Meet The Agency Owner Raking In $500k A Year Working Less!

I obviously opened an email of one of your videos and that opened the floodgates. From then on, you were popping up out the toaster at the kettle in the morning. Wherever I looked there was James Blackwell and, and I got sucked in and I started looking at it all and it was the easiest money I ever spent. So I was like, well, do you know what, I could semi retire and make a few beds, play a bit of golf. Or do we go nuts and absolutely build something massive and. And some fire lit up and decided, no, this is it, this. I've got plenty of time left now. I'm going to grow something. I think I said early on we always turned over like 222 to 300k was a kind of rough idea in the first year after accelerator, we bumped up to sort of 360 the next year. Now we, we look like we'll be around about 400 and we hope to do 500 in the next year. To be honest, I'm less hung up on the numbers at the moment than I used to be.

Hello everyone and welcome to today's special case study interview. Uh, it's always a privilege to have genuine conversations about people's experiences in business and today promises to be very insightful. So I have the pleasure of introducing someone who isn't just a successful client inside the agency program, but also a testament to what's achievable with commitment, strategy and basically following the right blueprint. So meet John Bolt. He is the founder and CEO of PCC Jobs and he comes from the UK and John has spent I think over 20 years making his mark in the recruitment world before stumbling upon myself and the agency blueprint program. And he was doing everything manually, which I'm sure we'll dive in on. So clocking endless hours, wrestling on how to think bigger and obviously scale his business in the right way. So fast forward to today. John Story has had an incredible change. It's been amazing to see over the last year or so. So he's at the helm of like his agency now, which is at the all time high. In 2023 he had his biggest turnover, a record months. Most job vacancies is ever filled in a month. And not to mention he's put together an incredible virtual remote team which we'll dive into today. So it's not just about the numbers, obviously, it's about the journey challenges, the highs and lows. So today we'll delve deep into John's story to uncover real life application strategies that he learned inside the agency blueprint and the impact that's had and basically some of the lessons that he's learned along the way. So without further to do, let's dive in. So John, it's great to have you here to kick things off, obviously. Tell me a little bit more about yourself, where you're based, what your agency does and really your journey before joining our program.

Yeah, so, I mean, as you said, we started recruiting something like 23 years ago. My background was the pharmaceutical industry. I spent about sort of 10 years, just over 10 years in that and decided that I wanted to set up a recruitment agency. Always, always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I'm a father of four children, my eldest is 27, my youngest is 16. And I guess the first few years of recruiting I kind of went into it from industry thinking that, you know, everybody does a bad job and we can do it better and we got sucked into doing what everybody else does really. And you end up in the numbers game that is most recruitment companies. And yeah, I think we were, we were good at it. It was, I mean I've always done it with, with Steve for, for a long time and we were good at what we did, but as you've often said, it was very manual. We were working in the business, not on the business and, and I think we were good at it, but we were churning out pretty much the same year in, year out in terms of turnover, somewhere between 2 and 300, 000 between the two of us and. But it was hard work, you know, I mean, like I was working 51 weeks a year really. You know, if I go on holiday I'd have a laptop and a phone with me. I actually tried one year to go on holiday without my phone and I left it with the PA that I had at the time and gave her my wife's mobile number and I ended up calling her twice a day to see what was going on. So that was really the story for sort of 18, 19 years of running a business of it served us well, you know, brought my kids up on it, but never really exploded into a a business, a proper business. It was just a good income and a lifestyle business. I never missed a sports day or a parents evening but, you know, never really fulfilled that ambition to grow something big. And I think possibly the damage of that for me was being as. I mean, I'm 55 now. You, if you're ever going to get set in your ways, you get set in your ways really big over 20 years, it's quite difficult to change and for me that's the testament of the program is that you can take an old dog like me and really teach some new tricks. And that's really what's made the difference. You know, it's been able to, to work really hard to change old habits. So I, I played a lot of tennis over the years and they always used to say, you know, for every, if you want to change a serve or something like that, it's like a thousand repetitions to change a serve that you've been doing for years and years and years and, and it is hard, it's very hard. But, but say the support from the program and, and the knowledge from the program, even for somebody as grooved as I was in all these ways and, and they, I can't, I can't tell you how grooved they were. Even now I'm still fighting hard to, to change ways. And that's why the regular contact with the program is so important. You know, it's so easy to. I could give you a story about my, my first job at university. I sold insurance. It was Pearl Assurance and if you ever heard the name. And I went on a training course with 30 people and I was one of three. Are you there? I was, I was one of 30 people and there were only, there was three graduates on the course and I was one of the three graduates and, and I remember thinking, yeah, I'm, I'm one of the bright ones, I'm one of the three graduates. And we went through this like six week course or whatever it was. Most of them were ex painters and decorators and so on and the trainers were like, like that as well in year and we are talking 30 years ago or something. In my first year I made £24,000. I was living at home, I didn't know what to do with the money. It was great. There was a six, an 18 year old lad who came out of Barclays bank at 16 and went straight into this at 18 and he made £76,000 in his first year. And to me he had the personality of a gnat. He was so boring. And I remember sitting him down and saying, support, how did you do it? And he just looked at me blankly and he said, I just did everything they told me to on the training course. And I sat and looked at myself and I thought, yeah, I was trying to cut corners, trying to be clever and smart and they've got all these people who've been there, done it, knew it and that's kind of how I started in the accelerator program. I know, because I did that first accelerator program where we did well. But then the reason we came back onto the mastermind is I realized I'd done exactly what I did in the first place of. Of just trying to find the shortcuts, trying to pick the pearls out instead of going, these guys know what they're doing. They've been there, done it. They've got just do it. So this time, we vowed to execute everything to the letter, and we will keep going until we do it. And it's still hard, we're still fighting to do it, but I know that that's the way to do it now, and there's no need to reinvent the wheel.

So that's awesome, John. So for everyone listening, then let's. Let's take things back. So. So when you were in this agency and you're doing the grind for the last, like, 19, 20 years, what changed? What was that flip in your mindset that was like, actually, I want to try and figure out a different way of working. And what, what made you, like, what was the turning point for you?

