Leo Harrison, Founder & CEO @ Chapter 2

Welcome back to another episode of The Graduate Guide. Today we're joined by Leo. Leo, welcome to the podcast, mate.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, so you are the founder of Chapter Two. Um, Chapter Two is a disruptive recruitment company Talk to me about, in your eyes, what, what do you do and why did you actually enter this world?

Yeah, why did I enter the world of talent? Um, so I guess the best way to put it was I was on the customer end of talent acquisition for 15 years. So I was the global COO of a business that was growing exponentially quickly, um, across many countries around the world. Our compound annual growth rate over 15 years was like 64%, and we had to open up businesses really rapidly from 2016 to 2019, which is when our really fast growth hit. Um, we were effectively, um, the cash cow to the recruitment world. You know, we spent way too much money on recruitment. Recruitment was done, and I felt, in very much a transactional way. You know, uh, I'm not saying all of them were bad because actually some of them I'm still friends with now. Some of them I've actually hired. But largely, generally speaking, Um, the recruitment, the contingent model was based upon getting a hire and getting a fee, and I felt that it was transactional, slow, and expensive. And, um, when the company was acquired in 2019, um, I felt it was a good time for me to say, let's go and address that problem, um, because I felt it was a client on the customer end of it. So I've actually incubated and designed Chapter 2 on the basis of my pain that I lived at Oliver And I thought, well, if I can solve this solution for myself, then I'm going to be able to solve this solution for many other people feeling the same way. And it turns out there are a lot of people that feel the same way about talent acquisition and recruitment. So effectively what we do is we go into businesses and we design and run in-house talent ecosystems for them. So what that looks like in reality is that if there's an internal talent team that exists, we support them, nest behind them and within them to scale up and scale down, whether it be specific roles they might be looking for that aren't equipped to hire or find or source. It might be jurisdictional, so they might need to drive hiring in Germany, across Europe, and we land teams into to hire those markets. So we help them scale up and scale down, basically.

Yeah, and a lot of entrepreneurship comes from experiencing a problem and being almost so annoyed by it that you feel like you can't not go and solve it. Obviously, working at the Oliver Agency You, you grew and rose throughout the, throughout the ranks in that company. And when you were there, did you feel like you were entrepreneurial? Did you feel like you would go on to set up your own thing, or was it only when the actual problem came that you're like, okay, here we go, this is the time to do it?

I've always had something within me to want to do something for myself. Um, however, and this is not a but, this is an and, Oliver was such an entrepreneurial environment that I felt that need was getting satisfied. Every 18 months I changed my role, the company would change. So my entrepreneurial sort of desire was being fed by this fast growth company we were building and running. So I didn't feel the need to like go out and do anything. Um, it was also, um, because I was a partner in the company as well, and you know, I was designing something and building something to create, um, for, you know, to take to market at some point as well. So, so, um, I, I felt part of that business. I felt a partner in that company. One of the things that Oliver did really, really well was it built, um, uh, an employee motivation incentive scheme, share scheme for its employees, and which a lot of people participated in and, and motivated and incentivized the people beyond the SLT, uh, to grow it. So it felt entrepreneurial and felt like we were building a business. And it wasn't until that we were actually acquired and I thought, now's a really good time. I've been there 15 years. I felt really well trained and equipped to go and run something and build something on my own. And, and I could hand over what I was responsible for to, you know, people that could probably take the business on. So I kind of knew where my limit was and I could I'll be really honest, I, I was feeling like I was tapping out at my capacity. So I was running 28 countries across the world, everything from North Asia down around to Southeast Asia Pacific, uh, India, Europe, South Africa, and even over to São Paulo in Brazil. I was running teams and being responsible for those businesses and P&Ls at the top level, and, um, it it just became very, very, um, big. So, um, I, uh, when I left, they actually cut the business up and they transitioned a guy called Jason Bayless, who's a phenomenal COO, and he took business on beyond where I was able to take it. So it's the right time to, to hand over to me.

Yeah, I think it's a, it's a rarity to stay at a company for like 15 years in this day and age. You didn't go to university yourself.

No.

Um, and you went straight into Oliver Agency. At the time, what was, what was the company looking like? What was desirable to you as someone just straight out of school thinking, oh, what am I going to do with my career?

