How To Unlock Your Full Potential and Strategies to Dominate Any Market with Sam Smith

The first 90 days came into a smaller team than I was used to managing, and I said, you know, a couple of times when I first started that I wasn't a great leader, but I really wanted to be a great leader, and I just was a sponge to take in that feedback and how to do that.

Sam Smith, he's the Senior Vice President of New York for Interex. Before joining Interex, Sam took a 3-person division doing low 6 figures a year in revenue and grew this division to 12 people generating $2.8 million in net fee income in 4 short years. He now runs the New York division for Interex and is leading and heading up the strategy to grow that part of the business. This is what you're going to learn in this week's episode: how to genuinely lead by the front as a manager.

I just wanted to learn how to become a great manager and a great leader and a great director, so I was very much, give me as much feedback as I can get, please help me develop to be the leader that I want to be.

The important metrics and dashboards that you need to continuously monitor that will help you develop your team.

But I never really looked at the number of candidates you spoke to, what relationships have we built. I never saw the value in it, which is why I was probably not the leader that I am today.

How to coach, conduct one-on-ones, and develop a high-performance culture.

My day-to-day is spent upskilling, developing, coaching, looking at how I can develop people professionally, but also within personal development.

Enjoy this week's episode. Sam, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

You're joining me from New York?

Yeah, I am. Fifth Avenue.

The Big Apple?

Yeah, yeah, the Big Apple.

Where did you grow up?

I actually grew up in Salisbury, which is near Stonehenge. Okay. It's like a traditional farmland south of England. Then I moved up towards Surrey, so like South London. Where I was until January of this year. And I made the jump over to the Big Apple and I'm now living in New York.

And how long have you been in New York now?

So since January 1st, I moved here. So 4 and a half months.

Love it.

Yeah.

Where I wanted to start this conversation was something that was very evident when we prepared for this and you said it a couple of times in a few different ways, but you said to me you've sort of— all the way, what you say to people is that you're like unrecognizable. Yeah, from like a year ago, a year ago, or who you was a year ago. Tell me, what does that mean? Like, tell me more about that.

Yeah, cool. Um, so I've changed a load of things in the last year. One of the big things is I, I've been in bang on a year. Tomorrow is my 1-year anniversary. So, um, a load of the platforms that this business has given me have allowed me to develop massively personally. Um, little things like a year ago I wouldn't even step foot in a gym. Now I go to the gym every day. And a year ago I would have deemed myself and categorised myself as a bad leader, um, which I know is quite a negative thing to say, but I was very much focused about myself as a recruiter even, even leading large teams, and I cared very much about only the things that would impact me. So how much would I get paid, and how much money would the team do to impact my bonuses and stuff like that. And I didn't really care about developing people around me. And as bad as that sounds, now my day-to-day is spent upskilling, developing, coaching, mentoring, looking at how I can develop people professionally, but also within personal development. And I also spend a lot of time, luckily, learning from Jamie and also a lot of the great leadership at Interact here. And I've learned loads about how to take care of my mindset, how to focus on my mindset, doing stuff like meditation, breathwork, and practicing gratitude, affirmations, like all of those things that one year ago to me would have felt very uncomfortable and awkward and probably quite cringy. And now a big part of my routine. So, um, in a positive way, I'm unrecognizable from the person I was a year ago. I've been on a journey of self-development, a journey of improvement, and I'm very happy with, with where I am today.

That never stops, right?

Never ever stops. There's always room to improve. That's why we work in recruitment.

No, I love that. And, uh, it really is like it can have such a— I do feel like our industry is like conducive with developing that mindset if you really want to go there. And I think that is one of the great things about our industry, that you can be surrounded by people that of course are driven, maybe money-driven, all these things, want the success, but actually you can really find yourself wanting to be holistically just a better version of yourself. I think is, is pretty cool.

Yeah, I think recruitment is fantastic, especially if you want more from life and you want to continue to improve, because it is like a, an unlimited way to go and tap into changing your life, both financially, and you can get serious financial freedom, but also like you can just develop as a person because you're surrounded by winners. Like most people who work in recruitment have similar sort of mindsets and hungry people. So you're allowing yourself to be around that like winner's circle and high-performance culture, which naturally then allows you to perform at better levels as well.

So you worked for one business for nearly 5 years, Technical Resources, before you joined Interex, and then it's going to be your year milestone.

Yeah.

So I think when we prepared for this, what I thought was really interesting, and you gave us a bit of context there, But something that I wanted us to sort of dig into first was I've got here how you turned a team of 3 people doing $250K to building a team doing $2.25 million. And the average fee in that team was $6K. So like, let's talk about this. I think, why don't we, like you said to me that your colleagues would say Sam is exceptional at winning business and you can fill in the color on what your role exactly looked like. But from what I understood, you know, your role and how you was incentivized was the overall performance of that team and how you enabled that team to perform was consistently bringing in accounts, developing accounts, expanding accounts. Yeah.

Yeah. So that was a brilliant 5 years in a brilliant tenure and allowed me to develop some really good BD. Like, I've really learned key BD skills in that organization. And I think the biggest journey is like the last 3 years when I step up into division management and took over the permanent desk there. So I was 100% perm in that organization. And at the time there was 3 of us doing £30,000 a month. And by the time I left, we were at peak doing best part of £300,000 a month. And actually, I was the only person that did BD. So the model there was a 180 model where you'd have sales pass into delivery. So I had two reports that were essentially almost account managers or team leads, and beneath them was just delivery consultants. So what would happen is I'd win business, pick the business up, pass it to the account manager, who would then basically just service the account. So we used to call them service delivery managers, where they would basically just be the ones that would send CVs, book interviews, and coordinate from a candidate perspective what happens. My job was new logos, expansion of accounts, and really driving the growth of that. And at peak, we were bringing in businesses and doing 30, 40 placements a month, like multiple, multiple placements within a month within organizations. We were working closely in the telecom sector, mainly on ISPs. So fiber and broadband providers that at the time were backed substantially from government and PE and were growing out their teams. And we would drop businesses down is the way I describe it, where they'd get a load of cash injection from PE or government, they'd then build out their exec team. So we'd place CEOs, COOs, CTOs, etc. And then we'd build the teams out around them, everything from sales all the way down to training level for engineering. Where you do like £3,000 average fees on trainee-level people and then everything in between. And actually the reason that that was so successful was because of the way that I built relationships with the customers we work with. And a massive part of my job was on the road, like 2 or 3 days a week, out and about, driving around the country, shaking hands and walking corridors is what I would describe it as. It's actually like getting into an office and physically walking around, introducing myself, making key relationships. That's a big part of recruitment is how can you build sustainable relationships where people use you again and again and again? And we did a fantastic job of providing a service that they couldn't get elsewhere in the market because we were so quick at delivering and actually a very cost-effective way to do that. And then we were able to really build and scale teams over, over months and months and months. The more logos we won, it was almost more logos would come in as well. It was almost like spiraling out of control where we were winning so much business. And that team grew from 3 heads to 12 in 14, 15 months. And then there was additional admin support that we brought in. We really grew that out very quickly to a seriously high-performing team doing loads of numbers and obviously very well supported in the business. With great infrastructure that was already there and just to now be able to roll on through and continue to bring business in. So 100% was something that built me in terms of my BD. And I think that one of the biggest things for that was getting on the road and meeting people, making those core relationships. But then also, like, every recruiter can say the perfect things. You don't have to back that up. And I had a fantastic team that were reporting into me. They were able to deliver time and time again, and that allowed us to just continue to service those accounts.

