What Makes a Recruitment Business Valuable. Craig Harman on Scaling Opus & Navigating a PE Exit

Greg, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks, good to be here.

Been great getting to know you over the last couple of days. Yeah, you've really helped me out since, uh, you know, we connected before I came over here. So it's been really great getting to know you and also really, uh, excited to go through this conversation with you because you've been through something that not every recruitment business actually goes through, which is a successful financial event.

Yeah.

A lot of people set out to have that as their ambition, their goal, but I don't actually know the stats, but normally it's very low stats on that actually happening. So in this conversation, we're really going to try and dig into, from your perspective, what are the things that you believe made Opus and the different businesses ultimately valuable enough for a PE firm to want to, you know, get involved in that journey? What are some of the things that you and your business did well on the APAC side leading up to that private equity event. Definitely going to drill into maybe some of the insights and lessons on when that was going through and leading up to it. What was that like? How challenging was it? What actually did this external investment firm find valuable versus not? Dig into all that. And then we'll then talk about, okay, it went through. Obviously a lot of people talk about getting to that end goal, but then what was it actually like on the other side? Yeah, because then there's always going to be, uh, different challenges when, when that comes to it, right? So to give everyone some context here then, and let me know if I get any of this wrong, so basically you, uh, joined Opus to launch the Australian part of the business, right? Because when you joined, there wasn't an Australian office.

No.

There wasn't.

It was quite an interesting, um, sort of turn of events really, because I originally started my recruitment career in Bristol working for S3. Down the road, Darren had started— I don't know when it was, probably sort of around, probably just a bit before I started as a trainee recruitment consultant— had started this business down the road called Opus. Um, a few of the people that used to work with me, and even my team leader and manager at the time, moved across to that business. So, um, they went across in probably 20— 2009, 2010 time, maybe something around there. And Darren approached me at the time through those connections, and we had a chat. And, uh, the first time I met him, I absolutely loved the guy. I thought he was, he was amazing. And, um, it wasn't quite right for me to move because I was thinking about moving back to Australia, because this is— so despite the accent, this is where I grew up, uh, for a part of my life anyway. And, um, So we always kept in contact and every time I'd go back to see family in the UK, you know, Darren would hear about it and he'd take me for lunch or we'd go and meet up or take me to a United game or something like that. So we always kept quite close and, you know, Darren was always Darren. He was very clear about why he was doing that, right? He saw an opportunity for us to work together in the future. So I wanted to keep that, keep that going. And I remember in 2010, I think he said, he made a comment, which was like, Okay, you're moving to Australia. Let's keep in touch. You know, I want to have a global, a niche global recruitment business. And it was like 6 people, 6 guys in a room in Bristol. And I was like, yeah, cool. Let's chat in, you know, in 20 years. And then he kept on going and then sort of hit me up a few times over that period of time, just testing the water, I think. And then in 2014, he messaged me and I wasn't going through a great period work-wise, which I could touch on later. And it just seemed like the right opportunity at the right time. 'Cause previously it hadn't, hadn't come around, uh, at the time I needed it to, et cetera. And then literally within a day, I think he called me on a Sunday night and then I woke up the next day and I had an email introducing me to the COO. And, you know, can you put a business plan together? I'm really excited about doing Sydney. We wanna open an international office. I think they'd gone to, so this was, yeah, 2014. They'd opened London in 2012. So they're now two officers. And, um, yeah, within a week he'd booked flights and he was out here. And we literally, like, no joke, we sat down, we had a beer. He was like, what do you want now? What do you need to be on? What does it need to look like? And I sort of just answered as I would, and he was writing it down on a napkin. He was like, you'll have this in a contract tomorrow. Let's go. Let's do this. And I was just so excited and buzzed by it. And it's, um, yeah.

And that was— I think that's such a good lesson there on— so like, just out of interest, what— from what time maybe did you have those first interactions to like that point? Was that over like 2 weeks? No, no, so overall, overall, because like it sounded like there was 4 years of kind of flirting. So that, that's the lesson there, right? I sat down with someone yesterday where their whole strategy is they want to bring like great recruiters and make them even greater with their platform. And I think it's always good to hear that, that because that is part of the game. I'm sure you maybe had some of them, yeah, stories, or know people where it took that long. But then what happened after? Like, so many people maybe would have given up before that point, right, in terms of the 4 years?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think he probably would have as well. I think there was obviously, there was a, a big distance between us. He didn't have an office out here. They probably weren't quite ready at that point in time. So there's other reasons why we didn't join up sooner. Um, but remove those aside, I think, yeah, we, we were having conversations before break. And I say conversations, it was like once a year, once every 6 months for a couple of years. And then, but he always— I always left conversations with him feeling just energized and buzzed, even if I wasn't working for him at the time. Um, and so I knew that would be something that I'd experience working closely with him as well.

So yeah, so that was 2014. So then very much the plan was he was backing you, going to support you to launch— successfully launch this part of the business. And then just to give everyone a bit of context, then what ended up happening in Sydney. So by 2018, there was 44 of you in that business, about $12 million GP. And then you ended up launching the other brand here that ended up being part of Opus, which was JD Ross. 2020, so going into COVID, obviously you had JD Ross, Opus Tech, circa around 55 people at that point. Then 2021, obviously during that boom period, ended up being around 100 people across Australia. Also then had the train and deploy part of the business. So Nology launched at this point, it was around 22-24 million GP. And then by the end of 2021, around November time, the actual private equity event happened. By this period, you was APAC CEO, maybe you was pretty much at the start anyway, but then you found yourself post-PE event being the interim global CEO. Of the business, um, and then ended up leaving that organization. So that's why really we're going to talk about that period leading up to the Private Equity event, because obviously a lot would have happened.

Yeah.

Um, and then I know there's some other like data points I've got here, but you know, at the peak of things, one of the things that you was really obsessed around was like productivity per head, GP per head. And now there's real periods where that was really strong. But why, why don't we just talk about maybe Firstly, like, just that initial period, because as you just shared with us there, there was like, there was no, uh, like any sort of brand out here or anything like this around Opus, right? It really was from, from, um, zero and scratch. So out of interest, I know you just said he was very much writing things on like a napkin, on the back of a napkin, but if, if I was in those early conversations like, what would I have heard in terms of, like, the type of business that you want? Like, the big goals that you had at the beginning? Like, was you really quite clear on that from the get-go in terms of what you wanted?

Yeah.

So talk to us a bit about that. Like, what were the early intentions, and what would you have heard if, you know, we were listening into you and Darren's conversations early on around what you actually wanted to build?

I think first and foremost, the conversations with Darren were always so raw and honest, which is what I really like. So I could tell him You know, at the time in 2014 when we were talking, I had been, um, yeah, I probably by then I'd done 6 years in recruitment and I'd had great times where I was highest performing person in the business and I had had low times where I was one of the lowest performing in the business I was in at the time. And on reflection, I could always look back and go, there was only one reason for being either at the top or at the bottom. And that was my attitude and my effort that I was putting in. Um, and so I was always very honest with Darren about kind of where I'd been in, in the, um, you know, in my position in my career. But I was always very clear from day one of getting into recruitment, one of the reasons I got into it was I had ambitions of being a leader. I wanted to, you know, I grew up, my dad was a director of a business, and I saw how he treated people mostly, uh, and I always wanted to get into sort of senior management and leadership. So I was always quite ambitious, but with Darren You can't— it's hard to out-ambition Darren, right? Like, you sit down with him and you go, I want to do all these things, and I did that, uh, and he sort of sits there and challenges you a bit on it and says, I, I feel like you could do more than that, I feel like you do better, um, and then you could walk away believing that you can. So, um, so those early conversations was very much like, we didn't want to just be another business out here, we wanted to be a fast-growing high-performing, you know, specialist recruitment consultancy that was delivering, you know, exceptional results to clients and to staff and so on and so forth. So it was always, the bar was always very high. Um, Sydney and Australia is a small market and compared to London and the US and so on and so forth. So trying to get good people that share that same view was really, really hard. And I remember, I know the number. I interviewed 43 recruitment, sorry, experienced recruitment consultants in like the space of a month.

