Only Works 3 Hours a day - 180K Biller

Hey guys, welcome 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 Fraser Merrifield. Fraser worked his way up the corporate ladder. He was billing substantial numbers, but he was working every hour of the day. In fact, it got so bad that Fraser thought about packing it all in and giving up on recruitment altogether when suddenly the pandemic hit. With time to sit back and reflect on life, Fraser realized that he wanted a change. So he set up his own recruitment company with a focus on work-life balance. On average, Fraser is sitting at his desk for just 3 hours per day. He's on track to bill $180K this year, and he spends the rest of his time doing things that he loves and things that aid his mental health. Today we're going to be uncovering how the hell Fraser manages to maintain such a brilliant business, providing a fantastic service, billing pretty substantial numbers and only sitting at his desk for 3 hours a day. We're also going to be talking about how he managed to reinvigorate his love for recruitment and how he's designed his life for optimal happiness. So grab a cup of coffee, my friends, or a glass of wine, depending on when you're listening to this. And let's get into it, shall we? Hey, Fraser, how you doing?

Yeah, good, thanks.

You?

Yeah, really good. Thank you, mate. Thank you for joining us on our 9th episode. I'm sure I got this wrong. I get it wrong every time. I think it's the 9th episode of Top Billers Toolkit. Really excited to have you on. We always start off the podcast with this question, which is what would you say is the most important tool in your toolkit, whether it be a mindset, a strategy, or a piece of software?

That's definitely not going to be a piece of software because mine's terrible. Balance. So I've actually— I'm saying balance. I've actually just watched someone on Instagram absolutely slating the use of the term balance in the— it's like the health field's talking about balance being a completely waste of time. But I genuinely think that finding some sort of balance in the way you work is absolutely key if you want to stay in recruitment. Yeah.

Why balance it? Sorry, Ben, go ahead.

I wasn't expecting that because normally when you ask recruiters, they come up with the typical things like persistence, perseverance. I guess balance is really important. But what does balance mean to you? Because I'm guessing it—

The way I would say it's like, yeah, you can go with like perseverance and determination and the ability to get kicked down 10 times and get up 11. Yeah, great. That's brilliant. In recruitment, you have to have that. But there's probably literally no one listening to your podcast who doesn't have those attributes because that's what we're all recruited for. Literally, we're all interviewed to the absolute hill to make sure that we've got that mentality of just powering through whatever comes across. So yeah, you need to have all that kind of stuff. You have to have an organization, you have to have methods, A lot of people, the toolkit that you've got and your CRMs and all these kind of things, brilliant, they're all in place. But for myself, I've been probably not been the highest billing that I've been, being balanced, but I'm now in a position where my business is my business, my life's my life, and in between that, they've all merged together. So I don't feel like I'm working all the time. I don't feel like I'm skiving. I've just managed to find this kind of harmony where I'm always in and out of both aspects of my life and it doesn't really feel like work anymore.

I find it amazing. So when Sam told me that you work, and I'm sure this changes, you know, this maybe changes from week to week and month to month, but you said you managed to work about 3 hours at your desk per day, which I think is quite exceptional. Achieve that because it's kind of unheard of. I'm not going to lie, Fraser, it's kind of unheard of. So I'm guessing that's tied into balance. Can you talk us around why you designed your life like that? What's the purpose of that? And if you could go into more detail.

You see, this is the bit I find really funny that I'm actually sitting talking to top billers when I don't class myself as a top biller and I don't even set myself in that sort of mindset where you've got your top billers who are out billing 500K, spending the weekends out in a yacht in Marbella. Literally, when we finish this, I'm gonna go and pick those kids up at school and go out on the bikes with them. And that is literally— that is where my balance is. I'm, I'm 40, I've got 3 kids now. My youngest's 2, my oldest's 8. That is time I will never get back. Um, and it's something that most people won't even consider, but I think it's really, really— it's an interesting technique when you look at whatever's important in your life. Recruitment can consume everything. It can chew up every minute of your waking day, especially if the only thing that you focus on is chasing financials, which is what we're all— again, we're all trained to come in and chase every single penny and chase the financials and be a big biller. Whereas if you actually look at what else is important in your life and prioritize that, you've got a much better chance of being a big biller and being consistent. Because you can sustain that. And, and yeah, I did say that I spent— I probably do spend on average about 3 hours a day sitting in this office at my desk. Um, yesterday I spent an hour at the desk. The rest of the day I went and had coffee in Glasgow, met someone there. I had a Zoom chat while I was in a cafe in, in the city center. I went out for lunch with my wife. Um, I came home, I spent an hour in front of the computer, then I went and picked up the kids. Then I went for a swim in the loch.

Uh, so that sounds lovely.

Yeah, it does sound lovely.

The dedicated time I spend in front of my desk, I work, and I make sure that that working time is 100% effective because there's no point. I can sit in this office all day, and I could say I've got tons of gadgets around here, and I've got stuff that I can fidget with around here. I've got computers everywhere. I could sit here and do absolutely nothing. And sit at a desk and you've got that presenteeism thing that's big in the industry of how many hours do you work? You've got to be in at 8, you've got to be working till at least 6. And if you leave the office between these times, then everyone's heads come up and think, what the shit are they doing? Whereas actually you'd be much better spending 3 hours in front of the computer and spending 3 hours doing something absolutely positive, productive, effective. So today I've got, I've got one job that I'm looking at today, um, in software. And my only mission today is to find the right candidate for that software job. I will send one candidate today. I will find the right candidate for that job. That's it. Once that's done, I've had a productive day.

