This Recruiter Billed 280K working just 30 Hours a Week!

Hey guys, welcome 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 none other than Simon Monaghan. Simon is a highly skilled tech recruiter who's on a mission to change how people perceive recruiters in the industry. He grew up with ADHD, which of course had its challenges, but now in the working world, it's ended up being one of his biggest superpowers. In his first year of setting up his recruitment business, Odd Shoes, He managed to work just 30 hours per week, but still managed to bill nearly £300K. The more I got to know Simon, the more I realized he was obsessed with two things: providing a high-quality service, but also doing things as efficiently as possible. In today's episode, we're gonna be covering how Simon manages to maintain a top-biller status while only working 30 hours per week. We're gonna be covering the importance of copywriting in recruitment and some of the tools Simon's used to become a better copywriter. We also cover how Simon managed to find his why in recruitment. And how this allowed him to perform better and be happier. So ladies and gentlemen, please grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine depending on when you're listening to this, and let's get into it, shall we? Hey Simon, how you doing?

Yeah, thanks for having me, guys.

Yeah, thank you very much for coming. Me and Ben have been following your content for quite a long time, and it's quite surreal. I, I said this to you last time when we had a brief conversation, it's quite surreal to meet someone who you've been following online for a while. Just feels a bit strange but cool at the same time.

Yeah, I, I have been in the same situation the other day. Do you know Alex Elliot?

Yes.

Yes.

They say don't meet your heroes, but, um, but yeah, I'm a really big admirer of his, and we had a call the other day for 45 minutes just to talk about discovery calls. And, um, yeah, it's— I agree, it's surreal meeting people who you, you follow the content because they're like little mini celebrities in their own way, aren't they? Me. And it's, yeah, it's weird because we're all just recruiters really. We're not special, are we? But because of LinkedIn and stuff, it feels like the person you're meeting is like already a celebrity. Because like, with you guys, I see your posts all the time. I've seen your face more than any other faces. Yeah, yeah, that's so funny.

Before we get into it, but that's the power of a good brand, isn't it? Like, you're just posting on even one platform like LinkedIn and the amount of like celebrity status you can get within that niche is quite insane. And yeah, so that's quite— we're going to get into more of that, but that's just quite interesting.

Cool.

So we normally start off the podcast with this first question, Simon, is what's the number one tool in your toolkit, whether it be a strategy, a mindset, or piece of software? What would you say, mate?

I mean, number one tool is resilience, I think. Um, I'm sure that's something that everybody says, um, is important, but it's the ability to, um, you know, like, some— it's how quick you get from like, shit, that's just happened, to right, I'm over it now. And I, I remember when I started in recruitment, I used to wallow in like, oh, that candidate's pulled out of that role, and that was worth 15 grand. Oh my God, what's gonna, what's gonna happen now? And you're still getting angry about it 2 days later. Whereas now I've managed to get that down to like maybe an hour of frustration, um, and you know, I'm still working to get past it even quicker. So resilience, yeah, because you can't, you can't allow these things to get you down because you're really stopping yourself from moving forward in other ways.

It's really interesting. We have had resilience before, and I I'm a total believer in resilience. Do you think resilience is just a byproduct of repetition and desensitization, or do you think it's something else? Is it like a strategy for you, uh, Simon?

I think it's a mixture of both. I mean, the stuff that happened when I was growing up, which, you know, is— we've not got enough time for that, but I think whenever I look at any bad situation that happens with the business, I think it's not as bad as what happened when I was 18, or it's not as bad as this, or it's not as bad as that. So Part of my resilience comes from I've been through some stuff, and part of my resilience is, like you say, repetition. You know, you deal with a situation so many times it becomes just part of your process. You know, so candidate pulling out of a job, under offer, whatever, like you really— you remove yourself from it because it's just part of the process of what you do.

Yeah, that's so interesting. I literally when something's that bad, I literally default to the basics where I'm alive, I'm healthy, I have options. Like, I just, I literally default to the basics. And it's surprisingly quite powerful. Like, you realize actually, no matter what happens, as long as you have those fundamentals, you can move past it and you can do whatever it is that's gotten in the way, which is really interesting.

Yeah, I agree.

You are a massive advocate for job ads, um, Simon, especially on the call that we had last time. What is the importance of a good job ad? Because I don't think a lot of recruiters appreciate the power of a brilliantly written job ad. Can you speak on that?

