Lessons From the Trenches: Year One of Running a Recruitment Business with Ned Menheneott

Let's all fail together. We'll get the wrong office, we'll make the wrong hire, we'll do the wrong thing, but let's not do it twice. It's probably the most valuable one is learning from mistake. Getting a market wrong, getting a hire wrong, getting a driver wrong, getting an incentive wrong, going to a client, losing a pitch, getting something wrong in a tender. The grass is always greener somewhere. Someone's market's always better somewhere. Like, but you've got to think about the times when it's gone well for a start. If you look at any startup companies, they will typically hire good billers at the start thinking about the bottom line. This guy's completely changed my view on what marketing is. And he wants to become the link between marketing and sales. So marketing actually helping drive your sales business as well. New technologies, new trends, new policies, whatever it is in that specific sector. And it may not be yours, but it'll be someone else in your team that it's going to be better towards. But it helps our guys spot opportunities and go, hang on.

Ned, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me on.

Been great getting to know you. What I was excited to sit down with you is you are currently in the trenches of basically your like first entrepreneurial journey. You're, you're in the trenches of building your own recruitment business after working for, um, an organization for a good number of years. So today our goal here really is twofold. One, what lessons are you taking into this business? Maybe what are some of the things that you're looking to do a bit different that maybe you're not bringing over? Um, and then really get into the detail. If I'm honest, a lot of people really appreciate hearing like how that first year of business is going, what you're doing, what you feel like you've done well, what have been the challenges so far. And we're going to get into all of those details. So anyone that is in the trenches currently, or maybe even thinking about starting their own recruitment business, there should be some really good lessons. So let me, let me give everyone a bit of context. Let me know if I get any of this wrong, so feel free to correct me. So you actually moved to Australia to build out the JD Ross brand, and that was building it out here from scratch. So basically over the years, so, um, you built that over a sort of 7-ish year period, right? So over those 7 years, we got that up to, um, $8 million run rate and around 20— and around a 20-person team. And you had 3 particular verticals, 3 managers, um, that was in this, uh, business that you started. And then really by the time that you left, you was getting exposed to, you know, cash flow, costing, commercial operations, which is really cool. Um, so it's a big part of, of that journey. And obviously by the time that you left as well, you, you wasn't doing like direct deals, were you? You was a bit away from that?

Nah, um, probably 2, 3 years before the end. Yeah, but by that point, yeah, you're more motivated to help other people as opposed to what's in your back pocket, I suppose.

So I think that, that's always interesting because I will get into it, but I know sometimes people end up in that position and they're like, oh my God, I'm starting my business, haven't done an actual deal.

Yeah, so, um, amazing.

So then left that organization and now launched your own business. So I hope I pronounce this right, so it's Enimix. Is that, is that how you pronounce it?

Awesome. Sort of, uh, the whole energy mix kind of put together.

Oh yeah, yeah, okay.

Yeah, it's the whole energy mix, so you just squeeze the two together.

And did you— I'll ask you now because I know it's something that people always think about— how much time did you spend on the name? Like, was that a lot of brainstorming? Did we end up maybe in a bit of an AI rabbit hole on different name ideas?

There was a lot more nos put it that way, with my partner, business partner, people over a couple of beers. There's a lot, there's a lot of nos, there's a lot of stuff out there that's been taken that you find hard to believe that it's taken. But yeah, you want it to sing energy, you want it to sing about you, so when they pick up the phone they know it's about you. So I think we landed on a good name in the end. It seems to be quite catchy in the space, people, it seems to be sticking, whether or not people pronounce it right or wrong, doesn't matter.

Well, that was my first go. So launch out in September 2024. Um, launch that with a business partner. And then you also have, um, Ryan in the business as well, um, who's MD in Australia. And really, like, the goal with this business, you know, from what I've learned and getting to know you, is like you have big goals for this business, which is why you brought a business partner from day one. Um, you know, that comes with, uh, more resources. And I think that that's really evident with, with where you are today. We're, you know, not, uh, not even 12 months in yet And in terms of where the business is at currently, we've got 8 consultants in the business. You've got a CMO, a CFO, and a fractional CTO. Uh, already generated a million Australian dollars revenue, and big goals for year 1 to end around 2.5-3 million. So I think that sort of says a lot in terms of you've got ambitions, you're growing, uh, and I think that, that shows up there. So why don't, why don't we just start with because you would have reflected on this. So just to make sure that we get this right, so you, after leaving your previous organization, you, you took the 6 months, right?

That's correct, yeah.

Because I think that is sometimes people have to wrestle with in terms of like covenants, these things. So that was that period. So after that 6-month period, you could just crack on.

Yeah.

And didn't have to worry about that. So you probably reflected on these types of things in that 6-month period. So like, let's just start with this JD Ross journey because I'm sure, like, you would have learned so much, uh, on that journey. What were the sort of real standout lessons you think that you're really taking into, into this next chapter in your career? Like, what are the really standout lessons you think when you reflected on, like, I definitely want to bring this to my business, this is going to be important to the business? Tell us a bit about, uh, where you landed on that.

Yeah, absolutely. Firstly, thanks for having me on. I really do appreciate it. Um, and look, uh, I did have the pleasure of working for a very, very successful business. Um, I was fortunate— fortunate enough as well at the time to have two, well, three really good managers that I've worked across throughout that period of time as well. So there was a lot of learns that came from those people that kind of sit above you at the time. Now, if I look at lessons that I've learned there, I'll probably start with people, and it's probably recycled a lot on these, these podcasts, but at the end of the day, it's a people business. People are your currency. That's what they are, that's what you're selling. But it's also in-house, it's that you've got to be treating those people right. Now, I feel like we got that right, right from the outset, knowing everyone's motivations, their whys, their families, what they do on the outside of work, what makes them tick, what their desks are, what makes their— what levers to put in place throughout their desk, what roadmaps are in place. Like, that's always that's always top, top priority. Like, you could have the best plan in the world, you have the best commission structure in the world, you have the best office in the world, the best markets in the world, but if you're not treating those people right, um, chances are they're, they're not going to stay. And look, our churn rate there was, was super, super low. So it was 10% for the first 4 years I was there. So there was, there was very rarely anyone that would leave that business, um, which clearly means that we were getting it right and people were bought into that that overall vision. But, um, you get that wrong, you end up having to retrain, rehire, put someone new on a market that you've already done, explain to clients where— why the person's come from. But you start to have that longevity, and the people are in their markets for longer and longer and longer. It's harder for them to move away as well. So getting the people right is, is huge. And I think we've started off with the first hires we've made, that's been really important. And I imagine at some point we'll talk about our process of how we go about selecting those people. But that's probably the biggest lesson.

Yeah, nice. That makes sense. And I think it came up in the live event, didn't it? And I think, you know, I know you're into your own development, but like, you'll very quickly find someone saying it's all about people, that's the most important thing. And it's annoying to hear that because it's like, it's so basic. But I think you really— when you— you would have felt it when, you know, you was at JD Ross, but you're probably gonna really feel that even more now when it's your own business, do you know what I mean? So I think that makes completely sense that that's at the top of the pile, and you sort of saw that some of the things they did well, and you're like, right, I need to make sure that I nail that, or I'm really intentional about how I approach the people strategy.

And like, you can— people who care about the bottom line and, and the money and how much profit you're making, that, that's great, and you always need to keep one eye on it. But, um, like, I'm probably one of those people who are confident in our processes that will, will be able to do that anyway, but I'd rather sacrifice the numbers over keeping the people happy. It's number one thing I'd always have as a lesson I learned there anyway. Nice.

So give us what else stood out to you, what else do we definitely want to bring over?