Really?

And I didn't hire any of them. I just didn't, none of them felt like they had experience, they had some clients, they had some track record in billings, but I didn't feel any of them were, had the energy and the drive and the passion to go to that next, to take something to the next level. Um, and I was convinced to interview this sort of young Irish guy who was a lawyer, wanted to get into recruitment, and I was convinced to interview him, no experience, uh, and, uh, met with him. And that was really, that was quite a pivotal moment because I thought, you know, it sort of was able to hire based on skills. Then I was thinking, right, he can learn, he's smart. He's— and then, and then I was sort of looking at all the things I can't train, and that was ambition, even likability, right? I thought clients are gonna love this, this guy. Like, he's just got loads of energy, loads of passion, wants to do well. And that kind of became the blueprint after that, hiring people that we thought could go on the journey. We can train people. We had really good L&D that I could pull from the UK. Um, so we had induction plans, we had solid L&D material to get somebody up and running. So I was really then hiring on the things I couldn't teach. And so, and a big part of growing in those first 2 to 3 years was referrals. So like if I hired somebody good and, you know, I've made the decision, this person is who I want in the business. Um, and then you do all the other things right. They start to say, oh, you know, I've got a friend or I worked with this person that did this or did that. And, um, and so we grew the business really quickly. I think after year 1, we had, I think it was 13 people, but sustainably, like we were making profit.

Yeah, he made profit by month 4.

Yeah, so month 4, it was a profitable month. Month 5 wasn't. I think month 6 was sort of just about break-even, but because we were constantly adding, we were adding people into the business. So, you know, that changed things as we went. But yeah.

And was it so, because I put here, hired 2 leaders. So was it, did you hire 2, did you manage to hire 2 senior people?

So we brought, we wanted some of the Opus DNA.

Right.

So we brought an And all of our support functions and that sort of thing were back in the UK as well. So we brought two guys over, Rich and Dan, who were team leaders at the time in the UK, one contract, one perm. So again, it was a very strategic decision on who we brought over, different skill sets, build out different teams, because we were always split. We did do dual desking. So yeah.

So you had that from— that's interesting for people to know because that's still, you know, you're having conversations now with different recruitment businesses, but I think I often hear it's not a silver bullet, but if people are expanding internationally, normally a consistent good play I've heard is Craig, who's, who understands the Opus DNA, let's get him over to the US. Yeah, that normally it can be a good play. So it sounds like, yeah, you had two people there that you brought over that they were in Bristol or UK.

Yeah.

And how did you build that?

Yeah, I think that worked really well, and I think we were— there's very different skill sets between those two people at the time, and I sort of was able to blend not only local experience but kind of work with them both to kind of play to each other's strengths, which was, which was something we were always doing as a leadership team, who, you know, define people's strengths, define where people are not so good, and then make sure the team dynamic, you know, covers all those things off. So yeah, I think that was, uh, that was very important.

And then worth sharing, might not be in this exact number, but I think I asked you like, okay, well, when they like backed you to do this, like, you know, normally I speak to people that start a business and they would have got X money investment or these things. But it was, I think you said to me something along the lines of like $500,000 or something. Yeah, I don't remember. Like you got backed to do this, you know what I mean? Which I think, yeah, is good to hear because oftentimes I'm sure there's a lot of people that have sat down with people like, yeah, Craig, we're gonna back you, make it happen, and then sometimes that doesn't, yeah, follow through.

Yeah.

But you really got backed in that sense, resources financially, because one of the benefits which you've already highlighted here is you had that operations infrastructure that from day one you could tap into.

Yeah. Um, yeah, and that was, that was very helpful. It was super challenging cuz time zone differences and all those sorts of things were, made it very, very hard. But yes, that was all there to tap into. Um, but yeah, backed from day one and, and I think the results, the results came quick enough and I think Darren could see what I was trying to do. Um, and so really I think, you know, we, as I said, we started to sort of break even and, and sort of pay back some of that capital investment. that was initially there. But we also, you know, he wanted to spend more on it, you know. So if we were starting to, you know, we had a good 3-month run rate, he'd be like, right, well, how else can we expand it? Where can we grow it? So I think, um, yeah, he was always there backing it.

And then was, in terms of like the go-to-market strategy, was it very much like, was the sort of core premise of it like, we're niche, vertical-focused in the UK, let's just sort of replicate that in Sydney? Was that like high-level the play, or did you understand the nuances in the Australian market when it's a bit different? Like, what would it be in the play?

Different. Yeah. So we, uh, and, and I had always done this in my career. I think this is kind of, you know, even Darren and, and, and, uh, loads of others have come through the S3 model, right? So, and I, I did as well. So we were always— I was always very vertical focused. So the business was— we decided to build it out in that way. I think where we did things differently in Oz was, um, the— once you're in with a client, being able to expand within that, that business, um, and build out relationships across it. So you're starting to do more work with them, and I think we were always very good at that, uh, in terms of group comparisons as well to other regions. So it was, it was vertical, uh, niche focus. That would be a lot of our door-opening sort of approaches to clients where we'd win new business, and then Um, Darren always used to refer to me as a bit of a quarterback. So I'd, anytime that, um, you know, we do client meetings or anything else like that, I had the bigger picture. I was trying to, you know, cross-sell and look at other departments and get, you know, referrals into other bits of the business and so on. So, and then passing that on to people in the team. So we did that well from day one, I think. So I remember, you know, within 3 or 4 months we had a client, um, and I think we probably did about 10, 15 deals just with that client in the first 7 or 8 months. And that was literally, I don't think everybody in the at that point did a deal with them because I think we had, we're probably 7 or 8 people, but most of the people in the team I'd given roles out to someone to fill. So yeah, so we're able to land projects really well.

And just, just to like frame this up to people then, and we'll just get into some of the things that I've learned that I feel like a lot of people can benefit from learning here. But like up until the private equity event that happened, So I've got here again, feel free to correct me, but around about that time when that happened, basically Oz, the business unit and part of the business that, you know, you're responsible for growing, contributed to like 50% of the global GP.

Yeah.

And EBITDA when that went through, right?

Yes.

