My First Business Broke Me. My Second Rebuilt Me. Mistakes, Lessons and a £470K Comeback with Selim

Salem, welcome to the pod.

Great to be here, man.

Thanks for joining me. We've got an end of day recording, so I appreciate it. We've got two clear goals for this conversation, haven't we, that we're prepared for? The first part of this, we want to shed some light and have you share with us your lessons on going through something that I think will happen a lot in our industry that isn't always often spoken about, and that is things not working out in business and things not working out with your business partner. So there's two parts of your entrepreneurial journey so far. The first part of this conversation, we're going to talk about that first part, which involved you starting a recruitment business with your business partner, which then 3 and a bit years later on you negotiated the exit of that because things didn't quite work out. So we're going to talk about that, the lessons that came with that, and I think our goal there is really just to try and help educate people on the things that can happen when you go into business with people. And also, I said shed some light, also just offer some transparency around how hard that can be, that decision, and the things that you can go through. And it absolutely isn't going to be about pointing the finger, anything negative. You're here today to share your experience and the things that you learn. And then the second part is then breaking down and having you share some of the things that you've achieved in this first year in business, because that's your second, uh, part of your entrepreneurial journey so far. Still very much in it, in the trenches, where you're building your second recruitment business solo this time. And we're going to talk about how in that first year you came very close to doing half a million quid in your first year, right? So to give everyone some context— this is where you have to let me know if I get anything wrong. So Basically, before you sort of took that entrepreneurial leap, you have always been in IT contract recruitment.

Yep.

Did that for sort of around 8 years, being employed, UK market. I think your best year, you said you got your contract book up to £12,000-£13,000 weekly GP. Then we transitioned into entrepreneurship around October 2020. Obviously would have been the, uh, COVID year going into that boom period. Started a company called Be Different with your business partner. Initially, obviously, with your track record, was going to focus on tech.

Yeah.

But then within a few weeks, because of different things that happen with clients and wins that you got, you then pivoted to niche in the gaming industry and ended up having a bit of a business plan and approach around we don't just do developers for gaming studios, we sort of COVID the whole cycle or the whole spectrum that gaming industry will need. Um, so you ended up focusing on that. I think I've got here peak performance of that business. Headcount was around 15 people, had an office in Liverpool Street. He was very trainee focused, so building people up, bringing people on the journey that haven't got recruitment experience. Best year in that period that you started that, revenue around £2 million, profits around £460,000. Um, and then basically after that you then decided to exit that business. I know it wasn't just like, right, I'm walking away with these things. It takes time and there's challenges, right? But officially started around the sort of process of leaving that business around September 2023. Yeah, context. And then it was around 3 months negotiation with mediation, and then you left that business in December 2023. Obviously part of you walking away with that and part of the agreement was that you had no non-compete. Yeah, right. So then going into 2024, you then started Pixel Movement, which is your business now, which you started solo. And then you've literally just come to your first year in business there. So April to April, you built £470K. That's mainly been you. You had someone along the, the journey didn't quite work out. You've got someone that you've been working on a more contract basis, and they're the highlights.

There you go.

So look, firstly, like, really appreciate you being willing to share this. I think we both agree there's hopefully a lot of people out there that can learn from this, right?

100%.

And I think people— I know you listen to the show, and I think people probably— I know we can learn from success stories, right? But I think people probably learn more, or feel like they learn more, from when things don't quite work out, from past experiences.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So that's the first part that we wanted to start on. So we've got a number of lessons here that you've reflected on. Where do you want to start? I mean, at the top of our list, we've got scaling too quickly. Should we start there?

Yeah, I think it's a good point to start about the scaling. So initially starting in 2020, and we were due to start in tech and product. and we were given an opportunity with a gaming studio, and it worked out well. What we then noticed in that market was that coming from tech backgrounds where it's super transactional, people were super passionate about the projects. It was a candidate short market, and clients were struggling in hiring. So as long as you could find good candidates and build a pool of candidates, build relationships, it was easy to market those candidates out, make success from it. So one thing led to another, and within a couple of months it was purely focusing on gaming. But what sort of made us really attracted to the industry was that people were not only passionate about it, people wanted to talk to you. People wanted to talk to you all of our calls were being done on video. So where within a couple of months we had 3 or 4 clients and requirements were flying in, we were already hitting capacity within 3 to 4 months. So it was bringing people as quickly as possible. So within the first year, I think we were 6 people, and that scale up continued along the way, and it even passed 15. It would be going up and down. The trickiest part of it is when any business gets to 10 people, it's pretty difficult to then move past that, like we've seen in previous businesses. Then you've got going past 20, which is another hurdle. We got past that 10 pretty quickly, but a strain of it was, looking back at it, is that we were not putting trigger points on it. So that's a big lesson that we learned. So requirements are coming in, everyone that we're hiring is absolutely exceptional at what their job is, and I'm doing all of the learning and development. We're helping everyone get up to speed with things. So with everyone coming in as resources as well, doing a 180 job, I think it's super important that everyone gets up to speed. Number one, you've got trigger points of when do we hire the next person, not just based on requirements, because anytime we'd bring someone in, there'd be more requirements coming in. The market is absolutely booming, so it's bringing more people. Have we got everyone up to the stage that they need to be at? And is this going to continue to be a 180 business? So we were scaling like crazy.

And I think it's a hard one, right? Because I've asked this question so many people, it might even came— it might have even come up at the, the dinner that you came to, like, what are the trigger points?

Yeah.

And no one— I don't think, like, no one has a clear-cut answer because you can tell me what you think because you've reflected on it, you've hired someone yourself so far on this journey, so I'm sure you've thought more about it. But like, it does depend on what, one, your risk appetite is.

Yeah.

So part of the equation is, okay, if we hire this person, what's our financial runway? How long can we get on? How long can we keep going with additional costs but not earning more money? So that's, that's quite personal. That's like depending on what financial risk that you have. So that, I guess, may vary. But then I do think there are metrics, data points that you can look at that I guess can make you feel more confident that, okay, this is actually a good time to hire.

Yeah.

I don't know if you thought more about it, but it is a quite hard one. Like, that recipe isn't just completely clear.

So we were very clear in terms of runway. So we would always want a minimum of 6 months cash cash in the bank, runway that's clear, covering everyone's salaries, covering months that are not going so well. We got that to a stage that it was 12 months, 18 months pretty quickly. But when you've got two people that are business development heavy, you cannot predict what could happen within that market. So are the jobs going to be continuing to come in? Is the market in a good place? So from, from my perspective, I think their learning and development is super important as well. Are they effectively running their own desk at that point? Not from a business development perspective, but their own will coming in, know what to do, crack on with things. Yeah.

