How Firing 60% of Clients Helped Ed Bray Build a $2M US Recruitment Business

Ed, welcome to the podcast.

Good to be here.

Nice to get to sit down with you. I know, uh, hopefully you don't mind me saying this, but I know, uh, you shared with me that this isn't your sort of bag.

Not at all, no.

I always like to look at people's LinkedIn to get some inspiration, and I think that matches up. I think it seems like you've been posting a bit more recently, but by your post around everything that you've learned since building this US team, being over here, I hadn't posted for about 6 months.

Sounds about right.

Under the radar guy.

Exactly.

Get shit done. Yeah, but you're here today because you, you have been on an interesting journey. I'm sure you may or may not be aware, but I'm just meeting more and more recruitment companies now that are based out of the UK that just serve the US, or it's on a lot of people's business plans.

Yeah.

So our goal here really is is twofold. We want to talk a bit about this career that you've been on, what you've learned the hard way, because you've been in a particular position which I'm sure you'll see this in a rama, but like by far the consistent skill gap that we see in recruitment teams is, is that sales capability. So you've been in a very particular position where you're out there client-facing, you're in a business development role from, from the get-go. You've been involved in delivery and managing that, but really the role that you're in now is what I believe is playing to your strengths, which is out there visiting clients, doing BD. And I think a lot of people would say that isn't their strongest suit. So I'm going to talk a bit about how you've got better at that, because I know, fair to say, you wasn't amazing at the start.

No, not at all.

So we're going to talk about how you were able to do that, and then we're going to dig into— you moved your life over here, Jan 2022, in Austin particularly. So we're going to talk a bit about this journey that you've been on in building the US office, and now why you feel like you've really built the foundations where it's probably the strongest it's ever been to build on, and what you believe is behind that.

100% is the goal. Let's get into it.

So why don't we— and your, your world, let me know if I'm wrong here. Obviously we're definitely going to talk about GTM search. That probably gives people a bit of an idea, but your world is go-to-market. So is that everything from— do you do this sort of entry-level SDR stuff all the way up to CRO?

Yeah, everything from SDR, CRO, customer success, marketing, anything in that full remit of GTM, we do.

Okay, so pure BD role. So let's just paint a bit of a picture. So 2018, yeah, joined Orama. So if me and you were to meet then and I said, oh, like, tell me about your job, like, what, what did your job entail?

Yeah, I was an 18-year-old kid straight out of school, um, who didn't know what he really wanted to do, but joined Orama because of Paul and really saw the vision of what I thought we could get to. It was a lot of old-fashioned cold calling, dials. It was a numbers game back then. It was whoever made the most dials was the most successful. So for the first 6-9 months, it was just in at 8, out at 7, making more dials, sending more emails than anyone else. And that was really my first year in recruitment.

And like, we can get into the grammar here, as I told you, it's the sort of how that people love. Like, what was we trying to achieve with these calls? Was it just to get— was your goal just to book meetings and then someone else would join that meeting? Would you then get on the meetings yourselves? What was—

yeah, it was, it was honestly just to get the brand out there. Aroma at the time had only been founded for maybe 2, 3 years. We were still pretty fresh. Um, Paul had done a lot of work at CD before, and it was really— we're trying to create something and we're trying to create our name in the industry. The more people that I reference Aroma with, the The more times people heard about Orama and the consistent outreach, the more we started to become familiar. And that then led us to win business more consistently over and over time. So I think fundamentally it was get the name out there and just have conversations. I didn't know what I didn't know at the time. I look back at some of my messages that I sent 5, 6 years ago and I laugh at how bad they are, but I still did them. And now I can talk to people and joke about them, but it was that foundation 18 months that really led me to where I am today.

So let's just get into this for a sec because I think it'd be interesting for people to hear. So you said to me that like you're not calling these companies or hiring managers, decision makers, with a salesperson or a candidate, are you? Because we'll talk about it, but never spec'd, you told me.

Not once, no.

So that's what I mean. So even in this context, it like— was the goal of it to do an introduct— it was an introductory call? Hey, hey, my name's Ed, I'm, you know, work for Arama, we do this.

Like, was that the intention of The goal was an intro meeting to get on with Paul. And it was, how do I, like an SDR in a software sales world, how do I get a bite is what we call them. And I used to be targeted on bites back then. I think it was 4 or 5 bites a week. And those bites, often 90% of them turned to nothing. But it was, how can I get a bite, get them on a Zoom or a call with Paul, and then really tell them the Orama story? And only then did we start to win a load of customers. Even back then, I won a bunch of customers. But they weren't the right customers because they didn't know who we were. It was just cold outreach, potluck. We were fighting with 3 or 4 other agencies, and funnily enough, we did no work in them.

And it was all— it was like US from the get-go, really, wasn't it?

It was all US. I was trying to do a lot of EMEA, but I was having a lot more success in the US. A lot less recruiters out there, the market was more penetrable, and actually, I think historically as a business, we've always done 85 to 90% of our revenue out there.

And was you spending most of your time calling, emailing, LinkedIn DMing? Was it like a fair amount across all of it? What did you find yourself doing most of?

It was a lot across all of it. I had the most success from LinkedIn Connect messages. Okay. That to me back then, it just worked. That and then follow-up texts, cold call voicemails. You know, I always say to the team Like, why do we do it? Why do we leave them? Um, and yeah, they may listen to them, but 90% of the time they won't. But it gives you a warm touch point when you then go to text them. Hey, just left you a voicemail reaching out because of XYZ. So that to me was where I had the most success, actually the most nos from text responses and most yeses from LinkedIn DMs. But it's all changed now.

And then just final bit on this to paint a bit of a picture for people, because I think you'll, you'll be closer to this because of the world you're recruiting. But whenever I've met people that recruit in a similar space to you, or we've done some really great stuff with the guys that run a company called We Have a Meeting. They do— it's like a sales agency, and whenever they've worked with recruitment companies, they've always been shocked at what recruitment companies like believe around the volume required to hit targets. Obviously you're going to be close to see even more. Just gives a bit of an idea of volume here, because, because I do feel like— I'm sure you've seen it when you've then seeing people join the business and stuff, volume around this time and period, like what were you actually doing? Because I think that will paint a picture to people.

Volume 7 years ago, 6 years ago, 5 years ago is very different to volume now.

Okay.

When I was making my name, it was 50, 60 cold calls a day. It was reach out to 300 people a week on LinkedIn ad notes, get as many emails across as I could, 50 a day. And I remember at the time being frustrated because it was just painstaking. and it was just repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. But back then, to me, it was a massive numbers game. BD now is so much more strategic, and I'm sure we'll touch on it later, but I have a very different way of BDing now than I did 7 years ago.

Now I appreciate you sharing that because I think some, even in today's world, if you're starting out, I think people can underestimate the volume, the volume required to get to the point that we're going to talk about.

I said this to you when we were speaking earlier. The work you do in, or you put in from a BD standpoint, it never goes away. Like, I send messages now to people and I haven't sent the message in 6 years, and I refer back to the shitty message I sent 5, 6 years ago and sort of laugh. And that's the beauty of BD. It's nothing wasted. The outreach can always then lead to something further down the line. So if I'm starting off, if I was doing this again as an 18-year-old, for me it'd be a numbers game. Yeah, if I can outcall, I can out-email, I can out-message. Everyone else doing what I do, I'm gonna be more successful.

So I always like to ask people if they've had like pivotal moments. So should we talk about this first one that you— yeah, spoke to me about? So I actually text Paul about this because I want to try and get a bit of an inside scoop wherever. If I've— if I know someone in the business, then I'll try and do that because I think it helps paint a bit of a picture. But there was this dinner, wasn't there?

Mm-hmm.

So tell us a bit about the context here. What, what was your perspective when we had a sit-down dinner? Was like, just talk to us a bit about—

Yeah, it was September 23rd, 2020. I remember it. Um, Paul, another leader at the time, took me out for dinner at Gaucho in the city, and I didn't really know what to expect. I was doing okay at the business, you know, I was making more calls, I was making more dials. I'd actually done, I think, zero revenue at the time. In my first year. So one account, but we hadn't done business in them. And they basically sat me down and sort of said, dude, what the fuck are you doing here? Like, there's no real potential. You're just turning up for the sake of turning up. You've got so much opportunity here, you just got to go and seize it. And they could have, all right, you know, got rid of me there and then and just said, hey, it's not working out, you're not showing us what you want. But they believed in me.

Um, was you surprised to hear that, that they saw the potential in you?