I mean, you know, when I first started in recruitment, job ads worked. I was told that job ads, you know, were a necessary thing. Get them out as quickly as you can and then move on. But it was never like a key thing. And I remember doing the Mitch Sullivan course on writing a job advert about 5, 6 years ago, I think. And honestly, I'm not underselling it here, but it was, you know, like in your life and in your career, you have like, you can look back and go, that was a crossroads moment. So I felt like I knew what I wanted to do in recruitment, and I always tried to write better adverts and be creative, but it was always just me taking an advert, a job spec from a client and trying to make something out of it. But when I did that Mitch Sullivan course, it was like the lights just went on. I was like, right, now I've done that. Now I understand the power of the advert. That just came across every area of what I did from email writing to content writing, understanding how to get somebody hooked on a piece of content. And then how to keep them reading. That, that's— so, you know, I, I say that that course was about job advert writing, but it wasn't. It was about just writing. It's about everything that you do, even like how you go about persuading somebody to do something, like verbally. You know, it, it all links in, doesn't it? So yeah, I think for me, the power of a good job advert. I mean, how do I put it? Like, so I worked out earlier on in preparation for this call, like, exactly how powerful job adverts have been for me. And I started Odd Shoes in 2020, February 2020. So 3, nearly 3 and a half years. I've built just over £700K in that time, and £324,000 has come from adverts, which is 46%. Wow. So, I mean, if that's not enough of a selling point for people to go and explore this, I don't know what is. And I find that there's so much arrogance from certain recruiters out there. And I've even, like, deleted connections with some of them because they're just like, we don't need to do job adverts. We're an executive search, you know, company and the types of candidates we want wouldn't look at a job advert. I had a, I had an offer of 150 grand for a lead DevOps engineer. Where did it come from? A job advert on LinkedIn. He wasn't looking on the market. He just had a frustrating day and he told me, I had a frustrating day and I was just pissed off and I decided to go on LinkedIn and just see what was out there. And the very first line of your job advert grabbed me by the balls. That's his words. Grabbed me by the balls. And I read it and I applied and before I knew it, I was applying and I wasn't even looking for a new role and £150 grand from LinkedIn.

That's so interesting because that is the biggest stigma I think around the difference between like executive level search and I think people assume that ads are only useful for like lower junior levels. Yeah. And it's like what you've just said there is a perfect example of that not being the case. It's so interesting.

Yeah, I mean, I, I keep a track of what percentage of the percentage of people who've placed have actually were active on the market and what percentage weren't. Now, if you look at that 46% of the last 3.5 years, nearly 22% of those were not active on the market. Wow. Not talking to other recruiters.

That's so interesting.

Is that not powerful?

That's a significant number, isn't it? Significant percentage.

So nearly half of the people that applied. And don't get me wrong, for low-level roles, put a good job advert out, you'll fill it. It's not a problem. But, but like most of the roles I'm at now are not low-level. It's like the best head of software development I've ever worked with, who's a friend of mine now, um, 5 years ago He wasn't looking on the market, same situation. He saw one of my adverts, we had a chat, he wasn't like looking anywhere else. I placed him as a client. He— I placed about 10 people with him. Then, then I helped him move on because he was actively on the market again, um, placed him, placed another 10, 12 people with him there. Then, um, he went to the current role that he's in, and I placed another 13 with him last year.

Wow.

So there's so many knock-on effects of it. And I think the problem with recruiters is they don't believe in the results, so they don't dedicate time to it. They've got managers above them are going, job adverts, yeah, just get them out, no big deal. We don't really get results from that. Where we really get results from is mass mailing people. That's the type of attitude. And it's like, you know, I, I just, I, I think it comes from a few things. I think They're not skilled at taking a good brief because you can't write a good advert without a good brief. They've got transactional multi-agency relationships. So if they know they're up against 3 other agencies, then it becomes about speed. Everyone knows that. So, you know, even when I was up against multiple agencies, and I still have one company I compete against another agency from Manchester with, and I still spend as much time writing the advert because all they're gonna do, if they're not writing adverts, they're gonna go straight to the active market anyway. Well, good, fine. But you know, this is my process, that's their process, and I guess the results are what matters, aren't they? So yeah, so believing in the results, dedicating time, taking better briefs, trying to build exclusive relationships is obviously key. And invest. And if they work for a company that, that isn't going to invest in like a Mitch Sullivan course or buy them books to help them improve, do it yourself. It's your personal development. Is it not worth like £200 or £300 or £500 or whatever a year? Like, you should, you should not be relying on your companies to do that. You should be doing that for yourself. And if you can't afford a course, you can get books like That one, see how short that is? You can learn a lot. Can you read out the name of the book?

Is that a copyright?

This book will teach you how to write better. Yeah.

That's the title of the book, this book will teach you how to write better, for anyone listening.

You've got a self-help guide for copywriters. Cool. And the one that Mitch always recommends, Persuasive Copywriting.

Wicked. I'm gonna put that in the link below.

All job, all job adverts are— it's just like writing any advert, isn't it? You find out who you, who your potential targets are, find out what their pain points are. Once you know all their pain points, you do, you take a really good brief, you see how well your client fits all of those pain points, you choose your top 3, and then you make it all about the candidate. I'm going to solve your problems by giving you better management, better learning and development, and, um, and, and a better tech stack. 3 examples, and this is how I'm going to do it. And they're sitting there going, I hate the tech stack I'm working with. Oh my God, the tech stack here is amazing. I mean, none of it's about the company. None of it's about, look at this great client, look at this exciting company that you could be working with, you know, who need all of this, these things from you. It's all about how can I solve your problem.

100%, you summed it up perfectly, Simon. You pretty much covered all the questions that I was going to ask you in one, in one go, Simon.