And then, I mean, that's when like process and systems come into play.

Yeah, process systems.

Getting that all nailed. Let's just— because I think part of this conversation, which I see come up more and more at the moment, particularly in this sort of AI technology world, just take a bit of a step back for a second. If I was to listen in to early conversations with you and your business partner on this business journey, like, would I have heard clear goals around, like, underlying goals? I'm like, right, we want to grow this business. I want to be 20+ heads, X, whatever the goals are. Like, did you both have clarity on actually the type of business that you wanted? Because I think when I do speak to founders sometimes— and this might lead us into one of our other lessons, right? But like, you have a business, so I feel like I should be growing, I should be recruiting people, we've got all this money in the bank, so let's— yeah, we should be hiring. Like, what— why else are we doing this? Yeah. Did you have clarity in that, do you think, you two?

We always had clarity from the start of growing the business, 100%. We knew that we wanted to grow the business and we didn't just want it to be a lifestyle business. That was clear from the offset that we just didn't want a lifestyle business.

Okay. Because I think that, that's important to, that's important to say, because I know you'll speak to other founders as well, but I think if you haven't got that clarity, then the question is like, why are you even hiring?

Yeah. Like what I think wasn't clear for us is because success can come very quickly, the business can scale very quickly. What we hadn't had clarity on from the offset perhaps was what are we doing in 3 years' time? What are we doing in 5 years' time? What goals do we personally want to achieve in the long run? Do you want to exit this business? Do I want to exit this business? Are we looking to sell the business? What, what, what is the vision here of how far are we going to go with this?

So maybe— feel free to disagree with this— but like maybe like surface level goals then in terms of like, yeah, we definitely want to grow it. Yeah, I'm gonna grow headcount. But actually, have we had those really honest conversations about how much money do you want to make? Yeah, how much money should we be taking out of the business? 'What are your big goals for your family?' Do you know what I mean? Because that's actually then what plays out, right?

So we were very close and we had those conversations of, look, halfway through the business I'd bought my first property and moved in with my family. And similarly, we had personal goals that we wanted to achieve, which we set out from the out. Um, yeah.

And then like, what— and then how, how, how did you guys meet? How long do you guys know each other before you then decided to take that entrepreneurial leap?

We were working together for a couple of years at our previous company, and he'd gone off and done his own thing for a period of time. I remained at that company, and then COVID had struck us. So we were also having conversations of setting up another business during that period. And when COVID hit, the investment conversations just fell flat on its head.

What is it? What, as in you raising investment?

Yeah, we were looking to raise investment.

We were for a recruitment business.

For a recruitment business. Yeah, together, together again. And that didn't go as planned. COVID hit us and everyone was on furlough for around 6 months, not doing much with their lives. So it come to a point where we had honest conversations with each other and said, look, we're not gonna really get investment in this climate. What do we do? Let's just go it alone and put everything we've got into it. And that's how it all got started. But we knew each other for at least 4 or 5 years.

I think that's just important context again, like, just for people to just see how they feel about that, like, who you're going in business with, how long do you know each other. Was it just in work? Have you also like met outside of work? It's, it's always— there's no recipe, right, for like, if you've known your business— if you've known this person for this long, then that could be someone to be good to go in business with. But I think it's good just to hear you talk about what the concepts of the relationship was. Look, one of our other lessons here was what we're talking about, misalignment on personal business goals. So I guess my, my question here is like, if that is a lesson for you We just spoke about actually, maybe, did we have those maybe deeper conversations about what we truly wanted? Did we have both a clear line vision on where we're heading? What is the end goal? Do we have one? How, like, I guess, like, what might be helpful for people is what, what did these conversations maybe look like that in hindsight actually weren't good enough or weren't— didn't have enough clarity around them, you know what I mean? Were you just having a monthly board meeting, or was it quite relaxed in terms of every quarter you, you both would talk about, right, okay, next quarter plans, what are our goals, you know what I mean? Like, what, what, like, how were you trying to talk about your goals? How— what do these conversations look like? And then we can sort of go from there on, actually, how could we have made these better?

I think it was pretty relaxed between us because of the friendship being so strong. Super, super relaxed. And we would have one-on-one meetings, we'd have our team meetings obviously on a Monday morning, stay behind between him and I and see where we're going that month. What is our plan for this month? Where do we want to get to this month? Where do we want to go in terms of headcount? It was just going into more depth is what I think could have been the shortfalls. Between us of, okay, we have a successful year this year, this is how much we're aiming to make, where are we gonna invest that into? How big are we gonna grow next year? If we grow this much, what do we do then? So we, what I don't think we were going into as much detail as we should have. So in terms of long-term plan, we weren't setting out, this is the long-term plan. Of this is what the business will look like in the next year and the years ahead of us, and then what do we do at that point?

And also, as you're breaking that down, which is important as you'll know, is like there was no like why in there as well, like why are we doing this?

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean?

It's important to know your why.

Yeah, like it's so, it's so important when you're on this. I know it's cliché, but it is, it's so important. Okay, so if we do that, like, yeah, why, like, why do you think that should be our goal? And like having those conversations So for people listening to this where maybe they've gone into business with someone that they do have a really good friendship with, or even considering it, if we're thinking about these conversations, there's one thing to make this more thorough, understand that. But is, is that literally the advice? Like, take those business conversations as business partners just maybe a lot more seriously than you may perceive you need to when it's like early on? Like, should you set up every month having like a board meeting with you and your business partner and have like a set— work towards having a really good framework that you always speak about? Like, what, what do you think? How could we improve those conversations, do you think?

100% framework has to be put in place before you start. Before starting any business, what do you want to get out of this personally? What are your goals? Let's break them down, personal goals. Where do you want to be in 1 year with the business? Where do you want to be in the next 5 years? Where do you see yourself retiring? Where do you see yourself going after this? Is it just this business? Are we building this to sell this? What, what is the goal here? So having a clear goal from the off, I think it's super important. But then putting things into place at the beginning of the year, putting things into place every single month, having them written down and having a clear structure in place that you are following. So if you're not following this at any point, one of you's personal circumstances are changing, which it could happen with any two friends. Life changes, personal circumstances changes, to then draw back to that and say, this is what we were aiming for. This is where we are at the moment. What has changed for you? Do we need to make adjustments? And having those open and honest conversations of what is working for you, what is working for me and having a compromise.