That's a really good question, and I'm not sure I have a single answer for it. Really? Yeah, I mean, I mean, part of it was we all always wanted to do something big, but, I mean, I don't know how many people watching have got children, but with four children, and three of them were sort of, you know, budding sporting superstars. So I was coaching from 7 o' clock in the morning till 9, going to work, and then coaching from 5 o' clock until 8 o' clock in the evening for 20 years nearly. And. And so I was flat out all the time. I just didn't have the spare capacity I was. I recently read Stephen Bartlett's Diary of the CEO twice, and one of the things that struck me in there was you said it's quite scientific that you only have a limited amount of willpower. So. And I think I was flat out with my willpower all the time and just didn't have any capacity. And again, that's another key of the program is by hiring people, you're starting to free up your willpower to use on other stuff. And I never had that before. So that was the first thing. The second thing, if I'm honest, I obviously opened an email of one of your videos and that opened the floodgates. From then on, you were popping up out the toaster at the kettle in the morning. Wherever I looked, there was James Blackwell and. And I got sucked in and I started looking at it all. And it was the easiest money I ever spent. And if you knew me better, you'd realize what that means because I'm normally very, very sort of guarded. I've been burned, you can imagine, 22 years I've been burned by a lot of people saying, oh, we can do this, you do that for you marketing agencies. It was the easiest money I ever spent because I said to Steve, have a look at this, what you think? And he said, yeah, all in, straight away. And it was dead straightforward. Both times we decided to invest in the program, we had no doubts at all, which for me I'm quite a cautious character. But it was, it was very straightforward to choose to do. But was there one single turning point? I think it's a mixture of timing of my children growing up and just really, here's another thing. I mean two or three years ago, maybe more, I was almost at a point, my wife runs some BnBs at home. We've got little business like that. It was almost like, well do you know what, I could semi retire and make a few beds, play a bit of golf or do we go nuts and absolutely build something massive and, and some fire lit up and decided, no, this is it, this is, I've got plenty of time left now. I'm going to grow something really, really big. And, and, and the more I go now, the more there's another Stephen Bartlett. There is no plan B, there's only a plan A.

Yeah, I think it's interesting that obviously at some point it turned for you, maybe the kids growing up and obviously you wanted to make a change, which is great, John. And obviously we'll dive into how the agency's been doing. But I think for most listeners what they want to know is probably what were your biggest challenges or pain points that you were facing at that time? Like if we look back over the.

Last 12 months or so, yeah, it's the boom bust. So you're either delivering and it feels great because you deliver. I mean I always used to say we made a profit every year bar one Covid year. And but if you analyze that year, we were making an operational profit four months of the year and an operational loss eight months a year. But the profit in the four months was so big we'd make a profit over the year. But that means you feel rubbish eight months of the year and it means you're in that constant cycle of fill in roles for a few months and feeling great and then like, oh crikey, we better go and win some more business. And then it's hard and you just never get this kind of feeling that you're, you're going somewhere. You're just, you know, it was okay. We got, I got used to the boom and bust, but it just never felt consistent. I couldn't plan, for example, to have a certain amount of money to do a certain thing particularly well because you're always like, you never know when the next boom bit's coming. So the lack of consistency is a constant stressor. And, you know, I mean, people over the years have said to me, oh, I'm going to go into business as a marketing consultant or something. I'm like, well, you do. You know, that's great. But most businesses that do that, it's not about how good you are at marketing, it's about how good you are at selling your service of marketing that will determine whether you're any good. And I think that's sort of true with what we do. You know, we were really super good at the recruitment. I always thought we were good at it. But whether we were going to be really successful was more dependent on how good we were at selling what we were doing than doing it. And that's, that's the bit that we always needed help with. That's the bit that I got burned by marketing agencies with, and that's the bit that your systems offered was the, the consistent means of winning new business. And, and then as I'm sure you'll come to the revelation of, of hiring people as you know, which is bizarre because I spent my industry career as the manager, but as a, as an entrepreneur, never really got my head around how, just how good it is to have people. You know, I'm learning now that you pay these people and you will always get many times what it costs you back. You just have to have the courage to launch and do it in the first place. Which is the top bit.

Yeah, I mean, let's dig into that because I think like after speaking to thousands of agency owners, one of the key things that I feel it holds most people back is it's not investing in themselves. It's, it's actually the hiring piece of realizing you will never be financially free and have freedom if you don't hire a team. So whether that's in person, in the office, or remote, like virtual, like, like obviously we, we teach and how, how you built your business is, unless you don't have remote employees that actually doing tasks for you to free you up so you can grow the business, you'll never break free so how true is that to you and how did that change for you?

Unbelievably true. And it's so hard letting go because as a business owner there'll hardly be anybody you can hire that can either do what you can do or will be committed to it in the way that you're committed to it. And there has to be an acceptance, a little bit of that. And ironically, the people we've hired this time around and they're through the program, they're all fantastic. You know, we kind of set out with the idea that, well, you know, if we hire three, one will be great and one will be average and one will be rubbish. But so far, you know, whether it be luck or whatever, we, they're all fantastic. And, and the mindset is more if we concentrate on making them the best them they can be, then the speed at which they accelerate is fantastic. Whereas I think where I was before was I was so busy thinking, no, no, I need to prop the business up and keep everything going while they learn. Whereas it's better to step back, throw them in the deep end and support them to do it and let them really have to come up to speed quickly. And you, I can't believe how quickly these, I call them the youngsters, but I mean I can't believe how quickly they're adapting and learning and there's so much they know that we don't know because us old codgers are rubbish with all the tech, it's just, it's mind blowing and I just hope we can keep it going. And it is all about filling in the gaps of what you're. You were doing as. So now we've got an ops integrator and a marketing sourcer. The next step is I need a full blown consultant that will completely remove me, completely remove me. So I basically become the company salesman already the amount of business development activities really ramping up, but that when that day comes where I can step back and just become the salesperson one, my lifestyle changes because I'm no longer tied to doing all of the routine stuff I've been doing for 22 years. But I think we'll grow three times as fast. I think it'll open the floodgates to just pick new markets, pick new locations and we can just explode it really, really fast.

Amazing. So let's boil this down and get into the nitty gritty then. So for people that are listening, because you mentioned the ops integrators and the remote sources, these are common terms that we talk about in the program for people on site.

Sure.

So what was your first hire? So obviously you came in, you built your client acquisition system. So we. You started getting leads inbound, being able to convert them with your signature sales pitch deck. And then, and then from the sourcing side, then you made your first hire, which was the remote source from our academy. Yeah.

No, no, no. So the first one was a va. So we hired a Philippines VA back in last May. Christiana. So, you know, if you think of the first task was to build up these live leads so people that had vacancies that you could do a video, a loom video to. And I was spending two, three hours on a Sunday evening trawling through LinkedIn looking for vacancies, putting it all into a spreadsheet and, and of course every night then you're trying to find manually all these. And how this has moved on now with AI technology for finding the vacancy. But, but you know, I was spending so much time and again that was sapping all my willpower doing what was basically a manual task of finding people, put them into a spreadsheet. So Christiana, her first job was to make sure that all I had to do was turn up for work in the morning to a spreadsheet and knock out the videos. And that was just like, just as a simple one thing, a massive freeing up of willpower from such a simple change. So she, she came in kind of like a as. As a sort of a PA for my business development activities. And yeah, I mean that's all moved on so far now with the changes in technology and with the knobs integrated, the whole thing's become so much more sophisticated. But, but that was, my first hire was, you know, the VA really for sort of general help to support all the business development stuff. And you know, she's done a bit of sourcing and so on. Her role has moved on a bit now she's doing a lot more sort of sour for us.

That's good. So she graduated to being a sourcer and then what was your second hire from there?

