"7-figure Recruiter Reveals How To Start Your Own Agency | James Blackwell & Steve Guest"

Hi and welcome to this week's episode of the Guest List podcast. I'm your host, Steve Guest. For those of you that haven't listened to an episode of this podcast before, Podcast is about top performers, motivational leaders, inspirational people and it gives a platform for people to share their journeys. So today's guest is an expert recruitment mentor owning both a seven figure recruitment agency specializing in the tech space and an online educational company, the agency Blueprint. Born and raised in Newcastle Upon Tyne in the UK, today's guest started their recruitment career in 2010 working for Frank International. Over the course of the next 12 years they moved from a trainee to a high performing recruiter, smashing every target along the way. In 2015 they left the comfort and security of the recruitment role to start up the Ronald James Group. With nothing more than a 10,000 pound credit card limit and the drive to make the agency a success. Over the last seven years Ronald James has scaled to the a turnover of 1.5 million a year with a team of 10 employees and he's now a well oiled machine that functions without them in the day to day activities. Having invested well over £300,000 in educational and personal development, today's guest now runs both the seven figure businesses remotely from Dubai and has set their sights on new heights over the coming years. James Blackwell, welcome to the guest list.

Thanks for having me Steve. Looking forward to the session.

Good stuff. How are you? How's Dubai?

Dubai is good. I just got back last week so I was away for the summer, summer because it gets too hot in Dubai in the summertime. So July, August was spent in Europe and a bit in Bali and then I came back last week so it's the, the weather's cooled down now. I think it's like 35, 36 degrees. So it's, it's almost getting really good.

So certainly the jet set lifestyle sort.

Of, I think, I think obviously we'll dive into that in the podcast but I think once you get some success I think it's really important to enjoy the moments because we don't know how long we have on this earth, so. So I've always been a believer ever since I started my business was yes, build success and wealth but also make sure you enjoying every moment because you don't know when you're next up in terms of the stop.

So it's so true, isn't it? I think sometimes we take that for granted, don't we? Because we think we've got all the time in the world as grateful for the time that we're here or at least spending it in the best ways to achieve what we want to achieve.

For sure. I've noticed that as we get older, when you're younger, like in your 20s, you think you've got so long and you just probably waste a few years, mess around a lot and you don't value the moments and you always. I was always future focused and always looking for the next thing and once I hit this or once I hit this, then I'm going to get this.

Yeah.

But now I think it's more as we do get older, like maybe you start to appreciate these things more because you realize that you only have so long on the planet and you don't want to take time for granted. So I always value like enjoying every moment and spending money on experiences and travel is important to me.

Talk to me about your, your kind of early career. You, you've achieved successes, obviously you're going on and I'm assuming you've got plans to achieve bigger success. Have you, have you always had that kind of entrepreneurial spirit? Have you always been invested in, I suppose, learning and, and building success?

Yeah, good question. Yeah, I think, I mean I was looking back over a video my grandparents sent me when I was like 10 years old and I was dressed with a suitcase and a suit and screaming down the garden garden saying I'm going to be a millionaire one day. And so I think it's always been instilled in me. When I was younger I played football at quite a decent level at academy level and had a few trials and played a few like clubs early on. But I think my passion was always business and making money. So yeah, I would say like even when I was younger I had like paper rounds, did the standard stuff like selling sweets at school, at my school and then like started like I did all sorts like from doing clean, easy catalogs where you drop them off at the doors and go back the next two days to see who's made orders and then go and buy the orders and make a little bit of margin on that to then when I was 17 and passed my car test, I started going to car auctions and that's when I started like buying and selling cars and sort of trading them from my mum and dad's doorstep on the house and flipping cars. So yeah, it's always been instilled in me early to be like entrepreneurial as such.

I think that those sorts of vocations, the, the door to door and the idea of flipping cars, it's all Based on the numbers, isn't it? So I think it's the detail with things like that it's, it's hardcore. Door to door is hardcore. I've done that. It's not, it's not for the faint hearted by any strength I think then progressing to doing car car flips. You've got to understand where the profit is, you've got to understand where the numbers are and I think that's a really good grounding isn't it for any business knowing that you're purchasing well buying at a point where you know you already should know where the margin is.