Markets, like, I think we got markets 100% right. Like, um, look, when you're setting up at any business— recruitment, insurance, sales, stuff like whatever it is— um, you've always got to do a bit of market research first. Um, I was fortunate enough to have studied energy at uni, worked for an energy company, gone into energy recruitment, so I feel like I know all parts of the sector quite well. Um, but I've always been interested in the context of the growth in the energy market as well. Um, you can look at a tech recruitment company, but it's not really the tech market. I think tech recruiters work with insurance companies or finance companies, so it's not like the energy industry. So that's what I quite love about it, is that you can look at the energy industry as a whole. If you look at solar's growing by 16% in the next 5 years, wind 30%, EV sales 44% of EV sales in the next 5 years are going to come from— of sales of cars will come from EVs. So you look at every part of the energy sector, it's growing, um, and I think we got that right. We were kind of one step ahead of it. When I came over from Australia, the markets in the UK and Europe were kind of 2, 3 steps in front. So I kind of had a bit of an advantage coming over, being able to explain to clients about those markets. So we did get it right very early on, and We're putting that into place here. So we'll have our core 10, 15 markets, but we're already thinking about who's going to be in what desk in 2 years' time, in what country, why, when, what background do they need. So markets is always number one. There's, there's so many people trying to compete in the energy space right now. You'll get an it recruitment business trying to do it, you'll get a construction company, construction recruitment business trying to do it. But as long as we can prove that we're one step ahead of that all the time, we'll have that edge.

Yeah, it's definitely, um, definitely number 2. Yeah, I think when I speak to people about this, it can sometimes be a bit overlooked in the sense like, if you're listening to this right now and you're building your career in recruitment, like, I do feel like there's a lot that you can control. Yeah. And depending on what market you go into, like, that market will have a potential ceiling.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, in terms of what you potentially do in that market, I don't know, average placement size, these types of things. Like, I do think it's a very important part of the equation, isn't it, in terms of the market piece?

And you can look at it as sector, you can look at it as contract v perm as well. Like perm will sometimes be doing better than contract depending on COVID or like what time of year it is on finance and things like that. But if you look at it across the energy sector, some parts are usually more buoyant than others. But if you're hedging your bets across multiple things, you're usually a bit more steady in predicting what is going to go right and what's going to go wrong. But yeah, it is a huge thing for us that we take very seriously.

And just curious on this because you highlighted it, I'll be honest with you, obviously right now I've been working in a recruitment office, and the amount of times that you hear the word AI— yeah, they do a lot of tech, digital— so like that, that's like coming up consistently, right? So the amount of AI recruiters and these types of things, uh, that, that's gonna be big. But I would probably say, if I'm honest, over the last, uh— you'll be in the detail more than me— but definitely over the last 12, 24 months, if there was like a new sector or a new desk a new discipline that recruitment companies were launching, probably be strong in betting on that being like a renewables desk or like— so I think that's also— so it's the reason I highlight that is because obviously you're in the detail of it. So just curious, because I think people that operate in the technology space might be feeling this right now, how do you like make sure you don't get lost in the noise and feel like maybe you're just— I don't know, you can sort of get lost in the, the noise a bit, can't you? Like, how do you stay focused on like, you know what, we've got the right game plan, we're sticking to it Yeah, versus maybe getting pulled in different directions.

The grass is always greener somewhere, someone's market's always better somewhere, like, but you've got to think about the times when it's gone well for a start. Now AI is having— and I say AI, but just the digitalization is happening within the energy sector. Like, years ago you probably used to go to your meter at home and it used to be ticking over like this. Now you've got smart meters that you control your heating, your bills, your fridge, you can turn stuff off, you can trade your own energy, you can buy and sell it and all these things. And AI is coming in massively to that space. So, um, It is something that we do keep a big eye on. And look, we do, we do look at tech recruiters to come join us because, because of that digitalization. Like, may— you may well have the best energy recruiter or renewable recruiter, but do they understand data science or how a platform's put together for an energy software? Like, we don't have that. So there is the opportunity to, to look elsewhere in the energy space, and it's quite a steady industry. Like, everyone always needs the lights on, so it's even in COVID, like, energy still remained quite strong. But, uh, yeah, I think the grass can always look greener on the outside. It's easy to get swallowed up by that. Um, but, uh, look, I'll probably talk about tech when we start talking about the, um, the investment piece as well. But at the end of the day, AI and recruitment, like, there's millions of software tools out there. And it's not just in recruitment, other business will be looking at AI. And I think it was Andy yesterday mentioned about it, saying we're not in control of all the products and all the solutions that are out there. There's much smarter people making it. It's the people who are making the right decisions to take them on. Um, but yeah, I'd say for those people, look, the grass is always greener, but there are loads of different sectors that you, you can go into.

Yeah, it's a good frame of mind, just like, because you can easily get distracted. And this is just good, like, you want to be clear on like, right, this is what we're staying focused on. But having one of the eyes— I think the way that you put it is quite good in terms of like being mindful of what could be around the corner. And you're going to be getting that— that's your job as well, isn't it, in terms of being in the market and the industry, asking those questions, being curious?

Yeah. And you want to be speaking to the, the innovators in the space, the candidates that are working at the innovators. You know, you've got your innovators, your, your laggards. You want to be speaking to those people right at the forefront of the industry that's interested in that, because they're your eyes and ears. They're the ones who know what's coming. Speaking to people in the US and Europe who are working on new technologies. Like, keep an eye on it, like, it's coming one way or another. If it's happening somewhere, it's coming.

So people, markets, any other standout lesson? And if to round it out with 3 that we're taking into this business of yours?

Yeah, 100%. So I got people, markets, and the— I'd probably say promotions is, is like a— keeping a roadmap for people is hugely important for us. Um, it's very easy in recruitment to just have a a number in front of someone. And I'm sure we'll speak about this in a moment as well, but, um, like, a lot of people in recruitment will just be judged on the end goal that they build, on the end number, like the sale, the actual physical tangible number. Um, and there were some things that we were doing there at the time that were actually starting to come in outside of that that I really liked. And it's just building on those ideas and obviously taking them through with us. They're that, that's hugely important for us because it ties into the people and motivation side of things as well. It's, it's, it ties in with motivations and people and journeys and roadmaps and stops the churn and all these kind of things as well. So I think I ended up making 60, 70 promotions if you count people getting promoted twice, three times, but it's the happiest they've ever been. Like, they're absolutely buzzing with it, they absolutely love it, they can't wait. And then it's the next one, they're looking sort of 12 months ahead. So always having that what's in mind. And that— this probably ties in with the other lesson that we learned, was everyone was bought into the vision. Like I said, whoever started, this is where we're going, this is the journey we're going on, these are the markets that we want to do, these are the markets we want to create. And it was always, let's win team of the month, let's win team of the year. And it was just driving that message again and again and again. Um, but that message only comes if you're living and breathing stuff. And again, it was brought up Yesterday, like, you can say all these traits, all these values, everything that you want your business to be, but if you walk through the door 5 minutes late or you don't ask for a lead on a candidate call, like, these sort of things start to filter into everyone else's psyche. Um, and I was fortunate enough at JDR that I absolutely loved it. Like, I was almost too obsessed at times, and my partner probably says I am now, but I, I, I live it. Like, I go home, wake up on the phone, change stuff. People will— I'll tell them to turn their phones off, but I'll be leaving emails to be sent to my consultants and feedback all the time. So the fact that I love it now and still loved it before— if it comes to a point where I don't love it, I feel like I'm in the wrong thing. But there's no signs of that whatsoever. Um, and look, I know I'm giving you more and more here, but there's probably one more. Okay, it's probably the most valuable one, is, is learning from mistakes. Like, got the amount of times I messed up, like getting a market wrong, getting a hire wrong, um, getting a driver wrong, getting an incentive wrong, going to a client, losing a pitch, getting something wrong in a tender, looking at setting up in Singapore, looking at building contract at the right time. Like, it's gonna happen. Like, if we didn't try them, I wouldn't have learned that stuff. And I now know that we're going to make loads of mistakes, and I'm fortunate enough that my team are aware of that and they're cognizant of this is Ned's first time going into it. And I tell them that before they even start, like, let's all fail together. We'll make mistakes, like, we'll do it, it's going to happen. We'll get the wrong office, we'll make the wrong hire, we'll do the wrong thing, but let's not do it twice. So, um, I hope that gives you something.