So the second hire was Anya. She was our first marketing sorcerer. So these are the people that will knock out 40 videos a day to candidates to basically generate a candidate pool. She's fantastic. I mean she, she's very young. She's like 20. But she's absolutely awesome character. Works really, really hard, really, really easy to get on with and just totally committed. I mean like for somebody that's in South Africa and we don't actually see face to face, we do, we do meetings with all, all of our staff every day. We try to get a meeting in every day. And again, that was something encouraged by the program that I probably wouldn't have done without it, you know, and if I'm honest, in the early days with Christiana, we didn't do that. We were setting a task and it could go a few days without contact. Now we've got to the point where Steve and I split it and we make sure everybody gets a meeting a day. At least you can see constant growth and activity. So Anya was a marketing sourcer. She. She filled a role with a new client within three weeks. I say, Phil, she found the candidate that. So I hadn't had huge successes with the email marketing, but I actually had somebody that knew me from a previous life responded with a vacancy. And Anya found a candidate that filled it within three weeks. So she's just like a dog with a bone. And, and so then what happened then was we, we could quickly start to see how this was benefiting straight away, but we were worried about cash flow and whether to hire more. And you know, Ken, Ken was saying, he's just got a hire. And you were saying, got a higher. Got a higher. And actually, I think this is good advice for anybody. I'm really cautious. So I set up a call with your brother Dan. I actually set up a call with one of the mastermind group, Dan. I can't remember his name. He's moving to Dubai. You know the one I mean?

Yeah.

Anyway, he. The reason I spoke to him was because I'd picked up on one of the conversations that he just hired a bunch of people like we were thinking we might do. So I had a call with him and he was great and he explained everything that he'd done in the. The impact. So we ended up hiring a second sourcer and an operations integrator, which just to explain, that's kind of somebody that will use all the tech, is a tech expert and will coordinate all of the. All of the business development activities and all of the tech activities of which there are now lots, and there's lots of new tech tools coming along all the time. And we hired through your program to do it on the basis that, well, they would come already sort of made and being coached to do it. But also we made the decision to do this on the Monday. We'd hired both of the new heads before Friday, and we had them up and running by the Monday. It was just so quick. And the final interview for the ops integrator was really tough. We had two people who I thought were just absolutely fantastic and some Momina who we have now. Her background, she's a. Some kind of computer engineer. She's. She's a programmer by trade. She used to make apps for blue chip companies, but, but I could put her in a sales job. She just wants to sell, so she's very commercially astute. Just to give everybody an example, I made a video for a live lead. So she basically finds what we've got, a spreadsheet with about 10 sectors on. She finds live leads for all these 10 sectors. I then make a video, send it to them to try and win the vacancy. If that doesn't work, I make a loom video and send it on an email. Both of these get followed up by the va. If that doesn't work, we can then try and spec in CVs and try other stuff. So we tried everything with one client and it didn't work. Then one day, Momina went on to saw this guy on a live webinar that he was running and logged on in my LinkedIn profile as if I was in the, in, in the seminar. Lo and behold, within 24 hours, he's asking me for a meeting. I'm assuming he thought I was a customer and he booked a meeting with me. And I'm like, do I tell, do I tell him I've got him here? So I didn't. I turned up on the date. It wasn't that he said, you just, you just gone after me and gone after me and gone after me. And I saw you on my webinar and I thought, I got a book, a meeting with him. The vacancy that we'll get now in eight weeks time is worth four times her salary over the year.

So the total snakes is one of these. Even the placement, I was going to say the first placement, she made it. How much revenue was that worth to your business?

Honestly, that was the smallest. So this marketing, this is. By the way, this was the ops integrator, not the sourcer.

Okay.

The first placement by the marketing saucer was the smallest placement we've made in the last three years. It was 4K, which is just a tiddler for us, but we will actually end up making maybe 20, 30k out of that client in a year for sure. And that's not really the point because she could have done exactly the same job for a 25k placement. So. And you know that, that story about going on the webinar, that's just one thing I could, I could give you so many examples of things that have made a massive difference or that live lead spreadsheet that she drives now has already won us other clients and roles and so on.

Excellent.

Yeah.

What would you say with the techniques or strategies? What's been the most impactful for you? Let's have a significant impact on maybe buying back your time or helping your business make more money. What would be that in terms of.

Actual strategy for winning clients? I think the use of video is just fantastic. Even today. I mean, I've done thousands of videos now. People still come back and say, oh, that's what a fantastic way to make an approach. And I'm like, really? You've never seen it before? You know, but they haven't. People are just not using video. So I, I think whether it be a LinkedIn selfie video or a loom video, approaching people via videos is, is fantastic. The, the, the surprise to me is the operations integrator Dan, who'd already got one, said it's made a massive difference. I also watched one of your videos with somebody else on the program who said literally within three weeks they were getting a massive difference. And it's simple things I think I might have said to you before when you set up your new email addresses for email campaigns. All the faffing around with D marks and trying to get the email addresses ready for deliverability can take hours and hours and hours if you're not technically enabled. Now I just say I want six new email addresses and within 48 hours it's all done and I haven't touched it. And it just, stuff like that, it saps your energy in stuff that, you know good at. It's like my wife asking me to do DIY. It'll take me six hours to do something a professional doing 10 minutes. What's the point, you know.

Very true.

So I think if you ask me, in six months time it'll be, it'll be higher, higher, higher. Because I just think if I had the money to just set up with, we want a team of 10 by Christmas. That's the, that's the aim, roughly.

And I think the big thing with that, John, is just to explain to the audience like these hires aren't costing you much money. They're like a thousand dollars a month salaries like. And that's the beauty about being able to buy back your time for such a small amount of cost. So you've still got really big profit margins.

It's unreal. So over the years of recruiting, at one point I did have a PA And a couple of consultants in an office. And my pa, the one that I had for years was fantastic. She was really good. I paid a 24k salary, sterling, which probably was expensive for what it was, but she was good. This was in the days where she would stop the database, she would take all the phone calls. I've now got a team of four really good people for probably the same that I used to pay for that pa. It's just ridiculous. I can't get mad around it still. So. No, I mean you almost don't want to shout about it because I can't imagine competitors in my sector are doing the same. They've all got like an office in Cheshire with 20 consultants in a, an expensive office with like paying their consultants 20, 30k plus the bonuses. I mean long, long way that continue. But no, it's, it's on the I, the idea of hiring this office here. One of the reasons I took this office here last October was the thought that I might want to scale and hire people here. That won't happen now. I can't see us hiring inside the UK border. There's just so many benefits through, through going overseas. You don't have the tax issues, you don't have the employment law issues. It's just, it's just mind blowingly different really. And they're better, they're better, they work.

Really smarter and harder for you as well. So that's awesome. So, so your business now is like, so what's your structure? So you've got your, you've got a source. How many sources do you have?

