This recruiter attracts 70% of his business by producing controversial comedy videos…

Hey guys, welcome back to 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 Will Grashoff, a recruiter who's made quite a name for himself by producing hilarious, entertaining, controversial videos. There is no doubt that he's on the extreme end of building a brand online, but it's paid off because over the years him and his team have built up an insane audience of devoted fans. He's racked up hundreds of thousands of views and watch time. He's made countless more placements, and he's attracting more recruiters who can't wait to come and work for him. On this episode, we talk about how using the power of comedy can help you connect with your audience, how building a brand online using your own unique style is worth its weight in gold, and we go into more detail of how Will and his team go about producing these hilarious videos. So 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 Will, how you doing?

Yeah, good, thank you. Very good, thank you, mate.

Awesome. Me and Ben are so excited to have you here because we have literally been in tears of laughter watching your videos and we absolutely love them. And we thought, who better to get on than Will himself to tell us a bit more about your company, who you are, and what you get up to. So thanks for joining us today, really appreciate it.

No, that's so kind of you to say, guys. That's, uh, yeah, very, very kind words indeed. Thank you.

Um, the first question we usually start with, with every guest is, what would you say is the most important tool in your toolkit, whether it be a piece of software, a mindset, or a strategy? What would you say, mate?

So for me, and this might be a slightly kind of left-field one, but, um, in recruitment, I think it's a sense of humor. Um, like being able to approach stuff with You know, a sense of humour, not take things too seriously, is really important because everyone knows the old adage, you know, recruitment's a rollercoaster. I think if you can approach the highs and the lows with the kind of same humility and humour, you know, all the way along, then you're never gonna, you know, be— you're never gonna suffer from horrendous lows, or, you know, you're never gonna get carried away with the highs. You're gonna maintain a really good level of like mindset, I think, which will allow you to kind of do better over time. And I think something that people sometimes get too wrapped up in is like the lows, you know, really, really low, hate this job, never want to do it again, I'm going to, you know, go and retrain as a vet or whatever. And then, you know, people get carried away over highs, you know, like, oh, I'm the best bidder in the world, I'm incredible, I'm gonna go put some money down on a Ferrari, and, you know, all of this kind of stuff. But you just need to have a sense of humor to, I suppose, to respond and react to um, kind of elements of the job which affect you, um, if that makes sense.

Yeah, perfect sense, mate. In that, I kind of got the message of like not to take life too seriously as well, and I feel like that's mine and Ben's ethos. And me and Ben have a similar thing where we like take the piss out of certain situations, and we'll just like literally spend 20 minutes on a Zoom call taking the piss out of something that's happened that day and be in hysterics of laughter. And it seems like you have, especially with your videos, you have a similar approach. Where did you, where did you get your kind of sense of humor from? Was it your, maybe your family? Was it your friends? Like, where did you kind of adopt this sense of like using laughter to get past difficult situations?

It's, I think it's because I've always been a bit of an attention seeker. So I think it was in school, like I just, you know, wanted to be the class clown or, you know, for everyone to know who I was. And I think I dealt with humor to do that. Like, I can't profess to have had a particularly difficult upbringing, or, you know, it's not like my parents are both comedians or actors or whatever. It just genuinely came through enjoying making people laugh. That feeling you get when you make someone laugh is a really, really nice feeling. And, you know, don't get me wrong, there's, you know, there's other great feelings, but I just think I've always been like that. You know, my goal, you know, all the way through school was to have as many friends as possible and to make people make people laugh as much as possible. Um, so a lot of people probably say I really failed at that, but you know, it was kind of what I wanted to do and what I cared about most. I didn't really— I wasn't really bothered about, you know, learning per se, or, you know, getting a certain qualifications. It's just all about the social side of it, you know, which for me was being kind of the center of a large group and, you know, just, just making people laugh. So, um, so yeah, that's interesting.

So your time at school was kind of followed you through to your career. Now you're using that experience to kind of, um, yeah, improve the work life. I wanted to, um, focus on your videos straight away on this podcast, Will, because I know a lot of people listen to this podcast or know of you would have known you from your videos. And the first thing I wanted to talk about regarding that was being controversial. Now, me, and I'm a big believer in being controversial, I think it's a brilliant tactic as long as you're doing it with taste in the right way. I think it's a brilliant tactic for branding, for social media, to get attention. But there are definitely some people on LinkedIn, specifically in the recruitment world, that maybe will look down on that or be like, oh, that's not appropriate, this is not Facebook, whatever. What would be your— for someone who does a lot of controversial videos, I think I remember seeing one where you were— the end scene was one of your mates was going in the back of the car for a blowjob, something like that. Yeah, yeah, I was literally in tears at that moment. I wasn't expecting it and I was like, yeah, come on then, let's go.

