I built the Biggest Community of SDRs in London (Here's why its priceless for future business)

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 Lewis Gadsden. Lewis is an associate director at Wiser Elite and he works in the tech space. And since COVID he's built a thriving community of SDRs. It's called SDRs of London. What started off as a couple dozen people in a WhatsApp group has now evolved into a thriving community of thousands of some of the best SDRs that the industry has to offer. On today's episode, we're going to be talking about how Lewis's community helps fuel his recruitment business, the exact steps that Lewis took to build a thriving community of SDRs, and why building your own community can be so powerful for future business. 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? Hey Lewis, how are you, my friend?

I'm good, mate. I'm good. Thanks for having me on, Sam.

Pleasure. I listened to your podcast like, I think it was 2 years ago when you first did it, um, for Hicham, funnily enough. And I loved what you said. I loved the aspect of the community that you built, Lewis, as well, because I haven't heard any other recruiter do what you've done, and especially to the scale you've done. And I just found it really fascinating, not to mention you're managing a team and you've got lots of wisdom to share about that. So Thank you for coming on, mate. I really appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks for having me. Look forward to it.

Wicked. Um, the first question that we start off with every guest is what's the number one tool in your toolkit, whether it be a mindset, strategy, or software? What would you say, Lewis?

Yeah, yeah, I, I always— with things like this, I think, you know, you've got to be a certain person to make it in recruitment, and, and that you're not going to get anywhere without work ethic. It's a really boring answer for recruitment, but people either have it or they don't. And like I say, it's a characteristic that I look out for. Probably slightly more controversially, I would say that you can't be a control freak either. I've mentioned it before on things like this. You can do control all your controllables in recruitment, but at the end of the day, you can't do an interview for someone, uh, and that's that. So, and ultimately recruitment comes down to two people speaking over half an hour or an hour, and one human impressing another and then deciding as to whether it happens or not. It's completely out of your hands. So being a control freak, if you show that characteristic early on, I think recruitment may, uh, may not be the good option for you.

Really interesting, mate. Um, can you— because you manage a team, Lewis, and you have done for a while— can you think back to someone that demonstrated a bad work ethic and then someone that demonstrated a good work ethic. I'm just curious of how you define that and like what you would look for in work ethic, because it's quite subjective, isn't it? Like some people could work 14 hours a day and be like, yeah, that's great, or 8 hours of good solid work could be good work ethic. I'm just considered— I'm just curious what you think.

Yeah, no, it's not— it's not so much— I'm not looking for people to be just working themselves into the ground. That's not what I mean at all. And it's not like you should be doing beyond your contracted hours or anything like that. It's not that sort of toxic behavior that sometimes the recruitment or sales industries have been known for. What I'm talking about is actually utilizing the time that you have and utilizing it properly. That's the sort of characteristics that I look out for. So, okay, is there, you know, are we at target is always number one question. How are you behaving when we're not at target? To how are you behaving when we're past target and things like that. First and foremost, being under target, that's easy. Your sole focus, you should be working, you should be making as many moves as possible and moving hell and earth in order to hit your number. That's that. With everything that you have available to you, with the time, with the resource, with all of that sort of thing, you should be utilizing it all to try and get to that goal. But then the really interesting thing is, okay, what about when you've hit your target? What are you at like then? Are we putting our feet up? Are we being like, yeah, that's me. Obviously most people in recruitment have uncapped commission structures, as it should be, really, then. And obviously you can't see that in someone until, until they've got there. So it's quite hard to do it, especially with people that haven't done sales before and things like that. You can measure it when you're interviewing people that have done this thing before, have done sales before, how well have they performed post-target. But really, I think that's when the true colors come through, is that, okay, how motivated actually are you? Are we going to push to the next level? Um, whilst at the same time protecting yourself and not working yourself into the ground, of course. Like, that's it. But that, that they would probably be— rather than naming specific names and going into it, in my mind there's two types of people, and that's, that's, that's, yeah, how they behave before and after target. That's what I look out for.

Really interesting. Um, I'm curious, um, Lewis, how many people that you have managed over the years you know, hit their target and then go above and beyond? Is that quite a rare thing to see, or is it something that is— I'm just curious how often you've seen that, and can that be taught as well if people don't?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, like, it's kind of cheating, to be honest with you, because we have an accelerator as well. So really, people are motivated to go beyond that. I think once you've hit your target, you can go up to anything. You can start taking 40% fees.