So Oliver wasn't my first job, um, but I was 22 when it was founded, um, and I literally knew nothing. Um, so I— what did Oliver look like? It looked like Simon Martin and a laptop, literally. Uh, there was another chap called Ash Grohl who actually introduced me to Simon, and, uh, there was 3 of us. Um, and Oliver was not actually the business that it is today, although it probably had sort of the sort of seeds of potential of what it is today. We're definitely excited into it. But, um, if you looked at— if you— if I said to you, if I walked you into the Oliver Door of 2004, you go, what is this place? You wouldn't recognize it as a business. And that, I think that's because of innovation. You look at Nokia, you look at, um, Samsung, you look at Apple, all these businesses that have grown, although some have, you know, plateaued. If you don't innovate, you're going to die. Nokia as an example, BlackBerry as an example. And so, so Oliver started out actually as a print management business. We did print, you know, and the reason why I got introduced to Simon is because I worked for Xerox. I used to sell photocopiers, my first job. So I just phoned up people and you probably don't even know what I'm talking about, but I used to sell fax machines. And before we had one email account for the office, that was, that was my world. So because I knew print, I understood print, I understood marketing and the concept around printing flyers and posters and out-of-home banners and that sort of stuff. So, um, when Simon set up Oliver, it was a mutual contact, Ash Gruel, who introduced us. And I think what he saw in me was just a really ambitious young guy that wanted to do something with his life, um, and he saw potential in me. So, um, I literally was like a puppy dog effectively, and, uh, I just acted like a sponge around this guy And Simon actually grew and learned, and every time he grew and learned, he passed that learning on to me. And I've even done a post on it today around mentoring and how important Simon has been in crafting my career, because I've done a master's, I did an MBA at Henley Business School, um, you know, I, I didn't do university, but I was, you know, fairly well educated. And, um, nothing can educate you like someone's mentoring when you're on the job. I think, you know, being on the job and learning on the job because you're doing it daily and you're learning about it. Every job that I did at Oliver was— I was doing it for the first time. So for the first 6 months it was horrendous. Yeah, because you're kind of learning and then you kind of get your rhythm and then come a year you're— I guess the best way to put it is you're, you're, um, how's it go? You are, you are consciously incompetent when you first start these things, and then you get consciously competent, and then you get unconsciously competent. I think that's how it works, like driving a car. Yeah. And every time I got unconsciously competent at a job, Simon would then promote me to the next job, and I'd go through the cycle again. So, um, I did that for 15 years. It was the most amazing education money couldn't buy. You you know, um, I feel really privileged to have had it. I would encourage anybody, um, to get into a business from the ground up and work with someone who's done it before, because you just learn on the sharp end.

And I think as a student you hear about the importance of mentorship all the time, um, but people don't know what it actually means, like impacts it, or like what a what a good mental mentee relationship even looks like. So obviously for you, um, in that scenario you were working with them, you're living and breathing it, um, being that chip on the shoulder. But throughout your life, like, you know, you've probably helped a lot of people, and a lot, a lot of people have given you help to, to rise the way you have. And I wonder, what, what for you does a good mentor-mentee relationship look like, and how do you actually like assess you know, how to get the most out of it and not just take and take or just as a mentor, give and give.

Yeah. So I think the most important thing in any mentor-mentee relationship is trust and vulnerability. Yeah. And it's upon the mentor to not take that for granted and it's upon the mentee to be able to be open and transparent and humble and, and be able to be themselves and honest. Because if one's got their guard up, it just won't work, you know. Um, so, you know, my personal experience was that Simon started as a boss in 2004 with me. Uh, by 2006 we were friends, and we became close friends ever since. And he was the best man at my wedding, and, um, he's my best mate, you know, that is probably the best you can ever get when it comes to mentoring. I've got, you know, the absolute best. Um, and I find I actually struggle because I've tried to do a lot of mentoring with people and it's something that you cannot force. So, you know, some people think, oh, because I'm a manager and I've got this experience, I should do mentoring. But actually, sometimes you just— people aren't great at it, so they shouldn't do it. Um, and while, you know, we might have a good relationship, if I sat in a room with you and talked to you about your career I'm— unless we could connect on that, um, sort of, uh, level where you trusted me and I, and I felt comfortable talking to you, you just— it would just be a meeting. It literally would just be a meeting. And I've had those before, you know. Um, I tried to mentor a few people within Oliver as we're growing the business, and the intent was there and it all was very positive and we were trying, but it just was forced. Um, I've mentored other people, um, and we've come in and out of relationships. I've sort of dropped in, supported them on a specific issue, and then dropped out again. I don't really call that mentoring. What is mentoring? It's coaching, really. Well, it's coaching. I think there's a blurred line between coaching and mentoring. Coaching is, you know, being very specific on a specific development area. I think mentoring is more holistic.