So I've actually got one because I think this is really— this is what he said was really interesting. Um, and you know, I think, I think a lot of people forget, and this is what me and Sam realized as we were working with people as well, is that the brief is like everything, or as equally as important as the ability to write as well. Because when me and Sam were teaching people of how to write better, um, invariably always come to the point where we ask them questions, and the questions that we ask and the answers we get makes a big difference as to, you know, the quality of the ad and the copy that we're writing. And a lot of the time they just didn't have the answers, and it's because they weren't doing a proper brief. So what would be your, your tips on taking a better brief for the people that aren't Doing a good brief at the moment, Simon.

So I've been doing this 9 years and I've had a structure for that. Um, and I completely ripped that up this year.

Interesting.

Yeah. So what I did is I went through the last 200 candidates that I've had out at interview. I looked at all my notes on each candidate and I looked for patterns in why they wanted to leave. So what is it they were trying to get away from? And what was it that they were trying to move towards. And I ended up with a master list of about 15, 16 things. And now my, my job qualification of buying, apart from getting the basics of the job and what they need, is how are you as a business meeting these 16 points?

So interesting.

And all I do is I, I ask them questions around those 16 points. I explain why I'm doing it. And they're basically giving me the content. Now, they're not going to, they're not going to be amazing on all 16 points, but all they need to be amazing at is maybe 5 or 6 of them. I choose the top 3 that are going to really benefit the people that are out there, and I obviously order them in order of importance to how many times people have mentioned it. So the main reasons at the moment, salary because of the cost of living crisis, Remote working, massive for most people, and flexibility because of what's happened since COVID Tech and projects, learning and development. So I know that they're the key things in my market. So they're the first ports of call for me, but there's obviously a lot of other knock-on things. And then when I'm talking to a candidate about the role, I ask them, you know, what are the factors that make up your decision? Like, what are you trying to get away from? What are you trying to move towards? And I'll only tell them about the things that my client, that they, that interest them. So I don't just tell them loads of stuff about the client. I'll tell them about the tech stack if they say that that's important to them. I'll tell them about the project if that's important to them. And it's just, so yeah, that becomes the basis of everything that I do there.

That's brilliant. That's, it's so simple, Simon, but it's brilliant because you're directly going back to the market and we say this all the time, you can't create these And this is what people try to do when they don't have the answers. They try to create them from their own mind, but quite often they're not correct. You have to go back to the market, do exactly what you've done and get the raw data from the customers or the candidate's mouth. So that, that's brilliant. Thank you for sharing that. That's really interesting.

I would love to speak about your time management, Simon, and how you organize your day because I found that fascinating. And Ben and I work with a lot of recruiters and I have to say one of the biggest things they're not very good at is time management. Yeah, and I can understand why recruiters are dealing with, you know, candidates and clients, and fires can go on during the day in a second, so they have to jump on the phone. But you seem to have your time under control, and I know that you said, um, you managed to bill $280K in your first full year working only 30 hours a week.

Can you—

for us, I mean, for me looking into that, I think that's insane. I think most recruiters would be like, if I could achieve that, that would be insane, working 30 hours a week and billing that would amazing. Can you give us some insight into how you achieve that?

Well, I mean, I'm sure we're going to come on to it in a bit, but, um, but I've got ADHD, and one of the key ways I manage my ADHD is, uh, apart from medication, is having a really, really defined process and day plan for everything. So I guess The key things are, so I'm a very big believer in marginal gains, you know, the Dave Brailsford thing, and I'm always looking for a way to save time by not sacrificing the quality of what I do, but finding ways to do it quicker. That could be more efficient processes, it could be investing in more tools that save time. I have certain products that I've had built from scratch in the Odd Shoes branding for clients and candidates. So I'm saving a lot of time with the back and forth, prepping them for interviews, for example. Every role has a candidate microsite. That means that I don't have to spend as long on prepping them during the call because I've Related everything they could possibly want to know about the client that they're interviewing at in one place, including the interview process, including each step, what to expect, who you're going to meet, types of questions, what the technical part involves, what you need to be aware of. Not gaming the system because it's all done with the agreement of the client. I don't give them the answers to questions, but I make sure that everything they need is in one place. And I think part of the reason I do that is because if I was going into an interview process, that's what I would want. And I'm neurodiverse and software development, like there's a high percentage of software developers that are neurodiverse. So I imagine, or I imagined that most software developers would want that too. So, and that's proven. So Steve Jobs said once that, you know, um, you shouldn't worry about what customers want. Sometimes customers don't know what they want until you put it in front of them. And I know that most recruiters don't, don't build a microsite for every role. I know that most recruiters don't build a client portal so clients can manage their whole recruitment process, all of the roles, in a really cool and easy way. I know that no one asked me for those things, but now it's a staple part of what they do. So yeah, so I'm trying to find ways to, to be more efficient, constantly refining. I'm completely anal about the KPIs that I, I, or the standards that I hold myself to. Um, and when I say KPIs, I'm not talking about how many CVs that I send, I'm talking about quality. How many, how many CVs do I need to send to get an interview? How many interviews do I need to get a placement? Um, you know, so what are my ratios? Um, so in short, I like to work with less clients, less roles, have higher quality fill rates, exclusive clients, and just be as efficient as possible with my time.