Yeah year I think I learned that when I. Because you get burned in the car auctions as well. So there's plenty of times when I've put all my savings I mean back then it was like 1£2,000 in a car and then all of a sudden the engine blows or the clutch goes as soon as you drive it out of the auction. But then you start to understand because I was going there like two, three times a week whenever they want and then you start to see which cars would sell more. Like I always just focus on small like little 1 liter or 1.2 liter cars. So for people to buy the first car and I started specializing in like Toyota Igos I think I must have bought and sold about 25 of them. So every time an I go in for I knew what to look for, I knew what the cupping price was, what I could really sell it for, what the best colors were, like what the best problems were and I started like. I mean we'll go into like a niche within a niche but like that's sort of I sort of niche down in the car auctions as well and what I actually flipped in cars like from small first time buyer cars to actual the model and because then I knew inside out exactly what I could purchase and sell that car for.

But it's beauties in the simplicity isn't it? So over the years I've bought a few properties and I had a property mentor going back a number of years the mentor used to take the mickey out of me because all the properties I've got are in the same postcode and they'd say well you need to look a little bit further, there's some better deals out there where you'll be able to spot different deals. But I knew what the deal was and it might be quite boring, it might be quite simple but actually I knew where the purchase price was, I knew what the profit was, I knew what I needed to spend to get it up to the right level. Simple doesn't need to be overly kind of confusing or complicated, does it?

100 agree. I think that's what we call like an unfair advantage. You carved on that advantage because you knew that area in postcode. So you've got to have an unfair advantage in anything you do in business. And it starts with like I say that in recruitment businesses as well. Location, like focus on a location so you can actually know who the best clients are, what awards they're winning, the candidates. Like so you can do events like it all shapes around, I would say location as well and that helps when you drill down in your niche.

So what, what pushed you towards recruitment? I mean most people fall into recruitment, don't they? Is that similar to you? Is it something you were going out to, to go and get or did you just find yourself suddenly it's the same like falling.

I mean I think pretty much, I would say 95 of people probably fall into recruitment. I didn't even know what recruitment was back. So fast forward when I was buying some cars then I, I started my own coffee shop back in the northeast and I got to take over this coffee shop. I ran that for two years and it was quite successful. I think we've turned over like quarter million a year and at 21 like you think like most 21 year olds on partying, like I was literally there opening a coffee shop up at 5, 5:30 in the morning.

Some soc.

Yeah like going to the cash and carry, bringing all the stock in and I did that for a couple years and then the recession came back and I think it was 2006 and then that prompted me to get into car sales. So I got a job at BMW and that was a turning point because I remember I had flights booked to Ibiza to work there all summer with friends and a job out there and some small savings. And I got offered that job the day before the flight was supposed to take off and that was a crossroads for me. It was like James, do you want to. This was. I was. Because I was 20, I was probably 25 then, 24, 25. And I was like, are you going to keep messing around or are you going to actually go into like making money and get career? So I took the job in BMW and then I was there for five years and then I learned through my sister's boyfriend at the time was actually working in recruitment at Frank International and got chatting to him on Sunday and was finding out how much he was making and it was nuts. And I think he had like a 6,7000 pounds paycheck at the time. I was like, how is he earning that money? And I'm working 50, 60 hours a week, so selling 20, 25 cars and coming out with two and a half thousand pounds, like maybe 2,700 pounds max. I was like, that just does make sense. So there. Yeah. And then I, I got, he managed to help me get an interview there. I got hired. I was one of the only people at the time at Frank International that got hired without a degree because they had a model of like second jobbers and they had to have a degree. I didn't have a degree, so. And I was probably a little bit older at that time. I think 26 compared to most people that would hire, like 21 to 24, 25. And yeah, that's how I started. And then I, it really opened my eyes up because recruitment is the highest level sales job you'll ever have. Like, there's, there's, there's nothing higher level than that. Like if you've got real estate, when people are doing big real estate deals, but you're dealing with people's emotions at the end of the day.

On two sides, isn't it?

Yeah, on two sides, clients and candidates. So there's so many things that can change and you need to keep it in an emotional state and you need to make sure that you're saying the right things at the right time with the right words, getting the right commitment. Like, there's so many things you need to balance as a recruiter. That's how I fell into recruitment was through my sister's boyfriend at the time. And yeah, I'm very thankful of that opportunity because I wouldn't be where I am today if I didn't start that job.

