Three Founders, Three Stages: How To Build a Recruitment Business That Lasts

So nice to see so many of you. Thank you for coming. I know there's a lot of places that you could be on a Wednesday night, particularly when the sun's out in London. You know, we're competing with beer gardens, rooftop bars, so it's appreciated. Also, I have to ask, anyone do the London Marathon on the weekend? Hands up. Okay, to be fair, yeah, I was gonna say two things, reasons why I asked. One, I thought there'd be way more because I feel like recruitment and running is the new, as well as Paddle, as well as HIROX, is the new recruitment, so like what we associate with recruiters, which I think is a good thing. But also I'm sure you guys are hurting still, I know I would be, so it's appreciated walking to the venue, coming here, and congrats. So what I wanted to do is just give you all a bit of an insight into how tonight's going to go, but firstly just want to say these events would absolutely not be possible without our amazing partners, which you can see on this big screen. Made this lovely image with Canva. I think this looks all right. Uh, the great guys over at Atlas, Raisin, Sourcewell. So a number of those guys are here today if you haven't spoken to them or met them before. And the plan for tonight is hopefully all of you will walk away with at least one thing that you can use in your business, consider taking into your business. Hopefully this comes across with the podcast, but I'm all about the how and I want the content that we produce to be really useful, really practical. So we've got a number of talking tracks that we're going to focus on, from what their North Star priorities are for 2026, why are they doubling down on that, why is that their priority. We're definitely going to talk about what are they all doing that they believe is going to help them build more of a robust recruitment business. I think safe to say the, the market has changed a lot and is going to continue to change with AI technology, We're not just going to talk about AI all night. I think we can just go on LinkedIn and get that. Then what we're also going to talk about is people. We're in the people game. I don't think there's any successful recruitment business, particularly if you're growing a team, without really thinking about your culture, high performance, retaining, attracting people. So we're going to talk about that. And we're definitely also going to talk about go-to-market strategy. How do they think about standing out, position themselves in the market as well? And before we put our hands together for the panel, final thing that I do want to say is when I put these events on, I really try and be intentional with who we get involved. If you was to come to an event tonight and maybe leave feeling that there was no one on this panel that you could relate to, where they're on their journey, where they're going, I think sometimes that can be a bit frustrating, disheartening. So the 3 different people we have on the panel are at very different stages. Have very different goals, ambitions. So hopefully there should be at least one person on this panel that you can relate to, that you feel like, you know what, there's something there that I can take. Because at the end of the day, we are all on our own race, we're running our own race. The majority of you in this room are in a recruitment leader position, founder, co-founders. So I think that is really important, particularly with social media, LinkedIn. We always see the highlight reel. But I know from the conversations I have, and I'm trying to bring more transparency to our industry around how hard it is, the failures, the challenges. So we're also going to be talking about those challenges. What have these companies found really hard? And not just get them talking about the successes and what's worked. So hopefully tonight you can walk away with some useful strategies, tactics, frameworks, that you can consider taking into your business is the goal. So you can hold me account to that after if you think I delivered on that. Final bit of housekeeping, if you haven't been to the toilet, they're just down there, down the stairs. And then we just found this to be a bit more better, but for those of you that do want to carry on the conversation after the discussion, there's a great pub on the corner, it's up the road, called The Ship that I know a number of us are going to go to. So if you want to stick around after, then head there. And I think you'll be able to notice some familiar faces. So without further ado, let's put our hands together for the panel and we'll get stuck in. We said, didn't we, we wanted to make sure that Dan Cox here sat in the middle.

I feel left out. I feel left out.

Didn't get the memo.

Yeah, we discovered that, didn't we, when we all showed up.

Slimming, mate, slimming.

So obviously you heard me talk about what our plan is for tonight, what we're going to focus on. So let's just get straight stuck in. Where I just wanted all of you to help us out is Botty. So I'm going to call— his name's Mike, but he's known as Botty. So that's— so when I say Botty, I asked permission for that and I also said this on the podcast as well, didn't I? Like, yeah. So what I want all of you to share with us, if it's okay, is firstly, could you share with the room just a bird's eye view of your businesses? Tell us a bit about net fee income, headcount, core markets, geographies you're in. Just give us a real bird's eye view of your business so we have that context. We'll start there. I'll come to you first, Botti. And then we'll talk about north stars for 2026, what we're focusing on, and then we'll get onto that.

Cool. Mike Bott, co-CEO of LHI Group. We have 5 non-competing brands, 4 offices in the US, 2 offices in the UK, and 1 office in Germany. Headcount-wise, circa 300+ give or take, looking at my CPA, hoping I'm right. And yeah, from a, I guess, GP perspective, we're on track ultimately to, or we're pushing our business to try and get to that third event fundamentally as a business. Q1 started well. Market's quite interesting time for everyone, I guess, but excited to where we're going to get and go to.

And then just give us really quickly, like, your core— I know you said non-compete brands, but just give us a bit of a flavor of core markets.

Yeah, we have Pipematics doing renewables and clean tech. We have Cypro doing life sciences, Lawrence Harvey founding brand doing tech, and Harper Harrison doing built environment, predominantly data centers, like half the world. And then XBS, which is our consulting brand.

Awesome. Coxie or Dan?

What, you go with Coxie?

Okay, Coxie. Okay, Coxie, tell us about Edison Smart. Tell us about your business.

So guys, I'm Coxie, or Dan, co-founder of Edison Smart. So 4 and a half Nearly 5 years into the journey now, bootstrapped. We have 3 now offices, so recently launched Austin, Texas, Middle East, Dubai, and Basingstoke. If anyone knows where Basingstoke is, up the basin, center of the universe.

Yes, Basingstoke.

So core specialties, we focus on smart technology, so disruptive tech, blended split of about 60/40 perm contract right now. And the focus this year from net fee income in sort of year 4 to year 5, we're tracking to do over £9 million NFI in sort of year 4 to 5.

That's a big goal, yeah. Last but not least, Ricky.

Hello everyone, I'm Ricky Burns, co-founder of Pulse Group, which is a UK-based startup, bootstrapped as well. We started, we just passed our 18-month mark. And we are now just about to become 7 heads. So the other end of the spectrum in terms of the panel tonight. We managed to get to £1.1 million EBIT in our first year. We are— got our sights set to scale the business to a point this year where we can achieve around £1.4, £1.5 million.

And also why I really wanted to get Ricky on is I— easily one of the consistent trends over the last 2 years is the amount of UK companies that don't do UK business and transact in mainly America but also Europe. Ricky, all your business is UK?

98.8%. Yeah, yeah.

Whereas Coxie, for you, it's more like 60, right? Obviously you have 65. Yeah. And then obviously you have— but you don't really transact in the UK, do you?

Like 2%, if that, in the UK.

Yeah.

Boy, what— I know you covered it in the pod.

What's outside of UK? Probably 80, 80, 20.

Yeah.

And like, just finding this, uh, a lot. So hopefully you can see what I was trying to create here, the intentionality. So I just thought what would be really helpful for people to hear is, now they understand a bit about your world, your business, there's so many things that you can do as a founder, as a leader But as you all know, there's only so many things that you can achieve and get to a really good level. So I'm always interested in what are recruitment leaders, founders' most important priorities, because normally what that means is they believe that if they get that right, then the rest will take care of itself, or that's going to be the most important point. So Ricky, let me come to you first, if that's okay. Talk to us a bit about coming into 2026. What was the real important north, north star in your business? What was a really a big priority for your business and why?

I can probably break it down to 3 core areas. So we had a fantastic first year. Um, I think, you know, it was about Tony, my business partner, getting our heads down, trying to build as much as we can, build as many relationships as we could, so build the foundations for us to then grow. But this year was very much about, okay, we've built the foundations to a point, plenty more to go. How do we now create a platform to continue to be billers, but then start to pass the mantle on to a wider team. So how could we create an environment that could do that? We benefited a lot in our first year as two perm recruiters doing it for the first time, growing quite a significant contract book. But we very much knew that that had helped us sleep at night for a long time. And there was always going to be a cliff edge where those runners would end up finishing. So priority number one was very much a strategic hire, bring in a contracts director, which Dan is with us in the, in the audience tonight. He joined in about 3 weeks ago. Well, hi, Dan. And yeah, so that was, that was two. There was another one.

The other one was which we spoke about. I know you spent a lot of time on Friday, which was building the Pulseway processes system, which is big for—

Yeah, exactly that. So very mindful as we grow, and I've seen it in previous businesses that I've worked for, of not having a business of just a collection of recruiters or doing recruitment how they'd always done it. Like, what is the way that we do it? How can we— somebody get the same experience from Louis in our team, Lauren in our team, whoever they're speaking to in Pulse, as however big we get, what's our identity as a business? What the processes that we put in place now so that we're not trying to undo bad habits or different practices somewhere down the line. So for us, it was let's think in an established mindset from day one. We both, myself and my co-founder, came from established business in, in salt. So we'd seen scale. So we came into it very much in the mindset, let's do it properly from day one. Let's put those processes in place. Let's get the values right, let's get the processes right, let's get our everything working as though we're a big business now, and that should serve us.

So, so, yeah, super smart. So, so many people don't take the time to do that that I speak to that are in that stage that you're in. Do you mind just sharing very quickly, uh, tell us a bit about the types of things that you did on Friday, just because I think that might be really interesting for people to, to hear.

So I Like a lot of people, I'm sure, in the room that have started, you know, get a website up and put some values on there, but— and then forget about it and never talk about it again. I think we asked the team, do you know our values? And they didn't because we weren't talking about them enough. We weren't thinking about them enough. And in terms of how we're now shaping, we're starting to bring more people into the team. Really important for us to have a real sense of identity. What makes us us? And then the people that we bring into the business, how can they fit into what we're trying to build? So Friday was a lovely away day, rafting, wall climbing, but also 2 hours in a room. What makes us us? What's our— what's our core values as a business? Which we came out with, which was authentic, united. I know them because we're talking about them a lot. United, authentic, united, and accountable. And obviously there's a lot that's underneath that in terms of who we are, what we are. But in terms of how that shapes us as a business now, every single hiring decision, our interactions with our customers, the processes and systems that we put into place, it works around those values that are core and everything then breathes out of that.

Yeah, that's great. And I know you brought in a facilitator as well to help with that and—

Yeah, yeah, it was a day that we talked about a lot and it was lovely to see it become a reality on Friday and the sun was shining. It was great.

Appreciate you sharing that. Coxie, North Star for Edison Smart, priorities. Obviously you have a co-founder.

Yep.

So you've got shared responsibilities, but what, what was the big North Star important parts for Edison Smart this year for 2026?

Having a US footprint.

Okay.

So I think a lot of our American customers can't quite work out, one, where Basingstoke is, and ultimately, two, you know, if you think about from a business case and business plan, from day dot, America has been part part and parcel of like the vision, it's about the North Star. That is continuous how we've been able to attract staff from competition, giving them the opportunity to, you know, naturally higher fees, higher margins in contract. Ultimately though, again, going around the houses here is getting Austin off the ground. So Mike, which I'll talk a little bit later about, I worked with Mike previous business that we built and sold, Consol, and I've known him for 15 years. So having that, having somebody that I could myself and Ben, to trust from day dot that can get it off the ground with teamwork, but ultimately just trusting that. So that was, that was key, getting us off the ground. I think becoming a 50/50 business, contract and perm. There's different viewpoints on perm and contract, perm-led, contract-led, and my world has always been that contract makes you sleep easy at night. As a founder, bootstrapped, having that recurring revenue, it just gives you the ability to able to scale profitably. It's really important and something that, like, myself and Ben from day one, our mantra has been scale profitably. You know, if you think about the market the last few years, again, companies have got into self-made, into some bother because they have been growing off NFI growth rather than EBIT growth, and that's something that we're really focused on. So that's something that the North Star— so staying profitable, getting Austin off the ground, which Jade, Head of Talent tonight, done a brilliant job to—

Why Austin? Because a lot of That's where Mike lives.

