Steve Guest - Author of the 'Top Biller' Book

Welcome to the Recruitment Rollercoaster podcast. My name is Hishem Azzouz, and today I'm finally joined by Steve Guest. That's definitely my fault it's taken so long. And Steve Guest is Brummie by background, has been recruiting for 14 years in the construction and property market, has always been a perm recruiter. Has built desks and businesses from scratch, has mentored recruiters from rookies to successful billers. And more recently, if you're not connected with Steve on LinkedIn, then you should, but you will definitely be seeing him talking about the book that he's written. And he's the author of the best-selling recruitment book called Top Biller, which I'd like to think a lot of people that listen to this podcast aspire to be. Steve. So I'm excited to uncover the Steve journey and talk about what makes a top biller a top biller.

That's it. I mean, if you're not in recruitment to become a top performing salesperson, what are you doing?

Definitely. I think, yeah, it's been spoken about quite a bit on this podcast about like you 100% should be aiming for the top. Like, why wouldn't you, right? So where I always like to start on this podcast, I guess Just for everyone listening, yes, we are going to talk about how Steve is surviving today in the current climate. We are going to talk about why Steve wrote the book and sort of the key messages in that book that a lot of the, a lot of you guys listening can benefit from. But like we always do on this podcast, we're going to dive into sort of Steve's journey and sort of how he's got to where he's got to today. So where I always like to start on this podcast, Steve, is how did Steve guest of Birmingham into the world of recruitment? How did that happen?

A bit of a strange one really. So I started out as a strategic commodity buyer negotiating multi-million-pound framework contracts for Severn Trent Water. Okay. Enjoyed the role, was reasonably good at it, and my wife was working as a maintenance trades temp consultant for Hayes. And I was dealing with these contracts, negotiating good levels of savings, getting pats on the back and handed the next contract. And sitting there thinking, is that all I get? Do I not get a bonus or some sort of commission or a share of the savings? And my wife was doing exceptionally well as a temp consultant. And obviously I've seen her levels of earnings and thinking, yeah, I could do with that. I could do with a bit of that. So I thought logical process would be, I went to have an interview with Hayes Purchasing and Supply. Being a qualified buyer, I thought purchasing for procure— sorry, recruiting for procurement staff would be the way to go. First interview went really well. Ops director said I'd got on really well, wanted me to play in his 5-a-side football team after my second interview, which was the following week. So I walked out skipping all the way home thinking, yep, nailed that. Uh, went for my second interview and I was told I wasn't salesy enough, wasn't confident enough, didn't come across in the right way, and didn't really fit the consultant profile that they were looking for. So obviously Really kind of gutted, to be honest. Wasn't used to being rejected, certainly at interview stage. It never happened to me before. Yeah. Walked out in Birmingham into the street, and across the street you've got Hayes Construction and Property. So walked over there and basically said, look, I've been for an interview at Hayes Purchasing and Supply. I didn't think I was quite the character they were looking for. You take me on. And I'll prove every single day I'm here that they've made a mistake. And that was really my— it was completely my fuel to do well. And I did prove them wrong. I was the fastest trainee to get promoted, the fastest trainee to consultant, consultant to senior. I still hold the regional records for perm placements and perm billings, as far as I'm aware. And that was set back in 2007. I used to drop emails back to the directors every so often just saying, have you seen what I've won or what awards I'm up for? 'Look what you could have had.' So, and yeah, that was probably the start. That's certainly an introduction to it.

So I guess let's just frame it up for everyone listening in terms of sort of the Steve journey to date. So joined Hayes, obviously huge, huge brand in recruitment, big business. How long did you work there for?

I was at Hayes for probably just short of a couple of years.

Yeah, was it 2 or 3 years or?

Yeah, it was about 2 years. Yeah, um, I left to set up a new office and region for Fast Track in, uh, the middle of 2008. Yeah, I joined, joined Hayes in 2006, so it was a short term. Um, I owe a lot to Hayes, don't get me wrong. Hayes have impeccable training.

Yeah, everyone says that.

Oh, it's awesome. And, and it— I wouldn't be the consultant I am today if I hadn't started with experience. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you're spot on.

So, so 2 years there, then obviously joined Fast Track to open up a brand new office. Yeah. And then just to frame out everyone listening, so then, and then you've worked at Fast Track for, or did work for Fast Track for how long?

Yeah, no, I worked with Fast Track up until September of last year. So opened the Birmingham office 2008. I opened an office for them in 2015 based in Manchester.

Yeah.

Across the 2 regions I managed, mentored about 19 consultants at its highest. Okay. Grew it to a sales turnover of £7 million across the two offices.

Yeah. Okay. And then, and then more recently, just to help me out and for people listening, and you've not, you're now self-employed.

I went self-employed in 2011 because I wanted to have other areas that for me to personally grow, I wanted to do other things.

Yeah.

So we came to an agreement where I could contract back to Fast Track. And still work with them, but I had other things going on in the background I wanted to explore and do. So I've been self-employed since 2011. Yeah, my wife, um, when I moved to Fast Track, moved to one of our competitors, um, and we actually— we've actually— yeah, we've actually competed for 12 of the 14 years I've recruited.

Oh my God, that's mad.

Yeah, no pillow talk. We certainly didn't swap clients or candidates. Oh God, jokes. So it's, do you know what, we've, I'm really pleased with the way we've managed that. I mean, my wife and I have been together 20 years this year. We know each other really well and we are both very ambitious and on the same page. And so yeah, 2011 went self-employed. Emma joined my business in 2016 after our second child was born, rather than her go back to where she worked. After maternity, she came and joined S Guess Consultancy Services to help grow the brand and the business.

So, and that's what you've been doing since, and then that's you now since 2016?

Yeah, so, well, September last year I ended the contract with Fast Track.

Okay, cool.

It was going down a different path and it wasn't where I wanted to be, and I wanted to go off and kind of explore other avenues. So my actual view was finish the contract with Fast Track and actually just go back to day-to-day recruiting. Yeah, I really enjoy the permanent construction market. As I said, I've done it for 14 years, got great relationships. I just wanted probably 6 months where it's just me I've got to motivate, it's me I've got to kick up the backside. And actually, I just wanted to get back to recruiting completely and 100% of my time.

Yeah, and that's what you've been doing since pretty much start of this year then?

Yeah, so September, um, I say I managed about 3 months working from home. Yeah, we've got 2 boys, um, and I didn't realize how short a school day was until I sit in the office at home and they walked in at 3 o'clock shouting and screaming. Uh, so yeah, and then we leased an office in February, like a 2-man office around by us.

Awesome.

And obviously then current situation happens. So I got about 5 weeks in the office and now I've been thrown into the turmoil of working from home again. Okay.

So I'm really excited to sort of unpack this. And then the final thing, just to help me sort of context as well. So you said obviously, yeah, part of this decision was you wanted to get back to recruiting, being on the tools as you were, but sort of whilst that obviously long period at Fast Track, was the majority The majority of time, did you sort of recruit still, or—

Yeah.

