Roger Wilkinson: Starting a recruitment business with 1 year experience? So did Roger!

When you're starting off a business and you haven't got a lot of cash and you want to make sure that the bills are paid, sometimes it's a little bit tricky to see the wood from the trees. Go, right, this is the vision, this was our structure, this is the game plan that we came up with this year, and I'm going to maintain it, I'm going to keep on top of it, rather than just make sure that money's coming in and that we're scaling. It's just about maintaining the game plan. Team cohesively comes up with a game plan at the end of the year. My job is to ensure that we hit that.

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Recruitment Mentors Podcast. I'm your host Hishem Azzouz, and on this week's episode I was joined by Roger Wilkinson. We discussed a lot about Roger's entrepreneurial journey, as in 2007 he took the leap to start his very own recruitment business called the Ojo Group. So over the last 15 years, this has been the business that he's been building after only working in recruitment for less than a year. So as you can imagine, in 15 years Roger has had to reinvent this business multiple times. But there was a pivotal moment, and that was in 2016, where he realized that the business that he'd built wasn't the one that he wanted or was proud of or was best built for the success and future success of the company. So in this conversation, we really delve deep into culture and how Roger, over the last number of years, has rebuilt a culture that he's proud of and a business that he is proud of that's successful and profitable. Enjoy the episode. Roger, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, it's great to be here.

Thanks for coming in despite, uh, I guess, yeah, you said the whole, whole team, whole family's ill, so yeah, yeah, I'm doing some serious night shifts at the moment and day shifts, but I'm here. Got some coffee.

Exactly, I'm ready to go.

So look, really looking forward to, to break down this journey that you've been on. Like I always, um, like to do at the beginning, particularly for someone with the— how long you've been on this journey for, I think it's just really useful for people just to have some immediate context. So obviously today, like, we're going to really focus on this entrepreneurial journey that you've been on, um, because you started your own recruitment business in 2007 after working in recruitment for a year. That's correct, right?

That is correct. Yeah, it's actually less than a year.

Less than a year. So yeah, you, you've been building this business, uh, for, uh, just over 16 years. Which is a long time. It's nearly 2— yeah, you're going on to the 2 decades mark now. So look, I'm going to add some context here, and if there's anything that you want to add or you think I'm missing, then please do. But I'm just going to do some sort of highlight things here, broken it down into sort of 3 key bits when we prepared for this. So just to give everyone a bit of an idea, so end of the first 5 years, um, I put down here that you ended up around 20 heads in the first sort of 5-year mark. Um, and I'm not sure exactly what revenues were, but around a million I put down here. And then the next 5 years, so up into 2016, you got up to 3 million net fee income and around 38 people. Now this is where it was quite a pivotal moment, which we're going to talk about here, where then you sort of ended up going on this journey where you went from around 40 people down to 12 to 15 people, and you've been on this sort of rebuilding journey, which is what we're going to go into. And then from that point, you've sort of been on this growth journey of 40 to 60% per year, and you're now back up to around— no, you're around 21 people now, or you're around 30 people.

Oh yeah, around 31 people now.

Yeah, around 31 people, hoping to be around 50 by the end of the year. And you can continue to grow revenues and net fee income. So this is what we're going to break down, right? This is the story that we're going to break down. So I guess let's just start with the million-pound question. Yeah, because I'm sure, like, particularly with your model hiring a lot of people that don't have experience, grads, you thought a lot about this. So what's Roger's take on what characteristics and traits do you believe make up a highly successful recruitment consultant in today's market?

There's the obvious ones which everyone's talked about, like motivated, resilient, um, but for me there's a couple of extra things. I think you need to, you need to have a level of ambition that it could be that you want to make the most amount of money, it could be that you want to progress faster than anyone else, You've got to have that burning ambition to, to do better, uh, than, than your peers. Um, and that could be— you might be come from a wealthy family, you might come from a, from a, from a tougher upbringing, but you still have that ambition. Um, I think you need social intelligence. Um, I think to pick out a good candidate and a good personality doesn't necessarily need to be You didn't need to come from a strong academic background, you just need to have that intrinsically in you. And those are some key areas that I would say make a difference for us. And I also think you've just got to be happy to pick up the phone, you've got to be able to have it, happy to have a conversation. If you're, um, you don't have to be a total extrovert, um, but you've got to be happy to do that.

It's interesting you say around that first bit because I had Luis I did a conversation with Lewis from Wiser, and the way that he coined it— I don't know what you think about this— which I really liked was he found that it's typically people that have a point to prove, even internally, externally, might change over time.

I used to have an advisor and he called it the fear. The fear, yeah. He called it— so he, he basically said you would need to have this, um, almost nervousness that, that, that, um I think, uh, the ambition to succeed is, um, just as powerful as, as the fear of failure. Um, and, uh, yeah, that I would, I would say that that's totally true. I mean, I know recruitment companies that will hire people that have to relocate, that they have no money, they're, they're kind of risking it all and they've got to make cash. Um, we don't necessarily hire for that, but at the same time I think that is a, that is a very motivating factor to succeed.