Oh, okay. We had Miami because Miami sounded great, but Mike wasn't willing to move, so, um, so going there. So 50/50 split, um, getting Austin off the ground and continue to stay profitable.

Yeah, I know we also, um, put on here as well because I know this all already spoke about recurring revenue contract, but yeah, we also, uh, said how can we diversify our service offering. So for you, Dan, as well, it's, yeah, statement of work on the contract side, RPO, multi-hire on the permanent side. So So that, that's definitely something we're going to cover today around that diversification, building a more robust recruitment business through how we're transacting our clients, how we're positioning our services. And we've got phone-first culture.

Yeah, again, don't shoot me, sorry, but I think there's got to be an element of Edison. Again, you talk about Ricky, you talk about your values. Like, we, we are a 2026 agency and we're adopting AI in, in a certain element, but we do adopt that, that phone-first mentality, having a conversation, picking up, adding value, influencing. That's what recruiters are best for, it's what leaders are best for, right? So I feel really strongly and passionate about that. Again, I'm happy to, to be wrong on that one, but, but more importantly, um, for me, that's our philosophy. That's what makes us different, um, in regards to, you know, other people. But again, if you're not having that philosophy, then it just doesn't work, right? So I think you've just got to own as a company what your philosophy is and what you're trying to achieve. Um, and if you can try and create— I talked to Botti earlier about trying to create the HQ philosophies in each business, which is the hard, really hard to get that in different cultures. I think that is, is, it's been fundamental to where we want to get to.

So yeah, Botty, priorities for LHI Group?

Yeah, I think between Ben and I, it was the evolution of LHI, and we saw 2026 as that move, as quite a few companies have said, around the move to talent solutions, which is a lovely buzzword, but I guess what it means for LHI is we're being very deliberate in 3 core areas of the business. First one being our client solutions piece, The second one being our internal leadership, our ability to fundamentally give them better skill sets and tools to therefore help us expand as we want. And then thirdly, and probably the one that most people have leaned into most, is branding. I don't just mean branding by how many times I post on LinkedIn or etc. It's also personal branding. So how are you becoming a brand within your own super niche? Are you talking at events? Are you engaging with your audience in different ways? It's something that the 3 components as a business of our size that we thought would ultimately give us the biggest impact through '26 and more likely into '27 as we see the market kind of change a little bit. We've been very deliberate in those 3 core metrics. We didn't want any more than that. I think I'm a big, big believer in keep it as simple as humanly possible. And we've done that and we are From Ben and I all the way down to the C1, they could all tell you what the 3 pillars of the business are, why we're doing it, and what that's meant to lead to. I think if you can do that over 300, you've got a good shot at actually making it stick.

Not everyone may know what a C1 is.

Uh, junior consultant. Graduate. Graduate. Okay, cool.

Uh, that's right. Uh, I know as well, because this will resonate, part of what you're talking about, which you write down here, is also re-pitching the full proposition to your existing clients, which links into that, right?

Yeah, I think, um, as a business we've evolved, and through our evolvement, uh, recently we've brought in a lot of different sales solutions to our business. We aren't just an exclusive retained or contract business, perm recruitment. We've now got embedded solutions, we've got opportunities to do RPOs, we've got opportunities to do subscription models, etc. We've basically gone back to our own client list as new clients which I was speaking to someone earlier, like, it sounds so obvious and it is, but a lot of your clients, in my opinion, when you look at when you signed terms in 2014, 2015, 2017, whatever it might be, knew you as a one-trick pony, whether it's life sciences, whether it's hypermatics, renewables, and yet they evolve. We don't keep re-pitching how we're evolving with them. End of Q4 into Q1 this year for us, our biggest upsell hasn't been new business. It's been new business with different streams in our current client base, making it more sticky. We are really pushing having clients with multiple propositions, ideally multiple brands where possible. Obviously not always possible, but the idea of having perm, contract, embedded, retained, exec, and like those brands that we class as our A+ brands isn't just revenue. It's how many solutions we've got in the client to make them sticky. My job, our job as a business, is fundamentally to take clients off the market. Everyone at LHI understands that a client is to be taken off the market so none of you can get in. And so we're going to provide them, provide them every single solution they need for that to happen. And that's, and that's what we're really, really pushing with our oldest clients as well as any brand new client being brought on.

Yeah, yeah, I just think that's really relevant for people regardless of if they've got 2014 clients or not. Like, when I speak to people about transitioning from how do I take, uh, clients I've worked with always on a contingent basis to then return, um, retained, like, there's always different opportunities with people. They may view you as delivering a certain solution, different service. So I think for a lot of people there may be opportunities there right in front of them. So it's really interesting to hear that this is something you're really driving at this scale that's already having an impact?

I just think that fundamentally the client is feeling the same pain as everyone is, right? That the market could be tighter. There is many economic factors that are making their client's job a lot harder. And your job and our job as recruiters isn't just to get a fee, it's to provide a solution. And that solution might not be 25% on 5 roles, it might be a different solution, but to still allow your client to keep moving forward at a price point that works for them but also works for you. And I think if we're not— our ability to not adapt will only slow yourself down. And the clients now are expecting— or our clients specifically, I'm not sure, I can't speak for everyone— are asking us for different ways to find the same result. And I think if you can build those models internally and still make that profitable for yourself and the client still wins, you're back to a win-win situation again.

You talk about clients there, but I think it's a, it's a key for any leader recruiter is you've got to keep evolving. And I think it's a massive— like, you think about the solutions that what he's talking about, that's massive about staff retention. If you can bring people on and show them statement of work embedded solutions, somebody that has never done it before, been very successful, 2, 3, 4, 500K a year retained or contingent biller, but then can open up a completely new world, double their billings doing the same sort of effort and work because they're just embedded in, in the solution. That's what we've had to do. Like, you know, we, we started the business in 2021, which arguably is probably one of the toughest times to launch something from scratch. I'm not saying we're any better than anyone in the room, we're not, but ultimately we've had to keep evolving, we've had to move with the times. And we talk a lot about our customers, but also we need to talk about the staff. The staff need to continue to evolve. Recruitment, recruitment what 5 years ago is very different to today, and the companies that are winning now have evolved like you have. You've been going a long time, but you've evolved your solutions. Very different business to where you were 20 years ago. And I think that's key. And staff, like, we obsess about it, is can I get billers to the next level? And that's not just billings, that's ultimately looking at what they're selling today and getting them from a competitor and then doubling, tripling their revenue outside of revenue that they've never even sold before. So we're taking contract billers from really, really good, um, places, they've never sold statement of work, and you show them a different world And again, I've learned— I never sold statement of work before I'd started Edison. So again, I'm learning on the job as we go. Fake it until you make it. And then, but ultimately then they're bought into a whole new world of revenue so they can— it's just an extra layer of talent that they can do.

So yeah, it's key. Just popped into my head, why do you think leaders would do the opposite? So what would prevent leaders from not evolving? Do you think?

No one's asking them to.

Okay.

Being content with what you've got. I'm a big believer in if you're, if you're not going forward, you're going backwards.

Yeah.

And so therefore, if by challenging yourself and listening to other people in the market, talking to other people in the market, what is working, asking people and being open to actually having open conversations around what is working for your business. Could it work for my business? Not everyone's solution is going to work for everyone's business. But none of us can surely sit here and believe that we know everything. And that's probably the biggest, biggest scary point of most leaders, CEO, founders, is most of the time it's like, we do as I do. But once you've never sold a statement piece of work, then you're not going to be telling your team to go and sell that work.

I think that was— Coxie, we spoke about this, right? And I've spoke to a few of you in the room, which is I do think from the companies that I've met that have struggled in that down market was there was a lot of leaders that weren't close to the tools, weren't on a pitch call for a while, whatever you want to call it. And I know I've definitely noticed with a lot of the successful companies that I've met over the last couple of years, we used to glorify get promoted, non-billing, you smashed it, you like, you're great, you know, you can tell other people what to do. But actually, one of the last things that you maybe want to give up is getting in front of customers, spending time with them, understanding Like, why do you work with us? Where do we deliver value? And I know, of course, that's been big for you, right? And staying close to those tools. I think that's a bit of a lesson for people, because I do think if you don't do that, then you're managing and leading from a spreadsheet and looking at the conversions and like, wait, hang on a minute, people haven't done enough meetings this week. You're doing that versus really understanding the nuances and what— where you can help people and where you need to evolve. I think that's hard to do if you're not in those meetings and in front of people.

The death of Excel, right? You know, like, that is straight up, like, it's— we've all been in those meetings when you sit with your manager, mid-level manager, hasn't picked up the phone for 10 years, and just ask you about your forecast, zero value, and you just go out. And every week you're like, where's the value add? Like, and as a leader, like everyone in here that's leading a business now, I was guilty of it, definitely towards the tail end of my previous business. And you have to reverse engineer yourself every single day. Say, like, around, like, staff, like, now more so than ever, they want to learn new things constantly, like, the next biggest thing. So I think that's, like, absolutely key, is that, you know, having that 360 mindset from top down, like, very much myself and Ben are still winning customers. We've added in the RPO, uh, solution, embedded solution. Again, we've learned on the job how to sell it. It's got sort of, like, 6 or 7 out running in, in 3 months because the market and demand's there.

I think it just keeps it fresh as well. So, you know, Tony and I were hands-off directors, very client-facing, but getting back on the tools has re-taught us and thrown us into the unknown on many different occasions. We'd never built a contract, but we built that to 50 runners and $100 grand a month within a year, throwing ourselves into the unknown. And I think in answer to your question, I think sometimes we're just scared to. We know what we know and it's worked in the past, so let's just keep doing the same thing over and over again and hoping that even the market comes back or different results will come. When you really start to get creative, you know, how can I package up something for a client in a different way? What is statement of work? It's fun. It keeps the job fresh. I've been more invigorated in the last 18 months than I had for the the previous 10 years building and scaling big teams, this has been the most fulfilling side of the, of the job for me in a long time.

If it's— so where I wanted to talk about now, we're talking about some of the things that we're doing well. Let's talk about the challenges because I know there's been hard parts. So Rick, I'm going to come to you. Okay, that's okay, because you're talking about what the— where we've got the contract book to.

Yeah.

So I know we need to speak about this in the right way.

We do, we do. It was looking in a different— it was looking like it was going one way.

Yeah, let me just give some context. So the reason why I wanted Ricky to share this was, uh, to be fair, Cox, you can tell me what you think of this, but what can be very hard for a founder to do is try and build— they know they should build recurring revenue and contract can help me do that, but they've never done contract before. They've always done perm, that's hard to be like, right, do I hire someone experienced in— I don't have the expertise, let me just hire someone externally who has all the answers and I'll just trust everything that they say. Obviously, Ricky, you guys were in that position, right, where you had opportunities, you brought someone in, didn't quite work out. So I guess just give us a bit of a lesson there on anything that maybe could protect people here where they're having to rely on someone to have all the answers.