So this has ended up being a really valuable part of the overall group, right? From an investment standpoint, like this is an important part that you built.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think the, the, Sort of lead up to that was Darren was— when I joined, Darren was heavily involved. Um, by the time— I'll get my years wrong here, but I think probably about 2017, 2018, um, we— that's when he brought Amy in. Um, so Amy came in as a consultant originally and then moved into an MD and then global CEO role. And I had a really good working relationship with Amy. Like, we, we got on very well. Um, the time zone difference meant that I just ran APAC as I would. And she gave me a lot of autonomy and so did Darren Sims. Just, you know, you fuck on, you do what you need to do. And the performance was always there. Um, so in about 2018, 2019, we really had scaled. You said the numbers, I'm not really great with them all the time. I forget the numbers a lot. Uh, but probably, yeah, about 55 people doing half, if not more than half of the revenue of the business at that point in time. Um, had a couple of challenges in 2018, 2019, which was kind of We can talk about that. That was a bit of a sort of probably growing too fast, running some challenges, had to make some decisions. But, you know, everything worked out well. And then obviously COVID hit. But that was the point in time where we not only had good performing business units, but we had a full representation of what Opus was. So we had the tech contract, tech perm, we had the JD Ross business, we were starting to shape out the technology business. I had Hong Kong as well, which I took over. Had some challenges, so I started leading that and changed some of the team there. So kind of holistically had a really good view of the business, which is why then at that point I went into APAC CEO role. Um, and then, and then by the time the deal was done, November '21, yeah, I think we were 50%. Um, that's a really good sort of really good split of all businesses, contract, perm, energy, that looks really good, technology side of things. And we really had, I'd say probably at that time, so this is pre like the real boom, I would say, But at that time we had such a great client representation across everything. Like we had clients who were doing contract tech, perm tech, energy with, and then doing major pieces of work for them on hire, you know, hiring non-traditional people from diverse backgrounds into technology.

So, and then just, so I want to get into some of the things that I feel like you guys did well that you shared with me, but just quickly, cause you're just breaking it down there. 'cause I think this would be interesting for people to hear. I've sat down with a guy called Oliver that worked at Faden, and obviously they've had a number of financial events. And we'll speak to them about what their business looked like when they went through some of these. So I want to ask you the same thing around that, about that, when this went through, obviously you can talk about the Australian business, but when you looked at those different revenue streams, like how much of it was like contingent recruitment? Do you think percentage-wise, roughly?

High.

Yeah, see, that, that's just interesting for people to hear, I think, because I just think more and more now you always hear it. You go into LinkedIn, you're hearing people like continued versus retained and these things. But I think we'll get into it. But I think what you were just saying there was you said you had a really good client spread. I'm assuming what you're saying, what you was highlighting there was we had clients who were working with us in JD Ross, technology, tech perm contract.

Yeah.

And I'm assuming by that point as well, you would have been able to show like a track record of like what these companies are spending with you, maybe more accurately project what they could be spending with you. So it's interesting to hear that in terms of, again, we've got another business here that got to that end goal and a good chunk of their business was contingent.

Yeah.

Because I think a lot of people challenge that, I think, because you think, because you're thinking what makes, what increases enterprise value? There's a lot of things, right? But recurring revenue, Um, and these types of things often ends up in that conversation. You had a contract book as well?

We had a huge contract book. Um, and globally we had a big contract book in Australia. Um, you know, large and also quite a sustainable— we had long-term projects, long-term contractors, we had high extension rates. I mean, like, these are all the things when the deal goes through, by the way, that you can't answer a question and not be able to back it up with data. So the due diligence process we went through, you You know, if we are having just an anecdotal conversation like this and I say our extension rate is 55%, if I'm not within a percent of that when due diligence happens, then it's just hammering down that enterprise value. So yeah, you've got to know, got to know your numbers and you've got to be right on them. But we were across all those things, so we would be able to explain why the contract book was valuable, who the clients are, what are the projects. And then being able to demonstrate things like, okay, yes, it is contingent, but that, so how do you win high percentage of contingent work by being better than the competition, right? Delivering better quality candidates faster. And if you can show a repeat, you know, multiple hundreds of occasions where you've done that, you can sell the story around why that's a great market to be in. And, you know, the, you know, the question of what's your right to win, which you get asked a lot during a deal. Um, that was always it. It was, we're so niche, we know things that are about to happen before the— sometimes clients even know it's going to happen, and so on and so forth. And we're able to sort of deliver to those very quickly. But yeah, huge part, you know, all perm. I think all of our tech perm business was contingent, and most of our energy business was contingent. We had some retained stuff on that, but for the most part, like, I think again, if you look at clients, there's, there's, um, even if you're retained Um, whatever your agreement is with the clients, there's going to be slippage, right? There's going to be areas where they don't always come to you first, or you're not their, you know, first choice. But, um, I think what we did well was we put ourselves in the window well enough with a lot of big clients, and we demonstrated what we could do across other, um, streams of work. And we would get— you know, we'd ask, we'd say like, what, you know, there's that department over there, who looks after that? Can you do an intro to us? Um, and that would happen a lot, which was great. And I think Probably our biggest client, I think our biggest single client ever, um, was 2021 to 2022. And with that one client, we did over $3 million worth of GP.

18 months?

Yeah. Yeah. So within 18 months, it was about 3 point— I think it was somewhere around 3.5, basically. I forget the exact numbers.

Do you want to tell us a story about that? Because I think that was quite interesting because I've got here, you know, one of the things that you guys would have had to done well, which is really top of mind for a lot of people that I speak to now, which is, yeah, how do we increase that lifetime spend?

Yeah.

And that of that repeat customer versus every single month thinking about, right, what new clients do we currently not know yet that we haven't done business with? That's just way more harder to predict, right, in terms of where you're going to end up.

Yeah.

So tell us a bit about that. Obviously this is one example, but like you were just saying there, one of the things that you guys did get good at is that increase that lifetime spend, expanding accounts. So tell us a bit about that because I thought that was quite cool. I got here around, um, you know, having that top-down strategy. So tell us a bit about this story because I thought it was quite cool.

Yeah, so I think there's probably something to just touch on before we go into that. I think one of the challenges a lot of recruitment companies had, and we certainly did at one point as well, is how do you keep really good recruiters in the role for a long time and with the business without pushing them down a management route, right? Because everybody go, you know, the traditional sort of development plan is team leader, manager, director. We had a lot of great client-facing market experts that just didn't want to go down the leadership route, or what probably weren't— it probably wasn't right for them. If you don't want to go down the leadership road, then it's definitely not right for you, right? So, but they were really good people, you know, experts, had really great relationships. So we, we spent a lot of time on putting together a strategy and a plan to execute around having career paths for people that they could really excel there. roles with us and be part of the bigger picture, but very client-facing as opposed to going and managing teams. And in doing anything like that, the leadership team has to go from the front, right? You have to be involved in that. You have to go out and meet clients. And I think the higher you get traditionally in recruitment, the less time you spend in front of customers and it's more internal-facing. And then your sort of more junior, mid-level people are the touchpoints, have the most touchpoints with clients. So I think what we were very good at, looking at the data and identifying who the clients, who was in our client base, new clients, existing clients, clients that have up spending, low spending, etc. And looking at and trying to really pick out who we thought was going to be a good sort of target for us to kind of really get around and see what we could, you know, how we could increase that relationship. So my role at that point in time was doing a lot of that across the Knowledgy business. So we had just launched Knowledgy, it was a year old or something like that. There. So I was doing a lot of those client meetings as well with, with the person running that, and then being able to tie in some of the recruitment stuff. So that particular client, um, probably had 4 or 5 different meetings across procurement, HR, talent, uh, hiring managers. Um, I then started to sort of network out some of the MDs and sort of C-suite within that business. Um, and that works really well. So I ended up having meetings with the, the manager director of Australia, uh, and a couple of the other direct reports into that person as well, who he referred me to. And, um, before I knew it, we were having, you know, we were picking up this project and, and it became more that it was kind of, I would get a phone call saying, we've won a project, we want you guys on it. And, and it's like 30 or 40 roles type territory as opposed to we've got an extra role here, can you look at it? So it was sort of having bigger conversations, I guess. Um, and then that just, yeah, that just took off. And I remember one we picked, they came to us, I think they had an agreement in place with like an RPO business. Where they had a project sitting with that company and they just weren't getting the right candidates or volume or quality quick enough. So I've got a phone call and we arranged the following Friday and the Friday after that, we blocked out the MD's diary and we did half-hour interview slots. I think each of those Fridays we had 13 interviews. Look at this guy. Yeah, it was brilliant to be fair. And the HR talent manager that was coordinating it all was brilliant as well. Um, because they're having the same problem. They were getting candidates through, and then by the time they're setting up interviews and sort of going through their whole process, those candidates are off the market.