It's really interesting. It sounds like there's probably quite a spectrum or a number of things that have contributed to time saving. Were there particular things that you saw the biggest impact on in terms of time saving? Simon?

Yeah, I mean, The first thing is, is, is I have an operating system for my business. What— that's what I call it anyway. I mean, it's monday.com for me, but for others it might be Notion or whatever. And I have every single process that I do mapped on there so I don't forget a single thing. So I have my resourcing process, I have my candidate onboarding process, I have all my invoicing on there, I have everything all mapped out. So The minute I come in every day, I've got a strict day plan. I know exactly what I'm doing at any point and everything else is mapped out in my business. So that saves me time. So I've learned to be really good with one system. What else? What, sorry, what was the question again?

Just to check. Yes, so it sounds like Monday was one of the things. The question was, was there one or a particular thing that's had the biggest impact to your time-saving ability?

Yeah, I mean, I'd say in terms of like tools as well. So I worked out, right, that based on my billings, um, saving 30 minutes a day on a process would make me an extra £19,000 a year in billings.

What?

30 minutes a day. And I really boiled it down to that. So My philosophy is always I look at tools and if I can save 30 minutes a day, I'll do it. I'll invest. Like Source Breaker, it's quite expensive really for what it is, I think. I mean, it's a good tool, don't get me wrong, and I'm utilizing it more and more now, but when I first started using it, it saved me 25 to 30 minutes a day. So for me, I was like looking at it going, right, okay, so it's like £300 a month. Well, that's £3,600 a year. That's one of my highest expenses in the business outside LinkedIn and Indeed. And, but then I thought to myself, well, £3,600 a year, but if I'm saving 30 minutes a day, then it completely makes sense. And so I look at that, I look at things like Source Whale, you know, that's the cost now that I've took on, but I'm saving time with it. It's made, and it's not just about the saving of time as well. Sometimes it's about, How mentally it affects you. If you're using shit systems, are you frustrated? It gets you down. So if you're using good systems that make you feel like there's an ease of use there and they make sense to you, you're like, you feel good about what you're doing. You feel good about the tools that you're using. Another one, really cheap one, is TextExpander, which I use all the time. Basically, it's like I put blocks of text that I regularly write, so I could, I could go forward slash BD email 1 or something like that, and I can write that into any website or any tool across all, all the systems I use, and it'll automatically populate this bulk of text.

Oh wow, that's cool. That's really cool.

Hardly any. It costs nothing, like maybe £30 a year. Interesting. And I save loads of time with that as well. Sorry.

So what did you say it was called? TextExpander?

Yeah. So cheap and so easy to use and just, I mean, I don't use templates a lot, but there is, there is a like rejection emails when somebody applies on LinkedIn and that templating system is not very good. I like to make sure everybody has a rejection reason. So I look at the candidate, I've got 7 templates. Templates for different reasons why I would reject somebody. And as long as I can see why they've applied, then I'll send them a specific template reason. And it takes me 2 minutes, um, it takes me 10 seconds, 15 seconds per one. But if, if I can see that they have clearly just like not even looked at the advert, then I'll just send them like a random, like a, just a, a standard template which doesn't give them a reason. It just says, look, you know, he's clearly not, you know, clearly you're not, you're not, you're not understanding the role because, you know, there's a lot of— and it explains it a bit more.

Yeah, I get it.

Typical reasons but doesn't give him a specific one for them. And like, yeah, it just makes stuff like that really easy. Like ChatGPT prompts, I've got, I've got like a load of ChatGPT prompts that I can just go /gpt BD or GPT reading or whatever.

So that's really interesting. You're definitely on like the extreme end in a good way of like organization, systemization. You wouldn't believe that. Well, you probably will believe this. A lot of the people that we work with, they're fantastic recruiters, you know, probably older than, definitely older than you. And they're, you know, I think I've done a few posts about this. They're quite old school recruiters. And so, you know, their systems aren't very good. They're spending a lot of time doing low level tasks, which they shouldn't really be doing. And outsourcing and systemizing is probably their biggest bottleneck because they're just wasting so much time on things that shouldn't be. So it's really interesting. I'm sure they could learn a lot from this podcast and you and just the systems that you're leveraging.

But it's scary though. I mean, when you have to onboard a new system and you're not that tech savvy, even for someone like me who is constantly looking at new tech and stuff, It can be daunting. You know, when I onboarded Source Whale, I actually wanted to onboard them a year and a half ago, and I gave up after 30 minutes of looking at it and thinking, this is too much. And I regret that now. And I've got back to them a year and a half later, and now I've onboarded it properly. It's really, really good. But I can understand why somebody would be scared of something like that, because it feels like so much. Yeah. But you've just got to go through the pain to get the reward.

Yeah, absolutely.