Yeah, I really like— I think again, this is sort of evidence of like what your ambitions are because I think a lot of recruitment founders I've sat down with that do want to grow their business, yeah, they sort of overlook the, like, the career pathways, the promotion, the pieces. They're like, I'll worry about that when we get to 10 heads or 5 heads or whatever. So I think again, that says a lot around like, no, no, I, I know I need to have that nailed because I want to— I'm going to hire people that are ambitious, that want to achieve things. So they're always going to want to know what's next. Yeah, yeah. Uh, and so I think that that's again really evident of like what your intentions are. With this business. Yeah, I'm gonna put you on, on the spot here, but I wanted to ask you this because when I sat down with, uh, Craig, he said to me that— or like when we have one of our conversations, he said that when he met you, he like, you were someone that he would have loved to, to bring on a journey and like really wanted to like back. And people listening to this show will be ambitious, will have big goals. So I'm just curious, I'm gonna put you on the spot here, but like, what is it that you— what is it that you thought that Craig saw in you then? Because this is when he was in the UK, but Craig obviously saw something, and I think it'd be interesting to sort of see what you think that thing is, because I think, you know, people listen to this will get opportunities like you got, that, um, to be back, to like be brought on a journey.

Yeah, yeah.

So like, I don't know, what do you think Craig saw in you then?

It's easy to sit here and say I was quite conscious about coming on this talking about myself, um, or even giving out David Brent management advice, but I'm gonna lose either way. Um, but, uh, look, with Craig, I can't not thank Jack and Kat, who were the managers at the time, who pushed me down that route, gave me the confidence to go and go and do that. I'm not gonna lie, my first interview with JD Ross and McLean Ross, as it was at the time, I said to them, I want to go set up your business in Australia. And they kind of laughed at me at the time. I was training, had no recruitment experience whatsoever, um, but I'm an all-in kind of guy. Like, if I'm in it, I'm in it for the whole thing. This was not a test. I was going into energy recruitment and I was like, I want to build, I want to do well, I want to manage and then grow. I was quite fortunate enough to know a few. My business partner at the moment, I've known for 15 years prior to that, who got me into it, did say I had a lot of the right things, but I didn't really know what those right things were. I couldn't sell. I failed the sales test massively. Ryan Speed. The guy interviewed me at the time told me he's coming and sell a suit, and I failed it 3, 4 times. Ended up walking around the room pretending to sell him suits. And, uh, yeah, just some— that's what I didn't have. I wasn't the best sales guy. I, I wasn't the best, um, at knowing my market at the time. Um, I wasn't the best at joining the dots, but I wanted to make sure that I was putting in all the right stuff. And I knew I would learn that at the time. So every day I was just like, just be the hardest working room. Just leave knowing you've done the most in the office. Someone else is there, just leave later. If someone's done more calls, do more calls. Someone makes more, more leads. Now that's dying out slightly at the moment, but I did come from that period of time where that was really important. Um, and Craig probably got wind of that, and like the Australian market is, is slightly similar to that in the UK of how the, the metrics work. Um, so we probably thought, look, that DNA works right out here. So someone like that, and after billing well and having a track record and managing a team myself, you probably saw right, this is the right time. I can get someone to help nurture, and if he's got the vision, the plan, let me just guide him slightly along the way.

No, that's good.

There was a few things, but, uh, yeah, I didn't pay him to say that. I'm sorry.

No, I was just curious to sort of hear what you said there on that. Okay, so let's go into this business journey so far. So like, just out of interest, like, obviously I haven't got to know you. I've sort of learned about your, your big goals for this. But like, if me and you met up before you launched this business, or as you're, you know, very early days in this business, like, what, what would I have heard if I said like, right, what, what are the goals here? What, what are the plans here? Like, what, what were the intentions from day one? Because I think a lot of conversations that I have with, um, business owners, sometimes this, if I'm honest, can be a really consistent theme where they're like not sure if they should hire, they're not sure if they should do this. And oftentimes that's that's because they haven't really thought about where they want to be in 2 years' time, 3 years' time, whatever timeline. So I think I always like to ask that in terms of like, when we— if we were to speak to you early days of launching this business, what would we have heard? What were the intentions? Because I think it's important to hear that if people have clarity on that.

Yeah, yeah.

But what would— what would I have heard?

You're teaming up for an anjo, posta cogli, second year, always win a trophy, sort of comment that you're gonna play back to me in 3 years. But Uh, there was no doubt in my mind that we would get this right. There was no— there's no, like, there was no doubt whatsoever. If there was a doubt, I probably would have taken a bit more time to do it. Now, I always wanted to be the number one energy recruitment business in the world. That was like the one thing. And I— it seems ridiculous to say that, it actually, it actually does. But if you break it down month by month, person by person, market by market, it really— it's almost like saying I want to build a million this year and breaking it down by market, by, by desk, by deal, everything like that. So look, we wanted to get to 10 at least this year. We'll end up on 10 or 12 people next year. We wanted to get to 20, 25. That was always the goal. And servicing the whole energy sector, a bit wider, a bit— a few more gaps in between, but pretty much the whole energy sector in Australia. Then the plan was to take that plan around the world and roll out the blueprint that we have now. Why? There was a plan that we were going to do that everywhere. Like, we were— my, uh, business partner at the time always fell off his chair and he was like, what, uh, maybe just start in one place to start with. But we were quite close to going everywhere all at once. You go everywhere all at once, you've got a manager in a different country that has a different DNA of how they run a business, they want a different process, they'll do this. But right here, we get all 20, 25 markets really right, we get the branding completely right, we get the technology in place completely right, we get the finance systems completely right, we can roll that blueprint out across the world. Now, some of those markets may be different or called something else in a different country, but the core 25 we've done, the research we've done, and the recruiters we know in other parts of the world, and the clients that also work in all them, lend itself to just be, yo, look, plug and play over there. You've now— and we can go and speak to, and we're already speaking to people at the moment, but directors in Europe or team managers and say look what we've done here. You don't need to do any of this stuff. You've got your marketing framework, you've got your skill codes, you've got your system, you've got your process, you've got the brand. From what we've heard about you, you're an unreal biller, which is— we do need someone to bill. Is it like, at the end of the day, you'll be fixing the sink day one, you'll be billing, you'll be helping training, hiring, you'll be doing all that sort of stuff, but we've taken away everything else. Like, we've given you the brand, the markets, the capabilities, the candidates, the system, all those kind of things. I think it's a really sexy opportunity for someone who's in a different country Um, if it was me, I would take it. Um, but also you get those people who are a bit scared to go and do— dive into something that's— I want to run my own business, but I'm not quite there. Maybe this is the sort of sweet spot where I've got the support, I can run my own thing here, I can run with their sort of processes and systems and take you on from there. So that is how I feel we get to 100 in 5 countries, which seems—

yeah, I mean, you've thought about this a lot. I really respect that, considering where, like, you've clearly got a big, like, goal and vision in your head, which you need. If you want to, uh, like you said earlier, like for people to get brought on this journey, you've got to be the guy that's saying this is where we're going.

