Matt Collingwood - Headcount is vanity and your bottomline is sanity.

Where I always like to start is, how did Matt Collingwood get into the, the world of recruitment? Talk to me about that.

Okay, I would love to have an exciting story about it. Yeah, but I think like most people, I stumbled into it. Okay, so I, I left school at 18, college at 18. Okay, uh, with A-levels. And I think it was a time, and coming from a family that, um, university was something doctors and engineers would do. Um, so me and a pal, when I was 18, launched our own little business. Really? Yeah. So we were working at a garden centre. It doesn't sound particularly exciting, but we used to get like wealthy families that would come in and they'd buy these fish tanks and ponds. And being entrepreneurial 18-year-olds, me and my pal would go to, go to the houses and install fish tanks and we'd do maintenance contracts. So a little bit like contract recruitment today with that recurring revenue. But I got to about kind of 20, 21, thought this isn't a career that I want forever. I wanted to earn kind of big bucks and registered with a recruitment agency, a guy called Gavin Chalmers. Interesting, 22 years on, I'm still in contact with the guy.

Really?

Yeah, he's brilliant. So I went along to, to an interview with a business called Computer People, market leaders back, back in the day, just simply for interview practice. And probably about half an hour, decided that recruitment was a career that I definitely want to go down.

Really?

Yeah, I was just blown away. I love the idea of— unlike selling a product where the, the, the, the customer makes a decision and the product's never going to be different— I love the idea of recruitment where two different minds perhaps sometimes on completely different page, you got to convince these guys where they're both right for each other.

So just, just a quick one before we go into the whole recruitment piece. I'd love to just like, how, how easy was it? Like, what, what I'm interested in is when you decided to start that business when he was 18, like, how many people around you was starting businesses? You know what I mean? Because I think into that, like, me growing up, it's become cooler to become an entrepreneur and these types of things. And obviously the people that you have access to and how well we're connected now, like, I'll just— I was just curious about that. Just made me a bit curious that, like, how— because how much information do you have access to to try and make that a success? You know what I mean?

We totally winged it.

That's what I mean.

We hadn't got a clue what we're doing. I mean, what we, we knew, we knew having worked in this garden center for years, we knew all about looking after the fish and getting the nitrate balances right and the pH, all the rest of it. But running a business, we hadn't got a clue. We just happened to be pretty good at what we did and the business just came in. But whereas a lot of my pals were either working in a kind of production line, the Land Rover, massive employer locally, or, uh, had gone off to university, me and my my pal were earning really good bucks, what seemed like good money back then, being our own bosses. And we were the ones that were rocking up at the bars head to toe in Versace, which was the brand back then. And I went and bought a Porsche 924 Turbo for my 19th birthday. So really, it was a bit of an older car, but it didn't cost me that much at the time. It was a bit of status thing then.

Yeah, I mean, it's again totally different then when, like, the, the, um, If I— so back then, I'm assuming, from what I understand, if you had that type of car or a decent car, like you had— there's no like getting out on finance or leasing it, I'm assuming, back then?

Well, we bought it cash.

That's what I mean. So typically, if— again, it was, it was a status thing that if you have— if you had a decent car, that typically meant, oh, Matt's doing all right. Yeah. Whereas now, if you want to spend £400 a month of your salary on getting the latest car, you can do that. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, which is interesting. But, um, just— I was just interested in that. So do you think that— so where did that come from, that entrepreneurial spirit? Was it— did that— was that just natural to go into that? Because I'm sure that's helped you throughout your career in recruitment, and obviously now, now starting your own recruitment, having your own recruitment business as well.

I don't, I don't necessarily come from a family where anyone's run their own businesses or anything like that. They've all had good long-term jobs, but always growing up I aspired to, to do well. I always wanted to travel, um, one of the big houses. I know there's quite a lot of material things, but the things that in order to achieve, I either needed to work hard or be creative in terms of what I, what I do. And my aspirations for years were to, to set up and run my own business. Um, I was probably a little bit late in setting up, so Probably still got a little bit of catching up to do.

Okay. So joined, um, so they are, they were part of Adecco at that point or how did that work?

No. So we going back. So I joined Computer People in 1997.

Okay.

Um, and they were bought by Adecco in '99 who were, yeah, probably Adecco, one of the largest recruiting businesses in the world. So a lot of their growth over the years has typically been done through acquisition.

Through acquisitions. Okay. And what— and then from what market did you go into? Have you always been in the same similar sort of market where you are now, or—

Always it, really, always it. So I've kind of flirted over the years with looking at other markets, but I know it really well. If there comes a day where VQ have got like a 90% share of it recruitment in the UK, then it'd be time to look at someone else. But, you know, we've got 0.01 or whatever it is. So I just think we can boss it incredibly well for looking at the market. The beauty of it is We're only becoming more and more IT savvy. We're driven more by apps on mobile phones. I can't imagine anytime soon that IT is going to be slowing down or be a datey thing.

Okay. And then just to, um, I'm really keen to get on to this sort of journey and the things that you've learned, um, having your own recruitment business. But so you worked for, for that business for 17 years. I saw on your LinkedIn.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

And what, what was, just help frame out for people listening, was it the typical route of joining as a consultant then you become a manager at some point, then you become a director, or was that the, the route that you followed, or what was the—

Pretty much, pretty much. So I started as, um, I started as a resourcer. Okay. I, I joined, um, I was hired by a guy called Adam Fletcher.

Okay.

You might know the name, um, he's in the M&A space. He just— his career was just transitioning through from being in sales through to management role. So it's the perfect opportunity for me to start as a resource under a guy that was fast-tracking his career, clearly a very good recruiter at the time, and he was going off the tool. So I had the opportunity to resource into some, some great accounts. And I kind of look back at that first year of, of resourcing, having a, working good quality accounts and, you know, a strong leader really enabled me, I think enabled me to really fast-track my career, really get on the tools very quickly, lots of exposure to different types of tech and you know, somebody was well respected. So I was able to— I was taken out a lot to client meetings and got a lot of face time.

So was he a bit of quite a good mentor to you then early on?

Obviously you might hear this. So yeah, really good, really good starting out. A tyrant sometimes. Really, really high standards, a kind of management style that might not exist these days. Yeah, might not be as accepted. But, you know, kind of back in the day it was great and it certainly worked for me.

And was it easy for you at that point? Was you really— was the mindset towards that just to be a sponge and really soak up everything that's going around? Yeah, because not everyone— that's not easy to do all the time, is it?

No. So I, um, and more and more, uh, recruiters coming into the market, I'll talk to them and often they want to do it their way.

Yeah.

Um, there's even some, some that think they know better, which is fine. Um, I kind of look back at when I started my career and I looked around the office at those that were doing well. You could see from the boards who was performing, and I would listen to what they were doing well. I'd listen to styles, I'd go and ask them questions, I'd ask specifically for training. So I think a sponge would be a great analogy for that. And I've got to be honest, throughout my career, and with 20— I'm 22 years into the industry now, I've always surrounded myself with people that I can learn from.

It's amazing. And you've consciously done that?

Totally.

Yeah, absolutely. It's such good advice because it's one of the most common things that I get to ask people that come on the show is 'Hey Hishem, I've hit a bit of a plateau,' or 'I'm at the £150K mark, I want to get to the— break the £200K mark,' 'I'm at £250K mark, I want to break the £300K mark,' etc. And a lot of the time the advice does come down to that, is like, okay, well firstly, who within your business is doing more than you are that you can learn from? And again, are you being proactive and saying, 'Look, Matt, like, I'm really impressed with what you're doing,' or whatever, like, 'How are you doing that?' And that should be proactive within your business. It's sound advice, isn't it? But it's quite easily not done.