I can't go into the ins and outs, I'll be sued. But there's lessons in there, that's what we want. Um, Ultimately, I think the lesson for us really led us into the next phase of who we are as a business. So we invested a lot of time in a bad hire, and ultimately it didn't go well and we had to part ways. But I think we underestimate sometimes behaviors and values at the expense of maybe this pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that may or may not be there. Um, and you know, the, the, the, the cost of time and the cost of mental headspace of, of that hire, you know, and especially when you are the founder and this is your baby and your life and soul is in it, you know, that going a direction that you never thought it would go is a very difficult experience. So for us, I think it's, it's then what's the next step from that, which obviously then forced us to really examine, okay, right, again, going back to what I was talking about before, who are we? What, what, what do we stand for? What don't we stand for? And then how can we protect ourselves and everything that we've built to have it from that ever happening again? So how are we screening the people that are coming in? What, what do we expect to see from them? At what point? What's our cutoff point in terms of our tolerance levels? How are we compliant to really understand what's truly going on in our business? So I'm a firm believer everything happens for a reason and actually a huge amount of positive positives came out of it. But the period was undoubtedly one of the most stressful times of my career, let alone of our founder journey.

Because the hard thing there, right, was maybe felt deep down the behaviors and stuff weren't right, but they had— they were the experts, right? And they— yeah, you guys didn't. That's the hard position.

Yeah, I mean, we're just talking about, you know, learning and, and growing. It was all very exciting, we're learning new stuff, but we don't know, and you don't know what you don't know. So there's a lot of kind of leap of faith involved, um, but the amount of learns that come out of it the other side are incredible.

Do you think you could have got more external expertise? Because I asked someone this question this week, if you were to start a contract perm background, they said bring in someone who's really experienced, but then maybe make sure you've got a non-exec or an advisor that has that credentials who could act as—

I think in that particular instance, we, we went quite quite left field in terms of the profile and what we were trying to achieve. It's all around statement of work consultancy, which we were seeing some good results in. So naturally we put our trust into a different shape of person, right? Not a typical recruiter, somebody that comes from a slightly different background. And it bit us in the ass in that instance. Doesn't mean to say that it would every single time, but having somebody sanity checking sense checking alongside us could have potentially, uh, stopped us from going too far down the road. But that being said, thankfully it happened very early on in our journey and, uh, everything worked out all right. But at the time felt pretty bad.

Yeah, and I appreciate, I appreciate sharing. Coxie, you shared with me, uh, if I'd love you to talk about, because I feel like it might resonate with people is you had— what you found hard, uh, was attracting really good people. And you've had a few instances where people rejected you, said, 'Nah, Addison Smart, nah, we don't want to work for you.' And then they did decide to come work for you later down the track. Yeah. I think for people building in that 1 to 10 phase, 1 to 15, that, that can be hard when you're competing for talent. So tell us a bit about that I feel like that could help people. What was quite hard about that? What did we learn in terms of really being able to attract really good recruiters that come with experience? Because I know that that's been a challenge for you.

I think firstly being in Basingstoke, and again, sorry, um, but, but ultimately I think twofold to that is the team will know, and we've got some of them here tonight, is that we've been, we've been very intentional from day one what we're trying to build. So we've got Project 24. So when we started the business in '21, where we wanted the business to be in, in 2024, by the end of that. So we were very much presenting each sales conference where we wanted the company to be. And then, so effectively, the staff are holding us accountable. Again, I've got a long list of things that we got wrong, so I'm not saying here that it's perfect because it really isn't, and that they will definitely vouch for that, right? So, um, but then we've got— we launched Project 27. So I think one thing that I've learned, and Ben, business partner, is you have to be intentional with your hiring on the long term, right? Yeah, sometimes there's that sort of like new shiny little toy that makes sense because you want to build contract and you want to get it moving, and there's someone there that you think that could be good, you know, great background, um, Spencer Ogden, whatever, good background, for example. But then you sort of bring them in and you think I shouldn't have made that hire, I should have just waited. And we've all been there, right? And the guy that effectively— we launched contract, it went to shit. Excuse my language. Like, it literally— we couldn't get it past 30, 40K a month. Like, I was just banging my head. And my world is contract, not perm. And I was just like, you know, we were both looking at each other, me and Ben. Perm business flying, but our contract, we just couldn't— whatever it was, couldn't get it off the ground. Really, really hard. If you tell me tomorrow to start a business tomorrow. I'll do that tomorrow. Start a contract business, not doing it again, never again. Um, but we had to find that right person. And Nick, who now leads our contract global business, met him like 18 months into the journey. And ultimately he said, it's just too early, like I need to go and learn, you know, go in London, go and learn from a really good agency, which he did. And I kept in touch with him for like nearly another like 18, 2 years, whatever it was, right? And we got to like year 3, year and a half, and I text him randomly one day, and I used to text him every, every— I think it's like the 20th or the 21st, a bit weird, right? But every month on the 20th, 21st, you text him saying like, how are you, mate? How you going? And his missus used to turn around, is that Dan? And it was like, you know, and, and at one point maybe he had a bad day, a few runners lost, and he said like, okay, I think I want to do this. And by far, I— we, you know, he's done a phenomenal job, like much better than where what me and Ben have done. And we've got our book to like £350K a month now, which is just like secured the business massively, um, and helps the bottom line. So I think firstly, being intentional long term, like actually having a plan of like what you're trying to build, and network around like your areas. So like founders, know your competition and reach out to the people that, you know, effectively could be right in the long term. And we made that, made that mistake bringing people in early doors that probably weren't right long-term. And we had to like, you know, scale back and go again on the contract side. And fortunately it paid off, but a lot of it is that, just staying patient and making sure that you are focused on the plan, never deviate from the plan. It's one thing that me and Ben have been obsessed with from day one. And you learn the hard way. So that was key.

[Speaker] Yeah, great lesson there for any founders in the room that, you've got to follow up. And for any— I know there's some Retz Reks in the room, they'll know the game, man. You've got to do a lot of reps, a lot of reach out. It's never straightforward. It's, I just met Coxie for a coffee, he's game, he's going to leave Consul, and then it's like, right, I'm going to get him in. Like, it doesn't work like that. So I think a great lesson there where you've got to be intentional, stay in touch with people. If you— you've got to play the long game, right, with that. But to yours is people-related, your big challenge. Tell us about this because I found this really interesting.

Yeah, so we, for those that know, have something called the younger you and we have the future you, and it's something that's pretty sticky in our business. And the future you is all about understanding what that individual in your business is trying to achieve. We're a big believer that you don't have to be, believe it or not, with LHI forever. I have been, uh, so I'm not the best one to sell it, but we do believe we can be part of the journey. As long as you're with us and you are at your peak and that gets future you to where you want to get to in life. There is someone in our business, I won't mention a name, that wants to open a surf shop in Australia. He knows exactly the money he needs, he knows exactly the timeline he's trying to do it in, and he is working night and day and has been for the last 3 years to try and get to that point. And we know he's probably 12, 18 months away from making it. That is like the perfect future you story. We back him, he's a great hire, we can know we can backfill that seat. He's doing everything he can to basically use us as a vehicle to get to his dream. The second problem, or the, the contradiction with this, is our biggest thing in the future is making— like, our DNA is to make a specialist in the market. We bring a graduate in, we don't just teach them recruitment, we expect them to be an absolute expert in what they do. After 8 years, we have 2 of my top, our top billers in America that have gone and got themselves outside of recruitment M&A opportunities, getting paid exceptional amounts of money because they don't just have the sales ability to talk to the client. Their knowledge is as good as any consultant in any business anywhere, and I truly believe that. They were top of the game. We knew that is what they wanted to do in their future. It doesn't make it any good when a few million quid walk out your business and you're like, you followed your dream, lads, and I love you for it and you're legends, but bugger, that's hurt. And they've left on great terms. We knew it was going to happen. But it's funny, isn't it, when it bites you in the ass. The one thing you're selling is becoming an expert, be hyper niche, be hyper commercial. And then now we're actually getting people that are very attractive, not to competitors, although I'm sure they are, but they're getting attracted by different, completely different industry who are, have deeper pockets than recruitment, much, much deeper pockets, and they can give these guys opportunities and OTAs that are beyond most people's wildest dreams. They deserve it 100%. They are the crème de la crème in my opinion. But it is a new challenge we faced, and it's not something we've come across before. We've come across people leaving to set up their own business. It's never been not easier to do it, but it's never been easier to start a business, in my opinion, as a one person. There's enough out there for people to say, oh, here's a CRM, here's this, here's that. Didn't really happen 10 years ago. Used to be quite difficult. Now I don't think it is. I'm not saying it's easy to start and scale a business. That's a completely different conversation. But we have lost a few top billers to that, which is going to happen. I think that's part of the game, to train people well. And if they're a top biller, can they do it on their own? They might want something different to what you're offering. But to then start losing your top people to industries that you can't even compete with from that perspective is, yeah, it's a new challenge that we have never faced. And it's quite an interesting one as we've got a few people on that 8, 9, 10-year journey that are as good expert in their market as anyone they speak to, which is testament to them, testament to how we push them to do it. But it does hurt.

Yeah, it's interesting. A good example, to be fair, would be, uh, for a lot of people that, uh, recruit in like the go-to-market space, tech sales. I've spoke to a lot of founders who have lost people to like their industries, and I know it's painful, but at the same time, as you said, I think that's what— I think that's what this industry is all about. It equips you with so many skills, and the fact that, you know, with how some people perceive our industry, the fact that what they've landed is, is testament to what they built their career. And I think that is what is great about our industry. But that is, that is a challenge that we're not just thinking about. Could they go to our competitors? Could they start their own business? But could they be that good that they actually go in the industry that they recruit?

You have to embrace it. We sell it aggressively internally. Like, that is so sticky for us. Like, we use it just about in every week, the future year. Like, you've got to understand purpose. I think that's a massive part of what we do. Um, the other side to the coin of that is we also are quite deliberate in making sure that your top talent has also got a succession line. So although 2 people walked out the door, I can tell you one thing, there was 5 people in that silver team that absolutely went ballistic because they just inherited 20 clients and they've all— they're happy as Larry, right? So you can, you can save it, but you'd never— like, I'm never going to sit here and say I want my top talent to leave the business. You don't. But if you can be quite deliberate in knowing someone's future, you, you're never preempting it. But as long as you've got a plan B and plan C, I'd say one of our better abilities in the last 2 or 3 years is to understand who might be in that part of the journey and do we have a plan B and plan C if that, if that does hit, which we don't always get it right. I'm not going to sit here and get it right every time, but we're pretty intentional of backing seats that are performing. If you're a million-dollar biller, the market's pretty good, right? So therefore we need to get more people in it. We've got to de-risk that opportunity, and we're quite intentional about that too.

Coxton, I'm going to come to you on this. Obviously we position this as build a recruitment business that lasts. So what I wanted you to tell us a bit about, because there's some commonalities between, to be fair, all of you, when I was speaking to you about how do you think you can build a stronger, more robust business. I think just the market is going to continue to change. AI technology is changing a lot. And all of you sort of said similar things, which was diversification, different ways of working your company. So you said, Coxie, earlier around never worked statement of work before. RPOs haven't done that before. And I think a lot of people in the room will be heard people talk about it. And ultimately one of the ways that we can future-proof our business businesses is by transacting and working with our customers in different ways. So tell us a bit about, if you don't mind, because I know that was how you thought, uh, you, uh, thought about one of the pillars around future-proofing your business, making it stronger. What's zero to one on that in terms of you knew that winning statement of work or winning mini RPOs, whatever you want to, however you want to package it up, was something you should be doing, or but you haven't done it before. People in the room may know they should do it, but I haven't done it before. What is zero to one on that? Is it you going out there pitching? Is it learning? Okay, we didn't win that pitch. Why? Tell us a bit about what does zero to one look like on diversifying how we work with our customers?