Yeah, exactly.

Like, you can come on this journey. So like, just curious then, because I'm sure, uh, you've thought about this, maybe it was something that you really workshopped with your business partner who I know who's really experienced in this space. But I think it's sometimes something that people can find challenging when they launch their business, and it's about having a point of difference. Like, how, how are you different. And it might, it might sound similar to maybe the types of things I'd hear you say at JD Ross, I don't know. But I'm interested to hear your take on there. Like, how, how have you got to the point currently? You know, you're still in the very— in the trenches here, you know, things evolve. But how do you currently think about— I'm sure you've thought about that. Like, what, what makes it different? If, like, how do you think about that?

You mean what makes Animix different?

Yeah, because I'm sure you thought about that. Like, what What is our point of difference here? Why are we different?

The point of difference is, um, look, you can look at it from how we're different to our employees, or from a talent attraction, like from a business, how we're different from a business overall, like our USP, our, like, how we offer different services, or how we go about something, how we do different training, and loads of different things. I'll probably separate them slightly just to hopefully answer your question when I come around to it. Um, from a, from a structural perspective, if you look at any startup companies, they will typically hire good billers at the start thinking about the bottom line. And that's, that's all well and good, and well, I feel like we're doing that anyway, and I've got a lot of trust and loyalty in our guys to do so. But if you look at 30% of our people, one's a CMO who's got 15, 20 years experience, one's a CFO who's got 20 years experience. One's the chairman who's our investor who's going on the journey I've known for 15 years, almost like the crystal ball, if you will, sort of being able to see mistakes before they happen or at least mitigate them before they do. So I think we're quite unique in that, that when people see you from an outside point of view and they're a recruiter, they go, that's— hang on, like all the scalability problems, all the other stuff that you talk about when you're getting from— because so many companies get to 8, to 15, and then it's quite hard to go from there. Um, and sometimes the management and the leadership don't have the time or the skills or the knowledge or the network to get leaders in place to manage that stuff. But we went, let's get that right at the start because we then will have more time to drive the sales, the performance of the business, hire the right people, embed the DNA into the business. So I think from a— from an outside perspective, from someone wanting to join, that's how we're different. Now if you talk about us from a business perspective, like, let's— like clients and candidates, for example. Um, the consultants we have are very experienced. Now, in Australia— this is only in Australia, so with numbers, I can't really give anything else anywhere else— but in niche recruitment, the average tenure for someone on their desk doing that desk in that specific location— so like, they're— I would consider that specialist— is 1.4 years. So because there's so many trainees, there's so many people who come in, test the waters, 1 month, 3 months, like, that's where the average comes down. We're quite fortunate enough where our churn rate is zero at the moment, but our average tenure is 3.6 years. So the people we've got who are dealing, who are selling Enimix at the other end, who are the faces of our business, who are selling our products, our services, going out, building relationships, they've done— they've got a huge track record of that. And chances are, if you call the business, you're picking up the phone to someone who, who knows the other people's markets. They, they know who the person to pass the phone on to. So from a, from a client perspective, I think we're, we're well trusted, and we've got data to back that up. We're successful, successful people in that space. I think also, like, one part of our sort of vision is we wanted to be— this is going back to the energy sector, how it's slightly different from tech recruitment because the tech sector isn't necessarily a sector, is it? It's insurance tech. In, in the energy sector, we didn't want to feel transactional. And what, what I loved about, uh, my old business was like, you go in, you win, you win business, you knock down doors, what's next, what's next, what's next, what's next, what's next. But, um, like, the relationship thing is, is more important to us here than necessarily going out and winning business, like protecting what you have, um, is, is really, really crucial to us. Now, we didn't want to feel like we were feeding off the sector. We want to feel like we're part of it. So we will get industry leaders in energy come in and run training sessions for our guys. So let's just say someone comes in and does.NET development. I teach them what.NET— like, this is what the skill codes are, search, Spanish, much as I can give them. Even though I've got a degree in the space, I can't really talk to energy that much. So each quarter we get a leader in the energy sector to come in, and everyone comes in, phones outside, you sit in the room and you listen to what that person's saying— new technologies, new trends, new policies, whatever it is in that specific sector. And it may not be yours, but it'll be someone else in your team that is going to be better towards— but it helps our guys spot opportunities and go, hang on, I remember that, I was, I was taught all that stuff about that person's market. 'You know what, let's collaborate because I can now work with that person.' So I think that makes us quite unique that we have that training. Um, and look, we, um, from a sort of feeding off the industry to being a part of the industry as well, like, we hold sustainable initiatives like quite high within our business. So you can say all these things about how your ESG policies and all that sort of thing, but we, we bring in sustainable initiatives like cycling to work schemes. We uh, kayaking, clear-ups of rubbish on the beach, recycling days. Like, we actually practice what we preach in that sense. So I think with the energy sector, it's quite unique. They go, oh, hang on, I feel like you're actually helping the energy transition, you're actually part of where we want to go, as opposed to just trying to get a few fees here and there. So hopefully that answers—

yeah, I like how you're breaking that down.

It's sort of different.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. I think, um, because I think a lot of people, when I ask that question, I think when I do speak to people, it's a lot of the time they're thinking about how they're perceived in the market, and when they're speaking to potential clients or people they're working with, like, yeah, what is my point of difference? Is there anything that you've— you still might be figuring this out right now, but in terms of like how you work with your clients and those things, like, it sounds like what you've really said there is you've got people that are genuinely committed to the, the market, the expertise, network, all of that. And then I love that you bring in people from the industry. I think that's really cool. Is there anything that you have thought about when you think about in terms of interacting and working with, uh, your clients on the products and services piece? Because that's often sometimes as well, there may not be anything drastically different there, but I think you think about these things when you're at this stage.

Yeah, I think, look, I'm probably going to recycle a load of stuff that people do say, um, but, um, yeah, I'm at risk of repeating a lot of stuff, but I think, I think, I think a lot of that, I think a lot of the things I'm about to say are probably just quite similar in, in a lot of different recruitment businesses. Um, but, um, sorry, the question you asked—

it's funny. Yeah, so it's like, is there any— have you also thought about that point of difference, uh, and how you can be— bring something different to the market in terms of actually how you work with your clients?

Maybe.

I don't know.

Yeah, we've clients at the moment, like a lot of the ones that we do bring on, we're attending industry events to actually go and work with, and then you go and meet with them again. The energy sector not the biggest in the world. You probably have 300 in each market. You probably have 600 managers and 600 candidates. So if you're in it for a long period of time, by way of nature, you will just start rubbing shoulders with all those people over and over and over and over again. But, um, when you go into a client and you go— like, transactional recruitment for me, and this is what Andy was saying yesterday, is a 30-day client. You go, you do a deal, and then you see you later. But what we try and coach differently is that ask about the fee, qualify the role, like explain it as much to people, go sell it as much as possible, do a good performance on that that they remember and use you again. That's typical client retention. But, um, I think for our guys, it's getting an understanding of like why they're hiring that person and speaking to the other senior people within that business. Like, why were you brought on? You brought it, built in to hire the team? Like And that's where you can start asking them what they need from a recruitment partner. Now, across the industry, the— like, it's just 15%. That's what people say a fee is, isn't it? It's just 15% everywhere you go. Every country is always 15%, 15%, 15%. But, um, if it's a client that's only looking to hire once that year, go, right, okay, if you're not looking to grow that much, how about we do salary surveys of the market We give you a breakdown of the market, we give you an understanding of the female/male split within each vertical that you operate in as well. We'll give you an understanding of all the market operators, all this sort of stuff. So yeah, you're paying us 20% instead of 15%, but if you look across that throughout the year, we're giving you market research for all this time. And that way they don't think of you as a transaction. They think of you as a sort of a business partner, like, oh, I can dip into this person throughout the year now that I've paid slightly more. And you start giving them all those insights and reports and touch points throughout the year. I'm not here to sell you something, I thought I'd just let you know, we're just, we've just done our little fact sheet for the behind-the-meter energy market. Do you want to have a look at it? It might help with sort of your plans for next year, sort of competitive analysis. Yeah, yeah, cool, cool. You're going to be the one that they come to next time just because you've gone out of your way to do that. But the people who go, we're only hiring once this year, cool, see you later, candidate, have you started? Nice, bye. Like, you try and create that from, from the outset, really.