Is it mainly contract? Was it?

No, this was mainly per—

oh really?

Yeah, yeah, this is, this is mainly perm. Um, there was a split, but it was mainly perm. And so they have like a 3 or 4 stage interview process, and then we got to the point where they trusted our judgment to knock out 2 stage interviews. And then we, um, so I, I sort of coordinated it all with my team, HR and talent coordinator their end. And we had two Fridays back to back of 13 interviews, and we did, I think we did 10 or 11 placements off each of those. So like the percentage of, of successful interviews that happened. Um, so there was things like that which was just interesting. It's just different, you know. And then I think when you're having bigger conversations with people, you can start to understand how I probably would never have pitched to block out an MD's time at a global consultancy business to say you're just doing 13 half-hour interview slots. But, you know, by the time we were doing that much work with them, and I think they trusted our approach to them, I'm glad you highlighted that first part.

So what would that career path have been called? Was it like principal? Was it like billing director, client service director?

Yeah, so it was, um, we called them practice leads. So, uh, I think it was kind of, yeah, and it's— you'd go principal consultant, managing consultant, we had an associate director level, and then it was practice lead, which was effectively you're looking after a, like we would then split out and say, right, these are all our consulting businesses or these are all our health tech businesses or fintech. And somebody would map those out and really be across those. And they'd become the go-to person then. So if a consultant a year into the business has a conversation, sounds like there's a bigger piece of work, their first thing would bring this person in. They would attend the meeting with them. Help with tenders and pitching larger pieces of work, etc., etc.

And how did you match up like incentives? Was it on like increasing client spend? Because I think that's interesting as well.

Yeah, I think what we always did really, really well at Opus was we were very clear on what we wanted to do from day one as well. Even just the exit, we were very clear that at some point we wanted to have some kind of exit as well. But we were always very clear on what we want. We're always great clear on setting the vision and then having a plan that met with that. So we, yeah, put a lot of time into that. And then it was always— and you want something done in recruitment, incentivize it, and then it'll happen, right? So we, we made sure that that was— that pathway was incentivized well to benefit the business and the individual combined. So yeah, let's, let's talk about—

because I think this is absolutely crucial to get anywhere near a successful financial event— is having people in seat that they're gonna back after they buy out the majority stakeholder, or, you know, because that's often a big bottleneck for recruitment companies, isn't it, in terms of— if I look at Craig's recruitment business, if we buy Craig out, what's going to happen? Um, do you want to talk a bit about that? Like, what— you know, you said that's— that was a big aspiration of yours from a leadership standpoint, something that you've always engaged in, but What do you think are some of the things that you, you did well looking back on? Yeah, building that leadership layer, because you would have had that, like, what would roughly the whole chart look like in ours? Obviously you would have been the CEO, but I'm assuming then they'd have been confident in the people underneath and everything as well.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, I had an unbelievable team. Like, it was, um, yeah, I had an MD that sat across the tech business. Um, I had a director that ran the JDR business, so I think you're actually speaking to this week. Um, I had a head of knowledge. Um, by that point as well, I had all the operations team built out in Australia, so we now had finance, HR, L&D, internal recruitment, um, you know, all the functions there as well. So it was kind of a really well-rounded business in Oz. But I think to answer the question about the deal aspect of it, I think it has to look at my level and probably, um, globally.

Oh, really?

Yeah, I think so. When, when I think the deal was going through, a lot of the, the emphasis was put on, um, so Darren obviously founded the business from the UK, I don't know, 2008, I think it was. Uh, he was a majority shareholder, so he was the one that was, he was the one that was really selling, um, in round one. And that's typically how it, how it works as well. But, and then, so you're right to say, what's the team left? You know, I'm going to spend all this money on this business. Who's left to drive it forward? And we'd had a couple of years where we could really quickly say, these are the people. And that was, you know, Amy came in and did a lot of great work. I had, what was always good was I had people that were peers, but sort of competition as well, but in a really great way. So Rory, who ran the UK and the EU, who came in after me, but took over instead of building from scratch, he took something over and completely turned it around and transformed that business. So it was performing really well. And then at the time the deal was done, Jack Rawcliffe was running the US business. Jack was one that originally founded JDR. So like, these are great people, right? They, one's a COO somewhere else now and one's set up his own thing and that's going really well. So these are like high performing people in the industry. And so we always had like quite a, we always had a really good relationship. Um, but we were always quite competitive with each other as well. So we were now driving all of our regions to be better than the others. And so that was always just accelerating group performance globally.

So due diligence, just, just jumping quickly. So due diligence leading up to it was mainly with the people that you're talking about there, not the directors in your organi— in your business unit?

Yeah, I don't think they got any exposure to the PE firm or the external due diligence companies at that point. It was very much me sort of running through the region, who are the people, etc., etc. Um, yeah, it was more that, more that sort of group.

Okay, right, that makes sense then. Okay, so let's just, let's just delve into, let's just delve into like leading up to it then, because like there'll be loads of things in there that might be interesting for people. What I'm always curious to hear is like what— I don't know if you would have had a perception on this, may or may not have, but I'm always interested to hear like what did you believe was valuable. I guess you can talk about us, I guess, can't you? You would have maybe seen and heard about how other people would have spoke about their part of the business, but you can talk about whatever you want to talk about in reference. But like, what, what did you believe was really valuable going into those conversations versus them thinking actually that that's not as valuable, there wasn't as much of an emphasis on that? I'm always interested to hear that. Like, did you go in there thinking, got all this leadership team sorted, they're going to love that, or contract book, they're going to love that? Do you know what I mean? Like, what were the, what were the parts that you thought were strongest but actually you didn't really get any extra points for out of interest?

It's a good question. I think first and foremost, I think nothing happened by accident in that deal. Like every, that it wasn't like, oh, we've just been approached. You know, we now need to think about all these things and look at contract to perm ratio, management layers, all these sorts of, we were working towards something for a long time. So we had brought in some external consultants probably a couple of years before. The deal actually happened to talk through how does a business get valued, especially in a recruitment business that's so heavily focused on people. How do you make that stack up to the finance heads that are going to look at the deal and do due diligence and so on and so forth? So I think we worked through for a couple of years on probably 15 to 17 different levers that we would pull and say, okay, these are all value levers. Like, these are all things that are going to detract or add to the value of the business, and we needed to make sure that we were doing them. Can't say you're doing it, you have to be practicing it, and you have to be able to show and demonstrate results. So I think we were quite fortunate in the time. By the time that we were going through that process and doing the due diligence, I think we were able to really— we knew what we were good at.

Yeah, you're that well-versed.