Totally. I think the question I'd ask is, anyone who's sitting in the office, who do they look up to and respect in that office? Who are they learning from? And if the answer is no one, then they need to find someone. Now, that individual could be externally to the business, or if they're just not getting it at all, the only way they're going to advance is to go externally.

Yeah. Okay. What I'd love to just for you to share, because we talked— spoke about it very briefly, and we've got the, uh, very retro kit behind us. For those that can't see us, say What, how old, what year is that?

That, so this is a Macintosh SE/30 from 1989.

1989.

Yeah.

And that's a Motorola.

Motorola, yeah. Brick phone, I think.

Brick phone, yeah. So what I would love just to share, because if I think of the people that I've had on this podcast over the last 10, 15 episodes, um, probably definitely haven't been in the game as long as you have. So I'd love, like, what was recruitment like when in those sort of first 1997 to 2000 or whatever, what was that shot? Because you're saying you was faxing CVs and all these types of things, and like, that is just mental to me. And sort of the experience I had, you know what I mean? What was it actually like back then?

And yeah, it was, um, it's obviously a very different world. Um, I kind of got in just the right time because I think it was over a 12-month period where the industry took a massive change. And, you know, obviously it's continued to change. Since that time, but we had no email, we had no website in '97. So if a candidate wanted to send their CV in, it's either done by post, which would take 2 or 3 days to come in. You'd have to persuade them to come in and drop it in face to face or they'd fax it in. I don't know if you remember what quality of faxes looked like back in the day, but they were dreadful. I mean, sometimes you couldn't even read the text when they come in the fax. And obviously the way you get them in front of your customer was to fax them again. And after something's been faxed, a few times, it starts to lose a bit of the quality. Very few people had mobile phones. The way we'd reach candidates was, um, pagers was one way. Um, we would, uh, we'd often call people at their home numbers.

Really?

They didn't have mobiles. We'd expect the partner to answer it. You'd hope and pray the partner would answer the phone. Um, and let's say for example it was the wife that answered. You'd be telling her what a great job we had for her fella and be spending more time with the kids, earning a lot more money. And then the first thing she'd make him do when he got home was to call up the recruitment agency. Yeah, because we were reliant on those guys calling us back. And obviously we don't live in that— we didn't live in that kind of mobile, um, world that we do today. We'd be in the office most evenings till 8 o'clock waiting for the phone to ring.

Yeah.

And for candidates to call us.

So in your time in recruitment then Talking about that, what was the biggest change, would you say? Like, what had the big— obviously I know it's always changing, these types of things, but you talking about it there then, what had the— was the internet the biggest— like, what had the biggest impact on the change of the market and how you approach things?

There's a few things that have changed, and I think it's changing for the better and for the worse at the same time. So if we take the internet, we take email. Yeah, email's fantastic. Candidate can get me their CV in a matter of seconds. Like they're on a client's desktop in seconds. So that's sped the whole process up, which is great, you know, time kills deals and all the rest of it. But I think to the detriment of actually picking up the phone. So again, too many recruiters these days rely very heavily on emails, LinkedIn messages, all the rest of it. I'm a massive advocate of picking up the phone and calling your customers. And like I say, back in the day, if we had a really good CV, we'd jump in the car and drive and see the client. Grab the client, say these are the CV, these are the candidates that you need to interview. Um, and I just think that, that technology's helped us massively, but to the detriment of sometimes that personal touch.

I think, I think for me it's— so I'm, I'm, I would like live and breathe on LinkedIn, and I, I now help recruiters get more out of LinkedIn. Um, and for me it has to be both. For me, like it just has to be both. And that's something that's really big for me. And I think now it's even got that far that what you're just talking about there, where I think for me, I think the people that can be really proactive and are great at building relationships on the phone and these types of things are now gonna have even more of a competitive advantage. It's all gonna go back on itself, if you get what I mean, because there's so many people out there that do just hide behind emails and just send loads of messages each day, et cetera, et cetera, which means there's probably less people now actually being really proactive on the phone and building those relationships that they need to. So I think there's going to be a real— there's such a good opportunity for people if they can get the online piece right and then that drives sales conversations, then great. But also if you're someone that is, like you were saying there, pick up the phone, be proactive, you can still— that's still really fruitful work. Do you know what I mean? I think—

If somebody like me that's been in the game for 22 years, which was— know, coming a time where there was no social media, yeah, no emails, and I can adopt and work to that standard, then, you know, I'd like to think that those coming into it or have perhaps only even known that world can pick the phone a little bit more. Yeah, no, go out and see more of their customers and develop those personal relationships on top of, top of social media.

So have you— so you did, you did mention, so when you got into this world of recruitment, did you always— did you then really feel like that this was going to be the vehicle for you to start your own business?

I know obviously you previously started your own business and bought nice cars and all that, but I kind of always said that, you know, I spent 17 years with one business, which is a hell of a long time. What they're really good at is getting the golden handcuffs on you, you know. Once, you know, um, it was difficult to, to, to get away from that. But I'd always said that if I was going to leave, it was to either set up on my own or to move out the industry completely and do something else. Yeah, I never found something else that really got my interest as much as what recruitment did. And without me saying in an arrogant way, something I did and did very well.

Exactly.

So why not stick at it? Um, it was just— it come at the right time 5 years ago, launching VQ. Not only in the financial position but also, you know, emotionally with it. And the only— I certainly wouldn't call it regret. Regret— they're probably the only thing I wish I'd have done is probably just done it 5 years earlier, really, because I was ready to. Yeah, a little bit of risk. I know I'm kind of— one of the things I do with a business coach is look at where my strengths and areas of improvement are. And the one thing that, you know, some might say would have held me back is just being risk-averse.

Really?

So yeah. So I'm kind of aware of that now. And in some occasions it can be a great help. In others it has a detrimental effect. So I'm kind of getting that balance right.

Because one thing I just wanted to ask, I know you mentioned it there, that they Well, yeah, you said that the golden handcuffs there, but what do you think they did really well? Because how many people do you see now that have, have worked for one business in recruitment for 17 years? Do you know what I mean? So I guess, how, how do you think they— what, what do you think they did really well, which we, which probably businesses or people can think of that they can use themselves to, to retain people in their business? You know what I mean? What do you think are some of the things that they did really well to, to keep Matt in that business?

I don't know whether it was the business that kept me or I kept the business.

Really? Yeah.

So I mean, don't get me wrong, great company to work for.

Sure, sure.

You know, great career, um, company's biggest biller in its history. You know, they, they kind of, you know, there was a time, that sort of time where I get wheeled out to, to meet a lot of the trainees as the example of, of what can be done. But, you know, I kind of think that, um, was it necessarily the business that kept me there? I It was me kept myself there with a high salary and the thought of, you know, I kind of started buying properties and it's a thought of being able to service the loans on those. And yes, you know, it's a few holidays a year and the nice cars and a certain lifestyle and looking after family or whatever. And it was just being able to step away from that.

That makes sense. Obviously, very quickly the responsibilities can stack up, can't they, compared to 5 years ago what you had to think about what you had to pay, who you had to support, etc. That can quickly change, can't it?

Yeah.

So you mentioned that I was, um, so you was, you was one of the higher performers in that, that group, or that, that—

yeah. So I, I was, um, I was Computer People's biggest biller in its history. So I did £1.45 million in my best year.

Whoa.

GP.

That's meant—

which is great. Yeah, it was good.

Is that perm or contract?

That's contract.

Okay.

So I, there are ex— I hear some examples of guys at S3 that have done kind of similar sort of figures and stuff. But, uh, you know, I, I, I think a good recruit for me can do about half a million quid, £700,000 something like that in today's market.

A good contract biller. And so is that, is that your bread and butter contract rather than—

Yeah, so we're, we're 90% as a— we're 90% GP as a business.