So let's just break this down a bit because I'm sure you've then taken these lessons into Interact. Some of them may have worked, some of them may not. But, you know, you would have taken some of the things that you've learned and tried to instill these in some of the teams that you're responsible for now.

Yeah.

So I'm just curious, with hindsight looking back, What do you think you did extremely well at the early stage of these relationships that then led to like big enterprise accounts where you're doing multiple placements? Like what if you were to think of maybe your top 3 clients that spent a lot of money with you while she was there?

Yeah. Yeah.

Like what do you think you did really well in like maybe the first 90 days of like Sam meeting me as a hiring manager.

Yeah.

To then like, yeah, I don't know, what did you do? Because I think a lot can be said at that initial period and the experience that you create. And yeah, like, talk to me a bit about that. What did you do at the initial period that you think you did really well?

I think I infiltrated the account. And like, I say that 100% genuine, where I would go and walk, like, literally get a meeting, and prior to the meeting I'll be BDing every single person in that business. Just like relentlessly, I'm going to be in your office on X date, X time. I can be around in sales in Manchester, I can be around in Manchester for 48 hours. I'll do dinner, drinks, lunch, breakfast. I'll be in your office, I'll do this, I'll do that. Like, I made my time 100% available to that business to make sure I fully infiltrated it. The other thing was focusing on C-levels. Like, a lot of these companies were growing and scaling, and most of the decision makers were actually CEOs, COOs, or C-level, exact level decision makers. So I made sure I fully built those relationships as strong points where they would then just push me into the right people. So I would be on like texting basis with CEOs where I could text them and they'd make the introduction immediately. And because of the fact that I'd gone and met them, built relationships, whether that was over lunch or over coffee or just face to face, And a lot of presentations, like thinking back at how many presentations I must have done in boardrooms, just over and over presenting the same thing where I was able to so detailed, like detailed, go through the services we offered. And I was so used to the types of objections and questions I'd get where I was able to then do great presentations. But ultimately, like I said a minute ago, the most important thing that happened in the first 90 days is we delivered on the first requirement. The biggest thing with any account you ever get is you have to deliver the highest quality if you want repeat business. I've seen recruiters win big, big accounts and fail the first time, and that blows the whole relationship because everyone's going to tell you that they can give you a fantastic service, but if you don't actually do that, you don't win the business. The biggest thing you do is deliver exactly what you said you're going to do. And then you can look at how you leverage that relationship further and get multiple contacts and start building those introductions into other points of contact.

So just a couple of things here, just a bit of context, Sam, if you don't mind sharing.

Yeah.

What was the typical service that these companies would work with you on? Would it be on a contingent basis typically? Was it exclusive? Did you sort of— what did that look like?

Yeah, I pitched, I pitched retain, I pitched contingent, I pitched exclusive. 90% of it was just contingent. Like, we had competition, we just beat them to it. And that's why we then built good relationships. 90% of the work we did was either getting into an account that they were working with people and the service they were getting wasn't great, so we were then able to give them that great service, and, or we pitched alongside people and proved why we were better. The examples where we're exclusive and retained were more later down the line, I guess, when we really proved concept and we were able to leverage those relationships. Now, in hindsight, I should have been pitching exclusive and retained way more than I was, and the retained business part would have been massive for cash flow and everything like that in terms of P&L. That being said, we were delivering on everything that we got and very rarely failing. So I knew that every time we landed a requirement, how we would act, and it was a lot of immediate showcase. Like, people would talk to us about specific requirements and intricate certifications and certain types of things they were struggling with. And because we've been networking so much, we could really quickly go, bang, here's 3 CVs, here's 4 CVs, book interviews. Like, it happened so quickly, and that made a huge, huge impact.

So just one or two things here then. Before we move on. Firstly, really curious, what does, 'cause I'm sure you bring this into InterX now, walk me through what a great presentation looks like. Like, I get into the boardroom, I've had this meeting in my diary, I've got this Sam Smith guy, he's telling me that he's got a track record of making a bunch of placements with our competitors, et cetera, et cetera. What, if you've done multiple reps of this, like what does, Yeah, what is that? What is that? What is a good present— if you walk out that boardroom going, that was a really good presentation, what does that look like?

Yeah, it's got to be tailored. The biggest thing is making sure you don't just go in and start sharing a slide deck and standing up and talking slide through slide. You need to know the business, you need to know what's important to the business. So whether you've done your research before, whether you find out when you're meeting with them, and then you need to tailor that slideshow or presentation, whatever it is, to the business. So you might have 15 slides that talk you through loads of different types of services, but no one's going to engage through 15 slides. What they will engage to is the solutions that you offer that genuinely fix their problem. So if you're talking to a business and they've got issues with the time it takes to onboard, the time it takes to find people, or something time-related, we'll go to your slide that talks about how you do things quickly and then give case studies, give examples, relay that back into real-life situations where you have done that, and case studies and stuff like that will make a big, big impact there. The other thing is don't just read off the slide deck, like really obvious things like pace you're talking at, making sure that people are actually engaged, asking questions as you go through. I think a lot of times people can give presentations and it can be just basically reading out what's on this slideshow behind me, but do they really understand what you're saying? Are they really engaged? And the way that you can leverage that is by bringing them into the conversation, asking questions like, "Do you understand how this could be leveraged in your business? Have you ever heard of a service like this? Are you familiar with these types of services?" Getting them to engage will allow them to be more bought in. So knowing what you want to say before you get there is a big thing. Knowing the business and what their problems are is a huge thing. And then engagement the whole time through, making sure that the audience is genuinely listening to what you're saying and understands the impact that you can make is a massive thing.

And then how much of this presentation is Sam talking about Sam?

Yeah, the first 2 slides used to always be me and then the business. So me, my background, my experience, what I've done, who I've worked with, case studies on me as an individual. Second slide is then a little more tailored on what I've done within the business as well in terms of So say I was presenting to one of our top customers with a new contact. The next slide is, this is my relationship with your colleagues and this is what I've done for them. So you always open up about me because people buy from people. Massive thing. People buy from people. And then I used to always engage on the relationships I've got.

So yeah, so it sounds like pretty much like 95% is about them, their problems, challenges, or Like education. Yeah. Okay, nice. And then how— because I'm sure I definitely have things that I always use in my like sales meetings. Spoken about how you go through them, keeping them engaged. How did you always like to finish these or close them out? Because I'm sure there was maybe a question you'd like to go to, or like what did you make sure you sort of asked before you finished? Or like how did you close these presentations out?