So less than a year's experience and you decided to go on an entrepreneurial journey. What, what gave you the right to do that? Where did that confidence come from?

I think, um, I think it was naivety mostly. Um, I came into recruitment, uh, wanting to set up my own business, um, and, uh, there was a friend of mine's dad who wanted to partner with someone, so originally going to go into a partnership with them. Um, and it quickly transpired that he saw it as more of an investment than a, um, than a partnership. So I bought him out within the first few months. Um, but I think the confidence to really do it was, was, was probably more naivety. I, I didn't really know some of those ups and downs. Um, I think in, in the long run it probably held me back. I should have been in a bigger business. I should have learned some decent structure, um, and it would have it probably would have accelerated my, um, the business by at least 5 years, I think.

So if I was to be sitting in front of you in 2007, like, and I said, Roger, what, what do you want for the Uhur Group? Like, what do you want this business to be? What would you say?

So right at the start, I probably wouldn't have had a very good answer for you, to be honest. Um, I would have just been trying to pay the bills. Um, But later on, we kind of compiled what, what we're about as a business, um, and we wanted to be the supplier to the top tech innovators in the country, in the, in the UK. Um, so genius-style candidates, um, really interesting tech, just being at the forefront of that the whole time. And that, that, that's, that's what we want to be number one for.

So you wanted to work quite early on, then you had ambitions for it to grow, wanted it to be Oh yeah, we've always wanted to be one of the fastest growing companies in the UK. Where does that come from?

I think that's just my ambition. I wanted to make sure that— I think with recruitment there's huge amounts of opportunity for people, and like I said, you could, you can make a lot of cash. But one big area I think is that level of progression. You can learn some certain skill sets, you can learn some great management skills, and you can bring those skills into your personal life to make life easier and better. Um, and if you're tying in with both people that want to make cash and people that want to progress, um, you need scale. Um, and you can get some really great people to work alongside that maybe isn't all about money for them, but they, they want to be running and building a business.

So why don't we— what I really want to get into with you is this journey that you've been on since 2016 and sort of what you learned. But just, just really quickly, for, for people listening that might have ambitions to start their own recruitment business or might be early on. I know we're sort of going back some time here, but obviously I'm, I'm going to assume that because you did, like you said, you didn't have that much experience, there's going to be certain things that, yeah, just took you longer to learn or you had to learn the hard way. But looking at that initial period, um, in the first couple of years, like, what, what, what ended up being sort of the sort of most surprising in terms of— you went into it naively, it was like, yeah, I can do this, I'll make it happen. But looking back, what, what ended up being sort of really surprisingly hard and difficult about starting a recruitment business?

So back then, starting was tough. You, you had to, you had to put down 5, 6 grand for a server. If you wanted a decent office space, you were committing to 3 years. You were basically a couple of hundred grand of commits, commitments, the risk of it failing. Uh, was just— it was really scary. Um, nowadays it's just not that— it's not that tough. Um, but I think some of those structural things that you can put in place that I didn't put in place— we, we succeeded in terms of billing, we succeeded in terms of picking up great clients and delivering really, really well. Um, where we failed was building a structure in place that when people got 3, 4 years down the line, um, we didn't have a bulletproof structure. In fact, we had a bit of a wobbly house of cards. Um, so although we made a lot of money, I think, although the candidate and the client experience was actually quite good, we— everyone was like slightly peeling off into different directions as we scaled.

So there's a people part.

Yeah, the people part and the management part. I think it's a lot easier to teach people how to sell than it is to teach people how to manage. Management takes experience. It takes years, um, whereas selling, you can, you can learn that aspect fairly quickly, I think.

So why don't we— because when we, uh, prepared for this, and also like when you dropped me a note on LinkedIn, sort of what really sort of struck out to me, which is why I was interested to speak to you, was like just this sense of overall commitment to building a culture that you're proud of.

Yeah.

So why then, why don't you describe the business in 2016 to us? Like, why don't you just, just take us back to— yeah, you're going into the office in 2016. How would you describe the business then? And you can take that anywhere— the culture, the people, what you're about. Like, why don't you describe the business in 2016?

So the business, I think, had a, had a, um, high-performing culture. Uh, people were making a lot of money, the clients were getting a good service, the candidates were getting a good service. Um, but on the management team, it was, it was argumentative, I would say. Um, and so we just started pulling off in, in different directions. Um, and it meant that it was, um, it was just less of a fun culture to be in. For me, I want to be in the office. I love going into the office. It's part of my sort of my structure and my, my framework for life. Um, and there was times when it was, when it was pretty tough. Um, and that part of it I would definitely never go back to.

How many people were in your management team?

So back then we probably had, uh, I think we had about 6.

Okay, so how, how was— how, what was the structure? So it was like what, you had directors, associate directors, you have billing managers?

