How to Start or Grow your agency in this current climate

I think we're just getting a few more people in the room and then we can, we can get started. Hello, Abraham, nice to join. If you've got any questions, obviously you can dive in straight away now before the rest of people get into the group and then we can get going. Sam. So question from Mr. Endermite. Do you guys still have as much work as you did before the current crisis started? Great question. No, we don't. Obviously things have dropped off a little bit. I would say probably around about by 40% in terms of live vacancies. It depends what type of niche and market you're in now. A lot of this is quite temporary because pretty much a lot of the world is on just some sort of pause right now. Quite confident things should go back to some sort of normality in the next few weeks. We have been trying to guide clients into interviewing remotely, onboarding remotely and getting candidates started remotely. So it has had some impact and that is to be expected in terms of how we planned for this over the next few weeks. But I am confident things should pick back up again in the near future. Ibrahim, thanks for joining. Your question is how do I get into recruitment for teachers for global education, recruiting teachers in the UK for Middle Eastern teaching? How do I get started with this? In terms of how you get started, what particularly, what's your, what's your first question in terms of getting started? I would start mapping out the market in terms of your type of schools or teaching clients that you would need speaking to candidates in the markets. I teachers within the industry you need to drill down into. Is there actually a need for Middle Eastern teaching in the uk? I'd imagine there is because that's what you have maybe found in the market. And then it would be a case of mapping out your clients and mapping out your candidates and then doing some reach, automated reach out campaigns along with one to one messages. Do I approach schools first to find jobs? Ideally, yes. Obviously you've got two strategies. You could do an agency at the start which is called like an mpc, which is most placeable candidates. So ie, if you get a really good teacher in your case and you can market those on to a range of schools and sell that candidate in. It's a little bit of an old school way of doing things. The ideal approach would be, yes, to approach different schools, find what jobs, where is the need? So where is there a demand? Where is their pain point? What are they struggling to fill at the moment? So that's the key thing that you want to look For Abraham, in terms of when you approach the schools, find out what actual vacancies they have. So you may find that there might not be Middle Eastern teachers in demand or there might be. So theory is, is one thing, going to market and actually testing it is another. I can see quite a few people joining in the live chat now, which is brilliant. I know I give everyone pretty much 10 minutes short notice. This is the first time we've done a YouTube live. Normally obviously the pre recorded videos. I'm going to try and do a little bit more of this over the coming weeks just to give you as much value as I can to the channel. But I will try and give a little bit more notice next time and so we can have a bit of a set procedure. So Coel Ganguly, do you think we should reach on to clients, let them know we are available? Do you think we should offer COVID 19 special pricing at this current time of clients? What type of market are you in coil and whereabouts are you located? And I can probably give you some more, get some more context on that. But yes, COVID 19 in terms of special pricing, there's a variety of ways you could do that. You could spread out the payment plan over the next six months, which could be a good idea. So say if you've got a six thousand dollar fee, ten thousand dollar fee, you could spread it out over six months to help that client cash flow. As long as you've got a nimble lean agency, your profit should be within the 30, 40% mark at least. So you should be able to afford to spread those payments out. All I would advise on the initial payment coming in, make sure that covers your costs so you're not actually in deficit or debt by making that placement and then spread the rest of the profit out over the coming months. Could be a great opportunity for you to offer something unique and different and give more value to your client audience as well. Because in these times of uncertainty they will remember you for that. So that's really important. So yeah, so calls come back tech recruitment mainly and digital marketing Canada, US and uk. Okay, great stuff. So I seem to, I've got a good understanding of that market because we're in that ourselves in terms of tech recruitment across the UK and we do a little bit of it in the us. So tech recruitment, great industry to be in. Even though now obviously everything's on pause a little bit. A lot of these tech companies will be hiring again and the candidates are so high in demand. You could spin it with the client and say, like, if you hire your talent now, you're going to beat the curve because these, these clients need to move quick when there's some good candidates around in the market now, when everything gets back to some sort of normality and all of that investment drips in from the likes of the us, uk, in Canada, billions and billions of dollars and pounds. It's, it's the, it's the clients that can adapt in the way of remote onboarding and remote interviewing. Even if you can set some interviews up for when you come back in a few weeks, that could be a good option. But yeah, this is the time to really give clients some love. More attention and asking about the pain points. What