Remote Integrator VA: The Key to Alex Making Extra $250k!

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, James Blackwell here. And in today's video, I'm going to be sharing a private interview I did with Alex Bell, who implemented our operations integrator VA into their business. So it fully streamlined and systemized their agency so they could scale without themselves being involved. So there's some really cool tips in this video. Check it out and I'll catch you soon. Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to today's webinar. Hope everyone is well. So I'm just going to give everyone a couple of moments to get in to the room and then we're going to dive in and wait for Alex to get in and then we're going to get started. So today's session's going to be live and I'm going to open things on to a Q and A as well at the end. So for those of you that are interested in getting any help in particular on your business and how you want to skill and what your bottlenecks are, then I'm going to leave it open as a, as a Q and A. And also you can ask Alex any questions as well. So just to kick off, I just want to double check everyone's in the room. Okay. So in the chat here, I want to make sure everyone can comment. So let's have a look. Yeah, so just give me a hands up and just say your name, where you're located and what your niche is. So where, where you are in the world, what city and country you're from and what your actual niche is in recruitment. Just so we've got an idea exactly where you are. So we've got welcome. Balal. So Toronto, Canada. We've got Teddy in Windsor. We've got Terry in the Cayman Islands.

Wow.

Never been there. Dean from England. Paul in Bristol. So we've got Isaac, London. Rector. Welcome. We've got Holland for Kim. Got. Norway. Belgium. Thibault. Welcome. Thibaut's part of we could accelerator program. Welcome Thibaut Biajo from Montreal. We've got Janique from South Africa. Awesome. We've got a lot of team in South Africa. Another person in Canada. Calgary. Jared. Welcome. Ben. Doing SAP recruitment. Know that very well. German. U.S. alia. Romania. Wow. South Africa. South Africa. Boston. So northeast the us. Okay, cool. Kelly. So we've got people from around the world in every single niche and countries. So that's really cool. Really cool. And what I would like to know from everyone as well is let's see if I can do a poll here because I would just be interested to see this Pool, let's see. I just want to see where everyone's at. Yeah, so I'm just going to start that. So there's going to be a poll here and what I would like to know is like there's, there's really four key parts of owning and scaling a recruitment agency. Okay. With the goal of getting to seven figures and beyond. Now that roadmap starts off as starter phase. So if you're in start affairs, that means you're either just starting out or you're 0 to 100k in revenue per year. Uh, so that means you're doing zero to one deal a month on average. Your profitability is really high because it's just you, your main problem is obviously getting clients, making placements and really building the agency. So if that's you, raise your hand and just put starter in the chat just so we can get an idea of the blend of people that are on the session, just so I can make it more tailored. If you're in solopreneur phase, that means that you've started your agency, you've been going at least probably a year or so and your revenue is 250k on average. So between 100 and 250k a year. Your profitability is very high because everything's still done by you. So you might have either hired and probably fired your first employee because it didn't work out, you're building your agency and you work maybe too many hours in the agency. So if that's. You just put solopreneur on the poll. And if you're in small boutique agency phase, so that is pretty much the phase where it's employees 3 to 7 and your profitability goes down a little bit because you've got actual people that are doing placements for you. So you've got recruiters and, well, I call delivery consultants. And your main problem then is you're working a lot in the business. So you're trying to manage a team, you're trying to build a team, you're trying to build systems structures, you're trying to productize the service more, you're trying to get bigger exclusive clients, you're still maybe doing a couple of deals yourself as well to sustain. And that's really a tricky part, the small petite agency phase. So if you're in small boutique agency phase, vote for that. And then for those of you that are in seven figure agency phase, this is eventually the holy grail. Once you optimize and you get to a point where you're doing a million plus in gross profit revenue. Your profitability usually is between 45 to 55, 60%. So that's normally the range. It does just vary depending on the size of your fee, how good your team is in terms of doing placements. Normally employee size between remote and recruiters is between 8 to 12. And then your main part is like letting go, hiring what I'll call a GM general manager in the business which is something that I teach in the agency blueprint and really dialing in systems and processes at a higher level. So higher level automations, higher level sops and structures so you each department's handed off so you can truly work on the business as opposed to in business. So hopefully that makes sense. So let's have a look in the poll I think just wanted to check where everyone's up. Let's have a look. Okay, so we've got 50% of you in starter phase. We've got 24 solo and 26% empatigue agency. If there's anyone else that's in 7 figure, just pop it in the chat. Just so I've got an idea. I'm just going to share those results there. Cool. Okay, Alex, I think you're on. So I don't know if you can put your video on and we'll, we'll dive in. Can you hear me?

Okay, I can, I can hear you. Let's see. You stopped my video, James.

I did.

I think so.

Let's have a look.

Let's see.

I'll make you co host. I'll make you co host. So that should let you just put your video on. You just click on the panelists on the right hand side. There we go.

There we go.

Cool. So yeah, likewise Alex. So for obviously the listeners that are on live and watching this recording, do you want to just do a little introduction to yourself so your background, your niche that you specialize and where you're located? Yeah.