I love that. Really interesting. And you've kind of already touched upon it. Sorry, go ahead. We need to come up with a rule, Sam, for asking questions because—

Yeah, we do.

Go ahead, Ben.

You kind of already talked about it and it's like, I think if I was a listener listening to this right now, I'd be like, how the bloody hell do you manage to get 3 hours a day and still, you know, and still manage to run, you know, a successful business? And, you know, you know, you're not billing $500K, but that's not the definition of successful business in my eyes. I'm sure lots of people agree with that. It's, you know, building a business that works for you. And in the hours that you are working, what's the most effective activities to move the needle in your mind?

Most of my business is done at the moment, most of my business is done through LinkedIn. So when I set up the business, I left my previous employer during lockdown. So I had furlough, I had a voluntary redundancy package that I was on, I had notice periods, holiday periods, I couldn't be working. But also I knew that I was setting up to work for myself, so I needed to keep the plate spinning. And LinkedIn was a tool that I'd kind of historically used to post up adverts and connect with people in my industry, and that was about it. Same as the majority used it for. So I started to use it as a social before it was kind of a thing, and I just started writing. I think the first, I think the first week of lockdown, I started writing about working when you've got kids in the house and sharing ideas with other working parents who were in my industry and the software industries and digital in and around the space that I'm operating in, sharing ideas with people about how the hell any of us are going to get through this because no one knew what we were facing. And LinkedIn to me then became, it became an outlet for me to chat to people in the industry, and keep communication running while we were all locked up and also keep the plate spinning while I was technically not allowed to work. And then it just became a thing. So I work 3 hours, say, at my desk sitting a day, but my LinkedIn network's working for me 24 hours. I'm always on it. It's on my mobile. Literally every time I get a chance, I'll check my LinkedIn, I'll respond to my messages, I'll post the weirdest, most random content out there. I've got no formula for how I use LinkedIn. I just use it kind of like a social, but a social that I work on. And that has led to be 90% of my business through that. Wow.

I find that so fascinating, Fraser, how you don't have a strategy for content, but you're kind of— but you said one key thing, which is, and you said this to me last time, mate, is that you actually post what's coming into your head and you just, you're just kind of honest. And that is such a, it's such a simple way to describe social, but it's such a great way that just being honest and being who you are. And I know it's cliché, but it seems to have worked for you really well because you built a huge following.

Really, really important. The area of the market that I'm working in, I like to work in the startup markets. I'm gonna go off on a tangent here again. You've frozen.

No, go ahead, mate.

You're here. You're like that frozen. So I work in the startup markets and I like working with exclusive clients. So a lot of the way that I get that is through recommendations, it's through referrals, and it's through people getting to know me and people getting to trust me. So there's a huge element of the fact that I use LinkedIn as a social means that I'm ahead of the curve. So when people need to recruit someone, they think, oh, who's that guy that posted that up last week? It doesn't really matter what I've been posting about today. I posted a dad joke today just because I think I saw it on Instagram. People have been chatting about that, might be a thing, might not. Um, yesterday I posted about swimming in the loch. On Monday I used my LinkedIn network to make a folk playlist on Spotify. I just have fun with it. But, but you end up making all these connections with all these different people who have similarities and shared interests and shared kind of goals and ambitions in the way that they build their businesses. So when someone needs to hire, they come to me first. Interesting. I'm not out there saying use me. I'm not out pitching for business all the time. I'm not out trying to compete and join PSLs and work with all your big corporate organizations. It's not really what I do in general. What I do work is I work with smaller scale-up organizations. And to be that, they just kind of have to know that I'm here. So that's why it's worked effectively for me to just be myself.

It's really interesting. And just to get into the nitty-gritty, Fraser, just for other recruiters kind of listening in on this, in terms of it working well for you, you're producing content, you're being in the front of your customers' minds. Are they reaching out to you on LinkedIn, say, hey Fraser, I've seen your content, I've got a job on, can you help me? Or is it more of a case of you starting conversations with people and getting to know them via Zoom?

Both. Cool.

I think both, I think both really important. I mean, I've literally had a number of clients get in touch with me who I've never heard of. And they say, I've been following you on LinkedIn for the last couple of years and I have no idea of their existence, but they're in the shadows. They've been following my content and never engaged with it, never liked it, never commented on it. You would imagine that they didn't exist, but then all of a sudden they say, you don't seem like a total dick. You seem to actually care about what you're doing. This is what we're looking to build. Can you help? So, On some situations, I've had clients that have come off the back of that that I've had no prior knowledge of. And then on a similar basis, I've got clients that I've built relationships up with over 2, 3 years who, when they need someone, they know I'm here. And we just, the rest of the time, we just chat about stuff. So I think both of them are really important. You have to actually network with people. You can't just sit and throw out content and hope that you're gonna generate a business off the back of that. More businesses generated off getting engaged in other people's content is another big aspect. Getting engaged in that, generating conversation. Likes don't do it. Like, yeah, most irrelevant. I think I actually posted something up a couple of weeks ago that said, if I've liked your post this week, I probably haven't read it. It's It's the ultimate lazy engagement. You scroll through and you go, good guy, good guy, good guy. You just like the content and you scroll through until something that's actually of interest and relevant, read it. And when you read something that's of interest and relevant to what you're doing, you tend to comment on it if you're active on LinkedIn. So actually the comments and the discussions and the stuff that comes off the back of that's the bit that I find really interesting.