Yeah, we have billing managers, uh, we had one non-billing manager, sales director, um, and yeah, the rest were team lead stage, and then myself. Um, and I think moving from— so going from 1 to 10, as a, as a manager, you as a sole person, you can manage 10 people. As soon as you get to 20 people, that becomes a little bit more creaky. You need, you need a stronger management team in place. And as soon as you get to 40, you, you really need to be performing with your management team making decisions by themselves. Um, you might be the vision, but, but it's, it's really much more of a collective and democratic management approach as opposed to that, that probably autocratic approach that, that you start with. Um, and getting that blend right so that your management team is making decisions, uh, that are in line with, um, your vision and values of the business. Um, that takes time so that by the time they get there and they're making those decisions by themselves, they're, they're, they're making them fairly harmoniously. Um, I don't think you want a really soft management team because Um, you want people with a bit of heart. You want people to stand up and go, come on, we need to, we need to perform. Is this good enough? Um, but you don't want people just sort of shouting other people down.

So when you say argumentative, like, what do we mean here? We're going to go into a leadership meet and Roger's going to go, no, we should be doing this, and someone else is going, no, we should be doing that. Like, what, what did that actually look like?

Yeah, I think, um, and this is part of my upskilling as well, so when, when you're a manager, you want to be asking like good open questions and coaching people through that. Um, and a lot of the time, depending on what your promotion structure is, which at the time was for us was build, pick up clients, um, it's much more comprehensive now so that people that are reaching those management levels are actually, um, they're doing presentations on the values, they're talking about what they've learned, they're developing skills so that they can sit around a management table, ask questions about what everyone is thinking, um, and then make that decision afterwards. So quite often, and you'll have this at a junior level as well, you're, you're, um, I was in, in the pub on Friday chatting to someone, he's like, why did we take away Deal of the Week? I love talking about Deal of the Week. And we would, on a Friday, we talk about Deal of the Week, and we were just making a lot of deals, and it was so lengthy that I'm not sure people were learning as much about it. So we, we, we turned it into BD of the Week and talking about that side of things and the successes. But his opinion was quite different, even though as a management team and a collective, we decided this was kind of the best route for the business. So you can have people at kind of a junior level that will have a strong opinion, uh, on, on a, on a situation because that's their perception of it. Um, And if you're sitting around a management team table, then you need to empathize and understand before you've really stamped that mark on your decision. You're, you're listening to everyone else's, and you're not coming into that meeting already having your mind made up.

So you had— okay, so you had a lot of people in the room then that got to the top by being selfish, focusing on their own performance, self-centered. They got there by performing bidding-wise, sales-wise.

Exactly, yeah, which is, which is natural. Um, um, but I think when you're running a business, you need to make sure that they're developing in other ways as well.

So looking back then, just on this 2016 period, because let's be honest here, outside looking in, £3 million net fee income, circa 38 people. I'm sure you walk into a pub and your mates go, Roger, how's it going? You're going, yeah, it's fucking great, making good money, um, good-sized business. So like, what, what were some of the lagging indicators here? Because obviously to go from then, yeah, the, the 40 down to 12, 15 people We can talk about over what period and sort of how that manifested, but I think what, what would be really good for people to learn here is obviously you got to that point and then you made some changes, but I'm sure you reflected on it. Like, what were some of the things leading up to that point where you then had to make some more drastic changes that maybe people could learn from, where they're starting to recognize or pick up on, like, oh, you know what, actually we might have people in the wrong seats here, or we might have to work with this management team to get better at empathizing and understanding and listening to people rather than just deciding and telling people what to do. So were there any sort of— on reflection, were there any sort of lagging indicators looking back that maybe you could have acted a bit earlier on, or you could have taken accountability and gone, hey guys, look, I feel like we could be doing better at this, or maybe we need to sort of start thinking about this? Was there anything there looking back?

Yeah, I think, I think you, I think you know when things aren't working. As well as you would like. Um, because if you sit in a management team and it's going, it's going well, but you know, you've got growth mindset, you're always looking for improvements to make, um, you can tweak one or two things and you focus on that on the month and you really nail that process down. Um, if things aren't going that well and you perhaps aren't billing as much as you would like, I think now is a slightly tougher market, and that's when we'll start to see some of these some companies creak maybe a little bit and see high attrition levels, is that you, um, everyone starts to have a solution for the problem, and everyone's problem is— every— everyone's solution is a little bit better than the other person's, and you've got to cherry-pick which one you really focus on. And when you walk out that management team, everyone has got to get behind the decision. And if you've developed a team which, as soon as they walk out that room, that they're kind of up for it and they're going be up for that challenge and they're going to move forward irrespective of whether or not they necessarily believed in it. And I think you've got a pretty good winning formula. If you walk out— if they walk out that room and people are like, I'm not sure, that's not what I believed in, um, then you've got a formula that could, uh, it's probably gonna not end very well for anyone. Um, so, um, there'll be plenty— there's plenty of warning signs But I think ultimately it comes down to, is your workforce harmonious? Is it happy? Is it improving? Do you have those constant small steps forward? It might not be the perfect solution for everyone, but are you constantly moving forward?

Okay, and then was there a moment then that you were like, looked in the mirror and thought, not proud of this business? Not happy with what it looks and feels like.