Especially because he's not— what's worse, he's not a mate. Well, he's a mate, but he's an employee as well. So yeah, you know, that's what I'm instructing him to do. Well, obviously not. Yeah, yeah.

Anyway, I personally love that bit. I think your comedy is genius, but that is like on the upper end, extreme end of controversy. So what would you say to other companies, recruiters who are kind of looking in on that and maybe don't agree with it or aren't familiar with it, what would you say to them?

We're very aware that our target audience, or the people we want to please, you know, will find it funny and will get it. There is of course going to be a lot of people, and probably, you know, getting towards the majority of people, who probably will find that a bit too close to the bone. You probably will find it a little bit like, oh. And I think over the years I've realize that, you know, you can't please everybody. You can't be everyone's cup of tea, otherwise you'd be a mug, right? So you do have to have a certain level of just letting go of what other people think and other people feel. And I mean, you're completely right when you say, you know, you have to have— there is a line, right? And there's certain things which, you know, we don't find funny and we wouldn't poke fun at and we kind of just wouldn't even touch, which, you know, others do. And I was like, oh, but like, we do try to Yeah, so I suppose just make people laugh in a relatable way. And if people don't like it and if they don't find it funny, they don't find it appropriate for LinkedIn, then that's kind of, that's their problem really. That's not my problem. I don't overly care. And like genuinely, we had a guy ring up the office from another recruiter, right? And I mean, he's not that far away from where we are, right? Geographically. And he said, he rang up and he like, I answered the phone and he said, I want to talk to someone about your, that video you just put on LinkedIn. I just want to say how inappropriate that is. It should not be on LinkedIn. It's absolutely ridiculous. And like, he got like genuinely quite irate about it. I was just like, look, you're through to Will. Like, obviously I was in that video and, you know, I kind of was involved in that. I was like, what is your real problem there? He goes, it just, it's not appropriate for LinkedIn. It shouldn't be on LinkedIn. Content like that isn't on LinkedIn. I was like, well, look, I'm really sorry. You know, we're not connected, but someone in your network has obviously liked it, interacted with it, which is why why it's on your feed. Like, um, I'm gonna probably suggest just to block me so you don't see my stuff anymore if it offends you that much. Um, but it was like, imagine going to the extent of seeing someone, right? I'm gonna fucking pick up my phone and I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell them, right? Because I said, that's insane. Yeah, I said, what do you want to happen realistically? What's your best case scenario here? Is that you take it down and start acting more professionally I was just like, okay, that is so anal.

You know what, that's a good example though, because I do believe that anything extreme, you know, you're going to get extreme outcomes, positive and negative, right? There's going to be people that absolutely love that, and there's going to be people like him who just got completely offended and took the time out of his day to call you. What have you found on the positive end? Because you talked about the negative, what have you found on the positive end? I feel like there is a lot of positive in what you're doing as well in terms of attracting your target audience and people that actually love what you do?

Yeah, so I mean, there's a huge amount of positives, but the main positives for me, people saying nice things like you guys, and, oh yeah, we love your content, it's brilliant, you know, because it just inflates my ego even more. No, I mean, from a kind of a genuine business perspective and trackable kind of, you know, perspective, like, I can give you an example today. A guy literally said to me, who I just placed into a role, and he said, you know, I was following you on LinkedIn because I liked your videos, I found them funny, and then you posted a job and I saw it, and obviously that was a perfect fit for me. And he said, look, if you hadn't been posting those videos, we probably would never have ever come into, like, contact, you know, he would never have seen it. So for me, I don't want to be sitting there doing the headhunting and all the searching on LinkedIn and whatnot all day, every day, trying to find people and, you know, turn their heads. I want people to be coming to me, and I think the way you do that is by, you know, having a mixture of content which is going to entertain people and kind of, you know, boost your kind of engagement. And then when you are posting jobs, people are going to see it. And, you know, if you— as long as you do it in the right way and you kind of position the role and position opportunity in the right way, people will kind of interact— or not necessarily interact, but they will come to you and say, yeah, I'm really interested to see this. So, but for us, it's about a much kind of wider strategy of driving people towards us, and we can be so much more efficient when we have more people coming to us. And guess what? That person might not be particularly right for that role, but, you know, we're going to then create a relationship, have a network, and they might be right for another role we do. So it's about, I suppose, trying to make life easier, or, you know, kind of, yeah, make it as efficient as we possibly can.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Well, what would you say— I don't— I mean, you may not have the exact stats on this, um, well, but what would you say in terms of a percentage, in terms of your percentage of inbound work compared to outbound? Do you know roughly what that looks like at the moment because of, because of your content and your videos?

