Great Marketing advice from a 320K Biller

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 Jamie Clayton. Jamie is a 320K biller, and he's now the managing director of White and Clayton Recruitment over in Dubai, which is a team of 22 strong. Jamie used to be a plasterer/tiler by trade, and after having this nagging feeling that he was destined for something greater, he decided to move into sales. Since then, Jamie's been been on an insane journey of learning from some of the best in the industry and working from all over the world. On today's episode, we're going to be talking about Jamie's journey and how moving into sales changed his life, the biggest lessons that he learned from observing top billers throughout his career, and we'll be talking about why marketing has been absolutely essential to Jamie's success and some of the strategies that he now implements with him and his team. As usual, guys, grab a cuppa or a glass of wine depending on when you're listening to this and let's get into it, shall we?

Jamie, thank you so much for joining us today, mate. We had a last-minute cancellation and we were rushing all over the place to try and find someone. And then I saw your message pop up in my inbox. I was like, yes, bloody hell, that's brilliant. So thank you so much, mate. You really saved our asses this time.

Glad to be here. Thank you.

Awesome. And when we jumped on a pre-call, I have to admit, you had a really interesting story and just your journey. I can't wait to unpack this and just ask you all these questions. But we're going to start off with our famous first question, which is what's the number one tool in your toolkit, whether it be a mindset, strategy, or software?

Yeah, I mean, it has to be mindset for me. It's one of the first things I train any new consultant on, whether they're experienced or not. If you can't train the right mindset, you're essentially, you're not prepared enough for the processes that follow in recruitment, regardless of your industry. I think mindset's got to be the number one. Number one thing that you're on top of. From a positive point of view, a negative point of view, it doesn't matter. If you're not prepared to accept things or deal with things in the right way, it doesn't matter how good your processes are. You personally aren't going to be able to deal with that in the right way. That would be my opinion on it anyway. I love that.

Great response. And you said you train your consultants. What would you do to help them with mindset, do you think? What kind of things do you instill into them?

So for me, it's obviously as any good manager has to be direct and clear and you've got to be prepared with personal experiences. I mean, I'm lucky enough to come from the frontline myself before stepping up into this position I'm in now. But just making it crystal clear, I think the biggest one for me, especially with how niche my industry is within food and beverage manufacturing, is that it's setting the right expectations of timelines, how long things actually take. Preparation is one thing. You could prep a CV in a matter of a couple of hours if you're going to spec, you could prep research for a couple of days if it's targeting the specific clients that are relevant to your candidate, whatever the process is that you're following. But the physical process itself, whether you're headhunting or whether you're BDing, it makes no difference. If you're expecting something to happen overnight, which we all know it can, you could send, somebody could send 5 emails, it could be nonsense and you could still get a reply on that. But I think it's just obviously setting the right expectations that you're not going to be walking into success right away overall anyway, from a point of view, which is something that we've done pretty well here, I'd like to think.

I found this really interesting, Jamie. You were originally a plasterer, tiler by trade, right? Before you got into recruitment. I love that, mate. So you were in the trade. Tell us, you were a plaster tiler by trade. What was the moment and why did you decide to get into recruitment at that point, do you think?