So we've got two sources and then, and then Steve and I at the front end. So traditionally in our business, Steve heads up all the sourcing side and I kind of deal with the front end of the clients and the front end of the interviews. And as we go forward you've kind of got. Steve is building the sourcing team and all of that as sort of back end to start to extract him from the front end because he's always had these several massive LinkedIn accounts that he's worked and then in time we'll bring in consultants and yeah, I suppose the ideal structure will be a couple of consultants, maybe four marketing sources, ops, integrator and then I mean the idea is if you think of that as a model of a team of 10, as a model, I kind of think we should be able to plant into any English speaking region. So we're already starting to make inroads in the States. But I think to make Real inroads. We will need a boot on the ground there eventually, but if we've got this structure that's set and works and ticks like a machine, we can just plant the same in America, Canada, Australia. Yeah, I mean, the world's. World's your oyster, really. It's a repeatable model, isn't it, that you can just. Just plant elsewhere and you know, this is the crazy thing. Four years ago I was thinking of playing a bit of golf and now I'm thinking I can carve up the world, as it were, over the next few years. It's. It's good fun, brilliant.

So. So share some, like, tangible results or milestones you've achieved since being in a.

So I think I said early on we always turned over like 2, 2.2-300k was a kind of rough idea in the first year after accelerator, we bumped up to sort of 360 the next year. Now we look like we'll be around about 400 and we hope to do 500 in the next year. To be honest, I'm less hung up on the numbers at the moment than I used to be. I mean, when you. When we joined the program, I'll be honest, you know, you see examples of people making 100k months in the first few months. For me now it's just like, no, if you get the structural stages right, it's an oil painting you. It's a layer here, it's a layer there, it's a layer here. And it might not take shape until you've got all those layers on. So long as we are going the right way, I. This year I'm more concerned about getting the structure and the process and the systems right. If we do 450, 500k, great. But if we get it right, that will mean we can try and jump to like a million the following year. What I don't want to do is fight for an extra 30 grand here, 30 grand there, at the expense of getting the structure right to jump forward. Because I can see if the structure's right, it. At some point it'll just take off. Steve and I were talking the other day, new clients for us, it's rarely contact them on Monday, new client Friday place the next month. It's usually a conversation that develops over 612 months plus. So now if you imagine the last 612 months or 6 months, particularly our number of conversations as multiplied by a factor of 20 or 30 over the previous 20 years, we think there's going to be a tsunami at some point. Of new clients because we've got all these conversations on the go. We're still building the systems to make sure we don't lose the potential in the ether. So somebody you speak to that says they're interested and then the meeting doesn't happen and it fiddles out. You know, you've got to make sure you don't lose any of those conversations because if you keep the conversation going long enough, eventually it tumbles. So I think for me, it's. It's all about structure and systems being absolutely rigid. We were always really impressed by Ken's little model of his stages, of how he gets his candidates all in place. It was all. And that's kind of what we're aspiring to, to achieve really. Is that sort of fluidity of a machine.

Yeah. I mean, it's been amazing to see your growth then from this John. Like, I think that's like run around like 40 growth year on year in terms of revenue. And probably not just that. It's like having a business that is. Is more a moat around your business that protects you, that's bulletproof because you're using the advanced technologies. You've got systems, you've got a remote team. It means that you're more competitive as you go into later stages, obviously with AI and the stuff that we're doing inside the mastermind, as you know with. With clay, which is really powerful with your integrator. So now do you feel more confident now? You've got more systems that are more aligned, where you've got something repeatable that you can plug and play into other niches and other markets?

Totally. Totally. I mean, we're a long way from the finished article. I really feel like we're. We're very much at the beginning still now, but it. It does feel like it's all going in the right direction and we've got kind of a good sense of purpose of what we're doing. We know what we need to do to improve all the time, and we haven't talked about it yet, but mindset is just a massive area for me where you. You've got to keep working on the mindset all. It's a constant journey. And I. I think again, for me, as an old codger with such set ways, it is quite hard to. To change. So you've got to keep working on the mindset and it's so easy to slip into the wrong sorts of mindsets. Yeah. And. And even when you're planning, you know, I kind of wrote down a few times, you've got to plan on numbers, not on emotions. Because your emotions will always try and see. You've got to consider worst case scenarios. Sure. But actually they rarely happen. So things like hiring, you know, when I was speaking to Dan, who'd hired a few people before me, he said, John, what's the worst thing that can happen? You can hire two people, it'll cost you 12 grand over three months. You can pull the plug, but you're not going to. But you know you can pull the plug on what have you lost, you're not out of business. Even Steve says that to me on an ongoing basis. If we go in for it big time, the worst thing that can happen at some point is we pull the plug and go back to doing what we're doing. But of course it's never going to happen. So you can't get too carried away with letting your mind run on the negatives. And that's why I think the mindset stuff keeps you focused on the half full glass all the time, keeps you looking forward, not looking back over your shoulder and really, really helps. And I think I've said to you in previous calls a lot of the sort of what's his name now, the Jeff Olson book, the slight edge, that idea of just and the Japanese Kaizen principle, little small improvements consistently is, is going to take you further than looking for a silver bullet. And that's where it can be a little bit off putting. When you see like, you know, somebody's just made a massive amount quickly and you know, what am I doing wrong? Why hasn't that happened? And the answer is you're not doing anything wrong. You've just got to look for these consistent. And I think when you do that eventually you will get big jumps at some points. But all you have to do is keep that mindset going where you're just consistently making improvements all the time.

That's. I mean you've touched on the mindset. Like what, what do you do on the mindset, John? So like tell everyone a little bit more about like what you did on your mindset side.

Yeah, so I'm, I'm not a reader in the sense of I'm, to be honest, I'm a slow reader. If I, I've never read a novel in my life. I can't read paper books, but audiobooks, yes. I have a dog. I walk a dog twice a day, listen to audiobooks when I'm walking the dog. I do quite a lot of traveling in the car, so I listen to stuff in the Car very big on listening to a whole spread of podcasts on, on everybody really from all of the gurus and, and it changes all the time. So and I've actually got like I, I use Evernote to store stuff and whenever somebody says, oh this is a good book, it goes into my book section in Evernote and I just pile them up to, to read the next book. And I've definitely adopted the reading the book two or three times. You know, I've never done that before. But you 100 don't get everything on a first one. And if you find a good book maybe four or five times or more, just, just play it again because every time you play that audiobook you'll pick up another nugget and, and so, so I think a regular spot in your day for, for reading twice, ideally twice I would have said is, is good. I, I also on site here there's a gym. So I'm 45 minutes and I've dropped 13 kilos in the last amazing 14 months. So just 45 minutes. But that 45 minutes is my podcast time. So I'll, I'll choose something I'm going to listen to while I'm in the gym. And again it's, it's little and often. Yeah, I, I, I, I'm sure anybody that's binged on diets and gyms, you know, they always say that they in January every year, gym membership goes through the roof and then it falls in February and everybody's just trying to hit it with that big silver bullet, big stick. Whereas if you're just nibbling at it a bit every day and it becomes normal, it's so much easier to, to sustain. So, so it's mainly books and podcasts.

For me and you would recommend to anyone. I think someone was asking.

So Jeff Olsen. The slight edge is a big one. I've just read. I'm on a second or third read of Diary of His CEO by Stephen Bartlett. Ultimate sales machine is a good one.

So one Chad Toms.