Okay.

We didn't set out to do that, by the way. It's just that I think we do. So my co-director, a guy called Mike, we're, we're contract together. He's been doing it now for what, 14 years? So I think if you set up a business with some guys that are really good at contract, then you naturally got a good contract business.

Just on that point, that's big, mate.

Thank you.

So that, I mean, that, that's a great achievement. And what year was that in? Rough?

Uh, 2003.

Okay. Just, I'm sure there's loads that went into it, and, and then we'll sort of dive into the sort of VQ German, these things. But I have, I have to ask you, like, what, how, let's break that down a bit. Like, what, that year I'm sure there's a lot of things that contributed to it, but how the hell did you get to that point? And what are some of the key things that you think really enabled you to achieve that? Because that's— I mean, there's not gonna be many people doing that now, as you said. And I think there's definitely going to be some key learnings there that probably become habitual to you. But what were some of the key things you think that enabled you to do that?

Okay, so, um, I'd always— I'd always built relatively well. So as a contract builder, I'd always do between like between 400 and 600 grand a year. Which was good. And it's gonna sound a bit random, but I remember sitting down with my director at the time, a guy called Nick, and saying to him, I really want to build big. That was the phrase that come out.

I wanted to build big.

And his response back was, okay, so you need a big contract book. I was like, yes. And it sounds the most simple conversation at the time, but he said, who has the most contractors? And I said, well, it would be the likes of HP, EDS, Geotronics at the time, which was the big kind of high-volume infrastructure guys. Firms were doing lots of infrastructure refreshes. There was a smooth beginning for companies to move to the cloud, etc., more virtual environment. As simple as it sounds, it was just targeting those sorts of businesses. And what I did was mapped out who the key companies were, then mapped out who the head of professional services were within those companies, and started reaching out to them. The model was pretty simple. What I'd have is teams of server network cloud guys where there was a project manager, there was architects in there, there was the engineers. And pretty much as one project was scaling down with one business, I'd literally pick up a whole team and drop them into another client. So it was a ready-made team. The, the individuals knew each other. It was a great sell that no other recruiter is doing when they're talking about just simply going in with ones and twos.

Portuguese.

Yeah. Yeah. So that was the kind of solution. It was identifying the customers with the volume and actually having quite— and it was a USP back then. There was no one else that was offering the kind of big product, big project teams like that. Um, I had a plan internally which was to build my own infrastructure of people that could support me, and that was always done through resources. So whereas I do most of the client-facing stuff, um, I had resources that would do a lot of the, the candidate engagement. Yeah, which is great, which worked really well. So 2, but I usually have between about 2 and 4, 2 and 4 resources. And then as they do well on resourcing, I was able to move those through to consultancy roles as well. So give them really great footing, just like I shared with you the opportunity I had to be a resourcer. Yeah, these guys had exactly the same. And I said the only other thing, and it might be a bit of a boring response to you, I've always had a high work ethic.

Yeah.

So, you know, I was always— really important to point out though, it Certainly, you know, I think a lot of people want to succeed and they want to do the right things, but, you know, the nature of having to get high results sometimes results in high work ethic in order to do that. So I, you know, I'd work— often work Saturdays and Sundays, um, and weekends. In fact, one of the accounts I've been chipping away at for about 2 years, yeah, um, I got a call about 4:30 on a Friday evening from him to say that um, his customer ABN Amro wanted 22 desktop guys just to do a patchwork down at Bishopsgate. And, um, I said— he said he was going to speak to some agents. Just leave it with me, I absolutely commit that these guys will be there on Monday morning when he needed them. I worked my whole weekend, and he phoned me up on a Monday morning and he said, Matt, I asked for 22 engineers and I thought it's been disaster, none of them turn up. He said, 24 of them have turned up. And basically what I've done is I've factored in 2 more. I thought 2 guys are going to drop out. And he said, I didn't think you'd be able to get more than 22, but we could do with some more. But the message there was, it was just, it was around work, grafting that whole weekend. And this project that these guys were doing, this patchwork, was just one week. We made very, very little money. But what it did was it sent the right message out to the customer that we were committed and were able to deliver. And we went from a business that gave us no work at all to one that then worked with us on an exclusive basis.

Yeah. So I think— and do you think that sort of— do you think that still stands now? And what I mean by that, you mentioned there before you went into it, a good contract biller can make 500, 700K or above that. Like, do you think that advice or that approach would still stand now in terms of actually take a step back from it and look at the accounts that you do have. Who in your market are the big players and can offer that, that big project work? Do you get what I mean? Do you think that's still sound advice?

I can— it completely is. I mean, the message is, even before hitting the big businesses, is just to have a plan. So I think the market's changed a little bit from the early 2000s.

Sure.

That a lot of those companies now do single-digit margins, whereas mine started with a 2 back then, and a lot of them had done internal recruitment. But I think what sits before that is just to have a plan.

Have a plan.

And that plan could be, uh, and this is where the, the market is today and it's not going to change, is just go specialist. So go an inch wide and a mile deep into a specialization. So find something that's niche and just boss that, boss that market. Know all your contractors within that space, meet with them, talk to them on a regular basis. They They'll tell you who's moving and clients that have got projects within that space. And just stay loyal to that market and it'll come.

Interesting. So how many people did you start VQ with?

So there was 5 of us on day 1.

Yeah.

We have, we've grown, there's 20 of us now.

20 of you now, yeah.

Yeah. I, um, I had this conversation quite recently where a lot of recruitment owners I talk to, the— when you— they talk about their business, the first thing they talk about is the size of their business. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think headcount for me is vanity, um, whereas, you know, the bottom line is, is sanity. So from the, the 20 people we've got in the business at the moment, we've got an average £200K per year net fee income.

Yeah.

Um, in 5 years of trading, we've only lost one person, we only had one person leave EQ and go and work for the competition.

Okay, interesting.

So we're able to hold and, you know, these people want to work for us, so we must be doing something right. But we've got no, we haven't got aspirations to be a 50, 100 FTE business. For us, it's just about finding the right people and having those continue working for us.

No, I think that's a really valid point. I think in a world of obviously the type of industry is and what it's renowned for, the money you can make and the nice things you can buy and stuff. I think what you're putting out there is, okay, headcount is a number that we should be looking at. However, it shouldn't be the core metric that we should be thinking about. It's the things that you just highlighted there, the net fee income, how many people have you retained, and these types of things. And I think that that should be what people should be thinking about, do you get what I mean? Rather than let's get 5 more people in, get them billing 100K, that's 500K. Onto the business, you know what I mean? Or we might lose 2 people, so then we need that, that type of approach. That's really interesting. So have you always— when you, when you started the business then, um, how, how was it? Did you have to deal with any like covenants or anything like that, or did you wait a decent amount of period before you could crack on with that? Like, was there any challenges with that, with that, or was it okay? Yeah, can you not talk about that?

Yeah, so it's probably not best that I go into too much detail. So the firm that I worked for weren't particularly happy.

Okay, fair enough.

Although, just to be clear, I did— I had done nothing wrong.

Yeah, yeah.

So there was no claim, no case or anything like that.

Did you have a business plan?

I had a business plan.

And all of you guys had that, or is it more your doing with that, or—

So I was responsible for a lot more of the strategy, and the guys and I helped implement that strategy.

Okay, and then, so I guess you said there that you never had the aspirations to be big, big, a big, big, big agency. Has that always remained then, or have you sort of had to— has that changed?

The massive change. So if you've asked me about a year and a half ago, um, where do I want to be, I'd have said 50, 50 people, 60 people, all the rest of it, just purely around numbers. The early part of last year, we went on a big campaign, hire a lot of people in And we got up to 28 people.

Okay.