Oh, wicked. That's a great incentive.

It's brilliant. Exactly, exactly. So we want to always incentivize people to be going and hitting that next level. And so don't get me wrong, more often than not, the people that I've managed in the past will, will go hell for leather and do it. Um, but don't get me wrong, you know, that, that has been— there has been the odd person be like— it also depends where you're at in the month. If you're, if you're— obviously we're talking 2 days out, you're completely burnt out, you've given it everything, you've had a couple of rebates in the quarter as well, or, or something like that, and things have really gone against you, by all means, you know, just take, take the day and start getting yourself right, ready for the next queue. But if I'm talking to people that hit that, you know, quarterly target in month 2, if it does happen, like, okay, we've got plenty of time to play with here. What characteristics are we going to show? How far can we push this thing? And obviously that then comes down to the emotional side as to how well you know your team and how you think you can push them and Yeah, when we get into the management piece later, obviously no two people are the same, so yes, of course, you need to make sure that you're getting the best out of them in the way that they need, not what is just best for you.

Um, yeah, I would definitely get into that, Lewis. I'm fascinated to hear your take on that.

Um, cool.

So what I want to do is spend, uh, just a tiny bit of the podcast speaking about the building community side because I just found that absolutely fascinating. And like I said, there's not many, if any, recruiters I've seen do it to your scale. So I'm going to start with a really broad open question, Lewis. Can, for anyone that doesn't know what you've done with this community, can you just give us a rundown of like what it is and why you set it up, if that's okay?

Sure. Yeah, I'll give you it. I'll give you it from the start. So, uh, in the back end of 2019, um, we initially— or well, during 2019, we initially just started a WhatsApp thread for tech salespeople, and that was all walks of life. Like, it was SDRs, AEs, CSMs, sales leaders. And don't be wrong, it was cool and people chatted and we did a couple of like meetups in a pub and all that sort of stuff. And it was great, but it was chaos. And also, yes, I had having the SDRs utilize it to try and sell to the sales leaders. The topics of conversation weren't very sophisticated. Like when it came from, from, you know, SDRs asking what's the best, you know, I don't know, permission-based openers. To the sales leaders talking about really strategic stuff about scaling and getting from 0 to 5 million in annual revenue, how to get better. The conversations didn't align. So we quickly came to a point where we thought we needed to segregate it. So back end of 2019, I set up SDRs of London, which is a WhatsApp thread and set out to be a peer-to-peer mentorship community for SDRs coming into the field for the first time. You need to be an SDR in the tech sector in order to join. That's the only stipulation. Completely free, but a chance for you to meet other SDRs, talk about different techniques, problems, hurdles that you're having, and also network with each other to help with best practice and all of that sort of stuff. But that's what it set out to be. There were other competitors in the space at the time for sort of sales communities. One of them was trying to charge SDRs $500 a year out of their own back pocket. I was like, well, come on, when you're an SDR, it's when you know the least, the least need the most help. So I thought, what can I do that's going to help them first, but also benefit us and put us in a shop window? And so that was the answer. I took 20 SDRs that place, 20 SDRs at companies that I'd like to work with in the future. Just through cold messaging and all of that sort of thing. Hey, I'm setting up this thing. There's no ulterior motive. I'm just looking to build a community here, put them all together. There you go. Mentor each other for free. Let's see what happens. Within, within a week, the pandemic had started. Everyone was looking for new ways to sell. We went from 40 members to around about 180 members in a week. Just people networking. What are you doing? How are you overcoming this? The world looks like it's shutting down. No one's buying anything. 'What do we do? How am I going to hit my target? Am I going to get sacked?' Like, just all of these, like, speech bubbles which you could imagine just popping up on a screen. My phone's going off, I'm like, 'What have I created here?' Um, but eventually it calmed down and that started to get, like, an actual sense of community, and people started to come to the forefront and really helping and advising and doing that, especially the more senior characters. And then, and then lo and behold, within a month we were doing our first Lunch and Learn with, with a, with a sponsored company. So I was just like, okay, I've built something here. I don't really know what I want it to be. It was just to help them and just get our brand out there. But I just, I don't know what it is yet, but I'm just going to go down the line with it and just see how far it can go. Um, so yeah, that, that's how it started. Fast forward to today, and obviously we'll go back into the nitty-gritty as to the hurdles that we've had and all that sort of thing. But fast forward to today, We now have 5 communities: SDRs of London, AEs of London, GTM Leaders, Retention Seekers for AM and CS people, and Making Moves, which is a little bit different because that is not how to be better at your respective tech sales job. That is a women in tech sales community. So more so a catalyst for change, educating the male populace in tech sales about what women want when they are an individual contributor in SaaS, what keeps them at companies, what they want to see more of benefits-wise. Did a big event the other year about going on maternity leave because if you're a female AE, for example, you go on maternity leave, you lose all your OTE, which we think is wrong. So yeah, stuff around that.