So I'm based in Chicago and I've been recruiting for 24 years. A hyper focus in quantitative marketing. I've been running a solopreneur desk for most of that time. And I was motivated to connect with James last fall for a couple of reasons. I had kind of an inflection point in my life. My wife and I were blessed to have our firstborn and my business was sort of stagnant. I was running pretty consistently a 700 to a million dollars desk. But I had a Beth Wilson who was my right hand who worked with me for 10 years and it was a great business but it becomes stale. And I wanted more from that. But I needed to, you know, when you're doing that for so long, you have a fixed mindset. And I needed to identify systems and have processes that were repeatable and something that I could believe in. And doing all of that in a market that was correcting in terms of quantitative marketing. So. So that was the genesis of my background. And since joining your program, I've gone through a lot of change and implemented a lot of systems. And although my numbers are not close to a million this year, I'm on pace to do 500. But I'm building a team and I'm building that with systems that are going to help me navigate any market and scale this at a level that I never could prior to joining this program. So, yeah, so that's sort of my story. Does that help?

Yeah, for sure. And obviously we'll open it out, if that's okay, to a few questions of the members and the guests that are on the. On the webinar, which is cool. So walk us through. So looking back and when you first started your agency, so walk us through. What was that like? What was the turning point for you that got you starting in the entrepreneurial journey of owning your own agency?

Yeah, I mean, so I started on the corner of Madison and Wells in Chicago in March of 2000. And I have a twin brother who was in recruiting at the time. So I just fell backwards into this business. And I loved it from day one. Just the idea of unpacking people's stories and matching up talent solutions with companies like that just that struck a chord for me. I have more of a qualitative mind. So I don't belong in numbers. I belong engaging with people. So that fit me in a really comfortable way. And I worked with a large agency for 10 years called Smith Henley Associ. And I was running, you know, a pretty traditional desk where I had a team of three people. But I didn't necessarily enjoy managing people. I didn't have a lot of patience for people that weren't dedicated to the industry. There's a lot of turnover in recruiting. I need to make sure that my desks were producing around 250 to 300 if we could. But there was just a lot of management that I didn't have a ton of patience for. It wasn't a strength of mine. So after 10 years of doing that. Linda Birch was one of the co founders of Smith Hanley. She broke away to start her own firm. I joined her as a partner for Two years. And much the same, I was managing a team. I was kind of getting exhausted with that. And so in the summer of 2012, I broke away to launch Madison Wells. And my mindset at that time was I want 80% margins. Beth Wilson is tucked in next to me. She'll be my right hand person and I'm just going to run the most profitable desk without having to manage anybody. And anyone listening to this who's a solopreneur, that might resonate with them on some level. But I will tell you that that has an expiration date at some point and especially as your life gets more complicated. I got married. Now we have this little guy who's a total dream. Time is my currency, always has been, but it's more valuable now than ever. So it was time for me to get out of this fixed mindset of working in the business and get to a point where I can work on the business and create scalable systems.

So walk us through that. Yeah, I mean, look, this is really helpful because I think a lot of people get trapped in. You start a business for freedom is the number one thing. Yeah. Like so people are usually employed or recruited elsewhere and they're like, I want to be my own boss, I want to have freedom, I want to take home all of the money and sort of commission and I don't want the headache of managing team and employees. I could just build 2,300k. Yeah. Myself, life will be great. And off we go. And then obviously you end up realizing that if you, you don't have a business, you just have a high paying job with what I call golden handcuffs. You can't take holidays, can't take time off and eventually you get burnt out and probably sick of dealing with candidates and clients every single day. And obviously that has, like I said, an expiration date and you fall out of love of your business that you, when you first started. So. So walk us through that journey. So 2012. So that's like 12 years ago. And then. So how long were you going just yourself and you mentioned obviously the partner that you brought on. How long was it when it was just you and them?

It's been this whole time. I mean it really has been since last fall, like since September of, of 23. We're consistently generating, you know, 700 to a million and running kind of a squeaky business. But I, I was involved with everything and, and actually, you know, your program, like in the process of going through your program, James Beth started to realize like, this isn't for her Interesting. She broke away. She has two boys and teaching was really important to her. She felt like her kids were going to a school where she wanted to participate in that. So I was vulnerable to Beth's departure and without having your systems, and we'll probably talk about this later in terms of having an operations integrator, marketing sourcer. I have a 180 delivery consultant now that I replaced with Beth. The confidence that I have in the systems that we're implementing and even the placements that I've made in this market, which our market is definitely going through a correction in quantitative marketing. But it doesn't matter because there's still plenty of opportunity out there. It's just a matter of having systems that, that are repeatable that I can deploy into the market and connect with the hiring authorities. So I was vulnerable as a solopreneur with placements and Beth as my right hand. Like there is no margin necessarily for error. And I had my hands in all aspects of the business and everything. Having systems now is giving me the freedom to step back and identify people that can execute certain facets of this business and, and free me up to really focus on what I do best, which is the business development, you know, the client engagement and closing deals. I don't know if that answered your question.

Yeah, for sure. And what's really interesting as well was when you. The realization that you knew that the business was fully reliant on you and you needed to build some systems and structure and not be reliant on either you or this other person you had in the business at the time. Because you were just two billers. Like billing in a business. Yeah. And Correct.

Yep.

So. So walk us through then. So what made you actually come into the agency blueprint? Because a lot of people don't change. And, and as you've probably seen in the program, obviously the, the hundreds of agency owners that we've had in a lot of people were stuck for 10 years, 15 years. Like, what was the turning point for you that where you were like, actually I am fed up of just being a recruiter in my own business. I want more.