Okay, so you always—

I've been a billing consultant for the whole time I've been recruiting. Okay, cool.

But your management responsibilities obviously just crept up, but your billings still had to be done, basically?

Exactly. I still had my yearly target. I still expected and wanted to be at the top of the leaderboards regardless of managing. And having different regions.

So, okay, cool, perfect. So that's great. And it's great to sort of get an insight into sort of the journey until now. So I guess first thing that I would just love to get your thoughts on, obviously you've spoken about Hayes and how much of a sort of grounding and I guess platform it gave you. Yeah, I guess I'm always interested to hear people's thoughts. Obviously you speak to a lot of consultants now with everything that you're doing. What What would sort of your advice be to people who are maybe thinking about moving job or wanting to go into recruitment or thinking about should they join a big business like Hayes? I know obviously things have probably changed since you've been there, but I guess what would you say are the biggest positives to joining a big corporate like Hayes or Michael Page or things like that? I guess, well, just first on that, I'm always interested to get people's thoughts. What do you think of the main—

Yeah, I mean, the huge positives for me for working at Hayes were The training was impeccable. And Hayes being the big global PLC that they are, are very clued up on numbers, ratios, expectations, what levels it takes to achieve the financial end product that you're obviously going into work to do. So they're excellent at that. If you can work to their numbers, generally you are going to be a reasonably successful person. If you get through all of their training, you should be an all-rounded individual that understands all the facets within being a recruitment consultant that makes you successful. Um, some of the big positives with the likes of Hays, you don't have to necessarily market you as a personal brand, and you've got such a big brand behind you. I had clients that just used Hays because they were Hays.

Yeah, my next question was that, how much did that actually help?

Yeah, so that I mean, the turnover of staff within recruitment, you and I both know, is high.

Yeah.

People move on every 6 to 8 months, generally across markets and sectors. So with clients that say, I always use Hays, the thought process there is, yeah, but you're speaking to a different person probably twice a year.

Yeah.

But you still come back and use Hays. And they were like, well, yeah, because they're a market leader. So I would quite happily sit at my desk, I'd make my calls, I'd do my activity. But I would still get calls come in from companies I'd never spoke to or heard of that would ring because they're Hayes and they'd get passed to me because I was the consultant that looked after surveyors. Yeah, yeah. So there is a helping hand there because the brand is so strong. The downside to it is it's restrictive. Well, I found it restrictive anyway. And because you're in within such a corporate structure you almost have to toe the corporate line. So the entrepreneurial side of me was always squashed, and actually you have to go along with the process. Okay, obviously you can benefit from that, but you can also find yourself a little bit—

yeah, that makes sense. I would be the same, and I found that in my—

yeah, but I came unstuck a few times because I would want to try and do things even as a top-performing consultant in the office, and one that was highly regarded, if I wanted to do something different, I mean, back in the day, I wasn't allowed a company mobile. How ridiculous is that? I was like, I want it so I can make the calls at home. I want to be able to log onto the database at home because I want to continue working after the office is shut. I wasn't able to do that because they had to protect what they had. I mean, it may well have changed. I'm sure it has changed. Certainly in the current climate, it's changed.

How, um, And then just quickly before we move on, how much of an influence did it have on you early on with, in terms of the type of people that you got access to? I think what I'm always interested in, I joined a small bit. So my boss that I worked for, he was ex-Hays and sort of climbed up the ranks and got to director level and was there for over a decade, right? So I get, but then when I joined his business, it was a small business. There was 8 of us when I joined and I get direct access to be the people in my four walls, right? And there's bloody brilliant people in there, but it was 8 people, right? So I guess what I'm always interested to hear, and so like, how, yeah, how much of an influence or impact did it have on you, do you think, in terms of the type of people you've got access to?

Or, um, I think at the time, I suppose I was, I was still learning and I was extremely selfish with my time and what I did. It does open doors, certainly, and it does give you access because people within Hayes, there are people that have been there years and years and years, and they've placed the people that are now CEOs, managing directors, anything else, and that opened doors because they knew the directors that went before you.

Yeah.

And if I'm balancing that thought process with opening a new brand, a new region for a business that nobody's heard of, and you're purely reliant on your personal brand to get you through the door, the first 12, 18 months of doing that despite the fact it was a recession, was still really difficult. Whereas perhaps you'd take for granted what Hayes offered because it was just there almost on a plate.

Yeah, okay, interesting. Right, so then obviously started, obviously joined Fast Track during the crash.

Yeah.

So you've got a habit of starting new things then when shit goes bad.

Yeah, I'm not— I mean, thinking back in hindsight, was it a great decision? At the time, I mean, I was questioning whether it was. Um, there were some really dark days.

What, what did— what did— just describe sort of the actual, um, your world at that point. Like, was it literally— obviously you did well at Hayes, great biller, hit records, blah blah blah, right? Okay, well, I've got the confidence to start up a brand new desk new part of this business, I'm going to smash it. '08 comes, and then are you literally calling people and they're going, Steve, I've got nothing for you, mate?

Like, yeah, the market just stopped, come to a halt. It was, it was days of making or doing double the activity for actually no return whatsoever. Yeah, except for, um, really tough discussion, discussions. Um, obviously dealing in construction, it can be nice colorful language at times, it can be quite straight talking. So It was a huge fall from grace, to be honest, because I walked in thinking it was all going to be great. If it paints a picture in terms of my logic, at Hayes, I had West Midlands construction commercial perm letters A to M in the alphabet within a postcode area. So jobs outside of that area, I passed to different offices, different consultants. If it was freelance, it went to someone else. It was very, very small and niche. The sell to go to Fast Track was there was no one else doing what I did in the company. So I had the whole country.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you didn't have to pass the form? No.

You sit there and you think, okay, well, if I can build this amount in such a small market, I can build an absolute fortune if I've got the whole country. So I went there thinking without a shadow of a doubt, I will be earning an absolute fortune. And to be honest, that is kind of how it progressed. But being hit with the fact that it was a recession, construction being one of the hardest hit markets during the recession, and only specialising in perm, I was well out of my depth for probably a good first, probably first 3 to 6 months, thinking all I've ever done is what I'm doing now and it's not working. How do I react? So I started adding elements in terms of doing freelance because freelance was a bigger market than perm. So I had to get to grips with a faster way of thinking. Being an ex-buyer, I am spreadsheet savvy, process, procedure. I am probably dull as dishwater to most people because everything's got its place. And I follow the set process every week. To suddenly change from being permanent to freelance.

Difficult.

It's just miles apart for me. My brain just doesn't work quick enough.

Yeah.

And if you're going up against consultants that have done that for a couple of years anyway, they're already streets ahead of you. Yeah. So I kind of changed tact from the freelance side, but I also started thinking, okay, well, within contractors you've got everything from admin, receptionists, PAs, right the way through to back office, accounts, HR, or support functions. So I started spreading my wings in terms of the actual job roles that I was dealing with.