That's cool. It's so interesting when you speak about networking and like using LinkedIn as a proper networking tool? Because I've been using LinkedIn for so long and really one of the biggest eye-openers for me was starting this podcast and realizing that, like, you can reach out to people and, and get on Zoom with them and have meaningful conversations, which even though I was using LinkedIn as a lead generation tool quite effectively, I wasn't actually starting conversations with people and jumping on Zoom with them. Like with you, Fraser, like I've been— I've known of you for years and now we're speaking. I've known of Mitch Sullivan for years and I didn't once reached out to him, say, hey, do you want to jump on a call? And it's just so fascinating how quickly that's happened and how many more people I've met just from doing that intentionally.

Yeah, I think at some point it just clicks. When you spend enough time, it just clicks. And once you start having these conversations, as you say, I mean, the fact that you reached out to get in touch, it's like we've been in amongst each other's content for God knows how long, so we kind of know each other. So yeah, It's a natural progression. You just kind of start chatting to people, and, uh, and it's funny the amount of people that you just kind of bump into that you know from LinkedIn, and it feels like you know them.

Yeah, definitely. On that note, you told me a really fascinating story of, uh, on our last call, Fraser, of you going to visit a building and seeing your clients at the top. Can you just talk us through that? Because I think that is a perfect definition of building your brand and getting to know people through your brand.

I made the, I made the, the, the decision that I needed to get out of office more. This was a thing that I'm sitting in the house, I'm doing the same routine every day. I was like, I actually need to get out and meet people more. So I booked in to go today. There was a— it was like a founder's open day at Barclays. They've got an Eagle Lab in Glasgow. So it's like a— it's like a building dedicated to small businesses, startups, founder scale-ups, where they'll give you advice and help you build. And it's a co-working space. So they were having a founder's day. I thought, you know what, I'll do my drop-offs in the morning. I'll swing down to grab a coffee, maybe meet a couple of people. Why not? And I went down and they were doing the, they were doing the tour of the building and it's over 3 floors. So on the first floor, they've got the kind of noisy coworking space. Second floor is the quiet coworking space. And the ground floor that I was on is where they do all the meetups. And as soon as they took us up onto the first floor, the desk right in front of me had 3 of my clients sitting at it, all working together. All people that I've worked with as employers, none of them I've met in the flesh.

That's so funny.

And literally, we all knew each other. We sat for about 20 minutes chatting about Pete Sullivans. I don't even know how we got into the conversation. We didn't talk about business. We stood there chatting about Pete Sullivans and chatting about Barclays Eagle Labs and them saying that I should probably get a desk down there a couple of days a week and come and join them. And, uh, and at the end of catching up with them and they had to get back to work, one of them turns around to me and says, oh, I might need you for a senior engineer.

That's cool.

So actually, I should be setting up an interview for that job next week because I already had someone in the books that was a perfect fit for what they're doing. But literally, we just literally never met in person, but we know each other well.

What I love about the, and this is what I think where you really get the best results from branding, from LinkedIn, from any kind of long-term pipeline building exercise is just enjoying the process. I feel like it's probably an integral part of the way that you function now, and it's probably quite intuitive and you enjoy it and you like to get involved in that. That's the feeling I get. And I think that is like the perfect mindset if you want to make it work for you over the long term, because a lot of people just view it as like a business development tool. And it's like if you're just viewing it like that, you are, you know, you're not going to be tapping into what it's truly capable of.

It's not, I don't, it isn't a business development tool anymore. It's kind of, it's actually kind of crap for that. If you look at it as a business development tool, if you use it for posting out business-related content, the responses on it are pretty, pretty bang average. People tend to switch off from it. If you post adverts on it, they're not the best responses. As I'm certainly from the recruitment side of things, it's not a brilliant business development tool. What it's really good for is building people's understanding of who you are and what you make and that. Almost replaces the face-to-face business piece rather than being what the platform used to be. And I think if you take a step back from there, what you really have to work out before you even go near using it as a branding, as a community, is you need to fucking like what you're doing in the first place. It's so true. You cannot hide if you're gonna be posting content on something like LinkedIn on a daily basis. You can't hide from whether or not you're using it as a business tool. It's so see-through.

That's such a good point. That's such a good point. Yeah. Sorry, I just want to jump in there, Sam, because— Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Because it's interesting you say that, because it is like what you're like— social media is just amplifying your passion, your expertise, you as a person. And this is interesting. When in the past, when we have worked with transactional recruiters, that don't understand their market, that don't really enjoy speaking to people, that just want to make a quick buck. Yeah, you know, it's almost impossible because we cannot create this out of thin air. It's an amplification of who you are as a person, and that, that's the interesting thing. So I completely agree with you on that. Aren't they so interesting?