Okay.

Like I said, it's not reinventing the wheel as such, but, um, but that's good to hear. You get a bigger fee from it at the end of the day, which some— which might interest a few people anyway.

Yeah, but I think it's not, it's not always about doing something drastically new. That, that's why that's helpful, because a lot of people may think that they need to do something drastically different or drastically new, but you're just really sharing your methodology there on like, how can we just do a good job beyond getting them a person and asking those wider questions and having that approach.

Yeah, and I'd like— just, just to add, to just go back to AI, because you can go to a client and say, we deliver in this period of time, we get 5 CVs in this period of time, uh, 3 to 1 ratio, 2 to 1 offer to placement ratio, whatever it is. You can say all this stuff to them and you can say all the resources you've got— AI, LinkedIn, you've got all this outreach, all this sort of stuff— and they're like, oh cool, that sounds brilliant. But at the end of the day it's the conversation, is that when you pick up the phone, like Andy was saying yesterday, it's that, that is like the relationships thing is still king. Like if you've got a good consultant who builds a relationship with a manager or a client, understands what they want, finds out about their, their weekends, what they get up to. And so that, like, I think the story yesterday was, is the best man at the guy's wedding was, was from 2008 contract or something like that. So, um, there is a real gap in the market for phone and facial interaction with all this AI stuff going on. And the more that comes in, this— the more exciting that gap is for real relationship recruitment.

Yeah, that's a good way to put it. So let— I just want to, um, change focus for a second. So because people might be thinking that— I'm just, I'm just curious, and again, like, you still might be in, in the middle of this. So obviously you have ambitions to grow.

Yeah.

So obviously with that, like you said, you've been— you've got a business partner, that comes with financial resources, expertise, different things.

Yeah.

Now I'm assuming— you can tell me— but I'm assuming that isn't just like— you're not having a grow-at-all-costs attitude, right? So I'm just curious, with the expertise that you're getting, because you're, you're doing like, um, monthly board meetings, these types of things. So you would have heard us talk about it at the event, and it is something that a lot of people think about, particularly when you're at the size of your size, which is like triggers for hiring and, you know, adding more cost into the business. So just talk to us a bit about this from the expertise that you've got from your business partner around, okay, we've got this headcount goal, you've got further headcount goals. What sort of things would I be hearing around like, uh, Ned, this, this is sort of like a good work towards of like where I want to see the business at. These are the— I don't know, you might say like, this is what I want the job flow to look like. Just talk to us bit about some of maybe the insights you picked up on, like, right, okay, yeah, we want to pull the trigger here, we want to hire. I don't know what that looks like, but I think that would be interesting for people to hear on how you're thinking about that. Because, okay, yes, great, you've, you know, you've, you've brought a partner on here, you've got big goals, but you can't— it's— you can't just be a grow at all cost, can it? Like, you've got to be doing this in, in the, in the right way.

Yeah, yeah.

So talk to us a bit about that, what that looks like.

I'll probably start from what a board meeting looks like for me at the moment.

That's best, probably that'd be helpful. I think we can trickle down from there.

But, um, I was like, we did board packs. I was kind of exposed to those board packs at JD Ross Energy, not from like the private equity and that sort of chief board level on strategic decisions, but I was always involved in sort of like those cash flows and things like that, where the forecasting people hiring, all these kinds of things. So I was fortunate enough to be able to take a lot of that in with me Um, and there's a million ways you can break it down, but at the end of the day, you want— you— what a good board meeting is, is you address what you did last month, you say what you've got coming in for the next 3 months, you say what you're going to do this month, and you come back and you've all done it. The marketing team's done it, the finance team's done it, and you sit there and it's an hour and a half, right? Next, move on. Like, and you, you go through all those things and you hope it— and then it goes on for 4 or 5 hours and you're like, well, we're just going around in circles here talking about loads of cool new ideas. And look, sometimes that does happen. It will happen at the start because there's way more decisions that are at play. But the key things we cover off is current, current view of the business. So what people you've got in there, their current performance, how they're doing, how they're tracking, what, how are they tracking for their target? Are there any personal issues with them? How are they getting on? Are they finding it all right? Are there any training gaps that we need to put in place that may be a trend across the team that we can roll out for everyone? So it's always people first. People, people, people. I mentioned it first at the start anyway. So you always go to those guys that are driving the revenue. Then we go, who have we got to start? Who have we got offers out for? Um, how is that going? When are they due to start? Like, what market are they in? Is the market ready for them to go into? Have we made it as tight as possible so they just slip into their technology and then they're good to go and they're just off and going. So, um, that's really crucial for us because it takes, it takes a while for a consultant to get off the mark. Like, you can do— our average first deal is 5 weeks, which—

that's good.

It, it is good, but I think the reason it's good is we put so much effort into having it fit for purpose. Like, here's all your hot candidates, here's, here's, here's jobs for you to come into before you come in, here is the perfectly skill-coded system. We make sure all the candidates are managed. Like I said, there's 600 managers 600 candidates. It's not years and years and years of work because we've done it for so long. We're quite geared up to knowing each person's market. We can do that for all 25. So that's really important for us that we get that right.

So just, just tell us a bit about that because I think that, that's, that's a good insight for people.

Yeah, yeah.

Oftentimes when this question comes up, it's how much money you got in the bank and like these things. But what you're talking about there is what can it— what can their— what can this person's market potentially look like? What do we have in place? Yeah. So like you said, from the get-go so yeah, there's things that they can— so tell us a bit about that. So what would, what would I— if I join your business tomorrow and I've got the certain expertise, these things, what would be some of those things that you've maybe done before I joined, out of interest, just so I'm clear on that?

So you're— I'm like, I've been in this space for so long, and Mango— I'll call him Mango— Ryan Mangan, um, is— he's been doing his desk and similar desks for longer than he's been the top 2% in recruiters in Australia who've been in their market for that period of time. I feel like I'm very well-knowledged in that. And the way I used to work in at JD Ross was I did a market and then I would pass it to someone else, and I would do a market, then pass it to someone else. I didn't do that 20 times, um, but I ended up doing it to about sort of 10, 12, 13 times. And then the managers below me started to learn how they could do that. Now, when you break down a market, it's all the companies you've got all the hiring managers that specifically hire within that market. So say, let's just say it's solar project managers, for example. You've got 300 development companies, you've got 3 managers in each that hire it, or 2 managers in each. That's 600 managers. All those will be on the, on the system, skill-coded. When I was using phrases that I've used— yeah, tagged or skill-coded, or, um, however you want to word it. For their state, their technology, their job title. Like, this is, this is not reinventing the wheel, but it's, it's having it so clean. And that's the— like, for someone starting off a recruitment business, that's the time to do it.

That's exciting.