Yeah.

Um, within the construction market, I deal with specialist subbies right the way through to main contractors, house builders, uh, developers. So it's quite a wide market anyway, but you were just having to do over and above what the expectation was to just even try and find that vacancy.

Okay. What, just a quick one, because people are always interested, I should have asked it earlier, but how, obviously, how did you do billings-wise at Hayes then? Like, obviously, what was the sort of your, because like, how did you do in the first year? Did you actually bill really well in your first year?

Oh yeah, I billed, to be honest, I billed throughout reasonably well. My top perm year at Hayes which is the record, uh, it was about £258 grand.

Yeah.

Um, best month was 17 perm placements in a month, it was £58 grand.

Was that in your second year?

Yeah.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah, that's right. I mean, it was a hard slog, don't get me wrong, and I put everything into it, but I was competing against my wife, not just at Hays. And you can't— if you've got to take the competition home, you want to be Yeah, I love that.

So what was going through my head when you're talking about that, Steve? What did you learn during that difficult period in that recession that applies today?

I think the biggest thing I learned was that I was growing with my clients. So I would ring a construction contractor who would say, I've got no recruitment. This market has just stopped. I'm not even sure if my business is going to be there in 2 or 3 months. Why would I need to speak to a consultant? Which I completely got. I was sat there equally thinking, well, I might not be here in 2 to 3 months either. So you have to find that level of empathy and that almost that sympathy in the fact that we're all in this together. No, there's no way, certainly now, even more so now than ever before. We are all in a position where we've got to think of new avenues to find income revenue and build a business. So during 2008, it was Talking to clients on the basis that, look, I am not going to call you every Monday and pitch a new candidate or something you might need. I will call you every month and catch up and see where we are, and if there's a need, then we can discuss it. But actually, I want to build a relationship where you call me when you have a requirement, and you know I will do absolutely everything to make sure that you get that person that you need. So you add real value, and you don't lose time and money wasting it going to the whole market. Yeah, I will add serious value, and I've always been about that anyway. I'm, as I say, borderline OCD, very honest, very ethical, very hardworking, and everything has a structure. So every client knew if they gave me a role, they would get 3 to 5 people to see, uh, it would be a considered choice. The references and all the, the general stuff consultants promise will be done. Will be done. And they got a good service and I didn't run for the hills when it went wrong either. So if it was a bad placement or the person didn't quite fit or whatever it might be, I always found a solution. So it was continually working towards that value-added service. One of the things I did take, so Hayes are very good at KPIs, they know their numbers, they know their ratios, and I still worked my targets that I had back in my Hayes days. But I almost found to the point that, and I think the rest of the industry has gone that way, the KPIs almost cage a consultant in and everything's about whiteboard ticking, KPI ticking, and it loses the element of service delivery. And if anything, now the market is screaming at recruitment agencies and consultants to actually put service delivery at the top of their list and actually fulfill the service they're there to do than call thousands of clients and offer a service that they can't deliver on.

That's, that's really interesting. I mean, it came up again in the sort of live podcast I did today, but it's come up a couple of times where a lot of people have said that sort of you getting through this particular period right now will make you a better recruiter. And I think it's those types of things that you're talking about, that you going through that '08 period and really recognizing and really hammering home how important is building relationships, putting service at the top, um, and being empathetic, saying what you're going to do, don't run when you need to be responsible. That sticks with you because you know that that helps you through the tough times.

Yeah, you have to be accountable and you have to be responsible. And for me, the type of consultants that I had between certainly in the Birmingham office, we had people that genuinely cared about service and the delivery. I've worked with consultants and worked at places where you do a handover because you're going on a 2-week holiday, you get back at that 2-week holiday and yeah, I left messages, I couldn't get ahold of them, couldn't get ahold of them, they've done nothing.

Fucking hate that.

But it's consistent in recruitment because recruitment is so selfish at times. They'll sit there and it'll be the last day of holiday and they'll suddenly think, oh, I haven't done the handover, I'll just go through it now. Whereas I wanted an environment where we were all there heading in the right direction, the same direction. And actually, if one consultant's doing particularly well, then it goes across the whole office. And we're all in it to make money. So the quicker we move to make money and bill and place more, the better the client relationship, the more chance they'll give us other opportunities that fit in other people's markets and desks. And I think in many ways, a lot of agencies lose sight of that. And it's more about the KPI bashing and the individual than it is about the team and the brand and everything pulling in the same direction.

Definitely. How long, how long, how long did that sort of period go on for then? Did you say sort of 3, 6 months?

I think my initial struggle was about 6 months. I think building the relationships and getting to a point where there was some momentum probably took a good 12 months.

12 months, yeah.

Probably not what people want to hear, but it's not a short-term fix. And nobody at the moment is thinking short-term.

Yes, you might have—

yeah, you might have a bit on the freelance and you might have some upside in some immediate roles, but actually businesses and clients now need more support than ever from people that can deliver a service. So you've got to be there thinking long-term because you need them to be there in 12 months.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Okay, so just to help me out then, obviously You powered through that, got through that, and then did you just— was the sort of growing of your team quite gradual, or did it happen quite quickly? Or in terms of, yeah, you bringing in people that were aligned with the things you were talking about?

Yeah, I mean, obviously I grew it, grew over an 11-year period. Yeah. Manchester opened in 2015, was probably one of the most difficult tasks I did because I wasn't so familiar with the area. So whereas I knew consultants in the West Midlands and I knew their backgrounds and whether they're any good or not, Manchester is a bit different. So I suppose over the years I found myself going forward a few steps and going back a few. I got to a point towards the end, certainly recruitment-wise, I wanted to kind of give consultants a little bit of a hard time at interview in the fact that I wanted to understand their motivations and their reasons why they're doing it. To the point where I know whatever is thrown at them, they will rise above it and get past it.

How important is that, by the way?

For me, it's top of the list.

Really?

It is top of the list. I would rather take someone on with no experience that has an unwavering determination to be successful than someone with 10, 15 years experience, a raft of billings behind them, but actually, they're probably more maverick than they are team player. I would go for the determined why, the ones that are motivated to do well because they have a reason, whether that's a wedding and buy their first house, they want their flash holidays and their nice clothes or whatever it might be. I want them to get me to a point where I think I would be crazy not to offer them a job because of their pure determination and motivation to succeed. Than someone that actually is just moving about because they want a bit more on their salary and they're an okay biller because they just do enough to get by.

I think, I think even in like challenging times right now, that's what's going to keep you going as well. It's a big part of what you might—

yeah, my personal belief, recruitment is difficult anyway. Monday to Friday it's littered with rejection, it's littered with things that go wrong, and generally it's the tough that survive, but actually in this current market, it will be the tougher that still survive because to get that vacancy, to get that role, to get to the placement, the competition is going to be fierce.

