Recruitment Agency Masterclass: Scaling from $100K to $1 Million

Always be curious, like you should always be wanting to learn and listen. Number one mistake most people make is hire from day one. You can't hire until you've got some good systems and the foundations in place. James Blackwell.

James Blackwell. James Blackwell. James Blackwell. Mr. Blackwell. James Blackwell.

I'll be honest, the more successful you are and the more money you make, the less stressed out. Of course, everyone should always get a mentor. If you're in business, find a mentor that's three or four steps ahead of you.

James, welcome back to the pod.

Thank you for having me again, nice.

To do this face to face.

Yeah, for the first time I was seeing off camera. We've known each other for quite a while now, but never met in person. So it's a pleasure.

Yeah, obviously you've got the Dubai colour, mate. Yeah, don't spend as much time in the UK now.

Yeah, I chase the sun now. But yeah, I'm back in London and I'm enjoying it. It's nice to just get normal weather for a change instead of just sunshine all the time.

And obviously you're here for the recruitment expo, so we just thought, right, yeah, let's try and make the podcast happen. This is your third time on the podcast, so just to give everyone some context, what we're going to do in this conversation, which I think will be really cool, is we're going to basically break down like what people should be doing to go from 0 to 10k a month consistently at that stage, then 10k to 30k a month and then 30k to 40k to sort of 100k a month. So getting up to that seven figure stage. So I know there's, you've. In your business, you've really broken down, you've broken it down into a tract deliver systemized scale and there's a bunch of different things at each stage that you believe if people do effectively, it should enable them to do at what if they're at that stage, do what they need to be doing consistently, but then also go up, go up to the different revenue points. So before, before we go into that, would you mind just sharing for people that don't know who you are, what you do, if you could give us that context and then let's just get straight into it.

Yeah, sure. For those of you that haven't heard me before, I started my own recruitment agency almost a decade ago. So 2015, before that was working in a S3 style recruitment agency, Nigel Frank, that was very successful, worked all the way up to manager, then set up my Own agency, Ronald James, that is in the northeast of the uk. We specialize in digital and tech recruitment. And it's still going to this day runs without me. I haven't been in the business for three, four years now, but it still generates seven figures a year without me. And then I set up an education company called Agency Blueprint, which is the world's leading recruitment training company that helps agency owners scale, systemize and automate their business. So we basically work with agency owners that are at 10k months wanting to scale up to 100k months, but really want to do things a different way. So like building systems automation and a virtual sourcing team. So I'm sure we'll dive into that more. And yeah, we've helped just under 1,000 recruitment agencies that have been through our accelerator program now over the last five years.

So what we're going to do in this is break down what goes on with what you help people with. Right. I want us to really break in, into the how. And I definitely agree with you with my experience with my education business, which we've recently over the last couple of months, being given access to independent founders because they want more ways to upskill, to actually do the job. Because although they have their own business, they're actually, they're recruiters like they have their own business, but they still have, they are the main, they have to generate revenue, their recruiters.

Right.

That have a business. So one thing that I've seen time and time again, even in the growing agencies that we partner with, one of the things that they really struggle with is the systems piece and the processes. So this is why I'm really excited to delve into each stage. What you believe are the right things to be doing that can help people listening to this just get more out of what they're doing, become more efficient and hopefully just have more of like a stressful, a less stressful journey. Right. So let's start with this. Naught to 10k a month period. So if I'm listening to this and maybe you know, my goal is to do 10k a month consistently, something that you referenced quite a lot on the last podcast. And where I wanted to start is like the first principles, like that's something that you say a lot. Would you, you mind just sort of from your perspective defining first principles, like why is that important? And then let's go through like what you believe should be the first principles at this stage.