And when you look at, when you look at our industry, a lot of the characteristics that we're traditionally known for aren't exactly things you want to amplify. Yeah, yeah, let's amplify the personality of a typical recruiter. It's never going to go down that well. And it's across all industries. If you just basically use it as a tool, you see through it. You see people that post up, here's a picture of my child over the well, I'm selling this. And it's like, it's just, it's a sales picture with a child or a cat. Sorry. But you can literally see the sales message just woven into it. And it's like, oh, give it a break. If you just want to sell, just be honest and say, I'm selling something. Yeah, I've had to learn it as well. When I post up that I'm putting up an advert, I literally put a disclaimer at the top of it saying 90% of you might as well scroll through. This is an ad for a software developer, which instantly says, look, I'm in sales mode, guys. There ain't no dad jokes here today. There's no random content. I'm not posting up stuff about trainers. It's like, this is a job advert. This is specific business. Scroll on by. And you've got to be honest about that. Once you start trying to spin sales messages into everything you do, it's just a complete waste of time. You might as well just post the sales message.

Very good point. I think I just want to give listeners a heads up on this because this is a really interesting point about content and the balance of sales messages. So we, like you, Fraser, we've been posting a long time and we've tested rigorously the balance between, you know, we have pillars and the balance between sales and We've been through periods of posting purely personal, and that wasn't the most effective strategy. We've been through periods of posting purely sales, and the reality is it's a mixture of both. It has to be a fine balance between personal and sales. I think probably if I was to put a— I'm probably going a little bit more salesy because I just love experimenting with sales copy and seeing what actually makes people convert. But yeah, I think there's definitely a fine balance with, you know, personal posts and sales posts. I would say now, like, the perfect balance is about 20 to 30% sales, you know, 70% personal and strategic sharing. I like to say strategic sharing because—

but I think you can even tip the bat. I think you can do more sales than that if you've actually something interesting to say about it. Yes, probably. Probably. I would say my content's now 50/50.

Interesting.

A lot of my sales pitch isn't sales.

Yeah. Yeah.

So for example, I ran a series called the Bullshit Free Recruitment Guide. I think it started as a free—

I love that. Yeah. I remember that. I remember that.

Right. Okay. So people, I cut it because the engagement looked crap on it, but then I had all these people message me saying, keep up. We really like it. But basically what I was running was interview advice, CV writing tips, job application interview advice. It was basically just. Series of advice for people in the job market without all the waffly recruiter shit. And it was literally, if you're writing a CV, rip up the rulebook, do the hell what you want to do, make it about you, but follow these basic rules. And it was making everything really simple. Now, you could view that as a sales post because it's what I do. It was basically me sticking my flag in the ground and saying, I'm a bullshit-free recruitment consultant. It's a sales post. But it was adding value to people. It's something that I, with the sales posts, it's very rare that I post something that's just buy from me. The sales post that I put into my content is here's my experience. Here's a snippet of what I can help you with. And so when people do need me, they'll pick up the phone because I've been useful. And I think if you use the sales piece like that, then actually almost add more value than a lot of the stuff you get. People that you see on LinkedIn, every post a selfie and you're just like, oh, Scroll because there's nothing. It's a selfie.

I'm sick of the selfies now, Fraser. Yeah, I have to admit, look, I've been a victim of that as well. Like, I've been through a period of doing loads of selfies, but bloody hell, like, when you rely on selfies as a strategy, like, seriously, like, just—

it works for some people though. That's the scary thing.

You say it works, it's really— it's bloody frustrating. I'm like, it's not that I don't mind selfies, it's just like, balance it. Just like, be a little bit more creative. I don't want to see your face every morning, mate.

I posted one yesterday.

That's fine, Fraser, you balance it out.

So you've got a good beard, Fraser.

That was actually one of the reasons I had to post some stuff. I never post selfies. And then I had someone walk— I was working in the gym and someone messaged me later that day and said, this may sound like a really stupid question, but it was like a really hairy bearded version of you working. And I was like, no, I've just grown a beard. I had to send them a selfie saying, was it this guy? Well, actually, So occasionally I have to post selfies to keep people updated on where the beard's at, because otherwise they don't actually recognize me when I walk into the room.

So, um, that's so funny, mate.

So occasionally I have to post them up to remind people where you look at it.

But yeah, I still do it, mate.

Honestly, I still do it, but I try to balance it out because, um, it's useful because I know you guys because if you guys didn't ever post selfies, yeah, you don't build that connection.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There's always an extreme with everything on LinkedIn, isn't there? There's people that just do sales posts, people that just do selfies.

What do you call a role in your part of the world? I'm like, it's a fucking role. Polls did my head in, but actually polls are one of the most useful tools that are online.

Yes.

Everyone destroyed them with crap. What's your favorite sweet in the quality street tin? And you're like, Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, posts.

Sorry, Fraser, what are you going to say, mate?

You can use pretty much every part of social in the most horrendous way.

That's true.

Well, I don't even know what we're talking about. We're talking about sales messages.

Yeah, we've gone down a rabbit hole, but that's fine.

That's what this podcast is built for. It's really, really useful when you use sales messages to actually share advice. I think that's an effective way of doing sales is here's a snippet of what I do. If you want the whole thing, pick up the phone. I'm here.

