James Branton: The importance of cultivating a strong mindset & investing in the right tools to grow

Welcome to the Recruitment Mentors Podcast. My name is Hishem Azzouz. Today I'm really excited to be joined by James Branton, who is the co-founder of 2B Talent Solutions, which he founded with his brother in 2013. As a business, they partner with high-growth B2B tech companies across Europe and are based out of Manchester. James entered the recruitment industry in 2008 straight out of university where he worked for one agency, um, and over 4 years progressed from trainee to the head of his division before taking the leap to set up his very own recruitment business, 2B Talent Solutions, with his brother in 2013. James, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you for having me, Hishem. Pleasure to be here, my man.

So where we always like to start is, so in your opinion, what characteristics and traits do you think make up a highly successful recruitment consultant?

Yeah, I think we've spoke about this before. I think, I guess overall there's certain characteristics and you've got to look at the type of recruitment as well, I suppose, right? So, you know, depending on what they're doing, for contract it might be a more salesperson, for, you know, senior perm it might need a slightly different relationship-based approach. I guess like overall the stuff that you're going to need is, you know, good resilience, it's the usual stuff, right? So a very ambitious mindset, ability to take rejection, you know, sales focus. But the stuff that kind of, I think that works well is like, number one is I like to see a passion for people, right? So the way we kind of look at it is if someone's going to be in our market, and we work for a fairly senior perm market, right? So it's a lot about relationships and engaging with senior people, and they're probably getting contacted by a load of recruiters, and we have to stand out with personality, basically. So passion for me, I think, like the ability to actually have an interest in what you're doing, to convey that interest, have an interest in people and to want to kind of make a bit of a change is massive. And I think that's overlooked. You know, sometimes people go straight, like cutthroat, go for the sell. But, you know, really like taking your time to engage in it, understand why you're interested in it. Because if you have that why, people are going to buy into you more as a person and are more likely to work with you. Do you know what I mean? Um, I think, I think kind of moving on from that, one thing that, that is important is like taking accountability. So basically not blaming people for when stuff goes wrong, you know, owning up to it. Um, and you know, in this game you can go into every month with a chance to bill out, you know, 50, 60 grand or more, and that can, that could all come in, that could all drop off. Um, you've got to keep your mindset like, right, well, even if it does drop off, I'm moving forward. I'm not going to start blaming people about what I've done here, what I've done wrong. I'll take ownership of it all. We're looking to the future anyway. Let's not get hung up on that stuff and move forward. Then I guess on top of that, the way we do things is very much a human approach. So I suppose it's like emotional intelligence. It's being able to put yourself in the kind of shoes of the person you're trying to engage, whether it's a client or candidate, and try and kind of see what they want to hear. What do they want from this? I think sometimes people can get wrapped up in the what am I selling or what am I giving, but you've got to kind of take a step back and think about what, what do they want to hear from me. And even this, like, constructing an email for LinkedIn Recruiter, you know, it's like just making sure that you're going to convey the points that people want to hear and not all this like jargon crap that no one cares about, you know what I mean? It's like put yourself in those, in those shoes. So That's it, mate. You know the deal. The list's endless, right?

But yeah, I think I love that. Do you, do you think just, I think I love the accountability piece. That's something that I had to, I sort of felt like early on in my career, early on in my career, especially in sales, like I had to, when I started reading like self-development books and stuff like that, that was like one of the main things that I took was like, I am completely responsible for like where I end up. Rather than pointing the finger at, hey, because that's happened, that's why I'm not here. So I guess, do you— the question is like, do you see that lack of accountability in consultants when you hire them more early on in their career? Do you think sometimes that can lack?

Yeah, well, I think so. I think— I guess this is like a trait that's quite hard to build, right? And you've got to be on it. And there's different types of accountability. So yes, you're accountable for your own learning, but then also the, you know, the team that you work with are accountable to you. But If someone, someone is like either gonna blame someone for their failure or they're going to take it on themselves, you know what I mean? And it's that sort of mentality of I'm in control of what I'm doing. Yes, there's factors that I can't influence, but everything that I can, I'm going to do to my best possible way, and that's my responsibility. And if, if the stuff that you can't control fails and you move on, you have to, you have to understand that's not your fault. You get, you get past it, basically. So I, I've seen it. I think You can even hear like the difference in mindset, people talking through the career. Oh, you know what happened? Oh well, something bad happened and they're blaming it on someone. Whereas someone even at a junior age, it's hard on you, but they're like, right, I take full responsibility. I took my eye off the ball. I was enjoying the social side of it too much or something. We hear people say that. Say, listen, I was social sec of the uni. That's why I got a 2:2. But it's like someone owning up to that right from the start. And I think that's that mindset and that characteristic that you want, that I want to see anyway, is like we all make mistakes. None of us are perfect. And I think for particularly for younger people who are getting into it, own it yourself, own your flaws and your positives, and that self-awareness and also that accountability will shine through for anyone— clients, candidates, or any employer that you're looking for as well, without doubt.

Yeah, I love that. So look, we're going to talk about your sort of journey in being a business owner with your brother, but let's just first start— we'll just start firstly, like, so you joined, obviously got into the recruitment industry out straight out of university. So I guess, look, always interested to hear, like, how would you describe your first year in recruitment? What was that like?

It was interesting, right? So, um, I, like, I think I'm probably like quite a lot of people. I fell into recruitment. I studied law, uh, I did. I really didn't want to go down the law route. It's like, right, you've got to progress every year for 50 years and then you just, you get a bachelor's. They didn't want— I knew I didn't want to do that, right? But I had an all right degree. And then my friend was working with him, he's like, I'm making good dough. I was like, sounds like something I could do, you know what I mean? I was like, I'm keen for that. So it was actually me and Rick, my brother, for anyone who's watching, we joined 3 days apart, the same company, right? But we both threw ourselves into it and I got put on the finance team, as it was back then. First 6 months I was basically doing a resourcer role because one of my managers had an account and then it just wasn't working right. I wasn't like, I was seeing everyone else who started with me who was billing, who was doing well, and I was like, right, you know, bugger this, I'm just going to take it on myself. So I just literally set it up without any help from the boss. I've got a list of managing directors at investment banks, found the number on the switchboard, and just did it old school. It was just literally— there was no LinkedIn even back then. There wasn't that heavy on— for what I was doing, heavy on LinkedIn. It was getting like— it was old school, getting candidates from a, you know, from a CV, like eFinancial Careers. I don't know what you call— we don't use a job board, right? And, um, literally just qualifying them and then speccing them into managing directors. I had no idea what I was doing, but it worked, and I got set up and running on that bit. So first year was like kind of getting exposed to recruitment, understanding how it works, realizing that, yeah, I'm not going to do this resources thing, and then having to kind of figure it out myself just literally by mapping out little markets and picking up the phone and hammering it, basically. I probably have a lot of people who are similar experience in the recruitment industry to me started, right?