Yeah. Chet Holmes. I'm trying to think of others really. I've got a list of them somewhere but, but yeah I would, I would definitely go on to. I don't know if people are in the, in the Facebook group or, or but if you, if you're in a group like this, everybody will be reading different books all the time and different books will be impacted different ways for different people. But you will get some that shout at you on a regular basis of read this and, and say for me the ones I'VE mentioned particularly I, I keep going back to over and over again.

That's awesome. And how important would you say with the mindset comes the accountability? So being in a group of other like minded individuals that are walking the same path as you or a little bit ahead of you, side by side with. How much has that really made an impact for you?

Massively. I mean it's, it's both uncomfortable and exciting all at the same time. Do you know the thing I enjoy the most is the end of month meeting and I felt uncomfortable leading up to the first one because I got this spreadsheet through and I had to fill out my figures and I'm like, I felt like I was hanging me washing, you know, me washing out dry in front of everybody. But it was fantastic because some people do have bad months but it's not the end of the world and, and then some people have good months and you. Over the period I've been joining them, everybody goes up and down. That's fine. But I actually love the accountability now. I love the fact that you're thinking, well I need to make sure I've got some decent figures to share and I have had calls with other people in the group and the first thing I'll look to do if we've got a problem or something like that is like who is going to be good for this? So maybe I'll speak to your brother in the group or Ray Hand might be able to offer some help or there's people in the group that I'll have a call with and I've actually had calls with other people in the group as well. So after I joined the Mastermind program so I was in Mika and people like that were like oh, what's it like? And you hop on a call because everybody's trying to help you so why wouldn't you sort of try and help somebody else? It's, it's. I do subscribe to that. The Bob Proctor thing of, you know, the more you give it'll, it'll come back to you. So give as much as you can.

It's very true. So true. I mean it's great to see the transition you've made John. It's. Obviously I've known you for a while now and even just your mindset around like the inner belief and the abundance mentality has been really impactful. So yeah, awesome. So what would you say would be your aha moments or realizations during the journey in the program of like a light bulb switch or something that was like wow, like I wish I knew this sooner.

Well, we had, we had a really early light bulb. One that I'll share was in the, in the accelerator program. We started using dripify and so for anybody that's not using it, it's a LinkedIn automation tool. So we were using LinkedIn from the very early days and, and traditionally we would spend a couple of hours a day mindlessly sitting there sending out manual invitations to connect to people in the market. And I, it wasn't just a connect, it was a. Hi, it's John, I'm a recruiter. It'd be really good to connect and just a little personal touch. A couple of hours there. I ended up paying my kids five pound an hour while I was students to do it for me. Along comes James with dripify. All of a sudden this automated tool where you basically go tap, tap, tap, tap, there's a list of 500 people, slap it into to Dripify and it will do what I used to do manually for two hours a day while I'm sleeping. So the best example of this was we work in pharmaceuticals and we had a HR director whose husband was, I shouldn't say the name, should I really, but husband was CEO of a fashion company and he needed a finance director. And she said, can you help? Said, yeah, of course we can help. She gave us, he gave us the vacancy for this finance director at 5 o' clock on a Friday. I set a Dripify running and Steve set a Dripify running over the weekend. And it was a sequence that said, hi, we deal with finance directors, be good to connect. And two hours after they connected, we've actually got a finance director role in London. This is it, are you interested? And on Monday morning we had six candidates final interviewed by the end of that week it was a 27,000 pound placement and we lost it because they withdrew, they didn't accept the offer. We refilled it two months later. But that was just ridiculous. It was a bit of software that was costing us 60 bucks a month. It took five minutes on a Friday evening to set it up and it basically filled a 27,000 pound roll for us while I was doing, I don't know, whatever I was doing, chopping wood over the weekend and I just thought, wow, this, this, this is a game changer. So just Steve and I, between us alone have, I think five drip advice running on different LinkedIn accounts now. And yeah, I mean LinkedIn have got a bit sort of stuffy about the rules about how many invitations you can send out, but it's still an awesome tool and was the first flavor we got of what automation could do for us.

Yeah, it's a great chair. And I think obviously the key thing here is it's not just about the tool, it's the strategies behind it and making sure you've got the support and the training around, like how to use these tools properly. Because I think there's a lot of horror stories of people going in automation. Then the LinkedIn account gets shut down. So you need to make sure you're in parameters and you're following the right steps. So for anyone that's doing that, make sure you've got someone to guide you through that. And what would you say, can you recall on like any mistakes that you made during implementation phase that like, others could learn from?

I should have written them down. So many mistakes. I mean, like, we make mistakes all the time and it's only recently. Again, another Stephen Bart, the one failure way to success. You know, I mean, I, I, I'd be worried now if we weren't making mistakes. But no, we, we, we've, I think we weren't very good at refining the target lists and this is something I think we've got really good at recently. So imagine you're running like an email campaign and you're like, wow, great, there's 3, 000 people. Let's just whack them all into an email list and they'll be getting hundreds of emails every day. But the problem with that is they're all different. You can't give a specific message to 3,000 people and it hit home. You know, you need to have somebody that, I don't know what would be an example, somebody that, that specifically wants marketeers skilled in, in selling mousetraps. And so you want to do an email campaign that says, we're experts in finding people that, that find people that make mousetraps. And if you do that, the person that wants that will respond. If you just send someone out saying, yeah, we recruit, can we help you? It's just not going to work. So now that's why we've got all these niches. So if you imagine we've got like an animal health care niche and it's a small list of like 80 companies and when they get an email it says, hi, we're experts in animal health care recruitment. We've been doing it for 22 years, doing whatever, it's all specific to animal health. We've recently mapped out the whole market for what you're recruiting for. And so on, then they go into a dripify to connect to all those people. And when I make my video, my video is high. We're experts in animal healthcare recruitment, so that all I get in all the time and every single market gets that level of specificity. So instead of running like 3,000 people, we're now running 12 campaigns to 100 each. And they're all getting something that says, no, no, we're exactly what you do. And that was a big mistake for me. Was. And the reason you do it is you're looking for the easy silver bullet. You're looking to just run 3,000 males in the background and expect it to produce a result. And that isn't how it's going to work. You. And this is the funny thing I ended up coming back to. Oh, this is what James means by a niche within a niche. We scratched our head for ages. How do we make a niche within a niche? And it's exactly what you need to do. You need to become a niche expert in a particular niche so that the people in that niche think that you are the round peg for their round hole. And yeah, that was. That was definitely a mistake. Was not paring it down to specificities where we could say we were particularly good in their area. Are you got. You're muted, James, or am I muted?

Yeah, I am. I was going to say that's great advice. So thank you for sharing that. There's a. There's a few questions and then we'll just. Whilst we're going through. So someone was saying, what does the candidate marketing sourcer do on a daily basis?

