$500K Biller: "Learning how to Pre-close added 200K to my Billings"

Hey guys, welcome back to yet another episode of Top Billers Toolkit, where me and my twin brother interview top billers from all around the globe to unlock the secrets to their success. Today's guest is Guillaume Mitzac. Gui was a $500K biller at his last firm. Now he's gone on to set up his own recruitment company, and he's managed to hit $1 million revenue in his first year of trading. He's also developed a bit of a reputation in the market for helping recruiters substantially increase their billings. It's not uncommon for recruiters to start making double what they previously made once they start working with Guy. Today we're going to be talking about some really important fundamentals of recruitment. We're going to be talking about planning and deconstructing goals. Guy's going to be talking to us about pre-closing and how that one thing alone managed to increase his billings by a couple hundred thousand. And Guy's going to be telling us why and how candidates fuel 75% of his new business. Guys, this is going to be a really interesting and valuable episode. I hope you enjoy it as much as me and Ben did. And as usual, guys, grab a cuppa or a glass of wine depending on when you're listening to this. Let's get into it, shall we? Gui, thank you so much for joining us at such short notice. Um, I was absolutely bricking it because we had no one and they cancelled last minute. I put a post out and then there you were, you popped up in my inbox and I was like, oh yes, thank the Lord. So thank you.

That was definitely good timing, so appreciate that. And then also also like bringing to their team today is like high sense of urgency. So I guess the, the discussion today will be probably around that.

So yeah, interesting. You know what, it was so interesting as well because you responded straight away. I said, should we jump on a call? You're like, yes. And everything happened so quickly and I got so many messages, but because you were the first one and because you had that urgency, you got it. And I'm not saying this is like a holy grail of amazing things, but I'm sure it's relatable to like so many things in life is that if you're first and you're fast, you typically get in there before anyone else. And it's just really interesting.

Um, well, not true for everything.

Well done for making the cut. You made the cut.

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. And again, like I, like I said before, like, I've been following you guys and heard some great insight from other recruiters around the world, which is nice too. You're just, you know, you guys are in the UK, I'm in Canada, uh, so it's hard— it's good to hear what's happening in different countries, how is it different. Country to country. So very happy to be here today.

Amazing, thank you so much, mate. And we're going to jump into the very first question that we ask every guest, which is what would you say is the number one tool in your toolkit, whether it's a mindset, strategy, or piece of software?

Yeah, definitely. I would say mindset is the number one thing for me. Um, like I always have like a 5-point that I've been kind of telling myself from— I've been a decade in recruitment now, and what's been my success is these 5 points. It's definitely like Planning my day, planning my week, planning my goals, high sense of urgencies, and no excuses. Doesn't matter what happens, there's no excuses. These 5 points I'm now transforming from an individual contributor from my previous company now to my own company. That's the same mindset that I give to my team is that you need to have that in mind. It's definitely important to definitely plan, plan your day because as you know, in recruitment, a lot of things can happen, can throw at you. Unexpected email, cancel interviews and whatnot. And I always kind of say, like, if you plan your day, everything else is going to fall in part and like kind of fall together at the same time.

So yeah, I love that. That is a brilliant response. Um, and I feel like we have to go deeper into that, Geek, because that response is brilliant. Because a lot of people say mindset, but I feel like you've gone into a little bit more detail and you've elaborated on almost like a philosophy or a principle around that mindset, which is cool, which is I did. So I got the first one was planning. You said planning your day, week, and month, did you say?

Yeah. Like those are, well, planning your goals is the part which is like, you know, your yearly goals. And then how do you relate back to them on a week-to-week basis? How do you fare against these targets? If it either like some people have placements targets, some others are really good with numbers. It depends how much experience you have. For myself, I always been more like a revenue piece. So like, you know, what, how do I break down my year if I want to do $500,000, $600,000, $700,000? How do I break it down on a month to month? How much do I need to do? How does this translate in terms of amount of deals? I usually put like in the past I used to use an average of about $9,000 per placement, either like as a 360 or 180 depending on like, you know, what part. Usually I do 50-50%, but now our average is closer to $12,500 per placement. So we kind of average that and find out like, okay, I need to do like, let's say I want to do 3 placements for the month. As a more junior recruiter, I break it down in more like, okay, like how many connections you have to make? Like that's a big, like we're not too like, okay, you have to meet this amount of person per week. I'm more about connection with people. And I always put a target of 25 to 30 targets 30, 25 to 30 connects per day. And then that's usually because it's hard like to, you know, sometimes depending on the size of deals you do with, you deal with, you might have like a week that you have like a deal every day. It's great, but they're more junior or you might work on an executive role and it's like, you know, how do I know if I had a good day without getting an offer or whatnot? So yeah, I usually put 25 to 30 targets on my mindset because it's great. You can, And 25, I'm just going to break that down if you don't mind. But 25 to 30 connects is talking to individual people. Either you call them, they call you back. That's one connect. If you call them, they answer. So 25 to 30 different individuals that you talk per day. And then if you put that on a, you know, let's say 25 per day, 100 a week, 400 plus a month, 20,000 a year. And all these, that breakdown, like, you know, it's not much per day, but if you break it down to a year, that's where you're gonna get to your number. And I think that's something that I always took with me from previous positions to now my own recruitment agencies of like, you know, you're not gonna meet, it's hard to say, hey, let's meet 2 people a day. Are they good? Are they not good? Are they fit for the position? Like if you connect with people, you're gonna have results over time. And obviously the phone piece is important, but like having these connections over time will make a big difference. So, so that's my mindset. So that's why I plan my week in terms of planning my week and my day. It's very much on the time block piece. I usually plan about 3 hours of call block from, you know, if you're running a 360, I really like to do 1 hour of business development, 1 hour sourcing and 1 hour of phone screens. And then, you know, based on that 3 hours, out it goes, then you can plan video calls with specific candidates that fit the criteria of certain positions. And then go through it. But without these 3 hours, I think it's very hard to be successful and then to stay on task because you can get, like I said, emails come in, things happen, you get calls, and the next thing you know, you can spend your entire day of 9, 10 hours and then you haven't accomplished anything because you've not been really kind of like focused on your task. So, yeah. And then I was just saying like, no excuses. You know, always kind of go back to yourself. What could you have done better? And that's what I kind of tell myself. Like sometimes deals don't go through for X, Y reason. I always say like, well, you know, it's the candidate's fault or whatnot. I always say like, hey, what could I have controlled or done better for the next deal? And I always kind of take that apart with me or the rest of my team and say like, you know, what, what could have changed? What can we control? What we can control? Because this industry is very gray. It's not the yes or no answer. It's very gray. So you have to kind of say like, what can you do to be better the next time. And there was always that mindset of being better every day as well. Um, and then it comes back to like, you know, that high sense of urgency. Like if you're, as you said, like if you have a high sense of urgency, you're going to be successful. You're going to be in front of talking to the right candidates. Sometimes we compete with other agencies. Um, although we can go a little bit more in details about that, that I like to have more like an exclusive agreement, but sometimes you work with a new client, they have two other partners, uh, you want to be the first one. You want to be really kind of like the first one to get the talent, the first one to talk to the hiring manager directly. And then that's kind of been our, like, kind of success translating from, um, working in agency, different agency, now starting our own and, and kind of, you know, working on that success.