It is about spotting potential opportunities as well, though, isn't it? Because you could have had that conversation and it could quite easily have passed you by as much as it actually goes in your favor. And I think when we talked about recruitment, there we. Finding that balance, it is a difficult, uphill task a lot of the time. And I think we have to find balance. We have to find that emotional state that keeps us detached sometimes to ensure we get the potential best outcomes. You joined and you started in recruitment. Has it always been kind of a career of success? Were you one of those individuals that started recruitment and it just clicked and you were immediately kind of in love with it and it, it loved you back?

Yeah. I'd like to say a story that Started with a struggle but I didn't like it. I think I worked hard because when I accepted that job I was leaving like a, not a well paid job but like a job in car sales. And I actually took a pay cut to join my recruitment job. So it was a basic salary, no commission because you were never going to make commission for the first three months. Like by the time someone started and then you got your commission check. So I remember at the time I was like how to get another credit card? And I was like probably 15k in debt when I took that job. But I knew that I want so I had to make it work. So I was the first, pretty much the first in the office every morning, first one on the job boards and my little market because we would fight over candidates who could get on the job boards first to get the candidates that came on the job boards. Back in the day that was when there wasn't really LinkedIn then.

So it was no LinkedIn social media really.

Yeah, there was just like job boards and a CRM system.

Yeah.

And it was you in the phone. So. But yeah, I did my first deal after I think it was five weeks and that gave me the bug because then I was like, I know I can do it now. And I, I, I think I remember it took me three, four weeks to really understand like what recruitment, how it actually worked and the scripts and like because it, there's just so many things that are thrown at you and you're like okay, yeah. From there like I started doing deals and making good commission. So but it was down to like you had to put in the hours. But that's what I liked about recruitment. It's meritorious. So the more you put in, the more you get out. Like and that's like there's not lots of jobs like that. Like recruitment is a good industry for that because you do get rewarded for the effort that you put in. Might have bad luck even there, but over time it'll leave in itself out.

I completely agree and I've had a similar journey in that my basic salary halved when I, I was a qualified strategic buyer. 25, 26K. I think I went down to 12, 13K for my first recruitment job having been told I'd never be any good at it in the first place. And I think without that kind of fuel to your fire, without that I suppose belief that you can do it and the fact that you've got to do it because if you, if you don't put the effort in, you don't Put the work in, you know you're never going to achieve the success anyway. I think you need it, don't you? You need that ability where you're just going to work harder than the people around you. I've always had that, I've always had that instilled in me. I just want to be bigger and better and actually get paid for the efforts that I put in, which I never got as a buyer. It was a pattern. It was never rewarded by money in the bank, which obviously recruitment can be and is the more successful you are. 2015 you decided to, to go and do something that most recruiters I think have a thought about, some do, some don't.