Yeah, yeah. So such a great point. Focus on giving value in sales posts and you'll never go wrong. That's, that's my mentality when I'm posting now. It's like, look, can I provide value to my audience? Can they come away with some form of value? And then they associate the value with our brand. It's like, Sam gave me value. Cool. I'm going to make sure I follow him, which, which we do get a lot more followers when we're giving value. And I'm going to make sure I remember him.

Is my caveat to value as well. It's not really a caveat, but it's an add-on to people. People kind of correlate value with like practical tips and tricks, but actually for me, value is also about a mindset shift. It's changing your perspective on a subject, and I think people don't really correlate that. For me, I almost find a mindset shift more powerful than a practical tip and trick. I mean, you can intertwine the two, but I think if you If you focus on, you know, shifting their belief system, for me that's also incredibly valuable, and that opens up a huge category of posts that you can, you know, you can experiment with as well, which for me is really interesting. Um, yeah, it's a great— what I really wanted to dive into as well, because I get the feeling from what Sam told me and what we know about you, Fraser, is that you're very much an intuitive recruiter as opposed to a process-driven— because, you know, we spoke to Simon, who's like the complete opposite, and there's no right or wrong here.

See, me and Simon know each other quite well through LinkedIn.

Interesting.

Never met. Annoyingly, he's in Glasgow this weekend and, uh, and our diaries just are completely back to back, so I can't catch up with him. But I was giving him— I've got him booked in at a restaurant and things while he's up here. But me and Simon know each other well. We both have the same— we've got the same idea on how recruitment should be done. Both massively value quality over quantity. And the trust element and the actually being consultative. We both have this very much that we're both on the same path in terms of what outcomes that we hope to achieve. Simon is probably the most process-driven person I've ever seen in my life. He analyzes everything.

Crazy.

Yeah, it's quite amazing.

It makes me look like an amateur, I'm not gonna lie.

So you'd probably piss yourself if you had a look at it. I don't even know if it could analyze my business. Unanalyzable. I have no CRM system. I've got an automated ATS, application tracking system. ATS, that's it. I've got one of those because it gave me unlimited free LinkedIn advertising for like £400 a year. I was like, I can't really knock that. So I took that, but I don't even use the tracker on it. I sometimes post jobs if I've got more than like 3 on my desk at a time, just as some sort of reminder. I am, I don't have, I don't do any email chain stuff, email sales. I don't really have a database. It's all on LinkedIn. I've got LinkedIn Recruiter. I don't really use the in-messages. I don't see them as being as valuable as my own direct network. So you actually put my business on paper and it's comical, but it works.

Yeah. Well, that's what I was going to say. And this is what I love about it. And people think that simple is bad. Well, some people think that you have to have complication and intricacy, but actually if it works, simplicity, I think is beautiful. Having something that's simple that runs is amazing and difficult. You know, I don't think a lot of people actually can simplify things to an art, which I feel like maybe, Fred, that's what you've done with your business. You've simplified it.

I think I've got the luxury of I work for myself. I think it's probably there's advice to be taken in all of this. But if you work in a big corporate, you cannot run the way that I run my business. It's not your parameters would not allow it. You've got to work with databases, you've got to work with application systems, you've got to work with CRMs, you have to use these things. But I think if you can take things and minimize the stressors from them, all these systems can actually be pretty fucking stressful when you're working with them all day long, and they can suck the actual enjoyment out of the job.

That's interesting.

I speak to, I work with a maximum of 5 clients at a time. And that's like a hard upper limit. If I'm working with more than 3 clients, I tend to— that's when I start having to kind of look at tracking things and use my tracking system to keep tabs on jobs and things. Usually I'll be working with maybe 3 clients at a time. They're usually exclusive, or there's maybe one other agency on it. And, uh, and everything's in my head, in my LinkedIn inbox, on bits of paper, in my diary. I have a to-do list in my diary every day. So tomorrow I've got 3 candidates I need to call and I've got a client that I need to follow up and some invoicing. That is my diary. But the simplicity of it means that I can focus on what's really, really important, which is the quality piece. As I said, conversion ratios are huge. My candidate submission to interview ratio was 100% this year.

Wow. That's nuts.

But I don't send shit. So there's no reason for a client to receive a CV off me and say, nah, not right. If that ever happens, it's an epic fail because I should know exactly what my clients are looking for because I know their personalities, I know their business, I know what challenges they're facing, I know all the personal details that make the candidate right or wrong. And then I just go out and find that one right candidate.

That's really interesting. So it's, for me, that sounds like a very thorough discovery process. And, you know, it sounds like you're getting to know both ends very, very well. This is, this will be interesting for me. And I'm not, I don't know what the answer is going to be. But in terms of how you go about that process, because I do think that's the key. It's the discovery process, it's the sales process, asking good questions. Is that rigorous? Is that systematic for you? Is that more intuitive? How does that work for you?

It's all intuitive.

Interesting.