So to be honest, I fell into that job. I was counting the days till I could leave high school. It wasn't something I particularly enjoyed. When I turned 16, I was lucky enough, it was actually during the first recession a few years ago in the UK, and I was lucky enough to get an apprenticeship with Edinburgh City Council, which was a big thing at the time. I absolutely murdered my first year in the role. I mean, I think 350 people applied for it and I was the person that got the job. So I was really lucky. And being a young lad, I just took the mickey a little bit too much. Truth be told, nearly lost my job. I got a final warning at the end of my first year and it, and I just, something just clicked to me in the second year. I got Apprentice of the Year in Scotland. And then I knew that I hated it though. Like I just, I hated the cold days. Mine was empty homes as well. So I wasn't going into nicely warmed houses, plastering the ceilings or tiling the kitchens. I was in in empty homes, just preparing the houses for people moving in. And I just knew that it wasn't for me, but I thought, given that final chat I had at the end of year 1, I thought, see this out, get my papers, and then just get into something that's going to be a much nicer environment for you. And my mum, people that knew me, you'll see by this podcast at the end, I can chat for hours and hours and hours. And she just said, you need to do sales. Like, you need to go and sell. Go and be a car salesman. Go and sell something because you can make people like you. I mean, I can adapt to my audience. I can get on with anybody I need to get on with in order to make money within reason. But yeah, that was the reason for that. I got my pay, passed my apprenticeship, and then fell into call centre sales role with, initially with postcode lottery. I don't know if you know what that is, but that's when they were first started in the UK. So started off with there, done really well in the sort of 6 months I was there. They removed commission. So I was like, well, I'm not hanging about if I'm not getting commission anymore. And then I went to British Gas. I was there for 3 and a half years selling electricity and gas and then went to Australia, fell into the exact same job I was doing at British Gas just by chance, ended up not traveling at all. I went there to travel, stayed at Melbourne for 2 years, loved it, made a lot of money, and then came back and that was when the recruitment began.

Oh, awesome, mate. So yeah, I forgot to mention that. So you moved to Australia, so you've moved to quite a few different places. Well, you're in Dubai now, which we'll get onto. But why did you move to Australia? What was that move for? Like, why did you decide to do that?

Itchy feet. I was just, I'd been in the UK, I was at British Gas for 3 and a half years by this point. But by 3 years, I thought this, Edinburgh's a small place, it's a beautiful city, but I'd lived there by that point for like 25 years, I think it was. I mean, I just needed to spread my wings and I thought, why not now? I'm not going, I knew I was never going to be at British Gas as a career. I knew I was always going to do something else. And I thought, why not travel now? Go and meet people, go and see the world a little bit, and then come back to the UK when I'm ready to do so and really focus on, on being older, I suppose. That's the best way to put it. So yeah, and then came back to Edinburgh and obviously I'm sure you've got questions on the start of recruitment, but very quickly in my recruitment career I was down in Manchester shortly after returning to the UK, and then I was in Mani for about 3.5, 4 years as well. So yeah, just, just need new change of scenery. I need something that's forever changing and I'm in the best city for that now. There's just something new happening every week, so can't complain.

Wicked. I just want to ask, because I'm fascinated in the shift in maybe self-belief, confidence, or mindset as you go from one job to another. So what has changed in your mindset since plaster tiler, now transitioning into the sales world? I'm sure things have changed, but does anything come up when I say that?

To be honest, for me, it's just the motivation behind why you're changing. My motivator was I never physically hated the job plastering. I didn't hate actually skimming a ceiling or plasterboard walls and skimming that or taping. It was, for me, it was easy stuff. People call it an art. And then I've done tiling as well and actually really enjoyed tiling. I suppose it was just the culture. Like I was working for a council and nothing against councils, but I was just destined for bigger and better things. Like there was never any progression there. You were always going to be a tradie. Like I say, environment I was working in, it wasn't great. I was, At the time, a young lad, so I wasn't even driving then. So I was getting driven about in a van all across Edinburgh and I just knew it wasn't for me. And I think when I then obviously got into the sales world, sitting in a nice warm office, making triple the money, more than that. I was making £130 a week as an apprentice plasterer for 4 years, £20 a year. So I think by the end of year 4, I was on £200 a week and I was just like, went right into postcode lottery. My first paycheck was £3,000 after tax. I was just like, I was like, this is, and then that for me, obviously everyone will talk about money and stuff. And you'll find interesting now, even being a business owner, money ain't my biggest motivator. It's success. It's been part of journeys. I'm a bit more fluidy than my business partner. I enjoy that. Because I've came from not really having that much money in my life and then understanding how much money is enough for me. That's the point I'm probably at now in my career and just maturing as well. Just understanding what I want for myself. That's been a huge part on a personal note that's affected my career choices.

Yeah, wicked, man.

Love your journey.

It's really cool, really interesting.

Cool.