Yeah.

But, um, But it was fun. Like, the first year was fun. I enjoyed it. Like, it was exciting. It was a roller coaster. You know, you're out of uni, you're kind of, you're with a bunch of other young people. The company, I mean, it was in the middle of the credit crunch as well, so it wasn't going to be easy, right? But that's what I look back now. I think if you can make success in those times, then when it's booming and it's starting to get that way now, then you can, you know, you can have a lot of success. So yeah, first year, I enjoyed it, mate.

Like, it was really enjoyed it. Yeah.

Yeah.

Talk to me about the dark days though, early on. Like, it doesn't have to be in the first year, but because I think I love your positivity towards that and I can really tell that you really enjoyed it and made the most of it and stuff like that. But I think, yeah, people want to know how did you early on in those days when you can, you're a bit more prone to maybe quit or like think recruitment is not for me. Like, talk to us about some low days that you really had to dig deep to push on.

Yeah, I mean, the low days, I might sound positive, but looking back, it's always 50/50 positive and negative, right? There's some real dark days, right? But you have to— I only look back and look at the positives because that's the stuff you've learned from it. There's no point looking back and seeing it as a negative. Any bad experience, provided you've learned from it, is a positive, right? But the dark days were bad. You know, like, back then, you didn't— it was— I didn't have the experience I had now. I didn't know how to qualify candidates. I was— you had people at, like, late stages thinking it would happen. I remember I had one month, right? And I was I was like 8 months into my recruitment career and I just moved from doing the resources. I just set up this little market, investment management it was called, and had these 2 people at final stage, both £15,000 fees. And back then it was like, that was big. So I was like, yeah, I was like buzzing, right? You know, you sat there, aren't you, in recruitment counting up your commission, you're telling all the boys on the floor, I'm going to smash it this month. And literally last day of the month when we were supposed to sign contracts, both dropped off. And it's just like, I was just like, oh my Lord, because it was a lesson learned. But lesson learned, don't talk about anything until it's done, right? Because that's what recruiters do, don't they? We sit here, we're all like buzzing off it, you're telling everyone how much you're going to make. Until it's done, it's done. But I remember back then the actual owner of the company was quite like a firm person, you know, I didn't mind it, but I was like, I think I always respected the way he sort of handled it all. But I know he was just like, listen, you know, make sure he's all right because obviously you've lost the deals and stuff. Said to my boss at the time, and I just seem to remember thinking like, and I suppose we're quite lucky with this, was that when that happened, I was just like, right, no one else can sort this out but me. So I'm going to have to go back even harder. Like, you're annoyed for a couple hours or the rest of the day. It was Friday, so we had some beers. But then after that, it's just pick back up, right? How can I get better? How can I do more? And I think it was actually a point, right, is that— maybe talk about this a bit later, whatever. But in terms of mindset, though, saying is that if you kind of— the problem that a lot of like recruiters have is they'll have a big month, you know, they're sat there all happy, and then they'll take the foot off the gas a little bit. If you can get your mindset into that feeling that everything will drop out and you have to rebound back, and if you're constantly in that mindset of having to fight back and drive back then that's when you create monster builders, basically. People who are always thinking, regardless of what success they've had, assume it is negative and move forward. Basically, we'll talk about that in a bit type stuff. But yeah, the days were dark, but you have to just pick yourself up, you know. It's— no one else is going to do it for you.

So, so I guess just, just focusing on this point a bit, because I'm sure you've now had to in those days and now with your own business, but like when you can see someone's in a bit of a funk, they've had dropouts, they've blanked for the second month in a row or whatever, like sometimes it can be really hard to sort of see that perspective, right? And that's something that, yeah, the best recruiters get better at. So I guess what sort of things people listen to this that may be going through that now or may have experienced that, like, I don't know, what would you typically try and communicate and convey to your people, people in your team, your business, who you can see sort of experiencing that and going going through that firsthand, what would you sort of communicate to them? I mean, yeah, of course.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a good one and it's how you've got to manage it all. I guess what I'd always say is that there's two things. First of all, remember, like, you got this job, you've done this job. If you've not had success before, you know, if you, if, say, if you've not had, if you just literally brand new and you're struggling with it all, remember that you went through an interview process and they liked you for it. Think about all the good traits that you have, that you're good at. Reflect on yourself be grateful for the fact that you've got the opportunity. Stop looking at external things to blame or whatever it may be, but focus back on it. And the way I kind of do the team is like, you have to make sure that if I believe in one of the team and they have a bad patch, then it's up to me to convey to them like, listen, we believe in you, we value you, you are good at this. It's trying to bring back that positive mindset. But I think, yeah, It's a tough one. I think good coaching, trying to not get too wrapped up in it. Once you start getting into a bit of a funk, you start making mistakes, right? Or you start forcing the issue and that can lead you into a bigger funk. So the way I kind of look at it is over a weekend or whatever, have a reset, do a little bit of an exercise. I think like showing gratitude or thinking— I know it sounds a bit mad for some people, but think of all the good stuff that you've got in your life and then come back, reset. Restart afresh. Either think back to what you've had success with before, talk to your manager about how you can make things better. Um, but remember, like, yeah, don't get too wrapped up in it. The negativity breeds negativity. So any way you can try and get it out of your mind, um, and reset yourself and come back stronger and focus on the key things that you were good at, that you've had success in the past that you might have forgotten about, I guess. Yeah, I mean, it's such a, it's such a, it's a tough, it's a tough question, mate, because everyone gets down about different stuff, don't they? So it's hard to actually gauge that one. But from a leadership point of view, good coaching, positive positivity, helping out with any training that they need, reassurances that you rate them. And don't create an environment where someone isn't doing well, they feel like the black sheep of the company. The fact is—

Yeah, I was just going to say, no, I think what you said is great. I think it's basically to put that all together. It's the yes, look, it's absolutely fine to be in a funk. That's fine. Go through that. But I think what you do want to do and how you're going to get better at making sure you snap out of it is finding the things to focus on that you did do well or finding the things to focus on that you're grateful for or whatever. And it's like a muscle, isn't it? Like you— it's like now, if you've always tried to find those things, as soon as something bad happens, you're just going to be quicker at finding the things that you can't— the positives you can take away from it and stuff like that. I think that's pretty good advice.