are they going to be doing when things go back in terms of the office? What are going to be their struggles and pain points? These are the times you could actually really get to know your clients. So hopefully that answers your question a little bit. Quill, let me know if you've got any more questions. Jacko Swanpool. Hi Jocko, thanks for joining the Live. Could you explain how you set up a virtual assistant program? What functions do they take off your plate? Good question. I've actually posted a video, I think in the past around building a virtual team. You could get a range of things. I would start off with your low value tasks first, Jacko. So that might be administration work in terms of in recruitment, whether it's shortlisting candidates, emailing candidates in Bulk, managing your LinkedIn profile, managing your emails, a range of things really. Your CRM system, building data sets, what type of functions Jaco do you have currently that you are overwhelmed with is probably the key thing. Write those down and start to step by step take them off your plate into your va. Got a question here. Oh, is the healthcare industry good? I want to start in recruitment. Some parts of the healthcare industry are obviously very good, depending on what location in the world you're looking at. If you want to start recruitment, like I said before, now is the time to do it. Never ever been a better time to invest in personal development, invest in your personal growth and literally take the risk and go for it. Because when, when there's been chaos comes new order. A lot of bigger agencies have actually took the big suffering for this because their overheads and costs are very, very high. So the lean, nimble agile startups are the ones that will thrive in this economy. Thanks, Quill. Mr. Endermike. When should a completely new person to recruitment. What should a completely new person to recruitment focus on? What mix of Calling companies versus finding clients Would you recommend should you find candidates before you find clients? Like I said before, you've got two options. You've got the MPC model which you can pitch in most placeable candidate to companies. That's one way which is sort of the old way of doing things, what we call the new age client attraction method which I teach in my program. One of those methods would be to build your Dream 100 list and actually target companies with unique ways on how you interact with them, build relationships, reach out to them. So I would be finding clients first. Mr. Endermate, see what jobs you can get and then look at the candidate base. No worries. Chat oh, let me know if you need anything else in terms of questions, just wait for everyone else to join. No problem. If anyone else has got any questions, feel free to go ahead. In terms of like these, these times as well, I think it's important for everyone to understand this is a time to really improve your life as well. And obviously if we have the right type of positive mindset in terms of what I've done. So maybe I could, I could go into that a little bit more around. I blocked down any news and media, especially the last four weeks so I really don't know specifically what's going on in terms of the COVID and the pandemic at the minute. I heard just through a third party obviously that it's been extended for three weeks for us in the uk. That's all I needed to know. So I've been surrounding myself with positivity all of the time. Positive thoughts. I've been currently reading a book called by Seneca, one of the stoics and that's a really good read. This time you should not be wasting watching too much tv being bored. You should not be bored because these are the times that you can work on yourself whether that's your inner self or work on knowledge around how to start and launch a business. Work on some skills that you've always wanted to do. Spend that time on self reflection. Spend some time on giving out gratitude meditation. I really have enjoyed this time working from home. This is our fifth week as an agency working from home and I probably work more than ever before but also had the breaks that I need in terms of throughout the day and having a good set morning routine. Ibrahim, what sectors are best for recruitment? What are common pitfalls with recruitment? Best sectors for recruitment Obviously the ones that I know the technology I like tech, technology, financial or good I suppose teaching at some point because someone asked the question There, I'm sure that's going to be still quite hot. Healthcare is obviously going to be hot. There's going to be quite a few things in and around. Like in these times when things go back to normality, a lot of companies are going to be getting a lot of money flooded down. A lot of businesses are suffering unfortunately as well. So having a lean and agile approach to being able to adapt to market conditions, so speaking to the market is going to be key. So having these chats with potential clients whilst they're at home, getting a feel of what noises are they making above from board level on what they're going to do when they go back to the office, are they going to be growing aggressively, looking at different investment pools as well? So there's a lot of websites you can check out in terms of what companies have had big investment. So all of the companies that have had VC funding and money flooded in, their number one focus is growth and that's headcount growth. So if you can get into those type of companies that are going to be giving you that, that need to actually hire and regardless of whether the business is making profit initially, they could be very good. Mr. Endermite, with tech recruitment, with tech recruitment, would you focus only on permanent, temporary or a mix of both? I started off