Well, I think, you know, to your point, I think quietly, I had been thinking about this for a couple of years. I, I have a competitive spirit and I think when you run a solopreneurship like this in the world of recruiting, you're going to get burnt out. And I'm competitive and it's a contact sport in recruiting. Anyone who's on this call that's new to this business, like, you have to have resilience. There's a lot of no's in this business. You have to keep going, you have to trust your process. But it's all about having. It's a mindset where I, in hindsight, I think, was operating with this fixed mindset and it was burning me out. And it wasn't until I had a life event, which this might sound silly to some, but having a little boy, it was just kind of a eureka moment where I realized, like, how important my time is and building for the future and a solopreneurship, it's a fine way to go if that's how you're wired. But we're all shaped by our experiences. And I think in hindsight, if, knowing what I know now, I would have, had I met James 10 years ago, I might be in a much different situation where I would be enjoying the business even more. I love recruiting, but I think when you're running solopreneurship, you're responsible for everything. You're the administrator, you're the recruiter, you're the sourcer, you're the marketer, you're everything. And it's really freeing when you get to a point where you start thinking about, how can I work on the business? Who can I hire that can specialize in this particular responsibility set? That's going to be challenging for them and rewarding for them, but for me, it's not worth my time. I've done that for so many years, for so many months. I'm better deployed in other aspects of the business. Yeah, so that, so it, for me, it turned out to be a personal development that bled into my professional equation where it just, it made me realize like it's, it's be so important for me now to create systems and unlock growth in Madison Wells that was much bigger and beyond my desk.

Yeah, that's really interesting. And obviously having a little boy obviously does change things because you realize, and I was reading a book the last couple of days called Die with Zero. And it's a really good book. And this guy, I think he's worth 50, 60 million. And he talks about your, your time in buckets of, of different stages in life when you're 20 to 30, 30 to 40, 40 to 50, 60, 70. And we all have this dream of having a big pot of money when we retire, but what's the point when you are not fit and healthy to enjoy the life experiences that, that can buy back? And then you obviously start reverse engineering the amount of time You've got like, time is the only thing that is finite and you can't, you have to buy time back. And that's one of the things where, which we'll dive into the operations integrator. It is physically actually buying back time that you can spend with your loved ones and family and on experiences that you want to do in life. Because you shouldn't be doing any task that's worth 50 to $50 or below per hour. And the quicker you see that and the quicker you actually buy that person to do that task and start operating more systems and efficiencies and automation and leveraging AI and clay and everything else, then you've got 20 hours a week back of your time. And that compounds like over the next four, five, six years, you realize that you, you don't want to be a recruiter for the rest of your life as well. You don't want to be working 40, 50 hours a week every single week for the next 20 years when you've got children and you've got family. So can you have a business that. Which we'll touch on might not do a million. It might do. There's a big difference between doing 5 to 750k a year compared to 1 million when you're doing all of the villains or you and one other person are, because that business is a bigger risk and it's just relying on you, putting the blood, sweat and tears in every single day. When you've got a business that's churning cash every single month without you doing the deals, that is just the sweetest feeling of actual true business ownership, as opposed to just being a recruiter operator in your own many agencies.

I also think to add to that too, I think for anybody that's in this business, you most likely have a competitive spirit. And I think as you progress in your life and in recruiting, when you work really hard in a business, if you were to shut the door, if I shut the door at Madison Wells, it's gone. It's like it never existed. And you also get to a point where you're thinking, I'd like to leave. What's the legacy? I'd like to leave a mark here. And if I can create something that can run independent of Alex, it's not only a saleable asset, but, but it also is, you know, it's, it's my legacy. It's my sweat equity that, that it. That can continue to make an impact, in my case, in the quantitative marketing industry.

Yeah. Cool. So. So walk us through. So you you came into the program which was, how long ago was that now?

September. I believe it was September.

Yeah. So it's, it's almost coming up a year. And what was the first shift for you? Like what was the key thing that you changed in your business?

Well, I, I mean this is where it created some friction. It's been a, it's been an interesting ride having with Beth, but we basically looked at our tech stack and I mean it was, it wasn't the most robust stack, but that was the first thing. We looked at our CRM and looked at all of our tech for client acquisition, for candidate outreach and redefine that entire staff. And believe it or not, because our niche was, we were so micro focused in our niche, we really didn't have automation. Personal messaging was important to us. So it was just like manual engagement and automation and I don't know if anybody listening to this, if heyreach or dripify resonates with them that automation for our business is, I mean I, it, it, it changed everything because it just increased the volume of my conversations and connected me with, with stakeholders who had changed jobs or were posting and it put me in front of them at, with a footprint that I just didn't have before because it was entirely on our desk to, to manually identify them. So automation and having a tech stack that affords us to personalize messaging I think has been a game changer.

That's interesting. So beforehand it was just you and the partner just doing manual outreach on LinkedIn.