We're probably talking like 70+ percent of our placements are coming through from people who are either applying for adverts through LinkedIn or who are seeing our video descriptions and stuff we put on LinkedIn and then applying to them. And even with our outreach, we— the kind of the strategy behind that is, you know, everything's personalized. So, you know, we're not doing the mass pants-on-our-arm messages, but we're always including a link to the job on our website. So, you know, we're directing people towards our website, saying, you know, look at this video description. And every job, you know, across OX7 and You Exclusive has a video description of a consultant talking about the role. Now, it's only like 2 minutes long, and it's really there to A) humanise the consultant and to B) inform the audience, you know, to tell people what they can expect to do without doing it purely in kind of written form, because that can be a little boring. And let's be honest, most people tend to look at the salary, the job title, location, and if those 3 tick it, they'll just skim read everything else, you know. If those 3 tick the boxes, they'll just not really bother. So, you know, for us having that video there, and again, we can track watch times and most people do watch the full length of the video. So like, you know, yeah, it's not as if people are just watching like 5 seconds and going, "Fuck it," you know, they do watch the full length of it. So I think little bits like that kind of really add up to, you know, to make it, I suppose, a worthwhile kind of strategy for us.

That's really, really impressive. 70% inbound is really impressive. That's almost unheard of. Um, yeah, yeah, you know, for me, 50/50 would be like Holy Grail of inbound versus outbound. So 70% is definitely on the upper end. Well, what, what advice would you give to people? Because there's probably recruiters out there who, you know, are nowhere near as tech savvy as you, that don't have the humor, they don't have the ability to create content to attract that level of inbound. What advice would you give to kind of those maybe slightly more old-school recruiters that want to get themselves out there that want to kind of attract more people to them? And that's a tough question, but do you have any kind of words of wisdom?

So the first thing I would, I would say is, you know, being authentic and being genuine. Don't, don't try and be someone you're not because, you know, it works for someone else. Like, what works for us probably wouldn't work for someone else who, who doesn't have the same sense of humor or who doesn't have the same inclination to kind of put themselves out there. I think you have to be a very specific type of personality to, you know, to to be as open to criticism and vitriol as we are, you know, because we do, we put our faces out there, we put stuff out there which try to entertain people. People don't like it, but, you know, it is quite a personal thing. So you need to kind of work out what works for you and make sure you're in an environment which kind of facilitates that because there's so many people I talk to, you know, recruiters, you know, just people who want to do far more on the kind of personal branding side of things but are not allowed. They're not allowed because the company says, "No, you can't do it." Like, that is such— like, I just could not imagine working in a place which wouldn't allow you to be yourself or post stuff which, you know, wasn't anything other than utterly corporate and by the book. And one of our kind of things I always say to consultants, you know, when they join OX7 or US Foods, I say, look, Have an opinion. There's nothing worse than being a fence-sitter. Like, nobody likes Switzerland because they're so neutral, you know. You want to have an opinion. You want to be someone who isn't afraid to say, well, actually, no, I don't like that, you know. As long as you position it in a respectful way and you're not being offensive, it's absolutely fine to not like something. And I think a lot of the time people are so scared to offend. I mean, so scared that, you know, they might say something which means they, you know, their company loses a client or, you know, it costs them business. Fuck that. Think about all the business you could win by being yourself and by, you know, kind of trying to attract people with that strategy. And I think it all comes down to just, you know, being yourself and finding out what works. And, you know, it's not an overnight thing. It's not all of a sudden you start posting and, you know, you're gonna get hundreds of engagements and likes on every post. You do have to build over time and kind of build up a little bit of an audience. And, you know, what we always say is, you know, we are trying to attract Assess an audience, and at the beginning that audience is quite small, you know, but as time goes on, that's going to grow and grow and grow. And, you know, as a result, especially on LinkedIn and where the algorithm works, the bigger that core audience, you know, the further the outreach you will get on the other stuff you put because of like the second connections and all of that. So, um, just I suppose, yeah, I would say like make sure you're in an environment which allows you to be yourself, then be yourself, and, um, kind of be, be, I suppose, patient and work out what works for you.

That's really great advice, especially I think that's gold. And it's what— it's something that most people probably won't think about or say, which is put yourself in an environment that will facilitate your creativity. I think that is really, really good advice. Whenever me and Sam are together, we always have such a laugh to create films, and it's like we have all these ideas. And I think, you know, if you're stuck in an office you know, in a boiler room with other people that aren't creative, just telling to play by the, you know, play by the book. And, you know, how the hell are you ever going to be creative? So that's really good advice, is change your environment to increase your creativity.

It's really good.