my agency in permanent, but what we've looked at now and we have a contract department and temporary vacancies, I think a lot of transitions, a lot of companies are going to be scarred by this and a lot of them are going to look for temporary resource to lower longer term overheads and costs. So they may look to increase just winning a project, outsourcing that to contract resource and making their margin in between. Because a lot of agencies, particularly in our industry, when I say agencies, maybe digital agencies, marketing companies, tech companies, they are, they normally make money on the margin when they own source tech stuff and to build a project or to build a solution. Now a lot of that will probably get outsourced and they just want to win the business, outsource the work, make sure it's delivered and make their bit on the margin in between. Even though the margin will be smaller because they would be using more expensive contract resource. It's less risk, less risky as it were. So I would do both. You can make a permanent placement and make a good 5, 10k on your first fee. So that brings in a lot more cash flow initially for little overhead. So if you going to really raw start off, I would start off doing a permanent placement but with a view to having a temporary solution as well. Hi Jo again. So what are some of your great tools that you've discovered? For example LinkedIn automation tools, remote work tools, CRM, ATS. Some good questions there. So it sounds like you've probably already got your agency up and running Jacko. So how are things going for you in terms of great tools? Yeah, LinkedIn automation tools. A lot of people have used different ones. LinkedIn have clamped down a lot on LinkedIn tools so we constantly have to adopt and test and measure different tools. Some older ones we used to use, I think there was a one called LinkedIn helper which could automatically connect and reach out to candidates. What I would recommend is just real conversations with your market. So if you can drill down really on your your market Jack or and you've got say a thousand companies that you could target and 5,000 candidates within that pool, you just want to be constantly connecting, reaching out, having conversations with your market. For that Remote work tools I have recommended in the past. Time doctor is one that you can track the time for your virtual assistants and they can log on there and put on what project they're doing the screen shot software on there and they can access the payroll in terms of paying employees like IE Virtual team we use transferwise really cheap in terms of the conversion rates. It doesn't cost us too much to do that ats I've got a couple. The CRM system we use at the moment is called Vincerry V I N C E R E We've got another cool tool in ATS that we use as well. But yeah, for the remote working tools if you are just getting started on a VA, recommend using the sites like upwork.com hi Gene, welcome. So Jean's part of our six figure recruitment accelerator program. So welcome Gene. Gene's been with us for the last few weeks. I know Gene's starting up a finance agency in Boston so thanks for joining. Hi Jay. James, Speaking of positive thoughts, I noticed you mentioned Tyler Buzz as one of your influencers. What do you think about him and have you joined this program? Yes, I've met Ty a few times. I've done one of his programs I think five, six years ago. The reason I give Ty credit was he got me into reading books. So now I read. Always read at least a book a week, if not more. Big advocate on knowledge is power and this is the time to double down on reading books. In terms of his new programs, I'm not too sure Gene like Ty is he likes to be a mini celebrity as it were. So I don't think he focuses all of his effort and work on actually building a really good program anymore. I think he has people in his team or he has outside networks of influence that he partners or joint ventures with in terms of putting a program together. So I don't think Ty has too much actual hands on influence within that. So it depends what you're looking for in terms of what you want to get out of. So maybe you could just enlighten me a little bit more Gene on what you are looking for in in that. Mr. Endermite, as an established agency, how much time do you spend per client? I have a team that looks up to the client so I still go out and win the client the majority of the time and then we hand that off to our delivery team or one of our senior consultants in terms of the client side. So not as much but I will be spending a little bit more time with clients as I'm over the coming few weeks and as things go back to some sort of normality re establishing those relationships and keeping them strong and tight through through this situation. Many clients have the objection that they pay a lot for what they actually get. I understand that you offer more value through your processes etc, but I'm curious how much time actually goes into finding the candidate when you're established. Depends. Like it's knowing where to hit the nail with the hammer, as it were. Sometimes you could find a candidate within 30 minutes. It could take you 30 to 60 days. So it really does depend. But the more you specialize in your niche you really get good at it. You map out the candidate market, you consistently engage with that market passively with different marketing strategies, campaigns and outreach methods. That again like something we teach in the program, like that's the type of thing where it gets quicker and quicker being able to find the candidates once you keep specializing in that market. So yeah, it does depend on what market you're in and how long you stay in that market to to get that. I'm just trying to think for you Jacko, if you're