Um, so we had a couple of sections to the business in London, and I was starting to open up, uh, separate sections of the business and open up a Scottish office. And there was a period when I get a phone call from literally being in Scotland for 2 days, and, um, it's like, the world's crumbling, you kind of almost need to come back down. I was thinking, I've made a mistake here. Um, that sort of adage that you you're not a leader till you've taught a leader who can teach a leader. I, I was, I was miles off that. Um, and, and I think that was a point where I was thinking, okay, well, I've scaled the business to a certain size, I've got overheads. And this, this might be true today where there's some businesses that maybe haven't nailed down some of their practices, um, perfectly. They've scaled in the good times. Um, and you get to a situation where You think, shit, I've got a lot of overheads here. I need to make money. Um, I don't really want to take a step backwards because I've never really done that in my life. Um, how do I ride my way through this? Um, and that's a, that's a tough realization that if you're someone who always wants to move forward, you might have to take a few steps backwards to, to go forward, or, or it might be enforced on you.

So the realization was then, what I'm getting is the business, even though it was at that size, it had a management layer, was still very much reliant on you and wasn't capable of running self-sufficiently without you?

Yeah, I mean, they were, they were great performers in their, in their own right, but as a, as a team that was pulling in the right direction to achieve the numbers we needed to achieve and just hitting our goals, um, it wasn't happening. And then, and then you get people, um, it's possible to have a bit of a blame culture then.

Okay, so, uh, yeah, so look, I want to go into then over the last few years, but just, just really quickly on this then. Yeah, because I'm sure you've reflected on this.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, for me, I'm, I'm big into, um, personal responsibility. Like you said there, then the blaming— I don't think you can get anywhere in life by having a victim mindset and not taking accountability.

Agreed.

So when, when you look at that period then, like, as a founder, as the, the person that was driving that business forward, made the decision to hire these people, made the decision to promote these people, like, like, where, where do you think you fell short then?

I think I didn't have a great promotion code, uh, structure.

Okay.

So I wasn't training and developing people in areas that, um, that I now know to be critically important. And I can see it happening now at Mylof, uh, with the, with, with, uh, with teams at the moment where I'm thinking, okay, this could lead to this, which could lead to this. And so just keep an eye out for it. Um, that structure was important. So what you want is to be promoting people on your values. Um, one of ours is humility. So, um, we won't have that situation where you've got someone who's like total kind of arrogant asshole that's pushing people down to lift themselves up. Um, which I probably allowed, allowed to happen because I was promoting this like high performance, hey, we've got someone who's just had like $20,000, $30,000 paycheck, and, uh, and they're totally killing it in the marketplace. Um, and I was fanning the flames, if anything. Um, so, um, so yeah, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't go down that, that road again. Um, there's a bunch of things which, which I know that I shouldn't have promoted people as quickly as they, uh, they should. And it's tricky if you're hiring with grads, um, and you want them moving forward and you don't want any speed bumps. You want them to accelerate through. You want them to be managers as fast as anyone else because that helps you hire, that helps to demonstrate, hey, we've got superstars in my team. Um, but really it's, it's, it's, it's, it's not good for anyone. You just end up having attrition, everyone gets frustrated, you're stressed, um, and the performance, um, in the long run is, it's, it's not going to help anyone.

I appreciate you sharing that. So, so where, where did you start then? Like obviously recognize, actually, yeah, maybe I've done some things, um, a few things wrong here, or I've obviously learned from them. I feel like I could be doing this better. I feel like, yeah, we could be, um, we could have a better culture, we could have better people in the right seats. Like, where, where did you start here then? So when we said, yeah, like, then went around sort of 40 down to 12, 15, like, was that over a long, long period, or like, where— so where, where did you actually start?

Uh, it was pretty quick when I decided that the Scottish office is not really working. I need to come back to London. Um, um, I need to basically almost go back to basics.

Yeah.

Um, and the start was sort of, it was almost my way or the highway. This is, we're just going to make it work and we're going to, we're going to outperform anyone. Um, and we just went back to that and there was some, a lot of, um, hard conversations with people. And it was, are you on the bus? Because we're going to make this work. Um, and are you up for it? And some people really were, and some people, some people really weren't. Um, so I remember having a conversation with Joe, um, sales director at the time, and we're like, we need to go— we're gonna go— we're gonna scale down, we're gonna go to a new office. Um, there is blood on the walls in this place. Uh, let's move out of it, go to a new office. But when we go in there we want to have deals galore coming through, and we're just immediately going to create positivity. And we worked our ass off for 3, 4 weeks. And as soon as we got in that new office, it was actually probably a little bit longer than that because we had to sort of see our lease. So it was about 6 weeks when we decided to do it, and we'd been working really hard up to that point. So we left that old office on a little bit of a high, and there was a buzz going on. And when we hit the new office, which was much smaller, um, we were kind of a bit more crammed in there, uh, rather than looking at all these empty seats. Um, and, um, it immediately changed. And from that point, it became a movement forward that we, um, that we had more of that hockey stick, uh, graph where, like, okay, let's take it a little bit slower at the start. Let's get it right. Let's make sure the processes are really nailed down and that each person is is good before we move on and we start hiring again.