I found that customer service can make a big difference as well. Like a lot of these tools that have like instant response from live chat, that makes such a big difference. I'd rather pay like 50% more and have that instant communication so that when a problem occurs, I can just get an answer straight away. For me, that's like—

Source Whale is a fantastic example of that because a year and a half ago when they first approached me, one of the reasons I didn't continue with it is because the onboarding was shit. They've admitted that. And when I spoke to them again, I actually spoke to their CEO and he was like, talk to me about, about it. And he said, actually, that's an area that we've really changed. And he explained what they've done and they've done exactly, exactly that. Within 10 minutes of me sending them a message, they're back to me and we're having a dialogue and it's, and, you know, like there's no bottlenecks. I find that when you remove bottlenecks to using a system, then people will do it. But if, if there's too many bottlenecks, people just get— especially if you've got ADHD, I'll just be like, right, I'm not doing that again. And it's stupid, but yeah, some, some people are wired like that, aren't they?

Absolutely.

Are you still working 30-hour weeks out of interest, Simon? Is that your— is that kind of the average that you're working at the moment?

Well, look, I messed up last year. And it's one of my mistakes. And then I've got, I got married last year and we, you know, we had this fantastic weekend where everyone came over to France where I live and, you know, couple of clients came over as well, spent the weekend. We were in this like bubble, you know, of happiness. I'd already been, it was like end of April, I'd already billed like 140 grand last year. So I thought, yes, I've nailed it. Got married, went on my honeymoon back, like driving across America, the southern states. And when I got back, I just got complacent. I, I, I, I, I, I have clients, you know, who were still hiring, but then bit by bit they dropped off and whatnot. So I ended, I ended up working on average last year 24 hours a week, and it affected my billings. I ended up with 22-24 last year. I was really pissed off with that, um, especially after doing more the year before. So You know, there's a— for me, in everything that I do, personal or business, I'm always striving for the right balance. Um, and I felt like 24 hours a week was probably not enough. I, I think 30 hours is the sweet spot that I'm aiming for. I'm currently averaging nearly 29, so I'm trying.

Still pretty good though. So I think compared to the average recruiter That's like the lower end for the amount that you're billing, which is awesome. So there was only a difference of 6 hours, right? 24 to 30. And so that must, that in itself in your systems and your workflow made a big difference, I'm guessing in terms of—

Yeah, definitely did. Definitely did. Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to finish on 224 next year. This year, sorry. Definitely not. Um, but I mean, I don't know how much to attribute to the extra hours because there's different challenges every year, isn't there? Last year there was an abundance of roles that I didn't really take advantage of. This year, roles— I think hiring in the UK is down like 34% across tech roles, um, on last year. So now, you know, I've got different challenges to deal with, and my— me working extra hours— God, if I would have worked 24 hours, uh, on average, just this year, I'd be doing a lot worse. I'm having to work harder to make up the shortfall, but you know, that's business, isn't it? You've got to, yeah, find the balance. It's a constant battle to find balance.

Definitely, man. That kind of leads me on to my next question, because the reason I brought up, are you still working 30 hours, because I have an impression, Simon, that you really appreciate the, the kind of work-life balance. Like, you appreciate— I get the impression that you love what you do and you love the, the buzz of working and providing a great service and systemizing stuff. But you also love, I'm guessing, stuff outside of work. Am I right in saying that you really live for the work life?

And if so, why? Do you know why? There's this term, isn't there? It's a lifestyle business. And I hate that term. Odd Shoes isn't a lifestyle business. Odd Shoes is a serious recruitment company that wants to do big things. Um, but why, why can I not do that in less time? You know, there's a book called Company of One, which is really good for startup recruiters to understand that, you know, growth doesn't necessarily mean that you have to grow to 5, 10, 15 people in year 1 or year 2. Growth can be, um, growth of your being more efficient in your process. It can be Providing a better candidate experience, a better client experience, um, giving more, building a better community— that can be growth, you know. So why does it have to be like about— like, recruitment directors come in and it's like they feel like it's an ego thing as well. It's like, well, I'm starting a business, I've got to grow, haven't I? And yeah, I feel that sometimes, and I, I am planning to grow the business a little bit, but and, and maybe hire one or two people, but, but not at the expense of quality, you know. And I'd rather spend my time worrying about how I can differentiate myself from everybody else. And you can do that when you're small. When you, when you're a big company like Hayes or Harvey Nash or whatever, it's a lot harder to be innovative because you've got so many people to think about. And any change that you make affects so many processes and people and clients, whereas staying small, you can make those changes really quickly. Like I had the call with the guy from Saltbreaker and I was like, yeah, let's do it. Onboarded within a week, starting to see a benefit within two. Like, why would you not want that? You know? So yeah, so anyway, so yeah. I love—

sorry, I was gonna say, I love what you said about, um, you define what growth is, because I think so many people get trapped in their own ego. And I think I fall victim to this as well, of thinking that, you know, you've got to make more money, you've got to, um, you've got to hire more people, and that's the definition of growth. When actually you define what it is— better client experience, better candidate experience.

I really love that.

And that's kind of a little—

who's it for though? You know, like, I guess you've got to, first of all, like, one of the biggest things I've done is understand why I set up a business. When I first set up Odd Shoes, it wasn't about like some grand reason. It was simple. I wanted more freedom to choose the tools that I want without having to go capping down to my boss. I wanted to make more money from the placements that I was making. Two very simple reasons, you know, nothing so spectacular about it. And then a few months in, I thought, right, I better try and understand why I'm setting a business up. So I did some training with a guy called Dave Lewis, who's great, and, um, he helped me to understand my why. And for me, the thing that really aligned is I wanted to change tech recruitment one placement at a time, which is kind of like my whole strapline. And the other thing behind that was like, I wanted to be the David fighting the Goliath. So they're like the two. And once I understood those things, and once I bought into those, it— freedom was just a secondary thing, money was a secondary thing. Everything fed into that why, you know, and still does.