Yeah, yeah, normally with jobs, but here it is. Yeah, I think, I think most of the time they would, they'd end with like rough Q&As, of course. And but only was like, do you understand the impact that we offer? Do you understand the services we offer and how they make impact to an organization like yours? And is there anything about this that wouldn't work for you guys? Is there anything about this that you want to know more about? Like just try and keep it very short and snappy at the end, and because I want to ask questions as I go, by the end of that presentation I want them to know exactly what we offer, and I want them to be crystal clear on the solutions that we can provide. It needs to be very black and white in my opinion that what we do is different to the market. And the way I end a lot of my presentations now is by saying something like, um, "Look, Hishem, recruiters will always tell you the same things. They're the quickest, they're the most cost-effective, they've got the best quality. What is different between most recruiters and myself is I'll actually show you that value immediately today. So understanding what I can do for you is very important. Wanting to understand more now how I can support you in one of the more trickier industry areas that you're looking to source resources for, how about we do this? Let us go work on one of those really difficult areas Let me show you the value that I can offer to you, and then I can prove this to you, and we can have a conversation about a bigger relationship after that. I want to make sure they really understand I want to build long-term relationships, and I want them to give me an area they're really struggling on, because I'll prove it. Because every recruiter will genuinely say that they're the best, right? They're not doing their job if they don't explain how they're the best. We'll go and prove that. That makes the difference. That builds the long-term relationships. Every time you back up what you say you're going to do, then you make a huge difference.

Yeah, there's a lot to be said on reducing the time it takes to get to that like wow moment or moment of like, wow, okay, Sam has really delivered or like creating that experience where, yeah, if you can just reduce that time where they then have that experience firsthand. Like you're on to a winner. So, I do really like that approach because then if you leave the meeting and then within, you know, 3 to 5 days, I'm then booking interviews. It's like, bloody hell, like they've really got to this point really quickly, right? So, the shorter you can make that time to value is huge, right? So, the second thing then, appreciate you sharing that. The second thing I just wanted to ask you on this was, I understand the approach of like, I'm going to be in your office, I'm going to be in Manchester, these things. But the people and the job titles you mentioned, these people are busy. So I'm assuming you're leading with, I'm meeting so-and-so. Yeah, I wanted to try and meet you as well. Like, I just wanted to ask you, like, why— what— how did you frame it? Like, why would I give Sam time? I'm busy. Like, why would I have a coffee with a recruiter that's coming in to pitch services? Like, why— why would I give you my time? Like, how did you think about that? How did you frame that?

I think the reason why I was able to have a lot of success is because the I'm meeting with the C-level, like I'd go and meet, say, the CEO or the COO or the CTO or like Chief Delivery Officer, and because it used to be a lot of engineering works, and because I was meeting that person, name dropping them into, say, directors or just that like one level below allowed me to have a lot more success because I was talking about the fact I'm meeting somebody who is on an org chart above them. So it's like, okay, well, if that person's meeting them I probably should as well. And then again, explaining the value of what you do. No one's going to meet you just by saying, I'm coming in the office, let's have a chat. I'm coming in the office to explain why we've got cost-effective resources and how we can implement resources within 48 hours. Wanting to understand when you're available as well so I can discuss how we can add those types of services into your projects. And like trying to give it salesy without being too over the top, I think you just got to show value.

And then just to— I'm, I'm just interested, even just for myself, if I'm honest, like, what, what was the mindset going into those meetings? Because I'm sure you knew that if you leave a good impression, yeah, you like have a good meeting, you know the long-term potential benefit of that. So what, what was like the mindset from Sam going into these meetings where they said, you know what, Sam, yeah, happy to, I've got time for a coffee, What was the mindset going into those meetings? Was it you wanted to really try and make sure that you understood who they were, their challenges, their issues? You wanted to understand a bit more about where they're trying to take the business or whatever, but like what were the key things that you really wanted to go into in that meeting? Because I'm sure it wasn't sitting there and telling them all about you and your services and selling.

Yeah, yeah, no, not at all. The reason I loved face-to-face when it was, it was all UK, so it was possible because it's not always as easy as that. But the reason I loved face-to-face, you build a really good relationship. All I wanted to do, and success to me in those meetings was, have I left knowing I've got a relationship where now next time I call you, you answer? Half the battle in this job is getting people to answer the phone and/or people to engage and be able to keep that speed and momentum going. If I could leave those meetings knowing that they genuinely understand that when I call them, it's about something that helps them or something that's going to add value to them, then I knew I was leaving successful. I never necessarily went there with the intention of today I'm winning this whole account and I'm going to be doing 100 grand a month for Goodyear. I wasn't thinking about it in that way. I was thinking about, I want to build a relationship today so I know that in 3 months' time I'm the recruiter you call, I'm the recruiter that you rely on, my organization is the company that you come back to time and time again. And I think that when you look at those meetings in that way, you have much more fluid conversations. I've seen recruiters go face to face and be nervous and that's natural because you're going into that meeting thinking, I need to win jobs, I need to win jobs, I can't go back to my boss in the office without winning jobs. Just chill out, be a bit more personal about, personal about it, be a human, have those nice interactions, build those relationships, and you'll start to win business. People buy from people, so build that core relationship and they will come back to you.

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Yeah. Yeah. So the reason why I was a bad leader is probably because I didn't look at those things enough and I didn't really ever, ever go into enough detail on them. But the way that I would be judging the team on success metrics would basically be number of CVs, number of interviews. But I never really looked at the number of candidates you spoke to, what relationships have we built. I just didn't, I never saw the value in it, which is why I was probably not the leader that I am today. But the way we judge things at TechRes was how many CVs we sent, how many interviews we sent. But we used to work on basically one-to-one, and we were, we were doing like each consult, each DC was 20 interviews a week as a target. So we were doing 60 interviews a week in, uh, one team and 40 interviews a week in another team. And then that was just scaling and scaling and scaling. We were having 100, 200 interviews a week as targets, where it then became a little bit unsustainable and we had to review targets. Um, but that was, that was the only thing I looked at. At the end of the day, the most important thing was how many offers, how many demos are we doing. And because those numbers were growing and growing and growing and it was an upward trajectory for such substantial time, I probably took my eye off the prize in terms of looking at key metrics and looking at how we could scale that as well, which is in hindsight something I should have been closer to.

So CVs, interviews, and ultimately CV to interview ratio.

Yeah, basically.

And then Just to bring us home on this, to really hammer home how much of an impact this has had in your career, because I'm sure you're looking to bring more of this energy approach into the people you're supporting, mentoring, coaching now. Yeah, but you know, less bothered about the company, what they're called, but have you got like a story where, I don't know, maybe you had a meeting, 2 meetings, 3 meetings, or whatever, and over what time period? Because I think sometimes people underestimate if you're having this approach, sometimes it can take a bit of time. Yeah, but like, if you've got a story where maybe you met one person, then over a period of time, months, maybe could be a couple of weeks, you met a few other people, you had this approach, yeah, and then 6 months down the line, a year later, this account ended up doing like over 250 grand with you that year or something. Have you got a bit of a story there of like maybe timelines and meetings? I think this would be interesting for people on how long sometimes these things can take.