still, you're still on live. I'm trying to think of other tools. Is there anything particular for you Jacko, that you are struggling with at the moment and I can help you out with. Just let me know and pop it into the chat. Again, like I said before, what was the ATS has come. Okay, ats, which one are you using at the moment? Choco. So because we've tested quite a few so I can give you some and Some feedback on what works well and what doesn't. One of the things around mindset as well, whilst we were on that subject previously, was if you're ever going to change your own personal financial circumstances from one level to the next, what gets you from where you've got to now to get to either a six figure agency and a seven figure agency, you need to accept some things that you need to undo in terms of your mindset and your brain because you'll constantly be drilling up to a barrier that you, you can't get through. So unlocking that barrier is a lot around like mindset and rewiring your brain, rewiring your limited beliefs around certain things. So you do always need. That's what I always recommend getting mentors investing in programs, whether it is like my program or someone else's, like these help you push through the barrier that is limiting your success. It's called like mental anchors as it were. So you need to get rid of negative people around you, whether that is your family. So one of the big things for me was like the friends that we used to be, my friends five years ago are not my friends today. Some core friends that I've got that are still have good core values I'm still with but I cut out a lot of noise, a lot of negativity. I do not like being around negative people at all. So if people have got negativity in terms of mourning all the time or thinking everything happens against them etc. You need to eliminate that from your life. Because to get yourself to a 67 figure agency owner and to be successful in life, you need to surround yourself with successful people. That doesn't necessarily mean financially successful people, but successful people in, in life. Do they have a quality life? Do they have a strong mindset? Do they have the right type of belief system that matches yours? Are they in a position where you would like to be that type of person? These are all things that you need to consider when you, when you are looking for your mindset. Especially like in also like a reset, like a sort of mini recess that we're in now. Remember businesses are going to be a little bit more nimble in terms of their cash. So you need to be able to add more value than traditionally just sending a cv. So when times are difficult you need to double down on your marketing. But my belief is like now is the time to really double down in terms of your market niche on audience creation and actually giving value back to that audience. Really important as well. And always think to for someone to be a customer a day, focus on ensuring that they know who you are and you're front of mind and then you can sell to them later because attention at the moment guys is cheap. Cheap in terms of paid advertising has come really well down in price. But also on social media, there's never been more people online at the moment than ever before because everyone's working from home. Hi Jack. Also we don't have a great ATS at this stage. South African one. Yeah, good stuff Joe. I hope all's are well. By the way, I know we've spoke in the past, I know you're out in South Africa at the moment, so I hope you and your family are all safe. The one that we use might not be relevant for you because it is quite expensive. That one jacko. It's like $5,000 so I probably wouldn't recommend that one at this stage. There's other ones like Job Adder I think is quite easy to start with and I'm sure it's only 99amonth. It could be a good one at the minute. It depends how many jobs you've got on as well. Clients are king. So I would be focusing on having a client, automated campaign and new age client attraction method that you can attract clients on demand. That's your number one thing, especially in this current climate. If you've got lots of jobs on and you struggle to manage them, then worry about the ats. But the main thing is making sure your client funnel is nil so you've got high paid clients consistently. Cole, does your agency offer contract staffing? Yes, it does. As in do you handle payroll on behalf of your client? If so, how complicated is managing that? Or do you recommend outsourcing the payroll component? We have my PA office manager manages the payroll side but we do use third party suppliers to outsource the payroll as well and I would recommend doing that. Cool. Don't get bogged down and stuff like admin because you. You'd make more money generating more money by doing more deals, winning more clients, focus on what you're good at, own source the rest. That's what I would recommend. And especially having a lean model throughout. I think a lot of agencies are going to change and move towards an outsourcing model. Ones that had it in house, yes, to save cost longer term, but they're going to be probably trimming the fat as it were in terms of headcount and stuff. And like I said before, same as projects, just, just making money on the margin and Just going on to the next one. Bradley Robinson. Hi Bradley. Hi James. What are your thoughts on the following? So I'll just wait for your actual question. Coming through. Bradley, Someone else. IMTV do use Octopus. I looked at, we, we reviewed and demoed Octopus a while ago I think a year and a half, two years ago. They had quite a good deal actually and I'm sure, I'm, I'm sure it was, it wasn't too bad but I can't give a definitive answer if it's cool rate or not. I'm just going to double check. So octopus CRM