Yeah, I would say a lot do because they're like the biggest conception with like recruitment consultants is oh well, I'm only getting paid 15 to 20% of that. I could have had 100% in theory, yes. But like you don't realize like mechanics behind like running a business is totally different and it's a totally different skill set, mindset and skill set. I was talking about it probably for a year before I actually started up my own agency and I went through all of the, A few people that probably started their own agency as well had meetings with the likes of James K and different people that were on Dragon's Den and different investors because in my mind I was thinking, oh, I need money behind me. Like I remember at the time I turned down like a quarter of a million pounds investment from, from them and I'm so glad I did because I get to keep 100% of my pie and what you, what you realized. And I remember I was speaking to a friend, we used to go on lunches and talk about like starting our own agency and I thought at the time it was like £20,000 to like have a nice website when really like I discovered upwork and I could get it built for or wix like for £500 or like which goes on to our first website we built. My, my younger brother Dan, who has started early on in my business venture with me and has grown now to, to running the business day to day, he built it like and I think it cost 50 pound 100 on Wix and we used that for the first like year and a half generated probably close to 4 or 500,000 pounds before we actually changed it. But yeah, like I think going back to starting my own, I knew that I wanted more. I always wanted to be really successful. I wanted to be a multimillionaire and you look, you can't get rich working for someone else. Like as much as I could sugar coat it, like, let's be real, like you can't, you can't make millions. If you want to make millions or create financial freedom, it's very rare you can do that working as an employee. You have to really be taking the risk yourself because the bigger the risk, bigger the road. And that was the same in recruitment. But it was a, it was a worrying time for me back then because I remember like that was probably the first time ever I actually got stressed and had a little bit of anxiety as such. That was because you have put a lot of weight on your shoulders. Because I was, that's when I started like getting into personal development. I remember I was listening a lot of Grant Cardone, Ty Lopez, Jim Rohn, like a good mentor that I used to listen to. And you see, put all of these theories in your head and then all of a sudden you're like, well there's a gap between where you want to be and where your current reality is. So the more I was like doing personal development and everything else and my reality, the gap was so big because I was still only earning like 60, 70K in recruitment agency. But in my head and mindset I wanted to be worth 10 million plus. I took the risk, start my own business. I didn't, to be honest. I just got a mortgage on my first house. So I had no savings at all, I had no money. Like and this is another thing, like when you, when you've been a top bill of research, you're earning any spending like go like on the train two, three times a week, do lunch clubs. You'd want to buy like a nice watch or nice suits. And so the money that you'd make, you just spend. And that was the perfect model like for the traditional recruitment agency was make loads of cash but make sure to spend it because once they get skinned again next month, then they're going to work to do 3, 4, 5 more deals the next month. And there was a few people like that in our agency at the time that I worked. And it was good banner, but it was like you were never going to get rich from that because it was just a constant cycle of like in a big paycheck, spend it and, and they go away, you go again. So I actually had, I had to take out like a 10,000 pound credit card and I was like, I'm just gonna go all in and just start it from scratch. I remember day one, I was just sat in Caffeinero with my MacBooking and what do I do next? Like, how do you win clients? Like, I'm gonna have to call, call. How do I, how do I define a niche, what market I'm going to do? Because then also there was some me legal letters. I can't do this and that with restrictions. It was like, wow, what, what have I done? But after a few weeks I started understanding things, mapping out a market, defining a niche, winning clients. Then, then that's when I went on the spiral of like, I want to do things differently. I did not want another S3 style recruitment agency, even though they're very successful in their own right and there's a lot of agencies that work out that way. I didn't want to be working 60, 70 hours a week trying to grow a massive agency to take loads of stress. I wanted to do it lean and agile and I wanted to adapt technology and real systems and outsourcing and I wanted to do it an effective way where I could make money but also still maintain like a good lifestyle.

And you touched on there in terms of you were surrounding yourself with, with people like Grant Cardone and Jim Rowan and would you, did you have business mentors? Did you have kind of your day to day accountability type partners? Or was it very much what was out there in terms of the books, YouTube seminars, what, what did you do outside of that?

Yeah, good question. I did both. So I actually had a lot of local mentors as well. So one of my strategies was so once I define my niche, we stuck on the Northeast. So very similar with your property empire, bnn, your postcode. I was like, actually instead of doing London or different markets, I'm gonna do the Northeast. Like technology is taking off a little bit here. And so I would use my cold email outreach and different strategies to message the other entrepreneurs that founded tech companies. I'd be like, look, I'm really, I'm a young entrepreneur, just start my own agency. I love what you do at XYZ, would love to meet you for a coffee for 20 minutes on me, just to pick your brains and like, basically like see if they would like mentor me. And I got quite, I would say I probably got four or five mentors through just networking, going to like these local entrepreneur events, friends, golf clubs. Like I've got probably two or three mentors. I would call them mentor. They're all friends now, not mentors as such, but they all help me. So I think in a space of those times, like the first few months, I've got Good friends now. One exited business for 60 million. Another guy's worth, like over 100 mil. Like, there's. I've got a lot of good friends now that were sort of mentors early on in the stage just because they've seen a little bit of themselves in me. That was the sort of angle. But you've also got to come when you want to mentor. You've got to bring value. So the value, like sort of maybe I bought was like the energy but also like marketing, sales tactics, like, all of these new technologies, like, all of the different ways of, like how I was learning from the books and YouTube and like you mentioned, grant card ones, all of these. Lots of different mentors. Like, I would like, dissect that. And I could give value back in a conversation. So it meant I could hold a good conversation with a business owner that's been in business for 20 years, for example. And that's probably the blend I had with, like, real in person mentors that I would meet. I would always at least go for two lunches a week or coffees and beat them or golf or take them to football. And then I'd also have, like, I would do 2, 3 hours minimum per day. And I still do in personal development learning, whether it's books, YouTube, podcasts, seminars.