I find that some people need permission as well just to write something that's controversial or a bit out there, because a lot of our clients, like, they have really good copywriters that have great ideas, but they don't think it's appropriate or they don't feel they're allowed. And as soon as me and Ben are like, yep, no, it's fine, go ahead, do it, their completely different personality comes out and they're like, yeah, wow, I can do this, I can do this. It's quite nuts, the barriers that people put in their own heads before they start posting. I think it's because subconsciously they really do want to do it. I think every, you know, the— I think every human, or at least a lot of the recruiters that we work with, have this subconscious kind of, you know, desire to really put themselves out there and be normal and not be normal, that's probably a bit of a not the right word to say, but be creative and really kind of put themselves out there. But I think a lot of them are on their own, or they have the perception that they're on their own, and so they need someone else to kind of push them outside of their comfort zone. Did you ever have that? Well, anyone kind of pushing you outside of your comfort zone to do this content, or has it always been you driving it and other people kind of assisting you?

So what, one of my former bosses was very big on, um, kind of content creation. And, you know, kind of, we're going back maybe 5 or 6 years ago now. Like, he was all about— like, do you remember how Gary Vee used to, like, I think he used to vlog daily, or he used to do, like, um, he was really, really kind of on it. He was like, look, I want to do that exact same thing on our journey. Um, and this was a previous business, and like, he would go out and it's, oh, today I'm in Birmingham looking at these offices, and kind of talk, you know, talk through what he was doing, like vlogging basically. And, you know, I completely opened my eyes up to, like, you know, Building a relationship with an audience and building a relationship with a network, especially in recruitment, of people getting to know you and getting to know what you're doing and creating talking points, creating, you know, elements of, like, we call them almost like anchors, right? So, you know, we try and do stuff which people will remember and kind of anchor in their mind, and like, we have so many of them now, and And, you know, genuinely, and this happened to Dan the other day, so Dan Beecher, he was going to a hospital appointment in Banbury and he was in the car park paying for his parking, like in a completely different town, and someone came up to him and said, oh, I remember you from the video, you know, where you did this, you're from Merit 7, aren't you? And he was like, what the fuck? Like, this is mental. Like, because it shows you the reach of kind of, you know, what you can, can do, can have. So I've always had that interest of like putting yourself out there and kind of being seen and being known, I suppose, which probably goes back to, you know, wanting to be popular in school and make people laugh. So, um, so yeah.

One thing about your content that I thought was the spitting image of was Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Don't know if you've seen that. And there's a guy, the guy with the curly hair that works for you, the one that was going to get in the back and do the blowjob, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He reminds me of always a character from Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and so does your editing, and the— which is so fascinating and interesting. Have you taken inspiration from that, or am I completely off? Is it—

no, no, I've never seen it. So have you not?

Okay.

No, but I've heard so many good things about it. So our, our biggest influences really are The UK Office. So, um, so David Brent and stuff. So that's a massive— I mean, we quote that to each other all day, and it is literally— yeah, I mean, it's exhausting, and it's just evolved. And like, it is, it is really quite pathetic because our whole life is based around trying to fit, you know, scenarios that you're in to a quote from The Office. Um, and yeah, we just do that all the time. So The Office, Alan Partridge, Peep Show, um, The Thick of It, like a lot of British comedies, you know, we take a lot of kind of influence. And actually, you know, it plays nicely because they're all relatively self-aware and self-deprecating, kind of about, you know, like, I suppose, how to act and how to be. So we don't take ourselves too seriously, like, you know, we don't see ourselves as these super serious corporate recruiters, you know, we see ourselves as human beings and, you know, people— we try to create it so people want to talk to us as opposed to, you know, being, oh, fucking hell, I'll have to talk to this faceless gimp from, you know, X recruitment agency. You know, we want people to make it memorable so people are a lot more likely to, you know, be— to trust us, to give us information, to, you know, to work with us. So, um, so there is logic behind all of it. It's not just— I mean, it's a little bit because we just want to fuck around all day and get paid for it, but, um, there is a bit of logic behind it as well.

Oh mate, I totally agree. I think it's so fascinating to me how comedy good comedy is like one of the best ways to connect with another human. And with you, there's only a few videos, there's only a few bits of content on LinkedIn where I will literally stop my day and watch it the whole way through. And your videos are one of them.

Oh, that's good.

Thank you. And it's— no, it's all good, it's the truth. And it's because I know I'm— it's selfish reasons, because I know I'm going to get a laugh out of it. And if you know anything about me and Ben, we absolutely love laughing. So I think—

yeah.

And, and what's interesting, what went through my head as I was watching, as I watch all of them, is I would love to spend a day in the office with these guys because I know I'll just have a laugh. So it's fascinating that you say there is method behind the madness because comedy is one of the best ways to connect with another human, hands down, that I found in my life. If you can laugh with someone else, you can connect with them instantly, from anyone, anyone in the world anyway. You know, laughter is that universal thing. I think that's really interesting.