So, okay, so then, so basically you just want it— so basically you just, yeah, like got your house in order, got the right people on the bus on the journey, and then it was like, right, we're gonna go again, new chapter, new sort of season, uh, of the iHerb group. Um, but when it came to— obviously, if— obviously you like looking back, it was the leadership team, management team, including yourself in that that didn't quite end up working. Why don't we just focus on that for a second? Like, when then the, the moment came of like, okay, well, let's, let's start growing. We're getting some good success, we've got a high-performing team. What is it that you did that was different this time in terms of promoting people? You said they're around promoting on values. What was it that you're like, right, okay, well, when we do promote people, when we do have people more in management seats, what are the non-negotiables now compared to— yeah, obviously when it didn't quite work out?

So, um, one of the things I started to do was, was hire experience, or at least have a flow of experience coming through. Um, because if you're just a purely graduate model and someone leaves from the top, unless you've got someone that's ready and waiting to step up, and I think you're in trouble because you then get this rite of passage where people kind of expect to be there. Um, and you do need a little bit of outside, outside exposure. Um, so, um That was one side of it. Um, in terms of the development piece, every quarter we'll have a promotion meeting and everyone will score themselves against varying values. And that could be as much as like system work or, um, values in the business. They score themselves out of 10 and write a little, little blurb on that. And then there'll be some managers' comments on it. And whatever they're focusing on, as well as our headline promotional goals, well, there'll probably be some softer skills that people are working on which they'll need to do before they get promoted. Um, and those opportunities every quarter that you're, that you're sitting down and chatting with people and developing them, as well as doing it on desk, you can kind of look back and see that journey that people have gone on. Um, and that's something that as a small business, um, and starting out, it's very easy just to bill, pick up clients, and recruitment, it can be, it can be 20 blokes in a room. And the difference between that and a really well-organized business is these processes that you, that you nail down, the rigor you put into it, um, making sure that you're having formulaic starts and ends to the year and mid-year reviews. Those sorts of things are really critical even when you're a smaller business.

So how do you promote someone on values?

You're not purely promoting someone on values, you're just probably not promoting them as quickly if they don't hit your values.

Okay.

Um, so if, um, if one of our values is motivated and you've got a, you've got a contract biller or someone who has a great client, they hit all the billings but they're not really challenging themselves and moving forward, although they've hit that that, that, that number. It might be that you're actually saying to them at an early stage, are you, are you delivering? Are you delivering enough to be a senior here? Are you delivering enough to be a principal? Um, because I'm wondering where you're at. And we would often score people, we'll allow them to score themselves on a monthly basis how they feel their input versus their output is out of 10. So you can kind of see what they genuinely think, and that decision gets kind kind of made for you. Um, so it's not necessarily that you're trying to hold people back. Um, you're trying to get the best out of them to perform. And that promotion, that increase in salary, and that next step for them— um, if they're not going to work for that and they're going to coast, um, it's going to end up being that they're not going to enjoy it in the long run. They need to be improving. And that's, I think, the structure of what a promotion criteria should be, be about.

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So it sounds like you utilize like scorecards and things then. So like, for example, if I'm in your business, you said humility areas. If I'm in your business, I'm a permanent recruiter, and to get my next promotion I needed to do consistently for the last quarter 15 grand per month. Um, how, how do I— I'm just trying to understand because it'd be helpful with people because this might be something that more companies want to do. Yeah, obviously promoting someone on their performance is just way more easy. It's like it's in black and white, right? Which is why that's how typically people do it. So like, how, how are you then measuring my humility? Like, how are you then— is it like, okay, so each month, Hishem, score yourself out of 10 on how you think you're living our values, and humility is one of them? I'm gonna go, you know what, 8 out of 10.

Yeah.

How do you then measure that? Is it just completely subjective?

It's, it's their own. It's a tricky one because if they put 10 out of 10 for humility, yeah, you're like, right, it's not very humble. But, um, uh, it's, it's down to them. And it could be that you're actually going, hold on a second, I think this isn't quite right here, is it? And having a sensible conversation on it. And then there might be some example cases where he said, okay, look, this was this situation, this scenario 'Um, this has happened a few times. Um, how do you think that impacts others? Um, okay, what do you think that does to the business? Um, this is an area that I want to work on, and let's make sure that this happens.' And then you're reviewing it at the end of it. You need to give people plenty of warning, plenty of opportunity to improve. It's much more about— that gives you a structure to a clarity that people can work to, but it's the on-desk bit that really makes it okay, because you don't want to get to a promotion meeting and say, sorry, mate, you failed, uh, because you're an arrogant bastard. That should be totally clear beforehand before they get to that point. Yeah, exactly.