Really, it's so interesting you say that as well. And it's interesting that— and I think it's almost a necessity, or maybe not necessity, but it's very useful that I think a lot of people don't understand their why. And it's something that me and Sam have struggled with and gone back and forth for a long time because I think it changes. You dip in and out of motivation and sometimes that why changes. But it's interesting that you got external help to help understand your why. That was quite— that's quite interesting for me because I think that's not something that people probably normally think about. It's like external help to have more clarity on your own why. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Yeah, some— sometimes— I mean, I do a lot of like different types of training and I've tried quite a number of different types of people. Um, because I'm constantly looking to improve. Um, you know, I, I'm a firm believer in personal development. I listen to probably 40 hours of audiobooks per month. Um, I listen, I read probably an hour to 2 hours a week. You know, I do courses, I do all sorts. So, you know, because I'm getting older, I don't want my brain to die. You know, I don't wanna— I don't— I wanna— I wanna keep sharp.

You're almost doing as much learning as working, uh, Simon, which is amazing. That's so cool.

Yeah, every opportunity. So when I'm in the gym, um, like the type of workout that I do, I only have 3 exercises per workout, maybe 4 on a certain day. And there's a lot of these, like, between sets is like a 4 or 5 minute break period. So I sit and I read That's how I handle those. So when I'm driving, I'm listening to an audiobook. When I'm walking the dogs, I'm listening to an audiobook, you know, any, any opportunity I get where I'm just— I don't— I'm— because I've got ADHD, I like to be stimulated all the time, so that plays into that. Um, but yeah, so in terms of the personal development stuff, I'm all— the way I, the way I think is I'm always looking for how to improve, and I always try to look at my business and go, what's the biggest thing that I could improve that's gonna have the biggest impact right now? Then once I understand that, I build a process. So I think to myself, is that something I can learn myself, or is it something I need to outsource? Um, now at the time, I felt like I needed to outsource that. I didn't even know that we were gonna talk about building a why. I just wanted to kind of be better at business. And the first thing that it did was got me to understand why I had a business and I haven't really thought about it. And now it's like, yeah, I've got it. It's the number one thing that everything feeds into and it, you know, and it makes you feel like you're doing something. It's not, you know, Like, I live my life intentionally. Everything I do is intentional. And I remember, like, before my diagnosis and before I'd set up Odd Shoes, I felt like I was always reacting to what life threw at me instead of taking the bull by the horns myself. So what type of a recruiter do I want to be, rather than just, I'm doing— I'm running a business? Do you know what I mean? Like, Why am I running a business? What, who do I want to help? How am I going to do that? You know, for me, every, everything is thought, idea, work on the idea, build a process, refine the process, then it becomes part of what you do.

Fascinating. And just to go back to, because I find, I think there's so many people that struggle with this, Simon, including me and Ben to a degree of finding that why. Was the biggest catalyst finding external help? Was that, was that the biggest kind of difference in, in that change that happened within your mindset, or was it something else?

Um, I mean, it's hard, it's hard to say because I've always believed that I want to, throughout my life, I've always wanted to get to be creative in giving something to the world. Of actually making something of myself and giving something back to the world. And I used to do that through being a singer in a band, which we don't need to go into, but I used to do that through that. I used to do acting. I was always finding a way that I could express myself. And I guess setting up a business, although it wasn't intentional for me to find a way to express myself, I did want something that I could take ownership of and be proud of. Something, a legacy that I could leave behind in some way. Um, and then, so that was all within me, but I hadn't really like sat down and thought about it that way. And then when Dave Lewis did sit me down and talk about it that way, it was like he almost fed into exactly what I wanted but didn't know that I wanted. You know, the, the Steve Jobs quote about giving the customers what— not giving the customers what they think they want, but you know, showing them what, what, what maybe they didn't realize they wanted but that actually they can't live without. And that's, and that's what happened there. So he gave me that, and it's, you know, obviously it's such a simple thing, isn't it? What's your why? Everyone should be doing that. But, but if you haven't really thought about it, then you don't know it exists. And so you— why— your values, understanding all of that, you just got me to this big exercise, and it And it got me feeling proud of what I was doing. And now it's like, now I'm really proud of the business that I've got, proud of the impact that I have. And yeah, everything feeds into that.

Wicked. I have to ask this next.

I'm really curious.

If you're working 30 hours a week, what do you do when you're not working? What are your kind of go-to places, things, hobbies to do when you're not working?