Yeah, I wonder, the, the type of recruitment that you do now, you don't do exactly like early, early careers quite yet, but you'll get people that potentially have come from a university background or have gone through an apprenticeship or just straight into a job.

What do you—

what have you seen to be like the differences in the makeup of a person that, that decision makes?

Um, I think that I, do you know what, I try not to look at what people have done previously first if I'm meeting someone. I look at the individual because, um, everything else is just written on a piece of paper. Um, and what university tells me is this person is well educated, they can work hard, they have a deep level of knowledge and experience in the specialism and, you know, a trade they want to go into, whatever that be. And they're going to need probably an incubation period into coming into the world of business. And that's okay if that's what you're looking for. But it's all about the appetite of the individual. So I've got A chap who works for me, he's 26, 27 now, I think. Brad Rose. He's a graduate, did university, did a graduate scheme at LinkedIn. When I met him, I was introduced to him in a coffee shop and I met him. Just the energy that came out of that guy and the work rate and the polishness of him. No education is really going to teach you that stuff. So I look for a blend of the both, you know. I wouldn't hire anybody based on just their pure qualifications. I'd need to see their personality and their sort of work ethic. Work ethic is so important, and work ethic isn't just about the job you're doing. If you haven't got experience, that's fine, because the university tells you about the work ethic and the grades you've got. So, you know, I think you need both.

And I think the other challenge then is like, okay, someone might be sitting there saying I have got that, I am hungry, I do want to do something, but they don't even know where to put it in the first place to prove that they are like that. Yeah, I think an element of that, what maybe students are missing in terms of how to actually land a job that you want to be in, is that storytelling ability, the ability to contextualize what you've learned, your experiences, even if it's not Cambridge, you know, all the traditional you know, some spring weeks, summer internships. Like, how can you contextualize the time you've been spending and make you seem like a desirable person? Yeah, for you, yeah, working here obviously in the recruitment space now, like, what, what do you think is the power of storytelling and actually making yourself stand out?

I think storytelling needs to be woven into nearly every aspect of life. I think, you know, when, when people engage with people and they communicate, what is going to engage the other individual more? Reading off a list, literally point B, point C, you know, D, da da da, or telling them a story from point A to point Z, you know? So storytelling, whether it's a business trying to articulate to a graduate that they can offer them an amazing career, or a graduate saying, I am the future leader of your company. Um, you've got to sell it. I think storytelling is about selling, and, and selling is about engaging. I think we're all, um, selling ourselves when it comes to talent acquisition recruitment. The business is selling its company to the graduate, and the graduate is selling itself to the business.

On that, you are, like I said, in the recruitment industry, which sometimes gets a bad rep. Yeah, for, you know, students like going into the recruitment industry. Like, and I think, you know, there's loads of reasons why that might have happened, but for you, you know, and you're obviously trying to change it in your own way, what would you say is desirable about the recruitment industry for someone graduating into an industry?

For coming into the recruitment industry?

Yeah.

I think that the recruitment industry is— has got a bad rap, and I think that's slightly tainted by the transactional nature of the reason why I set up Chapter Two. If you look at the people within our business, our team are the most amazing communicators. They're the most amazing people. People. They are generally extroverts, outgoing, social butterflies. So our team events are amazing because everyone talks to each other. We all communicate really well and actually miss them when I'm doing meetings online. So I think that if graduates are looking for a role where you want to build relationships with people and communicate with people and you're highly communicative, I think recruitment's an amazing career choice for you. The other thing to be said is, what could be better than helping someone get their next job that's going to get them more money to pay their mortgage and put their kids through school? I think that's overlooked in the deeper meaning of recruitment. People think recruitment, ah, recruitment fees, that's what people think. They think, oh, recruitment, it's recruitment fees, it's transactional. But actually what we think about is, I asked in my teams, I asked for alumni of people who we've hired into our clients so we can keep track of them and watch them go through our clients' ranks. So one, you know, proving that we hire really amazing candidates, but also making sure that these people that we brought in are having amazing careers and amazing lives because we brought them in there. It's like, it's like, it's like dating, right? If you introduce your friend to another friend and they start dating and they get married, that's amazing, right? That's really, really cool. That's what recruitment is.