So why, why don't you— I was taught, because I know this is sort of what you're passionate about then. So what else did Roger intentionally do culture-wise in sort of rebuilding this business the way that you wanted it to be? So like, what else have you spoken about? The promotion criteria, promotion, promoting people with the values. You also spoke about, um, getting more entry— um, sorry, getting more senior people into the business. So then if you did have someone leave, then you don't have someone with 6 months experience going, Roger, look, I'll have that promotion please, like, I don't— I think I deserve it. Like, what else, what else have you done on this journey to be really intentional around building a business that you do walk into and go, you know what, this is, this is excellent, this is the type of business that I did want— this is a better functioning management team. What else did you do really intentionally then on, on the culture side within the business?

Um, I mean, there's loads of little things. I think to a certain extent, when you're talking about culture, if you're having to have a lot of conversations about culture, you probably haven't got the best culture. Um, but what you do is you just put— you put a bunch of things in place and it will— it can make a huge— it can make a huge impact. Um, So, um, we have a lot of feedback sessions. Um, I'll have, uh, once a quarter Roger's Roundtable where we go for a meal, have some pizzas together, and talk to different people in the business about what their thoughts are rather than just chatting with the management team. Um, for me, that office environment should be a really healthy environment. It should be a positive environment. Um, you don't want people coming off the phone, chatting to a client and going, oh, for fuck's sake, it's such a wank. Like, that just, that just breeds a little bit of negativity. So you don't want them being negative towards candidates or clients. Um, you want to keep that a positive environment. And then you want, you want a healthy body and mind. Um, so we'll do things like last year we got a personal trainer in place. Um, we did 3 Peaks together. Uh, I didn't think that I'd be climbing 3 mountains with an amazing bunch of people, but it was genuinely one of those kind of life-changing events to the point where we're doing it again. We're doing something this year where we're looking at, um, uh, taking a group of us, or whoever wants to do it, um, uh, up to a mountain in Slovenia. And, um, and we'll do that on a weekend. Um, we'll put a bunch of different processes in place whether it be having breathwork sessions, uh, talking about health and fitness and diet, um, just creating a really high-performance culture. You can have someone performing really well who sits at a desk for 14 hours, makes insane amount of phone calls, and they bill a crazy amount, but I don't think that they'll— I don't think they'll keep doing that. At some stage they'll kind of go, what am I, what am I doing with my life? Um, so create, uh, create that structure and that foundation, that skeleton, and which people can really live by. And when you're hiring grads, a lot of the time they're coming from university, it's the first time in an office. You really want to demonstrate, okay, this is a sustainable way to live your life.

Okay, so all sounds great. How does, how does this positively influence the management meetings that you now have then?

I think you just got a happiness on the floor. Um, if you've got a situation where you, you're having to say, get on the phones, you've got to hit this KPI, you've got to hit this number, and, and it's a frustration running through the business, um, then, then you're gonna have negativity. If you can create an environment where, um, it's like having sort of a lead sled dog versus imagine a chariot with the horses and they're almost pulling away from you. There's times when you need to be that lead sled dog. There's times when the managers need to be that lead sled dog. But if they can create that high-performing culture, then they end up being standing on the chariot with the horses pulling away from them, and you're just steering in the right direction. Um, that was an analogy from Roy Ferguson. He always liked that one. Um, but, um, that creating that happy environment where will create a high-performing culture. It's, it's— I think it's— you can make money in a toxic culture, um, but it's always a, it's always a bit short-term.

So if they're the sort of things you do now, then what sort of things we've done in the past then? Just what, lunch and like just piss-ups every Friday?

Like what? Yeah, and we still, we still have a bit of a piss-up. We still have Michelin-star restaurants and all the rest of it, um, but we've Last Friday we had a goal which was, um, which was if teams didn't hit a certain goal then we would all go for a 5K run together.

Okay.

Um, that just would never have happened because everyone— I'm not doing that. Um, and everyone was kind of up for it and a bunch of people walked it. Um, and it was kind of totally— you had to be up for it, but at the same time everyone, everyone was up for it. Everyone who didn't hit was up, was up for it. It was just a little bit of fun stick. Um, uh, we have a lot of carrot. Um, we have a bunch of different targets and holidays and all sorts that you can win, um, the whole time. But there's— you also need it. You do need a little bit of stick, but you need people on board with that as well. Um, you kind of— people just go, I don't want to do that.

So how have you— how have you now got better then at, uh, how has Roger created leaders? How have you done that then? Because Sounds like that's what you struggled with in the past.

Yeah, it's, it's training from an early stage. It's train, train, train, develop, develop. So we'll have a Future Leaders program, and that runs 2 quarters of every, every year, um, and they will run a team, uh, of the future leaders together, and they'll run and perform and have some targets which they lay out. They create a budget on it, they perform together. We, we discuss, um, how to motivate people, how to get the best out of people, um, difficult situations that people have got when they're running weeks. Um, and someone might be in that from under a year with us, and by the time they get to a manager, they've probably done 2 years' worth of experience of actually managing by the time they get there. So it's, it's just about training and development so that by the time that they get there they've got a lot of exposure and a lot of experience. We also have an advisor that spends an hour a month with them to talk through some of those management and career development pieces. So they just have that period of one-on-one, one-time coaching that I think helps, helps support them. Um, that's just an outsider's point of view as well. Um, I think those are the major bits. It's, it's, it really is just a development piece. You If you stick someone in a role and it's sink or swim, um, it's going to be a bit stressful for, for both the manager and the person doing it. It doesn't mean that they won't succeed, it just might be a little bit more stressful.