And obviously, as I say, we're down to 20. So some didn't work out. I see that as a personal failure. So the individuals didn't necessarily deliver to the extent that the business needed to, and they're no longer with us. But, you know, any people don't work out, it's my fault because I choose to hire those people. I'm responsible for training them up. It's very easy. I hear so many managers, you stay staff don't work out to say, well, that person was an idiot or something like that.

I was going to say that. Have you always had that mindset?

100%. 100%.

It was—

I remember back in the day, big corporate world, board meetings, they go around the room and everyone would be slating their staff, point fingers. Yeah, totally. And it's like, well, the only idiot is the person who hires them and keeps them.

So I think that's such good advice to really live and breathe that if you have your own recruitment business. Like, anyone that you hire that doesn't work out, it's your fault. No one else's. I think that's really it. So what did you learn through that period then, in terms of— in terms of you, as you said, you wanted 50, 60 heads, got to 28, now it's 20. What were the key learnings? Because there'll be a lot of people listening that want to start their recruitment business, or I've started it and they're thinking, I want to grow this, I want to get it to 15, 20, 30 heads, or whatever. What were some of the key learnings?

I think there was a— there was a lot of learning, learning points out of that, to be honest with you. I think the key bit too is just hire the right people. Slow to hire, quick to fire. It's a, it's a well-used phrase, but it's, it should, it should be the standard for most businesses. So one of the things we implemented over the last 12 months is we now do psychometric testing for all our recruiters that come into the business, and it is fantastic. What this product does is the candidate, one of our, you know, potential recruiters for us, sits down and completes this assessment. He'll take about 45 minutes, an hour, but he feeds back on what their strengths and area of improvement is. Now, it doesn't tell you whether you should go and hire this person, of course, but what it will do is it will— where the areas of improvement are, it provides some questions to ask. Um, and they're, you know, they're really good open-based, open questions. And when I've used those questions, it's gone one of two ways. If the candidate has been able to explain those very well and they've been given a chance and those people have come good, or you can see them really struggling with the answers. And it's at that point, it's the answer to the questions, uh, made my mind up in terms of what our decision-making process is about moving forward.

That's really interesting. And have you done that psychometric test on the people in your business now?

We have actually, yeah.

You have?

I've done it on myself as well, which is great.

Yeah, obviously that's a good, good exercise though, because then that gives you some real data. Or was there any common themes that you noticed?

It's, it's, it's totally different.

Really?

People? Yeah, it is completely different because there's certain strengths and weaknesses that will identify. Um, but there isn't, there isn't, there isn't a standard blueprint.

Yeah, because I think I can't— I think this came up once before, and when they did it on the people in their business, there was like one or two sort of things that were quite common that came out of it. So then that obviously, it's a, it gives you— actually gives you some real data that actually all these people in our business, um, are hitting the mark around this. That's probably something that we should be looking out for. Yeah, in new hires. Um, okay, that's interesting. So I guess that's, that's an interesting sort of failure that you've learned through, and then that's made you sort of reflect on, well, actually, what are our goals here? And I guess, as you, as you were saying before, it's enabled you to actually be in a position where you're actually getting more out of the people in your four walls and in your business, rather than thinking about how many more people can we add to the headcount. Do you know what I mean?

Totally.

So what are some of the things that you've done to get more out of your people? Has it been very much the learning, the learning and development piece and investing heavily in that? Or how have you gone about maximizing the actual people within your business? Do you get what I mean?

Yeah, I think, you know, if I look back at my career, I didn't wake up in the morning and think, I've got to make my employer a lot of money. Never ran that. Yeah, I don't think anyone does. Yeah. So it's— I've always had a plan of something I want to achieve in my life. There's a reason, there's something thing that's driving me to get out of bed, whether I'm working for someone or now whilst I'm working for myself. And one of the things I've always done with the guys is just understand what makes them tick, what gets them out of bed. So it could be one of the guys is getting married end of December this year, and one of the key things for him is when he joined, he had an idea of what wedding A would look like. And actually, if he had— if he achieved certain goals and certain, you know, his kind of growth plans, what wedding B would look like. Yeah, he's well on track to have the dream wedding, which is great. It's kind of just focusing in. So it's not coming into work to hit a target or to make the employer happy, but actually, what are they coming to? Yeah, totally.

And how do you— how can people start if they don't know that? So if Matt's in my team right now and I don't know what makes him tick, How can I start approaching that conversation? Do you get what I mean?

You just need to see— they probably just need to get close to their people. So whether it can be done through a regular review or just sitting your staff down over a beer and understanding what kind of makes them tick. But I think any manager who's focused on purely what the business wants and what the business needs to get is coming from completely the wrong angle.

Yeah.

Look at what, you know, look at what what the staff member wants, what does the colleague want to get out of it.

I think it's come up a few times, this, because I think, look, you can drill that person with, you need to be doing this amount of activities to get this, da da da. But it's come up a few times where actually, once you know when this certain person really wants to have a wedding of his dreams and these types of things, when things get tough and you're having conversations on like, what can we do to improve in these types of things, it's something that you can use to motivate these people. Yeah, I mean, so it's like, you know, you know, we had that conversation. You told me that you want to achieve this wedding or you want to get that. How are we going to do that? Or what do you get? What I mean, it's also something that you can also— from what people have said and shared, that it's also really useful to understand how to motivate their team as well. That's bigger than, look, we agreed that these were the KPIs and you haven't hit them. Do you know what I mean? It's different.

We don't do KPIs, you know, we don't even do targets.

Target. So that's like overall annual?

Yeah. So the business has a target.

Yeah.

But in terms of, um, the guys aren't given a target at all. So really the way we base everything around a pledge. So I, you know, for me, for me, KPIs are amazing. I absolutely love KPI, but it's probably the worst management style to manage by KPI alone.

Okay.

Because what managers tend to do is they'll come in and beat people around the head for not doing something.

Yeah.

So what we have is we have a huddle every morning. So the team sit down at— or in fact, they stand at 8:30 and everyone just talks to what they're going to do that day. So I have this particular job I need to cover it off, or I might need to focus around new business. And on a Monday morning, people pledge on what they're going to do. So I need to focus on new business. So I need to connect with 30 customers this week. I'm going to arrange a couple of meetings. So the guys are pledging and they're dictating think how they're going to run their week, and they all— they'll also pledge their activity. So I will increase my contract book by £500 or a grand or something like that this month. So no one in the room can ever say that the targets were too high, and there is no reason why anyone shouldn't deliver on what they've committed to doing. Obviously, if somebody's coming in, their whole plan for the week is get— to get 2 sales calls and a CV out the door, then they're going to get challenged. Yeah, challenged by the manager. They get challenged by their colleagues.

So why do you use that word pleasure? That's an interesting word of choice.

Yeah, I don't— we just— it's commitment. It's commitment. Yeah, it's been, it's been the pledge board. Um, it's— I just, I think when you give someone a target, they're within their rights to push back and say, you don't know my business well enough, um, that target is unrealistic. When people are pledging, committing to what they're going to do. There's no reason why they shouldn't be able to deliver that.

I like that.

We found that it gets more results.

Yeah, because if it's— well, again, it's coming back to, I'm not— this is bigger than just me doing this for Matt because it means that his business— it means he gets more net fee income. It's, it's what I'm pledging to do it because I'm, I'm creating the, the targets and the ambitions that I want for me. Do you know what I mean? That's interesting. So just to round that off, knowing what you know now then, What do you look for in a hire? What are the key sort of characteristics that you look for that you just don't like? If they don't have this, this, and this, I'm not interested because I've learned enough that it's not gonna— it's probably— there's a very high chance it's not going to work out. What are the key characteristics you look for?