Yeah, we were cultivating our client relationships. We had about 10 to 15 loyal clients that we were staying on top of and kind of just working as an extension of them. And then we had a network of around 15 to 20,000 candidates that over the course of my 20 plus year career and Beth working with me for 10 years, we were just sort of like hand selecting based on our search assignments and engaging with them. Which in hindsight when you look at that you're thinking, boy, your margin for error is really small. You're just completely at the mercy of the ebb and flow of the market. And I'll tell people like, I think in, in business I have enough life experience to know that it, it takes time. Like you, you have to have some patience. Sometimes I think people in recruiting have unrealistic expectations because they listen to a podcast or they hear these stories and then they, they go out to the market and, and they're disappointed if they're not generating a hundred two hundred thousand dollars a month. It takes time. It Takes time. You have to develop a niche. You, you have to develop a system, you have to trust in that system, you have to be disciplined, and you've got to execute each and every day. The difference with this program is that it afforded me an opportunity to look at a tech stack and then start thinking about individuals that could specialize in certain features of that tech stack in terms of managing the technology, managing messaging, managing outtake intake, and afford me a chance then to just focus on what I do best, which is having conversations like these.

Yeah, so true. Okay, cool. So the biggest first one was, was automation. And. And then what was the next step from there? So once you started implementing the automation, what was like the, the next transition? So just to refresh your memory for, for people that are not aware of, like how the agency blueprint roadmap works, this is like our actual roadmap of what Alex comes into the program. And we don't implement everything. There's just areas and building blocks that we start step by step. So we start baby steps. 0 to 10k is like pretty much dialing in client acquisition system, your live leads delegate. In the LinkedIn chart, LinkedIn candidate automation, which Alex has touched on. There was anything on mindset and your current self and desired self that you, you helped shift. Was any shifts, like for your, your personal side?

Well, mindset, I mean, mindset is everything. And I think if you're a solopreneur, that can be a really lonely space, especially if you put a lot of effort into deals and maybe a deal that you thought was going to close doesn't go your way and that can have an adverse impact on your next day or your week or what have you. So having systems in place where there's a couple of things. Let me back up. Looking at our tech stack was kind of like number one. And then in concert with that, was focusing on my mindset as a solopreneur and getting out of that fixed mindset and looking at how I kind of just looked at how have I been conducting this business and what do I need to do to change? And the first thing was mindset and then looking at my calendar, which might sound elementary, but just creating like time blocks on my calendar, which I had not done before as a solopreneur because I was kind of just operating mu du jour, just responding to my client needs, which is a little bit, when you think about that, that's a more emotional way of going into the business. And you don't want to be emotional in this business. You Want to be steady, you want to execute, you want to focus on numbers and metrics to ensure that execution. So having a calendar where you can time block that calendar and have one hour or two hour blocks that are focused on client acquisition, business development, candidate outreach, screening, interviews, tying that time block into daily and weekly metrics at any level, I think is really key to being successful in this business. Holding yourself accountable and then anybody that you hire, holding them accountable to their daily execution, their daily metrics, I think spells success. So for me, Mindset kind of went in in concert with our tech stack which then led to our standard operating procedures. Creating a presentation deck that I had confidence in, looking at our market map and making sure our market map covered our regions by industry, by level, creating our dream 100, you know, looking at stakeholders that I knew led research, insights and analytics centers of excellence that I wanted to work with and measuring outreach with them. I think anybody listening to this that's new to the business, if you cold call somebody or send somebody an email and you're expecting a response, you disabuse yourself of that expectation. It takes about five to seven contacts to cultivate that relationship. And I've been in this business long enough to know that anyone listening to this would think, well this guy might is on pace to do 500 this year and he's done a million in the past. Isn't he miserable? I'm not because I am so confident in the systems that we have and I know this business well enough that it's like a loaded spring. The footprint that I have and the conversations that I'm having are going to lead to job orders and revenue as this market starts to cycle out of our correction at the moment in quantitative marketing. So tech stack in concert with Mindset and then looking at our standard operating procedures as it, as it related to our client acquisition and our Dream 100 campaigns was really, really critical for me to diagnose our market and uncover opportunity and then execute. Yeah, I jumped around a bit there. I don't know if that, if that helped.

It's good, Alex, thank you. So from there you then, when was your first hire in terms of did you hire a marketing sourcer or was it first? Okay, so what was that experience like?