So my biggest client, uh, at Technical Resources, I BD'd the CEO when they 4 people. Maybe 15 or 16 months later, I got an email replying to an email that I'd sent him from that long ago, introing me into their new— I think he was Chief Delivery Officer, but he might have been COO at the time. He's moved a few C-levels, basically co-founder because that's how small they were, asking if there was anything he was struggling with. They gave us one job. I told him that I was in Manchester the next day. I wasn't planning to be, And I said, I'm in Manchester tomorrow, by the way, would be great to meet you if you're around. And he said, yeah, sure, come by to the office. That account, within 3 months, we were— the CEO, this is how small they were, they'd got £250 million from a PE firm. The CEO was directly interviewing trainee engineers, engineers and everything. We placed within 3 months 40 people. From month 4, 5, 6 onwards, we were doing 20, 30 placements a month. Took them to about 400 people within, I don't know, maybe 8 or 9 months, scaled that business fully exclusively, beat all of our competition to it. Every new manager that came in was placed by us, so they worked with us. We put directors in there, we built their sales and marketing team out, and that just like the penny dropped one day. I've still to this day never met that CEO. I pitched to meet him. We were working with them that closely. I was in their office. I used to go and do like a weekly. So I'd sit in their office and be involved in meeting managers for about a month. I'd go there for a week at a time. So I'd go and actually sit in their Manchester office and just meet the managers once a week. That's how much business we had there. And even that often in that business, the CEO never met me. But still, I think the biggest we did was £220 grand invoice to that one customer. They were a giant of a customer to us. Um, and probably 15, 16 months. Yeah, it took 15 months to come back to me, and then he still never met me, which is, which is the biggest mistake. That's the one I get away. I can't— I still can't believe I never met him.

Love it. So I'm really interested on, like, as you said, you did— you've been really honest with us in terms of, like, probably wasn't the best leader, had room for improvement. So Talk me through, like, obviously being, um, obviously in New York from the start of the year, but obviously that isn't where you started with Interact. So talk me through, like, what does your role look like day to day now then? Like, just, just break that down for me because obviously a big chunk of it is like the coaching, the mentoring, the leadership essentially. Yeah. Would you mind just painting a picture of me of like what your role looks like now?

Yeah, 100%. So I now run both permanent contracts for New York And so a lot of my time is now spent way more involved in people management, as you quite rightly mentioned. The day-to-day for me is, first thing I do when I get in the office is I do almost like a review of the previous day, deep dive on the stats, deep dive into the conversations, the quality of the people we're speaking to, the quality of the companies that we're engaging with, CVs out the door, interviews, like really understanding how we're performing versus the large jobs we've got. Processes here ongoing, but then also like the details of yesterday and areas we can improve. That then builds me up for desk reviews of everyone and also like a kickoff of the team. And so if there's key trends for the business, I'll do like a generic, these are the types of things I've spotted, then individual one-on-ones at desk with everyone, 10-15 minutes going in the deep dive on their desks, making sure they're set up. And then I'm basically back to back on calls with people all day. I think Joe Brogan, when you spoke to Joe, spoke about the impact of being on calls yourself. So I make myself as available as I can. The whole office has access to my diary. Everyone knows to put me in as many calls as they can. So I'm almost back to back to back, just day by day, in as many meetings as I can, supporting the team, giving feedback. Sometimes I don't even say anything in those calls. I just literally let them run the call and then immediately coach straight afterwards. And then towards the end of the day, reviewing where we are again versus targets, what changes need to happen before the day finishes, what tweaks and stuff need to be in place. And that's probably a rough, a rough overview. Yeah, I love that.

Yeah, you said—

sorry, go on.

Yeah, you said in preparation. I was going to say, yeah, like when we prepared for this, you broke it down like Monday, Wednesday, you view them as like more management days. Yeah. One-on-ones, personal development, like obviously managing upwards, downwards, and then, yeah, always looking at the detail, trying to understand the trends where people can improve, how you can help people. And then you said, yeah, Tuesday and Thursday involved in as many sales pitches on client— yeah, as possible, maybe on average 25, 30 pitches a week. But you're really, you know, a big encourager of if you see any gaps in my diary and you want maybe some feedback or you need help with something or whatever it may be, like book it in.

Yeah.

What, so definitely want to get your perspective as it's clearly something you think you could have improved on, on what these dashboards look like, how you've got better at spotting trends. But I have to ask, like, what, how did you approach going into this organization? Because I always find it interesting when you go in at the level you went into, like you went in at a senior, as a senior. Yeah, um, I know, I think, again, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I wrote down here when you initially joined, you were involved in a contract team doing the Nordic region. But like, you was going in an environment where you'd only done perm, for one. So you've got that, uh, let's call it like a, maybe not a skill gap, but like knowledge gap.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, you're going into an environment where I'm sure you was inspired by the performance levels, what people were achieving. So just talk me through that. That can be daunting for people, right? Because I feel like you can really approach that in the wrong way. You can go in there, try and stamp authority. Like, I think we've all had those experiences in our careers at some point in sales where we get this new manager who, quite frankly, is just a dick. And like, they try and stamp their authority, try and make, you know, make everyone feel like they know it all. So like, talk me through the first like 90 days of Sam being in Interex in the senior role? Like, how did you approach— you're managing people you never managed before. Yeah, you— they're going to be aware that, I'm assuming, you're a perm biller, you haven't got the contract background, so you can't go, look, I was a million-pound contract biller, like, these are— these— this is why I think you should listen to me. Like, yeah, what was the mindset? How did you approach it in a way that hopefully enabled you to get the most out of people, but also so you didn't come across as that manager that we've all experienced and 100% didn't like?

So I think that the most important thing is like the reason why I looked to leave is because I wanted to develop and grow and learn. And this was a step up for me in my career. So when I joined, I came with the attitude and the mindset, I just want to learn as much as I can. I was reporting to George, who is a director in London, and I just wanted to basically understand what George thought success was and how I could work closely with George and obviously with Jamie about me developing as a leader. And I said, you know, a couple of times when I first started that I wasn't a great leader, but I really wanted to be a great leader. And I just was a sponge to take in that feedback and how to do that. And like really worked closely with both George and Jamie, which allowed me to develop. I think that the first 90 days came into a smaller team than I was used to managing. It was a team of 3, which within about 6 weeks became a team of 6 or 7. And really it was about making my stamp in a productive way where they saw value and got buy-in. Like, the most important thing to me was, do the team back me? Do I have buy-in? And I think the leaders that come in and don't necessarily do so well are the leaders that come in and, my job is to sit on the computer and to give you instructions and not to make impact and not to lead from the front. I always loved doing BD. I love picking up the phone. I love getting involved. And so I wanted to jump in at the start. And to really show my stamp and to win logos. And within 3 months I'd won a client, ended up doing like 7 or 8 deals last year. And so I made that impact very quickly and then allowed the team to get buy-in to me without throwing my weight around. And also I was still— I felt like I came in as a director, but I felt very much in that like I am a trainee. As a director, if that makes sense, where I just wanted to learn how to become a great manager and a great leader and a great director. So I was very much, give me as much feedback as I can get from both George and Jamie and also the leadership team we've got here. And like, please help me develop to be the leader that I want to be. And off the back of that, I became way closer to the team, made serious impact in the team, led from the front within the team. And that made the journey easier and way more comfortable for both me and the team.