Do you know what? It's— I think having done this for so long, I think it does make you a good judge of character. And I think a lot of the judgments outside of doing things like psychometric testing and CBI are probably done unconsciously.

Okay.

Which I know probably isn't an answer to what you're looking for, but the traits generally, and we look for this when we do our competency-based interviewing, is things like passion and energy. I want to hear people that are passionate about something in life.

Yeah.

If it's something outside of work, maybe the work, the, the, maybe VQ is just the vehicle.

Yeah, yeah.

Into what they want. If they're passionate about recruitment or doing their job, happy days, that's great. We'll look at things like previous sales experience and how they've gone about doing that. So I met some great salespeople, but actually they're great with accounts that people have given them. And we're a new business company. We've got 2 contractors for every, every client. Obviously great opportunity there to land and expand across these customers. But we've got such a big portfolio of customers because the guys are driving the levels of new business. So we need people who can go and secure do with that. So again, new business is an important trait, that sales piece. We look at people that are flexible. One of the questions we might ask is, give me an example of when you've worked outside your core hours. So, you know, coming back to the point I mentioned about, yeah, working a weekend or evening. Now, you don't have to do that, but I can guarantee there's a Matt Collingwood in another recruitment business that will be talking to your customer and will fill that if it's not being done. So if anything, it's that whole passion, energy, ability to sell. The main trait that we look for, and again, this is probably not one that I can necessarily quantify, is it's having individuals that fit into what is the VQ mould. We've got no ego upstairs. There's no attitude. Individuals like that wouldn't last 5 minutes. We've got a bunch of people that really gel well. They love, they get on, really well with each other. They love the VQ trips that we do where we take them overseas and stuff. Whereas I don't think you'd have that level of enjoyment if you just focused on individuals that can make money. Yeah, I didn't fit that, um, that kind of mold.

And how long do you reckon it's taken you to understand what that VQ mold is? Again, I know it's quite intangible, but do you know what I mean? You know it.

I don't think I'm there yet still, really.

I don't think I'm here.

So it's always, always learning, but I, I did have a vision on day one in terms of what that looked like.

Yeah, yeah, but it's evolved and will continue to evolve.

Totally. I, I, you know, I spend more time with the people in the office than I do with my family. It's just the nature of doing any sort of job. So it's really important that, you know, those people like me, I like them, and, you know, we can all get along.

What I'd love to go into now is, because you, you were just touching on it then, so one of the— another real, um, common thing that people ask me to speak to people about is new business, is business development. So I think what I'd love to sort of get your perspective on is, so in your business now, have you got some $300, $400, $500K contract builders? Yep. Okay, good. That's great in this market, right? What have you— so let's talk a bit about some of the common things that you see in these people that maybe some people listening that are on the sort of around the 200K mark or whatever as contract billers, what are the common things that you see in these people that are hitting those sort of numbers?

So one of the things I said very early on was about the lost skill of actually picking up the phone and meeting people. I think what wraps around that is just networking. Networking is, it's a word that I think people use, but it's not necessarily a skill. I see people, demonstrating enough of. So networking for me is when you talk to a candidate very early on, um, keeping in contact with that individual, um, actually following them on their journey, working with them to understand who they know and how you can help them and they can help you in return. So if I look at a lot of our clients at the moment, a large percentage, and it's a good 40+ percent, have come off the back of referrals. So we, we've done an amazing job for a client, that client's gone elsewhere and introduced us to their, their new inc. Um, or we've done a really good job by a candidate and they've landed somewhere else as a senior appointment, they've hired from us. So for me, the whole business, new business thing is you could be a half a million quid biller in this industry by never making a cold call at all.

Yeah.

By just showing a great level of engagement with every, every candidate that you talk to talk to.

Really interesting point. I think what you're talking about there as well is surely these people that are achieving that in your business, um, there's a mindset piece there where, do you know what I mean, it'd be very easy for some people to speak to Matt the candidate that you can't help me right now but I could potentially help you, um, and it's very easy to not think about giving you a good experience because you could help me in a year's, two years' time, you know what I mean. Yeah, I think it's really an interesting point.

If the candidate, if there's a candidate that sent their CV through looking for work, this is the time when they need your help. So if you're not offering that help, why should they help you later down the line when they no longer need your help? So it's just working with those guys. Now, I mean, I, I look at some of the, the best relationships I've got with, um, project managers, program managers, is where I've gone through the job boards, through a JobSite or a JobServe, and I found jobs that are suitable for them through other recruitment agencies, and I've just pinged them from that job to say, look, I saw this, thought of you. And the mindset is, well, why would you want to introduce that candidate to another recruitment agency? Well, when he lands, who's he going to come and work with? He or she, who are they going to come work with? So it's just the whole networking piece for me. Um, I think, you know, in addition to that kind of new business, a more mature approach to sales is, uh, collaborative and partnered approaches to recruitment. So we work with a lot of IT providers.

Yeah.

Um, now a lot of these IT providers, all they want to do is sell, um, hardware, software, and their consultancy services, which is often a relatively small part of IT. But they'll have large network— they have a large network of their own clients. One of the solutions has worked really well for us is to work alongside these customers, alongside our customer, which is the, the outsource business. Go on meetings with them, strategize with them, and their client when it comes to recruitment. Um, obviously that's not something that comes overnight. You need to work at that for months, if not years.

Yeah, yeah.

But the beauty of that is you've got your clients doing your new business on your behalf.

And again, it does stem from, from what you've seen is, is that networking piece. And again, having that, that mindset of, okay, well, yeah, maybe this isn't going to beneficial me for right now, but long term, as you said, that person lands that job, then all of a sudden it open up a big account and these types of things.

Yeah, totally.

So business development then, that seems like— as— so I was a permanent recruiter.

Yeah.

From what I've learned, a contract recruiter, the BD piece, that's the like key to the client, did you know what I mean? So how effective is cold calling now in Europe?

Uh, I still love cold calling. Yeah, I really— I still love cold calling to a certain extent. Extent. It's just when you get through to that individual to be able to do something very different.

Yeah.

And I think at the moment I see too many trainees coming in, they're just told to pick up the phone and ask people if they've got any jobs, and you can understand why cold calling isn't working for them.

Yeah.

Um, I cold call. Yeah, I still cold call as an MD, and I, I still see results from it. So, but my conversations with the hiring manager, the potential hiring managers I guarantee you're going to be very different to a lot of other calls they've had previously.

What do you tend to lead with then if it's not jobs?

So we, when we first launched the business, we, you know, we try and grab whatever we could when it comes through the door and we were getting more developer jobs than anything else. So.NET, and I don't know if you know much about the.NET space, but you've got twice as many jobs. There's no, there's very, very few candidates out there in the marketplace. So we wanted a different kind of solution for this. And I was chatting with a pal of mine who's an immigration barrister, and he said, why don't you hire from outside of the EU? And I'd seen like candidates from years from places like India, etc.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, and very long story short, we come up with a solution whereby we would source candidates from Vietnam, from Malaysia, from the Philippines, because there's a hotbed of some world-class developers out there that speak fluent English, whose expectations from a salary salary point of view are, should we say, more realistic to see UK guys when they want to move. Um, and we put a product— we put it— went about putting a product in place to go into these customers to say, look, we know you're looking for 20, 30 developers locally. You're not going to find them. You're going to have to be reliant on compromising on your skill set or using costly contractors. We've got the solution where we'll bring resource in from overseas for you. Massive cost savings. We'll work with the Home Office to get the Tier 2 visas for them. We do a full landing program. But in answer to your question about the, the new business sales calls, I'll call development managers, development directors, and talk about this solution, and not one of them have heard it. So I think the message is you haven't necessarily got to sell my product. It's patented, copyrighted, but it's different. It's going with something completely different. And when we, when we launched that solution, in order to to make sure it worked properly, we needed a guinea pig. I couldn't really go to a client and say, look, we've got this wild idea. So VQ went through our own sponsorship. We bought over a couple of developers that worked directly for us. And they built a product for us called technicalassessment.co.uk, which is a development tool. So I can set a program in front of that tool, and it'll tell me how good they are. As a full-stack developer, it tests their front end, back end, en, database, etc.

