? How did you structure it to favor them but also favor you?

Just, just re-document the agreement, you know, just make sure, put it into a contract to say if you do X, Y, and Z, you get this percentage of, of that particular business. And, you know, the thing with share options is they are executable upon an event, you know, upon selling the business or floating the business. So you only get to benefit if you're there at the end. And that's what you want. You want that person tied in to be part of the journey. Not to do 2 years and then, and then disappear.

If they hit milestones and they get some of the profit share, which in the short term, that's the motivation, but long term, it's—

That's your reward. If you're running an office, you need to put some sort of profit share scheme in place, and that's only right and proper. But for the longer term, it's okay, you know, if we sell this business, then you're going to get a percentage of the value that your office has created.

So what are the common misconceptions recruitment business owners have on expanding internationally, do you think?

You'd have to ask them what the common misconceptions are. I don't know.

I think, like, what was your biggest challenge?

Probably penetrating a market when you're, when you're on a standing start, you know, because let's not kid ourselves, most areas of the world have people doing recruitment already. So you've got to go over there and offer something different or something better. Um, and you know, sometimes that takes time to, to get known, doesn't it? If you, if you're just starting up a business, it doesn't matter if you, you've got some form of reputation in the UK or in Germany, no one knows you in Sydney or in Australia, so you've got to start that from scratch. That's the biggest challenge, isn't it? When you turn up, you have no reputation, and that's why I think the person who starts in the office probably needs to have that local market knowledge and, you know, be in a position where they've maybe got some relationships and some reputation themselves that they can bring to the party.

Hmm, and then, and then just, just a quick one. Obviously, I know that you said, obviously, you had someone that went over there typically, but I guess, what, how did you get better at instilling the Evolution DNA? What was sort of the core? Because obviously, Singapore recruitment office culture is going to be different to your office in Warrington, right? And you've got to respect that and understand that. So I guess, how have you gone about Yeah, how have you gone about ensuring that that DNA and purposes transfers across all different brands? And do you make sure that, I don't know, that the UK team know that actually they do have offices in Australia and you try and sort of cultivate these people to share knowledge? And I don't know, how have you gone about sort of cultivating this sort of group?

It's, I think it comes from the global board, so each of the offices has— the person that runs that office is on the global board. So when we've done work defining and, you know, honing down on our purpose and our brand promise and our values, those people have been integral in that process. So they then believe in what that purpose is, what the brand promise is, and what values are, because they co-created it. And then it's their job to go and instill that into their their offices, and I think, you know, if they have helped to create—

yeah, get them involved in the process, that vision—

then they're more likely to go and sort of make sure that their office actually lives and breathes it.

No, go on, sorry.

I'd say a rough rule of thumb for us is everybody has the same purpose, the same brand promise, and the same values, and 80% of the culture of the offices is probably the same, but then 20% has to be kind of unique to that, that country. Yeah, a good, good example would be in Singapore, team-based events are more around food than they are around alcohol, because culturally that's what, what matters to them. Our German business kind of changed the dress code and dressed down a lot earlier than the other offices because that's what mattered to them. But it's— they still shared the values of the business, they still shared the brand promise and the purpose. But what you do is some of the subtleties are different from, from office to office.

So what I was going to ask you was, um, like, for you, in your opinion, scaling this recruitment business as you expanded internationally, like, how, how important were your company values and purpose when actually growing your business, do you think? How important are they? Because obviously you hear about, hear about them all the time, you see people put them on their website, obviously, um, so being sure, obviously you have them over your walls. And I guess, like, how, how important are they when growing your recruitment business?

I think they're really important because I think it gives people an idea of the personality of the business and what's important to that business, and they make a choice: do I want to be part of that or do I not? So you end up with a group of like-minded people, albeit who, you know, you still want innovation, don't you? You still want people that are capable of doing things a little bit different or trying things or experimenting. But, you know, our brand promise, for example, is to provide a great recruitment experience. So whether it's a candidate that we're placing, a contractor, or a client, we want them to come away from that interaction promoting our service. We want them to be advocates of our business, and if someone doesn't really share that, then they're probably not right to work in our business. Because if they just want to do a deal and, you know, they don't care if they leave a bad taste in people's mouths, then that isn't sustainable long term. And, you know, that, that's really important to us to make sure that people share that that vision really of providing a great recruitment experience whoever they're talking to.