I don't know. Looking back at it, I think Arama was the first time I'd ever worked with. It was the first corporate job that I'd done, so I didn't really know how it worked. I was always very close with Paul and others in the group, so I knew they had my back. Um, but it was a sort of a shock in the system that, hey, Ed, you need to step up or you're sort of gone. Because I'm like, I'm miles better than everyone. And they were like, don't compare yourself to everyone else doing your role. Compare yourself to your potential ability. Yeah, and it was that step, you know, there that changed my career, my life to date. And I owe a lot to both of them at the time because when in their right, they could have said, hey, enough's enough, move on. Yeah, I think so.

When I asked, I said to Paul, like, what was like your perspective of this moment? And he said, yeah, like, by this point you hadn't built much at all in year one, like you said. But he said, but he was curious, intelligent, building knowledge, and I knew he'd become great. But Uh, he gave you a very clear choice. Sometimes I feel like— I'm sure you've seen this now in people that you've managed, supported— when you end up in that manager seat, it can be really frustrating because you can see this in people. So I think sometimes this is almost required. I'm sure, yeah, when you've been in that leadership seat, manager seat, and I'm in that seat, sometimes it can be frustrating that it has to get to that sort of point for like something to change, but sometimes it is required. So he said The choice was continue treating this like a job or start treating it like a career.

Exactly that. And you know, I've had that conversation with many people since, and a lot just still treat it like a job 'cause they don't see the bigger picture. And I tell everyone that we interview and hire, and I sort of draw a graph on a whiteboard. And on one axis it's, you know, how good you want to be, and on the other it's work ethic and time. And it's just a straight line, diagonal line like that. And world-class at the top and goods here, because we hope to hire no one less than good. And I ask everyone, where do they want to be on that graph? Most people put somewhere in the middle. They want to work hard and be quite good. Actually, most people don't do that. And it takes a real set person to say, you know what, I'm going to work really hard at the start when I'm still down here. And ultimately you're going to slowly get up that diagonal further and further towards the world class, but it doesn't take any less hard work. And in recruitment in particular, since I've been to the US, a lot think they can be great and world class but put in no effort and time. And those are the ones that frustrate me, and we'll go on to it. And I think that's why we've had a couple resets in the US, and so we are now in a position of actual people that want to be here, and they know where they want to be on, on that diagonal line. And it makes life and work much more enjoyable.

Is there anything that you believe, because of all the experience that you have now helping others, is there anything— if we're doing the reps, we're doing the volume— is there anything that you feel like you could have done better to improve the outcome of that first year? I think the most important thing was you was willing to put in the effort, the volume. So for people listening that might be in that right now, they'd hopefully quite like to get some of the success in that year one if they feel like they're putting in the volume. Do you think there's anything that because you would have got better over time.

100%. Confidence was one of the big things. You know, when I first started, I used to run out and make all my cold calls in a phone booth.

Really?

Yeah. I used to just go out and do them in a phone booth and just knock them out because I was nervous. There were lots more senior people than me in the office. I was like, am I saying the right thing? Am I speaking too fast? And it drives me mad to this day when people still go out the office. I was going to say, does that drive you mad?

It drives me mad.

We've got a small office in Austin and I get it. I'm quite loud. So that they say that, but I'm like, we can't help. And Paul and others at the time couldn't help me if I wasn't in the office. So for me, the biggest thing would be make all your mistakes, do all your success, just do it in the office in front of people.

Yeah, that's interesting. So to build on that, I'm putting you on the spot here, but like, anything that you think they would have picked up on quite quickly, or because you would have got better at this, like, what do you think if, if that you were making these calls, were doing these reps in the office, what do you think would've been those standout coaching opportunities in that first year? Was it overall just confidence? Was it—

Confidence, one. I think sounding like you knew what you talked about. So, you know, whether you are 6 weeks in, you are 5 years in, having that confidence that, you know, when we're speaking to people, we're generally really good at what we do. Like we've scaled some of the best startups that have ever existed. You guys should want to use us. If you don't, no worries. But you should actually want to come and use us. Um, and for, for me, I think the big thing really was when you start making cold calls and you start doing it, sounding familiar, having a real good macro perspective of what's going on in the space, in the world, where you can start to name drop because you had a 30-second conversation with the leader 2 weeks ago. You can say, oh yeah, I spoke to X 2 weeks ago. You know he knows him because they worked together 3 years ago. So The more conversations you have, the more, you know, inquisitive you are on the space, you start ending people's sentences and knowing what they're going to say before they do it. And that just oozes confidence and like, you know what you're talking about.

I get why people would struggle with that at the beginning. Let me know what you think about this because I'm sure you've tried to help people with this. But do you think it's about Hopefully, if you're an organization and you're early on, they've got a good track record, hopefully. So let's assume that. Yeah, I feel like it's sometimes people don't realize that they can borrow that, and sometimes they look in the mirror and like, I don't have that track record, I haven't done those things. But actually, it's about, like you just said, borrowing what Arama have done, and that, that's where you can get that confidence. And look, you're on this journey, you can borrow that, but you're on the journey of building your own credentials, but it's okay to borrow that credibility from your company.

I remember getting called out 6 times out of 10 saying, how come you've done this? You've been there for 4 or 5 months. And then that to me was a win because they've responded. They clearly liked what they saw. They engaged with it. And then it's up to me and Paul to compose a really compelling message. Hey, this is what we've done. I personally haven't done this. This is what we've done as a team. This is the team that you'll be working with. Let's jump on a call and dig into this further. So I massively would say lean in to whoever's track record you've got. I'm sure most people do it, you know. I see messages from recruiters that clients send me saying, oh, these guys reached out, and I know for a fact they've never worked with X company, so, um, because they worked there in their previous company, or, you know, whatever it is. So, you know, the space— why you win business is, and why you keep business more importantly, is you're really good. And that's the most important thing that I always fall down on and say to people is if you win business, that's actually the easy part. The hard part is keeping the business and making sure you get that business on an exclusive, on a retained, on a committed, whatever it is. That's what's hard.

And then in terms of— so I think that's a really good insight for people in terms of borrowing that where it makes sense to. I don't think you need to lie. No, I don't think, because then that's just going to go affect your confidence most likely, or you're going to feel like a bit of a fool.

You get caught out.

Yeah, it's just not worth it. No, long term. How— because I'm sure you've seen this, and maybe some advice to people coming up, and you've seen the drama yourself— but how obsessive was you with like market and industry, and like at least having a bit of an understanding and a grasp of what's going on?

Yeah, I remember back in 2019 when I first went to, uh, these events called KubeCon, and it's Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure, DevOps. And I try to learn all this stuff.

Okay.

And it just was way above my pay grade. And I realized then, and I started winning lots of business, winning lots of customers. I actually didn't need to know what they did. What I needed to do is tell a really good story around it. And, you know, when speaking to sales guys or customer success, you learn what they want to hear. Okay. And the customer success people, they probably care less about the technology and the product. They care more about the churn rates. What are the renewals? Sales guys care about the opportunity and the W-2 and who they're working for. Sales engineers and more technical folk, probably more so on the product. But actually what I learned is I could tell a really good story, what was important to them, and that's what mattered. There's people that, you know, in our office that know way more than me about certain customers that we worked with that I've worked with for 2, 3 years. But that never was the the factor that said to me, oh, I don't know, because the first question I say is, if you don't know the answer to that, speak to the hiring manager. He's the best person to give you an answer. And if they're bought into everything I said, they're going to want to speak to the hiring manager.

Do you think, like, how, like, how do you feel about that advice? And in terms of really knowing your market inside out, do you think, do you think that's important?

I think today's knowing who the customers are and having a high level what they do. So, you know, we do a lot of work in cloud infrastructure data. Knowing who all the data players are and what they high-level do, that's really important because it gives credibility when you're speaking to someone about a competitor or about what's going on in the market. They were just acquired by X. Like, knowing that, I think, is really important. Knowing the ins and outs of every single vendor that's in there and what they do and why they differentiate, to me, I've never done it, my team don't do it.

I don't think that's what makes you win or lose business, but it's more Understanding through your conversations the nuances of what VP of Sales care about, because you're speaking to them and understanding what they care about. It's doubling down on that, doubling down on that.

And you need to look, you need to have some context on the space. You know, if you're working in observability, right, you need to know the 5, 6, 7 tier 1 observability startups. Okay, that's important because that gives you credibility on why they may beat them or lose to them. But you should know that because you've spoken to the hiring manager and the hiring manager has given you their, a minute, layman's terms on what they do and why they win.

Got you. Because I do feel like sometimes you can fall into that trap, can't you, of like feeling like you have to know everything, which is why I wanted to—

So the first question I ask a hiring manager is, in layman's terms, what do you guys do? Break it down to me. So I had no clue what you were doing. It wasn't technical. Break it down to me.