Yeah, we were well-versed, but I think it was genuine. Like, it was— we focused on the points that were really important. And I think for me, um, you know, getting out of the spreadsheet and getting out of the numbers, which are obviously incredibly important, but they're not, they're not, they're not memorable, or they're not the things you think back. When I think back over the last 9 years or 10 years, I don't think about the moment we got through 40 people or 20 million. Like, I'd have to go and look those up, like I probably had to for you. I think of the stories of people, like the, the The people that we brought in where we changed their lives and they were with us 7 or 8 years and they went from trainee to managing a whole business unit. And I think we put a lot of emphasis on that story, like really knowing who we were, what we were good at, and how we could take this thing, you know, after you buy it. Because nobody buys it to stay where it is, right? You've got to, especially in PE where you're going to get, there's going to be debt involved, there's going to be banks involved. You have to grow. And so I think we, we were always very, very clear on why we believed we could grow. We had demonstrated certain amount of things in different regions across different brands that was scalable. And then we could repeat that in other ways because we had such a great team. So I do think the leadership team was probably one of the strongest points in our sort of, I guess, our process, because that is hard to build as well. It's hard to get good people to stay for a long period of time and be up for the next journey. I don't think any of our management team, leadership team globally were tired. We worked incredibly hard, but we absolutely loved what we did. And even through the, I think probably the worst years for me in terms of, I look back and think, when was I happiest? Was probably when the business was performing at its absolute peak. Like '21, '22, I enjoyed it, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't where I was. I loved it in the tough moments, like, because I thought that's where you can really, you know, differentiate yourself. And I think we were all kind of like that. We always liked hard work. We always liked striving for something that was next. And I think when you look at buying a business or anybody looks at a trade deal or PE or whatever it is, you look and think, how much runway have these people got left? Because you don't want to replace everybody. And I think we could articulate and show energy and passion and, you know, that we had the right people to take this thing on to the next level.

How would you define those as like levers then? If you go, I mean, you said there's like 17 or leave it, like what was that culture? Is that people? Is it leadership team?

Is it I think that's so you can break it down. So there's definitely leadership team. Yeah, that is a, that's a specific thing that people will look at and they'll look at whatever metrics they feel they want to look at, whether it's longevity, size of team, contribution, you know, how that team is performing on EBITDA, whatever it happens to be, growth, uh, whatever. Um, our job was to position and make sure that those people that were external at the time and didn't know understood the numbers because you can look at two different teams and you can look at and say PPH there is incredibly high, it's low there. Um, you know, they're on similar sort of salaries or OTs. How does this work? And the reality is that's an established business. This is starting up and actually the PPH there is really good and they're starting to grow a business. So you have to give them the, you have to tell them the narrative and the story behind all the numbers. And then yes, you can, you can sort of quantify a lot of these things like culture and dynamics and those sorts of things by looking at churn rates and how long you keep people and how quickly people perform and, you know, all those sorts of things that it all gets looked at. Like, there's a different— I think it's probably a different firm that does each aspects of due diligence, right? Like, so you get proper deep dives onto all of this stuff. So you need to be able to demonstrate, um, what all those numbers mean, basically.

So I want to go into what some of those other— the other numbers that always came up. But like, just, just to sort of make sure I understand the things that you just said there, because I think it's a really great insight for people is basically one of the things that you're saying was strongest about you guys was just that real narrative, and you could say authentically with passion about the people you had in the organization and like what they're going to be capable of in the future. Yeah, that was a big part of it. Yeah, okay, fair. That's, that's important to hear, I guess, isn't it? Because if we're being really honest and you're saying you want to get to some sort of event or whatever, are you looking around the room and going, I'm selling it, but actually they're tired, they're exhausted. Are they gonna kick on and carry on? Like, it's something you've got, I guess you've gotta really think about, right?

Well, I think especially depending on, I think one of the things that people, people say they want to have a deal or an event and that's their exit of their business, usually founders or whatever it is. There's so many different types, right? So it depends on what type to then think what's gonna be the lever that we pull here. So if you are thinking it's gonna be a finance deal, so it's a private equity deal, they're not going to come in and want to do the recruitment side of things. That's not their specialism. They can come in and help you transform your finance team or your tech team or the back office, whatever it is. They're probably not going to be able to really drive extra performance out of your sales leadership team or your sales team. Whereas if it's a trade deal, it might be different. You know, if it's a recruitment business buying another recruitment business, they might not care about the leadership team because they've already got that. So they just need to plug and play for something else or whatever it happens to be. So I think depending on the type of deal, changes it. But realistically, at the time the deal was done, I think we as a leadership team were looking at the private equity thing going, okay, well, you know, maybe naively, does this mean we've got extra money to spend on systems and finance teams and whatever else, operational efficiencies elsewhere, just so that we can keep running as fast as we are or run faster on the sales side of things? Whereas they were never going to come in and do the opposite of that. We didn't need that. So I think you've got to choose your levers wisely for who's buying it, not just for where your business is at at the moment.

Yeah.

I think if I was running a recruitment company now and the aim was to have some sort of event, I think you've got to be clear on what kind of event you're trying to achieve before you start to really spend a lot of time on this.

But I mean, I'm even thinking like a lot of people I've sat down with who achieved like a management buyout. It's— that's going to be pretty important then as well, isn't it, in terms of like that team, how energized are they? Like, they're not even going to be entertaining that if they don't think there's like a really positive future.

Yeah, we've definitely an MBO through PE, but, um, and it's more just a PE deal really. Yeah, so, but yeah, you're right, it's got to be— the management team have got to have— you've got to be able to— the person buying has to be able to believe that they've got a good period ahead of them of high performance. Not just— you get tied in, right? There's tie-ins and those sorts of things to protect, but you don't want tired people tied in. That's even worse. We'll probably be better off letting them go.

What were the— because I know I've asked you a lot about this, I'm always curious, like, what were the, the like numbers and performance metrics like you had to bring to every due diligence meeting, or like you felt like they cared most about, or they really were always drilling you on? Like, what were some of the numbers there? Because I think that's always interesting for people to learn from.

Um, good question. I think so. Obviously the high-level numbers— revenue, GP, uh, contribution down to EBIT— those numbers are pretty much sorted in, you know, sometimes the CFO would speak to their finance team and all those sort of larger numbers would get hashed out fairly quickly. Um, I think where we would get into the most questions around the finance side of things, uh, the financials is really around team by team, like where they're at, where does the revenue come from, number, you know, things like what's your, um, time to productivity for consultants. So when you hire somebody, how long does it take you to get them up to speed and get them paying for themselves? And then how long until they're profitable? Um, I think other numbers are just based on team by team, whether it be sort of conversion rates from high revenue to GP, you know, conversion rates from GP down to contribution, which for us, to give some context, because it might be different in different businesses, but we would have our GP numbers or NFI minus out direct costs of salespeople within those teams and a couple of other sort of costs on the peripheral of that. And then you've got a contribution number which shows you without considering any of the operational costs in the group per person. It just gives you a contribution number for that team and then EBITDA sort of sits underneath that.

Right.

So a lot of those granular numbers around teams, um, that's kind of, I think that's probably the thing that we were most drilled on, I would say. And then maybe some of the client stuff as well. I think there was, I remember there was a, there was a commercial due diligence company that did all of that. So they wouldn't—

and what, and that was like how many clients you have, how much they spent with you?

Yeah. What, what, what service lines do you deliver to them? Where don't you deliver to them? So similar sort of thing, like what's the upside in these? Um, and I guess for maybe context of people going through this experience, we, we, they spoke to our clients. So like the, the commercial due diligence company, we would hand over a deck of all of our information to them about clients and what our game plan was with them moving forward, right? So we would say, this is our client base, these are our markets, this is how we intend to continue to grow this. They would do their own due diligence and come back with a pack 10 times the size of ours with everything they know about the energy market or the tech market or, you know, these sorts of things. And then they would go and speak to Yeah, they'd ask us who, you know, they'd probably look at our client sheet and go, we want to speak to 5 of the top 8 clients that you've got. So they'd have conversations.