And actually knowing why you're doing it is going to—

yeah, exactly. And I think it will fall back again to the relationships with the client and the candidate. I've got clients that I know will only use me. I've got clients that certainly last year I was the top performing consultant on their PSL and I wasn't on their PSL.

Yeah.

Because, because the clients will want to use me regardless of what companies were added to their supply chain because they know what they get.

Yeah.

And I think, I think having that established relationship will certainly help a lot of individuals.

So, I know it's quite a long period, but sort of thinking about you then powering on to the point where you're looking at obviously starting the Manchester office. Did you continue to bring, to obviously bring and achieve that success that you got early on at Hayes at Fast Track as you were building the team?

And for me personally, yeah, for you personally, I mean, my billings took a hit. But I was still billing at the top level of perm billings within the company. And certainly for the first good number of years, I was at the top of the leaderboard alongside one other based down in the Watford office. I enjoy the buzz, and my whole ethos was, how can I expect any consultants that I'm managing or mentoring to respect who I am and want to improve if I'm at the bottom of the leaderboard, shouting at them or telling them to do something and they're thinking, why would I listen to you? I guess, what, yeah, what I was going to say, they don't, a lot of, certainly the guys out of Birmingham hadn't worked with me at Hayes, so they wouldn't have seen me at the top of the list, they wouldn't have seen the one that was lauded up on stage, that's just me bigging myself up in front of them. So you have you have to do it from the front. You have to lead from the front and you want everyone to follow you in that journey.

Yeah, I get that. I guess what I'd really like to sort of dive into and why I ask that is two things. One, sort of think, just uncovering a bit around sort of how Steve, the biller that always wants to be at the top, how you sort of broke through those glass ceilings. And then the second thing that I really want to dive into is that experience you're talking about in terms of managing and being the biller and sort of dealing with that, um, I guess push and pull of wanting to be the biller, having the high expectations, but then it's other people, you can't expect them to be the Steve Guest or whatever. Yeah, because I know a lot of people struggle with that and we speak a lot about that on here. So I guess the first thing, like a really common question and things that people are really interested in, is finding out from people like you on like How does a sort of day for Steve look like when you're someone that's billing $250K plus? Or what does a top biller's day actually look like? What are they doing differently? How can I break— like the real common one I always get is, Hishem, I've hit the $180K mark for the last 2 years. I just can't break this $200K billings mark. What does the typical day look like and what are people doing differently that are over that $200K?

Do you get what I mean? Yeah, I guess. I think obviously every market sector and individual is going to be different, but for me, it was— I was an absolute grafter, and I've always valued my time completely as my time. So little things that I would get the office to work to as well would be your non-menial tasks. You shouldn't be in a position where you're answering those, where you're trying to make sales. So you shouldn't be picking the phone up perhaps between like 9 and 12 and 2 and 5. You should be only dialing out. Okay. So things like people ringing in about how many hours have I done, have you got my timesheet, all these questions that need to be answered should be done by support staff within the office. So simple things like that. I had a consultant in Manchester, great guy, good consultant. He was sat with me saying, how do I become that next level up? And it's almost like that marginal gain kind of conversation, Dave Brailsford and the British Cycling Team. It's being creative about the small elements that you can change on your day. So he used to come in at 8 o'clock, have his bowl of cereal, his cup of coffee, he would be on the nail at half 8, start making his calls. So I said to him, just a simple thing, construction starts at half 7. It's great that you come in at 8 till half 8, get yourself sorted and you're set for your day, but why are you doing that? And he said, well, that's, that's what's in my contract. Okay, okay, and that's great. I'm not telling you any different. If that's what you want to do, that's fine. But if I was competing against you, I would be in at 7. I'd have my breakfast, my cereal, my coffee, I would start work at half 7 and I'm an hour ahead of you already. I've already sent the CVs out you haven't looked at yet. And I might take an extra half an hour at lunch because I was in earlier. Not that I would have done, but that gives you the idea that you sit there and you think— so another example, if I've got a really good candidate that comes in, the general mold of working is you speak to 30 clients about that candidate that are suitable for that person's skill set. That's how I would set up that candidate. I'd send out a marketing email, um, I would perhaps put something out on social media. For me, the best thing to do is to send out a marketing email first to everybody that was in— with— that is within your market, and then make your 30 calls, because you might have 600 other contractors then all thinking, oh, I haven't spoke to Steve before, he's got a really good candidate. So you get your market to come to you as much as you're outsourcing, or sorry, selling the candidate out. Does that make sense?

Yeah, that makes sense.

It's about being as creative as possible, as quickly as possible, so you have all the elements working in your favor. A post on LinkedIn, I've got this great candidate that does this, an email market that goes out saying I've got this great candidate, then you get on the phone and you make your 30 calls. Everything's working in conjunction with each other, and it means you're moving faster than your competitor who might just sit there thinking, I've got to make my calls on this candidate now. So they start planning through the calls.

Marginal gains is big.

Marginal gains is massive. And I think for me, there's a whole book there for me to add to my list because just going through the simplest little bits, asking every candidate you speak to for 3 referrals of people looking for work, Being systematic in your approach and doing everything in a process means you're so well coordinated and everything fits into place. I have the same process regardless of vacancy, candidate level, geographical area. I don't change.

Yeah, yeah. What did it— just quickly, because loads of people are always interested in this— like, what did your typical day look like, Steve, like when you was at your peak?

Hectic. Hectic.

So what would you do?

I would be the first in the office by an absolute mile. I would be setting and planning up my day. Generally, I'll have made, I don't know, 10, 15 calls before anyone's even surfaced. And then it's about making sure you've got call lists in your car, you've got a to-do list if you're driving to a meeting. I used to get— I still do now— I get to any meetings half an hour early. Always have done. That's again a bit OCD and a bit strange. It doesn't matter where the meeting is, I'm still half an hour early.

Yeah.

Um, but I'll always have things in the car that I can sit there and I get things done, and I'm not stressing about being late for a meeting because I'm already there. Um, I would always be the last to leave. Um, I'd take my work home, take it on holiday. Um, my wife's never been too happy with that, but if I can make placements within a couple of calls It's about living and breathing it so much so that you just outclass all your competitors.

Do you think people are willing to do that now?

Yeah, I think so. I think you just have to, you have to do it with a slight difference in your sales pitch. Am I, sorry, am I still willing to do that?

No, no, the reason why I asked that is because the way I took, like, if I think of all the people that I've sat down with and sort of speaking about and uncovering sort of what What makes a top biller, top biller, right? In line with your book, the first thing in there is what you're talking about is work ethic. Um, so I guess I think in— and I always speak about this in the world of work-life balance, in the, in the world of mental health, these types of things, right? Just because you do all that doesn't mean that you're gonna have, um, struggle dealing with it mentally, whatever. You're clearly, you're clearly someone that wants to be the best, and, and they're the sort of standards that you have for yourself. But I guess you speak to a lot of consultants now. How many people are willing to do that?