There's probably an element of there is a process in my head, but it's a process that I've been working for like 15 years. So it's just that I am, I recruit software engineers. I never talk about software, but the most, the most in-depth I get on software is what do they need to have? And what can we, what can we flex on? And they'll give me a list of skills that they need to have. And then I'll usually try and flex them on it anyway. And say, well, what if? So even when I ask about the technology piece, it's more a probe to see whether or not they really need it.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm not a software developer. If a candidate talks to me about software development, then my eyes tend to roll off, shut off, and I'll lose all interest. It's literally that simple because I tend to find that people hide behind technology when they're not comfortable with it.

So if you're not talking about technology, what are you talking about?

People, culture. The reason I set up the business was I don't have any skills at making shit, but I really like making stuff. So I've ended up in recruitment and I work in tech recruitment because I love technology. So basically when I actually stripped it all down, I was like, what do I like doing? And I like building things and I like technology. So my entire business is about building cultures around technology. Is building teams. That's what I love doing. So I won't move someone if it's not the right move for them. I will never move a candidate if it's not gonna progress their career over the next 12 months. I will not put someone into a team that I think is gonna upset the balance. I will not put two people together if I think there's going to be a personality clash. So I spend all my time understanding the people in the process. And the little bits that you get on that, a lot of the relationships have been built over years. So I've just built, I've just built a team from the ground up to about, I think we're at 10 people now, um, who are all starting staggered over the next couple of months. And we built that from zero for an American company who wanted to come to Glasgow and build a team from the ground up. The team we have got is phenomenal because I think pretty much every single person in that team I've known for 18 months to 3 years, including the manager that's heading up. I've worked with the manager over his last 3 positions. I know him really, really well. And I know that he's phenomenal at what he does. And all I have to do is put the right people in front of him and the guy's an inspiration. So what we've built there is potentially one of the best software teams in Glasgow. And I've got no idea what they do in terms of software.

That's mad. I love that.

That's amazing, Fraser.

Actually, the technology and what they do, I've actually interviewed candidates and forgotten to tell them. And it's been at the end of the kind of discovery process that they've said, what do these guys actually do? And I'm like, kind of, it's irrelevant now. You know what you're going in for. You know what's exciting about it. The technology is not the exciting bit. The exciting bit is the people. And I think that's really, really important. If you want to be a big builder, you've got to care about the people.

You know what's completely ironic with what you're talking about here? Is almost every single per— like I say almost, I don't want to say almost every, but it's so difficult to find recruiters that I think anyway from, from my experience in terms of the discovery process, the brief, that are— and obviously this comes with experience, Fraser— that are tuned in to really asking good questions about the culture and understanding people on a deeper level, which is what I think you're at now. It's like, but it sounds like that is the formula because you haven't needed to understood anything about the software, but you can still build incredible teams. But I feel like this is a massive gap that's missing in the recruitment industry. Why do you think that's missing?

Because we're taught it wrong. We're taught KPIs. You're brought into the recruitment industry, you're chucked a bunch of KPIs, and the KPIs are wrong to start with. KPIs have a place. My number one KPI is a 100% submission to interview ratio. My second KPI is a 90+ percent success rate on first interviews. It's currently at 95%. It was flawless until last week. I had 100% success at first stage interview until last week. But these are my KPIs. They're all based on quality and keeping the workload low and the output high. Whereas you're taught when you come into the industry that You have to submit 3 CVs to get an interview. And if you want, you need 3 interviews to place a candidate. So you're like, so you need 3 interviews to place someone, you need 3 people for an interview. That's 9 candidates to get 3 interviews to get one placement. If you're working in a niche field, where the fuck are you finding 9 candidates? Well, they don't exist. You're better to put the focus on finding the one right candidate and back yourself on it. And to do that, you've got to focus on the things that you that you can control. We're taught KPIs, we're taught volume. The other thing that I remember from my recruitment training days was we were taught all about mirroring, right? The skills technique of mirroring everything else. Yeah, better your clients, better your candidates. At no point are you ever encouraged to be yourself, in which case when you come to building a culture, everything's about mirroring, and that's not how cultures get formed. You cannot You cannot create a culture yourself. No company can create a culture. It's the sum of its people. And to build the best culture, you need a mix of people. Where diversity is key, it's diversity of thinking. It's got nothing to do with color or ethnic background or country of origin. It's to do with upbringing and it's to do with the way that people think. And people from different backgrounds have been trained different ways of thinking. And you throw loads of people with different ways of thinking in a room together, they'll challenge each other. So what you've actually got to look at is the complete opposite of what they were taught in an industry of this mirroring concept. You actually have to go and look at a team and say, what's missing? You've got a team that's got 3 huge personalities who are all really hyper-focused, doing this, doing that, coming up with hundreds of ideas. Actually, you don't want to throw another person like that into a mix in that occasion. What you want to do is you want to throw the quiet person who's more passive and thoughtful and process-driven, who'll look at what these big personalities are doing and say, stop a minute, have you thought about this? And challenge the bravado of a lot of these teams. So you want someone that's going to be analytical. You want someone that's going to be really ideas-focused. It's where things like ADHD come into the mix. ADHD people tend to have 1,000 ideas that come through their head on a regular basis, be massively creative, be massively hyper-focused, but have the attention span of X amount of weeks in one certain area. So if you take someone who has that sort of personality and then you throw someone that's really organized, really planned, really good at execution, you've got an idea creator and you've got an execution person. Then you put them together. The personalities are completely the opposite of each other, but you've got a full process. So actually, if you want to build a good team in any industry, you've actually got to look at what pieces of the puzzle are missing. Not what they've got in the first place. You don't want to throw like-minded people together and no one does it.