IO yeah. Just to remind the all in one Martin software for LinkedIn. Okay. Is that the automation tool? Sorry, I thought you meant it's a CRM system. So this is like a LinkedIn outreach tool. There's so many about, to be honest, so I'm not too sure. Like I said, you just need to be really careful because LinkedIn are clamping down a lot on automation software so the last thing you want to do Is lose a 10,000 plus connections account for the sake of the automation tool. So make sure it's tried and tested and ideally not a chrome extension because they're the ones that they can track quite easily. Use automation software. Yes, we do, we use a variety of different certain tools. Hi Bradley, what are your thoughts on the following Starting your own business whilst employed at an existing agency? Tricky question because you do need to honor the contract that you have with your current employer. I for one would, wouldn't be happy if one of my members of staff decided to start the run agency whilst being employed. However personal development, it depends on your current situation. Brandy, have you been put on furlough at the moment? I know a lot of agency workers have. If you have been put on furlough technically you're not sort of working for them. So you could sort of work on your own personal development and build start building the system, start learning in terms of whether you're learning on a course on how to set up your agency and get your agency six figures and build the pillars that you need to in order for you to have a successful agency. But it depends on the current situation. But if you are working from home and you're actually employed then like I said, you need to honor the contract or just hand your noticing and leave because if you're considering doing it now, now is the time. If you're not going to do it now, you're never going to do it because there's never ever been a better time And I know. Keep drumming. That will never been a better time to actually start for yourself. No problem, Cole. Thanks again. I don't know, Koel, you mentioned where you're from. I'd love to know where your agency is based. Yeah, but going back onto the mindset, whilst the questions are coming in, having a strong mindset in terms of getting rid of the mental anchors that you've been stuck towards in your current situation, you need to eliminate those in terms of getting rid of people around you that are negative. One of the tricks I do, if it is family or close friends that you can't get rid of, is just changing a conversation. I always change a conversation. It's better than prolonging a conversation about that's either degrading someone or it's a conversation about the news or negative things. I always just come in and change conversation and try and just deflect as much as possible. One of the key things, as well as saying no, a lot of the times to say no is better than saying yes to something you don't want to do so or someone you don't want to see. So I was learning, instead of saying yes just to please people, I say no a lot of the time and you see that a lot of successful people are big at saying no because time is precious. So you always want to make sure you're protecting yourself with that. No problem. Imtv. Thanks for answering my questions. So cool. I'll stay on for a couple more minutes and hopefully I've answered all of your questions. Hopefully you found it useful and I'm hopefully going to be doing more of these in the near future. Next time I'll try and give a little bit more notice. Then I think I give 10 minutes notice and we've had a good amount of live attendees, which is great, but I think next time we'll try and do it in an ideal time for everyone with. With more notice. The question coming in. For someone who never worked in recruitment, but I run my own business, what steps would you recommend I take to switch to recruitment? Any. Any courses aside from entrepreneur, of course. What steps would you recommend I take to switch to recruitment? The hard part for you is going to be the good thing is you've owned a business before, which is good. So you've got that entrepreneurial mindset and you understand probably the basic fundamentals for running a business. The key thing you need to learn is recruitment. So books I would recommend would be Search and Placement by Steve Finkel. He was one of my bible books. Being a recruiter, you need to understand the fundamentals of recruitment, I would say, and also have a strong niche. So the people are generally successful in growing a recruitment agency or recruiters that have been average to good working for someone else and then move on and work for themselves or what I would call industry experts. Someone that's specialized might be a financial consultant or an accountant and then sets up an accountancy recruitment agency because they've got the contacts and they've got a good understanding. So it's, it's hard if you haven't got either, it's not impossible, but you would def 100, you need advice from someone or you need some sort of step by step blueprint, as it were, to, to follow to make sure you've got a higher odds of success rate. Because as we all know, 95% of businesses fail within five years. So the only 5% that get through it, I would say the high majority of them have had mentors, they've been on masterminded courses or they've learned from someone that's been there, done that. It's very important. My intention would be to hire within the industry I'm in. So thank you, I appreciate that. Say. Yep, cool. Yeah, hiring industry expert would be the answer, which is good. So we'll wrap it up for today's session. Hope you found that useful. If you haven't subscribed already to my channel, please do appreciate all of the followers that we have so far and I'll catch you soon.