Yeah. And couple that with set little goals, right? So the goal might be to get a fee, to do a deal, but that might seem so distant that your mind can't even believe it. So set little smaller goals to reach that and then plan that. So every day, every week, you know, you're going towards that target and that will create a more positive mindset rather than just focusing on the stuff, the fact that you might not have any money on the board or you blanked for a few months, whatever it may be. Little wins that will keep the positive mindset, basically.

Yeah, I love that. Final question really on sort of you being employed before we go into starting your own business. I guess what I did notice and what a lot of recruiters aspire to listen to this podcast is to progress their career, right? Is to get that promotion, is to become that leader or director, whatever. So I guess obviously notice that you progress quite quickly. It seems like you really took the initiative to do things and take action. But I guess why do you think James was the person that was able to progress and get to that head of position?

Um, I mean, head of position— I was only managing a team of 2. It was more for the LinkedIn. But, but, you know, in reality, I, I did like from scratch set up 2 markets, and the last one was the one we ended up leaving the business, and we kind of based our company at the moment on it all. But yeah, I think, um, what, what helped me out was, um, I've got an inquisitive mindset. I want to understand how things work. Um, I love like— I love talking to people and understanding, like listening to them as well. I think not just talking to people, it's understanding I'm more about those guys. And I think I've got a little bit— I like— it's that it's probably built into a lot of people. You can maybe train it, but I've got no problem with working hard, but I am a little bit lazy, right? So I'm always trying to think, how can I work smarter? How can we do things better? How can we like— how can we reduce the workload? Right. So if you— if I know it's a bit mad, right. But if you're— if you had to be as efficient as possible because you're lazy as possible, I know I say it right, but what things would you focus on? Right, well, then, then you focus on all those things when you're not lazy. It'll just go, it'll go crazy. So trying— I was always looking at different ways in which I can stand out from other recruiters that were pestering them or bothering them, do you know what I mean? Or any way I can make an impact with these guys. Um, and that was like, it's just little stuff like remembering birthdays, it was following up, it was asking questions, making notes a bit about the family, about the friends, about anything that's coming up, something that's going to make them remember me and want to work with me in the future. And I think these were the things. And then, then I guess on top of that, what I learned pretty quickly after that first thing I was telling you about when those deals dropped out is like, be straight with your processes and understand how to do that. So that was another thing. Don't get caught up in the what could happen. Focus on what is happening and what will happen. And then, you know, keep looking forward rather than, rather than looking back, I suppose.

Okay. So final point on this then is like, I guess, knowing what you know now, what What advice would you give that sort of James straight out of uni, got the law degree, what advice would you give him going into that first recruitment job?

I mean, looking back at it, I wouldn't really change too much. So I mean, just keep doing what you do. I think, you know, in hindsight, I'd have, you know, looked at a different market earlier. I'd have, you know, been more focused. But you're learning as a person. It's hard for me to say, Hishem, because I wouldn't change too much, right? Because everything was part of the learning. But I think anyone who's early in the recruitment phases, you know, and if they're having a good time, keep focused, work even harder, be that, you know, be best, don't stop, don't look at anybody else around you, just focus on your stuff. And if you're having a really tough time, I guess assess, assess everything around you. Are you having a tough time because, you know, you're not getting the right support? Look at the external factors. Not saying blame someone, but it might be that you're not right for that, that situation or that market, wherever it may be. Or it might be that you're just not like doing the right thing. So trying to keep that self-awareness about what's going on with your career, basically, that'd be my advice.

I love that. So a lot of people think about starting a recruitment business, but not a lot of people make that first step. So talk to us about what gave you the courage to take that first step, because how old was you when you started, when you took that first step?

26.

Yeah. So talk to us about what gave you the courage. Why was you able to take that first step, do you think?

Well, yeah. The courage is more born out of having a problem with authority, right? So I think, I think that's right. So the company that I worked for, now they're doing really successful, so I can't say anything bad about them. But I think at the time, you know, they'd come out of a credit crunch. It was the company was expanding, but there probably wasn't a massive focus on kind of employee development, right, on a career path and all this sort of stuff that is important now. So I guess on top of that, so I was having success in a market, they wanted to be very heavy telephone based. Our market required more relationship based. There wasn't switchboards to get through to. You had to be good with your written word, with your emails and relationship building. So I guess it was wanting to do things more our way. So being a bit stubborn, having a problem with like not really being nurturing the career path and the staff, but then also wanting to make all the money for ourselves instead of making commission. So, you know, it comes to a point, I'd only done it for, it was actually 3 years I'd done it for. And yeah, we just thought, right, this feels like the right time, you know, and took the plunge. But I think we've always, like my brother and I have always been pretty confident back ourselves. And I think on top of that, yeah, I knew the market was going to go off. So we were like, right, well, if we don't do it now, then we could just, we could never do it. There's never— basically, if you see the opportunity, anyone who's watching this, take that opportunity. You can always go back into a recruitment job, but go for it if you get the chance to go for it.

Yeah. So just to frame it up for people then. So just to paint a picture. So obviously you started the business, you and your brother, and then obviously it's been going for what, how long now? 8 years? Is that another timeline?

8 years. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So really solid amount of time. So like just paint, I know there would have been peaks and troughs, right? But obviously it was just you two at the beginning. How long was it just roughly like just you two? And then where are you like today? As a business and stuff like that, and then we'll dive into parts of this journey.