Good question. So I think first one is a little bit of luck, right? So first client, the major client that we work with, so, um, in the AI infrastructure world come to us with a need, basically saying, listen, we've got 3 bids out. Uh, Irish guy in deep Chicago, cold call with one of our league guys, just like touch of luck, said, listen, if you want to be involved, love what you do, but this is the price that I've got. If you can do it for X price cheaper, we'll give you the project. It was like nuts, like absolute, like incredible, like, um, so we did. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I can't remember the actual, but so again, listen, a little bit of luck. I'd love to say here, you know, strategy. It's not like it is sometimes in success. You need that little bit of stroke of luck. Ultimately we was in the right market at the right time and we had the right person on the phone. That isn't luck. That was intentional of me and Ben and putting the right people selling. So Hishem, to answer your question firstly is that statement of work for me is where the margins and where the contract market's moving towards. Want to de-risk, especially end— true end users, not your consultancies, like your true end users. They want, for example, to take away the issues with timesheets, headcount, contracts. They just want one price, one month, and know that the work's going to be done. Um, so we went on a journey, right? And, um, we ended up, you know, doing the first project that went really well for about 6 weeks, and then it literally fell off a cliff. Um, somehow we turned it around. I don't know how.

What would you mean fell off a cliff?

Uh, 3 of the contractors had a row with the, um, with the, the project director.

Okay.

And, uh, and the guy that was at the head honcho said get these off, off the site. Um, and we, we somehow clung on to it, honestly. And now we've got like 12, 12 sites. The, the relationship has gone from strength to strength.

Was that time and materials or out—

that was, that was statement of statement of work. So it was packaged as like one set cost per product for 12 months, right? And again, sort of being really, really raw with you, like, we made loads of mistakes to get there, but then none of us knew statement of work, right? Me included. And we had to go on this journey to learn how to get there, and we did. And now the, that consultant is, he's only got about 18, 19 out, but he's, you know, his GP's six figures plus in pounds, right? So again, it's just showing someone the route, and then they will go on a journey. And he is like way more experienced than anyone in our business now. It's not me. The knowledge isn't with me, it's with someone else. And they're now training other people downwards again. So I think that was really intentional from us is that that's where we wanted to get to. And also ultimately looking at the way that we tried to build contract, which was time and materials, and we couldn't do it, we couldn't do it. So rather than just like going again, we had to adapt and evolve and change. And that's something I've learned a lot being a business owner You can make a mistake once, but you make it again, you're a fool, right? I think that's really important, if you was to make the same mistake. And I made a big clanger mistake, and me and Ben, when we invested in times and materials, and other people have got it working, and I've kudos to them, but we didn't want to go that way. We wanted to try something different. Luckily, it's paid off big time, and that's kudos to Jade, then that's built a really strong contract team, um, who's head of N&D and supported us. And then of course Jess, who heads up our marketing, uh, business, has created a whole marketing campaign around different service offerings, and then clients now are asking us more about this. So I think again, that's just coming back to that point around, um, like, make mistakes with it. Like, ultimately, you know, yes, you want to tie up the market. Like, boy, and my job is to go after Botti's clients and, uh, and, uh, and prove why they should come with us. But again, intentional jokes aside— I won't really, but there's loads of issues in the US. But no, Jake said it's just ultimately like you have to make mistakes, you have to learn from it. But as long as you learn from it and you can then push on and create value, then that's where the Holy Grail comes from. And that's where we just got it right second time round and it paid off. And we'll make further mistakes along, but you learn from it and you adapt.

I know we're going a bit niche here because not everyone may be thinking about statement of work, but I feel like I have to ask. So the second time round, what are the, the big core fundamental things that you did differently then?

Understanding, if you think about RPO statement of work, understanding what it actually entails, right? You know, the big word, what is statement of work ultimately? But it is effectively finding a solution that's one fixed cost, right? Ultimately it's recurring revenue, but it's a fixed cost per month rather than per contractor or per perm placement. You think about a lot of work, you know, uh, B and Ricky were talking about it earlier, the world for perm is moving more into embedded solutions. So your clients, rather than paying sticky fees one-off and hopefully, fingers crossed, they work over 3 months— if they can have somebody that you've trained in your business that knows super laser, super niche-focused, um, put them on site for a period of time, and they can recruit effectively that period of time and use your services and turn it off— that, for me, I think is way more interesting to a client than paying 25% of a one-off fee that is— there's a high probability right now that could go wrong. You know, we're dealing with people. So I think that's like a key part is just understanding really what it truly means. But you're not going to understand it unless you sell it. Like, that's the key part.

Okay, Ricky, let me come to you on this because per background, I think when I learned about what you guys did in that first year, one of the things that I really liked, and hopefully there'll be founders that can relate to this, I think sometimes when you're small starting out you can be concerned about how that's going to look and how that's positioned. But I think a lot of people that I've met have really lent into that. And the reason why I'm bringing that up is because what I really liked about what you shared with me on the perm side is maybe you did start some of your clients on that contingent journey, but then what you did really make sure that you, uh, communicated with them is how else can we work with you, what else can we do, and when you go from being employed to founder, you can have an idea on that afternoon. Hang on a minute, that's the third client that said that. Let's try and position a multi-hire solution. What does that look like? And I know that's what you guys have done really well. So tell us a bit about that, because I think that is the opportunity for everyone in the room that is in that founder recruitment leader seat, which is, yeah, you can go into your office tomorrow and go, you know what, let's, let's package up a company name multi-hire solution, however you want to call it, and start speaking to people about it and start selling. There's no one holding you back from that. So tell us a bit about your journey on the perm side, because you did a lot of that.

Yeah, I think that there's two parts, because we— you hear hyper niche, hyper niche, super niche, inch mile wide deep, you know, that's the, the mantra of everyone going to start. You've got to go niche. And we kind of went anti, we went the other way. We were like, okay, sounds like a lot of client wins right, in a market that was pretty depressed when we launched, uh, 19 months ago. Thankfully, we're now starting to see it pick up, uh, but back then we still didn't know where the market was going. So, okay, we can be Python specialists, but then we need 25, 50— how many Python companies do we need to then be able to find the type of income that myself and my co-founder would need to survive? So we went completely the other way. We went, okay, we have got— we've looked after a lot of people over the years. We've got some real low-hanging fruit in terms of people that as soon as we announced we were launching wanted to come and utilize our services. And we went client-led. We said, okay, we're going to service the client, we're going to become the go-to for that client in across like product tech and GTM. That's our world and we're going to stay within that. But we're not going to just say we can't do something. We believe in our processes. We believe that we are good recruiters, and we're going to have to spread ourselves and be a bit more agile in terms of how we— what we support them on, and then evolve how we support them. So that then turned into stuff that I'd done in previous companies, um, packaging up, uh, projects of work. Okay, you need X amount of those people, let's find a fixed cost you know what you're in for, you can budget. It works for us because it's exclusive business. We know what we can start forecasting and pipelining. And that really worked. And what it, what it led to was 20 in our first year. It was only 20 accounts, 20 accounts across the year. You know, 1.1 EBITDA. I think that works out. We wrote about £3.2 million in our first year, myself, Tony, and obviously adding Lauren and Louis throughout. last year as well, which we're really proud of. We could never have done it in the UK as well, trust me.

In the UK, US market, US market.

I'm not one to post on LinkedIn about numbers and stuff, but you know, as a, as someone that came back on the tools, it was a million pound year for me in terms of written business. No chance, and we'll talk about AI and how that helped me do it, but there was no chance that we could have done that if we'd said that's our one niche. Not a chance in hell. What we did was we embedded ourselves with our customers. We networked around, we farmed, and we put ourselves out of our comfort zone sometimes with roles that we probably had no right to work, but we had a go and we offered a great service, and that led to more and more. And now we're currently in play for team builds. We're talking about embedded projects across a number of those different customers. So yeah, it— there's a lot of conflicting stuff But, and we were talking, weren't we, about how it's amazing how two completely different opposing views and, and stances when you start out could work out in a good way, but so differently. So it's just another angle there.

Yeah, I think that's really helpful for people to hear because there definitely isn't always just one set way. So would you just say for the people in the room, just to wrap that up then, is you wouldn't got anywhere near coming up with those recurring solutions, fixed cost, if he wasn't curious about the overall company, what they needed, the challenges they had. So it's sort of that, that people need to take. And if they're curious about that, then don't be afraid to say, well, because you told me this, why don't we work together in this way?

Yeah, yeah. And just being super creative.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, Mark's in the audience. Mark and I went on that journey together as well, didn't we? Uh, where we were, we were experimenting with this in our old business where we worked together So we took a lot of lessons from that. I'm sure you're doing it with Noomi, and we've definitely taken that into Pulse. How can we— ultimately, it's about exclusivity, right? And it can be in the form of some sort of commitment fee, an upfront recurring fee, but it can also just be in terms of, I know that we've got this. Yeah, we've got the type of commitment from you that allows us to dedicate our time and energy into something. You're happy with the cost, we're happy with the outcome, it works for us, and let's go from there. And then that grows in terms of trust and relationship.

But I'm going to come to you on this. Let's talk about— to contradict what Ricky just said, I think it'd be interesting for people— one of the things that you shared with me that you guys are really doubling down on in terms of go-to-market strategy. How do you think you're going to have edges? How do you think you're going to make sure they don't use other recruitment companies is being community-led, having your recruiters really at the center of their industries. I definitely share that belief from the conversations that I have. Talk to us a bit about why you're really bullish on that. Like, why is that at the, the core of your go-to-market strategy? Why is that important for you guys?

Uh, yeah, I don't think it's— it's not the only core strategy we have. I want to caveat the fact that I do believe there are 10, 10, 15 different ways to actually do that. I'm a— the hyper niche, I'm a big fan of the hyper niche.

I will caveat with it, when you're that size, when you're our size, it's, it's impossible.

Yeah, true.

I can completely understand at a size of LHI why you would then start to go down that way.

But you can also flip that into— you can talk a hyper niche game, but you might get in on a hyper niche, but if you ask any contractor, look at their book, they got 50% in what they do, and they've got 50% in what they were given, right? So like, I'm hyper niche when it suits me to go in there, but if you offer me 10 roles on exclusive, damn right I'll work them, right? So let's make sure everyone understands that there's a bit of— yeah, what it looks like and what it is sometimes isn't the same thing. Um, the community thing for us has really taken off, um, more led by the actual individuals that we'd hired and people that believed I'm pretty old school in my belief system, for those that know me, um, and set in my ways. But I do— we were seeing that what they were building and how they were making and how they were actually bringing a community together. The best example we've got currently is our Rust community, 4,000 members in New York, 2,000 members in LA. I don't think that Rust team's made a cold call once in their life, right? And, and what they're doing is by hosting events, by networking, by bringing a community together, whether that's through events, whether that's through conferences, etc., etc., people are coming to them as they're seen as the authority in the space. They are networked up to their eyes at different levels with different businesses at different times and levels. So fundamentally, it, it kind of a little bit like you said, it happened for us without it being too deliberate. We've always done roundtables, we do podcasts, we do —what many good businesses do. We have multiple ways of actually bringing in business, but the community one, I'd say in the last 12-18 months, and Kim's actually probably testify better than I can, is pretty much the one we're seeing the highest ROI from what we're investing from putting on an event to the amount of clients we are attributing just to that one event is actually frightening.