Awesome.

Can I jump in here?

Yeah, of course.

Go ahead. Really interested as to why you chose WhatsApp in particular and also how you structure it so that people maintain or they get the value because I don't know about you guys, but when I've got like my mates have got a group of 10 and some of them are chatterboxes, I'm like, oh my God, there's like a million messages here. I can't be bothered to read everything. So how do you like, how do you structure— can you answer those two things?

I'm really curious.

Yeah, sure, sure. So first and foremost, like obviously when I said SDRs of London, SDRs tend to be a younger demographic. Like not always, not always, don't be wrong. I know some SDRs and brilliant SDRs that are, you know, over 40 and plus, but you know, for the most part, data will tell you that they are people who are coming into tech sales for the first time, grads in some cases, school leavers, whatever, mostly second jobbers that have had a bit of sales experience elsewhere in today's market. But the upshot of that is they use WhatsApp more. Like not every company has Slack still today. And don't get me wrong, we trialed Slack with some of our communities, GTM leaders especially, because obviously it's a more senior demographic. and we tried it with a couple of others. But my main point is we want this to be engaging. We want it to feel low friction. And you WhatsApp your mates, you don't Slack your mates, do you? And that's what, that's what we wanted it to feel like. I wanted to create that actual friendly feel, inviting. You can chat to anyone in here. Um, and also Slack, you put it down at 5:30, 6 o'clock. WhatsApp. We're in the SCRs of London, we have conversations going on sometimes till 8, 9 PM. Um, so that, that they were the main reasons I wanted to deformalize it, if, if that makes sense. And then funny story, because me and, me and, uh, our head of brand, my colleague Izzy, who now it's her full-time job to look after all these communities, um, we had a back and forth for years. I was always very pro WhatsApp. She was like, no, we need to do it Slack because then we can store media in it and we can do all be more sophisticated. And I was like, yeah, but you're ruining the vibes. They're like, that is it. Yeah, I have no, I have no logical or strategic explanation for you. We're just ruining the vibes by putting on Slack. Interesting. And, uh, and, and over time that eventually came to be because the engagement dropped on Slack. People weren't looking at it. And yeah, all communities now reverted back to WhatsApp. And, uh, yeah, the uptake and the engagement is much higher.

It's really interesting. We tried exactly the same thing with our clients. We were like, let's go to Slack for the exact reasons that your colleague mentioned. And then it just was dead. Like no one spoke to us. It was hard to get ahold of them. Went back to WhatsApp and now like we have engaging conversations sometimes till like in the evening. So it's really interesting you found exactly the same thing, Lewis. Um, Ben, did you have another question?

No, that was, um, cool. Well, I guess the, sorry, the other part too is that is Is, is the community really— and I kind of get it, it's like, you know, people are probably asking questions and then experienced people are probably answering them. I'm guessing you haven't had the problem where you have 100 messages and it's hard to keep track of so many people in one group, or does it just work in that way? And do people just seem to have value? Do they just go back to the conversations when they want and pick the things that they want to take value from? Does that, does that make sense? I'm just curious how that works.

Yeah, yeah, no, no, you're completely right. So if like, it's not like If you look at a Slack channel, obviously there's the thread and then there's loads of replies, isn't there? And obviously you can now do community or announcement page on WhatsApp, but obviously that's a very recent— it's not what it's been like for the majority in SDIs of London. But with, uh, with that, you can't go— you will find that there's often repeats, especially because we add new members every other week. Like we've had the question of which data provider is the best, Cognizant or ZoomInfo? I think we get that question like weekly in there just from new people, but Yeah, you, you can't go back and scale, but at the same time you get the more senior people that are ready to answer any questions, what it may be. And yeah, that, that, that they'll do it there and then. But that's the thing, we, we don't want to make it seem like there's stupid questions that you can't ask, you need to traipse through years of conversations in order to find it. Just ask it there and then. And that's very much the culture within the thread.