So awesome. Um, sorry, Sam, go ahead. I was going to jump in, but I know we're taking turns, so go ahead. No, just, I'm just interested about urgency, um, because We've interviewed so many top billers now and they haven't said urgency, but I can tell by the language they use and how they construct their day that urgency is definitely a key part of their, their day and their philosophy. What, what does urgency mean to you, uh, if I was like a fly on the wall in, in one of your typical days, can you give me an example of like what is, what is urgent to you and how you, how you, uh, display urgency throughout your day? It might be a difficult question, but I just thought I'd ask.

No, yeah, that's a really good question. So I come from like a sports background. I play high-level hockey in the past.

Oh, cool.

And when it comes to hockey, like, sense of urgency is very important. Be the first at work, be the first to practice, be the leader without— sometimes there's leaders that are not, um, like vocal leaders, but they're there because, you know, they're the first in practice or the first on the ice, for example. Uh, those are important. So sense of urgency doesn't have to be like, you know, picking up the call, the first person, but it has to be like, Are you present? Are you active? And are you ready to go?

Yeah.

If something happens, like you say, like, hey, I have a new position. Let's— I know we have people that we've been discussing with, like, quick turnaround is the most important thing. How quick can you go from being passive to active? That's how I measure a sense of urgency for me.

So I love that. It's a great one. I just want to go back to— because I feel like this is going to be so valuable if we can even— and I don't expect, you know, minute detail on every single day. But I feel like the planning is so important. I say to Sam all the time, and I feel like I haven't mastered it, but the more you plan, the more predictable your life becomes and the more likely it is you're going to hit your goals. So I love the fact that, you know, you have this $500K target and you reverse engineer the year, you know, the quarter, um, and the month and the day. Can we, can we just go back to that? Can we say, okay, let's say, you know, we're at the end of the year now, you know, December. Let's say next year Yugi or a consultant is like, cool, I want to hit $500K. Can you take us through the different steps, just the main areas that you would go to kind of ensure that you're going to hit that number? You kind of talked about a little bit. I just want to go into more detail.

Yeah. So usually what I do is obviously we don't want to set someone for failure. So it's really hard to say like, if you bill $200,000 to jump to $500,000, there's a huge gap that I can go a little bit of details for what's the difference between a $200,000 to $500,000 biller. Those planning part has to do with it, but there's also a little bit more to it as well. But I usually break down of like, yeah, you have an amount. He's like, hey, I want to do, you know, let's say $500,000, for example. I break it down to what's the amount per month. So, you know, you'd be around like $35,000. I usually say like, if you want to do $500,000, you have to do $40,000 a month. What I mean by that is that things will, you know, you're going to fall off. So people like, like getting off the work, even though like you can have like a 97% retention, there's still 3%. So you wanna make sure you hit your goal. So always aim high and then miss low. And that's always usually the thing I do is I, so if you do $40,000 a month, you can break it down to, okay, per week, what's, how many deals? So I break it down to $12,000. So it's about 4 deals per month, 4 deals per month at a $12,000 average for us at least. And then that's, that's if it's your client and if it's your candidate. So if you're running a 360, then a 4 deal, but you could break it down of like, you know, if you're, that means 8 placements. If you're just a recruiter, that means, you know, 6 of your clients and then the team also had to break it down to how many placements the rest of the team or how much support you get per positions. We try to break it down that per account managers, there's 2 people working per on the same positions on the team. So you, that way you're securing to have like 2 to 3 submissions per jobs. I like to have, that's the amount of submissions I like to have per position, depending on difficulty of search, depending on the market. I always tell our clients, for example, that, you know, we're not going to be the agency is going to send you 20 people, but we're going to send you 2 people that are very qualified. And very much interested in the position. Um, but yeah, like, we break it down per— not more on a monthly basis in terms of number of placements, because you can have a week without placements and then the second week you have all your placements, it just falls apart. But it's very important to plan your week because what happens today is, is something you've done 30 to 60 days ago. It's not like you can turn on the switch very quickly of like, hey, Today I'm gonna be working hard. Hopefully I have 2 placements tomorrow. It's composition you had 30, 60 days prior that are very important. They're now like, can you kind of write the, your success based on what you've done 32 months or 1 month ago? So we're really, we work really hard on the, that kind of like 60, 90-day mindset of like what's happening today, especially this time of the year. We're now like hitting December. It's like, okay, what are we gonna do today? That we're going to be like seeing offers in February. So as— yeah, we do, you know, plan your month or plan your week based on that. But also we want to see like, what are you doing today that's going to be impactful and not next week is going to be impactful in 30 to 60 days. So, so when we break it down, we break it down like that as well.

So really interesting.

Love that. And then, yeah, in terms of— sorry, in terms of like day planning and week planning. I don't know if you wanted me to go a little bit—

I was just about to ask that, so you are absolutely on track. I was going to say, okay, um, just, just to kind of add a little bit more meat to the bones because—

yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so the way we— oh, go ahead.

Sorry, sorry, mate. I can tell we can barely get a word in.

Yeah, fair enough.

No, but no, it was a great response, so, um, thank you. I just wanted to, to follow up from that and say, yeah, Um, yeah, you've done that really well. So 40K per month, 4 deals per month, that equates to 1 deal per week. Um, if we were to go down to a week, because I feel like that's maybe— yeah, people can probably, uh, visualize that and implement that kind of a little bit easier. If we were to go down to a week and then a day, what does that look like, do you think? If you were looking at a $500K biller or someone close to that, what would they be doing during a day and then a week, do you think?

Yeah, so on a week to week, I would say on average to 20 to 25 candidate meetings. And by candid meetings, I mean people, because usually the way we do it is that we'll source people, we'll be on the phone with them to kind of pre-qualify them, and then we'll meet on video after that. So it's kind of the second step. So 20 qualified people that we like to meet, 20 to 25 qualified people per week will translate to roughly, you know, there's definitely some variables. So like out of your 25, you're probably looking at 10 submissions a week. That's 40 submissions a month. And usually based on submission, ideally you want to be one submission to one client interview, depending on, you know, I'm probably at a point where I'm very, very close to 100% submissions to interviews. Other than like you send someone and then they change their mind, they're not looking to hire anymore. Things like that outside of control. But overall, like it's very close to that 100%. However, more junior recruiters will be to, you know, 10 submissions, but then they might be at 2 interviews, 3 interviews, 4 interviews. So as a company or as a management team, we really focus on quality versus quantity. So on your 10 submissions, we can break it down to, okay, if you do 10 submissions a week, but you're only getting 2 interviews, like we want to fill that gap and we can talk about the, you know, 30, 40% increase from 150 billers and whatnot. Like later on, but that's usually what we focus on. So to break it down, someone at $500 needs to have a minimum of 5 clients interview a week, which is 20 submissions to clients interviewing. So putting 20 people in front of your clients per month, which should be a 1 to 4 ratio. So probably like that 5 offers, 4 to 5 offers.