I've mishired a couple of times on the marketing sourcers and I think I. This is actually probably good for people to listen to because I've made mistakes in the program in terms of some of my hires for marketing sources. I think my expectations might have been unrealistic. And I think I also had my right hand person who wasn't fully embracing this new direction. And I think that, you know, what that demonstrated for me is that it's so important to have your core values aligned with your team and if they're not on board, you've got to cut the cord. Don't try to make it work, don't suffer for weeks or months. You've got to make a quick decision and make sure that you're hiring people that are open minded, are malleable, they believe in your core values, they believe in your systems and they're willing to learn and execute. So I made some mistakes on the front end of that and but I think now I've got a team in place where going from Marketing Sourcer, which I think is critical. If you've got a business like mine where you, you know, you need candidate outreach and you need, you need execution on live search assignments if you have that business established. Marketing Sourcer is key. But the next critical hire for me was an operations integrator. That's the individual. I have a qualitative mind. I was a philosophy major. I have no business working in a tech stack. And I also think in this world of recruiting we're constantly operating in beta form. What James, your program has really unlocked for me is not only the importance of taking advantage of artificial intelligence tools like Clay or automation like heyreach or a dripify but it's also recognizing that we're in beta. Every six months in this industry there's a new technology that might replace a Hay reach or a dripify. So don't get locked into one tool. Be open minded about it. But having an operations integrator frees me up to let them specialize in that. And I can send any new technology over to my operations integrator to say, should we be using this? Is this a good investment? How does this match up with our tech stack? Can we tuck it in? Will it integrate seamlessly? Operations integrator was really key for me and that is freeing mentally to know that I've got cutting edge technologies that I can market to our clients when I'm negotiating a fee. And it gives me confidence, inspiration that we're mapping the market efficiently and identifying our talent solutions for any job rack that we have. So after the operations integrator with Beth retiring from Madison Wells, I hired what in my mind now I'm creating delivery consultants. I used to think when I was a solopreneur, I've got to find that purple squirrel and get the 360 recruiter. And I always resisted that because I realized there was so much turnover in recruiting. I didn't want to go down that path. But now having these systems in place, what I'm realizing is it's so powerful to have in my org chart an operations team which my operations integrator will be leading. A sourcing pillar that's hyper focused on learning the business and identifying talent. And then having our delivery consultants pillar, which I don't need 360 recruiters unless I have a rising star. And it's really sticky with the business and gets to know quantitative marketing and falls in love with it and have sweat equity built in. But I can have an entire team of Delivery Consultants. 180. And I'm feeding them jobs and they're loyal to the business because they get up in the morning and it's just connecting candidates with jobs and they're getting well paid to do that. And I can, I can build that now because I have line of sight in a system that's repeatable and will work. Anybody that's running a solopreneur that thinks they're going to hire six amazing 360 recruiters, it's probably not realistic.

So true. And so it sounds like you're a lot more confident now in the business compared to you were for the last 10 years.

Like, yes, I, I think it, you know, I think, you know, anyone who's not in recruiting might have looked at my W2s and thought, wow, this guy's doing really well. But when you're actually in this business and if you don't have. Knowing what I know now, I was at the mercy of the market and the whims of my clients and candidates and that I think that's why there's an expiration date as a solopreneur, because that gets to be exhausting mentally and your hands are in all aspects of the business. So it's a much, it's. You feel more free and empowered if you have systems and you focus on who can I hire to provide a good life for them and put them in a position where they're a master of our operations or our delivery consultant or, or our, our candidate outreach domain. That, that is freeing and it's, it's joyful for everybody and it puts me in a position to make as much, if not more in a much more enjoyable way.

That's awesome. And just for those people that are listening, just because obviously we talk about ops integrators as if like everyone else knows what they are but to so to give people a breakdown like on the tech stack. So an ops integrator is like your, your virtual assistant remote employee that is literally the operations guru. So when Alex has talked about systems and all of the tech, a lot of business owners just don't have time to figure it out themselves and set it up. So this person is your go to person. I mean how much do you pay your ops integrator Alex that you found for us?

They're on $1,000 a month based out of Pakistan and then they have a, you know, a variable bonus. My ops integrator has their hands on identifying some of our live leads as well and integrating that into our Heyreach. We were using drip of 5 before hey reach so they're on pace to do 12 to 1500amonth depending on what that program is producing.

So basically what you've done is because they're, they're working like 40 hours a week so that over the month is $6 an hour that they're getting. And that's the type of money you bought back for a thousand dollar investment. You bought all of that back time so you can scale your business more and you have that right hand person that you know that can be learned like the things that they can do in automation lead generation which Alex has just mentioned and how we plug in like clay.com and AI, they can handle all of that because like what we do in the academy, which I'll go on to in a second, we actually find, train and help you hire these people and walk them through like a six month academy whilst they're operating in Alex's business. So that means Alex doesn't have to be always the go to person. When the ops integrator has a question they come on with our head of operations and director and they will walk them through the exact steps to do domain setup, lead generation campaigns, cold email campaigns and instantly set up all your LinkedIn automation, the lead generation using clay.com and AI, all the Zapier setups, inbox, calendar links, these are just some of the things that can do and obviously like from there Alex has talked about lead generation as well. So like helping them win more clients and yeah we do this fully done for you by the way. So those people that are on the call now, we actually source, train and can hire you in operations integrator. We shortlist, we provide them to you and they get fully trained on all of the systems. So whether it's building, market, mapping, geography, automation, email, automation, clay and they get access to all of our senior team as well inside Slack. So the inner academy whilst working for you and then obviously every week they come on Operation Mastery Clinics. Anything new that we're. Because the technology is moving so fast and you've probably seen that as well. Alex, with the last mastermind that we did in London about like Clay, which obviously the recordings will be to go back, we would be covering this a lot. And it's so powerful with chat, GBT and being able to carve out personalized messaging and just one click you can find a lead online on LinkedIn, Jobs and Google and before you know it, it's already found the point of contact, found the email address, created the email campaign, put it in instantly and it's all done. And that's where you get ahead of the market. With agencies that have 500 employees haven't even implemented that.

No doubt. And I'll add to that, like I, you know, anyone that has that qualitative mind like me that's listening to this, it, it would, it saves so much time having an operations integrator running a tool like Clay. Clay's a pretty sophisticated tool and I think to be successful in recruiting, especially in this day and age, my market is quantitative marketers. These guys can smell a cold call or you know, a cold email coming from a mile away. So the key is to have authenticity and personalization. And the only way to do that for me is to have somebody who's fully immersed in an artificial intelligence tool like Clay and is managing that execution because of if one of those tools, if something in your tech stack fires off an email that isn't personalized or something isn't quite right, you can kiss that lead goodbye. But if I'm not monitoring that on a daily basis, I've lost a lot of time and I've killed a lot of leads not managing that system diligently. So I think it's highly important for anybody that's growing their business. Like I said, I'm belaboring this point. But, but to have an operations integrator who's hyper focused on the tech stack and affording me a chance to have authenticity and a high level of personalization with my leads, I think spells success and it's an absolute must for me. It's probably the best hire that I've ever had in my recruiting career of.