Cool.

And I'm guessing you'll have like this— you said Izzy, who, um, who's managing the group, maybe you guys would jump in and answer some of the basic questions and Yes and no.

Yes and no. So it's something I spoke about with Sam last week. So, and this was one of the early hurdles with it because when, when we were scaling and it was COVID, everyone's very suspicious. No one knows what the hell is going on. Who is this recruiter who set up this thread? What does he want? What's his angle? And I'm like, you know, people didn't, didn't buy the, I want to, I want to set up a community to help you guys. Piece initially, and obviously it's helping my brand. People did buy that initially. They were like, what, you just set a massive talent pool to headhunt us eventually? Like, what's your game? Um, and it wasn't my game at all. So in the end, I basically said— because this was before Izzy had the full-time job of looking after all these, before it was anything special, this was just a growing thing that I didn't know what I wanted it to be, and we just knew it was cool. Um, I, I took, I made some of the members community hosts, not many, 4 or 5 of them. So senior SDRs that have been around the block, probably been in seat for at least 9 months a year at well-respected brands, Saleslofts, Reach Desks, Cognizants. I know they were all sort of sales techs at the time, but they were, I just basically chose the most helpful, not outspoken, but insightful members that I just sat back and watched for a bit. I'm like, who's answering the questions here? Who's asking the questions, who's answering them, who's actually adding value. And I just said, look guys, obviously it's not going to be a paid position. I don't know what they want this to be, but I will help push your brands in the community. You know, we'll, we'll get things made up for LinkedIn. You put— you can put community host on your, on your banner. I would love for you to help me with this and basically be the people in steep that can help do this. Of course I will add insight wherever I possibly can. And I still sort of founded this thing, but I'm not an SDR at the end of the day. I do sales activities. I'm not eat, sleep, and live and breathe in it like what the rest of you are. So I need people that can back me and my intentions, but also be there as almost like a voice of reason and someone to look up to for the rest of the community, the more junior community. So that's what we did. And that model worked so well that we then rolled out across all the other communities because we know full well With new members comes suspicion of recruitment companies, unfortunately, because as I'm sure you boys know, recruitment has a potty reputation a lot of the time, and there is very few good companies out there. Um, and, and it takes time to earn trust. But now, for all of our 3,000+ members that we have across, I would like to think everyone has a good idea of what we're about and, and what we're not trying to do.

Awesome.

Um, I would love to know, um, Lewis, what— and I know you said like the direct financials is hard to track with this community, and I'm sure there's scope in the future for where this has come from, but I'm— if we, if we— how has this entire community— because you've got 3,000+ people who know your brand, who you communicate with— how has it impacted your brand and the recruitment side of things? I'm just interested if other recruiters were like, oh, I'm going to set up community too. Like, what are the benefits that you've seen from setting up a community?