So how do you make sure you don't become an events company? Money? Because I know companies— because you just said from your mindset, I know companies would do that and they'd be like, what we pay— they just have—

because you've got someone like me asking what you actually— where's the ROI coming from the event? I'm giving you 20 grand to put on an event, there better be some ROI coming from it, right? So fundamentally, end of the day, you, you are still tasked with— it's all right having and putting on the meeting or putting on the event, which is great for that community, but your fundamental job as a recruiter is to get place business. Like, it's a very simple game that we do. It's got a lot of nuances to it, but that is what we do. And we make sure the individual that has that budget and is given that budget understands there is an expectation. Every single conference my team go to, no matter what level, they have an internal sheet they have to fill out of who they're meeting, what the expectation of ROI is. And like anything in life, if you do well and you generate ROI from that event, you can do damn well go back again next year and go bigger and harder and better if it's going to bring more ROI. So we're now starting to get into a world where we're tracking all our ROI from any event, community-led, or anything we put on from a roundtable, etc., which is just another, just another way of actually winning business, right? It's a different tact from just picking up the phone and cold calling. And I think, going back to your point, the one thing that you both mentioned was quite quite prevalent is one thing a few people seem to forget is ask the client what they want. Like, that's— your client wants statement, statement of work, well cool, find out how to do it and give them a solution. I think we're very— we can be very rigid in, I'm a perm recruiter, so I never ask for contract, I do the contract, I'm never asking for perm. You can get your sales force to actually start thinking of multiple solutions, having that in their back pocket, but asking the client, how do we give you the best solution? I think it's a skill that we can be better at as an industry. I think we're quite keen to ram down the throat of what we're good at rather than what the client might want. When you ask the question, you might be surprised what you get back, because then they might say, oh, we can give you 50 roles, not 2, at this price point. We can give you a project build, we can give you X, Y, and Z. And I think that's where you open yourself up to different and bigger bits of business than just your, your classic what you're known for. I'm a contract recruiter, I'm a perm recruiter. It opens up the, opens the ballpark a little bit.

It's interesting because sort of just sitting listening to the gents, I'd say a big evolution for us is that, like, for us as a company, I think Jess has been working with me and Ben to, like, evolve ourself. And we would probably put ourselves in sort of the old school mindset with, with that world, um, and we're very much, like, on the now and looking at like what we need to deliver. And ultimately, like, we're only, like, like I said, coming up to our 5th year. So we've been hustling for the last 4 and a half years to like to deal with world wars, whatever's been going on in the world, right? So our mantra, we hired Pav last year in L&D, is excess-free, etc. So her background was very much from a sales culture, and I think that's really important that you embrace that. And like, that's something that's 100% the biggest reason we been able to, to get through the last few years and grow, um, is ultimately we're a sales culture. That is absolutely at our core. That's what we are. 97, 98% of all our consultants are 360, and the other delivery guys, they're on RPOs, right? So they're, they're fee earners, they're making money for us. That was intentional. Again, it's not right or wrong, but it's again coming back to like what we're trying to grow at the moment. I do believe the evolution in a year's time, I hope the that I sit here, maybe I'm not in this podcast, but anyway, but like sitting here and saying that that's where we need to go now, like that 5 to 6 to 7 year journey is we want to immerse ourselves in the communities more, which we've done our first event this year. But if you are sitting there and not doing it, I can tell you I'm sitting here now with a £9 million business and we haven't done it. We're not very good at it. So I'm really excited about where we can get to. Um, but anyway, it's all about action and that's what we're trying to get to. So I totally agree that it's absolutely key. But don't immerse— don't like fundamentally just think about it all day long. Like what he just said, this job is about matching, finding needs, matching, influencing, and moving on. Then the layer is of course building that relationship. But I think as a business, we've just— on it, that's what we've core focus on about, is problem solving every single day. And if that is our mantra, rightly or wrongly, um, but that is an absolute— it's really interesting listening to the gents here talking about that because that's something we're not very good at and we absolutely want to continue to grow.

Also, don't force that because fundamentally I know, and Kim will testify to it, if I was the guy organizing an event, I'd be crap. Like, I'm just not that guy. I'm not. I don't. I have certain skill sets for recruitment, but that doesn't come naturally to me the way that Ross, who runs our Rust team in New York, he lives, breathes that community. He loves that interaction. I like it. I'm the guy who likes a phone and a list, and I'll go and hit it all day, right? And I am that old school guy, right? But it works for him because he's really super passionate about making it work into his market. I've also got top bidders, a million-dollar bidders, that would never even think about putting on a, on a community event. No. So everyone can have all the ideas in the world, but like, does it suit the individual? And if it suits the individual, the individual's got to prove that what they're doing then gives you the return. If you do that, you can't just have a blanket, we are now going to social sell as a company. I'm like, what? Why are you? Says who? You've got to have the people in your company that actually want to social sell, right? If that's, if that's the angle you're going on. I think we get a lot of that, isn't there? Like, oh, you should do this, it's the game changer. It's the game changer if the individual is good at doing it. I'm good at cold calling on a cold pitch. It's a superpower. Well done me. If I had to go and put on a marketing event and build a community of 60, 100 people to get on a roundtable, it'd be my worst nightmare. And so therefore, make sure what you're preaching is the person that actually wants to do it, because if they don't, they're going to do it badly anyway, and that's not a good return on what your time and effort. So it's quite funny how you've got to be a bit more fluid, I think. And there's so many tools and so many ways of doing that, just what fits the individual, what fits the market, etc., etc. There's there's quite a lot of nuances around it.

Uh, just wanted to ask, boy, how are you, uh, like you said, with the Rust community? Yep. Does LHI own that? Does the consultant own that? How do we think about—

we're talking about future-proofing the business, because that would be a good question.

That would be a new thing. That is something that people think about when he leaves to go and head up the Rust community in America.

You can, uh, yeah, you can tell me. Um, it's a bit of both, right? We, we ultimately The individuals in that team specifically have all bought into that way of working. Okay. Um, we have probably— I guess we haven't set up New York, but since we became a key partner, it's doubled in size, and therefore we've used our network to add to that, to their network. And, and now we ultimately play a very key role in running the events for that community. Um, so I'd say it's no, it's not ours, LHI Group. It's certainly a Rust community. We are just a prominent member in how we facilitate that community getting together, whether it's workspace, whether it's talks, etc. We play a big role in how that works. Um, how do you future-proof it?

Give me, give me, give me a crystal ball, because yeah, yeah, so it's something I know people have to think about, like who owns it.

And 100%, I think, I think it goes back to what we talked about I said earlier, isn't it? Like, use the community to facilitate doing your job to the best standard, which is building relationships, whether that's a client or candidate, and making sure you're matching the best people with the right people. If you do that over and over again, the community there is to facilitate that, not to be the only thing you do. We do sales. I can't say it more. I say it daily, weekly, monthly to every human. We're a sales business. We— that's what we need to focus on first and foremost. How we get the sales can be done in multiple different ways, and that's the exciting part, especially moving forward into '26, '27. That's going to evolve faster and faster, I think.

Yeah, Ricky, let me just come to you on this, and then we'll bring in AI and we'll get some live questions from people, uh, because I think this would be really relevant for people. I know a big thing that you and Tony are really, uh, figuring out in your business now is how do you make sure that if if we were to look at the 20 Pulse accounts, that they're not all still like so linked to you, or all of the accounts that are in the business are linked to the founders. I know that would be something that a lot of people think about here who are in that 1 to 10 or 1 to 20 heads. Uh, how are you approaching that? How are you making sure that the people in your team are building their own accounts and everything isn't just anchored to Ricky and Tony?

Yeah, so this year has definitely been an evolution of trying to step away from the sourcing side and step more into, for me personally, that client-facing piece and overseeing the accounts that I've got. But it's a constant training and development thing. We talk about it. It was definitely alongside our North Stars this year. As I mentioned, it was about how do we expand that. So for us, it's intentional hiring as well, bringing in people that are a certain shape in terms of their experience. We haven't gone down the graduate route. We have no intention of doing that at this point. It wouldn't work for our business and how we run our business. So for us, people that could come in and know that they've got a black book of people after their non-competes are done that will answer the phone to them and will want to work with them. And then leading from the front, showing how we're developing those accounts. So bringing all of our consultants on along those journeys with us. If we are passing a job, it doesn't mean I just then step away from it. You're going to watch, and I'm going to work with you as we get to completion of that role, all the way from that first briefing call to when we receive the offer. And then hoping that that then spreads and is contagious, which we're really starting to see some green shoots, by the way, in terms of our, our consultants that we've brought on. And now it doesn't feel so much like all— it's all on our shoulders. And that's— that comes down to critical mass as well. So as we trip into that 10 consultant mark, I know that that's going to naturally come because we're driving the same messages and we're encouraging, we're celebrating, uh, that part of the deal as much as we are the person that places it.

And I know we spoke about this, how you— did you land on what you want to do on splits? And Sharon, we're getting close. Um, so how are you thinking about it? Because I know this is something—

yeah, I think, um, it's— you can go around the houses in this. Uh, so we've done typically 50/50, person who brings on the job, person who fills the job. I think there is more nuance to it than that, and it's something that we're exploring. You can ultimately— I, I think where we might land is there's 4 parts to a job, right? Who opens the account, who pulls the job, who runs and manages that job, and then, uh, who sources it. Um, and you can do all of it, or you can do some of it. I'm all about recognition and collaboration, united, fighting for each other. So it's about finding the right balance and keeping people incentivized to continually look, how can I develop accounts, how can I be— and also to lean into the areas of the job that they're really good at, and for us all to play to our strengths as well. So I don't have an answer yet. We're getting close. If anyone does, if anyone does, I think, I think I'm a big fan of splits. I know that you debate it a lot on LinkedIn. Team. Like, I, I would—

about being clear with it. The reason why I bring up is so many people in here will be doing founder-led sales, and I've spoke to enough people where you could lead all the way, be a really nice founder and say, even though you brought on that account, but then someone in the team places them, whatever, they get all the fee. They write up— I'm too competitive anyway.

And I think this says a lot, you know. I, I want our names and on the leaderboards and our billings shown because I think it's about leading from the the front and showing where your value is for as long as we possibly can. Um, and it's— for me, it's recognition. Yeah. And there are different parts of the job that I think need to be continually recognized. And sometimes we can miss that, you know, with the, oh, I'll go and have you— you have that one, or what comes around goes around. I've seen that work very badly as well. I've seen it work really effectively. There is no right or wrong. It's got to work right. It's got to be right for your business.

It's interesting because we were talking before, our businesses are literally like polar opposites, right? Although, if you think about it, because we were saying me and Ben haven't been— we weren't on the leaderboard apart from like a little whiteboard for the first year in Swallowfield, if anyone knows where that is, right? And it's literally— but we aren't on the league table. And again, you said it's not right or wrong, but intentionally we wanted to focus on getting away from being recognized as fee earners as quickly as possible. We wanted to empower the staff that ultimately that they're, they're the fee earners, they're the business. That ultimately we're going to win business. My job title right now is dealing with crap every day and winning customers. That's it. That's what I deal with, right? Issues and customers. So, and that, that shouldn't change. But ultimately there's no right or wrong in that situation. But I strongly believe that long-term success from, from a business has to be evolved around the staff rather than the founders, right?

And it's, it's about When is the right time? When is the right time? Right now we see it and we'd like to think it's, it's a big USP for us. We are, we are with you in the trenches, right? But how quickly can we move away from that? I've started by now coming away from sourcing and just more into account management. Tony is starting to now focus more on the executive side of what we do, and we're allowing our team to start to take those relationships and push them forward, but it's a timing thing. I think it's really important to be seen as— and you know what it's like, you were a hands-off manager. Yep. That credibility piece is, I think, allowing us to really attract great people very early on because we are doing the job again. Yeah. Um, so that balance is going to be really difficult. And also, I like, I like billing. I didn't— I forgot how much I enjoy it.