Yeah. So I think the target is that they do 40 videos a day. But. But the problem is in the early stages, you. We give them a clean new LinkedIn account to build, so they don't have the contacts to do that. So, I mean, just. I'll share a little interesting strategy that we're using at the moment that when they're building it, obviously they don't at any point in time so much. Anya started on that animal health care market. It took her quite a while to get to 500 LinkedIn contacts. So what we do now is imagine she generates by contacting people. You end up with like, you know, 10 or 12 people are actively looking for a job in animal health care. I can then create an email that I call a candidate review. I used to do this by paper 20 years ago. And the candidate review will be a generic summary of the candidates that she's got. And then I can plug it into my Niche key contacts, all the HR contacts in animal healthcare saying, if you're looking for anybody that fits these profiles or anything else at the moment, give us a shout. And if, if they happen to see an animal healthcare profile salesperson in Surrey and they're looking for one, you're going to get an email back. And that's a means of generating a vacancy in an area where Anya's generating candidates. So it's an immediate win for her if we pull up a vacancy. So they're partly building their LinkedIn profiles. They're partly so, so we've actually got them active on. Steve and I have got multiple LinkedIn accounts that are massive. We, we get, we let them loose on those. So mine's got a sales navigator license, Steve's got a LinkedIn recruiter that they can use and that builds up their experience as well, while they're building their own LinkedIn network. So it's a mixture of building their network, making videos. They're also very, very good and hot on social media posting. It's brilliant. I mean, in the same way I say you used to pop out the toaster and the kettle in the morning. You were everywhere. I'm starting to find the same with us. I'm like, oh, look at that, we're everywhere. It's great. So they do LinkedIn posts. I'll try and make a video for them to post once a week and they build the sort of the social media presence, particularly across LinkedIn, you know, on a daily basis.

Amazing. Thanks for sharing that. And someone was asking to clarify what the OPS integrated person does. Now I've got a. I can just briefly share a document with the people that are actually on the call live of what Operations Academy is, but do you want to talk through that, John? So, so you went through our academy and hired an OPS integrator. We placed them for you and basically they're doing the full lead generation tech stack for you. Okay. So obviously they are sourced by us, trained by us. You actually hire them direct. So you're going to pay them around about a thousand. Is it $1,000 a month? You're upset.

I think we pay $800 a month.

$800, so even cheaper. So they can do everything. So from like building market maps, setting up the driver, fire automations, email automations, they get all of our Ronald James operations playbook, so they just plug and play them into your business. They get trained by our full head of operations and get access to us in Slack and basically like just so ideas that you can do is the full lead generation tech LinkedIn domain set up lead generation campaigns, templates for LinkedIn messages, market maps, CRM set up email inbox, Zapier automations. Clay is a big thing now. So one big thing that we do now is with clay AI as well. So for those of you that are interested in that, feel free. You can book a call with one of our team. We'll put a link in the chat or the description of this if you're watching the recording back. But I would say the biggest thing is you're buying back time now. Now John, what would you say about that? Because I say it can buy you back easily.

Just to give you some examples. So we're running now probably about 10 concurrent email campaigns to different niches. And if you go back before Momina started I had those running in Apollo. Simple things like going in every day to unsubscribe people who want to be unsubscribed, making sure you're not missing somebody that's responded. It was a huge time consumer and actually quite soul destroying as well. And the other that as well is you get so many p. You get a lot of out out of offices every day. And because that, the, the, the system recognizes that as a response if you don't do anything it takes them out of the, the cycle. So they actually haven't had the email and they're out of the system. So now what? She I don't have to do anything anymore. She goes into instantly every day she monitors to see if we've got any responses. Anybody that needs unsubscribing, she unsubscribes. But any out of offices she will put them back into the system. So it doesn't exclude them from, from the. Because obviously you want to keep going until they either say yes or say no. And then you can start to do things like well okay, let's look at people who've opened emails but haven't responded and put them into a new, a new mail campaign because they're obviously slightly more open to reading an email and put them into some kind of nurture campaign. And because you can, you can step outside because you're not doing it. You can think about what's the best way to use this rather than I've got to unsubscribe 20 people so that we don't, you know, get struck off an email address or something like that. So she monitors all of the email campaigns. She'll create all of the tech behind it, the email addresses and make sure, they're all clean to get high levels of deliverability. And she runs this series of spreadsheets for all our niches. There's so many cool things that she can do. We use a thing called Pippi Leads. So imagine you Want to find 500 HR directors in oncology or something around the world. You do a search on LinkedIn, you refine it, you find your 500 people. You can then take that search and put it into Pippi Leads and it will turn it into a spreadsheet with all of the email addresses, phone numbers and all the contact details, but it won't find them all. So you might have 500, you might have 264. What, what she's been able to do is she can program, set a program running a bit of code running that will basically use something like Hunter to look up the email address and pull it into the, into the spreadsheet to fill in all the gaps, stuff like that. And I mean, another thing, I hate invoicing, I hate money, I hate banks. And so I have a spreadsheet that I would do all the invoicing on and she's basically written an app and a bit of code to turn my Google Sheet into just, I just put in the, the invoice when it's placed and, and it goes out automatically. Have to worry about it. It's just that it's mind blowing. These small things make massive differences. You know, the amount of space that's clear in my head because I'm no longer worrying about invoicing is, is untrue. And, and I can devote that now to the strategic elements of how do we make the most out of that campaign? Well, we've got a semi response from three people in that niche. How do we blow that open and make it, make it work? You know, just things and ways of thinking that you wouldn't previously have had the spare capacity in your head to.

Address, would you Say, like, how many hours a week has that saved you, like from the thinking and doing stuff?

I mean, I've always worked 50, 60 hours a week and I'm still working many hours a week. But the difference is it's a totally different emphasis really. And I think, you know, I think if we, if we're successful by Christmas in building the team will build, I will finally be able to go on holiday and, and not take a phone and just say ring my wife if you need me. But whereas I've never been able to do that. So I think that's, that's it's not that I pine for that. I actually, I mean, I'm so programmed to do this. I'm built to get up and do this every day, all day. And I, I don't mind when I'm doing my, my LinkedIn selfies every day that I spend a couple of hours crashing out videos. I like doing that, you know, I mean, it's just, I just, I like racking up the numbers. But to have the freedom to say, do you know what, I might go and have a round of golf, you know, wouldn't that be nice and not be worried about missing an unsubscribe or, you know, missing some opportunity of somebody responding to something and not being on it. So, so no, I mean, time wise, I, I, I've saved days a week. Days a week. And I say it's not like that's the end of the road. It's not like I could stop working. But I just, I just don't think you can quantify it.

Really Amazing.

I know that's not really the answer you're looking for, is it?

But it's just more to help everyone else so they understand that. Because one of the key things I say is you need to learn to buy back your time step by step. As agency owners, you're doing a lot of tasks that you should not be doing and that's no fault of your own. It's just you don't know how to delegate, outsource it and hide the team that's going to do it at a cost effective manner. But now we have those solutions. I think for anyone, whether you're doing it yourself, hiring your own ops integrator and finding them and training them, it's very important. Like it's the only thing that will free you up so you can actually build a true agency that will give you freedom back and financial freedom as well.