Love that. That's such a great lesson for anyone listening on that. And look, time and time again, whenever I speak to people like yourself who, you know, want to achieve great things, like want to continue improving, like it's always like they want to continue to learn that they don't know it all. It's such a common thing. So I absolutely love that. Approach. Now, all I will say, it's easier to say that and then actually take constructive feedback.

Great.

So tell me, um, in that initial period— it could be recent, I don't know— but anything that sticks out where it could be Jamie, it could be George, but any constructive feedback that maybe was a bit tough to swallow, or maybe you was a bit, um, it was a bit of a blind spot for you that ended up being really helpful on your management coaching leadership journey, is there anything that you got some good feedback on that may go, yep, I've been doing that wrong, or that was really helpful for me? Anything that stands out?

Yeah, there's two things. One is getting close to detail because I just didn't know how to do it, to be honest. As in like really opening the bonnet up on someone's desk. As a leader, you can go into someone's desk and go, I've gone into this much detail, I can really spot the problem. Not this is the surface level problem, but this is the actual root of the problem. This is how you fix it, and then you make an impact, and the next day they change that around, 100% they back you, 100% they listen to you. I would just be, I'd notice things like, oh, your candidate calls are low today, that's going to impact the amount of leads you've got. Well, yeah, like, that's probably right, but actually the level of detail is, from the candidate calls you've got, going and looking at the types of candidates you're speaking to, well, they're all open to work on LinkedIn, and they're probably not the greatest candidates in regards to what you're looking for necessarily, or there's this gap, or even as close as like looking into the notes. I've seen from the conversation, the back and forth, it doesn't even look like you may have asked for a lead. How would you ask for a lead, Hishem? What would be the way you would ask for a lead? And like giving that coaching in desk so that you've not just gone, I'm micromanaging you and I've gone into so much detail because that's not what we're doing here. I've tried to understand the skill gap I'm trying to look at what the real root cause of the problem is. I'll now coach you on 3 different questions you can ask to get leads. Next day you pull 5 leads. Day after you've got a meeting with the lead. Day after that you pull the job. At the end of that week you're going, Sam, I'm so grateful for the fact that you noticed that and flagged it with me. A lot of leaders, and what I used to do at the start, would go, you just haven't got enough leads today, you need to double the amount of candidate calls. That's not the problem. So it's getting into that detail. And the second bit of feedback, which has been more recent and I'm something I'm still working on, is being more personable and being more friendly. And like, I think I work at a million miles an hour in my head, and I just like, I've noticed this is the problem, fix it, this is how. And like, not coaching in the right way and not being as constructive as I want to be. And I'm definitely working on it, um, I have made improvements, of course, but I'm still working on that. And that's like the chink in my armor for now that I'm really focusing on is, you know what, how can I be more friendly and personable when I'm giving feedback? And how can I come across as a positive leader rather than just as, Hishem, this is a problem, this is how we fix it, let's do this. It's now about being more constructive, coaching more, working people through the problem more. Maybe spending an extra 5 minutes building the story up, painting the picture to get the desired outcome. And that's— that will— that is helping and has helped me massively and will continue to help me as I improve on that.

And I guess also, like, rather than viewing you as like, you identify the problem and then you tell me how to fix it, maybe rather than jumping straight to how to fix it, you try and ask smart questions to help them 100% to that point themselves, right?

100%. Yeah, yeah.

Easier said than done. Again, like, that's, that's hard. Yeah, good at that. Because you can obviously— it'd be very clear to you, I'm sure there's trends in these things, you want to just go straight there, right? But yeah, it may— yeah, it could— yeah, it's not going to be as impactful than me arriving at that destination going, you know what, Sam, it's interesting to say that, this is what I know I need to work on. You go, yep, that's exactly what— yeah, I was hoping you'd say, or what I think was the issue.

Yeah, I think that the issue that I faced for a long time is I just want to get it done and get move on. And actually, like, Amy, our COO, has done loads of training sessions which have been very beneficial around that, like, people management stuff. So is Hayley, our HR director. And those types of sessions where you, you can understand almost the psychology of getting people to get to the answer themselves makes way bigger difference, or getting them to understand the problem will prevent it from happening again. Rather than just going, this is a problem. And then a week later, they forgot what the feedback was. They didn't really understand what the problem was themselves. So yeah, I'm very fortunate that Intrex has got that support network that allows me to develop massively. And that's been something that's been huge for me here.

I love, I love, like, I really hope managers listen to this or future managers really underline that, like, the root cause. I think that is like such a great insight. Yeah, because I think that is often where average managers like go wrong. Um, I think, I think that's such a great insight. I wanted to ask, there may not be one or two things, but if you really took that approach and that was something that you learned quite early on, what did you find yourself maybe coming back to quite often or more often than other things as like the root cause that maybe was holding people back performance-wise? Out of interest, was there common things that you've— when you did take a deep dive into it, yeah, that you found yourself repeating yourself going, I've had a really look into this and this is why I think this is the root cause. Is there any common things there that might be helpful to share?

The biggest thing is cutting corners in recruitment, and I think everyone's guilty of doing it, whether they're on a client meeting and they just picked up a job and they forget to go through like a full process, and then they go back and think, oh, if only I knew that up front. Um, or with a candidate rushing off the phone, um, and not really pushing through, like getting as much information or fully qualifying that candidate. I think that cutting corners is a massive thing, and I don't think people do it consciously. I think people just forget things, and that's where having structure in the way that you, you're speaking to people, whether you're speaking to someone on a client meeting or or you're having a candidate qualification call, but like having structured, not templates always, but like a structure that you want to follow or templates that you want to use, those things make massive impact and prevent those from happening. And it also allows you to start noticing if you keep forgetting questions. Like there's a, I've said to a few of my team here in New York, when you speak to a candidate, what are the 10 things you always ask? They write out 10 questions they always ask. What are the 10 questions that you don't always ask that would make massive impact if you did ask them? and all of a sudden they start writing all these questions and I'm like, okay, but now if you then add these 10 questions to these 10 questions and spend 10 minutes instead of 5 minutes, how much better is that call going to be? How much more do you know that candidate? Could you now take that candidate, all that information, and market it up and go and call your best client and sell them in way better? Every time they agree with those things and then they start implementing those, that extra detail, and those types of things then make a huge difference. So cutting corners is a big thing and definitely the most common trend that I've ever seen in recruitment.