Yeah.

Um, and so we, I think one of my, um, the MD in one of the consulting companies that we were doing a lot of work with spent an hour, hour and a half with them answering a load of questions. What, why Opus? Why do you use them? Um, how do you find them in comparison to other people? You all those sorts of things. What can they do better? You know, everything.

It's all of that.

So that's, so you got to be mindful of that when you're going through a process that you need some clients that, um, just back up what you're saying you do, basically.

And like, just out of interest then, if I'm listening to this right now, may have aspirations to get to some sort of financial event, I may not be, but you know, you've been out of this now, you're, you know, speaking, have spoken to a lot more other founders and stuff. Like what's good practice in terms of, as a business owner, what do you think would be things that they should always be tracking, looking at? Because there's a lot of different numbers that you said there, but what's like good practice, do you think? Or, you know, from you going all of that, you've seen it on that side, what they all care about. Yeah. If he was running a recruitment business tomorrow, or, you know, you speak to one of your friends who's a founder, like what, what would you expect on their like dashboard or whatever would be good practice, like good habits to get into? Because I think that's, as, as you'll know, I don't know what your journey was like, but you know, when people start that entrepreneurial journey, they, they didn't always get to develop those commercial skills. And some companies really let people get exposed to the P&L and how things are run, but a lot of companies don't. So I think that would be good to hear from your perspective because you've probably had to really level up in that area, haven't you, to go through that, I'm sure. But yeah, what's like good practice, do you think, in terms of numbers? Like, what would you expect people to— should they, should they try— what should they track?

Well, first of all, I think you need to have a really good CFO in place or head of finance that's looking at all of the, you know, looking at the P&L, but more so importantly, looking at working capital ratios, looking at cash flow, looking at debt, aged debt, all that sort of stuff. And somebody that understands the correlation between those numbers and the business that you're running to be able to come to you and say, look, we've got opportunities here, or we could potentially do this. So I think you need to have somebody that's in the weeds on that. You've got to be really, really on the money when it comes to that sort of stuff. Then I think from a more commercial aspect, I think looking at— I would say the number one thing is productivity or GP per head. Productivity per head, GP per head. I think it's a really good metric as a, like, a level playing field for all recruitment businesses. Um, higher isn't always better. So sometimes if a productivity per head in the team is too high, it means you're missing out on opportunity. There's probably more you could do, right? So you should be looking to maybe add more heads into that, expand out across different clients or whatever. There needs to be a strategy around that. But I think knowing what your total cost per head is across your business and then having a direct comparison, that's your productivity per head, shows you kind of per head what your profitability is. And that allows you to make good decisions around whether you expand the team, pull the team back, change markets. I think that's a starting point for a lot of a lot of decisions you make, because I think that's the next thing that PE or anybody buying a business will look at. They'll look at, show us some decisions you've made. Why did you make those decisions? What were the outcomes of them, etc., etc.? And I think being able to talk to that also shows that you're a smart leader. And if things, you know, there's always challenges in business. I don't think any, I don't know any recruitment company that's just got a straight line, smooth line to success, right? There's so many challenges always. And just when you think you've got it all nailed and you're sorted, something comes out of left field. And but it's how you adapt to those things, how you prepare for them and try and see them coming. And then it's how you sort of show that you made the right decisions at the right time to pull it out of the position it was in and drive it forward. And I think you need to be able to tell those stories as well.

Yeah, I like that, the productivity per head, cost per head. Alva, I know this would be nuanced, but again, you've got a bit more exposure now to different companies. It came up in our, um, like, solo founder community recently, actually. So interested to ask you, The question was something along the lines of like, I've got 5 people in my team, this is like my average cost, is that good, is it bad? Because again, like, people have no idea on this sort of stuff, right? I know it can be very varied and nuanced, but like, what would your gut tell you there? Like, what, what did a typical cost per— what would you look at as a, from what you've seen, average cost per recruiter? What are you saying on that? I think that's an interesting start.

You're right, it's nuanced because we would have a different— obviously we We had probably a good sort of sample data. We had New York, we had Tampa, Austin, Dallas, London, Manchester, Bristol, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Hong Kong, Sydney. So there's always, just in general, there's different costs in those places. Even if you just think London to Manchester or Bristol to New York, right? There's a, there's a big cost difference in salaries, office rent, all those sorts of things. So yes, it is very nuanced. I think you, to answer that question for whoever that person was, you need to look at who's in my area, who's doing the same markets, um, what's the tenure of those 5 people. Like, if it's— these are all the things that can make a massive difference. If you've got 5 people that have got 10 years of recruitment experience, that is going to be significantly higher cost base than a blend. So I think it is incredibly nuanced. To give you a specific number, I think we always looked at kind of £8,500. Yeah, probably about £8,500. That's pounds, so call it $15,000 per month, per person, per cost.

That's good insight. Again, it'd be nuanced, but I think that, yeah, like you said, you got a really interesting sample data there with the sort of numbers that you looked at.

So in Australia, ours was higher than that.

I was gonna say, was it lower or higher?

Yeah, so that— I think that was probably group average, so that covered off, um, you know, everywhere combined. Um, ours was probably more around the £9,500-£10K mark. So before the boom and before COVID we always used to sort of— £11,000 per person in Aussie dollars, yeah, $20,000-22,000. Okay. Per month per consultant was a good, that was a good number for us because it wasn't, you know, we weren't trying to make loads of profit at that point in time. That wasn't the objective. The objective was to continue to expand, develop and grow. So once a business unit got to that, we would sort of sit down and go, right, what's the strategy here? Where can we grow? Is it the right time to grow? Should we, et cetera? And then we'd have other business units that were, cost difference would be would be different. But yeah, it was probably around that mark. And then, and that's a good barometer to make sure that, you know, you don't want, you don't want a load of teams that are all, you know, costing you money, but you can have one or two strategic business units that you're looking to grow out whilst the others are producing really good sort of contribution per head as well. So that was a really key number for every, like, before any decisions made or anything happens, like, we, we were always very conscious about where we where the business was when it came to financial situation. Yeah.

So you just said that, sorry, $20,000, roughly around $20,000 cost per recruiter.

No, no. So that's, um, yeah, yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Cost per recruiter was a good number for you per month. Yeah. Per month.

Yeah.

Because we would factor in and remember we were predominantly a trainee sort of model. So we have high L&D costs, high IR costs. Um, And I think one of the ratios that you also look at is that contribution ratio. So how much is it costing you per person you've got in your business? And when you've got a trainee coming in that could take 3, 4, 5 months to get up and running, that's just pure cost that you're burning through in a team. So it can bring it down very, very quickly.

And what would be like, again, it would be varied, but you can talk on us like what if that was a sort of a good number that you consistently worked to or looked at, what would be like expectation of that consultant per month? And that would vary on experience, but what would be there? Would it be—

so it would be, yeah, completely vary. So we would always have our, because, because we were predominantly a trainee house, we had a really great sort of, um, progression plan, which was based not just on billings, on, you know, you had to interview for promotion, you had to show other characteristics and behaviors and traits that we would look for in more senior people. But it was numbers-based to trigger it. So, you know, trainee consultants need to do $120 grand, next level needs to do $180, next level needs to do— so we would have billers. I mean, we had some billers that were close to, in fact, over a million dollars a year billing. But then for us, it was more on average as you're, you've got those, but you're also adding 5 to 10 new headcount in that's not going to do anything for 5 months. That on an average, I think we were probably doing So pre-boom, we were averaging around 16, so about $30,000 per head per month. So 360 was like an average billings for us in Aus, including trainees. Obviously some people were doing 600, 700, 800 grand.