Because they're quite common to have on sometimes interview processes, aren't they?

Totally. Yeah, they are, they are. I think that, um, some clients it'll be the standard across their business.

Yeah.

But we— the— my developers built out this product, so we go into customers and we'll say, look, you could make this part of your recruitment process, and for that we want to be a supplier, and actually we want to get all your contract business exclusive. But actually, wouldn't it be really fun to start testing your own developers to see what their strengths and weaknesses are. So we've got clients that are using this across their business now as their standard for any of their hiring, just like I mentioned with the psychometric that we use, um, and as part of their reviews with their own permanent developers.

So really interesting.

So again, just coming back to, uh, coming back to the, the, the new business approach, it is picking up the, the phone to these customers. And these solutions, neither might not be Right, but you know what, the client will remember.

No, I think that's amazing, mate, that you come up with that solution. And I think as we were saying before we started this, is how recruitment's changed and these types of things. I think like from what I understand, the conversation I'm having, if you want to future-proof your recruitment business, it is solutions. Like you've got to really come bring to the table real solutions that's, as you said, some better than just ones and twos. And yeah, Yeah, Matt, we'll work with you. You've got, you have one vacancy, let me fill it and et cetera. Do you get what I mean? So I think that's amazing.

I'll tell you the good part of it as well. You get to fly the customer over to Asia. Yeah, I mean, best, you know, you're with your customer for 5 days a week.

Oh wow.

You're either interviewing during the day or out for dinner on the evening or something like that. But there's no better way to develop those relationships further. And also you get a suntan.

Very nice. So I'm just conscious that a big thing for me with this podcast is really talking about the— this sort of really actually uncovering the sort of true failures, learnings, and these types of things. So I guess what, what I'd love you to talk a bit about is like, what have— when have you experienced some real tough times, mate? I think it'd be great to just touch on that, some of the times that you really had to dig deep to push through, if any? Like, has there— what comes to mind when there's been some real difficult times for you and this business that you've really had to push through, which there'll be a lot of people listening that have gone through? Even just as a biller, that it can be really unforgiving, this job, do you know what I mean? So what comes to mind when, uh, I ask you that?

Yeah, it's actually— it's always been— it's always been manageable.

So is that fair enough?

I, I, I will give you an example. So, you know, most people think being self-employed means that you can lie in bed, roll in at 10, 11 o'clock. And some people can do that if they want to. But in 5 years of trading, I've never been late. So I lead by example, set the standard with the guys. There's never been a day I've got up and I've thought, I don't want to go in today. So there's been days I've gone home and said, I'm not going to go in tomorrow. But I think I'm really good at leaving the baggage and then coming in the next day, it's a fresh day and refocusing. And if it's a case of getting out the plan and dusting it down and fixing it and stuff. But don't get me wrong, there are highs and lows. I mean, thankfully for us, the highs have been a lot higher.

Yeah.

But if I, you know, probably the biggest low point for me was the way we launched this business was to, we, there was 5 of us on day 1. It was quite costly. It was quite a costly launch for us because we'd got all experienced recruiters. We didn't rent offices. We went and bought a building in central Birmingham just to kind of send the right statement out to the market. We spent a small fortune on websites, etc., but we funded the whole thing through debt. Okay, so we got a glorified overdraft from the bank. Yeah, put a personal guarantee against it, which meant that if we didn't pay off the debt, then we were selling houses to make it happen. And so from day one of launching, in fact, day minus 30, we'd already spent a fortune. On day one, we were just hemorrhaging cash. And for the first month, even the first year, we just did a massive loss as a business. I remember looking into it after a year and thinking, what have I done here? Yeah, I owe an obscene amount of money to the bank. If I'm not able to make this work, I'm in trouble. I'm downsizing.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's as simple as that. So that was a bit of a low, but that was just revisiting the reasons why I did it in the first place. Just injecting a bit of self-confidence that actually this is the lowest part we're gonna go through and we're at the break-even point and everything else is then year 2, just paying off the debt and motoring on. I think that I talk to a lot of people that maybe have been in the corporate world or working for another business and they wanna become self-employed, they wanna go and do their own thing. And what they see is, businesses, you know, on social media portraying themselves incredibly well and all the exciting stuff and trips for their people and getting involved in exciting things about branding exercises and CSR and all that kind of stuff. Often what they don't realize or they don't focus on is going through that journey of racking up a ton of debt or the disasters that go on. And when you lose, um, when you get a dropout very early on, it's Dreadful. I mean, it's— it can be— that's the sort of stuff that keeps you awake at night to a certain extent. But touch wood, at the moment we haven't had any disasters in the business. I think if we had a disaster today, I'd go home and I'd probably down a bottle of red or something like that.

But you become great at managing. I think that's— I think that's fair enough. I think— so has— have you always been like that, or like, have you during this journey, or you— have you just during your life experience? You've just got— because what you're talking about there really is perspective as well, isn't it? It's like, okay, I can leave, look, tomorrow's a new day, etc. I'll leave things once I leave this, I'm with my family after. But what have you done to become better at managing? Because not everyone is good at— even from a biller to an owner of a business, like, what things do you do, if any, to help you? Do you know what I mean?

I'm 43 now. Yeah, I had a light bulb moment I was 30. Okay, and I'll share this story with you. It was my 30th birthday and a party. I can't remember who said it to me, but somebody said, the guy you are at 30 is the person you are for the rest of your life.

Okay.

I remember thinking, I don't want to be that same person. I want to learn, evolve, and all the rest of it. And I mentioned this to about 2 or 3 other people, as in, actually, I didn't feel I'd arrived. I didn't, and I still don't now, and I hope I'm not when I'm 63. And there was a very good friend of mine, Steve said, have you considered business coaching?

Okay.

Now for me, business coaching, my mindset was you go in and somebody tells you how to run a business and how to get the most out of your staff. And he referred me to a guy called Richard Elwell, who's a business coach based up here in the Midlands. And I went, I used to go once a fortnight to see this guy. And all we did for probably the first 3 months, we never talked business. We never, it was never about actually how do I use these NLP, like Jedi mind tricks.

So was he your coach or you learned what he was teaching?

He was my coach.

Okay.

And he basically taught me lots of stuff. But the first thing he did was rather than teach me stuff, he enabled me to learn about myself.

Okay.

What my strengths and weaknesses are and you know, the sort of stuff What gets me out of bed? I know it sounds like a really deep conversation, but I think if you want to get the more out of other people and out of your business, you've got to understand how you get more out of yourself.

Totally. Self-awareness.

Exactly. So one of the things we focused on very early was always having a plan. And I was quite an emotive guy that would love to have an argument, go toe to toe with people. But actually it was just making decisions that were more pragmatic and actually considering repercussions of the decisions that I make. I think what I did back then at 30, and I think that was the catalyst that kind of pushed me on, has helped me today. And I'm by no means the finished article.

Yeah, totally.

And it's always about learning. So I think for— you've got to want to do it, because when I was having sessions with Richard, I was waxing lyrical to everyone about how great it was. Yeah, that everyone needs to do it. And a lot of my friends were going along to think, right, what is all this about? And some were getting a lot out of it, but equally there's a lot that just didn't get it.

I want it for yourself as well.

Exactly. I think you've got to want to change and you've got to— you want to go through that journey.