That's really interesting. So I've got two things from that. The right KPIs drive the right behaviors, the wrong KPIs drive the wrong behaviors. And when you're building teams, it's looking for opposites as well, which makes complete sense. If you look at relationships, even in relationships, opposites typically attract, right? People that are with each other for years. Me and Sam, I think, work well together because we are very different. We're similar, we're twins, we're identical twins. We're similar, but we are very different as people as well, which I think is why we make such a good team.

Yeah, it's really useful to have someone checking what you're doing.

Yeah.

And so, and it works like you're looking at it from the two of you. If I was hiring someone to work with me, I'd be getting that really process-driven person to go, Fraser, what the fuck? Please take that down. But actually have a think of what you're doing. You've done this, this, and this this week. Look at the engagement you've got on that. Why don't you actually run a series on it? Or you're you're working at this job and then you're working on this one, why don't you just pull the focus back in one direction and someone that checks me, that is what I'll hire when I hire someone. So when you look at it as 2 people, then you're kind of very much in that opposites field when you're looking for skill set and, and personal attributes. When you start looking at a team of 10, then you need to start looking at what projects they've got on, what challenges that they face, what the team dynamics already look like. What dynamics are gonna work alongside that versus what's gonna throw— you have to be aware of what's gonna throw the cat amongst the pigeons. Because if you get it too far outside the box, you can really screw up a team in one hire. So you have to have an understanding of the whole team, which is why I like working exclusively with companies, because you'll never get that working with a big bank, for example, because you'll never know all the pieces.

How do you go about asking for exclusive work, uh, Fraser? Because I feel like that's actually one thing a lot of recruiters want but maybe don't have the confidence or the courage to ask. What, what's your kind of go-to strategy for exclusivity?

It's really hard. I mean, most of the exclusivity comes because I've already got built-up relationships. So when they need someone, they come to me and I go, look, leave it with me and we can actually build something here, rather than going out to agencies, which means you've just got 2 or 3 lots of revision to do and you can't guarantee that the candidates are going to match up because you're pulling from different pools. And they'll either take it or they won't. I'm not really, I'm not overly forceful on it. If they want to use another agency, fine. It's up to me to do better than that other agency. So when the next role comes up, they go, do you know what? We don't actually need another agency. So I've been in that situation a few times where they've had me and one other and then just kind of slowly, well, not actually, And that's just about generating trust. Trust's a massive element of it. My clients come to me because they trust me to actually do what I say I'm gonna do. And they know, they know through all my content that I fucking love what I do now. And this is— if you'd asked me this 2, 3 years ago, I was about to drop out the recruitment industry entirely. I was looking at different career paths. Wow. Because I was miserable. I was in a company that I didn't match the culture. And I was always, it was always fighting upstream and I completely burned out just before lockdown. And I was literally, I was, I was moments away from completely leaving the industry and saying, I hate it. I'm done with it. I'm burned out. That's the end of it. And actually when lockdown came, it was like, well, why don't I just literally, there's no risk to anything anymore. Why don't I just set up myself and do it and do it the way I want to do it. And what's the worst that can happen? It all goes wrong. I go and get another job done. And so you asked me this 3 years ago, I was a completely different space, but now I genuinely love what I do because I do it in a way that I enjoy. And that's where the sustainability thing comes up. My billing used to, when I worked in corporate recruitment, my billings would peak and trough where my energy levels were. So I would have a year where I would bill a quarter of a million and then I would have a year where I would bill $150,000. Then it would peak back up again because I was always It always felt like a battle to me, whereas now I just kind of do what I do and I find a way that I enjoy doing it. And I don't— the figures, they're not really a big factor to me. I don't do it for the money, I do it for the balance, I do it for the work-life balance, I do it for doing recruitment the way that I really enjoy recruitment. As I said, it doesn't really feel like work anymore. I actually just really enjoy what I do, so I'm good at It's amazing.

It's wicked, man.

I love hearing that.

It makes me— I hit— honestly, I do. When I hear other people that love what they do so much, it makes me just more passionate about what I do in a strange way.

I don't know why.

Just, it's like infectious, the, uh, the energy that when you're meeting people that love what they do.

It's, it's quite cool. Yeah. And it reminds you, you know, how much happier you can be if you focus on that. Because I have to admit, like, I mean I am quite competitive. I like to prove to other people that I've achieved things, and that race can actually be quite tiring. And almost, you know, you go through really difficult periods and then you kind of stop and think, you're like, what, why am I doing this? Like, what am I doing this for?

If you're doing it for recruitment specifically, it's an absolute fucking killer because everything is analyzed, scrutinized. They put it up on leaderboards. So you take someone like us who are all naturally massively competitive. And then you say you're not in first place every single week because you're also sitting amongst a whole load of big billers. Yeah, it's like, oh, you're in third, by the way. And you keep doing that to people who are genuinely fucking brilliant at what they do and punish everyone that's not in first place. And then wonder why people burn out or why people aren't billing as much as they do because they're constantly getting ridden for that extra fee. When I first started in recruitment, we had a bell in the office and when you did a deal, you had your own deal tune. Mine was Chesney Hawkes, the one and only.