Okay, that's a very good insight.

It was, um, it was getting the balance right between all of those.

So if I was Just to change gears here for a sec, what— so if I, if I was in some of your meetings with your fellow colleagues who were like the MDs of US, these types of things, what would have been like the frame of mind when this like deal went through? Like really leading up to any moment now it's going to happen, like, do you know what I mean? Like what was it, excitement? Was it, do you know what I mean? Like what, what would I have heard in these conversations? I'm just interested because I can imagine You know, I can only assume here mostly surely excitement, a bit of relief because you, you know, you've really got ready for this.

Got ready for it. I think, yeah, there was a, there was probably a, I wouldn't call it relief, but it was, it was kind of like, okay, yeah, what we've talked about and what we've been working towards has played out to this point, right? Deal's not done at this point, but all the things we talked about and how we felt, and everybody feels this, right? It's your business and it's you, it's where you work or whatever. You always feel like you're better than everybody else, right? And like, why wouldn't they look at you? We should surely we're great. It was nice to actually have that cemented by an external sort of viewpoint that there was something interesting about us and they believed, you know, what we did. So that was, that was good. Um, I don't really think, I don't remember loads of excitement.

Really?

Because, and like, look, I was the odd one out in the deal in terms of geographical location actually, because everybody else was in the UK and I was kind of the only one in Aus that was heavily involved in the deal. So I was doing like 6:00 PM through till like 2:00 in the morning for weeks. It actually all happened quickly, which was good. I think it did.

It didn't drag out.

No, because we, it was 2022 and every, sorry, 2021. And every month, every week that went past, performance was getting better. Every month that went past, performance was getting better. So obviously when you're buying a business, you kind of want to get it done quickly when it's like that. Cause otherwise the valuation's just gonna go up and up and up. So it went very quickly, but yeah, it was a lot of late nights and it was, it was more stress, to be honest. Like, it was like deep into numbers, deep in storytelling, all of the stuff we had to put together and explain, answering questions left, right, and center. Um, so yeah, I think I was probably more relieved after it was done. And there was like 3 nights on the trot where it was like signing contracts and they were saying to me, you have to stay up, you can't fall asleep. Contract has to be signed as soon as it hits your inbox. And I just was like, why? And then, um, but there is a reason for it and everything else. So, um, but I think like the guys in the UK had a bit more fun. Yeah, because I think when the deal was eventually signed, I think it was kind of late afternoon for them. I went back to sleep and they all went out and celebrated.

Yeah.

Um, but no, it was an interesting It was an interesting period, um, but what was weird was that, like, the week after, it was just nothing had happened really. Back to— it was the same job, same people doing the same thing, um. I think that was actually quite— that was good.

I think there was—

I think there was some more excitement because we brought people in. We were able to we were able to bring some other people in that leadership team that sort of worked for me, that we were able to bring into the picture a bit more with things like equity and like trying to take it to the next level and showing them what that can mean over the next kind of 3 to 5 years. It's kind of how we, where the business was positioned at that time. We did the deal and we thought, right, there's a 3 to 5 year plan here. And if we can achieve this, then that will trigger the next event, so on and so forth. So I think there was a lot of excitement post-deal around that for certain people. Um, but I think for me it was more just getting back into it, back to the grind. Yeah, we got a lot of— I remember sort of, we are maybe a week or two after it was announced, so this is probably a couple of weeks after the deal was actually done. Um, we just got hammered by RexorEx and other recruitment companies saying, you've sold to private equity, you know, this isn't going to be good for you, get out. And so I remember a month after that deal kind of leading up to Christmas now was— yeah, it would have been December.

People really use that as a way to be like, things are going to change, the business isn't going to be the same.

Exactly. I was nervous at that point. I think I could go into that Christmas, I was like, didn't expect that. What if we, uh— I did to a degree because we were always quite an easy target. We were always somewhere people would go, rec to recs or sort of competition, to try and take people from us. It was always something we had as a bit of a challenge. I saw that as a really good thing. I think the reality was I didn't— I knew the answers before. Like, if somebody would— if we were getting hammered a lot and poached and whatever else, I knew the competitive landscape, I knew who we were, and I could have a conversation with our staff to make sure they understood who we were, what we're about, why we made decisions. I think that's one thing we did really well. Um, but when the deal got done, I didn't have the answers because they could be right and they could be wrong. I don't know. Like, it's, so it was, I think at that point it's like, what? Like, you, you're now owned by PT, it's going to be different. You know, do you want to come and have a chat with us?

Right.

And I'm sitting there going, no, I don't think it will be. I don't know, everything will be fine.

Uh, but like you said, you didn't have the answer.

Yeah, I didn't have the answers really. And, um, to me at that moment in time, it didn't seem like there was going to be anything different. Um, I mean, there was going to be stuff different, right? I wasn't naive to it, but I didn't think the impact on the team would be different, would be felt massively. Yeah. And if anything, I probably thought actually there's probably more opportunities for people here now. I think we can, um, you know, I think the growth trajectory of the business was primed to go again kind of thing, and I thought that would create a lot of opportunities for people. But yeah, at that point in time, I didn't really know.

That does make sense though, if you think of like, like you said, the leadership team that you built and everything, like they were there. So like, yeah, obviously they're going to be the people in C, so unless all of those people leave Yeah, then why would it drastically feel different? Because, yeah, like, that doesn't make sense. I do get that.

Yeah. And I was very confident on those people because I, you know, I think one of the, um, I think when I look back on my time there, I like— the thing I'm most fond about is the relationships I have with people there. And I think the experience, you know, we were nobody in this market and it was— we were sort of out, uh, it was us against the world kind of mentality. And these people believed in me They believed in the business. They put their careers in our hands. And we, I think I especially, but the management team take deep responsibility for anybody that's in their care and they're in their team. And to see that go the way it went was the magic period for me. Like, um, yeah, I think I'd have to look up the numbers for you on anything you ask me. But if you say, what, talk me through some promotion interviews that happened in 2016, I could probably talk you through those entirely because they mean so much more. And I think having that team together when the deal went through was really nice.

It's been unreal. Yeah, it was nice to get to that point.

Yeah. Um, yeah.

So what point did you then get asked to step in as fully as like group CEO then? Um, rough timeline.

Yeah, late 2022. Uh, Amy Floutz was, um, took me for dinner and said, I want you to do this job. And I said no. And then we had a couple more conversations around it and she won, so I said yes. I didn't want to do it at the time because I was really, I was, I was happy in Oz. Um, I had the different business units and I felt like we were just about to go on to another level here as well. And I wanted to have my time focused here, but it was an incredible opportunity to be fair. So, um, and also by the time the deal was done, um, I was one of the, you know, the way the, the post-deal equity was split, I was somebody that had a significant amount and that comes with responsibility as well. So I thought, okay, now I need to, I need to step in. She was going on maternity leave, so somebody needs to step into the business. And, um, I, it was weird because I think at the time she asked me, there weren't really signs that the market was going to shift. And so I said yes. And there was some things in there. I think there was some ways in which Oz was working at the time that she wanted to replicate elsewhere. So I think her view, what she said to me was get into this role. You're full control and decision-making. You can change whatever you want basically, and, you know, make these improvements and do this and that and the other.

I guess that could have sounded like a pretty good fun challenge.