And do you think, like, if we're like— if you're just like being honest with yourself, like, do you feel like there was moments where you tried to try and— you tried to uncover for yourself and for both of you, like, okay, what— like, what we're trying to achieve here? And yeah, from a personal conversation, because I also— I also view that as like important conversations you'd have with like your wife or relationship, you know what I mean? Like you can easily just brush things under the rug. Yeah, do you know what I mean? So did you, did you try and approach things like, what was hard about that? Because we can talk about this framework, but we're asking other people here to be vulnerable. And like what the other person might be thinking, yeah, you know what, 3, 6 months ago I had these goals and I'm now, I'm thinking, fuck that, like I'm here managing, I actually want to earn just good money. But like that might be hard to talk about, you know what I mean? Did you, like, how did you find just trying to bring it? I don't know, like, did you try? Did you try, do you think?

Yeah, we always spoke to each other. Could we have spoken in a lot more depth and be honest with each other what we wanted and then be aligned with that as well? I think that's super important. There was an element of holding back because you're seeing the company is growing, the company is doing well, and it's just, it's very easy for that to become an oversight at that point, I think, because the business is doing well, everyone's performing well, cash is coming in. You, it could easily fall off the priority list. Yeah, 100%. And you become sidetracked and you become so immersed in the work that you're doing. And it links back to the business scaling so, so quickly because you've now got 10 heads that you're looking after, 12 heads. So it's always got to be a priority, I think, of speaking to each other because things are constantly changing.

Yeah, I think maybe that is— that's the thing, a big part of this is like what the world looked like then recruitment-wise, right?

Yeah. Booming.

Yeah, so yeah, I do, I do get that when you think of that environment, which I guess is the lesson here for people, like being mindful of that and trying to be organized. Take your systems and processes seriously maybe before like you need them, because it can be very easy for me and you and your business partner to be like, so why do we need to talk about like why I'm doing this? Like, we're making money, mate, let's just crack on.

We've just had a 250K. What, look Everything's good right now.

Yeah, exactly. So I do get that, but I think then this sort of leads us into, again, one of the big lessons for you, right? Was— so let me know if I get any of this wrong, right? But I've got here shares agreement not signed. So did you both get one and then you both— did he sign and you didn't? Or like, do you know what I mean? Did you just both not proper get one drafted and both signed it?

God forgive me for this. We, we both got it drafted. So with our solicitor at the start, at the start, got it signed— no, not signed, so got it ready, paid the money, didn't sign it.

Both of you?

Both of us didn't sign it, mate.

And what— and I think this is— obviously we're talking outside before we started this— I think this is what people got to be mindful of, right? Is because you tell me, why do you think you'd— why, looking back, why do you, why do you think you didn't sign that? Sign it?

Didn't look— go— going into the— going into my first business, everything was a learning curve. It was all new. Every single thing that we were doing was new. So hiring, developing people, um, looking at accounts, paying taxes, whatever you can think of that, that you do with any sort of business, every step of that was new to us. So we knew the importance of putting a shares agreement into place. Why it wasn't signed, I still question myself to this day. But I think it was, I think, look, we didn't expect it to go as well as it did within those first few months. And no one batted an eyelid to think, look, we need to get this signed because When things are going well, you don't anticipate that the partnership's ever gonna break down.

Look, this is, this is one of those things that unfortunately people out there will never do again because they've had to learn the hard way.

Never, ever again.

Because I had that, so I raised a small amount of investment for my business and, uh, two of the investors had a bad experience and they said, look, Hishem, it's worth investing in the shareholders agreement and just getting it right. And look, the good thing about it is it will only come into play if things go bad and things don't work out. If it doesn't, then sweet, like, you don't need to worry about it, you know what I mean? So I think that, like, I've— for anyone listening they might be thinking, oh shit, like, we didn't actually sign it. Get it signed. But also, it's back to our point of like, I think this is something that again you have to learn as an entrepreneur. I, I didn't start my business with someone. I've, I've been a sort of solo founder for a good amount of time now, so I haven't had that dynamic. You've been through that. But I do think when it comes to business, you sort of got to put your sort of emotions aside. You hear that, right?

Yeah.

And I think it's the same with like your, uh, business partnerships. Like, okay, yes, so me and your friends, but when it comes to business, like it's a business partnership, we do it, and that's different. Yeah, do you know what I mean? Again, easy for us to sit here and say that, right? There's emotions, you've got friendship. But I think that is the sort of lesson here that we're taking as we build on this, that this— besides whatever your friendship is, they were your best man at your wedding, whatever, like, try and treat this as a separate entity and like, let's just do this properly. Because the last thing that we'd want to do is not do these things properly, things end up going badly, and when the person becomes— goes from being my best man at my wedding to us never speaking again. Yeah, which will happen to loads of people. Yeah, do you know what I mean?

And you've heard their stories.

Yeah. So let's get into a bit more then in terms of— I've got another lesson here, but more specific in terms of actual, like, business and growing the business, because, you know, we ended up doing 7 figures in turnover pretty quickly. I've got here complacency with big accounts. I think this was a really big overarching lesson that a lot of recruitment companies have had— sorry, in that boom period. So talk to me about this, because I'm sure this is something that you're now really taking into your business, Pixel Movement. But what was the lesson here around being complacent always doing continuous BD? Like, why, why was that a lesson for you?

So pretty quickly within those years, we had— we'd built relationships with 25, 30 development studios that we were partnering with. And you can see how things shuffle around. You've got certain key clients that you've got more volume from them, you've got better relationships that you're building with those. And there were certain key accounts there. These accounts were from 6 figures upwards, so 100K upwards accounts. And in the games industry, it's very common to have project work. I mean, there is project ramp-ups, so you could be getting 25, 30 requirements from one client. So all of your focus is immediately going onto that whilst you're doing that. If you're taking your foot off the gas on business development, for example, not attending conferences, which is one of the most important aspects of the gaming industry, showing your face, being on the floor, we were not utilizing them to its full effect. So when you're then focusing on certain key clients and the market could shift or that client could go into tricky waters, what happens next. And we had clear examples of this, of clients going into hiring freezes. The market over the past 3.5, 4 years has seen over 30,000 to 40,000 layoffs, studios being shut down, and we could— we had key clients being affected by that. So what do you do at that point? So business development, you just can't take your foot off the gas of it.

Yeah, like it's just got to be consistent thing. That you do every single day, every single week. And that's something that I'm always trying to remind myself of, that, because it is easy to like get distracted with other stuff. Yeah, right. But I think, yeah, the lesson there for anyone listening, and I've just heard this so consistent over the last 2 years, is like, again, we just want to avoid that sort of word complacency at all costs. And there's a lot that goes into it, right? But what you're sharing with us here is Yeah, like, okay, if you win, um, 3, 4, 5 big key accounts, they spend 6 figures with you, um, that doesn't guarantee that they're going to spend 6 figures with you again next year.