Much harder to do than people realize.

Much harder to do than people realize. But it shows you that if the hiring manager can't do it, then we're really going to struggle as an agency representing them in the market in the right way.

That's a good point. You said like post this, this chat as well, you really just start to get obsessed.

Yeah.

Like what, what did that— just paint it as a bit of a picture there. Like what, what did that, that look like? Because it seemed like that then led to— obviously it was all the, you know, you wasn't showing up and like just half-assing it here. Like you're putting in the right—

no, I was putting in the hours.

So what— and because this led to one of your first big wins, it was a lot more sporadic before that.

It was, let me ping 100 different companies and just reference and sort of copy and paste and say, oh, we worked with XYZ that we had done, but maybe they're relevant, maybe they weren't because they had the same keywords in what they did. And then it's a lot more targeted. It was, okay, let's pick 50 customers and go hard and go really deep, really, you know, really deep, really wide at every single person there and really try and penetrate them top down, bottom up. Didn't really matter. But it was that being obsessive. But it was more, to be honest, seeing it was a career. Okay, I've done this for a year and a half at that point, or 2 years nearly. Um, let's stop, you know, pissing around and let's really try and set something up here. Because I saw what people were doing and what they were earning, I was like, I want a piece of that. So what—

so why was you setting 2 AM and 4 AM alarms then? Was that for calls?

Uh, That was when I was really in the midst of a couple of big accounts, all in the US, some West Coast. I was working on some big roles. And to me, I was so obsessed that if I didn't respond to something that night, that day, I knew it would take a day and a half, 2 days. And back then I was chasing the dollar so hard, you know, I used to go to sleep thinking about how much commission I was going to make here and there. So at 2 AM I set an alarm to respond to any emails that I may have missed. And 4 AM did the same thing because I knew they weren't going to be back online till—

because they're on the West Coast.

They're West Coast till, you know, 4 PM sometimes, you know, West Coast time. And then that slows everything down. But I wasn't just doing emails, I was making calls. I remember Paul telling me, dude, you need to stop doing this. Like, it's unhealthy. And I was like, no, I loved it because there was nothing more impressive than— I was 19, 20 at the time— than CROs and VP of sales What are you doing up at 4 AM? I'm like, I've got to make this happen. Like, that to me, those 3, 4, 5, 6 months. And to be fair, I had an awesome 3 months and then went on a bender for 3 months, and it's the worst thing I could have done. Um, okay. But it's the, you know, it's the— you go from having done nothing to super high, and it's like, well, what do I do with all this? Uh, and it was the—

what did that look— not the bender, but what— when you say went from this to that, what— like, tell us a bit of an idea in terms of earnings.

400K in billings, pounds in 3 months, right? Which was whatever it was, 100 and something plus in commission. And then the following 3 months I did 16 grand in billings and then absolutely nothing, right? But it showed me what can happen if you take your foot off the gas and just, you know, and everyone says like that, that was obviously a big, big roller coaster. And then since then it was very much flatline after that. But I sort of got it out the system and said, Wow, okay, this can change my life if I really give it everything and, you know, stay obsessed. And here we are 6 years later.

So if you were speaking to someone that was in a similar journey and they just had maybe a big win like that, are you saying—

You've got to enjoy it.

Okay.

You, you work so hard, you have got to enjoy it. But there's a level of enjoyment that you can sort of go to, up to you.

But this is what I learned. But you're definitely not going to say like don't, don't do exactly what I did, but definitely, you know, I took all my mates out, you know, in 19, 20, and a life-changing money.

I took all my mates out, we went for, we went on holiday together for 2 weeks, we had crazy dinners and had a lot of fun. There's some great memories, um, and it was just after COVID as well, so I hadn't, it was very different times, um, but that's also why I could get really obsessive, because there was nothing I could do for, I couldn't leave the house, couldn't see my mates. It was just work, work, work all hours of the day. So, um, you've got to celebrate the wins. And I said to the guys in the office, some of them had record paychecks in the last 2, 3 months. Like, buy something nice that you remember what you bought with your first big paycheck. It doesn't have to be a pair of shoes, it could be, you know, a watch, it could be whatever, a new car. But buy something that you can look back on and think, that's why I do this. And I do think that's really important.

Just tell us a bit about, like, this sort of first big win then, because I feel like sometimes we need these breaks, don't we, when we're building out our careers. So just tell us a bit about that, because I feel like, like you've said earlier, there's one thing getting a meeting, getting a job on, whatever, but then I think it really then comes down to, like, really maximizing that, keeping these clients. Because I've got here, yeah, like, one of the first big wins that you got, which then resulted longer term in like doing 40, 50 placements with this company, with this account. To tell us a bit about this break, because it seemed quite pivotal again in your career, because then it's all of a sudden you're not borrowing a track record, you're going, we did this for X company. That's, that's a whole different ball game. Then it seemed like that really then led to be a bit of a domino, but again, that's on you to really maximize that.

Yeah, it's funny that that particular customer I'd met in person a year before We did nothing with them and it was just bad account at the time. They weren't the right business for us. We didn't do a great job. And then I cold reached out to them a year later or so, just after that meeting or the dinner I had with the guys and said, hey, let's catch up. I went in and met them in Manchester and they gave me a shot. You know, they didn't need to. It was luck at the time. They gave me a shot, but I said to them, no one's going to work harder. No one's going to do more than me in this account. And I did, you know, 30 placements, I think, pretty quickly in 6, 7 months there, um, which then snowballed on to a lot more success. And actually, that account pivoted to loads of my success in multiple different accounts because of where leaders left to and went, or where they interviewed to and joined somewhere else. But it was someone giving me a shot and me saying, guys, no one's going to work harder than this. I'm going to be so obsessive and live and breathe at the time. And that's what I did.

Just to get granular for a sec then, and then we'll get into this sort of Austin journey, just on that, because we would have heard this on the podcast before, and you probably help people with this now. How do you think about— so you work really hard to get that win.

Yeah.

To get that case study, to get that person, that champion to vouch for you. Like, how, how do we really leverage that as much as possible? Is it as simple as Okay, I've just got this success story with X company. Let me just look at who their 5 direct competitors are. I'll reach out to all of them and say, hey, just done this for your competitor, we should chat, I can do it for you. Like, is it that? Is it like, what, how do you view this?

That was a lot at the start, okay, what I did. It's less so now. Um, we're much more referenceable, people know who we are, but it's still, hey, we did XYZ, these 3 companies last 2, 3 years, they're a similar world looking for similar profile. Let's find some time to speak. Typically we have an intro or we can have a win. But if I go back to anyone who's starting out at BD and gets their first, you know, win as a customer or two wins as a customer, you've got to think, you know, if someone else is also working with them, that may be customer 10, 15, 20 for them. It may not be that important. But if it's customer 1 and 2, 3, 4, 5 for you, give them everything because you'll be competing maybe against someone who doesn't really know the high end that well. It's not such an important account for them. So, you know, if you give them everything in your first couple customers, you've got a good shot of winning them and turning them from nobodies to coaches to champions. And that can then be your luck to set up your career for success.

Do you think that playbook still plays out now?

Yeah, I think it does. I really do. The market is very competitive. It's also big enough for loads of different players in the market. But there's multiple times we come up with accounts that we know there's 2 or 3 agencies in it, and now we won't work with them. A year and a half, 2 years ago, we would have done. And if that was me as a 19-year-old, 2 and a half, 2 years ago, they could be great customers now because no one would have worked harder. I'd have been more relentless than anyone else, and I've made sure I got shit done. And that attitude I still think very much applies because most companies work with 15, 20, if they're of a decent size, different customers at any given period of time. If you've just got one, you work on it hard, there's a real good shot that you create a great relationship with the hiring manager, you do great work, and then success continues.

And then tell us a bit about when, as part of this journey, maybe it was when you moved your life to Austin, but I think something you said to me as well as you're talking about the different strategies here was you was very intentional about future leaders. When did you sort of be intentional about that? Because I think if I'm honest, this is something that more time I spend with people that are building in the US or successful in the US, same playbook probably can apply in EMEA, UK. But it does seem to be very driven by just really doubling down on building a really tight network of senior people or insert X job title of the type of people that you believe you can help now or in the future, and really getting around those people, really speaking to these people consistently, figuring out how you can help them beyond I've got a job for you, Ed, like way beyond that. But that, that seemed quite intentional. When did you make— what inspired you to make that move?