No, thank you for sharing that. I think that's great advice. I think how— so, so I, um, a bit, a bit, a bit younger, but I had a bit of a light bulb moment myself and I was, uh, how was I, like 23? And it was simple. And it was simple as the best investment you can make is in yourself. Sounds really simple, but I didn't realize that previously. And I think, yeah, all you're talking about there, or part of what you're talking about, is, is self-awareness. So when, when, um, when times do get tough, if that's you as a biller, if that's you as a business owner, um, I think if you've really put a lot of work into knowing what gets you out of bed in the morning and know more about yourself, it's going to equip you with better tools so you can deal with different circumstances and challenging circumstances, um, which I really like. So keen to, um, speak to you about the canaries.

Okay.

Because I think it's evident your mindset, how you approach things, um, is different to the typical, um, recruitment business owner that people will probably have a perception of. But what I just— what, as I said before we started, I was really keen just to get your thoughts on this, and even more so considering your sort of track record, um, and it's, it's came up once or twice. What do you— you may do this in your business now, but how have you gone about— I know you said how you started your business and racked up debt and these types of things, but have you always been quite smart with the money that you've earned in recruitment? I think what's a chap, Tony, that I had on this podcast said, sort of how many people were talking to big billers that are young people about how they can maximize the money they're earning and turn the money you're making into assets and not just all nice clothes and these types of things. You get what I mean? So I guess there'll be a lot of people listening that aren't earning a lot of money, that maybe their, their business, or no one's speaking to them about financial advice and financial health. Do you get what I mean? So what's, what's your relationship been with money and how have you got better with it?

Okay, so I think The important thing is enjoy yourself.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

So I kind of look back at my 20s and I travelled everywhere and I blew a tonne of dough, but I've got no regrets. I actually enjoyed doing it. Kind of running alongside that, I was pretty clever 'cause I'd always save and investing in bricks and mortar was always smart. So I bought my first property at 23 and I had to save a deposit in order to do that. Cut back and all the rest of it, but I was focused on doing that. I then bought a few properties personally and then me and my best pal business partner, we set up a property company 5 years ago. So it's only a relatively small business, but what we're doing is we're investing the profits from VQ into the property business. So in the last few months, we bought a couple of million quids worth of commercial properties and HMOs across the Midlands. And the plan is just to keep scaling that. I mean, the beauty of recruitment is you can even, you know, whether you're working as a business, as a trainee or an MD of a, you know, large established business, you can influence your earnings by all the stuff that we've spoken about today. So I would see I would suggest to anyone investing bricks and mortar, 'cause you're never gonna lose out with property long-term. And I think if those that do wanna have a nice little nest egg, I think to strategically think about how you invest the profits from your business into bricks and mortar, I think is a smart move.

[Speaker] Okay. No, I think it's just an interesting point. 'Cause if, yeah, I think when I was earning good money, not many, it's very easy, as you know, in today's day, day and age to get lost in looking the best and having all the latest things, you know what I mean? And I think recruitment, it can fast-track your career, it can fast-track your earnings, it can also get you in a bad spot if you're not, if you're not thinking like that on, and you have like a decent head on your shoulders, do you know what I mean?

Um, it's always been like that though because everyone's always wanted to wear the designer gear or have a nice car and stuff like that. It's just the— what is the cost of of that and how important is it to someone to own their own property?

So the Recruitment Canaries. Yeah. How long has that been going now for?

2 years now.

2 years? Yeah. And that's you and?

Del, Del Cherkis from Near People.

And why did you start that?

So going back to the whole life in the corporate world, we had a HR function, a training function, legal function. I had a peer group, I had a boss. If I had a problem, there was always somebody that I could turn to. Or if I had a problem, wasn't aware of it, there's always somebody that could come and tap me on the shoulder. They want to launch in, it can be quite lonely at the top. And one of the things you don't want to do is sit on the floor and say, we've got cash flow issues, or we're having problems, or this is a disaster, or that's a disaster, or I need help with this. It's sending out a good strong message and leading from the front. So when I launched, one of the first things I did, and this is my whole thing about surrounding myself with people that are good and often better than me, is that I reached out to the local recruitment network. So in Birmingham, so people who own businesses, some that have been established for years and some that are perhaps going on the same journey as me. And I'll drop them an email. And it was a little bit random, you know, this, this guy to say, look, fancy meeting up for a coffee? Because recruitment has been for many years, and I'm not sure if it still is, you know, two recruitment companies bump into each other at a bar and there's a little bit of attitude. It's like the film The Anchorman is now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there is an element to that about it, and recruitment shouldn't be like that. It doesn't need to be like it. So it started out with about 5 of us, and we weren't called the Canaries, we were just 5 guys that would share information, willing to share experiences, challenges. Exactly.

Yeah.

Okay. If I'd had a really bad day, I'd pick up the phone, I'd rant at one of them, and I'd do the same. Or maybe we can— if we've had a particularly good month or week on sales, we can share that because there's no egos.

Yeah.

Um, in the group, um, if somebody was getting a particularly good deal on one of the job boards or something, we'd share what the best price is.

Yeah.

So we knew what we— how we could negotiate and stuff. And that kind of— we started getting— doing regular meetups. There was about 5 or 6 of us that met up, then there's about 10 or 15 and then we come up with the name The Canaries. So the idea is we'll flock together, we chirp, we talk and share information. Yeah, very random name, but it's one that people seem to, seem to remember. And it's just kind of snowballed from there. So we've got 50 members, it's all Birmingham-based, a couple just outside of Birmingham, but there's no subscription. People don't have to pay to become members. There's a code of conduct we get them to sign into. And the first chapter of that is just around collaboration.

Yeah.

You can't be in the group and just take.

You need to contribute.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Very good point.

And it's worked really well. So we've introduced— I've given my whole list of all my clients to other Canarios that are non-it. So if somebody's an engineer, it's like, here are all my clients. Who do you want to get involved with? And they do the same. When we launched our Southampton office, there's a guy called Matthew Riley introduced us to his client. He works, he's got a business called Osprey. He introduced us to his clients and we did our first placement in the first 2 weeks, which really give those guys some confidence down there. From a financial perspective, we're probably, we're at least 100, 200 grand a year better off by being Canaries, by sharing each other's customers and increasing buying power. Wendy Merricks, who's who's the CEO for Jumar, she estimates that it's generated her £300,000 plus, really, just simply in terms of cost savings.

And it's so easy to think, like, just straight away on the face of it, that you would be at a loss rather than a gain. Do you know what I mean? If you're going into a room full of 10, 15 recruitment businesses, maybe some competitors in there or whatever, that is the typical mindset.

We've got it recruitment businesses in there, and we've had situations where we've had too much on and rather than another recruitment agency fill that job because we wouldn't be able to, we give it to other Canaries to say, look, this is something we need some support with, help us, you get the deal. Don't— obviously they won't talk to our customers going forward, but again, we win out of that.

Yeah, no, I just think that's such a great point to make, that actually collaborating, we can actually all gain from it and it doesn't come at the detriment of Matt losing out a bit or whoever else losing out a bit. Actually, we can all grow and achieve together, do you know what I mean? Which I think is it's part of the, the mindset that's changing with particularly what I've experienced with the other networks out there and, um, that I've been to. And like this podcast, for example, it wasn't, it wasn't maybe back in your day, it wasn't as easy for people just be willing to share their challenges and openly talk about their failures and what they learned and their clients and these types of things. So I think that's great. That's what I mean.

Nobody would ever do that. You, you meet recruiters in a bar or out and about and you ask how they are, everything's going well, yeah, everything's going fantastic. Like, yeah, flying, smashing it. The reality of it is they're not.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

You know, share those problems. That's the idea of the group. Our conferences have been great as well. So we're putting a few conferences, we'll get Speechmatters experts in. Yeah, you know, we'll get 100 people in a room. So I don't know many recruitment groups that are able to, uh, to do that.