That's not—

Yeah, that's what I mean. You know what I mean? How many people are willing to do that anymore? Because it's back to what you said. Fuck off, Steve. That's not my contract. I'm just trying to— Do you get what I mean? So I guess I think that's what is interesting, right? Because I think one, a lot of people were looking for, well, Steve said that if I instead of having my coffee at 8:30, at 8, that means I can make 5 more calls, which means I could potentially make '5 more grand.' People are looking for that rather than hearing you going, 'Well, actually.' You've got grass. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, I mean, there's elements to all of it. Yeah. A great book called The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great book.

Again, going back towards marginal gains and things. So if I'm targeting a consultant to do 20 sales calls a day, which is more than achievable, my expectation and the way I would like people to think as a consultant will be, actually, Steve, I'll do you 20, but I'm going to do 21. It's one extra call, but that one extra call over a year makes 2 weeks worth of extra activity, which is crazy. So I think people think too short term, they get put off by the fact, actually, you've got to work bloody hard to be any good at this. And you've got to, if you've got to get to 7 touchpoints with a client for them to have any confidence in you as a person, you've got to get set 6, 7 months into a role before actually you've built the desk anyway. Yeah, that's a hell of a lot of rejection in that time. To have an unwavering determination to be successful in recruitment, to get past all of that and then still continue to want to do it— 14 years in recruitment is quite a long time these days. Yeah. And you've still got to get up every day skipping to work and think, this is where I want to be.

Yeah, yeah.

If you don't have that and you don't have the willingness to completely change the rule book and create your own targets and motivations, the recruitment industry will eat you alive.

Yeah, definitely. So what did Steve the manager look like then? How did you— because I feel like, I think this has come up a lot where the sort of hard learnings as a manager or billing manager is that those standards that you have for yourself there, you can't impose those and expect those of, yeah, like team member one. Do you get what I mean? Yeah, because I think that's the quickest way to go, to get, yeah, to obviously get frustrated with yourself, or you just can't think that way. So I guess, what was your experience like, or sort of key learnings in just getting better at being the manager?

Yeah, I loved being a manager, and I love my team. Um, 100% loyal to every single person I recruited across Birmingham, Manchester. They were all really hard, genuine, honest, grafting consultants. They knew their markets, and as I say, it was about the service delivery side of things. I wanted every single consultant that I've ever managed to do and overachieve on everything they ever were given to do. Part of my belief there is if they are doing really well, the office will be doing really well, I will look really good, I'll be able to go in front of the directors and say, look how good this person's done, this person's done, they're over-excelling, the office is headed in the right direction, we're a great team, look at, look at us all, and we all benefit. And that was always my view. I would always protect consultants, um, from negative or bad comments from board meetings or director meetings in the fact that I wanted to manage them in a way that was empowering and motivating for them. I think in the first few years of management, there's a big learning curve because I suppose I would treat everyone the same way. And then over time you get to know that actually shouting at someone and being extremely direct will work, some people will get offended and not have an impact from that, whereas others, if actually you just find a way to motivate them or incentivize them, they would just pick their game up anyway.

Yeah.

And I think it was, you gain the knack of, I suppose, learning characteristics of people and learning the touch points in terms of what makes or what creates a reaction. But I've always been a very considered person. I'm never the loud one, I'm never the one that's in a meeting that will be shouting out the answers or standing up making a big statement. I'm the considered calm one that makes stupid amounts of notes, will go away, have considered answers, and it might take me 2 days to come back to you with an answer, but it will be well thought out, it will be practical, and it will be constructive. And that's how my management has been. So if things weren't working and people were underperforming, there would be practical ways to make sure that improves. My feedback from my management style a couple of years ago was if I had a weakness, it was the fact that I believed consultants could get there probably more so than they did sometimes.

Yeah, that's interesting.

Because my sense of belief is anybody can do it if they set their heart on it and they work hard enough and they do all the bits around it to make it work. Yeah, but actually I think sometimes I believed or wanted them to do it more so than they did.

Then yeah, that's really interesting.

And the comments back were sometimes you're probably too nice to people and you give them too much leeway, whereas actually you should have been a bit more cutthroat and said quite quickly you're never going to make this because you don't do this, this, this, and this.

Yeah, that's interesting. So let's talk about I love when you said you were someone that's considered that, definitely. Yeah, just having to speak to you in the way that you're answering the questions, that's definitely the case. And I think that's great self-awareness to know that. And that's awesome. So I guess what I'd love to just talk about, Steve, is definitely why you decided to write the book. I mean, clearly someone that's passionate about recruitment, been in it for over a decade. And again, really set yourself high standards and have always strived to be the best. So I guess, where was the motivation to write the book?

I think there was two reasons. The motivation comes from the circles that I mix with. I mix with a lot of entrepreneurial type people. I've got mentors in various parts of my life outside of recruitment. I read a lot anyway, probably 2 or 3 books a month. Okay. And they all say, obviously everyone's got a book in them. I was sat there thinking, I'm not your typical recruiter. I am, as I say, I'm not the loudest, I'm not the salesy person, and wasn't to start with. So I wanted to write something that actually said, if you were methodical, process, procedure, and actually you just delivered on what you say you're going to do, you can still be really successful in recruitment and you don't need to be the loud one. The second part to the book was, I kind of knew my time with working with Fast Track was coming towards an end. Sure. And I wanted to go off on a different path. So I wanted to write the book to create a differentiator for me and to build my own personal brand on the basis that the book was never to be a profitable asset for me. It was more of a business card. And I was writing the book. So to write the book, to give you some idea, I was getting up at 5 o'clock I was getting to the office for half 5. I would write an hour of the book between half 5 and half 6 before I then set up my day before the consultants came in.

Wow.

So that book took serious graft and not a lot of sleep. And I would— the pure reason for doing it was to motivate consultants that need a bit of motivation or some help or some support in structure, which a lot of people I've worked with often lack. Because they love the salesy bit, they don't love the admin or the process. But also I wanted to elevate me up to a different level for when I went purely on my own because I felt like I needed that impact to actually just say, it's just me now.

Okay, that's really interesting.

It's been a really humbling journey, to be honest.

Yeah. So see what you've been— and sort of talk to the present now, obviously what you've been doing this week is, I have been spending a lot of time with consultants and speaking to them and offering your advice, giving value, which I think is awesome. I think sort of the sort of journey that this podcast has been on, I've been on, and I don't know if you experienced this when you started to look at a book or think about a book, but when I started in recruitment beginning in 2016, I went into that sort of recruitment. I went into recruitment having the mindset of big into my personal development. I was really open to learning from other people, always reading books that always said if you want to get to point A, find someone that's got to point A and learn from them how they did that, blah blah blah, right? So when I entered the world of recruitment, obviously when you're in a small recruitment business, which the majority of the market is made up of, obviously you're, as I've already said it, you're, you only have access to the 4 people, the people in your four walls.