So awesome. I'm curious.

Usually that's how we break it down. So yeah.

That's awesome. I'm curious. You have, You have 100% submission, which is, which is amazing. For other recruiters who are coming into your business who are trying to aim for that, what are some of the biggest things you see them slip up on that damages their submission rate, do you think? Is there anything that comes to mind?

Um, I think they're very— I think obviously like finding a good talent, like what's a good talent versus maybe not a good fit for positions. I think that's one of the things. Obviously work ethic is always important cuz you still need to, even though let's say you're not producing the quality, if you're not producing like 10 submissions a week or 8 to 10 submissions a week, let's say like it's hard to, you know, to bring that number to number of interviews. So it is, it's not a numbers game, but it is a numbers game at the end of the day. Like there's always that percentage of like if you're not putting certain, it's, I would say there's a minimum output that needs to be produced. On a week-to-week basis to have a minimum amount of success. So people that say it's not true, like this is not a numbers game, it is a numbers game at a minimum status to go to 5, let's say 300, 400, 500. There is different levels and there's a little bit more different variables to that. But to have that, let's say to build $200,000 minimum, you need to have minimum output of work. And that's usually how we measured it. To go back to your questions in terms of, okay, what do we need to see from, from in terms of it's also like talking to candidates and understanding what's their why, either changing position, wider interest in certain position. That's very important because if you don't understand that from the beginning, talking to candidate, you could be sending them to the wrong positions and then the client might see the resume and be like, this is not what they're looking for. Or you might get to submissions at the end of the process. They might get an offer, they might decline it because you didn't understand their why, like why they're looking to leave, how this position compares. So you can kind of mitigate that risk from the beginning by saying like, okay, well, you're traveling this amount of time per day to work. This position is probably the same distance. So does that make sense for this person? No. So it's a lot of like junior recruiters need to understand like the location aspect, the seniority aspect, that's very important. And then understand like how to read a resume, whatnot. That's another kind of aspect that I like to, you know, takes time to, for a junior recruiter. So it's very hard to, for junior recruiters to come in this business and bill like $500,000. I've, I'm not saying it's impossible, but you know, 99.9% of the time it's not feasible. Is it possible to build $200,000 your first year, establish a good output base, and then grow from that? 100%. I think the first year is the most important thing. It takes about 6 months to, to understand that gray area I was talking about of like, you know, how do you mitigate the mistakes in between.

But yeah, so interesting. Awesome. Can, can we just go back to, um, so you described that really well. So we've got the 20 to 25 candidate meetings per week, we've got the submissions, What else are they purely focusing— are your consultants purely focusing on candidate meetings? Is there anything else they're doing during the day, you know, to ensure success? Maybe you could elaborate, Erky.

Yeah, so, well, yeah, that's part of it, but also like there's a part of referral base of following up with candidates on a week-to-week basis. So it's not just you meet 25 people and then you restart your week again, 25 more, 25 more, 25 more. We do a week-to-week basis follow-up with our candidates in terms of like, if you're looking for work, where are you interviewing? What's, what's been your search so far? What's not working? And that's something too that we established for your team is that like some candidates come to us and be like, hey, listen, I've been looking for work for, for 3 months. Like it's not working. And that's something I come from a teaching background, like in my, my education is that I was a teacher for, for a few years before getting into recruitment. So I like that kind of part of coaching to say like, you know, how can we help you? Because at the end of the day, at the recruitment agency side, like we're not helping, we're not gonna place 100% of the people we meet. That's something that I always tell to my team and I always kind of know that is that you wanna work, you wanna help everybody, but at the end of the day you can't. But if I can give everybody that I meet a little piece or I can kind of lift them up a little bit, that will make my day. Beyond placements, beyond everything, I think that's one piece that I'm really passionate about recruitment is really helping people. It could be like, you know, someone that's newer in a country that needs guidance of where to go. Maybe they're not exactly a fit for my client for based on experience or whatnot, but where can they go? Where can I help them? So I always tell my team that, and that's something that has resulted in getting a lot of referrals from candidates that I've cut off part of her sourcing, like, like time spent versus like if I meet someone, I give them a good experience, they turn around, they give us a good review on Google, they turn around and refer 2 of their friends. And usually good people know other good people. And that's always been my motto in terms of like, you know, where, where are the placements? Well, they're your, the friends of the person you place, former coworkers. Uh, if you give them a good experience, that's, that's, that will kind of turn around in terms of revenues very quickly.

So, yeah, interesting. Um, just one last question around the day and the day plan. So for the 25, that's for the, for the, um, the meetings that your consultants or you are generating, what's their daily routine to get those meetings? Like, what are they, are they sending, how many messages they're sending, how many calls are they making? Is it around, is it what you said, 25 to 30, um, connects a day? Is that what you said, right? 25% connect.

So just, I'll get back to it a little bit because we don't track calls as much in terms of like exchange. We do break it down to connects. So, you know, you can make 100 calls a day. If you don't have any answer, that's zero connect.

So yeah. Yeah.

So I don't really care the amount of dial I do or people do. I want to talk to people. So how many interactions you have, that's usually how we measure it.

So that's a much better way of doing it. Yeah. And then you say that their most success is, is it via LinkedIn? Is it via email? Have you found like what's the best success?

Yeah. Like we, we work, I would say 3, 3 fronts, obviously LinkedIn, Indeed, and then also ZoomInfo. I don't know if you guys are familiar with that.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

Um, so either, either someone that's in a position where we can get their information on ZoomInfo and I'll, I'll strategic, strategically call the co-call them. Yeah, if I'm like, hey, they're working for a competitor. And it's always something that we talk with clients too. We're like, when we do our intake, it's like, are they, you know, are they looking for someone that works for a competitor? Why? Why not? And in that way, we can start— usually that's the first thing we do. Obviously, we look at our network and whatnot, but we go try to do— find some direct competitors, people that work directly and have conversation with them first. So So yeah, these three fronts are safe. So obviously a lot of like LinkedIn messages, outbound calls. We have a database now that's grew to like over 60,000 candidates. So obviously there's like some research into the platform that we use. It's called, I think we mentioned, I mentioned it, but it's called JobAdder. We have really good success with that, especially for myself. I'm a very visual learner. So I like to kind of see the columns of what's happening. At all my clients. Um, but yeah, so that we kind of break it down on these three fronts in terms of like sourcing and talking to candidates. And like I said, referrals is a big part of our business. I think that's been very much our success is, is, you know, getting referrals and talking to them and, and see how we can help them in their search.

So yeah, in terms of the, uh, interactions, Guy, uh, because you said you use LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, and Indeed. Yeah, I'm just wondering, is Is there one that you and your team, or that your team see more success from? Is there one that you're like, okay, you know, that's like—

yeah, like, uh, it's good they asked that. We actually broke it down in terms of like how much money we're spending for one platform versus returns, um, and we're seeing probably 65%, 60-65% comes from LinkedIn, um, probably, you know, 30% from, uh, from Indeed, and then the rest would be like I said, like your, uh your like outbound reach directly to candidates from either like from people that we know or from like direct, uh, like from ZoomInfo. Yeah.