24 years and for $1000 a month, or that's even, worst case scenario, $1500. If they're really performing like you've managed to Buy back so much time and freedom in your business and headspace that's freed up that you can be more productive in the business, make more money and obviously spend more time with your family. So Prudy's got a question. So. So, ladies and gentlemen, those of you that are live on the call, feel free to ask some questions about this. So Bru is asking, and I'll let you this answer this one, Alex, how you do it, how do you monitor the quality of the outreach? These VAs are doing.

Well. So for Hayreach or Clay, I jump in, I have a huddle. I think it's important too. This is a good point. Like when you're, when you're scaling and hiring people. I have a 15 minute huddle every morning to look at our live lead sheet and to under, I'll go into our sequencing and once a week with our operations integrator, I'll look at our response rates on the sequencing and look at the messaging. We might tweak the messaging. I think it's important to tweak messaging on a regular basis and not just get locked in. So that's where we'll, we'll flag something that perhaps has, has fallen apart or, or you know, isn't aligned where you don't have like the first name coded correctly or the, the job title coded correctly. And they can, they can jump in and, and fix that. Does that answer the question?

Yeah. That's cool. So, so now for you then, Alex, so walk us through. What's the next steps for you and what's the goal with Madison Wells? Now you've implemented the systems and the ops integrator and you mentioned the delivery consultant. Are you looking to hire. Where are you going to be hiring that person?

Yeah. So I have a delivery consultant out of Colombia. Economies of scale, whether it's South Africa or Pakistan or Columbia, Columbia, South America is interesting for Madison Wells because we're in Chicago, so the time zone is really favorable. South Africa is a little bit more of a challenge. But I think marketing sourcers that the Loom video, I'm assuming most people listening to this are familiar with Loom, but if they're not familiar with that technology, personalization, authenticity, like I said, is massive. I mean, again, I've been doing this for 24 years. It's just in the last 12 months that I've been deploying Loom and I have stakeholders in my industry that I've known for 10 years that I had lunch with a CEO last month who sent me a note saying what Is this technology loom? I love this. I need to get our cheap revenue officer on this with our business development team. It's brilliant. So my next hire is a delivery consultant. And with my delivery consultants I want to have marketing sources bolted onto their desks to support that volume. But my, the key for me is getting through this corrective cycle, increasing our search volume, getting another delivery consultant to help deliver on those assignments and then making sure they've got a marketing sourcer that's keeping their candidate pipeline healthy and then just repeating that and repeating that.

And I think obviously you can implement everything that we do with the marketing sourcer. It's just you're getting the person from Columbia and they do the same obviously tasks and day to day outreach messages on video because video is really powerful and still a lot of agencies are not using and doing it because one they don't know, they're just not consistent with it. And as business owners you don't want to do it yourself. And as we tend to see. So actually having someone that is properly trained to do this, it really helps elevate your agency and gives you massive asset over competition.

Well, I think it really helps with, with the candidates too. I think it's a great way to get introduced into the business. And there's something I'll add to this. And this comes back to mindset. I think that coming into this program with James, I was kind of locked into a lot of planning and getting stuck in planning and thinking and not action and executing. And part of that was I was fine tuning messaging and not necessarily confident that even something on a cold email outreach like I wanted that messaging to just be absolutely perfect. And what you come to realize in this program is that if you're putting a lot of pressure on yourself, if you're making a cold call or you're sending out a cold email in terms of your business development because you're looking at securing that live lead or that job order. It's a bit unrealistic. For me, the big mind shift was I'm just looking to set up a meeting. I'm looking for an introduction to start a conversation to understand the pain point and then help them understand how we can solve that pain point as opposed to, I think sometimes early on I was sort of transactional saying look, you've got a live lead for a director of consumer insights. We have that profile in our network, there's some value in that. But I think, I think if you're putting together loom videos, you can pump out 20 to 40 loom videos on the candidate side or the client side. If you or your marketing source or have a mindset of authenticity, just looking to set up a call with you, you have the right profile or you have a live lead in this market. Our, our clients are, their applicant funnels are overrun. We'd love to get your perspective on how you're managing that applicant funnel and introduce you to our seven step candidate delivery program and help how we're helping some of our clients overcome those overrun applicant funnels. It's just having that authenticity, that personalization and having a mindset that it doesn't have to be perfect. Stay away from perfect and lean into personal and then execute it on a daily basis.