You've got, you've got a clean system. You're in charge of what it looks like. You're in charge of— I want everyone's desk to be like this. So it's— if someone leaves, it's, it's plug and play into that desk. Now, when you go and join a large recruitment business, unfortunately, you're— there's legacy people that have been on it, bad skill coding, like managers' numbers are wrong and all this sort of stuff. So having clean data for people to go to is so important. And if we get that right, your average time to do a deal for an experienced consultant, I don't know, like from, from track records, is around 3 to 4 months on a per— like doing a perm deal when you go into a new business. But if we can close that gap it actually ups what the first 12 months look like. So there's an element on me and Mango to get that right, and we take that really, really seriously. And if we don't have it right before, there's— no, we're not ready, we're not ready.

Um, are there any signals on like— so I've got the— you've like mapped the market, even like decision makers, the skill coding piece. Is there anything around signals on like, these are, um, they're hiring, there's been jobs that we brought on that we could have said no to?

And it's not just that, there's so many different things that are involved in it now. Uh, it could be that market is close to that market so they can work together. Like, they, they, they end up working with similar clients, so why not have someone else next to that person to kind of collaborate with and go in with? And the ones that they don't get in, they will get in, and they can kind of work together. Um, it could be there's a massive renewable energy project going on in New South Wales at the moment which requires a lot of construction and development. Like, it is news everywhere. It's government investment going into large-scale renewables, which may seem like all we do, but it is a little pocket of the energy sector And it's being keep aware of those things that are macroeconomics, policies, government initiatives as well. So it goes to that. It also goes to right person, right market. So we interview— I, I think we're probably doing 9 interviews a week at the moment. We're speaking to people in Australia who want to move to Australia, um, people who want to move from another sector into energy, but people who are thinking about our Singapore office. Like, it's just, it's just constant all the time. Um, and with that, because I've had a lot of experience in what some markets— some markets need different personalities. And it sounds really weird me saying that, but no, you either have a job-led market or a candidate-led market, don't you? Like, you have one where you get a job and you can get loads of candidates to it, and if you qualify, that job is done. Or you have a candidate where it's super, super niche it's a very rare skill set, and you make that candidate your job, and you take them out and get interviews. So it's two different ways of looking at it. Now, different people, different personalities lend themselves to different things, um, and usually you can get super organized people, like all the skill coding, like building relationships with candidates, like that side of things. If we get someone like that who's got experience in doing that market, we will pull the trigger on that at the right time. So the first 20, 25 markets we've got are good to go whenever, but it's a lot of it's in the personality and, and the external metrics that we spoke about.

I appreciate sharing that. I think, I think that there's some really good insights there. What, what else would be on the agenda points of a board meeting then? So you've got the people, have we got anyone that's in process? Cash flow.

Cash flow, 100%, is issues. Like, um, there's probably a lot of people watching this going like, oh, it's all right when you've got an endless pot of money. We certainly don't. Um, we, we don't run on fumes, but but we are very serious about when it's coming in. Like, you don't want to be misspending, it's— you're just wasting cash at the end of the day. Um, uh, so we will go over cash flow, what's coming in, what's due to come in, how long are the payment terms on each of those deals, and what's the worst case scenario of it coming in, um, what the commissions are going out and everything like that. All just making sure we're tight on the cash flow side of things. Um, Then we will go— marketing will have their own thing. Yeah, so, um, fortunate enough to have Matt who's got unbelievable experience. And what I used to think marketing was, was you send someone a document and go, can you make this look pretty? And they send it back. Like, this guy's completely changed my view on what marketing is, and he wants to become the link between marketing and sales. So marketing actually helping drive your sales business as well. So he's doing a lot of work on outreach. He's built a phenomenal website, so it's updates on that website, but the website's finished as well. By the way, for anyone looking to start a recruitment company, it's all well and good having it, but you will constantly want to add stuff to it. You'll change stuff, you'll add new markets. So there's a whole marketing part for that. He drives a lot of— you can drive the brand, but you can also drive individuals. And that's how I also think we're slightly different. A lot of the branding that he does, for any marketing person will do, will go out across the whole business, whereas he will specifically go into that consultant understand their markets, talk to them about all their specific companies, trends, policies, do research, documents, salary surveys, and make sure it's going in behind the consultant and they're getting stuff out to their own market. Because Enimix has, I don't know, 3,000, 4,000 followers at the moment, but the consultant has got 12. So pump their market through their own channels, because at the end of the day, they're the ones picking up the phone selling, selling their business. So I think that's how we're slightly different. So there's a big part of marketing that has evolved it. So we've got the finance side, we've got that side, we've got the future hires side, and then we've got the global side. The global side is always talking about what leaders we're earmarking for certain countries. And someone— we may get someone great who goes, you know what, call me when you get to 20 people. We may get someone who goes, I really want it now, but give me 50% of the whole business, or something like that. It's just having those discussions around who's right, who's wrong. Because let's just say we had a mega year this year and next year, and it was absolutely phenomenal and we're ready to go. We don't have the people somewhere else already lined up yet. Sometimes it takes 6 to 12 months to get the right person for that sort of level role. So we are very ahead of that. And metrics is probably the last thing that I come to, and it's probably the first thing I would have said in my old job, like KPIs, what's going into it. And I'm obsessed with the data side. I'm a very data metric person, um, I like to know the ratios of every single thing. But unfortunately, when you start a recruitment business on the new software and it's a new system, they're so warped.

Yeah, you're like building the data.

Yeah, you're a thousand managers to one deal, you know what I mean? It starts— it's like— but we're fortunate enough to, at the moment, to come to a position where they're starting to become tighter and tighter and tighter, um, which is exciting because you can then use those metrics in other countries and things like that, which is which is huge because you can't measure a business off 2 months. The longer your data goes around, the easier it is.

So, so currently, what, what's, what's on your, like, data dashboard that you always have a look at?

Um, same things that I imagine as most people— interviews, live jobs. Um, we do a lot of work around, um, leads with a CV. Um, now you get the word— I think the word spec CV in the market, even with clients, is like you essentially just send a candidate to 1,000 places, or however many places you consider it. But I think— I could be making this up— the word spec is like specific or something like that. I think it's— I think it's supposed to be specific CV. So you're sending a specific CV to a specific thing and making it relevant. So we put, instead of how many CVs you send a week, is what specific CV you're sending to a specific lead or something that's relevant in your space. So they will add the lead find out why it's there and make sure they're targeting that specific company to actually help them with something that is of value. Not, hey, I'm working with a person that may be relevant to you. It's, I know they are. This X person left, this person can add value.

So how many of those?