Yeah, of course, mate. Yeah, I'll give you a little bit of a heads up, I suppose. So the idea when we set it up was kind of, you know, we didn't really know how to scale a company or anything, right? So we just thought, right, what we'll do is we did it on a shoestring. We'll set ourselves up pretty much exactly like we were working before, but in our own little windowless Regis office. And in all honesty, mate, for the first few years, It was just about perfecting our craft with how we did recruitment. It was about building up our financial resources. So we've never had any external investment or any debt as a business. So it was about, right, the main driver was never wanting to work for anybody else again, right? So that's the first thing you're thinking about. And then that develops from there. It's like, right, well, the market's really good. We have a lot more freedom to do things as we want to do it. We have a lot more freedom in our lives as well. For the first few years, we— and I suppose we've got a good point on this one— for the first few years, we just worked, Rick and I. And then it came to the point where we actually tried hiring a couple of people. And despite I was leading a small team, the old company, I didn't really have any experience of building a company, right? So we tried hiring a couple of people and they did okay, but we didn't We didn't know what we were doing, in all honesty. We just thought, right, it was a bit finger in the wind and guaranteed a lot of people will be doing the same stuff. And so what we started doing, we started attending networking events. And as part of the networking events, we found a couple of people who were just brilliant, who now consult with us, much more senior, who have been there and done it all. And essentially the learning from it is to go and get the advice, right? If you don't know it, go and seek out people out there will tell you how to stuff with your recruitment mentors. Anybody who feels like they don't know something, go and seek out that advice, right? Um, go find people to do it. Um, and if you can, you know, that's what— and go to these networking events and have a bit of fun, listen and learn, and find people who are more senior than you are, have been there and done it. Get them to like you, and hopefully then they'll give you advice either for free or for cheap. And that's, that's a bit of a plan with it all. But one point I wanted to make, right? So the, the thing that I'd say to anybody who's in the state of maybe thinking about going their own right, setting up on their own, is stick to your brand of recruitment, right? So everything that's got you where you are, stick to that and stick to it religiously, right? Because that's how you do things, that's what you've got successful for and how you've been able to do it. If you're thinking about then moving to set up a business and your plan is to scale it, but you haven't scaled a company before, get advice. I think for, for me, like, one of the probably mistakes that we made was that when we set the business up, I always thought recruitment is like everyone's a bit grey. It's all a bit like, you know, I didn't really have any mentors in the recruitment world that I respected, and I probably switched off from getting advice because I thought they'd try and change the way we were doing our recruitment when our brand feedback from clients was brilliant. What we were doing was amazing. But what I should have done in hindsight is, you know, not as been as maybe arrogant or stubborn and then understood I don't know how to scale a business. So now go and get that advice. So that's probably what would have delayed things a little bit. But we learned pretty quickly when we had a bit— it was about a year of trying and then we started attending networking events. So I guess to bring it back, we probably— it's about 3 and a half years of just working by ourselves. Yeah. Then we tried hiring a little bit, didn't work out. And then over the last 2 and a half, 3 years is where we've been really giving it a go. Yeah. Just like, just when you sat there and you know in your head, but once someone who's been there and done it explains it to you, you're just like, oh my God, that's so simple to understand. You know what I mean? It's like, why haven't we been doing this the whole time? And then it's like, why is it that knowledge is so important? And then, and then, then once you know that, then you put in all the little things that, and then you make it personal to you. You get the knowledge and then you make it personal to you. But at the start I just thought, right, ignore everybody. We're doing it our way when we should have been more open to ideas and more about learning and stuff.

So, yeah, yeah, really, really appreciate the honesty on that. So I guess just, just let's just, let's just zoom in on that for a second because I think, I'd like to think the types of people that would start a recruitment business it today would be more open to take because there's just so much more stuff out there that you can learn from compared to when you started in recruitment. You know what I mean? It's a lot. It would have been even when I started in recruitment, it was like in 2016, it would have just been a lot more easier to be insular and just take everything that you know about recruitment within your four walls. But I guess there's also a lot of people that give you bad advice. Right.

So, yeah.

Yes. So let's just talk about like, I know you said you went to networking events. Got that. So you put yourself out there, gave yourself more opportunities, you and your brother, to meet people, etc., etc. But I guess, I don't know, talk to us a bit about what people can do to make sure that they're getting the right advice. What did you make sure that you found out about this person? What did you, what did you, did you have any sort of maybe non-negotiables on what this person's experience had to be like that gave you confidence they could help you? Do you know what I mean? Like maybe that could be some good advice for people listening that could seek help, but then maybe they don't want to get the bad advice. I'm not sure on that front. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, listen, the first thing you'd look at is whoever you're dealing with, what's their track record, right? I think even before that, do you connect with this person, right? Is the person that's offering help or you want to get help from, do you personally get on with them? Do you have that rapport where you can be honest with each other? You can talk to each other, you can give a bit of, get a bit, and they're open to discussion as well. I think then things you can do is then, like I said before, look at their background, right? Has someone been there and done what you want to do or are they doing it a bit differently? And then I guess like the final thing about getting bad advice is if you feel that the advice you're getting isn't right, typically your gut is going to be right. Right. Okay. There'll be things that maybe you're not comfortable with that will help your business that you'll have to change. But if you feel something isn't quite right, talk about it with your friends, talk about it with your family, find other mentors as well to cross-reference it on. The more help you can get, the better, and the more people you can reference it with, the better. And then just start building your little network. You have friends in recruitment, other leaders, an ex-boss, whatever it may be. People can pick up the phone to you and say, listen, I was running this past year, is that okay? So the more people to reference it from, I guess, is a key thing. Getting on with the person, seeing their background, see if they can they've done what you want to do with your business, because everyone wants to do like different stuff, right? And then, you know, keeping your network open and referencing it for advice, basically, I'd say.

Okay, I love that. Talk to me about what's it been like? You must have a good relationship with your brother. You guys not fallen out before? What's the deal there?

Yeah, this is it. We try to tell everyone when they start, like, what's it like working with your brother? Like, well, we like, we chill on weekends. Like, it's the Grand National on Saturday and um, he's just coming over to mine. We're gonna get like a pork joint in the, in the oven for 24 hours. We're gonna get— watch the races, have a few beers. We like it. We have a, we have a good mix, to be fair.

What's the age difference?

Only 14 months. So yeah.

Oh wow, okay.

Yeah, I'm the younger one, he's the older one. He just tells me what to do and I do it, basically. That's why the relationship's so good. So, um, but no, we have a good set of me, and I think, um, I think what, what's that comes from the relationship, right, is the fairness. When we were kind of brought up, everyone in our kind of friendship circle was come around to our house and chill out. We treated everyone well, we looked after everybody. And I think as we grow the company, one of our main focuses is on looking after the staff, making sure they're kind of treated in the fair way, make sure respect's massive. We're not going to have any people like bitching or moaning about stuff. We'll address issues that we have. But when people see that's how we interact with each other, as the founders of the business and we have that built into our DNA, then it kind of sets a nice tone for everybody else as well. So yeah, listen, we argue bad. We've had times when we're driving into Manchester and he's jumped out the car because we disagree on something and he's literally walked into the office. I've done the same to him. So you have the fiery times, but that shows passion. So you can't hide away from that. But yeah, we like it. There's ups and downs. There's always going to be ups and downs. But the positive is that, you know, neither of us are going anywhere. You can trust it all, but it does, it sets a nice tone in the office for everybody else to know. That's how we interact. We treat people like each other. Do you know what I mean? Fair, respectful.

No, absolutely. So let's just, let's just like, I want to dig into, because like a really popular question I always get is around sort of asking questions to people like yourself who have sort of yo-yoed with the people, the amount of people you've had in the business and the difficulties you've had sort of hiring for your own business. That always seems to be like a common challenge. Common thing that people find difficult. But I guess something that would be really relevant for people that are also sort of employed is like, how did you go about— because I'm assuming you had covenants, right? So I guess at the beginning of this journey, so I guess how did you go about building a market from scratch? And like, I don't know, what was your approach there? What ended up being sort of the most successful way that you and your brother got off to a good start? And how long did it take for you to do your first deal and things like that?