That's exactly it. We had a, a roundtable dinner probably 4 or 5 years ago where this first came up, and we come up with a lot of great ideas, as most businesses do, and a lot then don't get implemented because you get busy and stuff happens. And it wasn't till maybe, you know, I've always had a real obsession with customers and individuals. You know, I used to set, you know, I used to put up job ads for VPs of sales roles that I knew about so VPs would apply and I'd catch up with them and speak to them. Um, and I knew we were working on some stuff in the space that I wasn't personally working on, but I just wanted VPs to come and apply to me so I could speak to them about potential ops that we did have. And some of my best customers I didn't work with for 3, 4 years. And a couple of them I'd still call real close champions because they intro me in left, right, and center, but I've never done any work with them. But I've always been there. I've always been happy to spend 30, 45 minutes with them. If I'm ever in their city, I'll take them out for dinner. I'll meet them. I'll spend time with them. And I think one of the biggest things I did, which I started doing back in 2021 was whenever I spoke to someone, you know, I found out their wife's names, I found out their kids' names, found out what they like doing. If it was their birthday or the wedding anniversary and it popped up in conversation, I always noted it down on my phone in the notes section on an iPhone. So whenever they called, I'd always catch up with them and say, oh, how's Erica? Or how's Amy? Or whatever. Um, because I knew it. And they're like, oh, you know, suerte. They're like that sort of stuff doing. So the more you can build a relationship with them outside of work and you get to know who they are, do they like fishing? Do they like shooting? What football team do they support? All that stuff compounds year after year after year. And for one of our biggest customers now, I had never started working with him until the start of this year, but I felt like I knew this guy incredibly well because for 4 years I'd probably spoken to him on the phone for 20, 40 different hours. And just really got to know him.

So what, like, if I'm in your team right now and I do the go-to-market, yeah, and maybe, uh, I've been tasked with focusing on, I don't know, SDR leaders or, um, yeah, heads of sales, what category would you put this strategy in? If I'm going to say to you, okay, Ed, so what my plan is, is I'm going to make sure that I map all of the as many AEs as possible that could potentially become heads of sales or whatever the next step. Like, is that something I should be doing over, you know, a long period of time? Is that like a longer-term play?

It's a much longer-term play, and it's harder now than it was 5 years ago.

Okay.

If we look at the companies that we target and think pedigree-wise back then, you had MongoDB, AppDynamics, Snowflake. You know, there are 3 big companies that you thought anyone who's an RD there or is on that upward trajectory, has been there for 4 or 5 years, has a great shot of being a VP somewhere else. And we've seen it. Loads of them went off to Harness, loads of them went off to Grafana Labs, and loads of them went off to Windsurf. And they were all sort of top-end AEs or RDs back at these shops back in the day. And now there's a lot, because of AI and the world that's moving, there's a lot more of these leaders that are much more dispersed. But if you look at most of the best companies out there right now, in AI, ML, data infrastructure, they've typically all got a leader that's somewhat come from one of those types of companies where they were successful. And that's down to the level of training. And it goes back to, you know, the BladeLogic, PTC, BMC days, which produced this multitude of great leaders, medic leaders under John McMahon that then went on to form what are some of the best software startups today.

So you think that— so you think it's just harder to I guess it depends on market dynamics.

Market dynamics, you know, that PTC, BMC, BladeLogic system, it still exists, but it's very different now. A lot of those leaders are much older. They've sort of semi-retired. They're on their last two gigs. But if you look at where they worked before and the leaders that they worked underneath, those leaders have all gone on to be— well, not all, but majority have gone on to be very successful VPs of sales, CROs themselves.

So just to round that part out then, so if I'm in my particular market, yeah, if I'm aware of a cluster of up to maybe 10 to 20 companies that have got a great reputation for some of these types of things, you think it probably is a pretty solid strategy if that's in your ecosystem to try and build and connect and meet as many people as possible that if their career keeps going in the right direction, could be future leaders. Because if you feel like that, you know, you've met people and they're well trained and insert whatever, then other companies are going to view it like that as well.

And also they'll move up within. If they're early, if they're seed, Series A, Series B, and they're a director right now, they haven't got any headcount, but you constantly stay close to them, you give them market knowledge, you say, hey, FYI, this guy's looking in case you're interested. They're going to be a VP at some point, whether it's at this gig or another gig. They remember that. The beauty of now is there's so many more leaders that have gone in a much wider breadth of companies that the opportunity to do that even more is so much greater.

And then what would be like, just your— it might be coming back to the sort of little things like you said, but like these people, no doubt will be inundated, whether it be not just recruiters but people wanting to ask for time because they feel like they could maybe help them, TA people in other companies. Like, how can we break through the, the noise there?

Yeah, it's really tough, um, and it's really tough if you haven't got an in, right? If you're doing this pure cold, it's tough. Usually what worked really well for me was if I had a job or I knew the company Rama had a job that I was working on. Whether this person was right or not, I'd reach out to them. I'd say, hey, we're working on this, it could be really interesting, not sure if you'd be a fit, but we'd love to find some time to speak. If they don't respond, they don't respond. But you do the same at a rep level, and again, it's a numbers game. You know, I probably sent over my time thousands of these messages out to leaders that I thought could be interesting. Maybe I got a 5, 10, 10% response rate. So again, you don't need many to create a large pool of real strong customer base that can, as we'll touch on I'm sure, give you plenty of revenue to be successful. Um, so yeah, numbers, it goes very much back to numbers piece.

And then final bit which came up quite a lot, and then we'll get into this, this Austin journey. I think I said to you, it comes up when I sit down with people like you that recruit in your space. Just tell us about in layman's terms, being— having champions or building a champion network? Because this does come up a lot. Just tell us like your perspective of that and what that means to you, because that, that seemed— that came up quite a lot as well when we prepared for this.

Yeah, I think, look, everyone has a different definition of champion. Um, mine is very much when someone will do something for me without me knowing or behind my back for the better of myself or the company. So it happens the whole time where we get introduced into somebody because they need a lot of help. I don't know who introduced me or Paul or Rama, but someone's done that for us and it will come back to us and we'll say, okay, great. You know, that's a true champion when they're selling on our behalf without expecting anything in return. And it takes a lot of— I would say I have hundreds more coaches than I do champions. And I thought—

300 coaches?

Yeah. So if we look at You know, when I was— 3, 4 years ago, I thought I had loads of champions because I spoke to loads of people. People liked me. I had done a lot of work with them. But actually, you ask them to do something, they'd be like, I can't make that intro. No, I don't know that. Maybe in 6 months' time, right? And I changed them from champions to coaches. And coaches is, you know, in a software sales or a coach is typically someone who's gonna sell for you because they need something in return. So director of sales is going to say, yeah, use Arama, they're great, but he desperately needs to hire, which is why he's doing that. A champion may be the VP of sales that you're not going to recruit for, or the CRO who champions it to the CFO or the CEO saying, we must use Arama. And the difference there is the CRO has got some direct correspondence to what the success of the business does, but it's not their primary need. And a lot of people think they've got champions, but they've just got a lot of coaches.

Interesting. Why coach? Why coach? Because I feel like that implies that— so what? Because they're, they've got—

they're typically not at that top of the food chain, right? A coach probably can't get through to the EB.

So what does that mean?

Economic buyer. So the person who's got the sign-off on terms, on whatever it is, on making the hire, the coach probably doesn't have enough to leverage the EB. A champion who's at that top level might do. And if they're a champion and we need 25% terms, they're gonna make it happen because they desperately need us and wanna work with us. If it's a coach, maybe they push back and say, no, we can't do it, we're stuck at 20%. Right.

Okay, interesting. And so anything to share around most of your— have most of your champions been built by doing something where you've both benefited, it's been a successful partnership, or actually does it come from you maybe not getting like the end outcome for them and is you just doing a really good job?

Well, it takes time, champ, to really create champions. It's not a, I could fill 10 roles with this customer tomorrow, doesn't mean the guy I'm working with is a champion. Um, it takes time. It's more trust than the things where you can have really tough conversations with each other. Both good and bad. And ultimately, it's, for me, it's very much on, again, if I want to ask them something and I know they're going to get nothing in return and they're going to do it, that to me is a true champion. And most don't get to that. You have very few champions. You know, you probably have 100 coaches, 10 champions. And that's sort of— if you can turn a lot of those coaches into champs with time, with trust, and also giving them stuff when we don't want anything in return. You know, if I see someone's on the market and I'm not working with XYZ, I'll say, hey, they're on the market, maybe worth reaching out. So it's a very much give and take. Yeah, but for me it's just time thing.