I think the way that I would maybe reframe it because of, like you said, it's not that maybe we're consciously cutting corners. Yeah, but I think really what you're saying there, and again, this is so common, everyone listening to this, that you'll find you look at any top performer in your business who you work with, they will do— they won't do what Sam's doing, which is we're saying cut corners, but actually what we're saying is they follow their process.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, regardless of maybe how busy they are or whatever it is, like, but they have a process and they stick to it. Um, and that's what they stay true to. And like, the best recruiters will do that more often than not, 90% of the time.

Yeah.

Um, and the average recruiters will we say cut corners, but maybe just get complacent, right? And they won't follow the process, which we've sort of— the process is there because we know if we do this, we nail it 90% of the time or 100% of the time, it's going to help us get to the outcomes that we want.

100%. I think that the other thing is like you get excited as a recruiter and you, you might be stood up walking around and you're— you just forget things. That's people forget stuff, right? And then so many times I've had people come and talk to you about certain candidates or certain job processes, and I'll ask one question and I can see their brain go, oh, I should have asked that, but they didn't because something else was going on. And it's not like a conscious effort or a laziness thing. I think it can just be like the excitement of, oh, here's the win, I'm getting the win, I'm getting the job that I've been working all week to get. and then there's just that little gap that's missed. And we've got a phrase here which is do the basics brilliantly, which is probably everyone's heard of those types of phrases, right? But if you do the basics brilliantly and consistently, you guarantee success in my opinion.

We'll get back to the episode in just one minute, but today I'm excited to talk to you about one of our partners, Firefish, the recruitment CRM that accelerates data-driven growth. The problem with most recruitment CRMs is that they are just a database of records, meaning they become just one of the many tools that recruiters use every day. Like with all systems, the records are only as good as the data being captured. Our sponsors Firefish know that for agencies to win faster, data needs to be at the heart of their business, making your CRM the single source of truth. With over 10,000 records created and updated every day and 85% of placements from existing candidates, Firefish enables recruiters to enrich and engage their data, equipping you with real-time insights needed to win faster. To learn more about Firefish and take advantage of an exclusive Recruitment Mentors Podcast offer, make sure you click the link in the show notes and mention the Recruitment Mentors Podcast when speaking to the Firefish team. So what, what I'd love to dive into a bit then, because I think this is something where if they haven't got a manager doing this with them, like you've said like you said at the beginning, one of your biggest lessons early on was how Jamie and George really encouraged you to get into the detail so you can really have an impact. What I really like the sound of, and if you're happy sharing, I think, what was the term that you used, like desk review or like—

Yeah.

I think you may have used that. So, talk me through, like what does that look like? Because I think this is something for anyone listening that maybe doesn't have a great manager, they could potentially do themselves.

Yeah, yeah.

But something managers could maybe do a better job of, like, what does like a proper desk review look like? How— what are like the, the core headings that you're always looking at? Is it candidate calls, number of jobs? I don't know. Where do we go when we do a desk review? Because I think that's something that can be really helpful for people. Because I think one of the best things that great recruiters do is they make the time to reflect. They take a step back and really try and understand like what are they doing well, where can they improve? And if I've got a manager like you helping me discover that and understand that, then I can take that and then, you know, apply my energy and my focus in the right areas, right? Which is why I'm sure you're doing these things. So tell me a bit about these desk reviews because I'm interested.

Cool. 100%. So I look at ratios first off, like client conversations to outcome from those client conversations that then allows me to build. So if someone's had a really great day, I'll probably look in less detail. And but then the people that have had worse days, I'll look in more detail and then really open the bonnet at things like the meetings that you had. What was the general context of the meeting? Why was the meeting booked in the first place? Was it just a catch-up conversation, or was it like a generic thing, like a genuine reason why you're going to have that conversation? Looking at the types of things that the back and forth that would have been said on that meeting. Is there follow-ups booked? Like, what's going on? Opening the bonnet within the the meetings and looking at their process for chasing leads or chasing info and like really deep dive. If you've got a lead on your desk, what have you done against that lead? Really understanding the detailed process that person's followed that day, because if you don't look in the detail of what they're chasing that day, they don't chase it for a week. By the time they don't chase for a week, competitor from another company has already picked that lead up. So really getting into the detail of What do we do against our leads chasing process? And have we emailed everything? Have we sent specs? Have we gone in? But then not just for yesterday, I go back and look for the whole week. And then the team here, the operations team, send like monthly reports around on that as well. So really like getting into that level of detail. Then I'm looking at the contacts we speak to or the candidates we speak to. Are they in businesses that we can see value of working with? Are they within our niche? Are we speaking to contacts that are the right level of contacts? And if you work in a data market, are you speaking to the director of data analytics or are you speaking to the director of security? Because if you're speaking to the director of security, you're talking to the wrong person. And some people just might think that they're trying to get wins that way, but actually it's possibly going too far afield. And same thing with candidates. Are we speaking to good candidates? Are they contract candidates if you're doing a contract market? Or are you speaking to people that have been in the business and they're clearly perm candidates? And then like general trends. So I've got spreadsheets of just like the same thing day after day after day, and I'll go through and just put a red flag against it. That's a trend. If there's a trend, coach. So I've got like, there's probably 2 or 3 things I coach at a desk every day, and in detail I'll pull apart loads of other things. Now for the whole office, that takes me maybe 30 minutes to do that in the morning. That 30-minute investment every morning saves me hours in the week and turns tangible outcomes way quicker.

What have been some of the recent flags?

Uh, contacts is a big thing. Um, we— I think like I want it to be much more focused and specific, right? So the guys in the data market, as an example here, are going at it. Director possibly just too, too broad. I want them being really niche specialists. We speak to director of data analytics, manager of data analytics, like really focusing on the right contact is a big thing. And like not having these time-wasting conversations where you call up an it director and they're just not involved at all in the data team. And then they might introduce you to that person and they might give you the name of that person. But like the reality is they spend our time going at the right level of contact That's, that's been a common, common theme here for sure.

And then obviously you, you manage both contract and perm. I'm just curious because you said if they have a great day, I might look less into the detail. Yeah. What does a great day look like from your perspective for a contract recruiter?

Great day for a contract recruiter, uh, there's a couple of things I'd look at. I'd look at tangible outcomes that move their desk forwards in terms of opportunities. So, um, jobs, big thing. Opportunities for interviews. Like, have they got interviews going on? What outcome have they got in terms of the booked meetings that they've got? Have we actually booked meetings with tangible potentials? So like, when we're booking meetings, I'll look at the meetings we've booked and almost the agendas of what they are. And that's probably the, the success there.

What about perm?