Yeah, so I mean, so there's two questions there, right? So listen, do you want me to talk about the building the market bit?

Yeah, yeah, start there.

Yeah, if you start there and then you remind me of the rest of the questions because I've forgotten it. So you have to tell me, right? So for me, building the market was— I enjoy that, right? That's something that I like to do. So I guess what I'd always do is find your little niche, right? Whatever that's going to be, what you're going to be focused on, you know, map out, research it. Then what we did is—

How niche should it be? Let's just talk about that because I think you always hear that, don't you? Like, how niche should it be?

That's such an open question because, you know, the niche, the better, if that's even a phrase. Yeah. I think like the difficulty is that you've got disciplines, right? And then you've got like types of companies and sectors almost, haven't you? Like, as of—

Yeah.

So you might have sales and marketing as disciplines. Then you might have that for, you know, loads of different vertical companies, right? So typically what I'd be looking at is get 1 or 2 disciplines in 1 vertical. So when we, when we set the business up, it was fintech, online payments. So we were like, right, all we're going to do is commercial people, salespeople for online payments companies. So in a way, that's a niche in itself, right? Okay. Yeah, I got you. And then you've got location as well. So we set up and we just did Europe-wide. And in reality, we're probably going too far. Like, if you think about— if you've got to research whether— where there's a demand for it. All right. So, and you've got to kind of map out the market from a talent standpoint, which would help, right? Is there enough people? Is enough movement in this market? Is there people to move between different jobs? Then the key thing we've always done— I'm kind of waffling on a bit here, but the key thing we've always done is speak to the people in the market, right? We've always worked with high-growth startups and scale-ups. To speak to people in the market and understand who are the new players that are coming through, who are the companies that are changing the game, who people are admiring. You might just hear it from a couple of people, right? But if you hear a name that's coming up a couple times and research that company and spend your time trying to work with that company, it might take a month, it might take 6 months, it might take a year. Our best client took me 2 years of pestering to work with And since then with those guys, we've made over 90 hires across Europe. The company started off with just one office in the Netherlands and now it's, I think they've got 25 offices worldwide. They're worth €60 billion on the, they listed a couple of years ago and they're one of the best companies out there. But that's because I started picking up on people hearing about them, talking about them, and I was like, right, chief commercial officer, I am going to be working with you in in the next couple of years, so whatever it may be, and then build relationships with those people. It's very easy in recruitment to just pick up work and be like, right, now I'm just going to work on anything that's out there. Focus your time. You might need to do that at the start, particularly setting your business or your desk up, but make sure you get back to this niche, right? And this is kind of the message that we've— a lot what we've been doing over the last sort of year and a half is narrowing our focus a lot more. So really, like, before we were working across 5 European countries and everyone, every consultant might be doing those 5 European countries and then the disciplines within that sales, marketing, customer success, and everything else. And now we'll just have someone on one country, in one discipline, in one sector of the market, and get deep rather than wide, do you know what I mean? And I think that's—

has that had a positive effect then? Like, how's that helped your guys?

Without a doubt, because like I said, when you're in recruitment, it's quite easy to get distracted and just take on work everywhere, you know. Yeah, we can fill that. All right, we can try and do that, we can do that. But you end up kind of go around in circles. If you stick to one focus in one area, you'll build your reputation in that market, and you treat people well, and then you'll find out that you'll get a role on— and guess what? You've got the whole candidate market covered for that. And this is obvious stuff, but for people starting up, when you might be like, the market's growing so much, or you're trying to get different stuff—

yeah, yeah, yeah.

But narrow it. And it is— it takes, it takes balls to turn down a role that might pay X amount But if you think about it, if you're focused on Germany, for example, yeah, and you're doing enterprise salespeople, say, in just in Munich, for example, one city in Germany, if you just keep focusing on that, but someone goes, all right, I'm in Paris, I've got this head of marketing role, it's paying 120k, you know, we'll pay you the big fee for it all. It's tempting to focus on that. But in that time you spent on the other role, you're not focusing on your key market. The time that you're spending elsewhere is not spending on the key market. So there's always going to be a balance, right? You've got to try and hit your numbers for stuff, but as much as you can, focus on the area and the niche that you can do and understand that the time that you spend away from that is time where somebody else is in that market building the relationships that you should be building.

Yeah. No, no, thank you. No, I'm really glad you went into that because I know a lot of people just really interested in like, yeah, how much should I focus? What should my niche be and things like that. But the only other question, because I think it's just good context for people because it'd be something they're worried about was how long did it go, how long did it take from you and your brother setting up to getting that first invoice paid?

Yeah. So we, we, we budgeted for, we had a small bit of money, but we budgeted unrealistically for it to last us 9 months because what we were doing was quite like senior perm stuff. It was taking on average, it was taking like 6 weeks for the interview process to happen. and then the notice period, then start date, then invoice. That's the way we're doing it back then. But we got quite lucky from that. So we had like, we had, we made, we set up in February and then we did our first deals in, in April, early April. So we had the first deal was a person out of work. He was a Spanish guy actually, back in the day. I remember him, he's a really cool guy. Stay in touch from time to time, but out of work, perfect match. The interview process took a week and a half basically, and then he was starting the following week. So we just like, get in there. And then we just kind of, we picked up that we did have covenants in place, but because I set the market up at my last company, the clients weren't getting the service. No one knew what they were doing that well back at the company, so they reached out to us directly. And in the covenant, if they reached out to you, that covered it off. So in the meantime, in the downtime we had between setting up their messages saying what's going on with it all, and then it just boomed. Like we said, every bit of hope that we had that did go, like seeing the market and taking the risk just went to plan for that first bit. And we absolutely nailed it in our first year. We set the business in February and we've not really taken any holidays in the 3 years we did recruitment. We were in Dubai in May for my birthday on a holiday, mate. I was like, this is the one. And then we had a great first year. Then second year, literally standard. We were loving the success. We had a dry year, mate. We just took our eyes off the prize. We were young, we were enjoying the success. And that was a lesson learned. We stopped doing all the things, we stopped working as hard, basically just started enjoying our lives more and not really focusing on recruitment. And that will happen. You'll have those periods. And that was a lesson learned. Don't fall into that trap of thinking everything's comfortable. It didn't affect us in the long run, but It got pretty close at times, like we might run out of money or whatever. So we got quite lucky in that aspect. But I think again, that's because we spent so much time trying to work with these businesses previously and we built the personality side into it. So they wanted to work with us when it came to it. But yeah, I can't remember what your question was.