Yeah, and it's, it's crazy that it isn't like that, isn't the reputation it has, because I think, yeah, like you said, in theory it's, it's a very admirable way to spend your life, helping people, you know, live and have a career that they're getting paid well for, they love, and And I think, um, I don't know where it went wrong. Maybe it was the commission incentive, um, possibly, or whatever it was. But, um, I think if we, if we look at how it's going to move forward and, and the world of, of work in general, what do you think, um, what do you think companies are really looking for, um, you know, in their actual recruitment from their their candidates that they're getting put forward to, what is making a young person really stand out other than, you know, work ethic, which is an obvious one, like some tangible things that a student could actually go and work on right now?

I think, I think there are a number of things. I had this conversation with a client CEO yesterday. Um, I think that companies are looking for the next future leaders of their business. Um, I believe recruitment to be the equivalent of like a lifetime purchase. You know, you only really want to do it every 3 to 5 years, like, you know, buy a car, buy a house, all that sort of stuff. Maybe even do it once ever. And, um, companies are looking for the candidates that are going to come up through the business and stay there a long time because those companies are going to invest more in those people. So what they really don't want to do is bring on the graduate recruitment teams or bring on the graduates, invest in them for 5 years, only to find that they become sort of a bit plateaued and go work for the competitors after they've just invested in that person. It's an investment. It's almost criminal for someone to bring on a graduate, for them to invest in them for 5 years, and then for them to jump, hop over to a competitor. And how can you make them see, how can that relationship, that marriage stay, yeah, stay fresh. Um, so one of the ways that a lot of businesses and this CEO looks for is internal mobility. I think internal mobility is really, really key. My career was born out of internal mobility. You know, I was mobilizing myself around Oliver for 15 years. One minute I was working as a client lead, next minute I was a group client, next thing I was an operations director, next thing I was sales, you know. And I think if, um, I think what happens is if companies bring graduates on, the job's not done when they've brought them in. That's when it starts. It's like taking a VC investment. If a company takes a VC investment and they raise, you know, £50 million, they go, oh my God, we're amazing. No, no, no. This is when the work starts. So I think you liken that to like a graduate intake, right? We've just taken on— we've just won all of these graduates. They've chosen us, which is amazing. They've chosen us. This is a real privilege for us. How are we going to now maximise this? And it's a relationship. So then, you know, you've got to think beyond 5, then into 10 years going, right, these guys are probably going to— we're going to invest in them over the next 5 years, then they're going to potentially fatigue. Some of them are going to leave, a percentage of them. How are we going to make sure we keep these ones that we invest in and they become our future leaders? It's a journey.

It's refreshing to see someone that's obviously doing so well within this world now and you know, having just recently started it, you know, leading this and actually having this outlook. And I think obviously someone that bought into your mission, Stephen Bartlett, that's a big name. And I wonder how that came about and how it's actually helped with what you're building now.

Yeah, he's— so the investment from Stephen is phenomenal for us. He's a great guy. He— there's so many things to talk about with regards to that relationship. So firstly, I've known Stephen from 2019-20. We first started talking, we tried to make something work in 2021, couldn't make something work, we stayed in touch. He contacted me in November and said, I'm still really, really keen to get into the talent space, let's talk. And it was quite good timing for us because, you know, we're a, you know, then now global business operating fully across EMEA, but South Africa, India, and North America now as well. So I said, let's talk. Most of it was done on Zoom, and it was one quite funny moment when we were doing the negotiation. I don't even know if he remembers this, but I tell this a lot, and I thought it was really funny. But we were doing this negotiation, right? So it's like, this is what I want, this is what you want, what you're going to do for it, and we go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth about the deal. And then it went quiet and I said to him, do you want to go talk to the wall? And it sort of broke the room down a little bit. I thought I was really funny. I don't know how funny he found it, but I found it really funny and just kind of flipping the whole Dragon's Den thing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And we did this deal and I've got to be really, really honest. Steven is not just investor, he is a member of our business. You know, he came to our company and did a talk about, you know, coming on board. And then any other investor would probably go, thanks very much, left. He spent the rest of the day with our team. He goes, can I stick around? You're more than welcome to stick around. This is your team now as well. And he stuck around. He spent time with the teams. And he also, you know, we have almost a weekly call with him and how he can help us develop different products that we have within the business and just offers his experience. And the other reason why, um, I, you know, I've brought him on board and this sort of, sort of, um, marriage works is because, um, he's got this huge platform where he can amplify our business. You know, we are a fast growth disruptive company, but in reality we are small. You know, we're 110 people. Yes, we are across many countries and we're growing. Our growth rate is 248% since day one. We've grown by 64-68% year on year. Um, it's a great story, but we are still small. So if I want to start making noise at a higher level, I lean into somebody who's got the platform to do that. Um, I was really excited to do it. Um, if you said what would you do differently, I would do nothing differently. Um, because he's, you know, it's been very beneficial for us.