And I think, I think so many people miss that bit. They have the wish list. They have the thought that they're going to be successful or they want to be successful, but they don't necessarily take enough action or spend their time around the right people. They're with friends, they're with family who don't necessarily always have the right answers or the. They'll be nice, they won't be challenging. They're not necessarily going to say you tell you what you don't want to hear. But actually it could be the best bit of information that you need.

100. Because people, people overvalue figuring everything out themselves. They think they know it all. Especially, like we're in the recruitment sector. A lot of these recruiters are. We've all got egos. I had a big ego when I worked at Frank International. And that was another thing I worked on spirituality and abundance and meditation. But, like, people undervalue, like, pin someone else in whatever form of currency, whether it's giving it back in a lunch or meeting them to getting help from people that have already been there, done that, and had the mistakes, because they've got a formula. So, like, the best way to learn, like, in anything is like, even invest in yourself or make sure, you get advice. Don't try and figure it all out yourself because there's people ahead of you that have already figured it out that you can learn from and then you put your own concept and ideas and intuition on top.

It's so true. I mean, we mentioned in the bio there the amount of money you've spent on personal development and education and I've spent a fair bit, probably not to that sort of level, but what I've found is there's loads of free stuff. You can search anything on Google these days, can't you? And you can find videos and information disinformation. You can and, and I suppose have enough information that you're so confused and paralyzed by the end of it, you don't really know what to do. But actually when you start to, to invest and actually pay money and put skin in the game, you become far more invested in your education and the fact that you've got to get value from it. I've spent money on education that hasn't been great and I've spent it on brilliantly, kind of well presented, three, four day seminars that have been so influential. It's the best money I've ever spent. But until you start doing it, I think people are so hesitant to give away their money and actually it's for their own benefit.

I remember this. I, I still remember the moment I paid, I paid for one online program like, and it was cheap, but I went to my first seminar event which was with an old mentor of mine called Peter Sage, who was one of Tony Robbins coaches. It was a three day event seminar in London that was a thousand pounds. And I remember at the time I was like, it's a lot of money. And I remember, honestly, I was spending hours watching all of his videos, going through his website, reading things word for word. What do you get from this seminar? Like what the teaching per day. And I mean, I look back now, I mean a thousand pounds is nothing. I'll buy loads of programs for a thousand just to see if I can take one nugget.

Yeah, yeah.

And I remember it was a lot of money at the time, but I went to that seminar and it literally did change my life. Like it was amazing because you, the vibrancy in the room, the people that you met. There's a friend I bought there, a guy called Andre, I actually did an interview with him on my YouTube a while back and we've been friends ever since. And we attend a lot of masterminds and courses together around the world. So since I Met him there, We've been to la, San Diego, he's came to Dubai, London events like there's different people that you meet throughout the way that you progress with and it was really interesting. But I remember the time a thousand pounds is a lot of money and it's not like as recruiters we can make £10,000 off one placement. So if you can invest £10,000 in something that you're going to help, make you 2, 3, 500,000 or a million, it's a good ROI. It's a no brainer.

It's so true. I think I can equally kind of talk in terms of the people you meet on these seminars or events are often of the same mindset. Whether they're a bit behind you, a bit in front of you, they might bring the opposite of what you've gone there looking for and, and you find that ability to again have that accountability or have individuals that think the same are on the same wavelength, they're heading in the same direction. And that is so powerful when if you sat there listening to this podcast and you think I want to do all these things, but I kind of feel like I'm on my own. The best thing to start doing is actually just to start mixing in the right circles, turning up to events, even the free ones that then do the upsell to the next course or whatever it might be. It's just getting started, isn't it? Putting yourself out there.