It's good. But ultimately, as well, it's you've got to play with the cards you've been dealt with, right? We had no network in Basingstoke, right? So we had to go to market and ultimately try and showcase people that we're going to do global markets from Basingstoke. All the other competition in that period of time were UK-centric or maybe European-centric at most. So we had sort of this idea of what we wanted to try and change the status quo that had worked for a long— these companies are reputable companies. That have been working for a really long time. So we had to go the grad route, right? We had to go like estate agency route, and we brought a couple of guys in. They're still in this business today. It's a really proud moment for us the other week when they hit like their 4th year anniversary. And one's now on, I said earlier, on the RPO, and the other one's a sales manager. Um, but ultimately that— I didn't have the opportunity, and Ben didn't have the opportunity to bring in senior members of staff because either they thought we were crazy about the idea and strategy of where we wanted to go company to go to, or secondary to that, um, we didn't know them, we didn't know what they're about, we didn't have the network that we did. Ultimately then Jade joined us, uh, head of talent like, like number 7, um, recruit I think it was, Jade, 7 or 8. So, and she's built that reputation, but it's taken time to get there again. So, you know, if I was in your shoes, brilliant, if you can get people in that's got experience, awesome. But I do think long-term success for a company it, you have to have a grad junior level to bring them through. You know, current top biller last year, over 7-figure biller, and he's only got— he started with us after like 3 months of experience, and then he was driving a Tesco van for 3 months and then saw, I think, your ad and then started recruitment all over again. Didn't bill for 7 months and then went on this journey. So I think you've got to have that ability to bring people through.

Agreed, agreed. And I think that comes with Critical Mass as well, because it's the people in the room to learn and listen to and grow with. And L&D function, 100%, you know, when you're all hands to the pump, you want just, I know, I trust you. I mean, most of our hires have been people that we know, you know, most of our stuff is relationship-led, and that has gone and extended itself to who we've brought into the business for the— as the founding team. And we'll probably do that for a little bit longer until we have no choice. We have to go with people that we don't know. Absolutely. And that, that would be an interesting evolution of our business at that point.

You touched on L&D, and I think the odds— that's effectively where we've started the business last couple of years and '21— the odds are stacked so heavily against you every single day that the answer has to be L&D, right? It has to be. And we brought Pav in a year and a half ago, and she's transformed ultimately how we attack and approach business on a daily basis. And we didn't have the answers. So again, looking around the room, like L&D effectively was, um, a 9th or 10th hire. And of course then we've transitioned and brought Pavin. But ultimately, I'm a big believer in L&D. I think it's really important. Like, again, you're learning every part of the job. Some of you have had 10 years of experience and never sold statement of work. So absolutely, you want to find someone that's done that from, from an L&D perspective. So, you know, they get a tough time learning and development. They're dealing with issues every single day and perhaps either dealing with underperformance or, mainly, or overperformance. But sometimes I think we've just got to look at that and think ultimately the odds, any company, are stacked every day against you. But that new blood that's coming into the business with new energy, that naivety, I think there's something really special about that because they don't know. They could go and pitch a CTO at a multi-billion company. 'cause they don't know any different rather than someone that's been doing it for 10 years. I think there's something really special about that. So if we can harness that, I'm a big believer in, and I know some of you saw my post last week, lots of people are leaving industry right now. Lots of young people leaving industry because they're not given enough time. And I'm really passionate about that and where we get to. So again, we, I know that and I'm biased on that because that's all I've known, like in regards to getting this company off the ground. Odds stacked against us again, but you can supplement that with experienced hire. But ultimately, we definitely would not be in a position without having the L&D right now, 100%.

All I'd just highlight from listening to all of that is a big part of both hearing both of you speak, and I speak to so many founders, Coxie, the way you're talking is you have intention with what you wanted to build, and same with you, Rick. I think we've got to boil it back down to what type of business do you want? And I speak to so many founders that truly haven't reflected on that and may log into LinkedIn this week and go, oh my God, they're doing that, so let's do that. And maybe, yeah, let's hire. Or we've just got all this money in the business bank account, so I guess we should hire. Look at our job flow, it's good. So I think what's really important is you really think about that, and that's why you can then be confident decisions you're making, the investments you're making in L&D and the infrastructure you're building because you know where you want to get to and what's important. And that's really crucial. And a lot of people don't have that or really reflect on that and look at it and, uh, continue to, um, let's talk about AI and then we'll bring in questions if that's okay. So, Botti, how are you thinking about AI and the size of your business? Like, let's just keep it real because I know you're going to be getting pitched, maybe even by Sourcewell, Atlas here. Like, what How are you thinking about AI in your business?

My favorite topic. I think we're definitely looking at it probably maybe differently to some, but maybe not. I think we're being really deliberate in what we want an AI tool to do. I think there are so many businesses that will give you, it's the answer to everything. Well, I think you have to— we are looking at it, we're probably re-engineering it, going, What are our 4, 5, 6, like, maybe not problems, but serious challenges that we would like to look differently, be different, whether it's reporting, whether that's workflows, whether it's numerous things, right, to make your business more efficient. We re-engineer it and then we're looking for tools that actually solve the problem rather than here's a new blanket tool that does everything for you. It's like, well, depending on what you want it to do, is it going to actually fix the problem you've got. Um, so on that basis, I'm definitely not the expert, so I'm putting my hands up here. I know I, I'm not the guy to speak to about AI. Um, but I think the guys that we've got in the team, led by Ben, he's got this passion, and obviously got an internal team that we're looking at these tools to making sure the tools that we are investigating, whether we're putting in the business with a focus group, etc., are all designed to solve a specific problem within our business, not a blanket. We are going to be better because we've got AI. I just, I'm not a great good at that blanket. AI is going to solve the world. I don't think it is. It's going to solve specific problems. Your job as a leader is to know what the problem is to start with. Yeah, so work backwards from the constraints.

The problem—

yeah, that's a good insight. So we're being super, like, you're being super deliberate in how you build and how you step out. We're being super deliberate in in what is the problem and what do we need to fix it. Maybe not even fix it, improve it, make us more efficient. Yeah, the more efficiency doesn't just lead— doesn't mean we do the same thing. The more efficiency needs to give us something back to create more of something else. And in my world, that's face time with clients. We live and die by anything we can do to give our consultant more time to be face to face out with a client is, is fundamentally tools that we want want to look at and invest in. Because going back to what I believe is the next 2-3 years is, is that face-to-face human interaction will beat out an AI bot any day of the week if you're good.

Ricky, tell us about your experience because I know it's a bit different. And I do think this is the amazing thing about technology, right, is how much leverage it can give you and the size of your business versus, let's be honest, a business of, yeah, body size, right?

I understand where Botti's coming from. If it's just making everyone's job easier and the billings are the same, then what's the point? Like, it should be, it should be accelerating. It should be giving— it should be our biggest superpower. So there's no way, and I say this all the time, and we've designed playbooks around it now, and we're really taking it really seriously. There is no way that I would have achieved, in terms of my own personal billings, what I was able to achieve and have been achieving without utilizing AI. Um, and that for me has allowed me to Save time, efficiency, understand jobs in a much better way, qualify my candidates in a completely different way, present my candidates to my clients in a way that I never thought I could do it. And I can do it in an instant. I can literally do what would have taken me hours before. I can do it in 5 minutes now.

So what you're talking about there is the big— the where you've been getting a lot of gains is note takers, note taking, and the workflow brief with my client.

Is going into my LLM, my job description, my advert is then coming from that. My candidates that I'm looking at and wondering if they're good for the job, I'm asking and I'm assessing, are they good? But then I'm also like, what, how is, how am I going to go to market with this job? What questions do I need to be asking to go deeper than I could have ever gone before as a recruiter on a technical level? With a candidate, and then when I'm speaking to a candidate, I'm recording my conversation and I'm putting my transcript into it to then tell me if they're good and then explain to my client based on my exact conversation with them exactly why they're right in ways that I could never have done and would have taken me hours and probably still not got to that standard. Where I think it's allowed me to do is then concentrate on my relationship, my influencing skills, Understanding them, and that's where I don't think it will ever replace what we do. And then that special bit of magic dust that we sprinkle on a process is how do, how do we engage, the rapport that we build. I understand you, I understand your situation, I get the motivations, I can link this job back to that, and I can help you with your career. And you're gonna— and we're gonna build that trust. And then my job is about closing and managing process and, and making sure that that all runs really smoothly, which has allowed me to work very quickly and achieve great, you know, good billings.

Coxie, sales culture, phone first. How you think about AI, mate?

I sound like Jordan Belford, right? I'm definitely not. Um, but ultimately I think two things we're looking at as a business right now is it— can it reduce admin for everyone, and ultimately can it enhance operational tasks. They're the two areas that we're focusing on right now, both sales and like operational. So, and we've implemented a number of solutions that are paying off, like data analysis. Like, we're massive on data, like being able to share that with consultants, leaders, like in real time. Pav as well, um, from L&D, like having data at hand, I think is just so important today. Like, being able to train with data that you can just like pick up straight away from whatever, like, transcript that's then divided down into conversations, and it's just madness what can be done now. But I do think you can get lost in it. I do think you can, as, as a recruitment leader. Um, and ultimately Jess, who runs our marketing business, has been amazing for me and Ben because she's ultimately looked at how we're running a business from a marketing point of view, and ultimately how can we get more recurring revenue from our clients, implementing AI into our website, for example. Um, how can we find that? So I just ultimately, for me it's the unknown still. Um, listen, we've recruited in the space, right? So I've got to believe in it. But, um, market expert, mate. Yeah, always, you know, niche, super niche, super niche. Um, but I do think there is an absolute time and a place for it in today. It may be in 5 years' time it will, it will replace recruiters. I don't think that's the case. But ultimately, I do think that using it efficiently can massively impact your billings and also operate operational. And as founders of this business, using it in the right way can take a lot of the burden away from staff. That's ultimately what we're trying to achieve, is if I look at my sales consultant, how can we reduce from them not speaking and impacting clients? And for example, our operational team, Jade, etc., how can we get them away from doing admin tasks? How can they be focused on impacting the business operation?

So it's the bottlenecks, the constraints. I think that's the— and the understanding your workflows, that's where we've got to look at.

Yeah, I just say on that, on the AI thing, like the AI tool is as good as a user, right? I think like we've all been in a business where you're— I've got one of my top billers and he's absolutely awful on the CRM, like absolutely bloody useless. But I've also got a super biller in America who's an absolute super user of the system. So I'm not saying there's always two ways to do it, I think. But I would say you can give it— you can give all this— all the AI tools— if you gave all the AI tools to me right now, I'd be absolutely useless. Useless. I, I just wouldn't. I'm not that minded in how I would work. I would like to learn other tools to get me better at the job, 100%. But don't just throw a tool at somebody and expect them to be brilliant and expect them to get a result. Give them a tool and actually then test them on how they're using it. You found a way of actually genuinely using a tool that's made you a million quid in the UK market. That, that isn't good, that is exceptional. But it's allowed you more time to do what you're great at. You could give the same tool to 1,000 people and the difference in ability of what they would do with those tools would be absolutely immense.

Yeah, so we've made a real effort to, to train, yeah, and, and live examples. Okay, let's take a job description, let's put it in, what does it give us, let's work, work through this and, and really try and drill that into everybody. And my business partner Tony is would be the first to admit he's not the quickest adapter of these things. He's on it now and gets it. And I think it's about just showing, showing an evidence base. This is how it works. But the amount of tools that have come through our industry, video interviewing, you know, you name it, there's been loads of them. You can have death by a thousand tools. We've actually got a really small tech stack. We've got really small— we like our scraping tools. We've got great CRM. We've— and that's it. We've got our phones. And LinkedIn Recruiter and ChatGPT or Claude, whatever. Like, that's it. But you can achieve incredible things if you put your mind to it and if you make those things work for you. And it's, it's another brain and it's speed. And that, that's what's something that we've never had access to.