No, yeah, so common. I, um, I think one of the most underserved communities in the recruitment industry is that leadership layer. Yeah, there's so many people who are just sort of, yeah, learning as they go in that role. Pissing people off, being shit managers before they become good ones. Um, and it's really difficult. No one really gets taught how to coach, they just get taught how to tell.

Uh, exactly.

So I understand that you're trying to equip people with the skills before they even get there. So it sounds like, yeah, you've obviously partnered with someone or outsourced part of that, or do things. But like, what, what— is there anything that you've done you think better this time around? Obviously you've clearly invested, advisor, these things for people, but do you think there's anything that you've done to set these people up to win rather than fail?

When you're starting off a business and you haven't got a lot of cash and you want to make sure that the bills are paid, sometimes it's a little bit tricky to see the wood from the trees and go, right, this is the vision, this was our, um, this was our structure, um, this is the game plan that we came up with for this year, and I'm gonna maintain it, I'm gonna keep on top of it. Um, rather than just make sure the money's coming in, um, and that we're scaling. Um, that I think for me it's just about maintaining the game plan. The team cohesively comes up with a game plan, um, at the end of the year, then it's my job is to ensure that we, we hit that.

And then how have you structured the, the leadership team now then? Have you been conscious of how many people, um, manage like these types of things. Because we did at Recruitment Mentor, we did a bit of a sort of insight and performance survey on our customer base. And I think one of the sort of always sort of struggling areas— we're just talking about that leadership team— I think a lot of people find themselves managing 7, 8, 9— we had some people say that they managed 10 people whilst they were having a number. And we found that the sort of average recruiters to a billing manager, um, ended up being around 5. Yeah, so how have you approached that, that leadership, uh, layer out of interest?

Yeah, so I mean, last year I saw that problem happening, so we brought in, uh, an experienced hire to, um, to support the younger managers to make sure that actually they aren't getting swamped, and that development piece was there. Um, it's just having enough hierarchy to support them but not so much hierarchy that those, those top spots are just getting taken up so they don't have the opportunity to scale and to be, you know, one of the integral people in your business. Um, that I think is the key. It's just giving them the support and the framework to be able to do it and then keep you on top of it. As a manager, I think if you don't check up on it, just expect that it hasn't been done. And so if you put something in place, um, or you come up with a strategy then just keep on checking up, checking up, checking up, checking up. Um, that's critical.

So let's switch the gears here then before we, um, finish. I know obviously a big thing you want to talk about is culture, right? I feel like we've spoken about that. Yeah, yeah, um, yeah, and I appreciate you sharing all that. I guess, look, definitely top of mind for a lot of people, but from what I can see online in our conversations, it seems like, uh, I don't know exactly when you started, but let's talk about US expansion and sort of what we've learned there, right? Because I know that's something that, um, you've been really focusing on or has been part of the, the business journey in more recent times. Looks like you've been focusing on Austin, Texas. Yep. What, what's been difficult about that so far?

Um, just wish we did it sooner, really. Yeah. Um, I think it's not as easy as people think. Um, probably I've ended up working really long hours supporting the US team because it can be tricky when people leave the office at 6, 7, 8, and you've got a US team that's a small team that's, that's there until that, to the latter hours. Um, but so far so good. I mean, to be honest, they're both the two people we've got, the two top billers in the business at the moment. So, and that's from a standing start.

So, um, what was the go-to-market then? What was the game plan?

So we just kept it super niche, um, to start off with. So the plan was just support, but we had— we didn't actually really have any clients out there. Just one person was like, I want to do this and I want to go to this location. I'm like, there's a good market there, I know there is, let's go for it. Um, so we just kept it one area, um, not one person, we put a couple of people on it. We want a couple more in the team now. And just keep focused on that really tight area to start off with. And we got given roles outside of it and we just haven't really worked it. We've just stuck on that tight area. And it's having a combination of, I think, a few little clients that are scaling and just one flagship client as well. And we managed to nail that like really, really quickly. Um, so how long did it take until this guy did his first deal? Well, actually, it was another team that did a deal, um, sort of randomly, um, that, that was kind of before we'd even launched, launched it. And right, it was just a contact that said, can you do this? And we're like, okay, well, we're launching, so let's give it a go. And we ended up making 2 or 3 deals there. Um, but I think it took him 2 months maybe. Okay, it was a bit slower than we initially planned. Like, we started last year, and that Q4 was a bit, a bit lower than, than we would have hoped, a little bit. And then, and then it's, and then it's really accelerated since then.

So what have you been most surprised by there then?