Have you found that when your consultants come in, is there a— I think I know part of the answer to this, but have you found— because I'm guessing there's a few different like leverage points for me in order to get the deal over the line. I'm sure there's lots of different steps.

Yeah.

The, the one thing that a lot of people struggle with, or the first point, is actually getting that conversation in the first place. And then I'm guessing it's getting on the phone, negotiation. What points— when you, when you're bringing consultant in, what points do they need improvements on, do you think? Like, how— what areas do you fix in order to get them up to—

I liked, I like myself to kind of look at how they work and how can I improve, because it is like, uh, you know, I like to call it like a line of operation where there's like, it's not just one task, there's many little tasks. And then we— I try to break it down as as small as I can. I think I have not found the perfect recipe yet because you always want to— you always look at yourself and say like, hey, how have I reverse engineered this deal in terms of like from, from the first point of contact with the candidates to all the way to like the candidates in the positions that, you know, you do your follow-up calls and, and see how they're doing in the position. So yeah, like I break it down to, you know, the sourcing part. So how do you find candidates, how good your, your outbound messages are to candidates. I always been a, I like to say this, but dating is very comparable to recruitment in terms of that first point of contact. I don't like to say that I'm good at it, but you know, my wife can comment on this, but like a lot of the output that you do in terms of your messages, it's like you wanna get through, their interests or they're piquing their interest the quickest as possible. So there's different ways to do this. It could be, I tell people is that when you find someone that's like, okay, this person's perfect for the position. I always say like you, you mess, you message them, let's say I'll like a LinkedIn private message and then you wait, but I usually tend to add them on LinkedIn. If they add me, I start commenting or see what they're liking on LinkedIn. So I'll go to their activities. I'll see like, okay, this person likes a lot of golf stuff, but I love golf, so I can kind of point it out. I usually will send like a, I got a client from this and last year actually I sent a photo of my trip to Scottsdale for a golf trip and then they're like, oh, like you play there? Like, what do you like about it? And that's usually how I start conversation with people. I don't say like, I have this job and, you know, call me back or whatnot. I wanna get to know them. Sometimes obviously I do send like messages with, kind of like say like I'm working with a client, this industry based on your experience and I never send the same message. That's something that I've seen that people we brought in or that I worked with in the past will copy paste the same message over and over with not so much copy in like it could be the same generic base of your message. But if it works well, like, like we have messages that works great. So that's good. But you want to have messages that are very personable. Could be something that you've seen in their profile. Like, for example, sometimes I'll be like, hey, I noticed though you started your position with XYZ 3 months ago. I know it's quick, but I just want to see how it's going. And then that could like something that me like, it's not going so well. Maybe, maybe he knows something I don't or whatnot. So you want to kind of get them questions, get your either clients or candidate questions, be like, can I do better? Or is there something out there that I don't know? And then that's usually how I like to start a conversation. and that's something that, you know, junior recruiters that we brought in, we try to install is that obviously you have your, those KPIs, you have those numbers, that's important, but you wanna, you're, you, you're someone that wants to bring the right conversation to the candidates. So that's usually how I do it. But yeah.

So love that. Love that. And I just, I, sorry, Ben, I just wanna, I haven't got a question, but I just wanna go over what Guy said cuz there's so much information on LinkedIn. Like there's actually so much data on people's profiles of what they like. And I sometimes I go into people's about sections and they'll say what kind of sports they're into, they'll say, um, if they have a family, if they're a dad of like 3, you know, there's so much data. And it sounds like you're really utilizing Iggy to start conversations with, with high-value clients and candidates. I just, I just love that you said that and that you do that.

It's awesome. And sometimes I'll connect with people, like, I don't know, you guys are in the UK, so you're probably more on the football side, but We're very much on the hockey side. So if I see they like a specific team or whatnot, I'll say like, hey, my team beat you last night, and I put the score as a message, and that's all I write. So just to get them going, it works great.

So yeah, you'll be, you'll be, uh, probably shocked to hear that me and Sam aren't really big football fans. I always, I wish that I like sports as much as most men do because I feel like there will be some— it'll be so easy to connect with men on a different level. But hey, that's for another podcast perhaps. Um, we've got— I'm gonna skip a couple of questions that we're gonna come back to Guy because I just feel like this question is perfectly in line with what we're talking about. You helped, you know, I think you said that a lot of what you do, what you like doing, is taking say $200K billers or $150K billers and increasing their billings by like 30 to 40% in the first year. You've got one really good example of a recruiter that came to you that was doing $200K and you got the, got him or her up to $320K. So that's a 60% increase, which is really, really, you know, it's amazing. Um, what do you think is the one thing that you changed or helped them to improve on to hit those numbers?

Yeah. Uh, well, it kind of goes back to where we were talking before. Like, we— I like to kind of like start them and see how they're working, what's their processes, and then kind of look at my— put the microscope on some aspect of their, their line of work. Like, are they, you know, are they struggling to bring people? So you look at, okay, you're, you're meeting a lot of people, but then you're getting, you know, 2 deals a month. How can I get to 4 deals a month. So usually I go back to, you know, is it the sourcing? Like I find, I try to find that piece where it's not adding up. There's also the business development side to talk to as well. Like if it's 180, but this particular recruiter is, she's like mostly 180, I would say like, you know, 90% 180. And then, you know, we're able to increase her billing to like she's doing 6, 7 placements a month right now. So it's very like, you know, it's dramatic, but it works with kind of like how our team works. Like I said, like we have like a specific— we assign people on specific positions. We do weekly meetings of say like, okay, this is what's working. So we have the data, go back to a client so we can, you know, if we need to move the needle with a client in terms of compensation, we really thrive with data. So we like to share. We're just like, oh, we met people, it's not working out. Like we like to go to a client and be really a subject matter expert expert of, okay, like we, this is what's happening in the market based on your location. This is not working. This is what we suggest to do. And then that way, like, you know, it's good. It's easy for me when I work with someone that brings a lot of talent to me. And I think someone like that was, you know, she was really good at that. She brings a lot of people, like people to the table. And then I can kind of see like, you know, where we can take it to the next level with this specific individual. But to go back a little bit to your questions, like we, I wouldn't say we made the mistakes, but when we started, like me and my business partner Stacy, we worked together at our previous company for a bit. So we knew how we worked. So together we're like kind of a yin and yang and really good relationship of like, you know, she's more on the operation side. I'm more on the player coach. I like to call myself where I still build, but at the same time I coach a team, which was something that I'd never really done before. I was more individual contributor in the past, but we, when we started the company, we were looking at, okay, this is just, we're gonna bring a lot of junior recruiters because, you know, we can train them for X amount of time. And I think that, I wouldn't say that was a mistake, but a lot of time these junior recruiters were, you know, we're ramping them up to a certain level, but they're like, you know what, I'm not sure about recruitment, or I'm not sure if I can do this for 10 years or whatnot. So a lot of time we wasted at the beginning of like, we were like, okay, we're gonna bring like 5, 6 junior recruiters, grow them to $200, $300K, but then to find out that half of them are not really passionate about it. And then, you know, passion's very important. I think you can, you can like teach people whatever you want, but if they don't have a passion, like I think on the candidate side, on the client side, they feel it too. Mm-hmm. Versus someone that loves the industry. So we kind of made the executive decision 2 years ago to start bringing people with experience that were like, okay, you, you have a, you have a base. You understand the line of work, you love it. And how can I take you from X to Z, for example? Or how can I like switch you from like a 100 to 200 or 150 to 220? So that's how we kind of reverse engineer and goes back to like, you know, the planning your day, planning your week. What does that look like? And break it down to the numbers of like connects. If that was the issue, sometimes we notice, for example, that people, it's more at the end, like how, they're not really good at pre-closing the candidates. And that's something we can jump in if you want to. But pre-closing is probably the number one thing, at least for myself, that probably made me from my first year or two year and a half from like a $200,000 to $300,000 to now $400,000 when I left my previous company. Like biller, I think the pre-closing was the biggest thing that I thought that makes the difference in terms of jumping from like a, like a good recruiter, a $200,000, $250,000 recruiter, to like a great recruiter, someone, or someone that can earn like significant amount of money.