I'd also say do it early. I, I couldn't be more jealous of having a 10-person business and going, right, we are going to— you tell 300 people, we are going to— I'm like, just, just 10 of you take it up and you're like Do you know what I mean? That's the difference of if I'm starting— that's the advantage. If I'm starting a business tomorrow, I'm going to definitely understand the bottlenecks I've got, what frustrates me. I'm going to make sure from day one our culture is around what our CRM or, or our tech stack to make our life easier. I'll tell you what it would never be.

It would never be— for me, it would never be automated outreach. It will never be a robot interviewing my candidates. It will never be any of that kind of automation stuff that that completely removes any human element. We're not here to build the next, next Jack and Jill, which, you know, I'm sure a lot of people have seen. I, I, I don't like it. I think it's icky. And I, I love the essence of what we do, but how you then utilize those tools into what we do, which is human interaction, if human influencing— world beater. Get, get on it if you're not on it.

Right, let's bring in some questions. I'm going to kick us off. Um, I should always do a better job of bringing this up. So, boy, I'm going to come to you, and then for anyone that has a question, uh, I'll bring them out to you. How do you manage underperformance? Great question, because there'll be people in the room that are going from 1 to 10, starting to build that critical mass. How long is too long? When do we feel like we're giving a fair chance? And Cox on the hit, I love all of you. Like, how do we get better at managing underperformance? Performance?

I think first and foremost you need to— we've evolved that over 20 years, right? So it wasn't something— what we do now is very different to what it was year 1, year 5. In fact, I don't know if we even did year 1 to year 5. There's your number. I think the first thing is ultimately understanding, and for us, depending on what market you're in, what is the expectation? What is actually— what does good look like? How can you, can you ask your consultant on a desk, what's a good week? What's a, what's a good month, right? And once you've got the benchmark of what the expectation's been set, then fundamentally, are they up and down on the metrics that get there? Normally that starts and ends with a number of what you expect per level, and then you work it back into what are the metrics they've got to get there. And we just re-engineer it from that perspective. How do we manage it? L&D play a massive part, the manager, and then we run a very, very set 12-week program where they get multiple touch points with different people to upskill them on that journey. We call it PEP. It's not there to push people out the business. We genuinely take a lot of pride in how many people go through that 12-week program, and we've got 3 or 4 instances of people the following year become the global top biller. So like, it just shows that depending on who they are and what they are and market they're in at the time, depending then you can turn people around. But we're very deliberate in how we set that up and how and what metrics are expected of them. And like anything, I'm a big believer in the communication of do they understand the expectation and are they helped to achieve it? And then, and that's what we kind of set.

Yeah, great insights there for people. You can have those what does a good day look like, good week look like at any size business, and you've got to figure that out. Um, so many people don't have that. Coxie, how have you, how have you managed this, managing underperformance as you've been growing headcount? Because that would have been part of the game, definitely.

So I think one thing that we can sort of say, a hand on a heart, is we, we are what we are, and we've got ultimately like our standards. We, we set a bar, and that's ultimately, that's high or low to other people, but we set a certain bar that we expect individuals to be at in a period of time, right? And I think it's so important, like we set up our performance management. We brought in our third hire, was operations manager Hannah, who's now head of global, uh, for operations, and she's still with us. And first thing that she implemented into the business was at like 5 people, everyone telling us we're nuts to— again, intention of like big company mentality from day dot since we started the company, um, is having a really slick performance management process. So it's effectively like a 4-month swing on NFI, um, and the bar is, like I said, anything between 60 and 100% in, in depending on your years of experience and target. And if you fall under that, then you've got— we call it Back on Track, and it is ultimately to get you back on track. Like, ultimately, that, that I think some people misconstrue, like bots or whatever you call them, that we've seen people, like you said, buddy, that have gone on these and then gone on and done phenomenal things. Sometimes you just need a reset. Sometimes you just get into bad habits, like whether you've come from a previous business or if you're just starting out, um, you have to give people time. So we've got like a, um, 12— what is it, Pav? 12 weeks? There we go, thanks. Um, I should know that. 12-week plan ultimately, that to get them back to a certain percentage that we feel comfortable, that is at the level that we expect. And again, every business has got what good looks like, it's different. Everyone know in our company what that percentage is, um, so there's no gray area. I think that's so powerful in a company whether you're 10 or 300, knowing what good looks like. You're a sale— this is a sales business. It's a set, and that's important that we keep that culture. Um, again, going back to that, so that's how we do it. And ultimately, but we give people time, you know. And I think ultimately we've run the business on profit, which gives us the ability to give people time. You know, we're not asking for somebody to go from 0 to 125% in 6 weeks. Just not going to happen. It's got to be small steps. So we just try and be like rational with the process. Me and Ben love it because we especially set the process with our previous L&D and also with Hannah, and we love it when people beat the process. And I'm getting in a room saying like, brilliant, you beat the process. And I'm looking at myself and that's my process, like, what are you doing? It's like, but I genuinely love seeing people beat it and that's what it's there to do. And ultimately that's where our mantra around is like, hire, focusing on like the positive side of like that performance plan and seeing people do well, um, is ultimately what drives that, that tracking. Nice.

Ricky, run into this yet or no?

Uh, I, I— we're in that weird stage, right, where you don't want to be seen as a business that's letting people go. And, you know, and, and also the business that we wanted to run intentionally was about looking after people. So very similarly, we, we, we run on EBIT, right? We're We've got strong governance around finances. We always need a year in front of us, you know, where everyone gets paid. If the world stops spinning tomorrow, we know that we can support people. And that extends into bringing people in and allowing them to bed in and giving them time without like panic in our eyes and their eyes, you know, like do the right— big believers. If you're doing the right thing, attitude, endeavor, we've got your back. Those two things are there. We've got you. All day long. If those— one of both of those things go, that's the end of it. Uh, we haven't had to exit anybody from the business apart from the one we talked about earlier, uh, for underperformance. Um, it's going to be a big topic. I'm really pleased you offered to share that with me. I'm going to take you up on it.

Uh, check with Hannah when I get into my copyright and all of that stuff.

We'll just rebrand it. It'll be— no one will notice. Absolutely.

Uh, questions, anyone? I know there'll be questions that I haven't asked, but, um, I feel like we covered quite a lot there. But, uh, anyone want to ask a question? Yeah, let me come to you, mate.

All right, um, yeah, so it is about AI, but, um, so essentially, so I'm not a recruiter firstly, I don't work in recruitment, but, um, in industry I work in consumer healthcare and we felt the effects of AI causing like, um, like an conversations around like operational profit, right? So AI can make you more efficient. And with things like AI agents, which can do things like, for example, like, you know, customer, um, like client outreach, for example, right? Are you finding that shaping how you're hiring new candidates? Or sorry, sorry, new like internal recruitment? So for example, you want an experienced, like, experienced recruiter, or maybe some like an early, early talent, right? Has like AI, like fluency shaped at all your internal recruitment strategy?

It's definitely a question. How are you utilizing it? And there's no right or wrong answer. I think it shows an inquisitiveness. I think it shows a sense of I want to move with the times, I want to evolve myself. And like you said, if all my clients are doing this, then I need to at least understand what's going on. And if they've unlocked efficiencies, that shows for me that they're really thinking about how they can better themselves. So in answer to your question, yes, it isn't a deal breaker, but I think it says a lot about somebody that they have started to explore.

For me, absolutely not. Really? So for me, we hire purely on traits and characteristics, and we will teach them the job. And if that— if AI is part of the job and they have to use an AI tool because we use it in our business, our job is to make them AI literate. I'm myself, um, through that process. They don't have to come AI literate. They say you're finding now the 21, 22-year-old graduate ultimately is a lot more AI literate, especially than me, but like fundamentally they're exposed to it more already, but I haven't got any interest. Like, I want to see will, character, skill, and like, and I'll— we— our job is then to give them all the tool sets to be successful. Okay, I'll back that every day of the week.

But then like on an experience level as well, when you're seeing like different, like more creative ways of like finding awesome candidates, clients, I suppose, like everything goes back to the first question of the day, wasn't it?

Like, how are you evolving? If you, if you think you know it all, you're in the wrong seat. So if someone can tell me a faster way of doing it and show me, and I'm wicked, all in. If someone comes into an interview and they're confident enough as a senior consultant, a bit like Ross saying, I don't really BD, I create communities, and by creating communities I do this. Well, if we originally would have said, well, we do it this way, so no, I would have lost a lot if I hadn't taken him on and done that and built a whole Rust community through it. Do you know what I mean? So you've got to be open to it. Yeah, I get why you'd want someone the market will go more that way and as more tools get developed. But yeah, as a graduate level, I'm not— I've got no interest.

Cool. All right, thank you.

Over there. Oh, I'm sorry, it's just a bit closer.

Sorry. Yeah, cheers guys, thanks for all the points. I mean, we— just for a bit of context, we're a relatively new business, we're going to go like 6 months, but got a lot of experience in recruitment. We actually resonate with all of your points. So we're actually based Marlow in Buckinghamshire, so we're remote as anything. So we get the challenge completely. We're super niche and we work in super niche markets. Of course, we've only been going for 6 months, so we get the new business challenges. You know, we talked a lot about communities, building communities, building networks. You know, I see a lot of new recruiters being professional M&A news reporters. Every time a news report comes out, it just, you know, annoys me. It's just shit marketing, really. Like, what do you guys see as like the next thing that's actually going to build into Consultants Network that's not building communities actually on social media in other ways? Like, what's the next thing for you guys?

Um, so we're, we're launching our own podcast, and I know that's done a lot, but it's really opened our eyes over the last, uh, 6, 7 weeks and given us opportunity to speak to people that we, uh, not necessarily would have had the opportunity to speak to, but more importantly, it's about the engagement and the relationship building through the process of filming the podcast. So, um, it's allowed us— our outreach is different, um, but I just like that downtime. It's just about getting to know each other and leveling the playing field. Um, so yeah, I, I would say that that's been a really interesting one for us and opening a lot of new doors.

Congrats on the new business, by the way. Good luck. Um, love it. Um, ultimately it's a really good question, and I'm probably further— me and Ben and Edison are further behind both Ricky and, um, Botti in regards to what that looks like. Like, we haven't launched a podcast, um, yet. Um, we've just literally started, uh, launching our communities. Um, and that, that is absolutely an area that we believe that the that we should be focusing on. But we, you know, up until recently, we had no US operations, and 65% of our business was in America. So it's very hard to jump on a plane every week to, to wherever it was to build community. So again, but now with US operations out there, that's something that I think we want to focus on. But again, I do think you can get wrapped up, like, at 6 months. I wouldn't worry about that right now. Like, again, Ricky might disagree. Right now it's focusing on cash in the bank, growing your business, being in the right markets, and hustling hard. Yeah. And then coming up for air at year 1, year 2, and thinking, right, how can I grow this? It's again, it's about what your vision and what you want to achieve as a business. Um, so sorry I haven't answered that, but ultimately right now, like, just focus on where you want to get to it, like, at the end of the year. Great advice.

Do you know, um, there must have been a reason you set up the company, right? And you must have backed yourself because of past experience of I'm guessing you're not a 10K biller, right? You know what I mean? In a year. So you back yourself. Year 1, year 2, go and do as much of that as you fucking can. Simple as that. That is what you're good at. Do it. Double down on it. Triple down it. Quadruple down it. Whether that's social selling, whether that's conferences, whether that's podcasts, whatever got you that confidence to start your business, double, triple, quadruple down it. Then take a breath and go, how do we evolve? What do— what's my market want? Where are my clients going? If all your clients are going to X conference every year, get yourself to X conference every year. But like, there's no silver bullet. It's what you're good at. I said earlier, if it's marketing, don't come to me, I'm absolutely useless, right? If it's cold calling, hitting the phone, pitching, I'll bat you all day. And like, therefore, know your superpower. Then the first 6, 12, 18 months, use it as much as you possibly can.