So me and my wife are constantly planning the future. My wife's got 2 daughters who are now my stepdaughters, so we're thinking about what life's going to look like for us as a family, um, working on house projects. You know, we're buying a house next year and doing a complete renovation. Um, so I love spending time with the family. Um, we go to the gym 3, 3 times a week. Um, A lot of personal development, planning holidays. We love going away. We're going to Sweden on a road trip at the end of July. We like to go walking, go to gigs, socializing, shopping. Uh, probably shopping is a bad thing for me because of my ADHD, very impulsive, but buy a lot of clothes and vinyl, which I'm trying to calm down. And good restaurants and food, just spending time with being in quality time with your family, um, not just sitting down in front of the TV every single night doing the same thing.

Really interesting.

Um, lovely, thanks for that, Simon. Just interested what you've got up to past your 30 hours, because not many people have the luxury of 30 hours, but you've obviously designed your life the way you want it, and so I was curious of what you were doing outside of that. Um, yeah, so I would love to move on to a bit of, bit about content and building your brand on LinkedIn. You're obviously very prolific on LinkedIn. If anyone, I'm sure a lot of the people in the recruitment world have heard about you. Ben and I have been following you for a while. Can you tell us, Simon, like the moment you realized that building your brand and creating content was a valuable thing? Because a lot of recruiters still aren't sold By this, and it does take time to build up, as I'm sure. So what changed in your mind to say, okay, I'm going to test this out and I'm going to stick with it long enough to see the results?

What kind of happened?

When I did my first recruitment role, they're good guys, but they weren't like massively like trying to get you on LinkedIn, building a personal brand. It was kind of seen as an annoyance. And I was starting to think in those terms, well, actually, like, if this is the biggest website or social network for our targets, surely building a personal brand— I didn't think of it as a personal brand, just posting more— would make sense. So I kind of started then. Then I did the Mitch Sullivan job advert course. But the job advert course, like I said, was teaching you how to write, and once you understood formula, like the AIDA formula, you know, to write, then suddenly it became, right, okay, well, now I know how to write adverts. I know how to write more and now I'm gonna write content. So, but yeah, so for me, that was probably the moment where I really sort of like, Mitch Sullivan doesn't charge enough, honestly, he doesn't for his course and he's so reasonably priced. And I think he does that on purpose because Mitch comes across as like brash and direct, and I love that about him because it's similar to me. But I think he's a softie as well, you know. He might not admit it, but he's a softie. Because I remember I did his course like 5, 6 years ago, and then about a year and a half ago, I think it was, I messaged him again because I had a feeling that my adverts were too long. They were drifting into 2 pages on an A4. And I've always had a habit of being too wordy, I think. And I just wanted to talk to him and get him to, you know, do a review of one of my adverts or a couple of adverts and get his take on it, see how I've progressed since that first course. And, you know, he charged me hardly anything for the hour. And I said, Mitch, honestly, I'll pay you more than that. You don't like— he was like, no, Like, that's fair. So I was like, okay, fair enough. Gave me some really good advice. I managed to get my adverts down to less than 400 words now, 400 or 500 words, which is brilliant. Could be probably double that. And so, so yeah, Mitch's course, amazing, obviously. And then what do you want to know more about the actual content itself? Like what the strategy is?

When was your first win, Simon? I'm interested to know that because I feel like with content, a lot of people have to see the results. And the problem with content and building your brand is it does take time. And that's my feeling of why a lot of recruiters—

It's like building the house, isn't it? You build your foundations, you design your architecture, you build your foundations, you know, and you can't get frustrated when you're only at the foundation stage because you understand it's a process. And eventually you'll put the roof on and your garden will look nice and you'll be like, brilliant, I'm really happy. And that's what it's like with building a, building a branch. You know, there's certain activities that a recruiter can do that are short-term wins, like building a sales cadence, for instance, and trying to win clients. The classic sending a CV and hoping that, that gets you through the door. You know, all of those things that, that, like, um, recruiters do. But you've also got to think long term. If you want to have a career in the industry, you've got to have one eye on what's gonna— what, what's gonna bring, bring business in a year. And a lot of recruiters haven't got the patience for it, or, or they're not, they're not given that direction by their bosses. The bosses, the most of the bosses, aren't they, are they quite old school? They did it what works in the '90s and the '90s. And they're like, you know, oh, you don't need to worry about that content writing. Don't spend too much of your time on LinkedIn. You know, it doesn't work. Well, it does work. I mean, I've had clients from it that I would never have had. I've had candidates from it, constant candidates from it after about 6 months. And building a personal brand is about trust. Like, ultimately. The people who see your content, they're gonna identify with your tone of voice, understand that you know what you're doing. And honestly, the amount of times that I've had people who don't even like and comment on any of my posts, and then they'll just message me out of the blue and randomly, I've never spoken to them, I just wanted to tell you how amazing your content is. How inspiring it is. Honestly, you don't realize this, but one of your posts about CV writing actually inspired me to write a better CV. And I've had results from that in the last few weeks. So I just wanted to say thanks. Sometimes these people will just say, look, you know, I'm a hiring manager now in this role. I've been seeing your content for a while. You helped me when I was in blah, blah, blah. And suddenly they want to work with me as a client. You know, you've just got to be thinking. I mean, I don't think of it coldly. Like, I don't think of content writing as if I write content in a year, I'm going to get clients. That's not— I'm an emotional person and I write what I feel passionate about. So things that I care about is I want to fight to change the industry because I believe that recruiters are a lot more valuable than people give us credit for. And there is a lot of recruiters that drag the industry down. So I, I'll fight to change the industry. I'm not scared of calling out the bad practices. I don't care whether recruitment business owners like me or not. They're not my target market. People who like me like me, people who don't, fair enough, they're probably part of the problem. Um, I like helping other recruiters who maybe are employed, um, Maybe they're in a role and they're, they're not getting the right training and they identify with something of mine, they might message me. And I've got— I've built relationships up with recruiters who are still employed 2 years later who, who come to me for advice because they can't get it internally. I've got, I've got recruiters coming to me who want to start their own business because they're sick of working for companies who— similar situation to me. So, you know, I love helping people and, and I also like giving deep insights into how my business works. Because I don't worry about competition because most of my clients are exclusive. I don't care if people see my content and work out who my client is because they're just wasting their time. All I care about is— it's like, do you worry about your wife if you're handling your business at home? You, you're listening to her, you're supporting her, you, you do your part at home, you, you're equal in what you do. And do you worry, you know, you you're constantly looking at ways to find quality time with her, then you, you don't need to worry about whether she's going to look elsewhere, you know, because you do everything you possibly can to make that relationship work without being a sap who, who is a walkover, you know. And, and it's, it's the same with, with like writing content. It's like, I don't, I don't care whether people get insights into my business. I don't care if they go away and they take that information and implement it in their own, because it's going to improve recruitment, and that's one of my goals. So do it, have at it. Yeah, I'll give you— I'll give you the keys. I'll show you all the stuff that he's made, no problem.