So, so obviously the values part then also helps you say no to people or get more of the right people basically as you're hiring and growing?

Yeah, we're really, it's really, really simple. When we, when we were assessed for Investors in People back in 2009, the lady that did the assessment said, you know what, really impressive company, people love working for the business, they speak passionately about it, and they say the same sorts of things about your business. But you know what, you haven't actually got any values documented. So we, we went through a process then of talking to everyone in the business and saying, okay, well, what do you think is important? And, and getting workshops together and getting people to do some brainstorming. And we came up with with 7 values. And, you know, a number of—

that was co-created with—

co-created at the time in 2009. And all it was, was it was, it was documenting what we were anyway. They were always there, they just weren't, weren't explicit. And it was this lady that did our IIP, um, sort of assessment that flagged it up to us, just said, it's crazy, you know, you— it's so clearly you've got values in your business, but you've just not kind of stopped to write them down. Um, and then a number of years later it became clear that 7 is just too many for people to remember. And we— there was also hygiene factors in there, you know, things like professional. Well, the, I suppose the key there is if someone isn't professional, they just shouldn't be working in your business. It's not something that you should be aspiring to be. It should just be taken as red. So we took the 7 values and we did another workshopping session many years later with everybody in the different offices, and we said, what, which of these values is most important to you? And we boiled it down to 3, and that was to be ambitious, innovative, and collaborative. And, and I think when we hire ambition, I'm looking for somebody who wants to achieve something in their life that has goals, meaningful goals that they're prepared to work hard towards. If somebody doesn't have ambition the best thing you can do is not offer them a job because you're just going to do them a disservice. Because in recruitment in this era, unless you're ambitious, it's going to be really, really difficult for you. Innovative— the world's changing, recruitment's changing at a faster pace than it's ever changed before. So you've got to be capable of taking on board new ideas and running with them, and also coming up with a few yourself. You can't just always rely on someone else to to tell you what to do and to explain, you know, how to do recruitment. Sometimes you need to join some of the dots yourself. And finally, and probably most importantly, being collaborative. So we achieve more by working together, and I think, you know, in recruitment you do get people who are individual contributors, and that's okay, but you can't be toxic to the, to your colleagues around you. Your success can't mean that someone else isn't successful as a result, and And I think that's really, really important that I'd much rather, you know, a B+ team player than an A* individual contributor that ruins everything around them.

So keen to sort of just talk a bit about how you scaled your business, obviously going into the next 10 years after that first decade. But I guess obviously the real motivation going into after those 10 years was the diversification, international expansion. So after obviously you achieved that, I guess overall now, even you can talk about from where you are now, I guess, like how much of an impact did that then have on the profitability of your recruitment business then? Because obviously that's something that you learned during the financial crisis and thinking, well, actually we'll probably have more longevity as a business. Like, did it then actually, has it made your business more profitable?

Yeah, I mean, I would say opening international offices In the short term, it's an investment. So in my experience, don't expect to make huge amounts of profit within the first 2 or 3 years. But what you're doing is trying to invest for 5 years' time. So it takes time. You know, you've got to get office space, you've got to hire someone to start the office, you've got to hire employees who aren't necessarily going to be productive straight away, but you've got to stick with it. So you've got to, you've got to invest for the long term. So I'd say opening any overseas offices in the short term, you're likely to make less profit in the short term, but long term you've given yourself another growing point. You've given yourself another way to grow your business, grow your net fees, and grow your profit. So yeah, longer term it will help you to become more profitable. Short term, you've got to accept you're going to have to spend money to make money.

Yeah, it's definitely long term. It's increased the equity value of Evolution and your business.

Yeah, because an international recruitment business is generally going to be worth more than one that just operates in one particular country.