And I, and I've spoken to quite a few members now within his team on the, the Flight Group side. Um, and it is, it it is very special, the sort of team culture he's making there. And like, and, and they don't have linear roots into that job at all. Um, so he clearly has like an eye that most people don't have for, for talent. Yeah. And how you both acquire them and allow them to keep growing. So yeah, what do you think it was, you know, that you maybe resonated so deeply on, um, in, in regards to talent? What, you know, you sort of mentioned your attitude towards it, but what was it that really like clicked you together to become partners on this project?

I think the reason why Stephen and I clicked was because he believes that people and team are the root of everything when it comes to business, you know. The definition of a team is group of people, as he talks about, and a group of people is, um, uh, only, um, based upon the connection and the work that they do together. And that is delivered by a recruitment team and talent team that can do that. So, um, he's really, he's really passionate about building high-performance teams, really high-performance teams. Um, and he, um, believes that if there is anybody who's not on board, not even from a performance perspective, but just not, not into it, he's like, this is not for you. Yeah, let's, let's, let's be friends, but this is not for you. Even in the interview processes that we've done for his businesses and his teams, we've put some outstanding candidates in front of him and his team, and but there's been certain aspects that have culturally not aligned. He's like, this, this won't be for you. So, um, so he's not just in for the talent, he's in for the culture as well.

Yeah, and I think from the outside looking in, it's very easy to go like, oh, your career has just been success, success, promotion, promotion, start a company, scale it, all these amazing things. It seems very easy from the outside looking in, but I imagine there's been difficulties and confusion along the way Could you talk, you know, maybe to someone who's younger, you know, at university or just graduated from school thinking what they should they do with their career, like about a time that was really hard for you but, you know, you pushed through and it was the best thing you ever did?