So yeah, I love that. Let's jump into that if that's okay, uh, which is because I remember you saying that on the pre-call that the, the negotiation slash pre-call was one of the core areas that people could improve on. So maybe you could just give us some insight. Let's assume you're coaching someone and you're helping them to improve. What would you bring them through? What kind of things would you help them to improve on in particular? You're talking about recruiter or candidate or Or like, um, if you're, if you're coaching one of your consultants, your recruiters, and you're saying, hey, I've noticed, you know, you should be doing this better, what tip, you know, what typical tips are you giving your recruiters to improve on in areas, do you think?

Yeah, yeah. So the pre— like I said, the pre-closing, it's, it's about knowing where the line will be drawn in the sand for the, for the candidate. So understanding their why, understanding why they're changing positions, understanding that what deal are they open to take And if you can pre-close it, then when it comes to like negotiation, for example, if you come to the table, you don't know these questions ahead of time, you might be surprised if the client gives you certain offers, you send it to the candidates and they're like, well, you know, I'm looking for more money or, you know, this is not exactly what I'm looking for because the challenge is not on. So a lot of the part is obviously the coaching to the candidates and be very there to support them. So understanding like where they're struggling and then that's why we like to do the video part of it too and meeting candidates on video and well before COVID in person. Now it's been more video, but it's understanding like, or, you know, what, how can you improve their interview skills? How you can improve, um, the, the types of work they're looking for. But the pre-closing is really understanding of like where they're at and where, where you need to take them to, to, to get to that offer if, if if they get an offer. So that negotiation aspect, like I want to understand, like, you know, if I get X amount of money for an offer with all the benefits, perks and whatnot, is that a yes or no for you? Understanding without really asking them, but say like, hey, you know, calling them after the interview versus like just waiting to call them, hey, this is the next interview. Really being there for them, they're going to obviously open up more to you. And then that's part of the pre-closing too, is like where they're at as an individual in their career and then where can you take them to that next position. So really like being like, that's usually what I like to coach people on the team is that, you know, really being there for your candidate doesn't mean that you're just, you know, following up with a call and it's more like, you know, are they going to trust your advice at the end of the day? And that's how you pre-close candidates.

So really interesting. Sorry, Ben, can I just jump in? Because I want to— yeah, um, we interviewed a really great guy, he's been on the podcast twice, called Mike Anderson. Don't know if you've seen his, um, podgy, but, um, one of the things he does— and let me know if this would be under the category of pre-closing, I'm just interested— one thing he does is, um, if he, if, if the— if he's speaking to a candidate and say the candidate says, oh, I really— I'm not liking the project work that I'm doing at the moment, he'll make sure that he will say, hey, have you spoken to your manager yet? And then, and then if he says no, he'll say, okay, go speak to your manager first. And then if he doesn't say yes and he doesn't change anything, come speak to me. And for me, that was like he was ticking off all of the surprises that could happen down the road. Is that what pre-closing is? Yes, yes, yes.

That's actually a really good one that I actually never thought about it, but it is too. It's like going to the client was like, and telling them too, like, hey, he doesn't really like this, this part of the positions, or that he has some concern about the culture. And that's also too, like, I always there's this big school of recruitment. They're like, do not tell the candidate who the client is. Keep it secret until like the second before the interview. And I'm just like, when I talk to candidates, I pretty much tell them right away the company, what they do. I have a pretty, like a good, very strong, like, like detail. Cause I do a lot of intakes with clients of like very detailed of where the company's gonna be in 2 years. More than just the stats of the position, I like to go in culture. I like to see what's, you know, where they're heading, what kind of projects, if they have projects happening. I even send them like videos sometimes of some of the projects, get them excited. That's also part of the pre-closing more than like, yeah, what they're looking for. That's part of it. But the part of like going to your clients, like understanding what they're looking for. So I like to say, and then also I always say, I look, when I work with client, I look at reviews on even Glassdoor online. from, from candidates, but also like, are their products shipped? So is it, is it a bad product? Like what's going on there? So I always ask questions cuz candidates now are more educated than ever been. They'll do more research than ever. And then the worst that can happen is that if you don't communicate to your candidate, you send them to the client, they interview, and at the end they're like, hey, I did some research last night and, uh, looks like, uh, a lot of people are not happy about this company. So if And there's clients too. Like we have clients that had those reviews in the past and we're able to, you know, talk to the company and be like, listen, this is what we're seeing online. I think before we start working with this is going to be a problem for me. So I like to kind of put this in and sometimes they're able like, yeah, we know like this is what's happening. So I have a thing I can tell candidates of like, hey, this is what happened. This is the changes they made. So that helps quite a bit too. I'm very upfront with clients. I do not care what they think. My values are more important than anything. I've turned down clients more than probably anybody if they don't share my values, either from like, you know, could be ageism, could be where they're from or whatnot. Like, that's something that definitely I value. Like, I probably, I like to say that I probably place new immigrants in Canada more than any recruiters ever. I do, I do. I, when I started in recruitment, I did a lot of bilingual recruitment. That was kind of my, my niche. So bilingual French and English in Canada is a big thing, but a lot of immigrants from other countries speaks really well in English in Canada. They come here. So a lot of my part of my experience was like I'm getting turned down by clients saying, okay, well, he doesn't have Canadian experience or doesn't have US experience or whatnot, what country. And I'm like, well, how is this relevant? And then, you know, being able to, to kind of fart find the, the amount of, of, um, you know, what, how can we push versus how much the client pushing back, that, that's something that we like to look at too. So, um, but yeah, I feel like I'm getting a little bit off the, the questions.

No, no, don't worry, it's natural to kind of go off piece a little bit. But just going back to, um, the pre, the pre-closings, I feel like that's so important. And it's like, if some people could take away just a little bit of this pre-closing mentality, I reckon they could dramatically increase their billings, or at least increase it.