Yeah.

So when I learned from these great people around me and I wanted to be creative, innovative with how I could approach things, blah blah blah, there's certain pockets of sort of knowledge or things I was hungry for that the people around me didn't have.

Yeah.

So, but, and then when you go in this sort of journey to find out about recruitment, which I did before I entered the industry because I wanted to get into it, and I read the Rich Recruiter book and I Googled all these things there was really— and then when I wanted to sort of try and up my game as a recruiter, there was limited content. There really was. And I think what's been really interesting, people like you, the podcast, and so much more going on right now, is that people really are open to help other people and learn from people like you and these types of things. And I think that's great because I think— I'm sure you— hopefully you'd agree that maybe when you started in Hayes and these types of things, to speak to other recruiters and, hey Steve, how do you do this? Or how do you structure your day? People would have probably been like, fuck off, I'm not gonna do that, you know what I mean? So yeah, I think that's awesome. And I think, so like, when you looked at, shall I do a book? Like, there isn't much out there.

There isn't.

There's not.

When I did my kind of research, what I came up with really was that there are recruitment books Sure. But a lot of them are more like textbooks and they're written by coaches, trainers, or people that haven't recruited for 5 or 10 years.

Exactly.

And whilst they follow the set process and they cover everything you need, I stopped reading most of them because you sat there thinking, oh God, it's just going through what you do anyway. And I wanted, I wanted to write something that was relatable and actually showed the highs and lows people can connect with and think do you know what, I have really bad days like that, I have excuses like that when people don't turn up, but actually there's a few things in there that say Steve does differently, I can implement that and I can add some value. And ultimately my kind of spin-off from the book, the initial plan as I say was 6 months recruiting, potentially opening a new recruitment business and then building that, but actually I was looking and what I've missed most in the last 4 or 5 months is training and mentoring and working with consultants. And over the past few weeks, as you say, this week I've given up all my free time this week to speak to consultants. They're half an hour slots. Amazing. My initial thought process was I'd get 15 to 20 calls over the week. And I'm actually getting probably 10 to 15 a day.

That's awesome.

And I am stacked out Monday to Friday and I'm loving every minute of it because I feel like I can give some value and content back to people that actually have that want to improve.

Exactly.

Yeah.

If they're booking into your diary, then they're the type of people that you want to—

Fantastic.

Yeah. Well, so let's— sorry, sorry to butt in there, but I guess what I'd love to just get your thoughts on is what are the common things that you're seeing? What are the common sort of of things that you're seeing in recruiters of today that are sort of preventing them? They're going, Steve, I'm struggling with this, or Steve, I want to get here and I'm finding it hard. Like, what are the common things from your perspective as you've been doing this and digging deeper with people? What are the common things?

The common thread is people are struggling with just creating a personal brand. That seems to be the top of the list.

Okay.

And it's really simple things like people don't want to do a social media video.

Why do you think— so obviously, I'm— my business now is helping recruiters build their personal brands, right?

Yeah.

Why has this become so important in your opinion? Like, I don't want to sort of impose my opinion, but like, you're hearing this, you just said that.

Why? My view is the current market— so for me, construction is not moving, there's no permanent requirements at the moment, and no matter how hard I try or how hard I call people, the general answer is going to be no, we've got no requirements. Yeah. So if I'm sat at home, if I'm on furlough, or my market isn't moving, but I've got some income and I need to be doing something. Social media and putting your personal brand and creating videos to show that you're relevant in the market, you're an honest, hardworking, ethical, genuine person that is passionate about what they do. The only way you are going to get that across is either calling your clients on Zoom calls to talk to them about a market that stopped or putting your content onto social media that people can freely look at and understand. So you explain who you are as a person, what your core values are, what motivates you, when you've had a bad day, when you've had a good day. People start buying into you as an individual, so the market starts picking up. I've been to networking events where I have people come up to me and feel like they already know me. I've never met them. But because my social media is relatively strong, people live the day-to-day journey with you.

Yeah, of course.

And when I was doing— it took me 12 months to do my first social media video, 2018. And then I was challenged to do 10 videos in 10 days, which I did. I loved every minute of it. It was all about self-development, my own motivation, and everything else. But I had consultants going on client meetings talking about me and my videos. And it was really irritating them because they were like, I've gone to that meeting, why are they talking about you?

Yeah.

And if that point doesn't drive home how important it is to just be out there, it allows people to watch you even if they don't like, comment, or engage. It allows people to make an assessment as to whether you are someone they want to work with. And if they then start contacting you, you don't have to pitch the sale.

You're right. I think, um, yeah, like, like, just interesting. I'm not— I'm keen to have my two pence in, but do you think recruiters already have a personal brand?

Depends where they work.

Okay, because I just think it's really interesting that your sort of top of the list is that people want to— I don't know how to start building personal brand. They're worried about— I'm just— I wasn't expecting that. I thought he's going to say about I don't know, breaking certain bidding glass ceilings or—

Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong, that's got to be there, but I take that as a given anyway.

Sure.

Because I would expect if you're doing this, you want to be at the top and you want to be the best. But in a market where everything has kind of halted, for me, given today, the best thing people can be doing is staying within their market, letting clients, candidates know that you're still busy, you're there to be spoken to, people want to have a chat, you're relevant, you're consistent, and you constantly reminding your market that you're there. If you're a consultant that's, I don't know, you've been told you don't have to come back into work till June, so you just need to sit at home. If that was me, I couldn't sit still anyway.

No, I couldn't.

But if you are just sat there, people will go past you because they'll have built a brand and people will remember and and have lived that journey through what is a tough time. And they'll go to those people, guarantee.

What's the common challenge then? If people saying, Steve, I'd love what you're doing on LinkedIn, like, how can I start doing that for myself? So you mentioned about obviously people are worried about sharing videos and I totally resonate with that. And obviously I was worried about sharing videos when I was in recruitment, but like from your perspective and what's the common thing that you're hearing there? Because that might be useful people listening?

It's confidence, purely. Yeah, it is confidence. And it's the fact that you open yourself to ridicule and critique, and that is constant. That is, that is the message. It was the same when I published the book. That week running up to it being published, I was— it could have all fell apart. People could have said it's the worst written book on the planet. You write— my first ever social media video was, hi, this is Steve, um, this is my first ever social media video. There's no value, there's no content. I'm I'm not even sure what I'm going to say next. I've just got over 12 months of procrastination.

Here it is.

Hope you enjoy it. I think it was something along them lines. That was it. And then to do the next 10, because I then had to do the 10, it gets you over that hurdle of what am I going to say? What if I muck up? You just, you just got to put it out there. I think once you've done one and you've got the ability to think, okay, I've just got to think of some sort of content every day to keep it moving. The amount of exposure I got from videos far outweighs anything I've done. I was getting 4, 5, 6 clients that I hadn't spoken to for years and years every day email me to say, 'Watch your video on tomorrow, loving the video content. I appreciate we haven't spoke for ages, but it's probably worth a catch-up.' What's your view?