Love that, mate. Um, uh, we're coming to the end of the pod, mate, but I've got a few extra questions. One, one thing I'm really interested in is building your brand and creating content. You've been doing it for a while and there's probably been an evolution of learning and what's worked, what hasn't worked along your journey. What's been a few changes that you've made or a few tweaks or a few things that you've spotted that kind of moved the needle forward the most, whether it be like types of content or how frequently you've posted or anything around that? Have you documented anything?

There's a couple of things, but I want to be clear, like I don't play to the the, the algorithm, you know, how can we know really, you know, you see the post, this is how the algorithm works, and then somebody else does it and it's slightly different. Like, you could go mental thinking about stuff like that. But what I try to do is just post direct, honest content that fits with my values and will help people. So that's number one. But the two changes that I have made that have probably been the biggest impact for me is, um, is, oh, one of them's gone out my head now, but one of them is cutting down the amount of words I use. I try to say less, I try to get the point across in less words because people have got short attention spans due to the internet. You know, people don't read books anymore, they prefer to read their content quickly. And, you know, so I'm trying to play to that with the the text that I'm writing, but it's a constant battle. I can't remember what the other one was, to be honest.

Mate, I agree with you. Cutting it down has been one of the biggest things that me and Ben have had to learn in our content journey is how can you say the same thing in less words and still make it engaging? And once you learn how to do that with copy, that's one of the biggest gifts you can give yourself, I think, to improve your marketing is Cut out the fat and you can always say it in less words.

Even, even today, um, like one of the things is I never ever think I'm good enough. Um, never. And job advert writing, everybody like goes on about my job advert writing and says, oh yeah, he knows his stuff. But you know what I did today? I use Grammarly all the time anyway. And somebody on LinkedIn said, oh, Hemingway is better than Grammarly because it helps you cut down the amount of words. I'm, you know, writing like adverts in less than 500 words is pretty good, I think. But I used, I bought Hemingway. It's only like $20 a year or something. So I bought the app. I took an advert that I recently done, ran it through it. I spent an hour doing it and I managed to get it down by about 130 words. Wicked. And it's a better advert and I'm going to post it after this call. And, you know, so, yeah, I mean, that is a bit like trying to say less and get your point across is like a big thing that I'm always trying to do.

Good. I need to use Hemingway. That's, I'm going to check it out after this call. I've heard it so much and I haven't actually tested it out. So I'm going to, I'm going to check that out, mate. Thank you for the tip.

It doesn't give you suggestions though. That's the only, it tells you what sentences are too wordy, but it doesn't give you suggestions like Grammarly. Which is a downside because it makes it a bit longer, the process. But if you care about what words go on the, on the screen, then yeah, it's worth— it's time well spent.

Yeah, definitely, mate.

Cool.

Last question that we usually ask everyone at the end of the podcast, Simon, and I'd love to get your opinion, mate. What's your opinion on cold calling in today's age for the modern recruiter? Is it a yes? Is it a no? Is it a maybe? And why?

Um, it's a yes, of course. Um, shit cold calling is a no. Like, if you've actually got a good way of opening the conversation, you can show somebody within 10 seconds that you understand the problems that they're facing, and you can talk to them about those without sounding scripted. Then it's a yes. If you, if you just, if you're just making cold calls for the sake of it, don't bother. Because, you know, those people, people don't get cold calls as much nowadays, do they? Because everyone's like doing everything over email and LinkedIn and all that sort of stuff. But so you've got an opportunity there to actually make an impact if you call someone with a good cold call approach. Yeah, do it, definitely.

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