Yeah, it's super interesting. I think again, something that people— a lot more recruiters can be intentional about. I think, like, I've always sort of said this to people and I've sat down with people like you, I do think the sort of knowledge, access, people that you can learn from in your seat, I think definitely gives you— still probably makes it hard because you're like building relationships, selling to people that understand this stuff, that, you know, interested in sales methodologies, want to learn. But I do think you get exposure to like really like, like bleeding edge, uh, salespeople. So I do think that's a great advantage to be in your seat. Like these terms and things that you're talking about aren't typical. And there's a lot of people now that are trying to bring these methodologies into recruitment companies.

I've learned so much off the leaders that I've worked with, um, both personal and just how to go about business. I look at how they act, how they respond, how they deal when we push them on stuff, and their response rate. And the more and more you're having these conversations, the more you learn. You know, I was always that 15, 16-year-old kid that would rather speak to the parents and my mates, you know, to find out how could I, you know, learn more, or how could they help me, benefit me. And that sort of has continued on through. And the more inquisitive you are, if you've got time with someone, just utilize it as much as possible. Pick up on how they react, how they talk. And what I figured is there's a lot of great leaders out there. There's also a lot of shitty leaders out there who think they're great. Um, and I remember thinking back in '21, 2022, I was working with a couple leaders. I thought, wow, these guys are incredible. And the more I spent time with them, I actually just— they're just not. Um, but they say all the right things, but they then don't implement. And the great sales leaders, they'll implement it as well as say.

So should we talk about another pivotal moment, which was— I got here— you fired 60% of your client base.

Yep.

2 years ago. So that, that is part of— because we, we moved our life to Austin in 2022, right? Yeah. Oh no, sorry, sorry. Jan 2023.

Sorry. Jan 2023.

Yeah.

We came out and originally set up in 2022.

Got you.

We then managed remote for 6, 9 months while I waited for the visa and then fully came out then. And it was when I fully came out in Jan 2023, we sat down and said, what are we sort of, what are we doing? We'd done—

We had some success. We've had some things that we could have done better.

You know, we did some good revenue in that sort of first year remote, but it was just very much hero selling. And it was like, we don't have time to do that anymore.

What does hero selling mean?

It was me doing all the work with a team who was sort of just resourcing me, but I wasn't helping them get better. I wasn't spending enough time with them to develop them. They were sort of just SDRs for me so we could go and do well. And it's been a lot of that for the last year and a half, 2 years. And it was really probably about a year and a bit ago that we said, okay, then we got rid of another 50% of our client base and we were working with 4 or 5. But we were working, they were all champions, or maybe 3 were champions, one was a coach at the time, and they'd give us everything. We'd give them everything in return, they'd give us everything. And when I mean give us everything, I mean time, I mean feedback, resource to really be successful and do a good job.

So what did this— so like, let's just paint a bit of a picture here. When we say we fired 6% of our client base, like what, what, what, what did this client base look like?

It gave it—

had you done placements with them?

We'd done placements with them, a lot of contingent work across the US and Europe, but maybe there were 3 other agencies or 2 other agencies, and our fill rate with them was 20%. We were like, well, why are we doing that? If we can double down on customers that are paying us upfront, or we've got a real committed relationship with them, got an exclusive, and we can expand that, we can double down, or we're going to do way more revenue. Um, and we've doubled revenue every year to the US to date.

Uh, what did that— so what did that— I'm curious, what did that look like? Was it Because I'm sure it wasn't just a blasted email out saying like, when you work like this.

No, we either sat down face to face like this or we had a Zoom with them and said, hey, this is what we're moving to. These are the models. Do you want to continue this partnership or not? Some said yes, some said no. The ones that said no, goodbye. Simple as that. And I was like, at the time I was like, here we go. You know, revenue is going to real take a hit here. You know, but actually what it did was it meant we were more laser focused. We were more obsessed with the clients that we were working with. And we've just doubled down on them, and it was actually a lot very successful.

So what is the main benefit to doing that? Is it just the fact that the time and focus that you're— and energy you put into things you felt like is reciprocated and there's actual joint success there versus maybe putting same time and energy and not getting the return?

Or it was that we could forecast, you know, we knew if we were working 10 roles with an average fee size of $30-ish K, there was $300K there and we could do 80% if we filled 80% because they filled a couple internally or whatever it was. But we could actually start to predict what we were trying to do and achieve.

And you didn't have that previously?

We didn't have that previously because we were working with 40 different customers, 30 different customers, and it was one in here, one in there, two in there. And it was just, you know, we sort of called it cowboy recruiting. It was just do revenue where we can, which arguably worked right when we were first trying to get to the US and we wanted revenue on the board. But it wasn't sustainable. And we talked about it. It's about building the foundations on sand, rubble, or rock. And year 1 was sand. Year 2 was a bit of sand and rubble. Year 3 was sort of more rubble, rock. And now we're at year 4. It's very much a rock-based foundation where we're now working in the US with 5 customers, but we've got revenue upwards, revenue under management upwards of a million. And we know that if we fill even 70% of that, right? And we do in our average, you know, let's be generous here. And our average deal cycle is, let's say, 10 weeks. And we do that 5 times a year. 70% of $1,700,000 times by 5, $3.5 million. And suddenly you break those numbers down and you think, okay, well, that's pretty impressive growth. And I actually don't think we need to do that this year to have a great year. I'd much rather, you know, increase by 1.5x, but actually we build it in the real sustainable, scalable way that allows us to execute, you know, more successfully, more efficiently. Deal size goes up, deal length goes down, and suddenly we're sort of at the races and really humming at a decent tempo.

So I'm hearing when I speak to recruiters that maybe are used to working in an environment like you called it, a bit of a cowboy environment, or just get revenue wherever possible. And then the way that you're talking about it there, like most of the stuff that you spoke about there is how that benefits you. Yeah, I think sometimes what people struggle with, if they know the benefit to them but they don't know the benefit to the customer Just talk to us a bit about that, because this won't— this way of working won't work just if it's like, yeah, it just all benefits Ed, right? So no, let's just talk about it, because that— I think that's also important, because this is about how it really benefits the customer, not just how it benefits Arama and you being able to predictably forecast your revenue.

Yeah, it benefits the individual as well, tremendously. They create closer relationships with the customers themselves. They speak to them more often, they speak to them more frequently. They understand that business better because they're selling it and telling the story of it, you know, 10 times a day rather than 10 times a week. So they really can understand that. They then understand if we do it right and they're in a certain space and they're focusing more on the data world or the infrastructure world, they then become more familiar with the companies in their space. So from an employee standpoint, it's way better. If they're working on more predictable revenue, they're going to bill more. They're going to earn more, they're going to create more coaches in the space because they'll spend more time with the individuals. But from a customer standpoint, you know, and we've sort of started this thing called GTM Search. And if you look at the great exec search firms of the world and how they operate, it's very meticulously in the detail. It's all research-driven. They don't engage in a search till maybe a week after research. And then you look at a traditional contingent firm, it's speed. It's how do we get CVs in? How do we get CVs out here? And we've really tried to combine the two. And sort of, we call it to our customers GTM search. You'll get 2, 3 days of really detailed research identification. You'll see all our research. You'll see everyone who we think on paper can do this role that we've discussed. And those are the paper profiles. We put them into a long list. We then write notes on them. We score them out of 1 to 10 or 1 to 15, depending on what index we decide with the customer. And the customer knows that given the brief they've given us, The only people that can do this role are on that Excel spreadsheet, and that gives the customer confidence. It means, you know, they can focus on what's important, which is probably revenue and retention of staff and scaling the business. And they know that if we're doing our job properly, every week they're going to have 4 or 5 interviews, and it's just monotonous. It just keeps happening, and they can free up their headspace, which historically a lot of hiring managers, a lot of the headspace is taken up shit, I need to recruit these, we've got this revenue number, I have to do this XYZ. Takes a lot of headspace. Our job with the GTM search model that we put in place is to really say, hey, free up the headspace of recruiting. We've got that, we're fully accountable, we're in partnership. You focus on what's important in the rest of the business. And what—

how come you have this rule about only being able to work with someone if you meet them face to face? What's that?