And then I guess to bring it— I was going to say also then to bring it today, but then globally we've been affected by this. I was going to say, how useful has it been to be sort of diversified in terms of different— being in different continents? Because maybe it has, maybe it hasn't. But I think obviously financial crisis, it wasn't a global it wasn't a global event, was it? But I guess, has it helped being diversified in the current challenges, would you say? Maybe more so in Australia, maybe?

Yeah, I think, I think, you know, they, the coronavirus hasn't really wreaked much havoc in Australia. That said, they were very proactive as a country about going into lockdown. So they still had lots of the same challenges. But I'd say their economy is moving a bit quicker now than, for example, the economy in the UK. Singapore, you know, after China was hit quite early and then seemed to get a hold of things, and then suddenly a month or two later went into lockdown because a lot of the migrant workers in Singapore ended up with the coronavirus. Germany, Again, they've managed to control coronavirus very successfully, but one of the challenges we've got in Germany is that employment rights for permanent employees are very strong. They're very employee-centric, and even if people are on their version of the furlough scheme in Germany, they're only paid 60 or 67% of their salary based on whether they've got a family or not. But German— Germans are still keen to stay with their existing employer rather than take the risk of moving jobs. Yeah, because the way employment law works in Germany is that you have very few employment rights in the first 6 months and then you are very much protected thereafter. So, you know, our permanent it candidates are still nervous about moving jobs even if they are not actually actively working for their businesses because they're still getting some income and they're kind of, yeah, risk-averse, if you like, about putting themselves into that position when they're in a probationary period with a new business.

Okay, interesting. So I guess thinking of sort of, I mean, a lot of people will sort of have the mindset that they want to grow their recruitment business. Obviously, circa 160 people, it's a lot of people, right? Obviously, you've got different offices. I guess Just thinking about that for a sec, what do you think, obviously you invested a lot into training, clearly from the very beginning documented your process, but I guess what would you say were some of the key factors that enabled you to scale your recruitment business to the amount of people you have? Was it the strategy of getting people, bulk of people through your academy and growing it that way, or what would you say were some of the key sort of aspects to enabling you to scale, would you say?

Yeah, I think if you, if you think about it in a logical, um, order, you've got to have good people doing internal recruitment because arguably it's the most important job in your business. If you hire really good people with great potential, then a decent percentage of them will work out to be successful recruiters. So get your IR right in the first instance, and then Once you've got the right people—

When did you start building that team, out of interest?

Over 10 years ago. Yeah, I think we just found that the rec-to-rec companies we work with were just very sporadic, really, in the people that they could or would send us. So we had no choice. We had to build an internal team because there was no way we could we could grow via, um, rec-to-rec candidates, um, and the people that have worked internal in internal recruitment have done a great job. They've recruited people with the right kind of raw attributes, raw skills, and then obviously we've slotted them into this training program and training process to give them the best chance of being successful. No one can guarantee anything, but what you're trying to do is give people the best possible chance.

So investing in obviously your internal recruitment function and then going down the training program academy route. So that, what did that mean, that you was able to, I don't know, hire 10, 15, 8 people at once rather than?

Yeah, that was, that was, it's become more difficult over the last few years because the country's been virtually at full employment in the UK. So getting a quantity of people to start on one day has been very, very difficult. But yeah, historically we would, we would recruit, you know, a group of people, and I think that works really well in many, many ways. A, it gives people peers to compete against when they're first starting the job, so you can make it a bit of fun. Secondly, they've got friends in the business straight away. You know, if you think about it, walking into a company where there's maybe 100 people in an office and you're the newbie, that's a little bit overwhelming for some people, whereas if you're starting on the same day as 3 or 4 other people, you've immediately got friends to go, you know, go for lunch with, chat with, talk through the training with, you know, support you in terms of when you're on the phones making calls and trying to make your way in recruitment. If your only point of reference is your manager who's been doing it for 10 years, that's quite difficult, isn't it? But if you are in it with other people like you, I think that helps, gives people peer support.

So we've spoken a lot about getting new people into the business. What have been the key things you've done to retain the best people in your business? I mean, I've met a couple of people in your business, and I think online a lot of people— you'll know better than me— but it seems like a lot of people have worked at Evolution for quite a long period. So I guess What have been some of the key things that have contributed to you keeping hold of some of your best people, would you say?