We put a higher premium on that. Look, I think 15 a week is what we've got at the moment for that. It's 3 specific ones a day. Each one can take half an hour to do. But at the end of the day, if you start knowing your own market well enough, you convert convert half of them into— let's just say you convert 10% of them. Let's say someone has a low week, 10% of them, they convert 10% of those 10 leads into a job. That's 4 jobs a month. Our conversion rate is, um, 2 for 2 jobs, 1 placement. So that's 2 placements. Our average fee is £25 grand, £25 grand. So that's £50 grand a month, that's £600 grand a year. So it's it plays into it. Now, that conversion rate may go up, may go down, but you just got to make sure you keep an eye on those things. So for us, it is really important, um, that you get 50— they do 15 of them, are they going to be able to get in touch with all of them? Probably not. You can't call everyone that you send CVs to, unfortunately. You don't have the number, you can't have the time. So we say, look, if you can get in touch with at least 75% of those people in the next 2 weeks that you send that CV, chances are you're going to be able to convert that So live jobs interviews are always your lifeblood of the business. Like, if that's— that's the same anywhere you go, I imagine. Um, and the final one, which has nothing to do with actual pipeline, is meetings. Like, it's— unfortunately, in the energy sector, you'll get a solar farm in the middle of nowhere, you've got a wind farm in the middle of nowhere, you'll get a client in Queensland. Like, all of our stuff is all over. We do deals in Perth, Canberra, all— you name it. It. It's all over the place. The thing is about Australia is that a lot of people do tend to relocate or move somewhere, or they're on a construction project, they'll finish it and they'll move somewhere else. Um, so, uh, meetings is, is huge. And we will consider something virtual, like as a team, like an actual meeting, like it's still FaceTime that you're starting to really get under the hood of certain things. So, and that drives our everything we spoke about, about getting our message across, about industry events, um, being industry-led training that comes into the business. And you can't get that across from sending a CV or over a phone, like, it's quite hard. So getting in front of these people, it makes it stickier. And then at the end of this year, you can start with all the clients that you've got, you can actually forecast based off your clients as opposed to how many people we've got. We keep talking about headcount and 300K from that person, 400K from that, 500K from that. But if you do have sticky clients that you're really involved with and you're meeting them all the time, you've transacted with them, you can almost go, do you know what, I'm really confident that we do 4 with them, 5 of them, 7 with them, 8 with them. I think Andy was calling it 1,000-day clients or something like that. It's essentially looking at it the same.

Yeah, nice, love it. Really, really good breakdown then. I think anyone that is running a small business, or particularly if you're like a solo founder, I'd really encourage you to have your own like personal board meeting or think about that. I think it's a really good exercise to do those things.

It holds you accountable, and I guarantee you you. You'll do one, absolutely love it, and then you'll be busy the next month and it will just get— it's so easy to kick the can down the road. But you'll thank yourself by going, do you know what, no, I'm not doing that meeting that I was gonna do, or go to that drinks event, or whatever it is. If you hold that in the absolute highest regard, you'll keep on top of stuff and things won't slide. And someone else within the business who's at that level making these decisions will call you out on it and you're held accountable to it. Whereas when you run your own business, it's very easy to be like, I'm in charge.

Yeah, no, 100%.

Yes, that's—

I think it's good insight, so I appreciate breaking that down. So just curious then, it's a couple of, couple of, uh, final bits. Like, at— like, what's the actual absolute core of this is getting the right people. Like you said, you're interviewing 9 people a week on average. Like, just curious then, like, what What is your, like, non-negotiable, like, interview process currently? Because, like, you've got to have that dialed.

Yeah, yeah.

For you to be confident in this.

We're very— I think I've worked at a business that was growing extremely well, had a sound interview process, and I hired lots of people. I can't complain about anything that was there, but I often felt the structure was too too tall. There was too many layers of things, and you were only speaking to the team manager, and then for the final interview, the director asked you a couple of questions, and then you were in. Like, there was nothing else outside of that. Why sales? Why do you want to do this? So with us, we get under the hood of that. We find out why, and it's what you know about this, but like, why do you want to join? What do you not like about your current job? What's your manager like? Do you get on well with them? How— what management techniques lend themselves to you? And you can— some people like to be left alone, some people like to be managed certain ways, and if that's not right for our traits and values now Um, we will sit people in the second stage once we feel like, you know what, they want it for the right reasons, they've got the right experience, they tick all these boxes, let's get them in and give them an open book of Enimix. Let's— which you very, very rarely get. We will go, this is where we want to be, this is our, this is our whole board, this is our marketing officer, this is our finance officer, um, this is our CTO that we have here fractionally, these are the technologies we have in place at the moment, this is how we skill credit candidate, this is what Vincerio looks like. This is how much we want to do each month. This is what a good week looks like from KPIs. Um, this is what countries we want to be in at this period of time. And it's like full business plan. Like, we'll get them in and run through the whole thing, uh, and be like, there is going to be a lot of change here. Day 1 will look completely different to day— uh, month 6. We'll be in a different office. There'll be different people around you. The process that we rolled out on KPIs then could be different then. Um, our branding could look different. Like, there'll be so much, and we need to make sure people are ready for that. Um, and we often say, like, we— like, if there's an issue with— like, I've said, mentioned the sink again, it's my business partner always says it— that, like, if there's something wrong with the sink or there was dishes in the sink, like, and you saw them in the morning, would you go in and clean them? Like, it's— you, you do have to muck in. Like, you could— we can paint this picture of Animix being like this fancy business. It's got all these shiny things at the start and we've got these brilliant leaders, but at the end of the day you want people who muck in. So there are a lot of questions and techniques you can sort of go around to skirt around to get to that.

Um, then, uh, they meet many people. Sorry, do they— how many people do they meet out of interest?

So I'll probably give you an example. Like, we've just closed, um, a person who's one of the 8, um, and he had— I know he had 7 offers in Sydney from our competitors. Um, I'm not gonna say the person is or who the competitors are, um, but very good companies pay a lot more than us, um, like on base and things like that. Very successful recruiter coming over from a different country, and we ran the same process with him at the start, spoke with him, got under the hood of everything, understand his way of working. Is it— was it— is it similar way of working to us? Like, does would he manage well with us? Then did the open book policy, he showed him everything like that. Then afterwards we went, we aren't 50 people where there's a chance you'll get on well with someone. We're 6 right now. So how do you feel about meeting the guys? This is virtually, by the way. He goes out, comes back, and he goes, I want to meet the team. I go, right, set up a call. He's on the call with the rest of the guys. Me and Mango aren't in there. We're like, we're not going to be in there, ask them what you want. I don't care. All at once, all at once, all on one call, like a visual call like that. He's got his notebook out writing all this stuff. He's asking stuff like, if you were going to do a TED Talk on energy, what would you do? Like, I was like, what, what Ned and Mango like? Um, what's the, what's the worst traits that they have?

Yeah, like, be brutally honest.

I was like, mate, you go in there and ask somebody. I'm not behind the TV screen with a gun, like, holding up signs.

I love that.

But I was like, if, if they're honest and say what they want, we're not going to have someone who starts in 6 months and goes, hang on, like, that's not what— that's not the picture I was painting before I joined. Um, and the offers that he had base-wise, salary-wise, were more like bigger companies, global companies, good, good brands, like well-known. And he took us because of the interview process. Like, that's what he said. At the end of it. And I was like, what do you mean? He was like, open book, there was nothing hidden. Every part of the energy— I asked all your consultants about the energy sector, they knew everything about everyone's market, what I was going to do, why it's exciting. And again, like, it's easy to tee that up, but I'm speaking from, on, like, honest truth here. I just went, ask them what you want. And me and Mango just walked out. And then within an hour afterwards, he turned down everything after That's a great example. Um, but, uh, can we do that when we're 100 people? I don't know. I'd love to think— I'd love to think. And like, it is so hard to close someone in this market at the moment. Um, but if you— I think if you fully believe in what you want to do, it comes through, you know, from the management, the leaders.

And also being like really— like, not a lot of people interview recruitment companies and they won't— they won't be able to really clearly articulate where they're going, where they want to So I really like that approach to transparency. So okay, just out of interest and curious, what, what are the things that you maybe spend quite a lot of time thinking about as to like why you may not achieve your goals? Like, what are some of the things that— we've spoken a lot about where you want to get to. If we're being honest here, like, what are the things that you feel like could be the hurdles or the things you've got to be very mindful of that could hold you back from getting you know, you to where you want to get to. Might bring us back to thousands of things. So like, what's really top of mind? Because like, there's going to be things that are gonna be challenging here, but for you right now in this seat, what's top of mind for you? Like, what are the things?