Yeah.

Um, if you were to give something— and you have given a lot of tangibles, but I just want to go back so my simple brain can wrap my head around this— if you were to give some, you know, one tangible tip that someone could go away with for a better pre-closing process.

Yeah.

You know, what would that be? If you could just give one really important—

understanding what can go wrong is, is what I would kind of summarize it. If you know the hidden things that can happen ahead of time. Example, like other offers on the table. So very being close to your candidates, I think that's the biggest thing because understanding like if there's other offers, what are you competing against? So if you don't have a good relationship with your candidates, they're probably not gonna tell you they're interviewing at 20 other companies and they're in final at XY company too. So having that relationship, I think that's part of the pre-closing of like understanding, 'cause you can go to your client and say, just so you know, they're interviewing. I know they're paying this amount of money. So if we get an offer, we need to be somewhere close to that. And I think clients value this and really appreciate from us as a company. I, you know, my, my business partner Stacy, for example, like she's probably the— I like to call her the best account manager of all time, but she's, she's like her clients trust her as a subject matter expert. So, so she can go back to them and say like, you know, this is the candidate. But if her recruiters don't have any notion of what's happening in the candidate's life or, or, you know, on the job side, on, on like work side or personal life side, it's hard to mitigate that risk. And there's obviously, there's always a risk. It's never gonna be 100%, but if you're aware the most you can, and I think I talked about this before, is that like, I always like to look at my deals successful or not successful and reverse engineering it to find out like what could have done better. And that's why I tell my team is that always have that no excuse mentality of like, what could you have done better? Sometimes there's things you can't control. Like, you know, if something happens to the candidate in their life, they have to move or a lot of things happen. We're dealing with people, not product. But if you can go back to every deals you've done, the good ones, the bad ones, the one that were just like very easy that like what, what worked well. And that's usually also I add, if I'm like, oh, I need to add this question now to my pre-close, or I need to add this question. I need to talk to the candidates about like, you know, for example, COVID, um, like working from home was not a thing. Like, is, does the person has a viable workspace at home? That's something I didn't know about.

So, uh, sorry, can I just jump in really quickly? Yeah. Yeah. Because it's such a great, I'm really like, it was getting me excited, uh, listening to this because I feel like it's so important.

Yeah.

Um, so let's assume that, you know, you have a good relationship with your candidate because that sounds key, that, yeah, you build rapport to the point where they're willing to tell you stuff. You mentioned that one of the kind of risks was other offers on the table.

Yeah.

I think, you know, as you said correctly, maybe candidates won't always be 100% transparent with that. What are the other— what are the biggest risks that you're trying to find in the pre-closing process? If you were to say, okay, you know, these are the 3 biggest things that always crop up, what would they be, do you think?

Yeah, like obviously the interviewing elsewhere. If they're working, what's the risk of either like a, like a counteroffer? And I'm more talking like when you have someone that's interviewing that you feel good about, like not so much just sending the candidate, but you want to find out like the risk is that other offers, other interviews that he or she might be more inclined to take. So I always like to ask the candidates like, are they like where, where they're at. Does this, does this position I have, where does it rank for you? And then kind of gauge of like, you know, is it number one? And then like they'll do anything to get this job or they're like, I got to do a little bit more work with this person because, you know, it's a salary. But then I can listen, I can go back to the client. It's, it really comes down to what kind of relationship you have with your candidates and what kind of relationship you have with your candidate and your clients. I think that makes a big difference. Um, I think being a subject matter expert from the candidate perspective and the client perspective is very good because they're gonna be more aligned to trust you. So yeah, the trust part is important, but like to go back to your 3 things, yeah, I would say definitely, uh, knowing what's available for them on the market, other jobs, if they're working, is there a counteroffer? Like what's their why of wanting to leave their other job? And then the last thing is, is You know, anything location off, like hybrid, like, uh, more like, uh, working condition, I like to call it. That's another thing I like to point out.

So yeah, it's really— what I'm getting from this is there's no, like, magic question. It's really just about qualifying them as hard, as well as you can.

And really, the questioning is very important, and that's usually how you build relationship with, with your, your candidates or client.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm curious I'm kind of— this might be the last question, Ben, if you have any, but I'm just curious, especially from a fellow business owner, I'm always interested what are the biggest things you've struggled with. Um, so for me and Ben, for instance, it's like we're gonna— we're hiring someone to do the operations side of the business, and that's been a big part. Me and Ben are great marketers, salespeople, but the operations is what we need help with, and so we're hiring someone for that. Is there any parts of your business that you have struggled with, that you needed help with, that looking back at it now you're like, oh, I'm so glad that was fixed.

Or— Yeah. Well, yeah, that's a great question. So like when I started this company, Empty Talent Solutions, I partnered with Stacy Towers, one of my business partners. We worked together in the past and a lot of people always say like, you know, be careful who you partner with because, you know, you guys are brothers. So it might be a little different on the family side. But I think I was— when I started, I was always saying like, I can't do everything by myself. I'm terrible with like bookkeeping operation side. If I was on my own, I'm a fantastic biller, but the operation side would just drown me in paperwork. I'm like highly, highly ADHD. So, you know, I can do things, but like in terms of like mundane repetitive tasks, it's not my thing. So I was looking for a partner that would complement me. So that was the biggest thing. I think like maybe not like I think without a partner, I think for myself it was not going to work. Cool. So Stacy's very good on the client management side. I'm more on the candidate side. So we separate our tasks and then like, you know, I'm someone that's very positive, but sometimes I'll, I'm not afraid to go in a very, very dark place when things don't go work well and she's really good to bring me back. So I think like we kind of balance each other and the same thing with her too. Like I think that relationship is very important. We're still in a place like, although I mentioned like we grow team, we're now like 12 in the company, but in 3 and a half years, we've been able to grow, you know, I find very quickly. But we're at a place now where like, you know, it's hard to give part of your business, like the operation side away. Like right now we kind of separate that work between Stacy and I. But like, it's hard to give, for me at least, like it's hard to give to people responsibility that I was like, it's almost like, not that I can do it better, but it's like, I don't want to micromanage on these tasks. So that's why it's like easy for me to be right now a player coach. I was never a leader before, so that was new to me. That was probably— it's probably the most rewarding thing to manage a team and then like kind of share your knowledge freely because they kind of help you grow the business at the same time and kind of throw my passion at them. Maybe too much passion sometimes, but a lot of—

just throwing passion.

Yeah, I just throw myself, so it's not, uh, it's, yeah, so it's not great. Uh, but yeah, like, it's, it's, um, mistake-wise, like, it's, we, we brought in like maybe junior candidates. Like I said before, that was something that maybe we're like, oh, we maybe should have brought senior recruiters from the beginning and kind of trained.

What was the thinking behind that, Guy? Was it like, oh, and I'm sure there was all, it was all only good intentions, but initially was it, oh, we're a new business we can save money on the front end and train them. Exactly.