I think there's a few things really. One is the way you treat people, so I think as a person, I genuinely care about our purpose of helping people realize their potential, so people who go on to achieve success in our business, I'm really, really proud that they've done that, not for me, but for them. And I think people know that that's sincere. I don't think you can make that up on a day-to-day basis. When you see these people every day, you play football with them, you know, you go on social events with them and things like that, people see through if that's not how you really are. So be sincere, be fair, put their best interests at heart, not your best interests. Leaders should eat last, not first. And I think people know that— I think there's trust there, hopefully, that people know in the DNA of the business we do care about them, we do want them to be successful. And you know what? People do leave. That's recruitment. Nobody will stay with you forever. And even people have gone on, perhaps they've gone overseas, moved out of the industry, I'm still pleased when I see other people doing well. You know, if, if, you know, I've had people reach out to us that haven't worked for us for 5 years and say, you know what, you gave me a great start in recruitment, I enjoyed my 3 or 4 years with your business, um, you know, you're still the best company we've worked for, or whatever. It's really nice when people remember that and come back years later to, to say that. And I think you know, you've always got an advocate and a friend for the future. So yeah, treat people how you'd want to be treated. Be fair. Try and see things from the other person's perspective. It's always really easy to see things from your own perspective in life, but try and sit on the other side of the fence, um, and, you know, give people opportunity as well. You know, I think there's definitely, with Falco being the example in Germany, people who've started different brands for us, started divisions, grown teams, moved patches. You know, if you can give people a fresh challenge every so often in their career, that helps as well, because you can't just do the same thing day in, day out for 10 years.

And have you, have you had to cultivate that mindset? Because I, I do believe that's true. I mean, I haven't been to your office. It's a big office, and I can see you there sat there on the floor and you seem, you see someone that's really approachable. And I think if you think 160-person business and I can see the CEO sitting over there, he's not in that, you're not in a corner office and I don't have to go through a couple of doors to find you. And do you get what I mean? So I guess, have you been on a journey with that yourself or has that just been sort of innately how you, how you've been?

I think probably a couple of things. I think it is in, in, in my personality, you know, I, I, I don't think you can fake caring about other people. You either do or you don't. And I think that I realized very early on that the success of the business relied on other people. So you better be nice to them because they're, you know, they're more important to the success of the business than I am. I'm only one person.

Did you find that hard to let go of that? Because I think that's the— like, your ego can get in the way of that. And like, you started this business in your cellar. And you're going, um, the other people more important?

I don't, don't, don't really have an ego at all. You know, I think it's genuine where there's a lot of people in our business that are better than lots of aspects of our business than I am. I suppose what I've done well is, is find those people and encourage them to join our business and then empower them to get on with their job. And then support them. And you know what? Support them when things aren't going well, because everybody's a hero when things are going well. But when someone's made a mistake, just empathize and sympathize and say, you know what, in the same position, I think I'd have probably made the same mistake myself. So don't beat yourself up about it. And, you know, as long as you learn from it, just try not to make the same mistake again. And I think, you know, I did read a book, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Yeah, that's a great book. And it's a brilliant book.

Such a good book.

In terms of how to treat other people.

Yeah.

And that probably—

It goes such a long way.

Yeah, but it probably crystallized what I already felt was the right thing to do. Yeah. But gave me confidence that actually, yeah, this is the way I want to be. This is how I want to be remembered. And, you know, I want people that work for the business, to think great business and a great person, not because I'm some, you know, heroic leader, just because they feel as though I had their back and I supported them and helped them, especially when it's, when it, when times are difficult.