So true. I think on the last discussion we mentioned Rob Moore, I think we've both been at his seminars and like when someone's paying to attend event and they're making an effort taking time away from their day to go there for two, three days, they are the right people you want to be around. So like for people listening that where to find other people like me, you're not going to find them in the street or locally where you live. They're probably going to be from different parts of the world, but they're all congregate in this one like event or like seminar. That's where you're going to meet other like minded individuals. Don't just sit online and just start chatting to people. You want to meet people in person and you want to go to the events that you pay to play. And the more you pay, the more you listen and the more you implement and take action and hold yourself accountable. Like it's all like a spiral. And I see that so much and things that you mentioned how much I pay on personal development, I probably spent more now to Be honest. And I've spent more than ever the last two years, Steve, even the last year. And I've made more money than I've ever made in my life. So it's like I don't need to do it, but I want to do it because I want to keep going. Yeah, the more you pay for something. When I look back at like what I would spend now, it's probably the same stuff that I would have spent £10,000 on two years ago. And I might be paying 50k now or 60k because I want to just learn from this person, individual. But it just holds you accountable. And the more you, the more you like pay, the more you listen for sure and you implement more.

What would you say has perhaps been the biggest mistake that's happened or the biggest thing or catalyst that has either sent you in a different direction? Something that's happened that you thought that's had a real genuine kind of effect?

Yeah, I'll be honest with this. So what happened in my agency has been on over seven years now. And I started with the same mindset at the start. Like I want it lean and agile, I want a simple life, I want a simple business. It's going to generate me big profits and the business is there to serve me, not me serve the business. I say this all the time with my students. After year three we started expanding and I think again the ego creeps in. And then because you're surrounded by all these people of growth and you want to get to 100 million and because I was going to all these events, I went to dan penyas like $50 billion castle seminar. That's all about taking on the world and getting 100 million net worth. And that was always my goal. I used to write that goal down all the time. I mean in the back of my mind I'll still probably get there, but I don't hold importance to it anymore. It doesn't make any difference like if that type of figure. And I remember I, I was like, right, okay. To my brother Dan. We, we, I think we had a nice team of four, maybe five people, small, nice office. We were doing like about a million a year. And I was like, right, we're going now. Like I want to get to 20 staff and I want to exit the business for 10, 20 million. And I ended up hiring like four or five people, all on big salaries, all big egos or from like a big recruitment company. I hired a non executive director. And honestly, like it was probably the biggest mistake I made because it was an expensive mistake because I ended up sucking firing on all of them and because it ruined the culture, the dynamic and it wasn't the business I wanted because then I was having to have more meetings rather having a higher hr. It was complex. Like once you grow the business past 12 employees, like it breaks again because you need to decide whether you want a boutique agency that's going to be hyper profitable or if you want to go and get to 20, 30, 40 employees. Like the amount of people that have that business and don't make as much profit as me or don't have as much time off the 60, 70 hours and they're having to have a family and they're trying to burn the candle at both ends. Like that was the biggest thing was like all of a sudden it just a changed direction and I should never off. But I'm glad I did it because like it made it correct and made sure that I would never ever do that again. So for instance like even now 10 employees and it's sweet like I won't hire unless there's someone really, really good because I want to keep the business hyper profitable. Because as you scale there's more, more challenges, more, more channels of communication, more things that can go wrong. And what is the true purpose of scaling Unless you're going to sell a business and say this all the time. And 99 of businesses never sell. Like all these people that keep thinking they're going to sell a recruitment business. I know some sell but very, very.

Difficult isn't it to sell a recruitment.

So rare because then they've got a three year ear now and by the time they sell our business they hate their business or they hate their life and the last thing they want to do is stay in there for another three years. So why not just have it nice where it's a place that you enjoy coming to work, you've got a good team, good culture, keep it as a cash flow business and then invest in the likes of property in different vehicles. And that's normally what I advise like our agency owners to do is is keep it as a cash flow business.

So let's talk about your other business and the agency blueprint. Give me a kind of summary of, of what that involves. What's that about?

I dissected everything we did in the business like around about year five, year six because I've really refined the model to a point. For instance, I'm never cold called ever in my business and we've got like 170 clients now. Never had to make a cold call because we developed a unique system to get clients inbound and convert them and then like a signature sales pitch deck, et cetera. Basically what our agency blueprint does is we help recruitment business owners. Like scale without with red, reducing the chaos in there, increasing profitability and building a stable business that relies on like systems automation and a virtual team. And basically to give them more leverage, they get more time back and more freedom so they can start working on the business, not in it, take more holidays, take more profit on the business, have the business still running when they're sometimes away. And basically we help. We've helped over 400 agency owners now across the world implement either to get six figures or seven figures in an agency. And I enjoy doing that. And that's going from strength to strength. We're adding more features, more coaches. Yeah, we've got students from around the world, whether it's in the us, Canada, uk, Australia, they're probably the main type of areas.