I love that.

You had to walk out in front of the whole office and ring the bell because you'd made a fee and that was it. You'd made money. So you rang the bell to celebrate making money. At no point in my early careers did you ever celebrate the fact that you just got someone else a pay rise. A new job, you just built an amazing team, you just made the 10th placement with an exclusive client, you just created something, you were actually building shit. The industry doesn't care about that. But it's actually, if you just park the money for 5 minutes, yeah, everyone wants to make tons of money. That's why people are in the recruitment industry. They want to make money. They're sold the dream of making money, Rolexes, yachts, all that shit. We're all sold that dream. Park it for 5 minutes of your day and say, but what do I actually want to achieve? What am I doing it for? And look at something that's not financial. Look at the actual job itself. Look at the companies that you're working with, the area of the industry you're in. Find out where your passions align with what you're doing. Can't use passions. Every time I use the word passionate, I get slaughtered on LinkedIn because it's one of these Mitch Sullivan would kill me for eating it.

Oh really?

I like it for using the words passionate because it's really, it's like crap coffee. Um, yeah, but actually look at what you enjoy about what you do and look at how can you line up your desk to match what you actually enjoy about the job.

Such a great point. But like, every recruiter, that should be mandatory training at the beginning to make them happier. Just as people, and they probably bill more as well.

Have you ever heard of any company actually encouraging people to enjoy what they do?

Mad. Madness.

So you've got a biller sitting billing half a million and it's like the only thing that that employer will analyze is their KPIs, their statistics. They'll dig through and say, oh, you sent 56 CVs last month and you generated X amount with this conversion ratio, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you just sent an extra 3 CVs, I'm pretty fucking sure they would have done it. If they could, you've got these people that are sitting at the top of their game and all we're doing is analyzing their stats and looking at how you can squeeze or rinse that extra bit out of them. Whereas actually when you say, well, what felt right last month? What clicked? What did you enjoy? What clients were really good to work with? What ones don't you? What ones are draining your time? And it's like half the time making more money is probably about dropping a couple of clients that are draining the life out of you.

Oh mate, we could speak another half an hour just about that. We're coming to the end of the pod, Fraser, and we usually end with this question: cold calling, yes or no in your eyes for the modern recruiter? Does it work? Is there a place for it? What's your opinion?

I haven't done it recently. I haven't done any business development for the last 2 years. It's, uh, wow, other than my net— I've not made a business development call. But 100% and yet, yes, it's really important. I built my career on cold calling, especially early days. You do get taught so much for it. I was chatting to someone about this recently that it's an art form that's dying as well. Because like, see, when I was like 10 years old, if I wanted to speak to my girlfriend, you had to pick up the corded landline and you had to phone and speak to your girlfriend's dad. So you had to kind of be charming without being charming. You had to be polite. You had to have a mannerism. That was your early cold calling. You wanted to go and get your mate out on his bike. You had to go and speak to John's mum and say, hi, is John coming out? And be nice and be charming. And you had to go and knock on the door. You wouldn't do that anymore. You just WhatsApp. And it's an art that people don't learn very early days these days. Everything's digital. And you know what? I've got a business that is 95% analog. I recruit in digital industries. My business is analog. It doesn't rely on systems. It doesn't rely on databases, technology other than Zoom and LinkedIn. The technology piece is almost null and void. Everyone's talking about AI replacing us and I'm like, fucking hell, CRM systems should have done that to my business like 20 years ago. My business shouldn't exist on paper, but what my business does is everything is in-person communications. So actually, you take that to if I was going out today and going and doing business development, you want to take one step ahead of the competition, pick up the phone. Candidates don't even do it anymore. I did a whole, I did a whole series on graduate recruitment a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago, and I put an ad for a graduate software developer in an area where there's meant to be loads of people available. I had 300 applications to my adverts. How many people do you think picked up the phone to me?

I really, I didn't read, so I'm going to say there was one.

I'm going to say three.

You're both too high.

Wow.

What?

That's nuts.

That is crazy, mate.

300 applications, not one picked up the phone. For a graduate software engineering role, paying good money. The job's placed. I submitted 2 candidates, both got offered, one landed. No one picked up the phone. If anyone in that pack of 300 wanted to bump their application to the top of the pile, all they had to do was pick up the phone. And I would have spoken to them. Even if they didn't get that job, I would have given them advice. I would have given them feedback. I would have gone through their CV with them. There was so much. That they could have benefited from just picking up the phone to me because I'm always happy to share anything. And so if you look at it, how many, how many of your potential clients or your dream clients are getting picked or having other recruiters pick up the phone to them these days? Probably none, because they all get hammered on LinkedIn and WhatsApp and text messages and fucking Instagram. I don't know, but they're all getting hammered on email and digital that a bit, almost no one picks up the phone anymore and it would just be the quickest way to the top of the pile or it would be the quickest way to actually get a response rather than get another ignored email.

That is absolute gold to end the podcast. Fraser, thank you so much for today, mate. Honestly, I can say for me and Ben, we both loved having you on. It was a brilliant conversation. So thanks for joining us, mate. 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.