How To Build A 7-figure Recruitment Agency: The Old Model Vs. The New Model

How to create a self sustaining agency to seven figures by automating, systemizing and building a virtual team. Hello ladies and gentlemen. My name is James Blackwell and in the next few minutes I'm going to share with you exactly how I built a seven figure agency and how you can build a predictable system to set up a profitable recruitment agency yourself. I'm going to share with you the biggest mistakes most recruitment consultants are making when it comes to starting their own agency. And I'm also going to show you if you currently have a recruitment agency, how to build systems, how to automate and build on a virtual team. So you have a self sustaining agency. I'm also going to show you how to generate a consistent flow of clients and candidates on demand with predictability month after month using what I call the new agency model. The two things that seven figure recruiters have present in their business and the strugglers do not. So my name is James Blackwell and I own a recruitment agency called Ronald James Group. So we're based here in the uk, we're the north east leading digital and tech recruitment agency and I founded that business just under five years ago and I am currently one of the only, the world's only seven figure recruiters that actually is now teaching what he knows. So I started my business from the age of 28 after working at a successful recruitment agency for five years. And I started my agency with just a $10,000 credit card and by the age of 31 I'd made over a million dollars. Now I specialize in helping recruiters and recruitment consultants that either want to start up or grow and scale their current recruitment agency to over 250k and beyond by what I call building a profitable new era recruitment business. So this is just a little snapshot behind the scenes of you thinking who's this James Blackwell? What does he actually do? This is taking a live screenshot from our Xero accounts. As you can see, Ronald James Ltd. Here. So you can see we've already hit the million pounds plus mark this year alone and that's half year through halfway through the year. But we're hitting consistent months of 160k, sometimes even over £200,000 in terms of perm fees. Now I think it's important to be transparent with that as well because sometimes there might be gurus out there and they might be making maybe false claims. But I am obviously teaching only what I know. So at the minute you might be either recruiter or recruitment agency owner. And the reason why I put this hamster wheel is Most recruitment agency owners or recruiters like they feel like the concierge on this hamster wheel. And it's like a human hamster wheel, the consistently doing what they're doing. They're stuck working in their business and you never really get to make the money that you truly deserve because you haven't got a clear roadmap on how to build systems and automation. So think of trying to make a car move without actually your foot on the gas or, or actually being given a roadmap without any end goal or direction, like a hamster on a wheel going round and round the same track. Now, this perfectly sums up most agency owners and new business owners because there is no clear direction of the path that they're actually on. Now, whilst this may be a harsh truth for beginners, it's also an unavoidable trap. As the famous Albert Einstein says, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting different results. I know, and I've figured out a new way of how to run a recruitment agency. Now, the harsh truth for most recruitment agency owners and recruiters at the moment is when you get started, you're excited. You're excited to start with tons of motivation, you're putting in the grind, but you don't have any clear vision towards the goal of what you want to try and achieve and the actual business that you want to create. Because after speaking to hundreds of business owners in recruitment, like everyone started the business to have financial freedom, but also to have the freedom to work when and where they want and to be their own boss. Now, when you have like no roadmap, it's not your fault. Like, you start obviously with the motivation hustle, but your brain is overloaded. There's loads of new models, methods, features, all of the appealing ways to grab success from every angle, but hamster on the wheel going round and round every single month. A quiet mind is able to hear intuition over noise. So if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got. So without a clear goal or roadmap, this cycle really repeats itself and it happens over and over again when all you really need is one crucial ingredient for a successful business and that is a predictable system. In the new era agency to win retained clients and to automate and create an inbound strategy to attract passive talent. But it's like I said, it's not your fault. So the key thing here is you need to have your systems nailed. The old agency model versus the new agency model. So the reason why I took this snapshot, I used to be like this Leonardo DiCaprio figure in Wolf of Wall street and fully suited, going to work every day, usually 7:38am in the morning. And it was full of like lists, cold calling, trying to fit square pegs into round holes in terms of recruitment, trying to start on 35% fees and negotiating all the way down to 15%. And it was all full of party scene. So Thursdays, Fridays, weekends you would go out and party and just repeat and mint and repeat that cycle over and over again. Now I'm not against the old agency way, that's fine. There's a lot of successful recruitment agencies out there that are doing things the old way, but that, that's cool for them. But what I created was a business that I enjoy the freedom itself. Managing for me like it doesn't now take too many hours a week for me to run this agency successfully to seven figures. And I enjoy my life like I have like six, seven holidays a year. I enjoy the nice things in life whilst also enjoying the agency. So the old agency model is all around client outbound. So it's manual, like it's manual one to one, reaching out to a client manually, client conversion, it's all again, just on a phone