Be All YOU Can Be - Recruitment Agency

Back then, there was no mentorship guidance, there was no course, there's no structure on how we actually do it. So it was like a lot of unknown. And fear is probably the biggest thing that holds most people back, as we know.

Yeah. Like, just quickly, do you. You started Ronald James on your own?

Yeah. So, like, yeah, probably for six months or so, it was going on in my head. I had friends that would go out on lunch and talk around, like, should we leave and set up on our own. Back then, there was no mentorship guidance, there was no course, there's no structure on how you actually do it. So it was like a lot of unknown. And fear is probably the biggest thing that holds most people back, as we know.

Yeah.

So it's fighting through the fear because I remember back then we were looking into. It was looking into how much would it cost to do a website. And I think it was like £20,000. It's not like I built a website for two, but then you think, oh, well, you need loads of money to start a business.

It's crazy because, like, what year was that?

That was like 2015.

It's crazy that there wasn't like. Compared to, like, the amount of content now and like this podcast and all the other things, like, it's crazy how much that's come on. But you're completely right, I completely understand that, like, having access to that sort of information just simply didn't exist. Which is crazy, isn't it? Because you just wouldn't think that's the case right now.

Yeah, well, now, now there's. There's tons. I mean, great podcasts that you do, Hashem. And there's. There's loads on that thing back then. I mean, I remember when I first started, I did a podcast with Roy Ripper. So thing that I knew about recruitment, that was the only thing online that was talking about recruitment. Crazy. Like, if you Googled how to set up a recruitment business, there was pretty much nothing. And remember back then, you were relying on the brand and the data. The CRM system was key.

That was like a big selling point, wasn't it? It was like, look, we've got 100,000 people such and such on our datab was like part of the pitch.

Yeah.

So what, what ended up being the game plan then? So there wasn't many people that you could pick their brain. There wasn't content you could access. What ended up being the sort of game plan. Because I think, as you just said, like, quite rightly, people taking the leap, people being paralyzed by the fear of what that first year is going to look like. Are they going to be as successful on their own or out of the ecosystem that they've been used to. What. What ended up being the game plan for that first year?

Yeah, so it was like a lot of personal development. So just trying to read. I read a book a week. I was reading a lot around business fundamentals and how to help start a business. And then I had a plan. What I thought would be a plan was picking a market that was similar to what Nigel Frank did, but in Salesforce. Because I thought, oh, well, in theory they've got a great Salesforce team. I'll just do Salesforce recruitment. But it really doesn't work like that because you need to have a clear way of how you would map out a market and build out a niche with a proper structure. Okay, so like, because like a niche vertical will have like various different gradients within it. So yes, you could like have a specific group of high clients and candidates within a niche that someone else is successful with, but that doesn't mean that you can just step in there and be really successful yourself. So like the first. That was probably a mistake. Like, we.

How long did you focus on Salesforce.

For Probably like three, four weeks. And then we just got. Obviously I was based in the Northeast. We. I got talking to and I just networked like a hustled and just went to loads of business events, network pulled it. Like we pulled an IT developer job and we worked out, it worked. And then all of a sudden we just fell into like the Northeast tech market, which was up and coming at the time. And. And that's a very similar story to how Sean and Nigel started. Nigel Frank. They didn't aim to do Microsoft Dynamics. They were doing something totally different. Really just fell into it.

I think something that's really stuck with me is where you start isn't where you finish. And I think that's so important to realize that you might have in your head where you want to be, but just like. Cause right now what you're starting and what you're doing isn't like, do you know what I mean? Which is pretty much what you just said. And I think it's so important to remember that if you're starting your own business or just in general, okay, so a couple of weeks, then recognize that. So then just quite organically for you, hustling, meeting people, you ended up falling into or focusing on and working with Northeast tech business.

I think, like, the reason I started the business was like I wanted more freedom because I didn't want to work eight or late anymore. Yeah, I stood up a five years solid. Like you just get burnt out. Like most recruiters get burnt out doing that. It's like long term. Like it's not good for your health at all. There's definitely a better way. So freedom. I wanted more money because I was restricted. You always restricted to amount of deals you can do in a month and you can make it that place. So and then lifestyle because I wanted to be all I can be. The only way I can do that is express that is to have full control over my destiny. Hi, thanks for watching today's video. If you like what you've seen, please like and subscribe the button with Entrepreneur James so you keep up to date with all of the updated videos. If you've got any questions or comment, I'd love to hear from you. So please drop a comment in Entrepreneur Gems below and we'll look to answer those on a weekly Q and A video. Keep an eye out for any future videos that we'll be posting. I'll be popping the video in here probably every one to two days. Thank you.