Um, I think how much money you can make. Um, I, I think it's not as easy as people think. I think there'll be a lot of graveyards, everyone trying to swarm to the US, um, and especially if you're putting one person on it and going, here you go, good luck, because you're taking someone who's probably experienced, you're having to invest in— you're going to want a minimum 2, but maybe 3 or 4 people going after something, um, you've got to expect to spend some cash on it, um, and I think it's probably not as much about picking up the phones and hammering it. Uh, I think that, um, you do need to be able to pick up the phone. You need to speak to a lot of people. Um, but you can market out and, and pick up clients that way. Um, I don't think, I don't think the US particularly like working with UK-based clients. I think they would much prefer if you were in situ.

Oh really?

Um, yeah. And I think that those working hours are— they're a challenge, I think, to get people that are just really up for working that late into the night consistently.

Well, yeah, I think there's got to be— I've spoken to people and that's been the real challenge, particularly if you have— I speak to one guy who there's one person in the team doing it with obviously the plan for more people to do it, but you see the UK team leaving at UK hours, or, you know, they have a 6-a-side team game that you can't go to because you're working miss hours and you're the person that's only doing that, it's difficult.

Yeah, yeah. I think the person's got to want to do it. You've, you, you need to have someone that's, that wants to go to that location and wants to do it. If there's any doubt in their mind, you're gonna, you're gonna struggle. You want someone who's passionate to go out to a certain location, um, make it happen. There's, there's definitely a lot of opportunity though.

So she mentioned money a lot then. What, what's, what's ended up being like the average deal size?

I think it's about 23 grand, something like that.

And what if the terms that you've agreed been a lot more? Because typically when I've interviewed people around it, it's been, yeah, you, you're way more likely to get 25-30% terms agreed.

Yeah, I think that's creaking a little bit now. Um, so, um, we were just chatting about it last night actually. There's another new client that we picked up and we put across 30% and they went, nah, it's 18%. And, and, uh and I think they're having a conversation with them today, um, as to what that's gonna end up. But we're sort of building a name for ourselves at the moment. I mean, I don't really— don't want to go below 20%, um, but, um, there's some different things like you, you can't ask— you can't ask the candidate's salary, um, just some, um, legal things that we probably weren't as aware of, um, before we started.

If you had the, um The other common one that we've picked up on here has been working jobs that you haven't got signed terms for.

Um, yeah, or even just— I've heard that you can, if you put an advert out for a contract role and it's a certain rate and you end up taking one on a different rate, you could get sued for it. So really, yeah, yeah, you've got to be a little bit careful, I think, of, um, uh, litigious society.

So what's— just final bit on this, and what do you think has really worked so far then? So obviously having a niche, having a focus, and just doubling down on that. Yeah, is there anything else that, that you found, just obviously from your perspective, been doing, um, obviously, uh, have you always done the UK market then, or different sort of EU, UK?

Yeah, pretty much entirely UK.

Yeah, so from outside looking in, then what do you think they've also done well besides just having a real niche and focus that's gone down well, that's helped them get traction in the US, do you think?

I think it's that perseverance, it's that belief that is out there you've got to understand the market. You've got to— I think it's very easy to market map these days. You take out LinkedIn Insights and see exactly who's hiring, where the attrition is. You know, you can, you can kind of build it. You can build your market base really, really quickly. Um, but, um, but building a database of candidates, um, it, it takes time. You need to understand, you need people that are probably want to get out to the US and want to get out there as quickly as possible. So they're putting together a really good plan. Um, it's a really good, well-thought-out plan. Um, it might be that you're not just going straight after clients, that actually you're going after candidates first. Um, it's chicken and egg really, isn't it? Um, and as soon as you've got that first piece of business, you're really making sure you deliver, uh, and it's exceptional quality.

So look, as we come to the end here, obviously being on pretty lengthy journey. Yeah, like obviously we've spoken a lot around leadership, culture, speaking about the US, things you do differently. Like what— when I say to you sort of what, what has been one of your sort of biggest lessons personally for you on your own journey, on this entrepreneurial journey, being a leader, what, what, what, what comes to mind?

Sprinting at everything is not necessarily there. The best solution. Um, be considered, um, make sure you've got proper structure, framework, um, and you're, you're happy in your life with what you're doing. There's going to be tough patches, um, but if you've got that framework and that support to get through it, um, then you know that that's a short-term thing. Um, I mean, you can see at the moment people are finding this market a little bit tougher um, the fish have definitely stopped jumping into the boat. But actually, we've, we've done 40% growth this Q1, and we've seen the market still pretty strong. And I think that's foundations of having really great relationships, um, and having a happy workforce, and that, that just maintaining that, having the awareness, the understanding, the skill, the experience. To be honest, um, it's tough to do if you haven't got the experience and you haven't learned from other people. So learn as much as you possibly can, take as much advice as you possibly can. Um, I think that's, that's probably my, um, my best, uh, advice to myself. Um, but at the same time, you need to be able to cut through the bits of advice that work. You still need to have your kind of ideology, stick to what you stand for, 100%. And there was times in the past when I kind of took advice that was perhaps— wasn't— didn't work out as well as I would have liked. So experience, experience. Yeah.

Roger, thank you so much.

It's been a pleasure. It's great to have a YouTube sensation. I'm looking forward to the boxing match.

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