No, I absolutely love that, Gareth. I think that's, and then they're the types of things that you don't typically associate with recruitment or a recruiter, or so. I just love that. I think that's great. I think doing the right thing really goes a long way. And like, it sounds basic and simple, but you can build a great profitable big business by having that type of mindset. And I think that's awesome. So before we finish, I know obviously to unpack 20 years of your business, but I guess just before we finish, what I'd love to just get your thoughts on, Gareth, is I think when you've been in business for that long, and I feel like that you could be susceptible to being comfortable or getting complacent, and sort of, you, you could very easily have the mindset of, well, we did it this way 5 years ago, so that's how we're doing it. Do you get what I mean? So I guess, what, what's sort of been your journey with ensuring that Evolution Recruitment, although you're 20 years old and you built a sustainable business, which is amazing, but what have you done to make sure that you don't get left behind. And as you said, recruitment is changing as fast as it ever has. And you always hear sort of old-school recruiters or old-school recruitment now. So I guess what have you done in your business to make sure that you're not putting that box of, ah, over at Evolution, they're old school, they've been around 20 years. What— because that could be quite difficult, right? So I guess how have you found that journey and what have you done?

Always invested in technology. So we've always had a bespoke CRM system. We've got an in-house IT team. We are ourselves Microsoft Gold Partners as a business. For the quality of the IT team. So we've, over the last probably 12 to 18 months, redeveloped our CRM system from scratch in, you know, latest technologies, cutting-edge technologies, which allows integration with the things like LinkedIn and the tools that people are just using as a standard. I think that having or defining being innovative as one of our values is really important, and I think often the innovation comes from the floor. So having said earlier, that when people start in the industry, it's about teaching them process, and I believe that it absolutely is. What you've then got to do, probably 6 to 12 months in, is give people the confidence to try things and to innovate and, and to take chances and take risks. And if it succeeds, to then go and tell the rest of the business about it. So one of the most one of the best things we do really is run masterclasses with recruiters who are doing the job, who are trying things, and when they achieve success consistently, then in their own words, tell the rest of the business what they've done and how they've done it well. So the innovation comes from listening and talking to people who are on the front line, who are doing the job, and talking to your best billers and talking to, you know, even your okay billers and saying, What's working? What's not? When you say that's working, do you think you could write a masterclass about that? Do you think you could document that in some form of process that other people could understand? And then they get experience of presenting in front of their colleagues. And you know what I found over the years is that people often want to hear about new ideas from people who are doing the job like them, rather than someone like me who, you know, it sort of lasted recruitment 15 years ago or whatever. And again, that's just, hey, don't take it personally. People want to hear from people who are actually doing the job and are your top billers now, not what happened the day of. Yeah, that's amazing.

So again, it's your humility, right? And so that's really cool. So it's come from actually sort of you making sure that people are living and breathing your values and you're cultivating those things that you just said through your people, which makes it more current and can drive influence internally, not from you, but actually from the people that are on the front line. Yeah, yeah, absolutely love that.

Let them tell the story because they'll do it far better, uh, far— in a far more convincing way. And people can identify with people like themselves who are doing the job now in this era. And you know what, there's so much good stuff that is going on in our recruitment business and all the recruitment businesses out there. But just take the time to listen to the people and what they're doing, and then encourage them to document it, you know, back to that process thing. Oh, you're doing this really good thing, right? You can't just have a quick chat with someone else about it. You just need to write it down. And, you know, I remember hearing a phrase, you haven't got a strategy until it's written down. Well, if someone's doing something great, but they can't really document it, it's not going to help you change your business and move it forward. Get it in a presentation, share it with people, and then hopefully other people can learn too.

That's amazing. So before, so I guess just quickly before I just ask you a couple of last questions, so what does a CEO of your business do now then? So talking a lot about other people, like what, because like yeah, what have you ended up really focusing your time on and resource on, like as a CEO of a sort of 100-person recruitment business, what do you end, what does a typical day look like for you then?