How does this all plan out, Matt? You've been in the game long enough.

What's that?

How does this all plan out? Like, in, in terms of things like we're just talking about here and how that's like, that wasn't around and now it is, and people willing to share and people gaining 300K more worth of business because they're willing to collaborate. To, as we, as you, as we've also spoke about, that people are a bit susceptible now to hiding behind the emails and LinkedIn, these types of things. Like, you've been in the game long enough and, and you're a very smart guy. So I guess the future of recruitment, obviously it's a big, big thing to think about, but How do you see it evolving and what do, what do people need to be thinking about to remain future-proof? Like, what are you doing and what are some of the things that you're thinking about long term?

We've got a— there's a lot happening at the moment with, you know, R35 coming into the private sector next year. It's going to be massive and we're expecting a lot of disruption in that space. Ultimately, there's still going to be a lot of contractors need work and there's a lot of clients that need work. Work done. It's just that somebody's going to land grab a lot of that disruption and that movement. So do you see that more as an opportunity rather than a massive opportunity?

Great. That's the thing.

It's a must. Again, I talk to people out there in the wider market and the panicking and the numbers are going to get decimated. Yeah, those workers are going to go somewhere and hopefully they're on our books. But yeah, so in answer to your question, where's recruitment going? We're going to see there's been more legislative changes like, you know, are 35 than ever before. And I think we're just going to see more and more stuff happening like that. It's having a plan for it and being creative. I, I'm confident that recruitment is gonna go more specialist. So we've seen companies do more in-house. That's only going to get bigger as recruitment, recruitment agents go from agency in-house. So just be super niche, create a real value in in terms of what you do. So for us, it's that inch-wide, mile-deep market. So if I'm competing, one of my guys are competing head-to-head with a generalist internal recruiter, we're always going to get the edge.

Yeah, yeah, around that.

So I think the whole solution-based sell, so things like statement of work, um, we have started, uh, to hire as a separate part of the business, um, more techies here, more developers. So we're going to do more project-based work. So rather than the customer taking a contractor we'll say we'll deliver that and we'll quote a deliverable for it. Yeah. So in answer to your question, I think it's been smart with legislative changes, um, it's focused more on the solution, it's becoming more, more specialist, to be honest with you. I remember, I remember 20-odd years ago, in fact, if it was longer than that, when JobServe come in, everyone said this is the death of recruitment. Then LinkedIn come in, is this is the death of recruitment. Recruitment is a much, much a bigger base now. There's 40,000 recruitment businesses in the UK, 7,000. So if anything, the industry is getting bigger. I don't necessarily think there's more good recruiters. Yeah, so it's like there's a lot of, there's a lot of businesses out there, but they're generally managed around by people that have left smaller businesses, bigger recruitment companies, or medium-sized businesses. I don't think the market's flooded with lots of good recruiters at the moment.

Before we finish then, I think that's, that's really, I really like what you spoke about there. Before we finish If I'm listening right now and I'm someone thinking about starting my own recruitment business, what should they be thinking about?

It's going to sound a little bit boring, but day minus 60 or 30, whenever you're looking to launch, get your infrastructures and your finances in order.

Yeah.

And by that, I mean, I found a great accountant very early on who's brilliant. I have total trust and confidence in him. With her. We've got an FD that's been with us since day one to do the finance as well. Yeah, we put a great infrastructure in place to find a CRM that worked for us. Yeah, a good middle office product and a great back office product that I can get a dash. So it's putting all that infrastructure in place on day minus 30. So when the business launches, and a lot of people will perhaps be under contract so they can't actually trade before day one, It's just on day one, just get your head down and do new business.

Yeah.

Where I've seen organizations struggle or startups struggle or even fail for that matter is the business owner is getting involved in everything, anything but recruitment.

Yeah.

Um, if you're the MD or the director of a business and you're setting up with other staff at the time, play to people's strengths. We've got 5 people and on day one for me everyone was doing 360. What was evident very early on is people had different strengths. So I become 100% new business.

Yeah.

Whereas a couple of the guys focused more on that delivery piece.

That's amazing.

He was just playing to what— playing to strengths. Um, and the only other thing I'd say is I, I wrote a forecast, um, for year 1, year 2, year 3. What we delivered was nothing, nothing like the forecast. We were out by about 50% in year 1. So wherever you think it's going to cost you, add 50% to it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's, you know, it's great if you over-deliver, and you overperform on your forecast, then happy days. But you need to be ready in the event that you don't do that.

No, I think, I think that's great advice, mate. So look, what are you excited about, Matt? What's going on in your world that you want to shout about?

We have the VQ Christmas conference, which is taking place in 2 weeks' time. So every year we take the guys away. So year 1, we were on a budget, so we did Dublin. Good laugh. Year 2, we upped our game a little bit and we took it to St. Petersburg.

Okay.

In Russia, which is beautiful for Christmas, although very cold. Year 3, we took everyone to Dubai, which is brilliant.

Yeah.

Year 4, Dubai. This year, they've got no idea where they're going.

Really?

So they're— it's— whether they'll be told we're going away for 5 days, um, to pack enough clothes for that period.

Wow.

It's summer and beach, so it's 28 degrees where where we're going at the moment, but they've got no idea where we're going. We are going to do a big reveal, uh, on the— I think it's the 10th of December, where we're going to get the guys in, let them know where they're going. Yeah, which is good. So that's really big for us at the moment. That's our way of saying, look, we've had a great year, it's been our best year ever, um, we really appreciate all the work the guys have done. The only bit I'm worried about is we're going to have to outperform ourselves next year as well, because this year is going to be particularly good.

Really? I think I'll when I, uh, worked in the recruitment business, those moments are so special, aren't they? Those 5 days away, get some real solid time with each other, because it's bloody tough, this job, innit? And I think the moments like that are great when you can create them with the business that you have. I think they're just so important to have that and enable people to build some real solid relationships and get to know people that they work with.

Totally. I mean, over the years I've hired people that have never been to London, let alone been to Europe or other parts of the world. So to get those kind of life experiences as well, to travel and just experiences working, spending— yeah, sorry, not working, spending quality time with your colleagues is pretty important.

So, um, so the final question I have for you, uh, Matt, is, um, I ask it to everyone. You can answer with like a phrase, um, or a word, whatever comes to mind. So If you could communicate to, um, all the recruiters out there, business owners, and they take on Matt's advice, they'd implement it tomorrow, what would you say? What comes to mind if they were to, to listen to Matt and you could communicate to those 40,000 recruitment businesses, mate? What comes to mind?

We're hiring. Um, I, I, I You meet a lot of people that come into recruitment and they don't know why they want to be in the industry. There's a lot of people that just want a job to get out of work. Um, I think for the managers, it's just making the right hires in the first place to understand why those people are going to be there and what they want to get out of it. Like I said, I've always had a plan. There's always something that's driving and pushing me on, whereas the, the business is a vehicle to get to what I want. So there is a massive opportunity for any trainee coming into the business just be clear what they want to get out of it. And, you know, set your goals high. If you're 21 at university and you're just starting out a career in recruitment, think big. Yeah, get your first property in a couple of years. Um, we just hired a girl into our Southampton office who's amazing. She's just sat and wrote this whole itinerary of where she's going to go on holiday to Bali and Lombok and Thailand and Malaysia and stuff like that. So that's the kind focus that I like people to have. Yeah, it may be that, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to be financial. It could be that, you know, somebody wants to just, just be number one or succeed or something like that. But just having that goal and sticking to it. And for the managers, just finding out, you know, what your staff want.

Matt, it's been a pleasure, mate.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Really appreciate it.