Yeah, so the first things first, we're very fortunate because obviously we're part of Wiser, so we had a lot of like financial backing to get this thing built. Brand— like, once it was a thing, I could get it branded, I created a logo really easily, um, that I had money to put on events instantly. Like, you know, I mean, there all these sorts of things that, that anyone starting from complete standstill or in your normal recruitment company probably wouldn't have. So I was very fortunate in that sense. Um, so, so that's, that's kind of the first thing. Um, but once we'd— yeah, once we'd done that, the way it took a couple of years for us to realize whatever this thing was. Yeah, it was just cool for that point, and we didn't know. And it wasn't until over time where we built that trust with people, that people had met us in person at events, did they actually start coming? Oh, so you're a recruitment company as well? I'm like, yeah, we are. Yeah, a lot of people didn't make the connection. I'm like, no, I'm just doing this for fun, guys. Just doing this for fun. And don't be wrong, I was doing it for fun as well. Like, I really enjoy it. I really enjoy the work and all of that sort of thing. It was great meeting new people. But then it got— the first person came was like, well, actually, no, between us, actually, I'm looking right now. All right, cool. Well, let's chat. And then before you know it, that then, that then happens. Before you know it, we, it builds up over time. And now we have this whole talent pool, which generally regenerates itself on a weekly basis of people that are now starting to think about looking, not looking, not, not put open jobs on LinkedIn or CVs on job boards, but because they know us, they trust us, they've met us at events, we do something good for them. We give them this peer-to-peer mentorship community. Where they can get instant access to advice and insights whenever they want. Um, we're the first port of call when they're looking. Um, and, and don't be wrong, it took years to get there. Yeah, it was not easy, it was not overnight, and it was a trust-building exercise and expensive. Um, to put a figure on it, over the last 4 years we've invested over half a million in the communities. Wow. Um, so it's, it's not— it's been an arduous process, but now it's there and it's something that no one else has. Um, but that, that there's some figures and some time frames that it took to get to that point, and probably why people have tried to set up communities since and failed. Hmm, really interesting, in my opinion. I'm sure they'll tell you other reasons, and obviously that's just where I'm sitting, I can't say for sure. But, um, but yeah, like that, I, I know the struggles with it, and we're just fortunate that we had the money and the time to, to make it work.

Yeah, completely.

Of the half a million, Lewis, what was the most costly areas that you spent the money on? Was it the events, or like, where did you find that the biggest sucker was of money, do you think?

For always the events. Yeah, always, always the events. Always the events. We even today, we're still quite bootstrapped when it comes to like softwares and all that sort of thing. It's all manually done. There's no like automation or making our lives super easy and tracking data editor and all of that sort of stuff. It's still very much bare bones with me and Izzy, um, especially when it comes to SDRs in London. But a few years in, we started to decide to do an awards ceremony as well, the Elites. Um, and that's like a big black tie do. So, you know, a lot of that half a million initially was put in that, that first year of that, um, before it was a proven thing. Last year we did it, and yeah, it was profitable, thankfully. So awesome. So, um, But yeah, events, we last year I think we ran 21 events, which was actually something that we will not be doing again. Too many. Because you have 5 communities, 5 communities, a webinar and an in-person event every quarter for each one. It was too much. Whereas this year we're literally doing sort of one webinar, one in-person event for all communities. And that's hopefully going to add more value and let us go bigger with these, these events and spend more on them individually, if that makes sense. But yeah, not to ramble on, that's where, that's where a lot of the money went.

Yeah, I just— to go back to the benefits, so what I've, what I've heard from you so far, Lewis, is that it's kind of created an instant pool of great candidates. There's always being fuel in the pipeline, which is absolutely invaluable, and that's only going to keep getting better and growing as the community grows. Um, and I know that's it, getting good SDRs is a very competitive market, isn't it? It's a very competitive market, the SDR market. So to have that constant fuel of people that you're not even actively poaching, they just know you and they want to come to you, is what you've alluded to. Um, so that's really cool.

That's it, that's it. And just to make the point clear as well, like, we, we can't, we can't ever go poaching. Yes, in the community you can't do it. Even though I know someone who I know and I've spoken to and they're perfect like, do I mean, no company would ever want their reps as being part of our communities if we started doing that. So it is a fine art, but all we can do is put ourselves in that good enough position where they're comfortable enough to come to us as the first port of call. Yeah, that's, that's obviously something to do about. And then obviously that's in the hands of the, the companies then that they currently work for and making sure they keep hold of them, like, do I mean, that's—

yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. And sorry, Ben, just one last question off the back of What I was gonna say is, um, and has it introduced you to any new clients kind of organically, Lewis? And if so, how has that happened? I'm curious.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Got some, got some really, really nice stories of, uh, people who are in the original cohort of SDRs of London who are now sales leaders and workers.

So amazing.

Again, obviously the biggest caveat to that is time. Yeah, time. It's not, it's not been easy, uh, you know, it has been a gradual thing and No, don't be wrong. I'm not sitting here saying that 75% of our client base or community members at the start or something silly like that. Definitely nowhere near those numbers. But yeah, it is a brand building exercise above anyone else, because we often find now that, okay, commercially, if companies— we had it recently with a brand, a big enterprise martech, like, be like, we can't work with you as a recruitment agency, but we'd love to sponsor your communities. Like, great, okay, fine. And then that acts as sort of the way in. And then whenever the timing's right, whenever the TA team is up the creek without a paddle, again, because when they sponsor us, you bet, like, much like with the Unrivaled talent pool of candidates that are only just starting to look, we're then first port of call for those businesses as well.