Yeah, something I put in about a year ago. Um, and it's myself and the team, you know, ideally both of us. Sometimes just, you know, I'm on a plane every other week, every week pretty much at the moment, because it's very easy now that everything's on Zoom. You sit down with a hiring manager and you say, okay, um, talk to me about the business. What's, you know, why is this hire needed? Who are you guys? You don't actually get to know who they are as individuals. And what's— the market's so crowded now there's so many different companies saying XYZ or recruiting for the same type of profile. And for me, and the reason I joined Orama was I believed in Paul, I believed in Paul's vision. And I think it's super important because a lot of individuals won't see their hiring managers face to face to be able to say, we've met, you know, we've had dinner, we've had lunch, he's married. You know, I had a lunch last week with a customer and I found that he, you know, immigrated from Ethiopia. And he came here and he's married and 2 kids and he's been on this journey. And as soon as you create that story and people let their guard down slightly over lunch or dinner, you get to know who they are as a person. And for me, the most powerful question I'll ever ask a hiring manager, and I do it 99% of the time, is, what's your story? And they'll always start talking. They start talking about work and I said, no, what's your life story? Give me the 2, 3 minutes of who you are. And then, okay, they went to college here, they did this, this is why they did this. They got married at 25, they had kids at 28, and suddenly you start to learn who they are. And to me, that's just as important to my team as when you're selling the story of the customer. Who are they going to work for? Are they going to go into war for every day, hopefully for the next 2, 3, 4 years until some exit happens?

And you think you can just really grasp that and understand that story way more effectively if we're having that chat in person?

Yeah. And people are way more comfortable. Once you open up and they've given you an hour and a half, Zooms, you get 30, 45 minutes, maybe an hour. But that is the majority of that is work talk because people want to get on with the search quickly and start filling roles. So if the customer and my team will fly and fly out to San Francisco in the day, first flight in at 5:00 AM and last flight at 7:00 PM, and they'll go spend 2 hours with the team at lunch and then 45 minutes in their offices. And that is more valuable for them. For their development, but two, so they understand, they get to see the office, they get to meet some of the team, which you don't get to do if you're just on Zoom.

And do you think— totally, like, I think that's a really powerful question to ask people. And does that basically— what you're saying there, that translates to then when you're going to market, you can confidently, effectively communicate this sales leader that you're going to be working with, what they're about, where this all came— like, that, that is downstream from that?

100%. And you get— you can start to see who they are as a person. And you can see their tells. If they haven't responded to a candidate profile, you probably know why. It's probably no good. Because you know who they are as a person. And in this world where, you know, every seed, Series A, Series B company is trying to hire the same seller, same VP of sales, the same director of sales, you know, when you can say, hey, this is the hiring manager, this is what it's about, this is his beliefs, his ambitions, what his previous team members speak about him or think about him. It adds another cutting edge of narrative that most don't get, especially when everything's done over Zoom.

Is it having that sort of principle, is it also led to like you missing out on stuff? Because they're like, 'Ed, look, I'm speaking to this other search firm and like we don't need to meet. I just feel like it's going to slow things down.' Yeah, and I'd say, 'Dude, that's totally fine.

No worries, we're not the right agency for you.' And I'm super okay with that now. A year ago I would have never have said that, a year and a half ago. I'd be like, no, that's fine, don't worry about it. Now it's just, you know, if it means I have to fly in a day and you can't create 45— I will fly to New York, Chicago, San Francisco, over to the US in a day for a 45-minute meeting, then fly home.

Okay.

If you can't create that time for me, this ain't gonna be a partnership that we want to be in.

So, you know, you just said— I know you sort of painted a picture for us, but like, what is it that What is it that like drastically changed? Like, that isn't that long ago, hour and a half, where you would have gone— if I said that to you and I was a top-tier client of yours.

Yeah.

And I said, look, Ed, I think, look, I want to work with you guys. I've heard great things about Orama. Yeah. Um, you know, I want to work with you guys. Like, I, I feel like I've shared my story. I don't understand why I need to meet you. Like, let's just get cracking, let's get going. And then you're like, look, hang on a minute, this is really important. I need to meet you. And I feel like, yeah, it creates a bit of friction. Like, before you would have gone, okay, okay, let's do it. But now you're like, no, like, this is important to us. And then you can talk about why. What is it that drastically changed here? Like, you must have seen and seen enough to be like, if we don't do this, or when we do make this extra time investment collectively, long term everything's way better. Like, what is it that really changed here?

So since we've done— since we've met the customers face to face, we haven't lost a customer.

Right.

So the churn for us is a lot lower. Um, some of our existing customers pre this have then gone on to meet the ones that haven't. Funny enough, we haven't done as well with them. So whether that's actual the relationship on ship or not because of that, but it's something that we've looked at every customer worked with this year. We've met face to face, or I've met face to face, or Paul or some of the team have. And I think when you set that rule It's really important I don't break it because as soon as I break it once, it's really easy to break again. Yeah. And actually, if it means I've got to go on a flight last thing on Friday and then get back Saturday, well, it's the rule that I put in place. And as long as we keep that rule going and customers can give up 30, 45 minutes at a time.

So you've just seen it in the data, lifetime value. Yeah. Okay.

And maybe it isn't that, but There's also something fun, right? Well, a lot of the offices and the hubs we're building, they're back in San Francisco, they're in Boston, they're in New York. So actually getting in, seeing the office, understanding the other types of people in the office, the culture, the vibe, that in itself is fun. And I say to the team, it's the fun part of the job. You get to travel to cool cities and meet really great leaders. It's also great for the team. The team speaking to these hiring managers face to face. And these VPs of sales and these CROs of super successful organizations. And for them, it's a great opportunity to learn and get better.

Do you know, I just think it would be such a mixture of loads of different things. My other thoughts on it as well, I don't know what you think about this, but I think it's way easier to sort of ignore someone, not get back to someone, if you haven't met them. I don't know, there's just some— it's like a small thing. I don't know what you think about that, like, but for example, now me and you spent some time with each other. If I was to call you versus maybe we've had some text messages and maybe had one Zoom call with you, I feel like you're like just less likely to like avoid me or at least get back to me. I don't really think about that. I think there's just something— there's just something about nature.

Yeah, you want to help, um, and if someone calls you, you're like You know, I shot you a message a year and a half ago, which you ignored, right? But if I shot you one now, you know, there's more, there's a higher probability you'll respond. But it's the same if we did this over Zoom, right? We could do this over Zoom and I'm sure it'd be good. But you don't create that relationship and that personal of just being in the same room as someone, seeing their mannerism, seeing how they operate, how they talk. You just don't get that.

Yeah, it is just all, it is just an extra percentage.

It is. And it's, we're talking, it's talking small percentage here. And at the level that we're at and some of the top firms are at, it's small margins that make you win or lose. And if that's the reason why this customer chose us or not, because we went out and spent a day with them and they give us that role on exclusive, or they say, no, we want you guys to do this and it's a 3, 4 grand investment, then it's worth every penny. Yeah.

Have you asked the direct question? Around, like, what other search firms have you met over the last 12 months? So you've done a lot of work.

Always. Yeah, you know, we always do.

What's the— what's been a typical answer since you've been put this rule in place?

You know, the, the big thing with exec search firms and search firms in our world, you know, the Artisinals, the Diversas, the Trues, the Rivieras, is, you know, often when they go and they've used these for, for top-level hires, and that's fine, you know, if they, if they're willing to spend 150 grand minimum fee, 100 grand minimum fee, okay, great. Um, none of them do the GTM stuff. So if we can show and prove to them how good we are at the GTM stuff, and we are this cost-effective, and we're slightly more cost-effective than some of the top exec search firms, but they're going to get me and my team rather than someone who they won't know at some of the exec search firms, then they're going to give us a shot on the next role. Uh, and, you know, we partner with some exec search firms that plug us in when the time's right because they know that if they've taken equity in their business, they need a really strong GTM build-out team. And that's when we can come in. And a lot of the exec search firms, um, take equity in the businesses they recruit for.

I've heard that. That's quite smart. Interesting play, that.

Really interesting play. Um, so just to be clear for everyone, because I have heard that from—

speak to a few different people that some of these search firms in the— I'm sure there'll be some UK firms that do it as well, but like, yeah, basically part of the proposition or how we work together is almost like, look, we're literally invested in the success of your business, so it's a win-win. So rather than— I don't know, you'll probably know more than me— rather than being like, this is what the typical fee structure is and how it works, actually it's like, let's, let's talk about getting agreeing equity in your business?

Yeah, usually it's a split of fee, you know, a percentage of fee or fixed fee and equity. Okay. But it does mean, it means they're truly invested, right? It's because we've taken a percentage, we've, you know, missed out on $100K of cash, let's say, to take $150K worth of equity. We're super invested in this. But it also means that when the GTM build-out comes, and it's not something they do, they know they need a really strong GTM partner. Who can come in and build out fast, build out successfully, because it means they're gonna have a fast return on their investment. Maybe it's an acquisition, maybe whatever it is. And that's where, again, the world's big enough for us all to play in. It's enough agencies, enough search firms for us all to be very successful.