Next year, yeah.

And just don't— again, it's, it's easy to say, but hopefully this is just a reminder where it's like, hey, if you're at your busiest right now, that's probably a good sign to keep up the business development and keep doing what you're doing versus find yourself in that position where you're sharing now, where it's like, shit, 3 of our key accounts that we projected to spend 6 figures with us have said that they're no longer hiring. Let's get back on the BD train and open up some doors.

And how long does that take to build that pipeline again and build those relationships? Some relationships can be overnight, some relationships take 6 months, 12 months, 2 years to nurture. So you've got to always have a pipeline and relationships that you're continuously nurturing and being on the floor within your industry.

So let's, let's round this out then. Let me know where you want to start here, like, because I think this is a very important part. I think particularly you'll relate to this now as a solo founder, but when you're an entrepreneur of a small business obviously so many things that the business requires, it normally has your sort of touching or you're involved in, right? So I'm just a massive, massive believer in if you're not performing in work, don't just look at work, look outside of work. And what does that environment look like? What are you doing for your health? What are you doing in your relationships? Because if you are really strong and performing outside of work, whatever that means to you, there's just a very high chance that you've got all of the bits that you need to have the best chance to succeed and perform in work. So start where you want to start here, but I think, like, we wrote down on the lessons, like, one of the things that was really difficult for you was how it affected you mentally, right?

Yeah.

Which I'm not— I'm not surprised to hear at all. Like, having a wobble on my journey, thankfully I've got a really supportive wife I can speak to But I think this is what I was saying to you outside, where I think there's, there's always pros and cons to things. I think one of the massive positives when you don't start a business with someone is like, you've got, you've got no one to sort of combat with. You've got no one to sort of really win over if you really think we should be going one way and the other person thinks you should be going the other way.

Especially when there's two of you, because one person doesn't agree and the other one wants to go this way. You're like lockheads.

Yeah, exactly. But even— and then I've heard it multiple times when it's 3 people, because you can have 2 people that are like, nah, nah, we want to do this, and then one person that is always being shut down. There's pros and cons, right? But how— so how— let's just talk about this period. Like, how did it show up for you mentally? How is it affecting you mentally? You have a family, you have a partner. Like, I don't know, how would you describe that period? Because I know, you know, you was honest with me, you felt like it really affected you. So talk to me about this.

Yeah, look, we won't get into the depths of it, but having worked tirelessly to build a business that's peaking at 15 people, it's now established within the games market and we're a known entity. When that relationship started breaking down, there's an element of you that's holding you back and thinking, I know this environment is no longer right for me. Something has to be done, but what does that look like? So it's that constant guessing and trying to figure it out, which then become a day-to-day battle within my head. And within those last few months of when we said, look, it's not working out, something's got to be done, let's figure it out. Those 3 months, because it was so difficult in terms of negotiating of which direction we're going, who is going to go, if anyone's going to go, how are we going to even make this work? Because it's become untangible. It was come to the point it was untangible where we weren't speaking. So how is it affecting me? They, from a business that I absolutely love and I've put my heart and soul into it over the past 3 and a half years, to then wake up in the mornings, have no energy for it anymore, think, do I, what am I going into today? Are we going to be speaking? Are we not going to be speaking? There's so many things that are playing on your mind. And then the other part of it is, if I exit, then you've got the imposter syndrome kicking in immediately. Look, we're in a market that's transitioning at the moment. If I exit, I remain in the same market, how long is it gonna take me to get onto my feet again? I've got a wife at home, I've got a 5-year-old child at home. How am I supporting my family? What is this industry gonna look like in the next 6 months once I've exited? So it's all of those things. Then you quickly stop eating the way you should be eating. It's a common thing in our industry. We've been, brought up around drink. So you have a stressful day, you'll have a drink. If you have a good day, you have a drink. So drink creeps into it, and I quickly found myself that I was no longer present. Um, and it was the moment that my wife looked me in the eyes and went, you're just not here anymore, really. You're just sat on the sofa with me. And it's— it begins to take over your mind because you're going for a period of the unknown. What, what is, what is the next 3 to 6 months going to look like for us? And if you're the main provider, um, and your duty is to protect and look after your family, and you don't know what you're going to do at that point, it begins to take over. You lose sleep. It just— you go into a spiral.

Yeah, that's tough.

So yeah, look, wasn't eating right, was it? You're not performing right at work because your attention is all on what's going to happen, what is the next step, what is the next move. Emails are coming back and forth, negotiating, and it just completely takes over you. So gym goes out the window, doing the things that you love goes out of the window, and you're in a— yeah, it's all you think about. You become obsessed with it. And like I said, it was the moment that my wife said to me, look, you're not present anymore. You're not in love with what you're doing. And it was at that moment I was like, look, enough's enough, enough's enough. This is driving me insane. I need, I need to make a decision and run with this and back myself with it.

I think that I said to you, like, I totally— and I've spoke to several people that have gone through what you've gone through, and it's, as you'll know, like, you went through it, it's it's not easy to make that decision. You're going to walk away from something, even if— like, the perfect example is how many people do we all know in our life that shouldn't be in the relationship they're in but stay in that? Yeah, do you know what I mean?

Look, I heard, I heard a quote during that period, um, and it stayed with me ever since. And it, and it was, sometimes in life, in order to grow 'in order to move on, you need to cut a little piece of you off, no matter how much it hurts.' And I was like, 'All right, this makes sense.

I need to cut this part off.

I've got to cut this part of my life off, and this is part of my journey. This is how it was meant to end, and what's next is going to be bigger and brighter.' And look, you mentioned it as well, I've got an incredible wife, I've got an incredible family that are behind me, that back me with everything that I've done. I've been down below, I've been up, and look, we'll do it again. So yeah, when you've got a supportive partner there and you've got a supportive family, it makes life a tad easier, doesn't it?

Huge difference. Yeah. And the thing is, right, if I was to ask you this question, I'm, I'm sort of—

you're smiling—

assuming what you're gonna answer. But like, would you, would you change that experience, like, knowing how things have played out? No. That's the thing, and that's mad.

I'd never change it. Because I learned so much. Yeah, I learned so much about myself. Answering that, no, I just learned— I learned who I was. I rediscovered my values again and what I stand for and what I want out of life.