Awesome, mate. And I love getting your perspective on this because these are obviously the things that I talk about a lot. So I guess And then the sort of other thing to tie this together, which I think is really interesting. What's your view on then, like for you, is it personal brand versus quote unquote old school methods? Or like, do you know what I mean? You said there that it's driving, because a lot of people, the sort of skeptics are, okay Steve, great that you're doing videos, but how's that making you money, mate? I'd rather make 30 business development calls, right? So I guess what's your view on, and you've been in the game for a while, right? And you know, obviously process that you know that you need to do, you know the outputs you need to do, and all of a sudden now from 2018 you've been creating content, videos, blah blah blah. Like, what's your view on sort of, yeah, the personal brand new methods, if you want to call it that, compared with what you've known?

For me, it's complementary. So it's in addition to. So you cannot get past the fact that you still got to do the activity. Yeah. I've worked with consultants that believe because we now have the digital age where everything's social media, Actually, they can send 100 messages through LinkedIn and that means they don't have to make any calls. But actually, their messages on LinkedIn is crap. The open rate is crap. And they never get to ask any other question than what was in the email that didn't get read or just got deleted because it was a pitch. So you have to combine everything. And for me, I just work on a couple of posts every day, Monday to Friday, that are relevant to what I do. And they back up who I am and how I work. That allows the people that don't pick up the phone, don't respond to an email, and haven't necessarily ever wanted to work with me, but actually they get to know me a bit better just from being the quiet observant in the background. And then in 6 months' time, they may well pick up the phone. There's so many things. I had a client that never answered the phone to me. I used to drop into reception on the whim that they might come out and come and speak to me. Nothing. No replies to email, nothing on the phone. I sent them a handwritten letter after 8 years of trying, and they responded, and they're now a good key client.

Love that.

Most people would have given up after, I don't know, 4 months, but 8 years I was ringing and emailing this client, and then he finally responded to a handwritten letter. And now it's calls and emails and everything's fine.

I think I love that story. I think with what you said, I think that that's also the opportunity that there will be a lot of your competitors that are, that have got complacent with, oh, well, I've sent 30 emails today, Steve. I've done my sourcing. Or yeah. And I think that's for me, I'm huge on that. It's about—

I will face them competitors all day long.

Yeah, exactly. But you're right. It's about combining the both. That's the opportunity. Well, Yeah. Like now there's even more of an opportunity to get access to people, speak to people. And it is about combining the both. I think what, just my two pence on what you said, which I think is great, is that this whole content piece, it just enables you to have more opportunities to speak to people. And for me, that's why I started creating content when I was in recruitment, because I just needed to get 5, 10 more opportunities to say to people, 'Hey, my name is Hishem Azzouz and this is how I'm different.' And when you share content and it enables you to have sort of touchpoints with people in your market that may not, that aren't answering emails, that aren't picking up your phone, but all of a sudden they get to experience or have a bit of an understanding of who you are, what you're about. And then they may be open to actually having a conversation or at least finding out who you are. Yeah, that's all it needs to be.

Everything about today is about being creative. So in my LinkedIn network, I might have people that I don't know, I've never spoken to, and they purely just watch what I put on my feed. I don't know who they're associated with. So I sit there creating content that they look at, never comment, never say anything, but actually their husband or wife is the MD or the CEO of one of the biggest companies I might want to recruit for. And it's just having the ability to allow a market to work for you without you having to necessarily do or contact every single person on the planet.

Yeah. So in regards to the book then, Steve, if people were to read it and sort of they were to, and they were to take an action, like one piece of advice from the book, or like you would want them to like make sure that there's one piece of advice or two pieces of advice that they, that really gets through to them and they action. What would those things be?

For me, the whole book is about structure. So it's about having—

that doesn't surprise me, Steve.

Yeah, it's about having a plan, and it's about not going in blasé that you think you're going to get somewhere by actually not knowing where you're headed. So get your structure, get your plan, whether that's an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly plan, and have it placed so that there is a process to follow. You follow the process, things will happen.

Yeah. So it really is that, the process, the structure. That's interesting.

I say that, most people will turn off now because, oh, process and structure. But I've proved it works. And if you're ever sat there thinking, I don't even know how many calls I've made today, but I've had a really busy day, the chances are actually you've just been on someone else's agenda. You've probably answered the phone loads of times and passed them through to other people. And in terms of your selfish billings and your personal desk, you've probably done 3 outgoing calls. That is in my experience. People don't understand that a busy day isn't necessarily a profitable one.

Yeah, you know what, that's really interesting. So is it, is it that then that a lot of people just fall short on then? Like just really not actually understanding what a good day looks like?

Yeah, it's not having order and not knowing what they're trying to get out of the day.

I think a lot of people know what they need to do to make that day a—

Yeah, they're box ticking. And I think it's because the KPI part is so heavily driven that you end up making calls for calls' sake because you need to tick the box.

Yeah.

Actually, if you had— if I told you to do 20 and you did 15 quality calls, 15 is fine. I've got no problems with it. It's only a framework, but ultimately you don't want to be just ticking the boxes for the sake of it. You need the structure and the process behind why you're trying to do it. And I think more often than not, the why isn't explained well enough. It's just beating out consultants to get there.

Yeah. So it really is back to basics. Like what is part of that is that you're preaching to these people and you really believe that sort of getting a grip of that and really understanding that structure process will enable those that are at any level, I guess, what, like, maybe found themselves getting a bit comfortable, complacent, or got used to billing X amount of money. You think there's opportunities there if they really think about that hard enough and be practical and take action, that it can really impact, like, increase their—

Yeah, if you're a 150, 180K biller and you've been consistent for 3 or 4 years, the best thing you can do there is look at how you work and look at the marginal gains again and where you can make improvements or change slightly.

Yeah.

If you haven't got a structure and a process, how are you going to make a marginal gain? You've got no way to quantify any of it, so you can't improve or assess anything because you just work the way you work.

And is, when you say structure, is it like, are we talking like, okay, so, okay, Steve, well, look, this is my structure from 10 to 12, Every Tuesday and Thursday I do my business development, and that's me trying to obviously contact and speak to new clients. And then every day, 2 till 5, I'm spending sourcing jobs that I've got exclusive or that are sort of high priority that I know I can make placements out of. Like, is this what we're talking about structure-wise? Like, is that—

yeah, I mean, for me it has to be more defined, but yeah, I mean, that is a similar sort of thing. So I say I can go into, I don't know if you've got that much time, but my structure is the same every week.

No, let's talk about it because I think a lot of people will, that people want to know, Steve, what the fuck did your day look like, mate? Let's do it.