Yeah, busy. I think I'm someone who is quite hands-on by nature, so a number of the different departments still report into me. I've got two very good managing directors in the UK business who run the sales teams, and then got very good people running our overseas teams. But, you know, in terms of our development and data team, our internal recruitment team, HR team. There's still a number of functions that do report into me, so I make sure, I suppose, on a day-to-day basis that what we're setting as our strategy as a business is what we're actually doing on a daily basis, because you can have the best strategy in the world, if it's not implemented correctly, it's still going to fail. And it's, you know, constantly reminding people of our purpose, which is to help people and organizations to realize their potential. So if you're a manager in our business, your job is to help your team realize their potential. If you're a recruiter, your job's to help your candidates and clients to realize their potential. Make sure that our brand promise is upheld. We, you know, we do a lot of net promoter score, surveys. So, you know, we've got a net promoter score of +83 at the moment, which is higher than Apple, Amazon, and Netflix. And that means that the majority of people interact with our business promote, you know, promoters of our business. And it's also making sure that, you know, people are living our values and praising and rewarding people that are doing the right things, you know, be it ambition on the sales side and people, you know, producing great figures, or people who are running masterclasses and being collaborative, or people that are coming up with new ideas that they can then roll out to the, to the rest of the business. So I suppose it's, you know, helping and supporting all the other people that are quite frankly more important than me in the business do their job effectively while making sure that there's cohesion and coherence between you know, what we're trying to achieve.

I'm involved, yeah.

Strategy of the business.

So, final sort of question then, and then I'll ask you the last question. Obviously, I'd be stupid to not ask sort of what your opinion perspective is on sort of just putting COVID-19 aside a second, just sort of the future of the recruitment industry. Obviously, you've been in recruitment for a real while, and obviously back to your point of recruitment is rapidly changing, faster than it ever has before, I guess. Where does your sort of mind and thoughts go when you think the future of our industry? Would you say what comes up for you when you think about the future of recruitment?

I think specialists rather than generalists, and I think if you're an individual recruiter or you're running a recruiting business, you've got to think about what can you be the best in the world at, and I think the people that I've seen be most successful as recruiters have a genuine interest and passion about the sector that they're recruiting in. So they're attending meetups, they're reading articles, they're watching YouTube videos, and they're trying to add value, genuinely trying to add value to their candidates and clients. So I think unless you're doing that, I think it's going to be very challenging, uh, going forward. Um, but that said, I still passionately believe that recruitment done well is a brilliant job in a brilliant industry. So, you know, how many industries are there where you can help somebody realize their potential in their career by finding them the next job in, you know, in their career ladder, helping companies to grow? Because ultimately, a business is only as good as the people that work there. And if you're providing a business with great people, you're helping to grow that business, you're making a real difference. And also, you know, from a recruiter's perspective, you've got an opportunity to progress your career really, really rapidly. You know, you've got an opportunity to achieve the same number of promotions you would in any other industry, probably. You know, it'd take you 10 years in a typical industry, it might take you 2 or 3 in recruitment. And obviously, if you're successful, then it can be rewarding as well financially. But I think that's the byproduct of doing a great job. I think if it's only about making money, then sooner or later you will get found out. I think you've got to have a sincere, you know, passion for helping the candidates and the clients to be successful, and then business starts to come to you. You know, people refer you and recommend you, promote your service, and the job starts to become easier.

And again, it sounds basic, but you'd be surprised how many people don't have that intention. And don't do the right thing by their clients and candidates. And yeah, it will go a long way.

Yeah.

So I guess just quickly then, sort of if I'm a sort of aspiring recruitment entrepreneur or I'm a recruitment business owner right now that's looking at sort of you and your business and thinking, wow, I'd love to sort of get to the point where they are or whatever, I guess, what would you say if I have a recruitment business right now and I want to scale my business to sort of the heights of you guys, what should I be thinking about? What would you be saying to me if I wanted to be sort of where you are in the next 5 to 10 or so years?