And that's always a hard bit, isn't it, when you're in like the trenches, when you're sitting on that sofa and just in your head whirling around like, what's gonna happen, what is this gonna mean, what is that gonna mean? In that moment, it's so hard to sort of it's, it's so hard to even consider. If I get out the other side of this, there'll be a lot of lessons.

Yeah, that'll be really great because, because you're, you're focusing on what's happening at that moment and not looking beyond that. And it was once I started thinking in a way of, look, if I exit, let's, let's look at things as a family. Let's look at what I'm capable of. Essentially controlling the controllables. What am I in control of right now? And it's looking after myself, making the right decision. What the next 3 to 6 months looks like is not currently at play. So yeah, look, make the decision and then you'll have it all figured out.

And then just some final bits on this, and then we'll move on to the last year. But I just think it might be helpful for people, so don't need to know any details obviously, but like, how, how do you even go about— let's say I'm listening to this right now, it's really resonating, or maybe even I'm just interested to learn like what even happens when you're in that situation, because I don't even know myself. But like, when you reach that point and you're like, right, I need to sort of take action, like, how do you even start about getting like a mediation process? You know what I mean? Is that fairly easy to do? Like, how does that work out of interest in terms of how do you even initiate that? Do you know what I mean?

We were lucky in a sense that we had a legal advisor for the business that actually done the shareholders agreement for us. He was the person that drafted that. Our accountant was incredible as well. He was actually the person that mediated along the way because our solicitor didn't want to get involved. Um, but our legal advisor was there to give advice along the way, and then we took it from there.

Fair. So it was just like, we had the resources there, right? Okay.

And we knew within us that this isn't working anymore. And yeah, it's not, it's not tangible anymore. It's not healthy for either of us, and it's not fair on the business, because when there's a conflict between two partners, it's not only the both of you that are suffering, or whoever is within that business. It's the employees, it's the business, it's everyone else's lives that are up.

And what does— like, obviously you see it in, um, like on TV and stuff, but like, what, what does mediation even look like? You know what I mean? Is it like you saying, I want this, and then they go, no, you're not getting that, I'm getting this? Do you know what I mean? Like, what is— did you sit down in person and go through bits? Like, what does that even look like?

Basically like a tennis match.

Oh, okay. Is it what, over email, in person, on the phone, picture?

Yeah, I think if there's a complete breakdown in conversations between you, mediation looks like, look, someone will give you a call, have a conversation about it, then they'll deliver the news to them on what your offer is and what your thoughts are. Their thoughts will come back. But throughout that period, there was points that was like, look, this is going back and forth now. Let's make this work. It's not fair on any of us. Let's sit down and this is what I want, this is what you want. Look, it's clear as day, like, let's try and find a malleable solution here that works for everyone.

First, you— what you see— did sit down in person?

Yeah, there was, there was points that we sat down in person.

Yeah, it's just good to hear because like, again, you've got to— you don't know these things until like you go through it, you know what I mean?

There comes a point that you can't be doing this by emails. Look, you've been friends, you've been business partners. Yes, there's a breakdown, but let's be two responsible adults. There's a business here, there's other lives to consider here. Let's do the right thing.

But definitely important and critical to have that sort of middle person.

Yeah, 100%.

That doesn't have— yeah, I guess they've got to be neutral, haven't they? Yeah. In terms of like, they can't— yeah. Okay, fair. And then that overall, that took you around like 3 months to get to sort of a point where like you was happy, they were happy?

Yes, September to December, right before Christmas. Right before Christmas.

And then the big thing for you was non-compete, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense. Should we get into Pixel Movement then? Let's do it. So what Tell us about your— before we get into like what you feel like, yeah, key lessons, things you had to learn— what was like if me and you were to have a chat at the beginning of that year, 2024? Like, what was your mindset? Like, did you have clarity on the type of business that you wanted? Were you just— did you just feel a lot lighter that like, right, you're out the other side of this? Like, what was the mindset? Was it like, I have to— I have to feed my family, like, I need to get going?

Yeah, this is a big, big part of it. So after coming out of it, I gave myself a couple of months. I had wanted to recover from that period, but I think if I look back at it, the mindset was instantly switching to survival mode of I need to make this work. And could have very easily become another oversight because then you're on auto-run of need to get money in quickly. What is the vision? Where do you want this business to go within the first 12 months? How are you gonna bring it in? But I was pretty lucky because I had clients that I'd built relationships with for several years and I know it would've come good. But instantly you go into survival mode. At the same time though, there was massive weight lifted off my shoulders to say, I'm in control of my own destiny now. Every decision that I make, I know I'll make either the right or the wrong decision, but I can hold myself accountable for that. It's all on me now. And there was a massive buzz about it at the same time. Of fresh start, let's go again. Done it before, can do it again.

Do you think you, um, sorry, now I'm bringing it back, but I think I'm just curious, like, do you think you would go into business with someone again?

At this moment? Look, oh, if it's the right thing. Look, I learned a lot of lessons throughout that period. Definitely put a shareholders agreement into place. But you've got to be so, so well aligned in every aspect of life, I think, and really know each other well. And if it meant that it will bring me closer to my personal goals and my professional goals in the long run, then I'll always be open to the idea. There is— from one bad experience, you can't just shut off an entire thing, can you?

Yeah, yeah, I was just, I was just interested to like hear how you thought about it, but you just answered it. It's, you're not saying like, no, I wouldn't, but there's absolutely things that I'd be absolutely crystal clear on. Yeah, really dig deeper into that would give me just a lot more confidence that hopefully we've got a recipe here for it to work and for us to both get what we wanted, with an asterisk that it could still actually go to shit, but at least I know what to expect. Do you know what I mean?

At least I'll just go back to shareholders and say, look, It's not working. Let's, let's call it quits and go our separate ways.

So talk to me about— I think this is such a common lesson, so talk to us about your experience with it. You're talking about need to get money in, survival, want to prove to myself I can do it on my own. Yeah, but like one of these lessons here of year 1 was like, I'm gonna put, uh, yeah, so focus on selecting high quality, high value business. Like don't fall in, like not being confident with saying no. Like, this is such a thing that I always come up against. So talk to us about your experience of that. What did that, what did that look like?

I think going, one of the key clients that I still work to this day had several partners, and this is where I gained more clarity on how I wanted to work. With clients, and it was at a phase of, look, need to get working as quickly as possible, need to get revenue up. So, so I'm set now and ready to go and build upon that. Now, one of the first jobs that I was working with was with a client that was working with 5 other recruitment partners, and as we all know, that's just a shit race to the bottom.