That's fine. So I guess, look, let's dive back into the last few years then where you've really tried to go on this journey of like growing your business, right? You've got advice, you're investing. Investing in things and stuff like that. So I guess what— obviously we've been quite positive. So let's just talk about what have been, since you've been getting advice and really giving this a go and growing this business, what have been the sort of number 1 and 2 biggest challenges for you?

The biggest challenges I suppose would be adapting to new ways of doing stuff, right? So I think previously when we were doing it ourselves, we were never really metric driven and we're still not a heavy KPI business. But using those metrics, right, to manage for the future, look back over the time, what have we done at times of success? What do we need to do in the future? That takes a bit of time and effort, you know, and adapting to that mindset, not trying to go too like religiously, you've got to hit this every single day because we're hopefully hiring good enough people that can do things their own way. And there are different approaches, but adapting to the, to the metric side of it. And I think honestly, the leadership side of it, we hadn't really had much leadership experience and What have you found most difficult about that then?

Because like you said, you and your brother got the DNA of looking after people, being kind, empathetic. Like, so I guess what have you found most difficult? Have you found it difficult to maybe, I don't know, maybe make the hard decisions because they've become like a bit of a mate? Or I don't know, what have you found difficult on the leadership side?

I think the things that I found difficult or where perhaps getting better at it now is just communication with everybody. I think again, you know, like I said at the start, putting yourself in someone's shoes. So as a junior person, what you want to know, you want to know exactly where you stand, you want to know what you've got to do to have success, and you want to be going to know, like, you don't want to feel like you're just doing something that's a waste of time or you don't know what you're doing, basically. So overcommunicating is key when it comes to leadership, making sure everyone knows where they stand, everyone knows how to progress. Everyone knows how to have success. And then you have that channel and you treat people with respect. That leads to kind of more respect back. And that's a really good leadership trait. There's nothing worse than if you sat at your desk and your manager's like, well, you know, get on the phone. It's like, well, give me a little bit of help on some why behind it all and how do we get that there? And so many people will go through that. We have, we have regular just monthly sit-downs, right? Every month. People have quarterly or they have 6-monthly, it's so easy as a leader just to sack that off or, you know, we'll do it another day and it doesn't happen. But that really gives people— I suppose it makes the message clear on what you want from them and where they are, and it gives them that energy as well to succeed themselves. So communication is one of the biggest things, I think. Yeah, there's been times where you make tough decisions, but I think then if you're obviously hiring inexperienced people as a leader, you've got to stay on top of what they're doing. Not micromanage them, but you've got to know, you've got to keep a good mind out. And again, that's communication. If you can, someone can seem like they're being dead quiet, you know, they're not making any noise, but actually they're doing a load of good work. So you can track that. That's communication. Again, don't just sit there getting annoyed because they're not on the phone. They might be doing some really valuable stuff in the meantime. So again, that's communication from them to you as well. So just keeping that, keeping those channels as clear as possible is like you'll mess up because people become disillusioned and become annoyed that they're not getting communicated clearly enough to. And everyone wants that. Everyone wants to be communicated to well. They want to know where they stand. And I think that's the key thing for sure. Yeah.

No, no, I think, and I think that's, that's become even more important in the sort of remote, in the office, at home as well. Right. So I guess, look, you've spoken really highly of getting advice and that being quite pivotal for you. So I'd be stupid not to ask you like what have been, like, maybe what's been like the most impactful piece of advice that you've applied to your business that you probably would have had to learn the hard way? I don't know what— when I say to you what have been the sort of most instrumental 1 to 3 things that have really enabled you and your brother to push the business forward that maybe would have taken you another 2 years to work out, what comes up for you?

In all honesty, right, the main thing, it's pretty much a single thing, is the thing that we'd have maybe figured out one day, but still we could be sat here doing the same stuff. And if you want to scale your business right, is you need to have quite a few different things set in place, right? So you have to be clear on your mission or your purpose. So what is it that you want to do, right? And you have to be able to convey that to employees, the candidates, the clients. This is our mission, right? Then you need your vision. What is the blue sky thinking What was it like in 5, 10 years? How are we going to get there? Right. And then you need your values is what makes you, you, you hire from those values. You live by those values. You, you know, you incentivize people based on those values. You make sure that culture is born out of the values that you set because it's great. It's very easy for anyone just to go, our culture's pretty relaxed, pretty cool, take it easy. But what does that mean? You know, what does that come down to in behaviors? And if you list those behaviors and then get them down, it might be quite a lot of different ones. But then interview people off those behaviors. That's how you create a scalable model. That would be one thing. So the mission, vision, values, a clear thing. And I didn't know anything about this, right, until we started discussing it all. I think—

I think people just quickly on that because like we're just being honest here, like where you are as a business, because where are you? How many of you are there at the moment?

So there's 7 of us now and then we've got another person starting end of the month and then looking to get 2 more on as well as soon as possible.

Yeah, because I think like, I feel like someone listened to this or someone in where they are is that they may think, nah, that's for bigger companies. So I just wanted to highlight that, how much of an impact that's had for you. And actually you're a small growing business and that's been one of the most impactful things that you still needed that despite how big you are. Do you know what I mean?

It's absolutely, it's unbelievable. Yes. It's like it was essentially transformational. Right. And it's the most simple thing. But it is, and it makes sense. This is what I'm saying about those lightbulb moments. You're like, why have I not done that already? You know, it's obvious. Yeah. Um, another stuff there is get— if you're a business leader looking to grow, get a clear career path so people know where they stand in the business. Black and white achievables on how they get to where they want to be. Um, I think another thing, I suppose we're doing this already, but act like you're the bigger company already, right? Get your systems sorted out. There's a balance. You can't spend all your time sorting out systems, but act like you're a bigger company, put in the tools in place ready to scale. If you want to scale your business, right, think about how we can get there. So put the processes in place, like the systems that you want, make sure that's scalable. Get a CRM if you're just doing it on spreadsheets, get an applicant tracking system. I think also, and potentially like advice I'd give to any younger company looking to set up is Focus on marketing, but don't put too much into it. Get your basics set up right. Get your shop window looking good. Get a few sales documents sorted out, you know, get your product proposal, whatever it may be. But don't stress on the marketing too much. The marketing will come down from, from you dealing with your customers, right? Later down the line, you can, you can, you can deal with your marketing. But people who are very particular about their brand can go and spend so much time focused on marketing and trying to make things look good that they actually forget, I've got to bring the money in here. Um, and, and you end up kind of making a big mistake by— it's exciting, isn't it? It's like, oh, it's my brand. Oh yeah, we'll do it. Yeah, you'll spend half a day going, should we put the logo here? Should we put the logo there? I bet you've done this with recruitment mentors, right?