That's it. And you know what, I think it's so difficult to laugh sometimes when you're trying to put up a facade and be something you're not. So like, you know, the people who are being really stuff in corporate, like, and they're following a script when they're taking on a candidate client, like, you, you can't, um, like, it's so much more difficult to connect with people when you're having to put up that facade. But actually, when you're yourself and you, you're honest and you kind of say things which you, you know, feel are funny, like, it can, you know, you just build rapport so much quicker.

Definitely, mate. I'm really fascinated, Will, because, uh, some of you— I mean, most of your ideas are quite, I think, quite complex comedy in a good way. Like, they're like really good ideas that that on the outside look like they took quite a long, long time to prepare and get right. And the timing and the editing and the acting, some, some have props and stuff like that. Can you tell us how you go about creating your ideas, like from start to finish, for someone else who might want to start creating similar videos to yourself in their own kind of comedy format? How do you go about doing that?

Yeah, so actually we're quite fortunate. We've got Sheffield Tea, so Adam, who does kind of content creation. So the process has been the same before him and And then also kind of need to know now. So what we'll do is we'll have a weekly meeting, and actually it's quite often, you know, with our team meetings, you know, where we'll discuss what roles we've got on, what's, you know, what's happened. But always saying, you know, what's one good thing that's happened, one bad thing that's happened this week, and everyone kind of will share that. And through those, and through kind of general observation through the week, you know, we note stuff down, which can be funny. So on my notes app on my phone and on my laptop, like, there'll be like a content idea, a whole page of stuff, and you'll just write stuff in, like candidate not turning up to an interview because, I don't know, she fell off a horse. Like, it could be anything, right? It could be absolutely anything. And, or it could be candidate dropped out because moving to Australia. And like, we'll just have lots of these and we'll talk through them and we'll kind of work out how we can relate to, because we always try and make the videos, like extreme versions of real life in the office. So like, we put one out today, right, which is, um, which is about trying to— it's about replacing, you know, a favorite employee. So, you know, someone who's been in with the company for years, everybody loves them, they then leave, you're then trying to bring someone else in to replace them. Like, it's just, I suppose, exaggerations of real-life conversations. And again, a lot of the stuff stuff has all happened to all of us, like where someone's been in an interview and the interviewer then starts talking about the person, you know, that you're replacing, but just starts gushing about, you know, "Sam was so good," like, "He was amazing," like, "He was just brilliant to everything he did." And like, as a new person coming in, you're kind of like, "Okay, cool, you know, I'll try my best to, you know, to live up to their expectations." And, you know, it's just like, "Well, you're never going to live up to expectations, they were amazing." Like, then we just exaggerate it, kind of make it, you know, so much more like, you know, bigger. So, so yeah, so we do a lot of that. So it's It's all about kind of observation and real-life stuff, and it's actually very rare that a video will— we'll do a video and it's not based on something which has actually happened, you know, but it's just exaggerated. It's always kind of links there. So, um, so yeah, that's really interesting.

Um, what I got from that as well is, you know, two simple questions: what's one bad thing that's happened this week? What's one good thing that's happened this week? And then a process of kind of building upon those ideas with more than one person Um, I think with idea generation, to get, to get going, you kind of need this creative process. And this is what we have our clients with as well. We're not— this is not a plug. I just kind of want to help people with idea generation because you, you— for me, you learn, you get better at idea generation the more you do it. And you will get to a point where you may not need as much input and you can think of things probably intuitively where you're at now. Well, kind of where me and Sam are at, but the beginning stages having a group of people or even one other person that you can chat, you can like talk with, um, you know, ask questions and think of creative ideas is like the most incredible. It's so powerful in terms of like just getting to the end goal a lot faster and thinking of more diverse ideas as well, stuff that you may not have thought of. What I find really interesting about what you said as well, Will, is that you're getting live data from the market. And one of the best ways that I tell all our clients to find content that you know is going to resonate with your audience is, is the conversations that you've had with clients or candidates. Now, there's no— in my, in my opinion, there's no better way to create content than taking live conversations that you've been told or that you've been speaking about and feeding it back to your audience, because you know it's relevant, you know they're going to care about it, you know they're going to relate to it, and it's just about massaging that and delivering it in different ways. But I think that is so key for creating relevant content for your audience, get it from the conversations that you're having with your clients and candidates. And you do that with your content, which is awesome. One little software that we use as well that is brilliant for people listening as well is something called Fathom. I'm not sure if you've heard of it, but it just records every— you know, we've actually got it recording now, Will. It records all of your— syncs automatically to your Zoom. It records all of your videos and automatically transcribes everything. But the most brilliant thing that it does as well is it categorizes all the questions that you asked and all the questions that the client or candidate have asked, and you can go back to those questions literally. So there'll be like a list of questions from this podcast, and Sam's question might be, hey Will, how you doing? You press that and it automatically goes to your response. So it's just like an incredible way to pick up data very, very quickly and ideas. So anyone that's listening, try Fathom. It's free, it's incredible. And it's going to be, you know, it could be an incredible way to gather data for your content as well. Just an idea. I wanted to know, Will, because I would love to be a fly on the wall one day in your office and just see how you guys create your content. But have you got a funniest moment that you had while creating your videos? Because I'm sure you get up to some crazy shit with the ideas that you create. You got like a funniest video, funniest moment?