And this is, this is a setup for the business itself, isn't it? This is to scale the business so it's certain steps or stages to take it from where it is now to where you want it to be as opposed to the recruitment day to day.

Your course is great for that. Like I don't teach anything in terms of how to be a recruiter. Like it's more. The biggest gap is for recruiters that have started their agency once you're a 10k months like you need to build a business. So like you need to have systems and instead of trial and error for 2, 3 years figuring out we give you everything, plug and play like a franchise and you just follow the steps and implement.

It definitely covers a gap in the market because in my experience you often find perm recruiters go off to work for themselves. And in essence, certainly from the early days there, they are still a perm recruiter that is in a business, but it's their business, it's just them. And they continue to bill fees, but they don't necessarily think like a business. And then they might take on an ex colleague or someone that they know. So there's two of them, maybe three of them, and they're working as three separate recruiters that all put the fees in one pot.

And then there's exactly the type of people we help. And I see that all the time because the spread, you don't want 3, 360 recruiters. Like you need one client acquisition, one kind of acquisition and build the systems and delivery consultants. Yeah, those type of businesses don't work. And I've seen it many times when you've got partners or three of them and they're all trying to do different markets. Like, I'm like, no, like, you do one market, you all focus together. It's the same as the energy circle. I learned this from another mentor where if you've got 10 ideas or projects that you want to work on, you can only get 10% on each project. But if you focus on like one niche, one goal, one vision that you can focus 100% on that, and that's when you're going to like, create unfair advantages and be successful, is because you just focus on one energy source.

It's so true, isn't it?

I mean, we.

I run a recruitment business here. There's five of us, including me, we looking to grow it kind of organically. They're people that I've known and worked with, recruited with before. But we will concentrate in one area and we complement each other so we become the point of contact because we can fulfill the client's needs, whatever they might be amongst us as a team, Swap names, swap clients, swap candidates, swap information, intel. And it's. For me, it's just the logical path. What's next? What's the plan?

So the plan is to keep Ronald James doing what it's doing. So we've got like my, like I said, I brought my brother down on very early and I'm very thankful of him. I told him he was like 17, dropped down to school, I told him everything in recruitment. So that was the only time I did like, the training, which is me and him, small office and I was teaching him how to close, doing a few feedbacks. And so now like he, he manages the team day to day and still billing. So we have like a nice office, like locally where I'm from in Newcastle. So it's like two minutes from my mom and dad's house and we've got a love, we've got a nice team and a nice culture. So the plan is to, like, in the back of my mind, it's always, if you're not going, you're dying. But in a way, like, as long as you're grown, I improving the systems, the processes. It doesn't mean like not growing in terms of hiring employees, like, I'm happy for that. Stay like between 1.5, 1.8 mil. Yeah, not business. And then I really like for my next level, like, because transitions like normally they go in five, six cycles. And I've seen this with A lot of entrepreneur friends I've got after five, six years in a business, if you've mastered it, you're going to be not bored of it, but like it's like, well, what's next? So that's my. Was my transition in Engine's blueprint like two, three years ago. It's just to take that to the next level now. I want to inspire and help more recruiter, recruiter owners, like grow their own business and get financial freedom. That's like the number one goal and to help them in a way where they can still enjoy a good life as well and make it easier for them. The plan over the next two, three years is to grow that and then I'm growing my own investment portfolio. So I think going to like my next goal over the next, hopefully I should hit a target by this time next year, like over £10 million net worth and then it'll be the growth to potentially 100. But it's just more. I'll never sacrifice my life. It's enjoying the good life, health, wealth, love, happiness. The four pillars is making sure that I've got those all down. It's always been balanced more towards business, but now I'm trying to enjoy like the, the fruits of my labor as such. And then also it's like looking at things like property, for example. By the time we're recording this, we are in a recession. Hyperinflation. It's crazy times. There's opportunity. So I'm very excited about this because I think, well, for recruitment agency owners as well, it's a good time because you can, if you're, if you built your business right, then it's. Your competitors are for. By the wayside. And it is normally like unfortunately, the bigger recruitment agencies, because they've got bigger overheads.