I think it's important to learn from the past but not actually try and replicate it because the world's changing. So what worked in the past isn't necessarily going to work in the future. I'd say, you know, inch wide and mile deep. So try and pick something that has good long-term prospects as a market and try and dominate a niche rather than go general and just, you know, sort of not even touch the sides. So try and be really famous for doing something rather than try and doing everything for everybody, because I think that's going to be really, really difficult going, going forward. And in terms of, you know, anybody that's sort of joining the industry as a recruiter, is the one thing you can control is how hard you work. So people have more sales experience, more sales skills, more empathy, more persuasion skills than others. You can work on that, but what everybody can decide is how hard they work on a day-to-day basis. And, you know, if you want to be successful in this industry, I think you've got to take a genuine interest in the market that you do. You've got to be one to be seen as an expert and to be able to add value, but you're going to need to work hard. So if you read any book of any successful business person, any successful politician or sports person, you can see virtually on every page how hard they've had to work to get to where they are. And, um, you know, this is my, my rant. I've got, you know, children. I've got, um, 3 girls, um, youngest is 9, eldest is 16. And my worry is that social media gives people the edited highlights of everyone else's life that looks brilliant, um, sometimes isn't actually true. And the bit that is not promoted is how hard someone's had to work to get the outcome that they're then busy showing everybody on, on social media. And I really do worry for a generation of people that they don't understand the inputs that you have to put in to get the nice shiny things at the end. Yeah, you know, as the output. Um, and I, I just hope that that doesn't give a whole generation of people unrealistic expectations to say, well, actually, what's required, what's required to be successful. Because just read books of people who are successful, and they're not working 3 or 4 hours a day.

It's one of the most common, um, one of the common things that everyone says when I say what are the sort of top traits in top billers that you've seen, work ethic is always up there. And no, you're completely right. It's why I'm completely obsessed with sport documentaries that— because normally football, basketball, cricket is the latest one I'm watching on Amazon Prime called The Test, which is unbelievable. I don't even like cricket, but I just love it for the reason that you're talking about, because in the high-level sports, you see the finished article, you see the person on the tennis court, you see the person on the football pitch. But we've now in the world where actually documentaries like this and stuff like that, they can compete behind the curtain and see the hard work that Michael Jordan put in and the amount of free throws that he threw before he got onto that court. And I think, um, I don't know, that's why they resonate with me so much because it's just the work ethic and everything else. It's just so good to to promote that and showcase that.

You're completely right. People need to understand what's required, and it's okay to think, actually, I'm not sure that I want to work in recruitment because I'm not sure I want to put that level of effort in. But I think if you intend on being successful in your life, you need to understand what's required.

And I think what you're signing up for—

yeah, you know, the edited highlights of someone's life on social media, it looks brilliant, doesn't it? It looks absolutely brilliant. But what they're not telling you is all the hard work that's taken them to get to that point. And I think it's up to people like us to tell people the truth because, you know, that's been, I suppose, my mantra, you know, as a business owner, as a manager, is you've got to be honest with people. You can't say to people in the interview process, ah, don't worry, you know, you can turn up and turn up when you want and make a couple of calls and, you know, this time next year you'll be earning £100,000. It's just not true. You've got to work really, really hard, build a market, take a sincere interest in what you're doing, care, be passionate. And do you know what? If you do all those things for a sustained period of time, you will have a really, really good career and you'll make a really, really good living. But that's the byproduct. It's not just something that gets kind of gifted to you.

No, I love that. Look, final question. What I always ask, what are you excited about, Gareth? What is the future of Evolution, like obviously post-COVID? What are you excited about, that you want to shout about?

Great question. Do you know what, I think the resilience that the business has shown to date with the coronavirus has been exceptional. I think the ability of everybody to work from home effectively and to still produce results has been amazing really to see. We set out this year to roll out our new CRM system around each of the offices, and I've got to be honest, when the coronavirus hit, I thought, okay, that's gonna be really difficult in our overseas offices. So in Q2, we're rolling out to Australia. Obviously, the flights got cancelled, our developers couldn't get over there, and what they've done is, by great collaboration, by a lot of early mornings from the UK team and late nights from the Australian team, we're actually ahead of schedule, and by the end of this quarter, we will roll out the new CRM system to Australia. And they've said it's made a huge difference to them. The experience is better, it's quicker, it handles latency better, is helping them do the job more effectively, is using kind of cutting-edge technologies. And I suppose if we can get to the end of this year, and despite the fact that probably no one from the UK will have been able to travel to an overseas office, we've still managed to roll out that new CRM system successfully to the to the other offices, that will be very exciting because that was a long-term plan which could have easily been disrupted. But at the moment, due to people finding a way and being innovative, the rollout's actually gone better in Australia than we could have possibly hoped for.

Love that. Look, Gareth, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks very much for your time.