That was just like, yeah, like we were like, cause pretty much like we're a self-funding company. Like we didn't, we started from zero pretty much and then kind of grew it to what it is now. But so we're like, okay, we're great at training people and don't get me wrong, I think we're good, but there is, we found out that, you know, not everybody is as passionate as recruitment as us. And I think we found, not the hard way, but we were like, we would train someone for 6 months or like, well, are they going to be a $200K biller, $300K? Probably not. And then they're like, yeah, I don't know if I want to do this for my entire career. So that was a little bit hard for that.

How much faster were— because I'm guessing maybe new recruits, they may not make any money for 3 to 6 months. So how much faster did these new experienced recruiters make for the business? Was it like, did they make money in year 3, in month 3 or 4 or 2? Like, probably faster.

Within like a month, I would say. Wow.

That's not—

they're able to bring talent right away. And then like we have like we rerun like, you know, between 40 and 65 jobs at all time right now. So they're able to bring talent right away. So obviously the conversion was very quick versus like a lot of things too. I kind of forgot to mention that, but when I was training people, I would— that would take my time away from me billing the company. So, you know, not to say the company suffered, but at the same time it's like it was very hard to find a balance. You're either 100% in training or you get it because you need to be entrenched as a bailer to be in there. Like, if you're doing part-time recruitment and part-time training, it's hard to be good at both. Let's just say.

Yeah.

So I'm a very one-tasked person. Like, I can do the same thing for a number of hours and be entrenched, like, super into it. But if I start Switching too many tasks, it just, it goes all over the place.

But I'm exactly the same. What was the— so just going back to that, because I find that fascinating. I think it's a great— I think a lot of recruiters will probably, you know, initially, and I probably would, you know, let's get, let's get cheaper talent and try and train them up. But it's gonna— it's so much harder. So, but how— what, you know, go— let's say, you know, you had all these, um, junior recruiters that you hired and then you switched to more senior or more experienced recruiters. What percentage increase did you have to pay in order to get these guys? Was it like a 50% increase or 30% or 20%? Probably 30%.

More on the base salary. Um, obviously we were paying everybody this the same on the, uh, commission side. Yeah, with a lower base salary. I think we spent a lot of time like training them. And don't get me wrong, like some of them are with us, still with us now, that's very junior recruiters. But it's, it's the time that we spent. I think we're more like the time that we spend training junior recruiters was not as beneficial of us working within the business. Is pretty much my conclusion on this. It's, it just worked better that way. And then we spend, you know, we spend the onboarding with new recruiters and whatnot. But after that, like after 2 to 3 weeks, like we can tweak things as we go. But like if they have the good base, like I don't have to kind of step away from my desk like too much and I can keep billing and then it makes a big difference. Like company revenue is like, we're seeing it this like in 2024, like I said, it went up like Almost like 4— well, I think 41 or 42% growth. So it's amazing. Jump.

Really impressive. Um, Sam, I've kind of taken over this podcast with a lot of questions. Do you have any more? I've still got more in my brain. I don't— you go ahead, you go ahead. Are you okay for time? I'm—

I have a lot of time right now, so thank you so much.

Um, I've just got a few more, or a couple more questions. Yeah. Um, I'm really impressed, you know, we just mentioned it there, your growth, 42% this year. You hired like 5 people in your first year. Which is amazing. What— again, I'm just going to ask you, and if there's more than one, feel free to jump. But if there was one thing that you think contributed to the speed and success of your growth, what would it be, do you think?

I think bringing people that were closer values. I think, I think that was the biggest thing. Like, let's say rather it was junior recruiters or senior, senior recruiters, they're really close to their values in terms of candidates' experience in terms of client experience. And I think that's something that's for us was a non-negotiable. We're like, you know, we can train you, we can do, you know, we can take you from $150K billing to $250K. But if you don't give our candidates and clients a good experience, this doesn't work for us. So really we stick to this from, from the get-go. And I think that's been the biggest thing.

So that's amazing. So sorry, I just wanted to understand from your perspective, why do you think that, you know, sticking firm on that, what's your opinion on why that's had such an impact on the company and everything else?

Well, I think we believe that the candidates are our main source of revenues. So without giving them a good experience, we're not— they're not going to come back. They're not going to refer us people. And then it's kind of vicious circles of like, now you have a bad experience. It's not very hard to get a bad reputation in the market. You can have 150 good good rapport with candidates, one bad experience will put a sour taste in the mouth. And then, you know, just, I like to give the example of like, if you go to restaurants, you could have 150 good experiences at the same restaurants. You have one experience at your favorite, bad experience at your favorite restaurants. Yeah. Are you gonna go back to them?

No.

Are you gonna tell people that you had a bad experience? Probably.

So, yeah.

So it's, and then it's, it's, uh, it's a challenging market right now for, for some people. So, you know, you wanna, when things are unbelievable, it's easy to, to get let loose on your standards. And then I always push of like, doesn't matter how the market is, you— there, your standards are your standards.

Great piece of advice. Um, how do you— I feel like questioning for values is so hard. So, and again, this might be more of an intuition thing, I suspect it is from just experience, but if you were like— let's go back to the time when you were interviewing, you know, considering this was such an integral part of your growth, let's go back to the time you were interviewing these candidates, uh, these recruiters for the role. What kind of questions, what kind of things were you looking for for them to say or not say to see, okay, this person's going to be right for the company? Like, what do you think?

Yeah, I always ask them what their process is, how they meet people. Uh, I always ask them what— walk me through what's their best deal that they've done, what happened, so I kind of understand what their process is, how they're thinking. Uh, and then that's one time. And we start switching to— we, we do a little bit more role play in interviews now. Either, well, on more on the sales side, like if they're 360s, like I wanna know how you talk to clients and how you're like looking at a position. How do you position yourself from the get-go? So for that, for when it comes to 360s or business development people, like I like to do some role play with them to kind of understand or give them scenarios and kind of say like, hey, how would you, How would you react to that? So, so that's one thing that we saw, because everybody, especially recruiters, they're all good on videos. They're all good on, on talking to you. They'll tell you whatever you want to hear. But, you know, when it, when it comes to it, like, can you, can you sell me this job or can you sell me this pen? You know, like, I'm not a fan, but I like to say, like, I like to joke and I say, like, can you sell me this job?

So, so, but yeah, so yeah, that's great. Interesting. Okay. Um, I feel like, you know, a lot of these podcasts we talk about, we get straight into business development. We haven't talked a lot about business development, and there's a reason why, audience, if you're still listening. It's because Guy gets about, um, like 75% of your placements come from referrals from candidates, which is insane. It's amazing. So, so in my brain, instantly switched to, okay, you are providing such an exceptional service to candidates, you're making them feel so good that they are literally going out and representing your business and giving you business. I find that quite unique because I feel like, I feel like there are recruiters who still give an exceptional service but don't get referrals in that way, get that volume of referrals. So are you doing anything differently? Like, are you, are you, are you basically saying, hey, knock on their door? Well, that's what I mean. Like, are you, are you like sending them a letter saying, hey, if you refer us, we'll give you, we'll give you X? Or is it just reminding them? Like, oh, you just—

it's more like, like, so, so a lot of the time we do like Google reviews is a big thing for us. But a lot of time it's like I call them personally and be like, hey, if you had a good experience, like what was your experience with us? And then get a sense of like, you know, I always tell like good people know other good people if you come across anybody. And usually it's very, especially when it comes because we do, we do like executive search, we do, you know, senior leadership, but we also do like hiring class. Of like, you know, like, um, like mid-level positions. So it's like, who else would you want to work with? And that's my biggest thing. I'm like, hey, who's as good as you? And then clients will usually love that too. So, uh, so that was a like big thing from the beginning is that referrals was kind of what we're looking to, to do the most because it makes your sourcing easy. You don't have to source.