call. It's manual sourcing one to one and it's manual delivery one to one. And that is not scalable and sustainable when you want to have a successful, highly leveraged, highly profitable agency. Because without a clear goal or roadmap, this cycle repeats itself and it happens over and over again. So if you see here, this is the recruiter's career roadmap. And when you start up like from 0 to 100k, your profitability is very, very high. So you should be making about 80% of the revenue as profit because you should have a lean model where you don't have many overheads because there's just you in that business. But the key problem for these startup agencies is getting clients, making placements and actually building the agency. So if you're in the startup phase now, you need a clearer direction of how to build out this agency because you need to have a client acquisition system, you need to know how to make placements and you really need to build the foundations right and strip things back to first principles, which is what I've figured out and what I can show you. Then when you progress, you'll progress to a solopreneur so that revenue could be 250k and beyond. The profitability is still Very high, so around about 70%. But again the problem there is you end up having low fee clients. You start to hire your first employee and really again you're trying to build out an agency and you're struggling how to really automate and systemise that in the right way. And then you transition to a small boutique agency. Now that's when you actually get an office if you choose to do so and those revenues are run around 300k to 750k. Again the profitability goes down, but still quite high. So if you have employees between maybe three to seven then your main problem is hiring operational management, actually making sure you've nailed the systems and trying to remove yourself from working in the business, doing it, doing it, doing it every day to actually being able to work on your business and actually start productizing your services, trying to win exclusively with clients. And then this is when you the holy grail, when you transfer into the seven figure agency, which is where I am at and where I want to teach a lot of you guys on this call to get to, which is a million dollars, a million pounds plus, your profitability goes down, but you leverage more with to 12 employees maximum. The biggest problem there you've got is letting go of not trying to control everything. Let the systems, the automation and the team do the work and then your main challenges will be around expanding with newer clients, expanding with revenue, hiring maybe a manager to work in the business as well and then really building out those systems and processes and KPIs. So all you need is one crucial ingredient to build that successful business. And, and that's a predictable system for winning retained clients, which I'm going to show you in a second. But before we go on to that, just take a minute to like think about the most successful CEOs and entrepreneurs of all time. Like what do they all have in common? Well, they have a crystal clear vision. They invest in learning over a lifetime. Learning is a key thing for most entrepreneurs and CEOs. They surround themselves with successful people with the same strong mindset and they've mentored by proven successful individuals. Success leaves clues. So what I'm going to show you in this session, I'm going to show you how to build a predictable system to grow your profitable recruitment agency. That's me behind in my business and that's our office, which I purchased as a commercial building. Ronald James, so you can see me with a snapshot there. And what I'm going to share with you today is I'm going to share with you the biggest mistakes recruitment consultants are making when it comes to starting their own agency. But if you have already got your own agency, which I know a lot of you are from this session, don't worry. What I'm going to show you is the main meter around this training session is how to generate a consistent flow of clients and candidates on demand and with predictability month after month, using the new agency model. I'm going to share with you two things that seven figure recruiters have present in their business that the strugglers do not. So I started my agency back in 2015. Like I said, $10,000 credit card from a kitchen table. I was that person. In fear of the unknown and not knowing how to run a business, I tried to scramble around and figure out how everything worked. And to be honest, I spent a lot of money on failures. So my actual first deal was only $1,200. And that landed me the next client. That got me $6,000 fee after eight weeks. But then I really, like snowballed. So my agency now consistently, like I said, I took a snapshot before. We're easily in the $160,000 a month mark now in terms of like the background here. So this is like a few snapshots of like me. So you can see, like I said, you can see me in the office. Obviously I like my nice cars. So the affordability of the agency is being able to be able to enjoy nice things as well. Which I think again, we all get into business for different reasons, but it's important, like you reward yourself with these things as well. You can see me with James Khan. So James Khan built a multi million pound successful recruitment agency. He actually offered to invest in my agency before I started, But I did decide against that. But again, I managed to meet him three times, which is great. The guy with a hat at the bottom there is Michael Gerber. So some of you might have seen him from the E. Myth book on how to build systems in your business, like the McDonald's way. So I got to meet Michael at a live event. Again, really important to surround yourself with all of these mentors. The guy when I'm dressed in the kilt, that's what I call. He calls himself the 50 billion dollar guy. You might be able to look him up on YouTube. I went to his castle seminar for eight days. We stayed there, learned everything around business acquisition and growing a business. And that was a really great experience. So like I said, I mean, I'm not one of these guru types that just teaches theory. I am Teaching battle tested techniques and I'm in