Yeah.

How does it look? How does it look? And I saw a LinkedIn update the other day. It was like, never has anything more profound been done in marketing than moving the logo a little bit to the the right, it's like, it's like a joke. So yeah, I think kind of, you know, backtracking is get out like a big company, get all your vision and your values in place. You have the core behaviours, get a career path, get your marketing, but don't take your mind off what you need to be getting done. And that's getting yourself out there, building relationships with good people and, you know, essentially bringing revenue in. Don't ever take your mind off that. And that was what feeds the company in the future.

Yeah, nice. And hopefully you don't mind me asking this, but again, people might be thinking about it like, You don't have to give us the exact figure, but what's been the sort of guide investment for you to get advice or monthly support? Because what's been the relationship that you really got value from? Has it been like the sort of NED point of view, or has it just been like a consultant that you've engaged with? Do you know what I mean? What's been the sort of actual financial investment? Because some people may be thinking, well, I've spoken to people before and they've charged way too much money. So tell us a bit about that, if that's okay.

Yeah, I mean, there's different ways to look at it. I think the relationship, just to answer the first part of the question, has been an NED/consultant style relationship. I mean, the investment can fluctuate obviously depending on the amount of time that somebody puts in. But, you know, a really good non-exec director out there is probably going to cost anywhere between maybe £1,000 or £750 a day to £2,000 a day. Depending on how they gauge their time. And you might not— you might need that person a couple of days a month at the start. You might need them half a day, whatever it may be. My advice firstly would be try and find people that will give you advice for free. So yeah, use your personality, you know, engage with these people, try and get little snippets of info, you know, the big stuff that you might need. But when it becomes apparent that you don't know what you're doing and you've exhausted all your other channels, do that first. Then you can start maybe finding someone and getting that arrangement where you pay them.

Yeah, awesome. Thank you for sharing that. And on, on the investment side of things, people always like to know like what, what's been some of the sort of best tools or services that you've invested in as a business in your journey so far out of interest, that have either helped you or helped you or that really helps your consultants?

Yeah, I think HubSpot was a big one for us. Okay, so it's CRM. So, so we, we have— we use Bullhorn as an applicant tracking system for all the candidate stuff, but for the, um, I suppose the, the client development side of it, HubSpot's been ace because you can, you can put all your contacts on there, you can get different tools. Like, there's, there's— it's a really— it's a really good CRM, to be fair. Um, but there's a little, a small tool which was, which was really good is that we found that we kind of the way we typically work is we'll take a brief on for, from a client, we're going to do a search, then the good people that don't get the job will actually market them out to good, to good businesses, right? Take a more proactive approach or speccing out as people call it. Um, in our market, like I said before, a lot of it isn't done on Switchboard and there is numbers that you have, but it'll be a good email. So what you can do on HubSpot, you can get these things called sequences, and everyone might already know this, but it was about 2 years ago we set it up, but you can write your initial email, and then you can set automated follow-ups to that email, up to 10, and pick the time and date that you want to send them. And what we were finding when we were doing marketing candidates out was actually maybe the second or third time that we followed up with them saying, hey, did you have a chance to check out that profile? But then, then they were getting back to us. Now, if you can automate that, and you can automate that so at the start of the week you can organize all of your BD, or on Friday you can organize all of your email BD for the following week, you don't have to lift a finger. It's going to lead to a lot more, a lot more saved time, um, and a lot more efficiency with how you're working. So that was a good tool. Um, I think like, you know, the other ones, like, you know, everyone uses LinkedIn, don't they? LinkedIn Recruiter is amazing for that stuff. But, you know, then the tools— I suppose the tools is like the people, isn't it? The people that you're, you're training. And we train our guys to get referrals for a lot of candidates, right? So asking your network again, use your personality to get them to give you information. And that's, that's the best people. One of the juniors here, she, she billed £36,500 in March and been with us for 7 months. And 2 of those came from referrals. 2 of those, 3 placements, 2 of those came from referrals. And it's just like, that's what we want to see. You know, it's minimal. You're not having to put as much effort into it all. So you can have all the systems in the world, but unless you're doing the right things yourself, it's kind of kind of pointless really. And then even on the CRM stuff, if you've not got the right people, the right contacts, the right data, the right companies that you mapped out, then it becomes pointless.

So, um, no, no, that was good. So I guess to tie this together then with everything that you've learned so far, what, like, if you was sitting down with me and I was someone that was early on in my sort of recruitment business journey, or thinking about it at least, and I was going to take that first step, what would you try and communicate to me?

I'd be like, right, get your vision and your values sorted out straight away. Make sure you understand your market. Even there's tools like Fiverr now you can jump on, you know, Fiverr, the—

Yeah, so good.

Yeah, you can get in contact with someone, you can give them a list of companies and get them to go and find those companies and send the spreadsheet back to you. Right. Like go on LinkedIn and do it all. So get your data. If you're setting up from scratch and you're doing it in a market that, you know, obviously lean on the people that you know, but if you're doing new markets because you've got covenants, find out, map it out, get people to do the hard legwork for you because it's cheap. Get them on a good system. It's HubSpot's free to use as well, and then you can explore the different options that they have and then make life work as efficiently as possible so you're not having to do loads of legwork. You feel like it's taking too long or it's an arduous process, and it probably is. So there's ways you can simplify it all. But then honestly, just get get to it, like work hard, focus, um, grind it out. That's what you've got to do when you're setting up the business. That's what the first years are so important. And really all it comes down to is the, is the money that you bring in, uh, for the future, and then everything else should fall into place. But if it is like that and you, you're doing it like a one-man band, or there's two of you, get— don't stop focusing on the, on the clients and the candidates and getting— making placements, basically. Yeah, but, but plan for yourself.

Yeah. So how— talk to me about how are you viewing the future? You can talk about you guys as a business, like where you want to see yourself in the next 5 years, and how are you also thinking about the sort of future of sort of the recruitment landscape and sort of services that you're delivering as a business?