Bring that mic a bit closer.

Sorry.

Um, so with, with what we've spoken about then, it seems like what really makes you feel like we've built this US team on foundations now is I really respect you, like, being really transparent because I think people can really just take a lot from this where you were just willing to be like, you know what, actually let's just stick with the clients that we have the most success with, that we really enjoy working with. You're gonna have some great stats around actually, you know, we're working with 10 customers, this is actually the amount of opportunity that we have versus working with 30 different companies. So it sounds like that, that's been like a real like bedrock of like why this is now foundational to growing this Austin office. Because now you're actually trying to then get someone who's like head of delivery because you're going to be that sort of head of growth on the BD side doing what you do best. But it sounds like that, that's really the backbone of you believing this— we've got really strong foundations now when we're clear on what we want to be, what we want to be known for, where we say no, where we say yes. Is that sort of fair?

Yeah, I'm pretty old school with how I look at recruiting. Um, And I look at the team we've got now and I think every one of these people has got a real opportunity to create life-changing money, you know, skills and be on a journey here for the next 4 or 5 years. I've never once been able to say that before. And that's because we had a shift in both that, but a shift in hiring as well. You know, half the team I wouldn't have spoken to a year and a half ago because they didn't come from our world, they didn't come from our ecosystem, they didn't, you know, know what we knew of the software world and go-to-market. Maybe they came from engineering. You know, one of them worked, was doing engineering hiring for American Airlines, but she was the best at what she did at that. So we thought, okay, let's bring the best people in from any recruitment vertical and teach them go-to-market SaaS. It's not complicated, it just takes time to learn. But what we do isn't rocket science. Now, at the end of the day, we're recruiters, um, and if you can recruit and be really successful in one industry, and you can bring those raw traits and skills across to another, you can also be very successful.

But it also really seems like having clarity on also like this GTM search piece, how you want to work with companies, super helpful, all that as well. Because a lot of it I've got here, what, like 90% of your work now is like committed?

Yeah, it's all committed. They'll all work on a GTM search. There's a couple of— one customer that hasn't moved off it yet, onto it yet. But everything else is, you know, we're hiring head of delivery as we speak to come in and really own the delivery function because our team just focus on delivery. Myself, Paul and Jack and a couple of others in the business do all the growth and they just focus on delivery. So it really focuses them on the world, what they can get good at, and there's great opportunity.

So it sounds like all of that really is the equation behind like, we've got some really solid foundations now to grow on. Yeah. So this, like, just to give people some interest and perspective of this GTM search I've got here, let me know if I get any of this wrong. Yeah, but you mentioned it earlier. So let's say that we initiate a GTM search. Yeah. Is that— I know it might really vary, but typically is that for one hire? Is it like, what have— what, like, when we're having each search will have their own search within it.

So if it's a sale, if it's an AE, you know, it will have a search. If it's an SE, it will have its own search. If it's an SDR, have its own search.

Okay.

And, you know, follow this process. Follow this process. Yeah.

But typically you win in like a variety of like multiple searches, or does it— I know it really varies.

You know, a lot of the seed Series A stuff, it's land and expand. So we'll, we'll do a couple hires here, and, and then they'll hit their revenue targets, and then they'll expand further and further.

Right.

Um, some it's more big buildouts. You know, we've got some big 20-person buildouts right now. Both in Europe and the US because of champions that are joined, and they'll all follow GTM Search.

So I've got here 3-day research sprint. Yeah, that's what you said earlier. So that's okay, we— okay, I need this VP of Sales, that's where we need to start. 3-day research sprint, long list of 50 to 150 people.

Yeah, long list. It really depends on— it could be more, it could be less, but the research is the most important part. It's— if we look at recruiting companies in the whole What makes us different to anyone else out there? You know, we're recruiters. A lot of us have worked in the same leaders in the past. We're doing the same sort of outreach. We're sending emails, sending texts, we're sending ad notes, we're cold calling. How do we get in front of more people? Um, and actually the research and identification of all the profiles is for me the most important thing now. I never would have thought that I would be saying that 2 years ago because it was just speed, get people in.

But we're just using LinkedIn for that?

Just LinkedIn, yeah. Okay.

Yeah.

And now it's okay, well, the customer does X, let's find every single one that could be relatable to them. Every single company out there that we think is the right type of company, the persona they sell to, whoever it is, that could be a fit for our customer. Then let's really deep dive in and see, okay, who all the individuals at those companies.

And is it— sorry to bite in, but is a long list deemed as just people that we believe from our expertise could do this job?

Could do the job on paper.

These people have been interested or you spoken to?

It's long list is Anyone who we think could do the job on paper, then the shortlist is once we've introduced 5 or 6 people that can then do the job that we've spoken to that are interested.

So we've done this long list and then we're then going to be doing the strategic outreach, intentional outreach.

And we'll run all the outreach through our customer. We'll say, hey, would you do this? Would you change this? Would you proposition it this way? Or can we say this? And they give us the sign-off. So then we know they know what we're saying. and we're all agreed again, we're in partnership that, okay, this is what we're going to do, this is how we're going to go to market. Every customer has a Slack channel. If we're working multiple different roles, multiple different hiring managers, multiple different Slack channels. Slack has become one of our biggest tools now as a business.

Um, then you're doing the first stage interview, are you taking on that responsibility? Are you—

we'll run them through the entire process. We'll pre-agree an outline of what the interview process should be. We'll mutually agree it. We'll agree what each interviewer should interview for in each stage, put a scorecard next to that, associated to that, because a lot of hiring managers don't know what they need to interview for. You know, if you're looking for a sales rep, it's the VP of Sales, then you speak to the SEA manager, you speak to an AE, then may speak to the CRO again. They're all probably asking similar questions, so let's break it down and say, okay, this is what you need to focus on in this interview, and score it, rate it.

And then when you're like, when you, you're typically speaking to companies about working this way, like typically have you found that things just aren't consistent in the process, that also knows different things, Like, is that— because it sounds like really that, that's what you end up— I can imagine that's what you actually end up selling a lot of the time.

A lot of it is the process.

Yeah.

And what we say to them is, you're not actually— you're not paying us for a hire or individual, you're paying us for a process. So if we can run a really great process with 5, 6 individuals, 7 individuals in it at any given time, you're going to hire one. That's the end product. But you're actually paying us for is to get those 5, 6 in process before you make the hire.

And I got here, time to hire, 62 to 47 days.

Yeah, it's dramatically reduced.

Um, but I think it's almost as well, from what I— when I sit down with people and break this down on the journey that you've been on, it's almost like the customer should perceive, okay, they might get, get to the outcome more quickly, but they get to the end of the outcome more quickly, and they also get to the end of the outcome going, that was the, that was the best possible, like, hiring process that we could have done, and we're happy with And that's why we do it.

That's why we say it's the process, because they know at the end of it they've made the right decision because they've spoken to enough candidates that have got them to the decision.

Versus you putting some CVs in front of them.

Exactly.

And then going, Ed, is this the best? Is this the best?

Yeah.

Out there, or—

We can show them every outreach we've done, every message we've sent, everyone we've spoken to, the reasons why they're not interested, why they are, and everything is meticulously mapped, detail-oriented, and they can see it. And for a lot of CROs and first-time founders and first-time VPs of sales, they don't really know what they're looking for. And they really need to have a really strong, tight process where a lot of education goes on. Because again, they don't know what they don't know. We've seen this hundreds of times, but then it could be their first time.

And then, you know, you said earlier around keeping clients, and I've got things here around— so we're running quarterly reviews as needed. Like, where it's then the other, like, the post stuff.

Yeah, every customer has a quarterly review. We send it to every hiring manager we worked with, plus the CEO, founder. Some will send to the investors that we work with so they can see, okay, time to hire, how many hires they've made, how many interviews they've done, who was the bottleneck on the interviews because the SE manager took 60 days to hire, every other hiring manager took 45, and it gives them complete visibility into the hiring. And suddenly that SE manager next quarter is going to be the fastest to hire because he's just been called out on a very standard quarterly review.