Oh cool. So just to clarify again, you, you would ask your clients who else is as good Would you ask your candidates?

No, candidates, candidates, sorry.

Candidates, who else is as good as you? That's what you're asking.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then they say, oh cool, I know this guy.

Yeah, it's like, I know this person. And then usually I like to say, we like to have 2 to 3 people per candidate that we meet as referrals.

Love that.

And then in terms, sometimes it'll be like, I ask them if it was like a language piece, like let's say it's a bilingual French-English position, I'll talk to candidates and be like, oh, do you Can you give me like a reference for someone that speaks French that can, that can like attest that your French language skills are used at work versus a manager references too. So that's usually, you know, a colleague, for example, then I talk to the colleague and then that's usually how. So yeah, that I would count this as a referral as well.

So yeah, of course. Interesting. It's just, I just, it just sounds like you're, um, again, which makes sense why it's such a high volume. You're, you're laying it up with a question. That will initiate some sort of referral, which is great. Which is— and I'm guessing in these referrals they would say, um, just so I can wrap my head around this, they would say, hey, I know this company is hiring, I know this dude, speak to this person. Would it work like that?

Yeah, on the, on the BD side too, sometimes too. I think, um, to kind of like go a little bit further is that on the BD side, like, I think we have 92 and 93% return client rate, which has been a big thing. We were, I would say, lucky because we started in 2021 where there's nobody out there. So the business development side was really easy on the beginning. Obviously now that has changed, but we have a lot of returning clients that come back to us. Like, you know, I get an email a day of a new position right now from a client that I worked with in the past. And so that's definitely helped their strategies. We also have brought in an amazing business development person that only brings new clients. So that kind of helped us grow as well. But yeah, returning business is key. I think that's been the biggest thing we do mostly, our business development through references from existing candidates. Again, it's like, you know, if it was a good candidate, I always ask the clients, I'm like, you know, would you like someone like this again? And then that's usually an interesting conversation.

I think, I think references is the best way to get business That's a brilliant question. Sorry to jump in, uh, I've just placed you an amazing person, would you like someone else like this? Like, yeah, what's their response, Guy, when you ask that? Is that like a pretty good response rate in terms of like, hey, yeah, actually, if you have someone else, I would love to see them? Is that— is it— it's pretty—

yeah, like that's usually, I would say, happens, or I get a sense of. And that's also like some— yeah, like probably, you know, 30% of the time it works, every time, uh, kind of deal. But like the the rest of the time, like, I never like get an offended answer. It's more like, well, we're not hiring now. And then I can get into like, you know, what's your 3 to 6 months plans of hiring? What does that look like? And I can go into like, hey, this is the trends of these kind of positions right now. For example, like we do a lot of sales positions. So I'll be like, you know, right now in December, it's a perfect time to hire. If you're looking to hire in, you know, later on in May, now you're getting people that are like probably going to wait for their quarterly bonus or whatnot. So you know, I have someone else, might as well look at them and tell me what you think. So yeah, interesting. That's a big thing.

So that's really interesting. Gee, I feel like this has gone so quickly, and, and thank you for bearing with us because we have absolutely peppered you with questions, like, like back to front. So you've done really well to bear with us. I want to end the podcast on this one final thing because it has been absolutely transformational for my life and you said it was as well. So just, just hold that, hold that thought. Give me one second. I think I know what this is, Guy. Ben told me before the podcast began. Cool. So this little baby I've been using for a long time. It's not very— you can't really see it, but it's basically a timer and I can— and Guy, you pulled up the same one, didn't you? Yeah, there we go.

It's the same thing.

Your one's a lot cooler than ours. But this— they still work in the same way.

Yeah.

Now, when I started using this, I was like, I cannot believe I have not been time blocking my day. And I think you do 20 to 30 minutes, um, I do 45-minute chunks. But I can't tell you how amazing it's been for my life doing 45-minute chunks, taking a break for 15 minutes, either meditating or journaling, and then going again. It's been incredible. And you do the same thing. So yeah, can you just tell us why you decided to do it and how it's transformed your working day before we end the podcast?

Yeah, like, as I mentioned, like, I have really bad ADHD. So, and I would get very much distracted, even though I was like, okay, I'm doing 60 minutes of call block right now. I'm on the task, but next thing you know, it's like phone rings, email comes in. So now I've decided to do like 20 to 30 minute call blocks. So I put the timers in front of me. So that keeps me on task. I'm like, okay, I need to, if I have like a, I always go back to when I was in school, university. I was— I would wait to do my paper at midnight for the next day and I would do all-nighters. If I have a time limit expiring, I tend to work way harder. So I have like the 20 minutes, I'm like, oh no, I have like 5 minutes to finish this. So then it's kind of like a— again, goes back to the sense of urgency, but that helps me quite a bit stay on task, but also like, you know, getting things done off the list or getting things done like through my day. So.

I feel like that is perfect as well. It's also the urgency. Like, if you give yourself 10 minutes to do a task, typically you find you get it done in 10 minutes. Or you get it, you know, if you give yourself a time limit to get something done, you'll get it done a lot faster than you think because you've given yourself a time limit. Whereas if you're just like, cool, I've got the whole day, let me do these 3 things, you could spend an hour on a task and actually do it in 10 minutes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that was a really good example of why it's so useful. Gidi, thank you so much, mate. I've genuinely loved talking to you today.

I feel like we have probably another 3 hours in us.

Yeah, you may have to come back on, Gidi, for another one. That's why it feels like we peppered you, because I feel like I was trying to get as much value because you have so much to give. But I just really appreciate your time. You've answered the questions brilliantly, and you've been an absolute source of inspiration and knowledge today. So thank you very much, mate. We really appreciate your time.

I don't know if I was the first person from Canada, but, um, I think you are.

I don't want to insult any other Canadians if they've come on, but I don't, I can't remember. I think you were the first Canadian. Yes.

Yeah. There's a lot of good recruiters in Canada.

So amazing. So, you know, we've got, yeah, no, it's brilliant. We've got a lot of people to conquer in that side of the world. So again, awesome. Thank you, Guy. Really appreciate your time.

Thank you.

Hey guys, thanks for tuning into this episode. If you enjoyed it, please don't forget to subscribe on YouTube and Spotify. Tune in for another episode next week. And we look forward to seeing you again very soon. Peace and love.