I'll share a really quick story. My first year in business because I learned what I should have, I should have kept this, but I should have learned to think in numbers then. So my first year I turned over 104,000 and I had a guy from Welsh Development Agency visit me and, and he said, okay, so you need to hire a PA and well, I'm worried the PA is going to cost me like 15 grand a year or whatever. He said, how much time a week do you spend doing the money stuff? And I said, well, three days doing the money stuff, two days doing all the faffing around, the admin and the invoicing and all the database and all the rest of it. So he said, if you hire a page, but that's going to cover two days a week, that's going to cost you 15 grand to buy back. Two days a week, you've turned over 100 grand. On three days a week, you'll do 140 grand. I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. So I did it. I made 164,000. So that 15,000 brought me back more than enough time to pay for it. And I thought then you just need to think in numbers. And that's what you've taught really is thinking numbers. If you spend this amount of money on an extra head, it'll buy you back this number of hours and your hours are worth far more than that. And so all the time now I have to keep reminding myself, thinking numbers. Thinking numbers. The numbers are out there. You can see what numbers create with everybody else doing it. You don't need to guess. So if you've got three other people that have hired a marketing saucer and within three months it's made them this number of placements, the numbers are just no brainers. Usually it's not even worth thinking about.

So true. Okay then, John, so I'm gonna like open it on again to the audience if anyone's got any other questions. One person said, caroline, welcome. Any tips for starting an agency from scratch? What would you do different now?

Oh, what, post program?

Yeah, post program. Yeah.

Pick one really small defined niche and hit it with a big stick. And I think that applies to. How many people have you heard say, I'm going to go into business but I'm going to keep my old job part time while I do it? And. And you're like, well, if you're going to do it part time and compete against people doing it full time, you're not going to succeed. And I think if you apply that to, to recruitment and pick one small niche, whether it be purple fruit baskets, people that make them or something, and, and be an expert recruiter in that, so that everything you do is to a specific group of people with a really specific purpose. And then when you, when you've got that nailed, then pick another niche. Don't just try and be a generalist, that that would be the first thing. And then the obvious thing on top of that is to use all the tools that we're being taught to use and create as much automation and systems as you can whilst maintaining the human bits that, you know, are needed that make the difference. Yeah, that's cool.

Okay. And I'll just see if there's any more. You said someone was asking about the recruited overseas, save costs. How did you find the talent overseas? Obviously it's through our program and our services.

Yeah.

What would you say that the methods you've learned would help in industries that are very competitive? Everyone. This is in every industry that is a niche of a niche, so to speak.

Well, here's, here's a thought. I mean like whatever industry you're in. I remember seeing somebody on the program who had been recruiting for years and struggling. You'll probably remember the name when I say the story. And she decided to totally change niche and she did 900 grand in the next year or something like that. And I think this, it's a worthwhile thing considering. And this is again, to quote another Stephen Bartlett, one, you know, he did his role and made a, say a couple of million as a, as a social media guru, all of a sudden got hired by a biotech company to do exactly the same thing, but just in a different environment and he made ten times as much. And so you could be recruiting in an area you think is, I can recruit a medical rep in Dorset and get paid £4,000, I can recruit a CEO for a biotech company in Switzerland, get paid £40,000. And it's probably easier to do the CEO than it is to do the medical rep, endorse it. So once you've learned these systems about how to attack new markets and new niches, sure, do what you've always made money from. But pick, pick things that do the same thing and make bigger profit and are less competitive. You can do that. That's one of the things you can. That's what we're doing. We've got a lot of bad clients at the moment that make us money, but we're trying to edge them out and move and use all these systems to bring on new clients that don't have internal recruitment departments that do pay big fees, don't bat an eyelid at paying 20%, happy to pay out 200,000 pound salaries and so on because they're out there and they're out there in abundance. So if you're in a market where it's all 2, 3, 4, 5000 pound placements, just choose a different niche.

Yeah, great advice. And Harry asks, how long did it take John to implement the agency blueprint framework into his existing process? Will it be a big change or can it. We do it on the fly as progress in the course. As we progress in the course.

So. So we we would both say that we implemented Dripify in the first week and within two weeks we reckon we'd got activities on the go that we're going to pay for the fee that we paid to come into the program within it was within days really. So we had stuff that made a difference instantly and for anybody that does the course it is captivating and, and you will find yourself staying up late at night watching videos and, and sur looking at stuff. So impact is instant. But I'm, I can't remember when we started the accelera. We may be 18 months into the program and I feel more now like I'm at the beginning than ever before. And I don't mean that in terms of results, I mean in terms of learning and growing. I just think you, it's not like I've got there at all. I, I would love to keep doing this and keep in with this group for as long as we possibly can because you can't fail to grow always learning.

Yeah, I mean it's really, you say that is there's certain things that you, you only know what you can see in front of you and sometimes you can't see around the corner because you haven't walked that path and then once you walk around the corner you realize well there's another corner to go through and once I've implemented this then, then what's next? So everything's a journey, especially business and obviously it's really important to keep learning and I think that's really good advice John that people are, it's not a silver bullet bullet. There's strategies, there's processes that you need to do every step and it's constant building. But the whole idea is to free your time up more and make more money obviously and build a bigger business that can rely without you one day is, is obviously the goal that we want to get to and yeah like thank you for that advice. Mike was saying would you recommend agency blueprint for startup or suggest you should already be set up on trading.

If people do the program and, and they execute and they commit to executing it will not fail. I, I would, I would say that and, and on heart because I mean I know what it's like setting up a business. I know how hard it is, I know how challenging it is. But you're surrounded by people that have walked the walk, talk the talk. You'll be in a program with people. Some of them will be at the exact same stage as you. Some of them are stage ahead, some two stages ahead. I, I, I Yeah, I just think you've got to have the courage to do it. And it is hard to spend money that you feel like you don't have and you've got to judge your own cash flow. But if you're able to execute and follow the program, it will not fail. It, it's true too, it's too tested. I mean, how many people have been through the program now? It's hundreds, isn't it?

Almost 1000 now since we started.

And, and you know, there'll be varying degrees of success. But I wouldn't mind betting if you could, if you could plot the execution versus the success, there'd be a strong relationship. And I hand in the air. We didn't execute properly when we did the first 12 weeks, but we still made more than enough money for it to have been well worth doing. And then it was just a question of, we just decided we needed to go back and do it properly. So, no, I definitely, you know, it's, it's a long journey on your own. It's a long journey on your own. You'll fight very, very hard to make small steps forward.

Yeah, it's a good point, I think, because obviously been in the agency world 20 years, so if you look back over the maybe 18 months that you've, everything you've learned and implemented in 18 months compared to like 20 years, it dwarfs it.

There's no comparison. And you know, I, I, when I was going into recruitment, I had three months notice in a pharmaceutical company and I knew what I was doing, so I, I basically signed up and said, I'll, I'll help you run all the recruitment. So I got used to what magazine advertising costs and I learned as much as I could. But then it was out into agency life, having never done it before, and a very steep learning curve. But you're so busy fighting all the time just to, to chase an invoice, to, you know, to make sure somebody's prepped for an interview. It's very difficult to, I can't explain it. You just need fresh air in your brain to move forward. And, and not only have I now got fresh air in the brain, you've got people that can help you fill it with all the processes and the means of doing it. And that's, that's the difference. There is no comparison, there is no comparison between what was before and what we do now. And say, I don't want to sound like we're at the end of the road, but it's a very different scenario now to sort of 18 months ago.

