James Blackwell left BMW sales to start Ronald James Recruitment Company in the northeast UK with £5-10k from a personal loan. He grew it to seven figures in three years, turned down investment from Dragon's Den's James KH, and worked solo from coffee shops before his brother Dan joined.
Because the whole point of, like owning my own business is you want, everyone does. You want freedom, flexibility, autonomy, no boss, and to make as much money as you can. It was tough at the store because you've got a lot of competition. So I've invested a lot of money myself in terms of personal development to grow as a person as well. For the viewers or listeners that don't know me, my name is James Blackwell. I'm an entrepreneur based in the northeast of the uk. I run a company, a couple of businesses, Ronald James Recruitment Company. We help specialise in digital and technology recruitment and we work with a lot of big tech companies up here in the northeast. Got a big passion for marketing. So I started my business just under five years ago, start with like 5 to 10,000 pound credit card loan and then grew it to seven figures plus agency within three years. So it's been an interesting journey. And yeah, I'm looking forward to today's episode.
Yeah, so I'm going to jump straight in with that there because you mentioned the 5,10,000 pound credit card and one of the questions a little bit later on was, how did Ronald James start? But in terms of like, funding it? Because on one of the podcast episodes, I was editing one for your podcast, you mentioned about bootstrapping the business. I'd never heard the phrase bootstrap before. I actually had to Google it to find out what it meant. Which is basically starting from nothing or more or less like your own savings and piling everything together. That was my understanding of it. So, yeah, first of all, like the idea of a recruitment company and then if you don't mind touching on that kind of funding side, and in terms of the actual cost of starting a business, I believe it was you. And that's Corby in the background as well, by the way. James is a dog. You'll get him on the. On the cameras in a little bit. Yeah, it was just you and Dan and I actually saw the. Which is James's brother. And I saw the post a couple of days ago, four years ago, of just you and him in an office, wherever that was, and then now grew it to. To this, which is in. In three, four years. Quite impressive. But yeah, starting out. So how did all that come about? Or how did Ronald James come about?
So prior to that, I used to work in recruitment for a big northeast recruitment company and I had a great experience there for, I think just under five years as well. So started off as a recruitment consultant. I mean, prior to that story, I used to sell cars. I used to work for BMW for five years again. Learnt my trade. It was great. I used to love cars and I still do. So it was always one of my passions to get involved at cars more. So I learned what we call like sales apprenticeship. Yeah. With those guys. Matured and then moved on to recruitment. I didn't even realize recruitment was sales, but it is like really high level sales. So started off leading recruitment company and then worked my way up to manager and then left and started my own business. Always been entrepreneurial and then I think always been interpersonal development as well and like actually learning and evolving as a person. So I wasn't really very academic at school, but since then I realized that it's only down to you to really better yourself and educate yourself and learn and start. Start when you leave school. Yeah. So I've invested a lot of money myself in terms of personal development to grow as a person as well. But yeah, started the business off. It was. I took on like a personal loan, made sure I had limits on credit cards and stuff just to get going. And it was tough at the start because you've got a lot of competition and you needed to really find a niche within a sector as well. So there was a few different areas that I toyed around with before settling on being local in the northeast.
Right, okay.
Within the digital and tech sector as well. And then started off, I remember like pretty much that was by myself. So Dan hadn't come into the business at that stage. It was literally just me. Yeah, it was just, just me. Started the business off. I had opportunities and I had an experience with James KH from Dragon's Den. He wanted to invest in me.
Right.
But I decided against that, against taking investment and just actually going it alone. Yeah. Because the whole point of like owning my own business is you want, everyone does. You want freedom, flexibility, autonomy, no boss, and to make as much money as you can, so.
And then you end up with James as a client and you're none of them.
That's true. Yeah. Tough. So, yeah. So started off like literally just working in a coffee shop with a laptop. And it was tough those days to be fair, because it's hard to win clients that trust you because you're just a startup. So you're starting from the bottom and then obviously just trying to like grind my way up. So it was just like networking and meeting people. Yeah. From day one was the main thing. And then after I think probably a few weeks, my brother Donna got involved in the business because he'd left school and he hadn't really had a job, so this was his first job. So started off, made a few placements, got a chance on a few accounts, and then just grew from there. And then we took some office space, serviced office space, and started from there.