the trenches day to day, still running my recruitment agency. Like I said when I first started in 2017, just before 2017 we good over 350,000. Then we scaled up to just under 700,000, then a million dollars and beyond. And I can show you how to do that. This is a little snapshot of me, my younger brother Dan. So I brought him on as an apprentice when he was 17 and left school and I really taught him everything I knew in recruitment. And this is how we started. Ronald James, literally four person office in a serviced office up the road from where I live. Those were great times. They were really great times. But how far we've come now is that's 2020. This is my current desk that I'm actually recording this session from and I've got a five and a half thousand square foot office and we actually sublet some of the office out in the service office space. But it just shows you the transition you can make in four years. If you set your mind to something and you build things correctly from first principles and the right type of systems, you can potentially get there too. So I've earned from earning $80,000 a year as a recruiter. So I was a biller and then now I'm a millionaire. And this is what I'm going to try and show you in today's session of how you can build these systems and build out your agency yourself. So the top three categories of people I work with are anyone who's actually making a living in recruitment at the moment, or you may be an internal recruiter, wants a business from home. But really the bread and butter for me is actually current agency owners or businesses who are struggling to automate and build a predictable revenue and do not want lots of employees. So I can teach you to get to 12 to 13 employees, which is where my agencies are and that's a really good model to get to seven figures and be highly leveraged, highly profitable and, and I can also help if you're an entrepreneur that wants to start their own recruitment agency in a certain type of niche, I can help you too. I've just realized that's four, not three by the way. So basically I'm going to show you everything you need to know so that you can build your business to $250,000 plus in year one using predictable repeatable systems instead of guesswork and failure. So if you're a recruiter looking for a predictable way to generate clients on demand and explode your business to the high six figure level, then you're definitely in the right place. The two things you need for success are a high quality product to differentiate your service and a proven system that will get you high paying clients and candidates on demand. So in the recruitment world, I'm sure you've noticed that people fall into one of two categories. You've got the old model and you've got the new model. And the highly leveraged, highly profitable and predictable new model of recruitment with high paying clients. Because the old model of running recruitment agency, here's a pattern of agencies running the old model. Every consultant's generating maybe one deal a month at max. And you really stress trying to get that consultant up and running and billing. So you've got high overheads with a big office, you cold calling to generate clients. It's a lot of spot business time and time again and it's really hard to get that flywheel working because it's stop start all of the time. You see lots of agencies like this generating just one deal a month. You've got, like I said, spot business. They're not really developing long term relationships. And I was one of those people in what I call like a sort of call center like recruitment agency. But when you move to the new model, it really unlocks everything that you can achieve because you can work the hours you want, when you want and where you want, reduce the workload, attract more high paying retained clients month after month you'll have complete control over who you work with as well, so how you work with them and the prices you can command. And when you move to the new model, you'll be able to generate clients on demand and, and with predictability, month after month. And you'll have an exact idea of how much it costs to get a new client and in what time period. And then your new business will become much more simple and significantly more profitable with less moving parts and overhead because the invisible ceiling on your income will disappear and you will be able to blast right through it right away without having to do more stuff. Now you will finally have a proven, repeatable business model that can make over $50,000 a month, every single month. And do all of this whilst tapping back into that joy that you had when you first got into the business and started working with your first few clients before everything got so complicated and draining. So what I call the new model, the new era agency model. The first thing is having a client attraction system that gets clients coming inbound to you 24, 7 and having that machine working really important and crucial for a business, then what you need is a client conversion system. So a way to actually convert that client lead into a paid client. Then you have a VA sourcing team. Now a VA short for virtual assistants. Now for some of you that might already know me, I've built a successful virtual assistant team out in the Philippines. We've got running on just under eight virtual assistants and they help source all of the candidates, do a lot of the admin for the recruiters. And that means you can have a highly leveraged model to have your consultants billing more without working more. And then it's having a consistent delivery machine with all of the systems integrated for this new agency model to work efficiently. And this is like the model I've created of an agency, I call it a micro niche boutique agency. So anything from 0 to 12, 13 staff is really the tipping point in the part where you've got this model and that's having exclusive and retained clients, no cold calling, being that key person of influence in your market, having candidates booked inbound into yours and your consultants diary, having a virtual team to operate that, having leads booked inbound to you with the client acquisition system, having a strong, lean and agile team, and then being able to have