It's interesting. One thing that stuck with me when you mentioned this was it's a lonely road. I remember when I started my agency almost 10 years ago now, 2015 and I'd left like working in an agency with lots of friends and when you actually start up your agency, you going through like a fancy website, putting together this business plan, putting these spreadsheet numbers of all made up revenue if all the clients are going to get in the money. But then it comes to day one where you like crack open the laptop and you're like, right, well I need to get a client now. And it's like, where do you start? And you, you are truly alone. And I was like, I remember that first day I was in Cafe Nero and in Newcastle and I was, I had anxiety because I was like, put all these precious numbers of like the business plan and then I had to go and do it. And I was like, well everything that I learned in the previous agency was cold calling job boards, getting out on LinkedIn and it was like starting from a start with no support, no other people that are going through the journey with me, no mentor, no guide of right way. This is, this is what you do. Step one, two, three and, and actually put it in a process. There's nothing then. And it's interesting we say that because it is a lonely road as an entrepreneur and you need to surround yourself with other like minded individuals or something else.

I nearly went bus twice and, and it's because when you, when you're doing it on your own, there's just, there's just nothing to fall back on. And I, I can remember now we'd, we'd committed to buying a house, a couple of placements fell through and I ended up in a situation where I had one big, big fee due to come in and if it came in I was fine. If it didn't, we were screwed and unfortunately it landed and so on. I'm sure any entrepreneur will tell you they've nearly been bust a few times and can give you horror stories. But, but the thing is, is if you, if you're an entrepreneur and you're in that situation, you feel yourself sinking. You'll just kick harder and kick harder and you'll make it work. And, and I think that's the thing about taking any plunge like doing the program or hiring people is you have to remind yourself that if you've gone into it in the first place, you're probably that sort of character that will kick harder if your head goes Under a little bit. And that's the thing is if you, if you take the plunge and you, you invest in something, you're more likely to kick harder and pedal and fight for something. And, and that's the problem is I've had years and years of being a master at having a plan B. So always knowing I, you know, I've created this comfort plan B that if, well, you know, if it doesn't work. Whereas now I'm like, no, there's no plan B, there's a plan A and we're just going to do it and if I die fighting then we die fighting and it's just a better way to be. And it's hard taking the plunge. It's hard. And you know, I think nobody can make a decision to become an entrepreneur off the back of somebody else's say so you really have to decide yourself. But definitely surrounded by other people doing the same is, is so much more powerful.

So true. Well listen, I don't want to take up too much more of your time John, but this has been a fantastic catch up and interview and I hope everyone listening has found this valuable. People that are watching live and, and on YouTube as well because it's so authentic the way you come across John. And it's been amazing to see your journey over the last 18 months to two years. I mean what would you say the plans are for the future? So walk me through what, what's the next three year goal for, for John? Yeah, business.

If, if you'd, if you'd have asked me that only a few months ago, I'd, I'd have probably just said well just keep trying to do a bit better. But, but now I really do think we've got a sort of a plan that we'll try and get to maybe sort of 10 of us by Christmas. So you know, a couple of recruiters and sources and, and then if we get that model, I do, I do think we should try and plant into other places. So I mean I think that a model in the UK should be able to be a seven figure business in the next sort of 18 months, two years and then we should be able to plan to replica in, in different English speaking places. I'm, I'm 55, I, I don't think I'm cut out to retire anyway. So I've got so much, you can achieve so much in five years. I think we can make a monster in the next five years. So that's the plan.

I love it. And you're going to have More holidays for sure.

Well, I've just. So I, I went from one holiday a year. Well, we've always had a holiday towards Christmas in December. This year we decided to go to two. So I've just come back from a week in Malta and yeah, we're up to two holidays a year. I don't have a great need for loads of holidays but, but I. What, what's nice is you can still, you can still do what you do. I mean you actually don't lose to. I go to somewhere like Gran Canary. I went in December, had a really good week's work there on about one or two hours a day of work and then in a gym by the pool, out walking by the beach. I mean like it's, it's a, it's a, a great lifestyle really to be able to maintain and, and technology now with, you know how good phones are, you, you're not really neglecting your business. If you're out for a walk on a mountainside somewhere, you've still got your phone with you, people can still get hold of you. So. No, it's great.

So true. For people listening, what advice would you give to someone who's maybe considering investing in themselves or joining the agency blueprint program, but is maybe on the fence or going to go away and leave this and be inspired but not do anything? What would you say to those people.

Acts act straight away on it. Don't, don't pontificate and think about, I mean, I'm the worst in the world normally, but, but I would say if you've got that inkling that you want to do this and you think that you, you know, you'd be a good entrepreneur, I would say just go for it because, you know, if it's always going to be an element of risk in anything that you do, but it's better to take a risk and have a real chance of a fantastic outcome than to just, just be an also round, isn't it? So. No, I mean, I think it's just having the courage to take the plunge and I think if you take the plot, taking the plunge on your own big risk taking do you know, I've done. If you ever had the franchise discussion there, people go into franchises and they fail less because you're running a tried and tested path, but then you are mortgaged to somebody else who's in control of. It's almost like having shareholders in it. This is a chance to do something that's almost as safe, I think, as more like a franchise model because you're going into a system that's ready built, ready made with help. You know, if, if you can't make it work inside a program, like blueprint program, then it isn't going to work. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it anyway. It means that like, well, if you're going to try it, this is the best way you can possibly try it. And you, what you won't try, you won't succeed in anything without investing something. Got to invest something to get anywhere. And, and that, that whether you have money up front, whether you take out loans, you know, I started my business on a 8 grand interest free credit card and an 8 grand loan from Barclays bank which was the biggest unsecured loan I could get at the time. That gave me 15,000 and I went out straight away and bought a car for eight grand on the credit card. And every six months I moved it to another interest free card for three and at the end of the 18 months I bought it outright and I was fine. So I think you might need help. Whatever you do, you know, think of your numbers but if you've got the capacity to do it, it's the most exciting run you'll ever have.

Amazing. John, thank you so much for your time and hopefully everyone listening and watching this bar back found this incredibly valuable and inspiring in terms of your energy very infectious and your true authenticity of like how you've scaled your agency and very proud to see you grow inside the program and really proud to have you as a student inside Elite Mastermind. Looking forward to seeing you again in person in our Mastermind in June as well, John. So see you in London. For those of you watching, thank you. Give it a like if you liked it on YouTube and you're watching it back just so you can help us with the algorithm. For those of you that might reach out to John, please don't inundate him on LinkedIn wanting calls etc. Feel free to connect with them. But obviously the whole idea we do this is to give you the all of the questions that you, you would ask be, be precious of John's time because obviously we've worked hard trying to free him up. Last thing we want is everyone just entertain them on LinkedIn and contacting them. So yeah, there'll be a replay that'll be posted obviously people watching it back anyway, so until next time, I'll catch you soon. And again thank you very much John.

Welcome, nice to see you everybody.

Okay, bye bye.