Yeah.

Um, and you're speaking to candidates that have already been put forward to, what are your chances of success there? So being selective of who you work with and how you work with them come very early on. And what sort of relationship do you want with clients? Is it going to be transactional, just as another recruitment partner that fills the odd roles and just chases a role here and a role here and a role there that could bring in some revenue? Or do you want to do something a little bit more strategic, be closely embedded, being more consultative? And having worked on that first requirement and a couple of others right after that, it enabled me to build some metrics of how many resumes are we sending to get a key, key hire here or a successful placement. And looking back at it, With the opportunities that we worked on very early on against 5 other recruitment partners, and we were coming up on top, that then enabled me to have some very serious conversations with the CEO, with the stakeholders within that business to say, look, we've known each other for X amount of time. You've got 5 recruitment partners here. This is what the market is saying when you're reaching out to these candidates in terms of your reputation and what your process is looking like. How can we further improve that? What are the challenges throughout this process? And that very quickly turned into an exclusive partnership for the remainder of the year.

So it's interesting, right, because what you're saying there is like you should have said no, but at the same time it gave you the opportunity. Yeah, because it showed you like what you could do, right?

Contradictory.

But that's why it's so hard, because like when you are on your— when you go out on your own your time just feels a bit different, like that, that you, you're more willing to give the time because like, what else have you got to lose? Yeah, do you know what I mean? So, so like, I guess, do you feel like— again, there's never a silver bullet, right? But I think for any early entrepreneur that's listened to this, it's on that recruitment entrepreneur journey, you just got to get better at sort of sensing and understanding, like, right, should I be presenting this way of working? Should I decide to sort of go in this multi-agency role if it means that I can then really show what I'm about and this is a good client? Yeah, knowing that I'm gonna then say this is why we should work together this way, I guess a bit of a balancing act, isn't it, in terms of trying to judge it?

It depends if you want to take your time with it. You can take your time with it and figure out how you— what your actual offer is as a business. I think it's super important to figure out what your offer is from the beginning. And I think we came to realization of that around August, a couple of months into it, of this is what our offer is, this is how we work with clients, and this is the value that we can bring in. But there's no right or wrong answer. And look, as I said earlier on, you can use it as a way to prove yourself, But then if you are just chasing a job without taking very detailed discovery calls and knowing all of the hiring managers and knowing the challenges of that business, then what are your chances of success?

Mm-hmm.

So that's something that you've gotta assess at the start of any sort of relationship that you've got with a client.

Yeah. Yeah. You've gotta sort of— it is very nuanced.

Yeah.

Isn't it? Um, but I just think when, when you are starting out, I think what can just massively help you is just, just getting those like small wins, getting those little bites where then like the benefit of having, you know, that opportunity, even though it's up against 5 other agencies, is that you can go to your network and speak to people about things, right? And even if every candidate is— has been spoken to that's something new to be like, all right, okay. And then, you know, it's all about the information, isn't it? Like, what can you get? Leads? Or, okay, that's interesting, like, how come you've been invited, um, spoken to so many people? I don't know, like, there's so much you can then do about— at least you've got something to talk people about. I think that's what often people just find really helpful early on. But I think you're completely right, you may not have it from day one. Some people do, but if you, you've got to have clarity on that offer and how you want to work with companies, that might take a bit of time figuring out. You might have to learn the hard way doing multi-agency stuff and like, right, I don't want to work this way, I want to work only this way. And you can build towards that. So why don't we talk about that? Because I think what's really interesting here is that $470K number. I haven't got it, um, in front of me, which is annoying.

How many clients?

Yeah, it was like—

it was 5 clients.

5, exactly. So like that That's the benefit, right, of having this approach, because it's like, okay, to do £470K, how many clients would I need to work with if I'm every role is multi-agency, success on placement? It's probably gonna be more than 5 on that.

Yeah, probably.

Very likely.

Yeah, unless you've got massive fees.

Yeah. So tell us about this offer, because I think you've, you've sort of framed it as, um, like exclusive partnerships. So do you want to just tell us a bit about what that means? Like, we've heard work on clients exclusively, but again, there's nuances here. You're in a certain industry, but like, how, how, what does that offer look like? And let's just learn a bit about that.

We've tailored that specifically to our industry, and what it comes back to being more client-led as well. So we've recognized that our sweet spot are companies that are pre-seed or Series A that do not have that infrastructure or networks of actually doing things that are the same as more established game development studios. And that's where we come in and built an offer to just not come in and fill seats, but just have a more consultative approach at that very early stage. Of who can we connect you with, number one, within our network. So on a weekly basis, we're reaching out and having conversations with anything between 5 to 10 people that are key players within the industry and building a pool of specialists that we can reach out to when a company is looking for investment, publishers, or to be connected in any other sort of way. So building that and having a network of people that you can connect them with those companies that haven't got a recruitment team and are just getting started. They've just received their investment and are ready to now scale at a pace that they won't be able to keep up with, essentially. So coming and building what that interview process needs to look like from the offset, how many stages it needs to be, who are the best people that should be in that interview. How are other clients interviewing and seeing success? How many days is it taking for them to complete a process? Mapping out geographically of where they should be hiring. It's a very common thing that in the gaming industry, there's a lot of remote work across the globe and where we are working across the globe to map out certain geographical regions that are gonna be more cost effective. or that are going to have better employment laws for it to be an easier process for them, is by giving them that sort of information from the out. So that's a little bit about the offer that we give. The rest of it is, of course, that entire hiring process of how we work with them. And we've, we've seen that to be a success.

And then the thing, like, I absolutely love that because there's so much there that isn't getting someone in a position.

It's not about sending CVs, it's What are your goals? What is your mission as a business? How can we add value? What are the biggest challenges that you are having at the moment? Some, some of the studios that we've partnered with had, had never hired in particular regions. They don't know what the salaries are. They don't know basic things as what, what are the typical notice periods. We, we, we saw that very early on with one of our key clients when they began hiring over in Germany and over in the UK and they were coming across 3-month notice periods for very senior hires because the stakeholders are all based over in the US.

What's going on?

What's going on? We've been hiring people in 2 weeks. Um, why have these people got 3-month notice periods? It's about educating them and adding value in every aspect of that hiring process and looking at it from a broader angle.

Yeah, and I really like that. I think it's often missed, but great recruiters do do it, which is that I love that first bullet around like you're just absolutely committed to this industry, your niche, and anyone that you can connect your sort of network with where it's beneficial is like a— is such a solid value add. Like the publisher piece, the people that might be interested investing in studios, whatever, like just being really aware of the ecosystem.