Yeah, my KPIs that I worked to at Hayes, that I still work to today, is roughly defined as 20 sales calls a day to decision makers, 3 client meetings a week, 5 candidate meetings a week. 10 interviews to be arranged a week, 2 e-shots a week, 2 mailers a week, and then the bolt-on to that is I will pick 2 vacancies to go into any week to specialise in and on. So over those 2 vacancies, I want to speak to 30 specific candidates for each vacancy. I want an e-shot to go out and I want some social media marketing on each vacancy. Same with the candidates. Candidates have 30 points of contact for each individual looking for a new role: a candidate spec email, a social media spec email. It will be sectioned into core hours, so between 9 and 12 is sales calls, 2 till 5 sales calls, hours in between is admin and adverts. What else is there? I will send an asset register once a month, which I talk about in my book. An asset register is a collection of the candidates and a vague description in terms of their characteristics. I'll send that out to the whole market that I recruit for. What that enables means other clients within the company you don't know or you don't necessarily speak to have the option for one of their internal staff to forward it on to them. Opens up your market, creates momentum. It enables you to, if you're feeling a bit crappy and you've had a rubbish week, send the asset register out because it automatically engages most of your market if you've got that relationship built up. I do 2 social media posts a day on LinkedIn, one at breakfast, one at lunch, because it's the most engaged time in terms of people looking on LinkedIn, as far as I've made it out. And then it's about doing anything over and above those actions. All the targets that I've said there, I always naturally try and beat by 1 or 2, bringing in the compound effect and everything else that goes with it.

How do you keep track of all that, mate? I cannot imagine people listening going, Steve, you just— I've just lost you at first. No, honestly, all I want to say firstly is I love that. I think that's definitely me personally. Since I started my own business, I've had to get better at sort of structure my weeks, specific days. And when I've actually— so what I very quickly realised is that when I started my business, I was basically just, I would do obviously my utmost to sell to clients, get new clients obviously paying, and then I would fit them into the diary that I had, right? And obviously you hear a lot of the time like, don't, what's it, don't let clients dictate sort of you and your time. Right? But what I realised was, I had, what I was doing was I had no structure to put my clients in. Do you know what I mean? So I was just like, I was just calling people, I was obviously closing people and then be like, right, okay, let me look at my diary, when can I start, fit you in? I had no structure to put them in. So like, yeah, I love the way that you—

You've got to value it. The consultants that work with me got to know that if they walked up to my desk between sales hours, I would not speak to them. I'd pretty much just put my hand up and they go and sit back down. And whilst it seems a bit rude at the start, and they're like, I need to ask this question. You'd be like, well, can it wait till lunchtime? Or is it urgent now? If it's urgent, obviously, yeah. More often than not, it was like, value your time. But if you're walking around the office trying to find some menial admin question, and actually it doesn't support what you're there to do, save it for a time where you've got the time to do it. Yeah, um, I go into each day, so I always get to the office an hour early to plan what I'm doing for the day. Um, and it's also to have a bit of peace and quiet, to be honest, and a quiet coffee on my own. Um, it allows me to set it up. So I will have goals that I'm looking to achieve for the day, and I'll have A's, B's, and C's. A's are I can't get through the day without having achieved them. Yeah, B's are okay, but I really need to get them done, and C's can wait till tomorrow if I don't get these A's done. I've created what I call the month planner. So that's a collection of my habits over 14 years. And it's a basic day plan, week plan, month plan, all in a booklet. I have been emailing them out to consultants because I think there's a lot of people at the moment that's at home and that's how you've been tracking it.

Sorry to butt in, but that was going to be my next question. Like, how did you actually track?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And even though this is not a spreadsheet, Always, always.

Okay, okay. Spreadsheets upon spreadsheets. But even down to the simple thing that if you aren't even counting the amount of calls you're making, yeah, how do you know if you're being busy? So I have a tally list where you tick off the number. If you have a good morning, you get to lunch and you look at the fact you've done 10 calls in the morning, yeah, that's an okay morning. If you get to lunch and you've made 3, you've got one hell of an afternoon coming up. Yeah. And you've got to be able to go off for lunch, have a walk around the block, eat your sandwich, and think, you know what, nothing is going to stop me this afternoon because I've got to go and find 17 sales calls from someone.

I love that. That's so good. I went on a bit of a tangent there, but I'm glad we did because I think, like, we spoke— you spoke a lot about structure and process, and I think we finally got into the, the Steve secret source.

If any of the listeners want the month planner, I've been emailing them out. So cool, just drop a note. Yeah, comments or contact me.

Or I guess, yeah, as we sort of come, come to the, um, close here, uh, Steve, I guess, yeah, a couple of things. So firstly, obviously you're, you're clearly someone that's willing to help give back. So anyone that's listening that has sort of really been interested how Steve's been articulating what makes a good biller the common things that you've been seeing, the process and habits that you formed, then obviously you're happy for these people to reach out. And yeah, of course. Um, yeah, I guess obviously what we will be doing, um, obviously I want to help you as much as possible. So I guess as we sort of agreed before we started this, obviously when, when you post, um, about being on the podcast and when we release this, I think we agreed, didn't we, that basically if anyone, um, I hope people that listen to this if they comment on Steve's post and you see it when we announce this, what we want you to do is comment on Steve's post saying sort of what your key learning was or key takeaway was from the episode. And you commenting on Steve's post will mean that you get sort of put into a hat that means that you can win a free book of the free Top Biller book basically. And you're going to give a couple of copy of those away. People. Yeah, awesome. So we'll make that clearer again when we post about it, but wanted to make that— make everyone aware that if you got to this part of the episode that you can do that, so make sure that you do. So where I always like to sort of finish this episode, Steve, is, well, firstly, what are you— what sounds a bit weird asking it, and I always ask it, but with what's going on, but like, what are you excited about?

For me, I've really enjoyed getting back into the mentoring, the training consultants. So I think that's, that's going to be a new avenue that I'll be pursuing. I've already got a few clients and potential consultants that want me to help mentor them, which is great. I'm currently developing an app called the Expert Recruiter, which will be a central place, centralised place for people to go and get value and content. Which I'm really excited about. Lots of work to be done, to be fair. But yeah, for me, I mean, you're not meant to say things that you find opportunity in downtimes, but it is there. You've just got to go and get it. And it does excite me, to be honest.

I love that. I think it's great what you're doing. So, question I always ask: if Steve could communicate to every single recruiter out there, they'd listen and take on your advice, it could be a phrase, a word, a sentence, but they would take on your advice, they'd action it, they'd implement it tomorrow. What would you say to the people?

I suppose something that I've always worked to is just deliver on what you say you're going to do.

Yeah, goes a long way, doesn't it?

Recruitment is full of people that blag it, and they will tell someone or oversell, and they just don't deliver. Yeah. And that is probably a common thread.

Full of free people. Make sure you do what you're going to say, what you say that you're going to do. But look, Steve, really enjoyed that. Thank you so much for your time. I think a lot of the listeners will get a lot of value out of this conversation. So just a big thanks. Really love what you do.

Real pleasure.

And thanks a lot.

Thank you.