So true. Really good advice. So Paul was asking, when you say lead creation, do you mean clients or candidates? So mainly on the client side. On the candidate side, the marketing source which we've just dived into does all of the candidate generation. So you've got LinkedIn automations and email automations and we help build all of these things out for you and really map it out and really get it dialed in so it gets consistent. And then on top of there you've got a marketing source. So for example if I show you. So your marketing source is going to generate candidates and then your, which is up here on the top left and then you've got your operations integrator. So systems and ops is the person that's going to hire and look after all of the client attraction automation. Okay so hopefully that answers that question. Other questions we got here is Vincent, do you have German sweetened beers? Not really. Sometimes in South Africa we do get people that can speak German. But what we've tend to find we've got a lot of German clients in the agent agency world in the program that are killing it. Vincent, with English speaking marketing sources, uh, and even if not everyone speaks English to German candidates, you're still gonna get an uptake of at least 20, 30% so that you just wouldn't do yourself. So I would definitely consider that. And yeah, like a lot of our clients that have got a lot of success are all in the German market. So we can sure help you with that. Booking a call with the team, we can walk you through how that works. Um, but yeah, that would definitely work. Uh, other questions guys. Uh, let us know and uh, we can, we can help you with that. So in terms of the goals, revenue wise and growth, Alex, which we were touching on, like what is the goal now for the next 12 months with Madison Wells. And what is it you want to achieve?

Yeah, I mean, right. So right now in our current market, I'm averaging about a placement a month. Our average placement is around, you know, 30,000. My minimum fee is 25,000. But I want to get this up to two and a half placements a month. So a year from now, be on pace at a million dollars a year. And to do that, I need to have two delivery consultants, two marketing sourcers, my ops integrator and my desk, and then continue to build from there.

Very nice. Really good goals as well. And you feel more confident now. You can deliver that now you've got the systems in place and you've got the core structure.

There's no question about it. Again, I've been doing this for a long time and I think I had kind of a really fixed mindset that was in hindsight, a bit too narrow. And I was just at the mercy of the market and my clients. And now this system has kind of redefined my lens and unlocked opportunity to help me understand how I can, with confidence, not only work on the business versus in the business, but deliver at a higher level for our clients. So if you have that confidence, I think it then, then it just really helps understand your market, your metrics, your execution and. And then it's just a matter of taking action.

Awesome. And what would you say to people that are listening to this, Alex, and on the fence about making changes, investing in themselves or maybe coming into the program.

That if, if you don't jump in, then you're just missing an opportunity. The longer you wait, you're just delaying the inevitable. Like whatever dream, whatever vision you have today, that can be your reality if you just take action. And if I had to provide guidance to myself 10 years ago, I would say, you know, don't think as much and plan as much and stop worrying. Just jump in and take action. Take action.

Love it. Okay, Alex, so we'll just do a quick five minute question and answer, if that's okay, and then we'll wrap things up. So, Thibaut, welcome, my friend. You put it in. Host and panelists, but it's fine. Would say your. Alex, would you say your business is actually a more valuable asset now in comparison to two years ago?

Yeah, no question. Because I'm now, I'm building Madison Wells to a point where I'm not the dominant variable to that equation. And you can't do that without the systems that James and his team have in place that, that I've been able to adopt. What it, you know, prior to James program, it all rests on my shoulder and if I'm not part of that equation, there's no value in the business. So no question.

Awesome. And Scott asks how do you handle the time difference in Pakistan versus Chicago?

Well, our Pakistan people that I. So actually my ops integrator that I first hired is on maternity leave. She's brilliant. She's coming back in a couple of weeks. It's such a critical role that Hassan, her replacement, I'm trying to figure out a way to have them both tucked into the agency. But they both agreed to operate on Chicago business hours. But I have a huddle with them pretty much every morning Chicago time at 9am and then we're on a Slack channel. So we're communicating on a regular basis on Slack throughout the day. But I would say yeah, most operations integrators, especially in Pakistan, they're accustomed to supporting U.S. business hours. And then of course if you're in Asia, PAC or Europe, you're in good shape.

Very cool. Yeah, cool. I hope that answers the question Tariq AI impacts on traditional agency operations so the biggest shift has been Clay. So Clay.com is being a massive game changer for recruitment agencies and a lot of B2B agencies and we help build all of this out for you. And there's so many powerful things that click and do and integrate with like I kind of get in the back end just now because I just wouldn't have time to log in. But basically what it can do is it can plug in and find leads or clients that are of advertise a job of your vacancy. It would find the point of contact on LinkedIn, it would find the email address, it can verify the email address, it can add it into ChatGPT and it can create a most personal candidate on reach message. Then it can do a three or five or seven step follow up sequence. It can load it into instantly which is our cold email, a tool that we use. You can load it in a driver fight to do LinkedIn automation side by side and then it will do it full end to end the click of a button. So it's operating in the background. So the ops integrated can build all of this for you. That's just one playbook. We've got a number of playbooks in our remote operations academy. So if you actually go through us and we will source, train and hire that ops integrator fully done for you, they will be fully trained on this. Because for you to do this Tariq or anyone else listening, it's not worth your time to deep dive in and try and figure it all out because you you are best placed speaking to high quality clients and candidates, getting more retained business, growing your brand, growing the business and making placements or getting your team to make placements. You doing the operations or figuring out automation and this type of stuff. Just me. You've been in for hours and hours and hours and you're just not going to get the ROI. Like I said, we worked out opposite $6 an hour. You're going to be doing a 6 to 10 an hour task and it's just not the right thing to do. But also like the most important thing like AI is happening and like clay.com like we figured out, we've tested a lot of tools and strategies. This is the biggest game changer that you can implement in your agency right now that is working and we give you the full playbook so we implement it all for you with the tech stack. So James asks, would you recommend going for the German software market specializing in Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt if you're based in the uk? It depends James. I don't know your full context or your background but I mean we've got UK agency owner clients in the program that are doing the gym market and software for example. Yes. But we also got German speakers that do software software market in Germany that might be a little bit better because they speak German but the placement fees are big there. Kozan asks what are the valid expectations from OPS integrated in the first six months if you're just at starting phase as a new agency. So basically because it's going to save you so much time because you as a startup phase all you should be doing is speaking to clients. You should be just winning clients. Like the Zero 10K is implementing these bottom pillars here but you should just be client acquisition system. So it should just be speaking to clients, getting leads, getting some jobs on and trying to make your first placement and in the background your OPS integrator can do and handle all of the rest. You're welcome. Thibaut Kyla why did you choose Madison Wells as a name of your own name? Let's just find any questions.