Yeah.

And how you can connect people just because it, it's a good idea and it makes sense. Like, you're not saying, oh, let me introduce you to this, uh, publisher, and if they do publish an article, can you give me your next job? That isn't it, right?

No, no, no.

So paying it forward, it's helping people in the industry, um, and like you said, then building those relationships and just trying to deliver value in all different ways. Um, and what— and then the sort of end outcome of how you've approached this is that on several occasions you've ended up over a period of time, whatever the period is, you've ended up bringing on what, like 7, 8, 6 different mandates? Or you're at least aware of like, yeah, this is what they need now, but I know in 6 months' time they're going to need this if they get here. And that's so you can a lot more project plan, right? And actually project effectively. Okay, I've just signed this exclusive agreement, but if everything goes to plan that's in my control, we should be doing 6 to 8 placements with them and we should be making X amount by the end of the year.

So it's a little bit easier to predict what your cash flow's gonna look like in 12 months' time and where you need to plan for resources if you are gonna scale up as well and what sort of team you need behind you. So from the first call that you'd have with a client, I think it's important rather than asking how many jobs have you got this year, what are the trigger points of, Okay, you want to hire now. Look, I don't wanna know anything about that job. Tell me about what's going on within the business. What is the next milestone? What is the biggest challenge at the moment? What are we gonna achieve in the next year, 2 years, 3 years when this game is going to be released? And then look at what that hiring looks like over the entire year. So then work backwards.

Mm-hmm.

So at what point do these people need to be in? You need to make X amount of hires, but when are you going to start that process? So it's just working backwards rather than here's the job, get to work.

Yeah. And I think that, that's what I always find in these conversations, which is what you're talking about now, which is my next question was going to be if I want— if that's— if the way that you're describing working with your clients is sort of where I want to get to, and I'm listening, what's like the first step that I can take? And it just always comes back to those discovery calls and being really committed to not jumping in, just speaking about the job brief. Like, I— when I was in recruitment, I never, I never did a discovery call ever. Like, it wasn't, it wasn't even a phrase. Like, it wasn't— it would be like, have you got a job? I can do this. Like, talking about terms quickly, what percentage can you do? It's like all that, right? But time and time again, we're talking about Elizabeth's episode, right? Again, it's the commitment to the discovery call and be like, look, I'm not here— I'm not here— I know you're hiring, um, I've seen that there's a job ad. I'm not actually here to talk to you today about that. Are you against us talking about how we got here in the first place? What have you struggled with? And actually, where do you want to be in 6 to 12 months' time? What talent do you need to get? Do you know what I mean? It's being committed to that.

Yeah.

And that will result— you may not get wins straight away, you may not get time signed, signed terms straight away, But what it can result in is information, is things that you can use to go, okay, well, look, because of what you said, I'm actually going to introduce to this publisher that I met the other week. I think that'd be a good connect because the thing that you said, whatever. But it can— the end result, I think, is then actually being in a position to go, this is why I think we should work together in this way because of you, because you told me this, this, this, and this. This is how our exclusive agreement on our offer works nicely with that.

And you're building trust along the way. You're building credibility. It's a very, very small industry. If you look at gaming, it's a very premature industry and it's a very small industry as well. When you're going to events and you're attending a conference across the globe every month or every other month, you start seeing the key players here. And when you're building these relationships and becoming a known entity to everyone, you're taken more seriously.

So in recruitment now, like, we hear it's such an phrase that we hear so much, like personal branding and build your brand. But like, this has been really pivotal for you, hasn't it? Like you just said there that the gaming industry is quite small. Yeah. But you said to me what's been absolutely critical is that you're showing— you're going to these conferences, you're being interested, you're being curious, you're getting involved. And that, if I'm honest, like obviously how we connected— I see your content, we've exchanged messages. So like, talk to us about your experience with this, but like just give us how it's actually helped you as a recruitment business owner. Because I think there's— I'm sure you get hit with all the time, like, so I can get you 10 leads on LinkedIn every week. There's so much of that stuff now, right? But like, let's just cut through the noise a bit. Like, how— what's important from your perspective, from what you've experienced in this year when it comes to building your brand? And like, how has it actually helped you? Like, what has been the sort of knock-on effects of actually really committing to this? Because you shared with me that that's been really crucial this year, hasn't it?

Yeah, look at— looking back at it, if we look back at the last 8 to 10 years, I don't think I ever posted. I think it's a, it's a lot— it's more common nowadays for people to be posting and sharing, but you'll see a lot of the samey samey and the same sort of formats that are up there. But I've, I've got to show gratitude to, to a good friend of mine that I was introduced to. His name's Harry, and he's been pivotal for the gaming industry, he supported me in terms of putting some content pillars together. I had no idea of sharing on LinkedIn and sharing my journey, because you look at it and you think it's pretty cringe.

Yeah.

Um, how do I do this? How do I tell this story? And I committed to telling my own story and just showing who I was as a person, because you're approaching clients and you're spending 99% of your day on LinkedIn. If you've got no presence and that person looks you up, what do they know about you? What is their impression of you at first glance? So telling my story of, you know, previous business and not going into the details and sharing successes and showing a little bit of my life outside of the working world has enabled people to see what I'm doing, see that I'm active, see that I care about this industry. I'm very invested into it, and it allows conversations to be a lot warmer. And look, we're going to a conference next week, and you, you put it out there, people are reaching out to you before you're reaching out. And I've noticed that you're gonna be at the expo, let's have a conversation. It just makes life so much easier. But people then begin to get to know you, and when they see you in person— I'm not saying I'm a massive LinkedIn content head and I've got 100,000 followers, but people are seeing it even if they're not liking it and you're coming up on their feed. People are seeing that you're active, you're working hard, you you, you care about what you're doing and you're actually serious. So it's, it's a massive— we've had clients reaching out direct to have conversations. You have other specialists within the industry that want to have conversations or just meet for a coffee at an industry event.

How do you get the most out of conferences? Because I know that's, that's like really big in your— and it's big for a lot of people, but how— yeah, like when you're going to a conference, like I saw that one that you went to in San Fran and then like there's flight issues on the way back or something. Like, how— what's your mindset going into a conference? Because that, that can be overwhelming for some people. Yep. Um, people could go in there being the opposite, where they're like, right, I'm gonna walk out with 15 business cards. Don't know how many people will walk around with business cards in the gaming industry, I don't know. Uh, but like, what, what's your mindset going into them? Because that— I'm sure you've got better at this because they've been crucial for you, haven't they?