predictable income from your clients. The new model when you're running your agency is going to be exclusive and retained clients only using your signature product. So that's something that can help you and show you how to develop. Even if you had just 20 clients that each generated $25,000 in fee per annum, that's over half a million dollars in revenue just from 20 clients. You'll have leads booked in your diary consistently, candidates booked in your diary, having a nice, cool, small agile team in a micro niche, in one market, one location, predictable, high paying client system. So targeting clients who hire all year round is really crucial when you have your agency because that gives you monthly revenue and it really elevates your agency to be number one in your market. If you're not making the income you want right now, let me ask you this, like how many inbound clients did you get in the last seven days? And if you can't answer that and you didn't get any clients, then answer me this, what did you do in the last seven days to try and generate clients? Because you see, like in recruitment business it's very easy to get distracted by all these operational tasks and they're all done manually and it's very, very tiring as a business owner to do that. But the raw reality is that generating clients and generating passive candidates are the only two things that matter and that's the rainmakers in the recruitment game. The players with high six figure profits that work smarter, not harder. And how do they do that? They have a predictable system for generating clients and candidates inbound into their diary. Only offer your core product or service. So when I built up my agency, Ronald James, we really specialized and honed in on one location and one niche within a niche. And then over time no one can really compete with the expertise because it's the flywheel. If you've got all of these flywheels and machines working in your business, then that's when you can really, I mean after year 1, 2, 3, 4, you push all of your competitors out and it leaves you as number one because you're just focused on one location and one niche and you've delivered it using a product and a successful agency. So are you working on vacancies at the moment that you don't have 100% conviction in? Well, cut them and dedicate to just offering one or two core areas that you're proud of and you believe in most Hone in on this niche because you can be the best in the world at that and then forget about everything else because great companies focus on one or two core areas and work on making them the best to really define your mountain and own it. When I focus our agency on productizing our business and actually pitching for retained, the profits in the business skyrocketed. You can command premium prices and be proud of it. We've got big accounts and retained monthly recurring revenue coming in. We use inbound marketing and we really know our numbers. Now you can see here, like I said, we've smashed through. Should be on track to do 1.5 to 1.8 million this year and consistent months of six figure months consistently. Don't get me wrong, you're not going to get that overnight, ladies and gentlemen. This took three to four years to build. But I can shortcut that route to success by showing you the blueprint of what I have done. This is an example of actually our Boston James office in the US which we've operated successfully from the UK so far. So we've battle tested our methods actually in different markets as well and it fully works. This was a $24,000 fee that we got from the US market, all automated through our virtual assistant booking in the calls for the, for the recruiter here, our client acquisition system to generate the client on demand and our productized service, how we pitched it and it all Transpired into one fee of $24,000. Because if you use inbound marketing as well and really know your numbers, it's really important because most recruiters really rely on what I call random acts of recruitment and hope marketing. Like you'll get drips and drabs of business from maybe an advert, maybe a LinkedIn in mail, or a referral here and there, or maybe the odd cold call. But they have no way to get clients on demand and they have no idea how much it costs them to actually get a client and in what time frame. It's not predictable. So I'm sorry if this is you, but you really need a brutal wake up call because you need to create your own unique system to generate high paying clients. And the beauty about this, you only need 10 clients to build the high six figure agency. This is a snapshot of our top 10 clients and you can see it generated over $1.5 million just from our top 10 clients. Now you may have heard of Pareto's law, the 8020 rule. So we've had over 80 clients in our agency, probably over 100, but really the top 20 made us the most money. And if you focused on the top 10 delivering a brilliant service product, then that's going to generate you seven figures. And believe me when I say this, there is a shortcut and an easier way. And it's mentorship with somebody who is a proven system and who's actually done it. Well, at the moment what I'm doing is I've put together everything that I've learned over the last five years into a blueprint, a step by step system to enable you to deliver a high six to seven figure agency using automation, virtual team and systems. Now at the moment I've got some slots left to bring on some more clients. These are some of my dream clients at the moment that I work with. A lot of them have had some great successes. So you can see in the top left hand corner, Ben, he just recently joined a program. In the last 24 hours he placed five contractors with one of his clients and that's nine contractors he's had in the last three weeks. Underneath there you can see Zoo. She's just rang the bell with a first placement and I think was worth five to six thousand dollars. And that's six weeks first placement thanks to the program. Now where else is going to do that type of impact? Gordon, bottom right. Gordon had been running his agency for two to three years and he was doing it, doing it, doing it just like what I was explaining before he was struggling to win exclusively. He didn't really hone down on