Yeah, I mean, that's, that's exactly where we're at. I mean, we use a phrase internally, it's street fighting. Take the gloves off, let's get on the phones.

Exactly. Let's start scrapping. That'll get you further than doing something you don't know a lot about. You dip your toe in trying to build a community, you're not really sure how you want to do it, and therefore the time you're investing in that compared to street fighting, you're going to get more out of street fighting than that, I'd imagine, in the first 6-12 months.

Yeah, I've just got a small follow-up question, and this is, uh, I'll try to be quick so I don't cause other people— but we've just signed a recent like PE deal we have a company that's basically getting us to connect startups with their PE to basically consolidate and buy. It's an additional revenue stream that obviously isn't recruitment. Like, what's your experience with that? Uh, have you seen that before? Is that something that you try to avoid and have as like an add-on?

Yeah, so I like that. So we've evolved again over the last 12 months. So again, we're now— there's lots of companies that are doing it really successfully, but I think there is absolutely a game and a gap in the market working directly with like the venture capitalists an area that I think that they've got the power to the keys. Like, they are the true bosses, they're the top dogs, right, in regards to like these tech companies. So I think ultimately adding value, but I personally looking at that and where you're at in your stage, I think that's a long game. Like, you're not— you'd be very lucky to break a venture capitalist overnight like you would a client. And again, it's about the long-term strategy of your company. So I think aim that as like long play and where you want to get to, but in the short play is cash in the bank. That's ultimately what— that's what's going to power you to grow. Everyone can talk about communities and everyone can talk about, you know, EBIT. Really, what's going to grow you in the first 24 months is your cash. That's it. If you ain't got cash, you can't grow. So I think, again, you can get wrapped up in those things. I think that's a really smart move, especially— I don't know your markets, but that sort of PEVC world is definitely evolving. More and more companies moving into it. Um, but what differentiates you to them going to an established brand that they've got already, and you're spending weeks and weeks and in trying to break that VC, and ultimately leaving maybe stuff on the, on the table, clients that need it now. And there's not— you don't need to apologize for going after clients that have just got needs right now.

For all those that come across my desk on a weekly, oh, can we broker a deal between A and B, the amount of those we sign off is about 1%, and the amount of hours that go into putting those parties together, negotiating. And they always say, like, do you know how to do it? Do you have an idea how to broker that deal? Brilliant. So what value is your— what you're adding to that? So you're trying to do something you don't know. I agree, you can go and stumble your way through it. There are companies out there that get paid to broker those deals that are also doing that as a full-time job. So like, again, be deliberate. If you want to go after that, go and learn it and be deliberate in going after it and understanding genuinely how that works. Get that experience and knowledge, bring it in somehow. Otherwise, stick to what you're good at.

It's your vision for the business. What are you trying to achieve? Like, what is your USP? What are you trying to grow? Don't be like, you know, unapologetic in regards to what you're going to do. Other people will think you're crazy. Other people will think that you're not going to do it. And guess what? When you do do it, those people will turn around and say, I knew I'd do that, you know. So I think that's key. Like, just stick to what you've set out 6 months ago when you put your business plan in play. It will change, but the first year is what we're trying to do. What do we want this business to be known for? If it is that, well, great.

But I've definitely met people that have agreements with that. Then how many people I've met that have then actually got to that end outcome? Not so many. I think obviously being in that world, making introductions, people, talent is always going to be a big constraint for them. So the fact that you're building relationships with those people is a good thing. Um, and then your first point I spoke to a lot of companies who do stuff like this. I don't think actually it's about doing anything new. It's about if you were to do anything community-led, what can you do that ensures you're doing it in 5 years' time? That's really where I'm sure there's been some quick rust wins in the community, but actually the best recruiters that are embedded in their market, community-led, whatever, it wasn't a let's see how, let's do it this next 3 months. It's, so play to your strengths there. Do you love being in a room with senior people in your market, host it, like do something that you know or can be more confident you're going to be doing in 12 months, 24 months' time.

That is super important. If it is a community-led, just because it's been said a few times, that isn't a quick put on one event, I'm a community-led recruiter. Like, you have got to go. It isn't the one event, it's the 10th event, it's a 15th event, they've come back 7 times, and then they've got the trust to go, you're in it, you are genuinely in my community, not just trying to be in my communities to get the sales. Do you know what I mean? You gotta, you gotta commit if you're going into that. I agree.

Although we haven't done events, we, we, we've, we've sponsored an event at Christmas, a Women in Product event, and who knows what the ROI is, you know, it's hard to measure. Yeah, I completely agree in terms of 6 months, get money on the board, and then year 2, look at what is my go-to market. Is it a podcast? Is it Is it roundtables? Is it events? Is it whatever it might be?

All I would say just really quickly is, obviously you heard a lot about niche market expertise. I think one of the big benefits of having that approach, we've spoken about how the ROI, like what he's talking about, but actually one of the biggest ROIs is market expertise and really actually genuinely being in the room and understanding these people. What do they care about? I think that is actually a big ROI is the amount of knowledge and market expertise that you can gain, as well as understand who these people are as humans and what— like, why do they do the job? Why do they— it's all that stuff as well. Um, another question anyone want to ask? Let me come over.

Hey dude, thanks a lot guys for tonight. Um, so I'm in the hedge fund asset management space, um, and I position like equity analysts and portfolio managers into the those businesses. I'm looking to build my community. I know that you said in the middle that you're looking to grow that, and that you're doing more of a podcast. I've actually started a podcast, but I was thinking I want to start doing events. But I'm just wondering from your business as well, and people that have done it internally, what have been the most effective events that they've run that have really kicked off and helped them? Or from when you're thinking about communities, how you're thinking about developing a community? What are you doing to, to get people time after work to come to your events? What, you know, what spin are you putting on?

Very little spin. We're basically using the network. It's like, to put on the event, I think it's all about the person that's speaking at the event. They haven't come to hear me in to speak for 5 hours about something I don't know about. They're there to speak to an actual industry absolute expert on a topic that is related to them. Therefore, there's the interest. You guys are here mainly because you're in recruitment. You might take away a snippet or two, hopefully, and take that back to your own businesses. Whereas like, that's the same part for your community. Your community wants some value add. I want to go and speak, I want to go and hear X hedge fund manager speak about what's hot, what's not, what's common, what isn't. Find out what that is and then build your audience around the speaker. You're— for me, it's all about the speaker. I think that's the— you got— you gotta have the draw. The draw is the individual that's gonna kind of hold the conversation through that, through that 1 hour, 45 minutes, etc. You're there to facilitate it happening, not to be the front and center of it happening.

Yeah, I think that's a really good point. So we, we launched Smart Talks this year. So Jess, who leads a marketing campaign, it's Nothing to Do About Edison, is ultimately to, is to ultimately bring the community together. You asked a question earlier, why, like, why now and what, how are we doing it? It. So that I'm a niche guy, I believe in niches, right? Again, there's no right or wrong, but like, that's the mantra for my business and what we're trying to achieve. And so the niche that I built in the early days, we've then developed teams around that. Um, and the amount of times I've asked them about just like, you know, what do you do for networking events? And there just wasn't one there. There was just a real gap in the market. Again, right time, right place. So one, we needed to make sure the guest speakers were like C-level, like people that could add real value, um, and they were competition, like literally the competition. And we had, I think it was like 40 people, um, in this one room, and they were carnage. They were literally carnage. Like, they were doing presentations and they were like heckling each other because they compete with each other on a daily basis. But like, the fit— the feedback that we got was like, it was really refreshing to get people that I haven't seen in such a long time that I know that I can compete with in the same room, but not talking about recruitment. There was not one thing— it was about the community. So I think for us, that really opened up my world, is that I built a niche and now I'm building the community. Like, I'm trying to build for that rather than building the community and figuring out what my niche is. So like, that for me is what I'm trying to focus on, is following that slow trend. Um, so yeah.

We'll wrap this up on this final question.

Gents, thanks very much. Appreciate all the insights. If you had to choose what's a stronger predictor of performance in your business today, call volume or digital conversion metrics? And if you look at your top billers, are they still heavily on the phone or are they winning business in different ways?

I'll go first. Shock what my answer is. No, I'm joking. So I love like the word of like, like diversifying different revenue streams, but ultimately how to win business, there isn't a right or wrong, right? So ultimately our mantra as a business has been and will be phone first, right? So ultimately building relationships, but that is evolving and I think that's ultimately what we're trying to achieve. So the answer to your question is that I think we'll continue to focus on that, but it will evolve. And what did you mention? What does good look like? And what our metrics are is productivity per head. Like, that is just the number one metric that we obsess with. And that sort of headcount vanity sanity goes out the window. So if you continue to look at like 200— at the moment our productivity per head is like 250, 255 as a business, um, and the conversions are there. It might not be next year, but if we obsessed with those two conversion rates, we should be able to grow the business if we're hiring the right people. Um, so again, if we sort of like what— where our mantra is focusing on is that sales-first culture and phone-first. But then if we can distribute that with other elements— we're talking about communities a lot tonight and AI— that will supplement what is our core value, which is a sales phone-first mentality. That supplements that vision rather than scattergunning approach. And it works for us right now. It might not work in a year's time, we'll keep looking at that. But I think if you look at your metrics and you've got a strong productivity per head, you're EBIT positive, and you're, you're investing your EBIT rather than an FI, and you have a mantra of what's true to like Edison, for example, and what that is, a sales tactic, then you're probably in the right direction. So those are the 3 things that we continue to obsess with. And if our productivity drops, 9 times out of 10, our FI and EBIT's going to drop. So we need to look at— hang on, things need to change. Maybe first phone first mantra isn't the answer anymore.

Again, agree with most of that again, but I, I mean, for our, our business is obviously we have 4 different, completely different brands there. So what works for one brand isn't also what works the other. I'm heavily ratio, like, I'm all about the ratio. I think it tells the whole story about around if I can do the same number with 10 less jobs, etc., per head, then happy days. Like, there's no need to overwork or etc. So we heavily invest the ratio. And I'd say most of our businesses, no matter what market, understand what they actually need to create good. And then again, it goes back to my question I ask everyone I ever work with externally or internally, is like, do you know what good is? What is good? What good to me, what good to you? We could all differ on what that is, but for your business unit. And then once you've worked out what good looks like, what are the metrics and what are the ratios you need to hit good? And then I challenge everyone to to be great because that's the— that becomes the bottom barometer. And I want you to exceed it because we're not here to be— if we're doing good, we're going backwards. If we're doing great, we're going forwards. I think once you're— once you actually understand what that looks like, and so few, in my opinion, do genuinely know what that barometer is, then you've got a starting point to build from up or down. And then I'm saying PPH for me, like profit per head. I want to know that that's got to be running at certain levels. In every business unit. If it drops to a certain level, it's break glass. If it's rising, it's how we, how we're going to maximize on that opportunity. Keep it pretty simple, basically.

I think it's very similar for me, but I think the ratios have to be underpinned by quantity. So, you know, job flow, first interviews, number two, like one and two, or almost level with each other. We can't get the first interviews without the job flow. How are we doing on that? How are we tracking as we grow? What's that happening per head? If it's staying flat as we're growing, something's wrong. It should be growing as we grow in headcount. And then what are our conversion rates within that? How many jobs does it take to make a placement? Interviews to placement. But it has— you can't— you can have one job and fill it, you've got 100%, well done. Yeah, but it doesn't tell you the whole story.

Love it. Let's wrap it up there. As I mentioned, if anyone wants to have a cheeky bev, soft drink, pub on the road, just up the road, The Ship. I know a few people will be heading there. But let's put our hands together for these guys. Thank you, everyone.