Yeah, because I thought some of the things would have been beneficial for the group everywhere. Um, so yeah, so that was interesting, and it was a really good opportunity for me to now work closely with Rory and Jack as well, who are people that I've known for— yeah, I went on a super trip with, with Jack when we were at S3 and then ended up working together and, and then met Rory when he came in. And so these are people that kind of known for a long time and worked with, and, um, so opportunity to work with them more. And, you know, Nige, who was in the UK, who'd been there since day one. So yeah, that was— so yeah, it was, it was a, um, it was the right thing to do. Hindsight, I could look back and say probably wasn't the right choice, but I think it was, um, yeah, it was an interesting time because obviously 2023 market, I think tail end of 2022 there was a bit of a shift and it was kind of like, what's it, you know, how's this going to play out? And then 2023 was one of the toughest. Yeah, one of the toughest years in recruitment. I, it 10 times tougher than COVID for me.

And then just give us like, let's just like, what you know, because I'm sure you've done a good chunk of reflecting, like, what, what do you wish you knew before the PE deal? Or maybe, I don't know, would you— have you been more reflecting on like, what I wish I knew before I said yes to like the CEO role? Is it more that, or is it actually coupled with—

um, no, it's not necessarily that. I think, you know, hindsight's a wonderful thing, and I can always look back and say, yeah, what if this, what if that, I had no doubts about anything up until the end of 2022. I was like, this is great business still. We're heading in the right direction. This is where I want to be, et cetera, et cetera. I think there was some things that I wasn't aware of outside of my region, which I became sort of aware of fairly quickly, which meant there was just some challenges internally as well as the external market. And I think when going leading into 2023, I was really clear in my head if the market is in a tricky spot, which by January 2023, it certainly was, right? We were now at a point where it was, you know, it was stop-start and that was the tough part. COVID just happened and you just deal with it. When it's like, okay, is the market off? No, it's not. Yes, it is. You know, we're hiring. No, we're not. All those sorts of things. I think that makes it so hard for a leadership team to stay consistent. And, um, and for our teams to stay consistent and so on and so forth. So I thought that was, that was a really tough time. But coming into that, I thought what I'm going to do is just do what I do best, and I'm going to get involved with the teams. We're going to work on what our strategies are. We're going to work on how we operate. Um, and a big thing I remember, uh, probably not great, I don't know, maybe not great leadership style or whatever else, but I remember sitting down with a lot of the sort of teams in the UK So team leaders, team managers who are sitting there saying it's like consultants are finding this really hard. They've just come off boom years and now, you know, every call they made back then, they'd pull a job and get a deal done and now they're not getting any. And even just one of the silly things that I said was that there's not allowed to be a meeting in this business where it doesn't end on a high. Like even if, you know, half a team have quit or that there's no jobs.

End on a positive.

You have to end it on a positive. Even if it's a joke, like we could take the mick out of each other or whatever it happens to be, just leave. Don't leave meetings on a down note because if I look back to the points in my career where I was successful, it was always about my attitude and my approach. And so, and it was the same with all the teams I ever ran. If it was high octane, um, people had each other's backs, um, there was good direction, leaders were leading from the front, celebrating all the wins, like all of these things that you can't put on a spreadsheet to a value that they work. And so I think all of those, that was sort of very much Q1 and Q2 of 2023. Um, but what I didn't realize coming into that period of time was there was a lot of other challenges in the business, which I can't go into too much, but that, you know, that, uh, that means you have to make decisions that sort of benefit other interests as opposed to, you know, your sort of team and, uh, and maintaining the market, uh, position that you've got and all those sorts of things. So that was, that was really the tough probably the toughest part. Yeah, and I was traveling a lot. I spent, I think, yeah, it must have been so hard.

I mean, I've done the flight once, so I can't imagine that. Family as well, right?

Yeah, I was one month in Oz, one month overseas for like 12 months. So, uh, in fact it was worse than that. I think I spent 9 months out of the country. Really? Yeah, because we, it was with, so obviously the P firm are based in London and all of the C-level, uh, based in London, but US was a huge growing market for us. Um, Oz wasn't really gonna, after the PE deal was done, Oz wasn't really gonna be the bit, the bit that added significantly more value because we were, we already had quite a big market share, like 100, more than 100 people. We were doing $130 million in turnover and contributing 50% of the Group E bit. It was always gonna be the US or Europe. That's the, the big growth. So I spent a lot of time with Jack who had built a great business in Austin now, um, coupled with New York and that was starting to, to really grow, which was great. So I spent a lot of time there as well. But yeah, it was hard. Like, that was, that was—

imagine that being so hard.

That was tough.

I mean, look, now this is like why I wanted to sit down with you, but I think crazy to think how much you've learned. Like, just silly, the amount, like, what you've been exposed to, what you learn, what you've gone through. And I think this is one of the— I think one of the greatest things about our industry. Like, I'm, you know, if me and you were chatting when you really started that with Darren back in 2014, I'm sure you had some big goals, big ambitions. But would you, if I was to say to you that you went through all of this, don't know how much you would have believed me. Maybe you would have, but I think it's pretty cool, all these things that you've now learned along this journey. Like you said, the thing I love hearing, that the thing that really sticks out to you is the people that you brought on that journey and, you know, the, the people that you brought along that you've seen maximize their potential and the things that they've gone on to do. Because I, I know so many people then have gone out of, um, have left the business to like start their own journey, do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

So I just think it's really cool that, you know, all of those things— um, there's even more probably that we could go into, but like there's just so much that you've learned.

I mean, there's so much I've learned. You're absolutely right. But I think fundamentally, if I was to go— I've learned all of this over the last 10 years, um, you know, if I'm able to, you know, when I'm able to start my next recruitment venture, a lot of this stuff is— it's good to have, but it's not— it doesn't create a really high-performing recruitment business. I would go back to all the stuff that 2015, 2016, 2017, and markets have changed. Dynamics have changed completely, but there's fundamentals around how you attract great people. You look after them, you give them room to grow. I think that's one of the things we did well in Oz. Um, I'd give somebody a leadership roadmap, but then I'd step out of their way, and unless I was really adamant on something, I would let them make their own choices on it, because like, you can't let people grow if you don't give them room to. So I think that was always something that I again would do again. Um, so I think it's a lot of those kind of Yeah, more day-to-day hands-on experiences that you go, okay, that's, that's really what fundamentally deal only happens if there's something amazing to buy. Right. And I think that those are all the things that will stay with me forever. I think. Um, and weirdly enough, like I always go back to it is just attitude and, um, attitude and positivity. And leading up to this, I was, somebody messaged me saying, I saw that you're going on this podcast and, uh, asked if they would get a mention. And I said no, but They gave me a really good example of where this happened. So I had two guys working for me that were good performers, but quite inconsistent. And I remember at one point we had a bit of a little bet for some tickets to this concert that they couldn't be positive about their market for one month. They weren't allowed to say anything negative about their market for a month or their, any client, any candidate, nothing negative. The moment anybody heard them, they lost the bet. And, um, I think that was sort of May, April-May time. And, uh, they ended up managing to do the whole month without being negative about anything. And then they went on that year to be the two of the highest, the two of the top 5 billers globally, and went on the super trip and everything else like that. And that, that was in 2015, I think, 2015, 2016. And that always then became like an example and a management style for me, is if you can be, if you can have the right attitude and be positive you will get results comes your way. And I think that just echoed throughout the whole business, which was just awesome. And then that helped us get to where we wanted to get to. So it's things like that that I would do again, as opposed to talking about due diligence and ratios and that's what else.

Look, Craig, I appreciate coming on, sharing your story, and I know so many people benefit. So thank you.

Yeah, I hope so. Hope so. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.