his niche, he didn't have any systems and he didn't know how to win clients on demand. And now Gordon made an announcement he made he won an exclusive 10 role contract recruiting project retained with a client from his dream 100 tragedy that we taught him. Now there's three types of clients that would want this is if you want retained clients with predictable monthly revenue, a systemized business that works without you and you want to grow to over 250k profit. Here's how the process works. We will be focused on the specific and custom tailored strategy session with you and we'll solve the two biggest problems that you're facing at the moment. Now who's this for? Like I said, anyone that's making a living from recruitment at the minute. Agency businesses that are struggling to automate, productise and scale with predictable revenue. Or maybe you're an entrepreneur looking to start their own agency. Who's it not for? It's not for people who just like the idea of starting a business or already have an agency that is wanting to scale past 20 and beyond because like I said, I'm around about 13 employees at the moment. I don't have a desire to get past 20. I only ever teach what I've done myself. I practice what I preach. So that's why it's important that if you. That's why it's important that if you are looking to scale past 20, that's probably not for you and that's totally fine. But I don't want people who make, make excuses and complain. I don't want people who are stuck in information gathering mode and are not prepared to take action and get results or people that are not serious about growing their business by another 100k to a million dollars. The better the fit, the better the results I'm looking for. Win wins. So your next step of what you'll be doing is we're going to focus on the two biggest problems you're facing in your business or your business plan right now. And this is a free strategy audit. It's going to take around about 30 minutes and you'll be speaking with me one on one personally. I'll, I'll be helping you identify what you've got and helping young to put together a strategy to dramatically grow your business by three, four, even maybe five times without increasing the amount of time you spend on your business. Like I said, the better the fit, the better the results. So now, knowing that we're a good fit, it's crucial because I like to get all of my clients results like I've just showed you there, work with them for the long term. And I need to do that. I need to give them a quick return on investment. So the truth is there are some people who I cannot help. And if that's the case, I'll always be 100% upfront with you and suggest somebody else or maybe an alternative. I'm only looking for those who are good fit and I am certain I can get results for. So the first step after this, you'll see there's a link below to schedule a call. Now you need to complete just a quick application for the strategy session with me privately. So there's a link below this session here, you'll see to book a call. Now the application is necessary because number one, to determine that I can help you and I'm the best person to help you generate results. It's important I know where you're at now. So it'll take 2, 3 minutes to fill in that. And then once I receive your application, the next page, once you click Submit, it'll take you through to my calendar. So just wait for a couple of seconds for the next page to load and you'll be given options to book into my diary direct at a time to suit you. And you put in your name, your email and contact number and that'll get in both of our calendars and then from there, obviously once you've scheduled that time, this is where we really start working together to figure out what you want and how to make it happen in the fastest possible possible time with predictability. And then at the end of the call, two things are either going to happen. So you'll either be a fit and I will extend an invitation for you to work with me as one of my clients, or if it's not a good fit, that's totally okay too. And there's no hard feelings, no obligations, anything like that. Either way, you're going to receive an insanely valuable strategy session and you'll walk away with some newfound clarity as to where you are right now and what's holding you back from achieving the results that you want. So the next steps now it'll be pretty much, I think, the most valuable 30 minutes that you'll invest in your business so far. So go ahead, complete the application below and we'll see if we're good fit to do business together. Like I said, I've had over 150 now recruitment consultants or agency owners that have spoken to and applied within the last 60 days. So I've already got a number of people in a group, I have almost got 45 people in the group. So this opportunity is going to be closed off soon. So it's extremely limited because my time is precious and like I say day to day I'm still working in my agency so I can dedicate a certain amount of time to make sure that I have these calls with you. And it's extremely limited because it is an intense one to one time needed in order for me to provide you the results. And because as I said before, I can only work with a certain amount of clients every month that I know with certainty and conviction I can generate them results and a return on investment. So basically out of probably 10 people that apply, I generally only work with one or two of them at a time. Now I've actually got five spots left currently recording this, that's currently filled up at the minute. So I've got around about two to three spots left and they will probably go as quickly as possible. So with that being said, please understand that this program of window of opportunity won't be available for much longer because once I've got those in the program, it will be locked. But what I've found is that those who have the ability to make decisions and act quickly are most likely to be the people that are going to take action, get results and most likely become my best clients. So if you feel like this is the right thing to do, go ahead, apply right now, see if you qualify and then go ahead after that page and follow the instructions to the next page and I'll speak to you soon.