Yeah, there's many times. So, you know, um, talking about Oliver and that journey, um, I was constantly surrounded by people who were more experienced in their field of ad land, whether it be marketing, creative, production. They were all more experienced than me, um, and I had to manage these teams, and I felt like a massive imposter most of the time, um, and sometimes, um, it got the better of me. You know, sometimes I thought, why am I bloody doing this? You know, and there are a few times when I felt like jacking it in. But, you know, I don't think any relationship is worth having if it's not worth sort of fighting for. And I literally think that, you know, jobs and business relationships, I mean, employee relationships are like marriages, right? You know, as long as you're in for the long haul, you'll get through the tough stuff. So, so there's been times where I have stood in the car park at Oliver crying. Yeah, literally, because I couldn't do this or something wasn't going right. There's been times when I, I set up, I set up Chapter 2 in probably the worst time ever, 2 weeks before COVID landed. So, I mean, it might look like on LinkedIn it looks really, really good, but you scratch beneath the surface and there are scars and wounds there. That have got me to where I am today. I have an obsession for client services. I have obsession with building a quality team. I have an obsession for, for building something, building out Chapter Two. That's what fires me up every day. I don't think I'm ever going to retire because I love it too much. It is my passion and hobby. I don't really have any other hobbies other than doing stupid marathon runs that I raise money for charities for. But that's basically it. Um, so, um, I think you've got to really love it. And yeah, in— when I, I left Oliver in 2019, at the end of 2019, um, I was in a well-paid job. I was the fabric of that company. They— I knew everybody, everybody knew me. It was brilliant. And I, I quit it all to do this thing called Chapter 2, which was a presentation at the time, an idea I had. Um, I, um, COVID landed into the world. The people that were going to support me in that business pulled out, um, and I was cut adrift, and I was effectively just left me in a presentation. I said, I'm going to give it till October, November, December, last quarter of the year, to see if I can get this off the ground. Uh, in June 2020, yeah, COVID landed. So then COVID landed, which was horrific, um, so nobody was hiring. So the story goes, I quit my job at Oliver I started this job called Chapter Two. Uh, I'm not known in the industry. I had no black book, no relationships, no nothing. So it's all cold. Everything was cold, uh, cold sales. Um, then not if you know if that was hard enough doing cold sales with no network. COVID lands on your lap and nobody's hiring, everybody's furloughing, and the just the bottom has fallen out of the economy. Um, so went through a dark time then. I remember talking— Simon has always been my mentor. He's on the phone to me, we're Zoom chatting. Uh, I literally, like, I, I remember being on Zoom with him and having to go off camera because I was literally crying my eyes out. Like, messed up. I messed up. And I knew if I really asked him, I could have got my job back. Him being a mentor, and I know this about him, and I can say it quite confidently, I know I could have got my job back if I genuinely asked for my job back. But he didn't give an inkling that he would give me my job back because he knew that if he got me off the pitch, dusted me off, pushed me back out on the pitch again, I'd be all right. And guess what? I was all right, you know. So I kind of— he didn't let me think I had that safety net to use or cord to pull because he knew best. Now, if I did fall, he would have caught me and he would have said, come back to Oliver. But that was really dark. That was really tough. And I literally— I can remember so clearly now, like, I literally had to go off camera because I was just a bawling mess. I was embarrassed for myself. Um, so that was, that was, that was tough. Um, and you know, in running a business, everyone expects you to have all the answers, and you generally don't. Most of the time you generally don't. Um, the amount of times I have people call me and go, have you got just a minute? I was like, well, I have— it's not gonna be a minute, it's gonna be half an hour, and I've got 9 people that report into me, and all of them call me and say that pretty much. There's 4 and a half hours of my day gone, you know. So, and the buck stops with you as well. The buck stops with you. So when you're sitting in front of clients you know, you've got to find the solution. So yeah, it's not easy if I'm honest with you, and it takes resilience. The one thing I'd say, the one ingredient that any graduate coming into the world of business, if they really want to be successful, the one ingredient you need that potentially the university world hasn't prepared you for is resilience. Genuine hardcore, like, brutal resilience, um, that you get knocked and you get kicked, and then you think, well, someone's gonna help me up, then they just kick you again. Um, that's, that's what you need to really succeed, um, because yeah, it can be crap. And, you know, we've, we've done, we've done well. I, I think that I'm really proud of the team. I'm really proud of what we've done. Um, I want to do a lot more. I'm not even thinking of slowing down yet.

A lot of what we do on this podcast is try and tell stories so that somebody listening to this feels heard in a career sense, like they see themselves in you. And obviously you've gone on to achieve all this success, and it's not been easy, there's been hardship in it as well. But who was that 18-year-old Leo? Who— what kind of person was he?

Um, uh, the 18-year-old Leo was a highly competitive, slightly naive, career-oriented individual who always aimed for the next job effectively. So, you know, when I was 18, I was a customer service exec and I wanted to be a sales manager, and sales manager was— then I had to plan to be a sales director, and that was my— I always had what I thought I wanted to do. Now, I never ended up being a sales director, but I think, I think forward momentum was a thing that always got me going. I'm, I'm definitely not the smartest cookie. I think I'm, I'm, I think I'm I listen, I'm empathetic, I'm humble. I think that anyone who's 18, you know what, you've got to act like a sponge. You've got to act like a sponge. I was 18, I learned from everybody. I don't care who they are. And I mean like that today. I learned, I learned from Stephen, I learned from you, I learned from everyone around me. I always act like a sponge. So the 18-year-old me is still in me now to always act like a sponge. As you get older in your career, if I'm really honest with you, like a bit of ego kicks in and, you know, you think you've done certain things. You've got to be humble, like a sponge all of the time. And the 18-year-old me was a sponge to learning, consistently listening and learning from anyone and everything around you and always be open to learning. That's the biggest thing I think helped me when I was coming through my career, because when I was put in these rooms with people that are more experienced than me, I didn't see it as a, I've got to like assert my authority. I was like, right, you know, I can learn from all these people. And I've learned from some of the best in the business because people love to give their experience as well. So people love teaching because it boosts their ego as well. So it's a win-win.

Yeah, no, it's true. I think a lot of, again, when I started this podcast, I had no right necessarily to be speaking to the people that I did. And, um, and I think whether it's to stroke someone's ego or someone genuinely wants to give back their learnings, there's always an angle when you're young and naive that you can make someone believe in your story, whether that's just even your curiosity and line of questioning, like being that sponge. I can massively resonate with how important it is for, for graduates starting their career journeys. Um, my final question to you, which I ask every single one of my guests, yep, When you first started out on this career journey, you would have had a certain idea of what success would go on to look like.