Interesting.

Like, it, it puts us, it puts us at the door, not through it, but it puts us, it puts us there on the recruitment side, which is, which is good. And yeah, it'll be quite hard to open that door and not see us standing there first.

Yeah, really interesting.

What, um, I, I feel like you said that, you know, you obviously can't directly poach these guys, but they come to you when they need to. So what, yeah, what's the little things that you do to like subtly remind them who you are and what you do? Do you, like, is it, is it the events that mainly do that, or do you kind of, I don't know, like, how would you do that, Lewis, in, in a way? Yeah, yeah, I guess people could join and just not know who you are as well, right? Like, so there's a way that you might be kind of educating them to some extent.

Oh yeah, yeah, I'd be lying to you now if I thought that, that 100% of our members actually knew that we're a recruitment company as well. I don't think they do. I still don't think they do. I'd like to think far more than than they did 4 years ago. Yeah, but yeah, I, you know, I'd like to think over 80% at least, but you know, I reckon there are still a few stragglers in there that have no idea what we do otherwise. Um, but, um, but with, um, so I've completely forgotten your question.

No, sorry, I was just saying, what, what are the things— is it— what are the things that you're doing?

How do we push the recruitment thing out there? Yes, exactly, that's it, that's it. Um, so, uh, we obviously have the events. We always mention what we do at the events, that's just a given.

Yeah.

The second thing that we've recently done is also we've launched a job board again on WhatsApp. Cool. So not, not only— not— and this is— this was a big decision for us, um, we are not just doing our jobs on there, we're allowing companies to post themselves.

Oh, interesting. Wow, cool. What was the thought process behind that, Lewis? Like, how did you come to that conclusion and what were the pros and cons of interest?

Yeah, it was mainly— I was, I was on, I was on bat lead when it launched, but so I, I obviously gave the go-ahead, but it was largely thrashed out between Jack and Izzy. Cool. Um, but at the same time, like, that it's a hard situation as a recruiter, isn't it? Because you don't want to miss out on revenue, but also you don't want to be seen to be greedy.

Yeah.

And, and we, we always refer back to the mission initially of what the community was. It's there first and foremost to help it and build it, help our target market and build our brand, and it's secondly for us to gain like that revenue from it. That, yeah, and if as long as we keep that throughout, it will always be cool. People will always want to join it. At the second we start wanting to try and, you know, drain it for all it's worth, that's when people start leaving. That's when, yeah, that, that's when people won't be asked for that anymore. So with the job board, um, we, we came to a point of being like, look, we allow members in the communities post on behalf of their own companies. Um, but we didn't want them to become job boards. Like, that was, that was the key thing. You can't post for anyone else or for other companies in there or whatever, or my mate's looking for two SDRs. You can't do that. But if you work for a particular business and that you're recruiting right now, by all means, please do it. Please put it in there. So we wanted to eradicate that and we found that that was just happening quite a lot. And we were like, okay, how can we better this? Let's create a place for them to go. And it all comes down to brand building at the end of the day. So we were like, look, we can either be really stingy about this and let only let people post jobs that we're working on or something like that, or they can't post jobs that we're working on. Do you do it that way instead? Because we're working on them, we don't want anyone else to find them. But in the end, we were just like, look, let people do what they want. Free for all. Do it. Because then it's just another way that they come to know us. Mm-hmm. Love that. That doesn't still— like, it still doesn't save them time. They're still going to have to go through applications. Doesn't mean necessarily mean they're going to get the right applications. All the problems that we should solve as a recruitment company, other than the advertising part, you know, that they're not getting the rest of that. So if they need us, they would still use us, is basically the general upshot that we came to. And we add far more value than you just posting posting a job out there. Like, do you know what I mean? If you want to use us, you get far more than that. We're not just, you're not going to utilize job slots. So that was basically the upshot that we came to. Let more people do it. Let more people know about us. Let more people be intrigued with, oh, this job board's good. We actually hired someone from it. It's from WiseRelate. Aren't they a recruitment company? Do we need to pay for this? No. What do you mean? We don't have to pay for it. We need to find out more about these guys. That's the ideology.