One of the first conferences that we'd been to was over in Brighton, and this was many years ago. This was when I was part of the old business, and that was more of a social environment of people to get together. It's the summertime in Brighton, everyone's on a piss-up.

Mm-hmm.

So we had a bit of an impression of it's to go out to these events, see existing clients, and, you know, have a good time with them and show face. Now when I look at it, we, we come from a strategic outlook. It's who's going to be attending here, who do I need to speak to, who do I want to speak to. So when we're attending conferences, from a month before, we're already building a pool of specialists, CEOs, stakeholders, anyone that we want to speak to on LinkedIn. And starting to reach out. I've also got meeting platforms, and every single client that's going to be there, every single person that's on there, is on this meeting platform. So who are the clients that I want to speak to, and what reason have I got to speak to them? Why should they even want to speak to me? So you've got to give everyone a reason that, you know, what is the reason you want to have a chat? So everything is personalized. Look into the business, understand what they're doing, And everyone will put on to the conference platform why they're going out to these conferences.

What's the meeting platform? Sorry, I don't know what that is.

So when you've got a conference that you're going to, they've got a platform where every single client that's attending, every attendee is on this platform, right? And everyone's diaries are on there.

Okay.

And that's where you book meetings.

And these are like proper paid-for events, like Spanish paid-for events? Yeah, yeah, fair. Obviously they may not have all this, I don't know, maybe, maybe it's quite common.

Is it in the gaming industry? It's very common.

Fair. Okay, mad.

There's—

there's— you could book into— and they have to accept it, or they'd have to accept it, right? So it's got to be personalized.

It's got to be personal. Look, I've noticed that you're seeking investment, or you're seeking a new publisher for your new title. I've worked with so-and-so within your business. There's so many avenues that you can go down. There's no right or wrong answer, but it's got to be super personalized. You've got to give people a reason to meet with you.

How many meet— like, how many meetings could you do in a day? Like, how many meetings have you done before a conference, like, through that, like, a platform?

Over the course of 2 days, 3 days, 25 meetings back to back. Yeah, but I've learned my lessons. I don't do back-to-back meetings anymore. That is hard. By the end of it, you're exhausted.

Because I do— I do— this makes complete sense because Obviously a lot of the time the reason people go to these meetings, um, go to conferences because they want to meet like-minded people or yeah, get connected. But unless you're pretty good at going up to people, speaking to people, or you know some people in industry that are well connected, you can introduce you, it can be hard, right? It can be so daunting just to turn up.

If you just turn up to a conference expecting to get something out of it, it can be hard. You'll bump into people when having a drink or at a mixer in the evening, but the conference within itself, everyone is attending with a strategic goal in mind. Whether it's recruiters that are attending, developers or publishers or any service providers, everyone has a goal in mind and everyone is very open to it. It's not, it's not coming from an angle that you're coming in cold. People are gonna reach out to you to have conversations and everyone's open to networking. It's, it's a couple of days of networking and meeting like-minded people, but you've got half an hour slots to go in and understand. Treat it as discovery calls. You'll go in and having conversations to get to know a business and see if there's any synergy between yourselves.

And then just quick one on this. It might be something that you're sort of quite natural at, but you said a few times that the gaming industry is quite small, quite insular. People know each other.

Yeah.

So like sometimes when I speak to recruiters about getting out there, going to conferences, I know it's important but can sometimes be a bit— I don't know if concerned's the right word, maybe apprehensive about how they're going to be perceived as a recruiter being there. They don't want to— they know that maybe they've had bad experiences, like, oh, recruiter here, he's just trying to speak to my staff or whatever. Like, how, how have you sort of approached being not like accepted by the gaming industry, but you know what I mean, like not maybe sort of fulfilling what a lot of people in the gaming industry might think of recruiters? Because I think that's important, isn't it?

Yeah.

Have you approached that, or have you been quite natural at that?

Don't pitch slap straight away. It's very easy. Show a keen interest in getting to know people. These are human beings. Show real keen interest in what they are doing, who they are as people. Even at these conferences, when you're going in to speak to people, have a genuine conversation just like you and I are having now, and get to know them outside of business, and then talk about the business and what they're doing. But you've got enough of that information. If you go into that meeting and say, hey, I'm a recruiter, how many jobs have you got? This is what we do, this is how we can do it, people are going to be taken aback straight away. So it's just approach it like a human being, man. Yeah, it's fairly simple.

Fair. So what are the year 2— what are the goals? I'm sure you thought about this. What, what's on top of mind? What if we sit down another 12 months, where are we going to be? What are the goals?

Goals. So this year starting, I've gone back alone, um, However, partnering with a very good colleague of mine and combining forces, for me it's going to be hiring another person. That's super important for me. Remotely? No, I don't think it works at so early on in a business. You want someone that's going to be able to work side by side with you and have that buzz, have that energy. Um, and by the end of the year, I'm hoping to be at 3 people because as a lone founder, to try and source for roles, do BD, attend the conferences, and do everything in between, it's not sustainable. So for me, it's to grow this year, continue building the brand, continue being at the conferences, and then go into next year with a nice small team and grow our client base.

Any cash money targets? Any revenue targets, what we're saying? I bet we're glad that you didn't hit 500.

Yeah, absolutely.

That sounds better than that.

Trying to sound so much better.

The classic double year on year, get the, the million mark. I don't know what goals you've got.

Revenue-wise, I want to surpass the 500K that we've done, um, and then go from there.

Keep it consistent, right?

Keep it consistent.

Yeah, consistent.

Yeah, be consistent. I've got an idea in my head that I've jotted down and it's written down and I'm working towards that. So yeah, love it.

Look, so I appreciate you coming on, being transparent. I know that we touched on it today, right? But I think going through that period that you went through, as you said, there would have been very challenging, difficult moments. But I've said to you a number of times, like, kudos to you to keep pushing on, being persistent, come, come out the other side. And like, look where you are now. I know you'll feel like you're just getting started and there'll be things that could have done better this year, but you've, you come out the other side of a very difficult period, which I'm sure at moments you thought, I don't know, it was going to be the end, or like, what the hell am I going to do now? Like, whatever. But you come out the other side, you start another business, and I think that is like what for me, I just really love and respect about other business owners. Like, you back yourself, you made it happen, no one else. Like, you've, you've done all of that, right? No one else. And I think that is the, the hard thing about entrepreneurship, right?

There's never an easy day, but it's also the really cool thing.

So I think, yeah, kudos to you, and also really appreciate coming on and sharing that.

No, I appreciate it, man. Thank you so much.