Yeah.

Fast forward with everything you've learned and succeeded along the way, what is your definition of success and how has it changed?

Um, I think success is a moving target, is what I'd say. And because if you said that to the 18-year-old me that I'd be sitting here and anyone would be interested in hearing about my journey, and I'd be where I am now, and we've built a business and we've sold it, and I'm building another company, um, that it would be incomprehensible, uh, to, to the 18-year-old me because it's just so far beyond what I thought I was going to be. Um, so, um, I think the definition of success moves all the time. Um, what I think it is today for me is building a company of 500 people within 6 countries around the world, um, being highly— being a highly disruptive talent acquisition business, um, that's consistently innovating and adding value to our clients. That's what I think success looks like today.

Yeah, thanks for coming on, mate.

That's a pleasure. Yeah, thank you very much. That's really great. Yeah, I'm trying to think if there's anything other snippets I can give you.

No, you don't need it. It's not about sniff it. So that was great answer.

One, I would say one of the other answers to that question and one of the assets that I've been able to do is visualizing, visualization of, of that. So clearly visualizing where you want to get to. I genuinely believe in affirmations. I used to, you know, have out Post-it notes on the wall outside my bed. When you wake up in the morning, like, these are, this is what I'm going for, and they changes. Um, I think affirmations and really like obsessively focusing on where you want to get to, you will get there. Trust me, you'll probably overachieve it. Like, I honestly believe this. Like, like, I, I opened a company with like no network, no experience. I've never done recruitment. I've run recruitment team, but I've never done recruitment, um, in an industry I wasn't from, in probably the most worst economic global pandemic scenarios. It doesn't get worse than that cocktail. And I've come through it and I'm not the sharpest in the box, right? I just got— I've worked my ass off and I grind, I'm shrewd, I network and I hustle. And I think, I think that's really, really important. Like, you don't have to have the best grades. I had the worst grades. I had the worst grades ever. I had in my GCSEs, I was predicted and I shouldn't say this because my wife, like it's embarrassing. I was predicted straight E's and 2 G's at my GCSEs. It was that bad. And you can put that on record. But like my mum and dad absolutely, pardon my language, shit themselves because like our son's going nowhere and put me into like homeschooling, Saturday morning schooling just to get me because the next stage of what I had to get to was college. I had, I needed 4 C's to get into business college. I got 4 Cs and a D. I dropped all the other subjects. Like, let's get the 4 Cs, let's focus on these 4 Cs, right? Let's just get these. And I got the 4 Cs. I got into the business world, and then I started to realise my motivation. And that's because I had no motivation for school. I had no motivation for it. And my son is exactly the same. Scares me because my son, he's a carbon copy of me, and I worry about it because he's the class clown. He doesn't care. But if you have a lot of the ingredients that I've got like, you know, the resilience, the work ethic, you know, the people skills, all that sort of stuff, like you, you will be successful. If you've got that and the academics, you'll be phenomenal, you know. Um, but yeah, I think one of the things I would actually say to your listeners is like there's a huge, huge amount of pressure these people are under because, you know, they got to get certain grades, they got to get certain qualifications. But there also is another way. And the final thing I'd leave you with is in the great scheme of things, it doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. The real things to worry about in life hit you on a Tuesday afternoon and you don't even know it's that phone call. The real things to worry about in life will hit you on a Tuesday afternoon. It's that phone call. That's the thing to worry about. Like your grades, whether you're going to lose a client or not. I've been through all of that. You know, Oliver, we lost a client on my watch. And I was so stressed, I was up till 4 in the morning about it, like worrying, stressing every weekend. I was sick. Um, did it matter? No, we still scaled a 3,000-person business and, you know, sold it, and it's hugely successful. But at that point in time, it was totally consuming to me. Now, if I now myself now could go back to that person that was doing that job then and say, don't worry about it, I would do, because in the grand scheme of the world it doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. As long as you keep that work ethic, you don't get too relaxed on it not being mattered, like you keep those work ethic and you keep the hustle, keep that grind, like you will take knocks and you, and there will be things that don't go to plan, but it's okay. That's, I think, the last thing I'd say.

Clip it. Yeah, there's some good, yeah, some gems there. Yeah, really good.

Yeah, cool.