Yeah, we do. Right. So Yeah, we nearly got in quite a lot of trouble for this one as well, because some of the stuff we do, it's quite difficult to explain to someone who has no, like, context of what you're doing, right? So one of the biggest videos we, we ever did was a video where I— the idea was I went on holiday and, um, I came back, but I walked into a room where, like, they're essentially torturing another member of staff, right? So The member of staff was Josh, curly-haired one, um, and he was basically top off, apple in his mouth, tied up, right, with 3 people around him, and one of them was holding a knife, right? And yeah, I know, right? The knife is the killer in this, because— well, not literally, but it is the bad thing, because our landlord in our old office lived on the same farm, right? So quite often just kind of pop in and say like, "Hi guys, how's it going?" So, you know, we were mid-filming this way, and because everyone's laughing so much, it takes quite a few attempts to get stuff right, which when someone's topless, apple in mouth, hands, you know, behind the finger, you know, at knife point, like you're kind of— you have quite a big area of risk where if someone was to, I don't know, a landlord was to suddenly knock on the kind of window and open the door and say, "Hi guys," How's it going? Like that happened. So he opened the door, he walked in and he obviously saw this scene, right? And it did look fucking really bad. He was like, whoa, what? You know, is everything okay? What's going on? And I was like, Andrew, Andrew, no, no, no, no, we're just filming it. We're just filming a video, mate. It's all as a joke. And he's like— and he was talking to Josh. He's like, are you okay? Kind of like looking at him like maybe Josh is going to send him a message like, please send help. But no, like Josh got up and like we let him go. But like, you know, we just couldn't believe like the bad timing of him walking into the office to do that. And he's a lovely guy and he kind of, you know, he laughed about it. We showed him the video after, he found it hilarious. But yeah, like that was just unbelievably bad timing and quite funny, you know, of all the times it happened. So yeah.

That is brilliant. That is like one of the best pub stories to go back to when you guys are—

oh, that's brilliant.

That's so good.

Yeah, man.

So we're nearly coming to the end of the pod, um, well, but one thing I wanted to talk about with you because I found it quite fascinating and very different to the other recruitment conversations that I've had is kind of happiness versus profit and what drives you and what drives the business. Um, I got the impression that profit wasn't your first— profit is always good and you have to make money, and of course we all know that, but it wasn't your primary motivator. And so can you just tell me a bit about what's driving you at the moment and how that's kind of, um, rubbed off on the other members of, of your team as well? Like, what, what's the energy in the office and what's driving you guys?