Of course, mate. So a few different points there, but I was— we're constantly looking at this, right? This is just in the way we do stuff. We're always looking at things, how we can make things better and better and how we can do things more efficiently. And how we can even provide a better service to our customers. I was looking at this the other day, right, and I sat there with someone, and the way we've always done it in our business is get people in and get them to do the 360 recruitment role. Now, that has to be— the 360 recruitment role has to be one of the hardest jobs in the world, right? I'm not even messing. You have to do so many different angles, and it's great. Listen, for experience to do that successfully, fair play. If anyone does that successfully, fair play to them. It's a tough job. You're balancing so many different things. But for us as a business, we're looking at right now, what do our markets look at? And there's a lot of investment going into markets. When you get a lot of investment going in from venture capital companies, it means growth. And a lot of companies are now popping up in our space, but perhaps, you know, don't have the sort of history that we have with it all. So the way we'll look to grow the business and how we'll really scale, the plan is to get to 50 heads. In the next 5 years. And I think really where the scalability will come in for us is having the, the, like, a core sales team of the people that we've got at the moment, right, working on a more exclusive and retained basis where everyone's going through retainer training at the moment over the next couple of months to really to up our game on that side. And then what the plans are is to build out a delivery team, basically. I'm probably giving away all the secrets here, but Essentially, you still have people doing 360, have a main sales team, have a delivery team, and give people the opportunity. In a market, in a market that's growing so much, candidates are gold, right? We know this. So hire people who are great, great with people, who are interested, who are passionate, who people want to work with, and create them, put them on a clear career path on how they can progress through the candidate side of it all, because that's going to be the gold. And I think You get really sharp, ambitious people into that environment. You give them the opportunity to move into a sales role as well, but you level them up on the candidate side, teach them that side of it. Or they can build amazing relationships with senior candidates and they can go and do the client side. It's not really very different, but have that constant funnel of people, junior people coming in, learning how to do it our way. And then as they become more senior, either lead a team of delivery people or move across into the sales side of the business. But you need to keep that engine. The problem we have is we can't find a lot of people that we want to hire. That's the difficulty.

So, but do you think, do you think sort of over the next couple of years that most recruitment businesses or most recruiters will either find themselves doing more of a focused client-side role or candidate side? Or do you think the sort of 360, where, which I was as well, and most people probably listen to this are in that sort of environment, do you think that'll still exist?

Yeah, I think it'll be the majority still, in all honesty. I think, um, it's, it's weird, isn't it? Like, as recruiters, we've got this mindset of like a little bit us against the world, which has changed a bit. But I'm 360, it's my clients, my candidates, I'm not sharing. Whereas actually, if you're, if you're really good at the BD side and landing clients, why not have support? You know, why not give, give half of your fee away, or however you structure it, to the delivery team? Because you can still then focus on doing more and go out and get more clients. And that's when you go from a kind of $200K biller up to a $400K, $500K biller. So you have to open your mind and be ready for that. So yeah, to answer your question, I think it'll carry on, it'll stay for ages, but I think we'll have that for a while. But I think different skills align themselves to different aspects of the recruitment process, right? So yeah, work to the strengths, find the people that can do the different roles, and don't just turn someone down because you think they might be shy on clients when they're great on candidates, you know what I mean?

Yeah, absolutely. So I've got some final questions for you. Okay. Before we finish. So first one is, if you could change the industry, what would you improve?

I saw that one question, the other thing, right? So what I do is I'd— it's hard to explain, but I try and make every— what the service levels a lot better. A lot more like people working with commitment. I'd never have people dropping fees just to get work. I'd really— I suppose it wouldn't say put barriers to entry into the recruitment market because it's stupid. That's the whole joy about it all. But up everyone's game, right? Provide a better service. Bring the reputation of the recruitment industry back to actually being a good service, consultative service, right? All the horror stories that you hear, it's that— it makes it bad. Listen, everyone does things different ways, right? But Some of it's just awful. So I would try and remove all of the sharky, shysty stuff and put in great service, great delivery, good relationships, and charging more, basically.

Yeah, I love that. So what book have you read recently, or maybe podcasts you listen to, or maybe something you've watched recently that's had the biggest impact on you?

Most of the books I read are fiction books. So, oh, okay.

Nice.

Yeah. So I'm not really— I'm not massive on the self-help stuff. I listen to podcasts and stuff, but I find that it sounds weird, but you can learn a lot from actual make-believe stories.

So yeah, for sure.

But you take stuff.

So what's your like— yeah, what's the maybe like really great fiction book that's like had a really lasting impact on you? Maybe.

Well, this is more about— this is more about like just keeping positive. There's a book called Catch-22. It's where the phrase catch-22 comes from. Right. And it's just this mad— like, it's like a It's like a funny book, satire, they call it, right? It's just a frantic book of the maddest story you've heard and how these people in Italy are in the war. And yeah, you can only get out of flying in the war if you're insane. The only way you can be insane is if you declare yourself insane. But if you declare yourself insane, you can't be insane, right? So that's the catch-22. And you've got these guys trying to get out of flying because the war's almost over. Just kind of makes me realize is that, like, listen, I suppose life's too short not to have fun and be positive and enjoy it and be grateful for everything that you have. But reading books like that just make me kind of realize you got to have a bit of fun with life, right?

Yeah.

Get down. You can focus on all the bad stuff. Like, at the end of the day, that will all disappear. You've got to focus on the things that kind of make you happy, make you have a laugh. That's what I like. Read those types of books. It doesn't have to be depressing. Yeah.

Yeah, I love that.

Keep that mindset positive.

I love that. So slightly different one here then. What did you spend your first biggest commission paycheck on?

Boozing. I don't think I bought anything, mate. I was in New York at the time. There was a good nightlife scene, mate. We had a good group of people we all used to go out with together. So I was just spending that on clothes and booze and partying, basically.

Fair enough. Final question, what, what's the ultimate goal for your recruitment career?

Um, well, this might change in a couple years. At the moment, the ultimate goal for me is to create a business that is thriving, where people really understand like what they, what, what they can achieve within our company, and progressing people's careers within our business, and creating future leaders, making people a lot of money doing it, and having an environment that is super positive that everyone's buzzing to come into work and it's supportive of each other. And I think creating that environment, it's a goal, isn't it? It's like it's blue sky thinking. But for me to have that set up, if you— if at 5 years' time I was walking the office and, you know, there's 50 of us in there and everyone's buzzing, everyone's like talking about putting deposits on houses, what holidays they've taken, everyone's like really— and then I guess on top of that, that comes down to providing that perfect service and that great service and being being, like, respected in the industry for doing what we do. But we have a lot of positive feedback from our clients, and we just keep doing what we do and don't compromise on those standards. And yeah, make sure everyone's enjoying it as well and have fun doing it. Like, you can get down sometimes about it. You've got to just keep positive, haven't you, and enjoy what you're doing, basically.

I love it. James, it's been an absolute pleasure. Yeah, thank you.

Pleasure, Hishem. Take care, buddy.