So let's get back into recruitment, which is awesome. So you had this— went from apprentice to traveling the world to doing all these different sales roles, to then figuring out you wanted to do recruitment. And correct me if I'm wrong with these numbers, but I'm just going to go through the, the billing from year 1 to year 4. So year 1 was £120K, 2 was £150K, 3 was £250K, and 4th year was £320K. So what's interesting to me is that every year you're increasing, you know, quite considerably. And I'd love to know during that time, during the fact, you know, during the progressive learning of becoming a recruiter and getting better, what were the needle-moving things that allowed you to increase year on year, do you think, Jamie?

Uh, yeah, I mean, for me, it's, it's my— I learned from my mistakes. Um, and for year one, as any new consultant will know, Regardless of your industry, you're going to say the wrong thing. You're going to send the wrong thing. You're going to do the wrong thing. Like there's going to be a number of mistakes in those first 3, 4 months. I'm lucky. It's easy for me to sort of talk about my experience, but if you've not got that type of head on you, then you have to, I don't know if you can even train it. You've just got to get through it. But for me, I would never make the same mistake twice. It'd be very, very rare unless it was pure human error. If I knew that I could see something going the same way that resulted in a negative impact the last time, I'm automatically thinking of a new way to come up with a way to avoid that or make it a better scenario. So to progress from year 1 to year 4 the way that I did, it was all about just, it was just kind of hard work. You're just grafting, just making sure that I knew as much as possible about what I was recruiting. And I would be the first in the office, last in the office to make sure that I was climbing that leaderboard every single year. Because I mean, my old company were great at what they do, and they've been about for over 20 years, specialist in food and beverage manufacturing, really sort of known in the UK market. But they've been about for over 20 years. So with that comes a lot of traditional recruitment, you see. And when I entered that business, a lot of it was based on their CRM. They had a really juicy CRM, but over the years you've got recruiters coming and going. It was really outdated at the same time. So one thing for me that I was obviously very on top of was housekeeping and ensuring just organisation. And that, again, it's so closely linked in my opinion with mindset. If you've not got an organised mindset, do you know what I mean? You're going to really struggle to become one of these top billing recruiters or really stand out among your team or your company. So for me, it was just ensuring that I was watching what other people do when I was training in my first 6 months. My third month was an £18,500 month which my whole company were like, what the hell? Like nobody normally does this. And that's because like I say, I put the time in, I put the graft in. But I also done is I sat with the people that were at the top of the board for at least an hour every week, all the different people that were at the top of the board. And I just picked all the individual things that they'd done well and that I liked, that I agreed with. Even if they'd done something that was maybe making the money, but I was like, that's not my style. I was not in it. I was trying it and I knew that I wasn't going to like it, but I made sure that I just created my own style essentially. And I just worked with it. I just trialed and errored it. I didn't work on 10 calls a day and thought it was a masterpiece. I was doing 50 calls a day, working 8 or 10 every single day until I knew, right, I've got a formula that works here. And like I say, the billables prove that. And to be honest, I firmly believe that if I wasn't only recruiting in the UK. I mean, year 4 was the beginning of my European recruitment, which obviously shows you a substantial, substantial jump. Year 3 was when I'd done a dual desk. So that's when I went from food safety to food safety and R&D. Again, a substantial jump from the year before. So it's just recognizing the gaps that I could take advantage of in the fairest way involving my business to make it benefit me. That's essentially how I've managed to grow.

Love that, man. I just want to state a really important point, um, Jamie, that I think is really valuable, that you saw top billers, you saw things that you liked and some that you didn't like, but you still tested the things that you didn't like. And I think that's such an important point to make because a lot of people might see, oh, they might, they might see a LinkedIn post and be like, I don't really like posting, it's not my thing, like I'm never going to do that, or I don't like cold calling, it's just not my thing, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna do it. But like the importance of testing it and finding out for yourself is just It's very understated but so powerful, I think.

Absolutely. I mean, because a lot of people in this industry are, especially at the start, only all they're motivated by is money. If they try something they maybe don't agree with or don't like, but they see success from it, you bet they're probably going to do it again. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. 100%. For me, the reason I didn't necessarily like it was because I couldn't see the way that I was operating in other aspects working for me or that being aligned with the processes or the way that I was trying to recruit overall. It was against the grain with 90% of the stuff I was doing. Doing elsewhere. So that's where I thought I knew, but I still tried it to ensure that fact. And yeah, it's just one thing to tick off, tick off the list that I know that it's not going to work for me, and obviously go along and see the stuff that does.