Similar, to be honest. I think that there's this big thing in recruitment that they're two wildly different They're two wild different beasts. What I've learned from Intrex is recruitment is recruitment. Yes, there is differences, of course, I'm not saying there's not, but ultimately the way that you win business in both sides is the opportunity creation and the growth of your desk, which to me is looking at, do you have interviews going on? Are you pulling jobs? Have you sent CVs to those jobs? Are you booking meetings to pull more jobs? They grow your desk. So most of the time I'm looking generically at both parts of the business in regards to, have you won a job? If not, have you had meetings? If not, have you booked meetings? And then against the jobs, it's the ratios of CVs sent and interviews happened. And that's just really what I'm looking at day after day. And the coaching element comes into, if you haven't done those things, how many conversations did you have? And if the conversations are high, then it's coaching around this is what you could have said, should have done differently, maybe the contacts are wrong. That's like the secondary layer to me. And then the sort of tertiary layer is like, what have you actually done in terms of raw activity? Have you had a day of candidates instead? Have you had a day where you've been less on the pulse of things? Like, what does the raw activity actually show us here? And then that's again a coaching and training piece.

So you've spoken a lot about ultimately you being a coach, mentor, manager, but really we're talking about managing down here. How have you got better at managing up? Because that, that's also required in someone in your seat, right? And anyone senior listen to this that, you know, may want to make a move one day or is in this seat now, they also then have to— which is, which is hard. It is a hard part of the role, because then I'm you know, reporting directly into my head of, or maybe even direct to, uh, directly to the founder. Like, how, how was, how has Sam got better at that? Because I'm sure you weren't perfect at that either to start. If you described your leadership as not like amazing, room for improvement, like, how have you got, how has that been? How have you got better at that?

So I've got, I've built confidence and backed myself more, which allows me to have more fluent, transparent conversations. I think at the start, start my relationship in, in tracks, I wanted to be a people pleaser. And I think that it's easy to do that. But now I set very clear expectations and I'm happy to bat back in regards to things. And if there's deadlines that are set on me or there's expectations that are set on me, I make sure I'm setting realistic expectations. And like for a long time in my career, I overpromised everything and often delivered. but maybe not to the same level. And so the big thing now is setting realistic expectations and delivering either at them or above them. It's easier to under-promise and over-deliver than it is to over-promise and under-deliver, and it prevents any back and forth or awkward conversations, or like basically not having aligned goals with things. I make sure that Anything I'm set, whether that's from Jamie or from anyone in senior management, I fully understand what it is they want. I'm happy to keep questioning if I don't understand. I follow up on everything, make sure that expectations that have been agreed, or missing a one-to-one, I send a follow-up so that it gives them the opportunity to say, actually, this isn't what I meant, this is what I mean. And then I execute deadlines to make sure that there's no weird dynamic or anything like that. In difficult conversations, it's just about being transparent and open. And Jamie is very, very much around, just tell me what it is and we'll work through this together. And therefore, I have no problem being open and honest with Jamie or with anyone here about things that don't go the way that we want them to go, because I know that we work through them as a team to build a solution together.

I love that. Some great, some great insights there. I really liked two things. One, because I think like anyone listening to this that maybe has made a move in their career, when you're in that interview process, you're ultimately like selling expectations or what you're gonna be able to deliver, managing expectations. So I think there's a lot to be said there, like even before you join an organization, like make sure you're really clear or you push back on what their expectations are to what you think are the right expectations. And then when you're in this seat, having the confidence to go, Jamie, I think, you know, I understand why you want us to get here. This is why I think it should be this. And like really making sure that you match up those expectations and push back where required. And then the second thing which I really liked is then making sure everyone is on the same page. And what a better way to do that by literally writing your thoughts or writing down what the expectations are. And giving them another opportunity to go, actually, no, this is exactly what I meant, some of what I'm expecting. So then you're exactly on the same page. I think that that's a great insight for people because then it's always going to be challenging if you go into a one-on-one and Jamie expects this thing and you expect that thing and it's not matched right and it's not aligned. So I think that that's some really good insights in there. I wanted to, I wanted to make sure we, we covered this. Spoke quite a bit about it with Joe. He called them solution calls. So I don't know when, you know, you said you're like a big chunk of your role besides the things we've spoken about is really trying to have a direct impact on your team winning more business. Yeah, having better quality meetings, um, and you helping them get those things over the line and also being in that room meeting, um, context with them so then you can offer them even better coaching.

Yeah.

Um, so then they can get better outcomes, right? So I have to start like, you, by this time now with you leading the team and these things, if a lot of your time is on these pitches, helping them have an impact, like, what are your best consultants doing? Yeah, like, where, what, what makes you get off these meetings going, Sam fucking nailed it, great client pitch, great solutions, cool? Like, what, what are the— what does that typically look like? I'd love to hear your take on that because I'm sure you've walked off a number of calls going. Sam absolutely nailed that.

What is it from the calls that I'm doing for the consultants or the ones that I'm watching them do?

The ones you're watching them do. So the ones that you're in the context and there still might be obviously always room for improvement, right? But what are the often things that you're seeing that these people do really well that you're giving positive feedback on?

Yeah, cool. I'm actually at the moment doing like a whole training session ongoing about meetings. So I've actually got my consultants doing meetings to Joe as like almost practice meetings because I want Joe's feedback on them. But to me, the biggest thing here is the best consultants build rapport immediately at the start. Like, you can hear that, you can hear people laughing on calls. That's a good sign that you're building that rapport, you're understanding like those relationships. We don't have the luxury necessarily when we work across the whole US market to meet people. You So you need to still build those foundational levels of relationships so that people buy from you. People will respect the relationship more. First thing people do is they build that rapport. They don't just rush into it and start trying to pitch the world. The next thing they do is they understand the pains. So they understand there's a reason why you're meeting with me today, Mr. or Mrs. Customer. I want to really understand how I can give you the best possible solution today. "Now I can talk to you about loads of solutions, or I can give you the solution that fixes your problem. Just so I can make sure I tailor this to you and give you the best possible solution here, I want to understand a few things." And they need to then just dig around what's going on within that business. You know, what are the real challenges or pains? 9 times out of 10, we probably know them. That's how we've already put the meeting, but then we just push more on those. And then they very, very, very well tailor the solution to them. We offer a range of solutions here. We offer so many unique and individual solutions, so if we just come onto every call and pitch all of them, 4 out of 5 won't fit. But you, if you can pitch the right solution and clearly explain how we do it, the benefits of our business, and the impact they will make, then they get wins. And the best consultants will clearly build the relationship, clearly understand what solution to sell, and they'll sell it very well, and then they end everything with process. The biggest thing to me to end any meeting with a client is process and next steps. You need to end that call knowing when am I speaking to you next, what am I speaking to you about next, am I presenting profiles to you on the next call, are we catching up to discuss how we get onboarded, what is that, how do we do it. Very good follow-ups sent and meetings always booked. You need to be in control of that process, and that comes down to that last That last part of the call is getting control back. When you're out of control in recruitment, you spend your time chasing people. We had a great meeting 2 months ago, I really want to speak again. Why don't you just book the meeting and confirm the meeting and get their acceptance while you're on the call so that you know you're re-engaging with that person and you know when you speak to them again, this is what I'm speaking to you about and everyone's aligned before you end that meeting.