Yeah, sure. So like, to be completely honest, and you know, money isn't the biggest motivator. Like, I think freedom and flexibility are, um, and don't get me wrong, you kind of need to have money to have freedom and flexibility to a certain extent. But I think everybody— I would say, and I feel— I do feel this is kind of driven by, by me, and this kind of does trickle down— is that freedom and flexibility is so important because you can never get time back. You can always go and get money, right? You can always go and, you know, earn more money and do something, and money will come back around. But you can't go back and go to your child's sports day or go to their recited or whatever, right? If you miss that, you miss that. That's gone. That's a memory you could have had which is gone. And I know so many places, so many places who don't have that freedom and flexibility and won't allow people to leave the office at, you know, 1 PM so they can go to their kids' sports day, right? And, you know, people miss poignant and significant moments in their kids' lives. And, you know, and not just kids but other stuff as well, right? Because they don't have freedom and flexibility. So I think one of the biggest drivers for me and for everybody working here is knowing that you're not tied to a desk between two arbitrary hours. You don't have to be here at 8 and leave at 6. They just don't exist, right? You have a life, you have stuff going on, and that is all— every time, family is more important than everything to do with work. Like, it really is. I wouldn't ever want someone who, you know, who felt they couldn't do something with family, who couldn't be there because they had to work. That just doesn't exist. That culture here just does not exist. Family always comes first, and it's about creating an environment where we're doing well enough commercially to genuinely not have to worry about the freedom and flexibility thing. It's just a very sensible approach to it. For example, tomorrow I've got I've got two sports days, so I've got my youngest daughter's in the morning, then my eldest daughter's in the, in the afternoon, right? So I'll probably do— I'll start working a little bit earlier tomorrow, you know, I'll start at 6 AM, you know, and do some stuff in the morning, don't enjoy the sports day, not worry about rushing back, then I'll pick up for a second evening, like, you know, I'll be flexible around it. I'm not going to kind of, you know, ruin my day, you know, ruin the enjoyment and not be present in the moment because I'm worrying about kind of work, you know, you need that element of kind of freedom and flexibility. So everybody who works here has that and knows they have it, and it is like a— what's the word— it is a change of— like, it's a shock to the system sometimes, people, you know, because Sammy, who came in like 3 or 4 months ago, she was so— in her previous job, right, she was so like indoctrinated. You have to be in the office between these hours, you should be doing this at these hours, like, you know, it's almost like if she was to take your dog for a walk during the day, which working from home, like she was being naughty or she was somehow, you know, kind of going against the rules. Whereas now it's just like, Sammy, you know, it doesn't matter, you know, like, you know, come in and do the work you need to do, but also don't forget you can go and, you know, walk your dog at lunchtime, or you can, you know, let the dog out and not let it stay there all day and, you know, be inside. So like it takes time for people to adjust because there is, it's like, you know, I think sometimes people think it's a trap like, you know, he's just testing me. But it's genuinely not, you know. We want people who are— who respect that, and in the times when they're not working, work hard enough to make it all work. So, you know, like, everybody here probably could and is capable of doing, you know, your 30, 40 grand a month, you know, billings. But they could do— but what costs? Like, you know, what are they sacrificing to do that? And, you know, 9 times out of 10, they're sacrificing person time, right? And I would far rather people have time and, you know, modest billings, um, than, you know, sacrificing the one life they get being a slave to someone like me who's creaming all of the profits themselves, you know, fucking rubbing their hands and buying another Ferrari just because this person's been forced to work 50, 60, 70 hours a week and missing their entire life. So like, it, it, that's the kind of balance we've got. We're probably, you know, the extreme end compared to a lot of agencies. But for me, like, that's what's important to me. Um, and you know, I don't even know, I've done the kind of 50, 60, 70-hour weeks as a business owner, and like, you do sacrifice so much, you do miss out so much. And it's not just to do with families, it's to do with like going to the gym, um, doing all that kind of Um, so, so yeah, how do you—

I love that, Will, and I, I totally agree with that way of working. And funny enough, we just interviewed a guy called Fraser Merrifield who only sits at his desk for 3 hours a day, 2 to 3 hours a day, and, and he makes sure that those 2-3 hours are like super focused, intense, super productive. Yeah. And then the rest of the time he's spending it with his kids and doing stuff that he loves and catching up on those moments that you, that you said. So I totally agree. I think if you work the right way, you don't need to be at your desk for 10, 12 hours a day. In fact, most of the time people are probably just looking on, scrolling on LinkedIn, watching funny videos, probably your videos. But what I was gonna say is, how do you manage that? Or how do you— are you finding that you have to manage people, or is it more about they come in, they understand, and they respect it, and they don't take the piss? Like, how does that work? Work, um, in terms of getting people not to take the piss?

It's tough, right? And it is hard. And I'm, I'm more of a leader, but I'm a manager, um, so I, I'm not good at those difficult conversations with people saying, you know, oh, your billing's been shy this month, or like whatever. I'm no good at those conversations because I know usually there's a reason, you know, there's something behind it. And I think when we hire people And we don't hire that often because we're quite like, you, you come in and you get trusted straight away, right? Like, the trust is there to lose. So it's quite obvious to us if someone isn't— if someone is, sorry, taking the piss and it isn't kind of doing the right things. Like, it's a very quick, firm conversation. Like, you have a chance, you've taken the piss, see you later. And everybody I don't care, you know, who they are, everybody has days where they don't put in the same effort as they did before. It could be because they've got stuff going on at home or whatever, right? We always try and look at things in kind of quarters or, you know, annually, right? Because everybody has up and down months, everybody has up and down weeks. So we try and look at it at kind of a really kind of high macro level rather than obsessing about how many calls someone's on a particular day or how many emails someone's on a particular day. But I think everybody here is bought into the way, you know, we do it. And without sounding too kind of sycophantic, I think everybody knows that it's quite unique and they're lucky. Um, I'm not saying I'm lucky, but they're lucky, as you know, by having this perspective, because it's rare. Um, and that's why, you know, I think I've lost 2 people, you know, in 5 years that I didn't want to lose going to other agencies. And both of them were very, very similar kind of demographic, right? They were both, you know, kind of youngish people who were very ambitious, and realistically their ambitions were, you know, far beyond what we wanted to do. And we still keep in touch, we've still got a great relationship, and I genuinely hope they both do incredibly well. But they're not at the stage of their life where they have kids or they have like a family. They're at the stage of their life where, well, I want to go and smash it, I want to go and do '60K a month billings for the next 12 months, I want to buy myself a Rolex and take my birds to the Maldives,' or whatever, right? They, they're not kind of thinking, 'Oh, actually what's more important for me is I'm going to go do the school run and pick the kids up.' So like, like, it just— they were great people and, you know, genuinely still love them, but they're the only people who haven't worked out, um, for that reason. And it was kind of, yeah, positive reason, I think.