Yeah, I put that in there in the chat. My last name is Bell, which isn't the best for search engine optimization. So I started on the corner of Madison Wells in Chicago in March of 2000. So that's what I adopted for that and that's and you know that's actually part of the story. Everybody has a story. I think storytelling, authenticity, personalization, is really key when you're growing your recruiting business and that's what these, you know, Clay and your tech stack is going to help you execute, but it's helping you execute because you need to personalize, you need to storytelling, you need to have authenticity.

Cool. Kelly asks Costa clay, normally the one for $149 a month. When you really implement everything, you can start for free anyway in 100 credits. It just depends on how many credits you do, you know, for the leads and the follow up sequences, etc. But normally between free and start phases is pretty much what you need. As you're a bigger agency owner and you've got a team and you're doing probably on average 20 to 30k a month, you might go up to explorer stage, which very, very rare that happens. It's only here so the cost isn't big at all. Josh, is there any niches, sectors this system isn't effective in? No. Josh, like I've shown you, when the people come in onto the program, I mean to give you an idea, just even the, the members in the program, this works in any single niche. So like these are the members from actual joining newest date so you get access to the portal. So you'll see these are all people that came into the program and are doing all sorts of niches. So you've got stem, engineering, manufacturing. Blake joined just what you last week, Frank doing 20 years stuffing in executive search. You've got who else we got?

Well, I'll add to this James, while you're going through that like the community is first class. Um, and in my time in the program, I mean I've had private huddles with owners in Boston, in Romania, you know, in London, all across the world. It's a vibrant group, really, really smart. And what it, what it demonstrates is that it doesn't really matter what your, your market is. And I think some people think in their own niche market that they have like a unique set of challenges or problems that are only unique to their desk. That's just not the case. Not the case.

Yeah. One of the key things we didn't touch on today was community or the average of the five people you hang around with most. And what would you say the biggest impact has been for you, Alex, on the community side? Like what is it the difference between you being sat at your desk by yourself or having a team of other agency owners that are all in the trenches with you implementing the New Year Agency and having that support?

Well, I mean I do think the people that you surround Yourself with it really does kind of spell success in your life. And if you're around business owners that are, you know, generating a million plus a year and you start adopting their mindsets, their systems, their approaches, it just leads to success. And I think if you're stuck in your own desk by yourself with your own thoughts and you have limiting thoughts, you have a fixed mindset, it just minimizes your opportunity for success. There's no question about it. Very true.

Thank you for that. Okay, other questions were which package is the best of answer that? Rajiv, would it be possible to apply these procedures and systems whilst operating a more generic recruitment business similar to Michael Page? No, because you should never copy a Michael Page model because you're never going to be Michael Page. Like they're like a billion dollar agency with the old school model. Like that will not work as a solopreneur boutique agency or seven figure lean agency where you've got a business that you can run systems. So I always recommend having a niche within a niche. That's something we dive into in the program. I walk you through an exact framework how you're going to do that and how you can test that in the market, but definitely not. You can't be a jack of all trades recruiting multiple disciplines within a single company. No, it doesn't work. I mean, I mean we've had what, over 1,100 agencies through this program now there's 313Alive agency owners going through the 16 week program right now. And they all like specialize in a niche that's very, very important. Okay, we're going to wrap it up in a second guys. So any final questions, just let me know. Really appreciate your time, Alex. It's been great for you to share your journey. We love having you in lead mastermind and you're always showing up with the calls. Highly vibrant and it's great to see the transformation you've made personally and obviously within the business. It seems like it's a robust business now. That's giving you a lot more confidence to grow and scale than previously being built on like maybe a house of cards. And that's probably the key thing is like having solid systems.

Well, thanks for having me. And I feel so fortunate. Forever grateful that I got connected to you and the team because it's changed my business life. So I'm forever grateful. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Alex. So I appreciate your time, Alex. And I'll see you guys on the next one. So for those of you that were live on this call, like I said, um, there's a link in the chat, booking a call with the team if you're interested in implementing some of the systems that Alex talked about, that's really game changed his agency to where it is now interested about the OPS integrator and implementing A.I. look, there's no risk in booking this call. Like, in fact, like, the only risk you're facing is if you decide to ignore everything that myself and Alex has just showed you and continue to operate the agency in the same way. Then you're just going to be stuck in the same position. So book in a call. You've got nothing to lose. And we can walk you through exactly the step by step procedure of how that works. And for those of you that were watching, really appreciate you coming on live. Thanks again, Alex, for everything, and I'll catch you all soon. Take care. Ladies and gentlemen.