Love it, man.

Love it.

Um, I had a question, but it completely went out of my brain. Oh my God. Um, Ben, have you got a question by any chance, or should we move on to the next section?

I think we can move on to the next section.

Yeah, I've got nothing else.

Cool. I was a really—

oh yeah, sorry, the job boards just came back to me, Lewis.

What have you—

because it was just a recent thing, and it seems like it's quite a big decision. Yeah, yeah. How long ago was it, like a couple months ago?

January? No, no, a couple of weeks ago.

Oh wow. What, what have you seen so far in terms of— have you seen any— I mean, it's only been a couple weeks. I'm not expecting like rainbows, but like Have you seen any differences since putting the job board in the group?

Someone's made a hire. Oh, wicked.

Yeah, that's so cool.

So it's good. Yeah, obviously I won't mention who, but like they, uh, they came to us on— it was actually like my, I think my second day back, so it would have been like the 10th of January maybe. Um, and he came, he's like, look, love the idea of the job board, mate. How can I get in? Can I post my job in there? I was like, yep, where you go, here you go. Check with him the following Friday. We've made a hire. I love that. Brilliant. Come on.

Yeah, that's so cool.

And now obviously from that, we've now made the connection with that person. It was a new business, a sales leader at a new business that we, you know, weren't even particularly on our radar, if I'm honest with you. But now I'm like, okay, we've done something. Always, we like want to— you do something good for someone first and hopefully, hopefully they'll want to return the favor in the future. They don't need to, obviously, but because You just got to keep doing good things for people, and hopefully karma will come back around for you, and you'll get it back someday. Um, and that's just what we always try and do. So hopefully that one— that, that one is, uh, we've got a favor in the tank for the future.

That's cool. I just want to say before moving on to the next section, I feel like you have built something incredibly powerful, and I feel like you're just tapping in. Feels like you've done the work, Lewis, and you're starting to see little shoots. And I feel like 2 to 3 years from now, it's going to be an absolute powerhouse. For your business as well. Um, and I'm sure it's already helped a lot of people, but it's just really interesting catching you at this point in your journey. And I can just predict 2 to 3 years from now, it's going to be insane. Um, cool. So second half, I would love to go— we've got about 15, 20 minutes left. I'd love to just talk about managing a team.

Yeah, sure.

Um, what has been the hardest lesson you've learned managing a team? Is there anything that comes to mind of that's been the most annoying or hardest lesson that you've learned?

Yeah, like when you're a manager, like, how can I put this that doesn't sound like I'm being a dickhead? It's always a good way to start a point. It's hard to expect that people will care as much as you. It's kind of, kind of, I think, I think is the key, especially like now, now we're You know, now I'm an associate director, but even when I was a team lead, like, I don't know what it is. And again, I think this kind of goes back to why I think the work ethic thing as well. Like, I'm— I, with help from leaders and everything in my business, I built the SDR desk at Wiser. And like, you know, don't be wrong, I didn't do it all through cold outbound or anything like that. Far from it. I had help, but, you know, I built it to what it was. I don't know if I had a certain amount of love, like, like a baby for it. And then when you start hiring people onto the team, especially people where they had no work, you know, work or life experience, but they got a degree under their belt so that they think they're entitled to a good office job initially. And then you get them in and they look great on paper and then it's like, okay, you actually don't give a toss, do you? And then, or, or even more so, you train them up, it all goes well, and after 18 months, 2 years, they leave. Because they can get a better salary elsewhere, which, you know, it's not their fault in any way, shape, or form. You know, you've got to look after yourself. But at the same time, yeah, that I'd say those are the biggest lessons that I would have and probably changed our hiring strategy pretty quickly. Once I was a leader, changed my hiring strategy pretty quickly. I'm no longer willing initially, which is a bit of a sad, not willing to like bring someone from the ground up. I haven't got the time or the resources.

Oh, interesting. No, so that's one of the rules that changed, Lewis. No more newbies, so to speak.

No, yeah, no, no, unfortunately no, no, no sort of people who are fresh to the industry.

Um, why did you make that decision? Is it just too difficult to train people?