Really fascinating.

And did you have a question?

We usually— yeah, I was good. Questions?

Pardon?

No, I was just going to say, um, if you were to go back— so I completely understand, Jeremy, in terms of the things that you've already said, in terms of how you got to from 120 to 3 320. If you were to go back to, to younger Jamie and say, hey Jamie, if you do this one thing, you'll probably grow twice as fast, is there any of those little things that you've mentioned you've noticed in hindsight that you could have done differently?

Um, I suppose, I mean, I'd say I'd rather have done quicker than differently because there is things back then that the top builders were doing that I couldn't really do at that time. And I think a lot of it was based on just time in the industry. It was based on knowledge and experience to make me, or to allow me to understand, now that makes sense. Yeah. So to set you an example, it was, and again, it's maybe an easy answer, but it was the research part. It was actually taking the time to prepare things before just diving into it. I still very much am an off-the-cuff type of person on the personal front, still in recruitment, but I'm very cautious of things that I'll maybe just dive into right away. This podcast, to be fair. Some things are worth the risk, you know what I mean? And you're never going to know until you do that and take the opportunity. But with recruitment, I suppose it was really understanding and taking, just taking my time. Like the top biller, a guy named Richard, who was in my last company, he was, he's a commercial specialist and he would be putting, or he would be spending time with networking and researching with specific clients. That matched his current candidate base, for example, with whether it was the customer channel they were selling into or the product category they were working with. He would just take the time to know everything about 3 or 4 candidates. Whereas I was operating with 20 candidates and just going bosh, bosh, bosh, bosh, bosh, out, like spraying it. What I've obviously realized now in my last years of recruitment is that there's a lot of numbers there, but the quality is what really drives success. And there was a business owner, a brand. Obviously, whether you're a recruiter or a business owner, your brand is your service and the CVs that you're putting out or the job ads that you're putting out, whatever your motive is, it's all about that quality and of course consistency. You can put one good job up out of 100, you're going to have a shitty brand. Do you know what I mean? Whereas if you're consistent, you could put 5 good jobs out that are going to have that consistency. You're going to make more money from 5 jobs than the 100 crap ones, aren't you? So I wish I could have learned that back in year 2 because my billables could have been maybe over £200K at that point. But You know, it's such a funny thing, isn't it?

It's, uh, yeah, but it's interesting you said brand as well because people, when people think of branding, they instantly think, oh, content, LinkedIn content, or— but branding is like so much bigger. It's, it's your reputation of everything you do, isn't it? And every experience you leave with your clients and candidates. So that's really interesting.

Oh, great. And even unfortunately, the, the, the negative conversations you have to have, I, I sort of thrive off them because it's an opportunity to to still come across as the nice guy or come across as a professional manner where you don't have to have a screaming match or a to and fro because the client or candidate is not like the way that you've, not like the direction the process has gone in. You being the middleman, you're always getting the brunt of it as all recruiters will know. But it's almost like I take joy de-escalating situations and turning them over. But at the same time, not just falling at their feet and giving them what they want. It's obviously just educating them on why certain things have happened in the process because that also matters. If you're somebody that just walks away from the negative, it impacts your brand whether you fight back or not. I think if you're there seen trying to do the right thing, that person's going to walk away and go, well, at least they tried, instead of having a shouting match with them and then blocking them. Word of mouth is so powerful. And it's like I say, I've realized that over the last year and a half, 2 years since opening the business, that you've got to really do your best to ensure that Everyone knows as a recruiter you've tried your hardest, whether it's a positive or negative impact— impact, outcome, sorry.

Yeah, love that, man. I think a really valid point of trying to de-escalate stuff and always leave people with a good feeling even if they're acting a bit douchebaggy.

Like that word, Sam? Douchebaggy?

Yeah, that's a new word I just made up now.