Yeah.

They've got bigger risk. We've got middle, middle management layers and everything. Like these small, lean, agile boutique agencies are the ones that will thrive. We thrived in 2000. Like we had our best year ever.

Yeah. It's a mindset thing though, isn't it? Quite often we get consumed. I put a post out on LinkedIn today to. And it's just simply saying, do you watch the news? I stopped watching the news six, seven years ago.

Yeah.

And. And I think quite often people won't see the opportunity because they see the downside and they worry and they stress and they think, oh my God, mention the R word, everything's going to fall apart. I'm never going to be able to afford the gas and electricity. This year and it's switching that thought process to think where is the opportunity.

Most millionaires are created in recession times like most businesses are the most successful in recessions. Touch on a point I didn't think we touched on it in depth was you are the average of the five people you hang around with most. So you're hanging around with other millionaires and other people, not even millionaires, people with the right mindset, positive mindset all the time, always learning, always growing. Like the chances are you'll become the next one. So like switch off. Like love my family, I spend time with them, but you don't have to listen to them all the time in terms of advice. And that's the same with news media. Old friends, like my friendship group now is pretty much a lot of them are in Dubai. I've got probably two or three close friends back home, the rest are all in Dubai. And they're all either at my level or above me. So it always forces me to grow. And that's the, probably the number one trick that got me to the success I am today was I was always upgrading my peer group. Literally, like as Jim Rohn preachers. I actually upgraded it from like being around people that were worth a few hundred thousand a year to million to 10 million, 100 million to even billionaires. Like the more you surrounded by that just your mindset reprograms. Because we all need to reprogram our mindset minds as well because we've been indoctrinated with the school system, the media, the news. Like all of those negative mindsets that just want to like keep you thinking small and keep you worrying and panicking and yeah, like the more you surround yourself with the other like minded people, the more you'll get out of the matrix, as it were.

We'll become stale as well, don't we? We do we, we can become lazy in our own processes.

Humans are not, we are all naturally lazy and we will fall to our default position of where we're most comfortable at. So the more we raise our standards, which means our daily habits every day, the people that we surround ourselves with, our success, the more we keep raising that, the more our default position increases. Because the times I'm lazy that I don't do anything. But my, my standards now of not doing anything is totally different to what it was five years ago.

Not doing anything.

Like not doing anything. Then we'll be going out, drinking, a party, you know, watching the news or being around the wrong people. Me doing nothing would be still knocking around with like my high level people and children having a coffee, talking about business but just not doing it. So there's a different standards as humans that we've, we fall to and we want to be careful of like make sure we're upgrading our standards all of the time. So then when we do have a time when we've been downtime or being a bit lazy, it's a different level of laziness for anybody listening to this.

And they're in a position where they're looking to, to grow their recruitment business and they want to put the systems in place and, and have a plan to scale. What is the best way for someone to get in touch with you?

Yeah, best way would be the agencyblueprint.com our website and that will take you through like a video tutorial and you can book a call with one of our team and we can see if and how we can help you. I've got tons of free advice in my YouTube channel. So if you just go on YouTube, put James Blackwell and you'll see. I mean I normally post a video a week around how to start your agency, grow it like all of the systems, social media. The best way to reach me is his Instagram again, James Blackwell. It'll come up fantastic.

Well, I'll put all them links in the, in the show notes as well anyway, so. Question that I always ask when we draw these sessions to a close is if there's one single piece of advice that you'd leave the listeners with, what would that be?

It's a simple bit of advice, but I would say it sticks in my head. I'm not going to swear on the podcast, but it was from my old mentor, Dom Pena was just do it. So take action and do it. So whether you're thinking about starting your agency, go and do it. If you're thinking about systemizing it and growing it in the right way, just do it. Like we only have one life. Honestly, the amount of time that I look back that I think I've wasted now, I cherish every single moment. You've got no tomorrow. So never worrying about what other people think is a big thing. So just do it. Because I was always worried about, oh, what will my ex colleagues think of me posting videos on LinkedIn and doing this and that now I do not care. Like. And it's funny, the more money you make, the more you like. All of that noise just drowns out and it silences you. Don't. You don't look at the comments, you don't because you're just doing you. And that means just. Just do it and keep hyper focused and stay on your track.

That's great advice. It's so true as well. James, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you.