Yeah. So it's kind of finding people that are in similar points in their life that have the same ambitions, and then it's probably easier to get them to, to respect what they've got, and they probably appreciate it a lot more. That's really—

exactly, exactly. Yeah, cool.

Last question, Will. We always finish on this one: cold calling, yes or no? Is there a place for it in today's modern recruitment world? Does it not work? Does it work? Should we leave it off altogether? What's your opinion?

So, you know, I, I am so bored of people saying, oh yeah, cold calling's dead, cold calling's this, or because it's just not right. So we actually don't call it cold calling, we call it unplanned calling. So everything we do— videos, marketing, outreach campaigns— is with a view to making that call, that unplanned call, a bit more warm and a bit more familiar. So people can go, oh yeah, I know, I've heard of you guys, I know you guys, I'm familiar with you guys. So we do do cold calls and like, I'm amazed at how many people don't do cold calls anymore. So, you know, we've just launched a direct-to-direct arm to our business, right? And so Dan, don't know if he's doing it, like, he's been cold calling for the last week, right? And the amount of directors and people he spoke to said, look, I've not had a direct-to-direct call me in years. It's all done by email, it's all done by, you know, in-mails, right? He said, I am open to this conversation, you know, now because you've taken the time to call me. And as as a business owner and as someone who holds, you know, the purse strings, like, the amount of people who cold call me has gone down 95% since COVID right? And anyone who calls, anyone who ever cold calls me, I'll always answer the phone, I'll always give them a time of day, I'll always listen to them, I'll always go, okay, cool, you know. And I'll be honest though, it's not for me, you know, thank you very much. So, and I always say that I really respect you picked up the phone today, um, and kind of encourage you to keep doing it because 'cause yeah, so many people hide behind mass emails and, you know, like all these kind of mass campaigns and fucking hell, I don't know about you boys, but I get emails like hourly from people saying, do you want 10 more leads per month? You know, these pretty simple techniques, we can do it, da da da. And it's all bullshit, it's all fucking rubbish, right? You know, cold calling isn't a silver bullet, but it's a very powerful tool in your armory. And what it does is rather than stretching like a, a sales process over, you know, 4, 5, 6, 7 touch points. You can get someone on the phone, you can answer objections in real time, you can ask, you know, pertinent questions, which is going to give you answers to, you know, or give you opportunities to kind of provide solutions. So it just, it just, it's inexplicable that people don't want to do it. But, you know, we are coming into a generation of people who, you know, when their phone rings, you know, people of a certain age, like, fucking hell, my phone, oh my God, what do I do? Like, why the fuck are you phoning me? Just text me, what's going on? Um, so I do kind of get it. Um, but yeah, so yeah, we do, we, we, we fucking love a cold call here.

I love that, I love that.

It is.

How much, just on that note, because we tell a lie, this is a lot, this is the last question, how much, how much has your content and your brand building exercise help with cold calling? Has it made a difference at all, or what's your feeling?

Unequivocally. So for example, right, when I'm doing, when I'm doing kind of cold calling or whatever, I'd always say, you know, and in this case, probably just like a swipe up, I'll say, we connected on LinkedIn, I don't know, you might have seen some of the stuff we post. And genuinely, oh yeah, the videos and the memes and stuff. Yeah, yeah, so that's 'Oh, okay, cool.' And look, don't get me wrong, some people are like, 'No, no idea what you're talking about, mate.' But the more people who can be familiar with it and kind of understand from, you know, that very second, 'Oh, okay, this is who we're dealing with,' like, again, it humanizes me. It makes me more like— it doesn't make me like one of those other knobheads. It makes it a bit more easy to transition into a friendly call because they'll know I'm not taking myself too seriously. They know I'm not going to chew their ear off about something completely irrelevant. They're kind of going to get it. So it has massively helped. And again, that's why I I encourage all of my consultants to try and, you know, really push their opinions and brands and videos, you know, on LinkedIn for that exact reason.

Very interesting. Wicked. Great answer, great value at the end and throughout the podcast. But thank you, Will. Pleasure to have you on, mate. We managed to get in a few laughs, which is exactly what we wanted as well. And, uh, yeah, thank you for coming, mate. Really enjoyed it.

No, guys, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. The time's flown Yeah, it's insane. So much. Yeah, yeah, thank you.

Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to 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.