There's stuff out of your control but it still gets you. Like, you, you can, you can be one of those motivational speakers again. Oh, it's out of your control, it's out of control, but it will get to you. Like, another COVID, like, that, that's an absolute nightmare. Like, um, a government come in and they go, scrap all renewables, like little things like that actually do eat away at you that unfortunately are out of your control. But that's, that's good. Like, I, I don't need to worry about that. Other parts are, at my old business, we had a really good management structure. Like, I had 3 really great managers, right? Ryan Manger is obviously with me now. Um, and having a flat structure, you get to 20, 25 people, you're at a point where you're— are you stressing too much of your time across different things? Um, do you have generals and leaders in each position that can actually help you with that on a day-to-day thing? That you can have— you can want the flat structure so you've got innovation, you've got collaboration happening, more ideas being shown, sharing around, people's voices are heard, but at some stage there will need to be another level there. Um, and for me, that's the, um, it's the scary part, by going, right, who is going to be those people? Who wants, who wants that job? Um, there's somebody who works for us now, um, Tyler, who, one of the best recruiters I've ever worked with, unbelievable network, and she went down the team lead route. Um, and we've hired her just as a, as a sales lead. Like, she doesn't do any management anymore, and she absolutely loves it. She's full of confidence. She loves, she loves what she does now. But not— it doesn't work out for everyone. So you've— I think we've got to be really careful about who we get into those positions and roadmap, because the stress across not just Ryan or myself or managing all those specific people is— it starts to creep into the business. You can't— you've got less time for different people. So you need people who are just like yourself, who believe in the business, want to go on that journey. And look, we've set aside a lot of large portion of the business for employee share ownership. And those people who want those jobs which add a higher value to the business, that's, that's what they're there for. Um, they're in our back pocket for that sort of thing, which is great. Um, but for me, that's, that's probably—

that makes sense. Probably one of the other—

and the other, and the, the other thing is I'm here on the ground. I can see the guys day in, day out. Um, I've never run a global business. Fortunately, my investor has. He's been in 3, 4 different countries, so he knows how to deal with different personalities, different cultures, different ways of working, all that sort of thing. And you can want to take a blueprint around the world, but will that DNA, will that— will those KPIs, will that way of working be right for that country? Um, and are they actually putting practice over there on the other side of the world whilst I'm asleep? Is it all going on? So for me, that does scare me a little bit, um, but it's good, it's exciting. Like, at the end of the day, you've got to let people go in and take the blueprint. They may do it 10 times better than what you're doing in a different country as well. So for me, those are probably the two key areas that do not necessarily keep me up at night, but things are still food for thought. Yeah, I appreciate it.

Right, okay. And then, like, final thing then, like, how are you— how are you personally finding this journey? Like, because it is different.

Yeah, yeah.

Like you said, you have— like, I think so. For me, with the position that you're in right now, I mean, it will be the case as you are on this journey consistently, but I'm just a big believer that you've really got to be— for me, like, performing— if you're performing outside of work, then you've got a really good chance performing in work. And I think you're going for this transition right now where it's exciting, the adrenaline is probably high, and there will be a period— maybe you've run into it a bit now— where it's right, okay, yeah, so now I just need to show up, do the job every day, and that's what the job is. There's— you'll still have the excitement, but it's like, right, I just got to keep cracking on and doing it. How are you finding it? You might be finding it hard to switch off, I don't know. Like, how are you personally finding— because it is different.

I, I've, I've never switched off. It is, it's hard. I wish, like, I could sit here and say I love it, I love it, I love it. I wish I could. Like, it's actually— my partner would be like, I just wish you could switch off at certain points. And like, if you judge it by my rounds of golf that I play a year, it just gets less and less and less, um, which is— and I love golf, um, but, uh, I'm obsessed with it. I'm absolutely obsessed with it. I'm obsessed with making people better. I absolutely love making— like, that's what I get joy out of, like, getting people to the next stage of their thing. But, um, we look at it in phases. We were in phase 1 getting up, getting the systems process, getting the first group of people. Phase 2 is building on these people, getting them billions and getting— adding some real talent to that. So if you look at it in different phases, it's like the next step of our journey, the next step of our journey. It doesn't feel like Groundhog Day. It's always like, like, you can, you can look at the 105 countries and be like, right, we're now at 9, 91 to go, or 4 countries left. But, um, you break it down in phases or quarters or however people like to look at it, you're— there's always something for what's next. And you, you go, look, we just missed phase 1 by 50K and one person. Do you know what, let's reset. Let's— these are our new goals for phase 2. And we always knew there was phase 1, phase 2, phase 3, phase 4. Um, but, uh, yeah, getting them right. Now, I, outside of golf, I don't really have too many hobbies outside of work. And I look at Ryan, who's a managing director, he goes to the gym, he runs triathlons, he does all this stuff. He's got, he's got a kid, he's got another kid on the way. Um, and I can't squeeze another minute into the day to do anything else. I don't know how he does it, but But, um, uh, yeah, I'm just quite lucky that you're on the journey. I, I like it. I like being in the trenches of it. Like, your day is different every, every single week. Um, everyone knows in recruitment there's more bad days than good days anyway. Um, but, uh, yeah, if you can make everything as exciting as possible and know there's another stage each time, it's less Groundhog Day anyway. But, uh, yeah, I'm sure my miss is gonna be watching this today.

Yeah, you'll have that to— you'll have that to figure out. Yeah, it is, but it is part of the journey. Yeah, like you just gotta get good at communication. And it's— yeah, I struggle, really struggle with that at the beginning of my sort of business owner journey because you sort of just expect them to understand and these things. But you've got to get better at communicating, 100%, because you don't want all that— all those other things to sort of deteriorate and not be good, and all your eggs are in the business basket, 100%. Um, so, but yeah, I wanted to ask that. So it's cool, like that, that is what I do really like about well, definitely recruitment, but also the entrepreneurial journey. Like, you learn so much about yourself and you're like always learning. But I really like that breaking it down into stages. Um, I think that's a cool perspective.

Like, you— when— it's probably good for your viewers. I don't know if you ever mentioned those numbers, but it was like you've done your thousand— 6,000 podcasts.

Yeah, like 600, 600 episodes.

Like, it's That's unreal. It's almost like a pinch myself moment. And like, I think if you look at— I don't know, is this the first time you've been towards to do these, these sort of things? That's just like another phase. I'm sure you'll have— yeah, another phase.

No, you are right. Yeah, it's a really good perspective.

Like what you, um, yeah. And just, just on what you did yesterday, unbelievable event.

Is that—

was that being filmed and— yeah, showing somewhere else? Yeah, no, that was class. Like, my guys came back from that, absolutely loved it.

Yeah.

Um, but, uh, Yeah, it's just, it's just another phase. Another, like you were saying, you've done one a week every week.

Yeah.

And is it best recruitment? And it's the same, same, you almost doing the same things, but it sounds like you absolutely love it anyway. Yeah.

So look, uh, really exciting. Like, I think really kudos to you. You've, you've, you've got big goals, big ambitions. I think we, we can all see that. So I think it's going to be really exciting to see where you end up. I will definitely be looking from afar. Like, I think what I've learned here is like, you're— I love what you said earlier around and look guys, we're going to make mistakes, we're not going to get it always right. And I think that's such a good mentality to approach, like that's just part of the process. But you've really worked hard and like, this is where we're going to end up, these are our intentions, these are our big goals. So we love that. So, uh, yeah, it's going to be really cool to see from afar how you guys get on. And, um, really appreciate you coming on, uh, on this, on the show and sharing everything you've learned so far.

Now right back at you. Enjoy your last, uh, last day or two in Sydney anyway.