Douchebaggy. Yeah, transparency.

Yeah, exactly.

One thing I just want to go back to, again, I'm fascinated in those moments when people are specifically observing people better than them and then realizing the patterns of what they're doing.

And there was—

you said that you were—

and we've, we've heard this quite a lot from top billers, but you were, you were looking at all the top billers and observing what they're doing and sitting down with them for an hour.

What were some—

well, that you've already mentioned one, which was like more detail to the process. Was there anything else that came up when you were looking at these top billers of stuff they were doing that that you were like, oh shit, John's doing that, I should probably test that, or I should probably do that?

Yeah, I mean, I suppose a lot of the stuff that I do, well, I did recently up until I stopped recruiting, was, it's what I've always followed since I've obviously sat in year 1. I've just done everything and continuously improved them, and that just came from the market knowledge that I've gained through my work. But if we take it back to year 1, when I was physically doing that, it was more so like, If I break it down from a candidate and client point of view, that's what it sort of narrows it down to because these guys were doing this purely my old company's way. Like they had, for example, and we'll probably talk about this later, but with LinkedIn, these guys had LinkedIn and they never used it. I mean, they had all the recruiter licenses, they would use it here or there as a backup to the CRM and they're working roles where they're up against 3 or 4 other agencies that are on LinkedIn first. So there was a couple of guys in there that would use LinkedIn, et cetera, but I can only talk from their process and how I improved myself because I was the one that really introduced LinkedIn in my business. So I'd be the person that was liaising with the LinkedIn account manager, doing some of the training. When I moved into Manchester, I grew the whole office. Well, I helped grow the office from 3 to 28 consultants in a year and a half, 2 years when I became senior. So if I can relate it to year 1, when it wasn't, it was before I introduced the LinkedIn to them. It was ways that they were sort of using the CRM. Now, I don't know if you've heard of this CRM, it's quite an old one. There is newer versions, it's called RDB.

I don't know a lot of CRMs in recruitment anyway, but carry on.

It's called RDB. So for anyone listening, if they're using it, they'll know the battles, the RDB, right? It's a really old software. There is newer updates for it, but for me it was just like, it was a maze sometimes. And it was really sort of, streamlining the way that we went about our day when it came to spec and when it came to searches, noticing how, for example, it was Cassie and Lexi who both trained me on food science and food safety, sorry. And what they'd done really, really well was structured their day. So it was the organisational piece, how these guys were organising themselves when it came to a search, how they were organising themselves when it came to using the database, how they were organising themselves when it came to phone calls. And it was just At the point you've got to have that sort of structure when you're learning recruitment, because you don't know where to start and you don't know where to stop. You really don't know where you're going. You're all over the place. So having that structure and copying what the bigger billers were doing and understanding and asking questions like, how does that impact your daily? Why are you doing your calls? Like something as simple as why are you doing your calls between 5 and 6? Everyone's finished work, maybe on the way home they can answer their call. So I mean, you're speaking to food candidates that are in the factory or in the head office. They're not going to pick up a call for a recruiter, have an open conversation, and they're really reluctant to leave the office as well in case it looks conspicuous. So just sort of little details like that.

Yeah, really interesting, man. Really interesting. And so the next stage of your journey was— so you became a top biller. It sounds like you, you progressed this company massively over the years, or over the year and a half that you were there. Um, and then you decided to set up your own business. That was— that's the next stage of your journey, isn't it, Jeremy? You set up your own business You moved to Dubai. Ironically, we— or funnily enough, we had another, uh, lady on the podcast last week, um, who moved to Dubai as well.

So it sounds—

it seems like a popular, popular move for a lot of recruiters.

Yeah.

Um, and you said, uh, well, before you moved to Dubai, when you built up your business, you— your business was doing— I think you did a million in revenue with 4 graduates, is that right?

Yeah, yeah. So you— as you'll see by the billables, from going from 150 in year 2 to 250 in year 3 The turning point for me was of course growing my desk. So dual desk essentially with them, with two different departments. And look, I wasn't doing UK-wide even at that point. I was only doing the Northwest of England and Wales. That was my only two locations. And you're looking at