And where, what are the common stumbling blocks? And I can imagine a lot of the root causes if they don't do that beginning bit and they don't— like you said, I might have some assumptions of Sam might have some issues with this project or challenges with this, which is why he's happy to give me time. Yeah, but often the root causes of these meetings not going as well as they could or progressing in the right way is me not doing a good job of really truly understanding, like, yeah, where are we at? How do we get here? What are the actual issues? And really digging into that, like, what are the often root causes of these meetings not progressing and accelerating in the direction that we want them.

I think a lot of it is the key things I notice is meetings booked for meeting's sake. So there's no real call, there's no real reason for the meeting. You booked a meeting to introduce Interact. Brilliant. But like, why are we introducing Interact and what are we going to get out of this call? And then the next thing is there's no real challenges or pain. Sorry, there's no real stumbling blocks in the business. So there's nothing to sell in there in terms of a key solution, and they're good relationship-building calls and they leverage things further. I think where people go wrong is they, they'll start the call and start pitching immediately. They'll have the calls without real valid reasons to do them, or sometimes that they could be even like wrong contacts and stuff like that. Like, I've seen people have meetings with directors within organizations that might have some involvement with an it team, but they might be center of excellence and not responsible for the part of the project that you're trying to discuss. And you've just spoke to the wrong person completely. So yeah, I think that they're really the key things and a lot of that comes down to why have you booked the meeting, what are you booking the meeting about, is there a clear agenda set, like almost the prep work before the meeting.

And like just curious then, like what are the things that your consultants, if they hear, should be like these are the types of issues that we can really have good solutions for. Like, what are the common things that you're like, guys, girls, if you hear these things, yeah, like really be— make sure you look out for these things. Is it time to hire? Is it quality of like candidate? I don't know, what are the common things that like if they do hear these things and note them down— I'm sure this is where sometimes we can get excited and go straight into the sell, but it's where we probably want to get them to talk about it more, dig into it more. But what are the common things that really recruiters should be listening out for that should lead to great solution selling?

I think there's 3 challenges any business faces, and it might be a combination of speed, quality, and cost. If at any point any, any of the conversation goes around those 3 things, you dig, you dig really aggressively and deeply into what they mean, and then you tailor the pitch back out there. So there might be people talking about the cost of working with X partner. What is that cost? How is that costed? What does that mean? What's the impact on the business? It might be the quality of resources from partners. In the it world, you might get a big vendor give you an A-team and they swap it out for a B-team. People will say those, those types of things on calls. It's then understanding what impact did that have on the project, what did that mean to the project, and pushing again in those areas. Um, So the 3 big things are definitely those areas. And whenever you hear anything related to that, I always then push myself 3 more questions. What is the impact of that? How are you going to overcome the impact of that? Like really going deep diving into those areas to then be able to extract the root pain there. And then you go, you know, you can sympathize and understand the problems of that. Talk about a solution that we've done working with X company. And then explain how that would benefit them and making sure they see the value of that as well.

Yeah, that's, that's really good. I think this ties into one of your posts I saw recently where you said about every day I'm asked what sets Interact Group apart.

Yeah.

And then you said one, quality of resource provided, two, time speed required to integrate resource in the projects, three, cost of acquiring these resources. Yeah. Love that. So let's round this out here. What, what is it like to move your career to New York?

New York.

Like, I'm sure people have a perception of that.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, you was, you know, you was outside of London, then you joined InterX. Um, like, what, what is it like? What has surprised you? What has surprised you so far of moving your life and career to New York?

Um, I've loved it. I've actually loved every single minute of it. And I went back to the UK in March and couldn't wait to get back to New York. It's fantastic out here. The States is a got a much bigger opportunity in my opinion. The market's less diluted, um, the fees are bigger, the clients are much more engaged with you, and the culture is different. I'm not going to beat around the bush, it's not like working in a London recruitment office in Liverpool Street anymore. It is a different culture completely, um, but it's helped me mature massively. Uh, I'm lucky that we've got high performance culture with people here that want more and push for more. So I've really, really enjoyed it. And I also moved out here with Andres, who is an AVP in New York. He's been in Anthrax for 6 years. So I live with Andres, which makes things easier. And I've got a support network here as well. I think the other thing is it's nice now for personally to have my friends, my family, and everyone come and visit me. And to build those core memories in a city that I think everyone would want to visit at some point in their life. And they can all stay with me and it's like a really nice place. Flights are £300-£400 back home or for my family to come out. So it's not massively expensive to do that. And when my family have visited, it's been amazing and I've had some fantastic times here so far. I actually surprisingly love it here. I was somewhat nervous coming out here, hadn't heard necessarily amazing things about New York, but really, really, really exceeded my expectations. Like, what to me is probably the best thing I've done, and it's obviously allowed me to push my career even further, which makes a big difference as well.

Yeah, I mean, I went to New York with my partner and stayed with her because she was there for work, for like a work secondment. So I was there for like 2 and a bit weeks, and it was like unreal. Yeah, so I absolutely loved it.

Yeah, yeah.

Of course, like, but with London, like, there's, you know, good parts of it, bad parts of it, like, like anything. But I think there was so many great things about New York. Like, it was, it was unreal. What, um, what, what's been the most, like, American thing you've done so far?

You know what I actually said? We were at the Yankees. We went to the Yankees last Wednesday. And it was like all American chants in a baseball stadium. And I actually said to someone in the office, like, this is the most American thing I've ever seen. Hot dogs and fried chicken. And just like, it was everything I'd ever thought or seen on TikTok of this is what America is. It was really good. But it's not as American as I thought it would be. Still quite a conservative, liberal place where, like, it reminds you of London, just much bigger buildings. Are much more expensive. Like, it's very expensive here. That's undeniable.

Yeah, for sure. So let's round this out then. Like, what, what are your big goals for the New York office this year then, man? Like, where— if we're having this conversation around, you know, Q1 of next year, like, where, where do we want to be? What are the big goals? What are the big ambitions?

Yeah, substantial growth is a massive thing, and I want to really, really grow this office, like triple headcount here, and and make us the most high-performing office in the group, which is obviously we're the newest office. You've got our legacy office in London, you've got Miami with Joe down there, and we are the newest office. But by the end of this year, we will be the most profitable office, we will be the biggest office, and we will do the most numbers. That's to me undeniable. And my eyesight is set on all of those things and achieving all those things. But I still want to have fun with it. I want us to be a fun, great business. And I'm big on making sure that we've got a really nice place to work and doing fun things is a floor. We're not going to become corporate or anything like that. We're going to be a fantastic place to work doing serious numbers. And we're on that journey now, which is really exciting to be part of.

Love it. Sam, been a pleasure. Kudos to you on everything you've built so far. Thanks for joining me on the pod.

Cheers. Thank you.