And then just to like round this out then, like that, I honestly think particularly people and recruiters that listen to this podcast, yeah, for the most part would like hearing you talk about how you're working, the time you're getting, how involved that you get, how much you can influence, how much the customers are listening to you. I'd like to think for the most part recruiters would go, that sounds like a way better way of working. And like, you've been on— like, what, what is it that— is it limiting beliefs? Is it— do you know what I mean? Like, what is it? Because you'll be interviewing potential people now that don't exactly work in this way. You're going to be going, look, we've been on a journey, we now work in this way. What is it that you think, for the most part, you can just talk from your own experience, that holds people back? Because you were— you was that, that—

it was painstaking. When we first started implementing, it was tough. We lost a bunch of customers. The customers didn't quite understand what we were asking them to do. 'cause there's a bit of feedback they have to do on the Excel sheets and filling some stuff in. And it was painful and it was tough and customers churned, the right style of it, because they didn't get it. And it was much on me not educating them well enough and laying it out. And it's actually, guys, if we want to partner, it's setting clear expectations at the start. And that's the most valuable thing I can ever do in any partnership now is this is what you can expect from us, this is what we expect from you. And they agree to that, do they agree to it? So then when I say to them, XYZ, you need to do this because you agreed, they then go on and do it. But for other people out there, I think the hardest thing is getting customers to commit into it and buy into it, because most don't, most don't want to. And that's the big difference, is if you're a contingent shop, it's not going to work because they're working with 2 or 3 agencies and all they care about is speed and profiles and speaking to enough people. So it only works if you're in true partnership with the customer where, you know, you've got an exclusive or you've got it committed retained and you can spend some time with them. You can go out and visit them. You can sit down with them and walk them through this entire process. I did it with a founder last week in San Francisco, 3 hours, me and one of their investors. We just sat down, we walked them through the process and originally they needed a CRO. We actually, having been through that process, they actually don't need a CRO. They need a VP of sales and a VP of CS. But I wouldn't have got that if I just jumped on a Zoom with them. I said, great, what's the brief for the CRO? I'll fly out and meet you next week. We're going to have dinner and let's kick it off. As we walk them through exactly what he wants, why he wants it, what he's thinking, first-time founder. And we've come to this conclusion. It's a way better solution for where they are as a business and the revenue goals they need to hit next year.

So what I heard there then is, do you feel like for— again, you can just talk from your own experience, but maybe people aren't willing to go through that initial pain to maybe get to the end outcome where they'd like to see a CRO.

They think $100 grand fee, great, let's jump on it straight away, let's do it. Actually, it probably will fail. You know, we've done— and you know, people laugh, they say, well, you know, what do you do for work? And it's recruiter, right? Actually, we do a lot of consulting these days. Like, I spend more time consulting with founders and advising them on what we think they should do because XYZ and Understanding their revenue, their CAC, whatever it is, um, that's super, super important. And when you're a founder trying to get from $1 to $5 million, it's not just about hiring a bunch of sales reps or a VP of sales. Well, let's break it down.

And so what, what made— like, just curious, just, just to sort of focus on this for a sec— what, what made you feel like the pain was worth it? Do you know what I mean? To like— because you really had to— you, you must have like—

I lost 2 of my best customers. Who I've done a huge amount of revenue with in the past.

Because you work with them in a contingent way.

Because I work with them and they knew hiring managers, they didn't want to move to this model and XYZ. And that was tough. Um, that was a tough pill to swallow at the time, but it— I was very much here for the greater good. I feel like, okay. And it was more because I could see what it would do for the delivery team and the team that I was working with. Like, before, it was very sporadic. They didn't know if they were going to close this deal because they didn't have control. And I was doing really well because I was running the US and we had great revenue and I was making loads of money, but the actual team weren't. And okay. And then sort of step back and sort of, you know, this is why I think being a leader is, if you go into leadership and it's why I'm actually transitioning out of it as such, is it's really important to know what you want to achieve and why you're doing what you're doing. And the team now are doing way more revenue individually. Because of the model that we've moved to. Where before it was a lot of me, I knew the hiring managers, so I could sweet-talk them into this deal here and there, and I knew what strings to pull. And the team didn't because they didn't have that relationship. Now every person within the team has all the weekly calls with the hiring managers. They run the account, manage the accounts, they're in charge of it. And that wouldn't have happened if we were doing what we were doing a year and a half ago.

Yeah, I appreciate you being transparent with that. Yeah, that must have been tough to sort of hear, like, because you obviously would have pointed all the evidence or done such a good job.

Yeah.

And still then reluctant to move to— I'm sure there were some lessons in there though.

Yeah, I mean, it's the best thing I ever did, is we've done as a business. We would still be built on rubble. We've now got real strong rock foundations with key core customers that every time we speak to them, they know the process they're going to have to go through. If they want to work with us.

Was it just getting to that, to that 0 to 1 that really then just gave you that—

Revenue took a hit to start, you know. Our April this year, um, March this year was pretty slow, um, or March last year, April now. Our year runs April to March, um, but then we suddenly saw a huge June, big, big May, huge June, because it took time to get them ramped up. And the customers did buy into it. Took them, you know, 45, 60 days to really buy in for us to start doing a great job. And then we just saw an absolute, you know, tumble effect of deals falling in. And then it's down to the process.

And then that really then gave you that belief, that conviction to be like, like, this is why we need to work with customers this way.

And don't get me wrong, it still gets me wrong. You know, we've got great customers speaking to, and they say, now we just can't buy into it. And I'm like, you know, um, because there's some of the most exciting startups out there and we've got to say no. And they look at us, why are you saying no? And that's the rule we put in place. And as much as it hurts right now, and it's long-term success for short-term pain.

No, I appreciate being transparent with it because I think people would take a lot from that. And if, if they want to get to the outcome that we've spoken about, the way that you're working with customers and have a lot more predictability around just the whole— oh, the whole process, not just like your pipeline, then like you just said there, you have to sign up for that initial pain.

That's the difference being a leader and not being a leader. If I was an IC and just billing and just running my own little one-person team, well, it matters less and less, right? Because it's just you, you know what's going on, you're in with all the hiring managers, you've got that relationships. But when you've got other people, 7, 6, 7 people relying on you to know what's going on, And the biggest bottleneck before was me, because everyone's like, we don't know what's going on, we're waiting on Ed. And that was the biggest line that I heard for the last year. We're waiting on Ed. Because I had 20 customers, I was managing and running everything, and it was just bottlenecked. And when we sat down with the team and, you know, I said to them, what do they want from a delivery leader? And they listed, you know, 1, 2, 6, 7 different things there. And I was like, guys, you know, I'm maybe one or two of those things. And it was that point that said, okay, it's now it's really time to bring in a head of delivery, which we're trying to hire for right now, and come in and just own delivery, own delivery, own account management. But they've really got to want to teach. They've really got to want to be a learner and help develop and get this team pushing forward, because everyone there has got great raw ingredients. But we're a really junior team. Um, no one's got more than 2 years experience in our world.

Love it. Well, I think like generally, like, I, I'm just a huge advocate of a career in recruitment because of what we've learned today. Like, if you think of where you was since that dinner and that conversation, and like even now the learning hasn't stopped, right? You're still going to be learning a ton. But I really sort of commend you for one, having, having the humility to go, actually, you know what, I'm maybe not the the best lead in this position to take us where I know that we can get to. Then just again, I love the, like, the learnings and the humility around actually, let's actually— maybe this is going to potentially benefit me personally in the long run. But you, you would have, I'm sure, taken a bit of a hit personally, financially, and these things. So I think there's just so many lessons in here. And like, yeah, you would have learned so much and likely feel like you're, uh, still learning. And you've moved your life to Austin as well, all through this platform of recruitment. I just think it's mega.

There's very few jobs in the world that anyone as an 18, 19-year-old can then be sitting here in this chair 7 years later and have done what I've done, what loads of others have done in this world. Like, if you give it everything, the opportunity is crazy to go out and, you know, be managing a team of 7, 8, you know, doing multimillions in revenue. And then actually for me to step back and say, you know what, guys, I've taken it this far. Someone else can take it on the, you know, $2.5 to $5 to $7 million journey in the US and I'll focus on something else. And, you know, as someone told me as a 19-year-old kid, I could sit here, shake the hand off, you know, every day of the week and the opportunities that I've done and the work we've done as a business. And there's a long way to go, but there's loads to learn. And Graham, who was on the podcast, you know, a couple months back. He's a real strong mentor to me. And the only reason that came about was because I said to Paul, the founder here, dude, I need to learn more, I need to do more. And how do I get more knowledgeable around the space, around recruiting in a whole, around life? And I have a session with Graham, you know, once every 2 weeks. And if I didn't ask Paul or push Paul, probably wouldn't have happened. And I look at people out there in different worlds and roles saying, And if you're feeling stagnant or you want to do more, just push. Because every founder, business leader has got a mentor of their own that they've worked with or can introduce you to and have conversations with. And as you said earlier, we speak to some incredibly successful people who are going to be way more successful than I'll ever be. Right. But you can learn 1% of what they do or half a percent. It's going to make you better. Love it.

Thanks for joining me.

Appreciate it.