We're, we're a lean team, obviously. We're, we're a lean team. It takes too much time to train people, takes too much effort to train people, and they don't add enough value instantly, obviously, especially now we're a leaner team and whatnot. But there isn't loads, and we spend the amount that we do on the communities and whatnot, which works for us. Yeah, in generating inbound leads and candidates and what it does, we'd rather spend the money on that rather than spending money on, on training someone for 6 months only for them to potentially leave a further 6 months later because they realize recruitment isn't for them. So we, we, for the last 3, 4 years, have only employed experienced recruiters. Cool.

And, and, um, last question for me, Lewis, because I know you have to go as well, but Um, this is probably the biggest problem any hiring manager has, exactly what you stated, that all my clients tell me about, that their clients have as well, is you interview someone, they're really good in the interview, and then they come in and then they're actually not very good, or they don't care as much, or they just don't perform. What have you done to— you can never completely eliminate it, but what have you done to help eliminate that, um, hiring the wrong person? What would you say?

Yeah, so it's, it's difficult. Like, you know, there's only so many questions that you can ask, but the key thing that we'd always try and go on is like coachability, character, experience. Like, they're, they're the three, three things that would always go on. So, um, coachability is obviously hard to, to measure it just in one conversation. It needs to be over the course of the interview stages. So we'll see what they picked up from the first interview in last one and all of that sort of thing. The task, how they take direction instantly, all of that sort of thing. Character is the biggest one. Like, can they actually articulate where— for want of a better phrase— have they been through some shit? Yeah, have they been through it? Like, you know, rather than beat around the bush, have they been through some shit, you know, professionally, personally, you know, all of that sort of thing? I'm not saying we need like wounded soldiers or people that have had a ridiculous life story and a really hard life to date. Um, but at the same time, you know, have you, have you gone through a really tough time? What did it teach you about yourself? Was it your fault? If it was, what did it, you know, what have you done to ensure that it doesn't happen again? Or if you can't help it, as little as possible, you know, being able to articulate all of that sort of stuff, that, that is probably the main sort of characteristic that I would look out for. I think I mentioned it on Hisham's podcast a couple of years ago and stuff, like, you know, I commuted in from Oxford for like 10 months, 5 days a week, and all of that sort of thing. I'm not— whoop-de-doo, well done, Lewis. But like, I had a guy who, who sofa surfed for 6 months, uh, in my team, and he's, he's still with us today, and he's like a high performer. And just overcoming tough periods, coming out the other end, and then it's shaping you further— that, that they're really sort of the things that I try and eliminate. If you've been— if you've had it, and it's no fault of their own— but if you've been to a good school nice school, you've been to good university or a nice university, and your parents paid for it, and you've done some extracurricular activities, and you've just gone through the whole education system from start to finish nice and linearly, and you've never really worked because you haven't needed to or anything like that, and you can't articulate anything to me as to what, what's really been hard in your life, or the hardest moment was being told that you were getting a 2:1 in your degree and then you got told you were going to get a first and you got first in the end or something. So that's just, that just doesn't do it for me.

Interesting. I love that.

That doesn't do it for me. If you've had to struggle, if you've had to really grind and fight for what you have and, you know, and that comes in many ways, many shapes like that, that's really what I'm looking for. And to be honest with you, that's, that's what's been successful in the people that we've hired so far, plus recruitment experience. So yeah, plus, you know, a solid, a solid 6 months to a year, you know, we'll definitely take. Take a look at you and you've actually done it and not been— not completely flopped in doing it, plus all of that character piece. Yeah, that's really what we look for.

Love that, mate. Very simple but very powerful. So recruitment experience and just digging into struggles to make sure that they can overcome some challenges and go through the pain of what they will inevitably be— inevitably experience being a recruiter. Um, it's really useful.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, anyone that started recruitment in the last 2 years, my God, I feel sorry for you because it's just especially in the tech market. Like, there's one of the lads in my team, I'm like, you've never been here when it's been good. You've never been, you've never had like the sort of, not what we don't call a president's club, but like, you know, like our big annual incentive or anything like that. You've never had any of that. And I'm like, it's going to get, if you can last now, you're brilliant.

Yeah. Yeah. Really interesting. Lewis, I know you have to shoot off, mate. We need to get you back on because I feel like we only scratched the surface of your value. But thank you so much, mate. It was such a pleasure to have you on and lots of little golden nuggets. So appreciate you coming on, mate.

Thanks so much for having me, guys. Had a blast.

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