Sure. So from that starter phase, so 0 to 10k, you just start new agency. You need to know what your niche is. So you need to define your niche. So you need to map out that market. So you need to know what is your potential client target base and you want to get that at least on a Google sheet. So you want to have every single client that is in there that you could potentially work with. You want to know their email address, their LinkedIn profile, URL, company page, vacancy page. So at least you know that you can market map that out. You can run that in an instantly campaign like cold email outreach, LinkedIn automation campaign with Dripify to attract clients and defining your niche. So you want to make sure you can be a specialist in a niche. So some people make a mistake that they want to specialize in all of the UK for example, or us. I believe you need to be a little bit more location specific and ideally I say break it down into two or three job titles to get started. So be a real specialist, a niche within a niche that's like for mapping out the niche. Then you want to leverage yourself because you've only got you, you've got maybe 40 to 50 hours of units of time per week that you can be a recruiter, but you have to build a business as well. So I think most people starting up spends a lot of time on building a fancy website, a brand logo, but really the, the crux of it is to get some live jobs on, get some candidates over the line and get some placements. So like 0 to 10k is pretty much you being a recruiter but also building a business as well. So really to give yourself more leverage, obviously like starting with LinkedIn automation, starting with a client map and then some client outreach campaigns that you can do, whether it's video outreach, whether you're using loom to do manual one on one video outreach or you're automating that there's some cool tools you can do with AI video automation now which is, which is getting quite powerful. We're actually working on something which I'll share maybe in a future episode, but that's like 0 to 10k stage. You're pretty much trying to get low hanging fruit. So another thing is live leads. So you want to be looking who is the clients hiring right now that you can go and try and get that job on. So everything's a little bit manual at the start and then you're trying to build and you're not looking to systemize from day one. You're just looking to get some clients on like some jobs on that you can work some CV sent some Interviews, placements. So you're still being a recruiter in startup phase, but then you just trying to leverage your time back by Maybe building some LinkedIn automation and email automation and then video outreach to try and give you a little bit of leverage.

So what I'm getting from that then first principles at this stage are have a niche and a focus and then also then it's about, yeah, how can you leverage your time more basically is.

What I'm getting from a lot of its mindset. We cover a lot of mindset, a lot of recruiters that start their own business, like who you are right now isn't who you need to become. Like I evolved so many times in different versions of James Blackwell for example to who I am now and a lot of inner work and mindset work that you need to become. So we talk about creating Vision 2.0 of who you need to become. So what is the goal of your business in the next five years, three years and one year? So some people want a lifestyle business. So a lot of people start an agency because they want more freedom. So they want more time back to spend with family, friends. They want to make more freedom for financially so they can pick and choose when they work and what hours they want to work. So a lot of people start initially for lifestyle agency, which is fine. I mean the majority of agency owners we help, I would say 60% are lifestyle, 40% want to create a real seven figure agency and skill it up. But like you want to make sure that you understand from first principles what it is you're looking to build because that's going to shape what you want to do. The number one mistake most people make is higher from day one, you can't hire until you've got some good systems and the foundations in place, which is like candidates, a sourcing machine, an attraction machine for clients. Like you need to build these things on before you even hire your first employee.

So you've got it down on your. When I've seen some of your videos and the things that you teach you put at this stage, the biggest issues at this stage, getting clients consistently. More specifically like quality of jobs and clients that you can find yourself spending time on, jobs you don't get paid for, clients that mess you around, making placements consistently and then like what you're just talking about then like building an agency, right, so you, you like to break it down into like four pillars it looks like. So like which you're just mentioning a few of them. So you've got attract under at this stage you need a client acquisition system, live leads, delegate, LinkedIn chat. You've then got deliver hire first VA work, working a job, 10 steps, master the close, then like you just said, systemize the bits you want to work towards systemizing whilst obviously actually getting wins. Generating revenue is the LinkedIn candidate automation and client map that you're talking about. And then active infantry delegation. Don't know what that means.

Activity. So like activity. So basically it's like every task that you do every hour for the week, uh, you want to account for that and then you want to start delegating. So these are the things you can start delegating those tasks to your VA. So probably 50, 60% of your tasks you can start to sort of outsource.

Yeah. And then as you said, then you've got the scale pillar which seems a bit more like mindset focused, actually individual, which obviously is such an important factor to this. So you've got boost productivity, mindset, current self to this desired state, as you said. So on, on this stage. Then what I just want us to like, just delve into a bit, just from my experience is why don't we first talk about like the attract piece? Because like, if that's one of the main issues which I agree with, is when I speak to independent founders at this stage, it is having a consistent opportunity of working with good clients that don't mess them around, that pay good fees, that they do placements with. So you've got here client acquisition system, livelihoods delegate, LinkedIn chat. Let's, let's break these down. Like what, what's going on here then onto these elements.

Sure. So to build your client acquisition system, you want to look at it. So firstly you're going to take your client market map. So that's the first thing you build is your client market map. So you know every single client you could potentially work with, whether it's now or in the future, you've got. And then once you've got that list, you can start running email campaigns. So like the first thing we'll start is email campaigns. Now sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. It depends on your niche and market and what your outreach is. Email is still very strong in terms of called it email outreach. It's very competitive, but it's a thing that you want to have running in the background because it gives you leverage. Once you build it once, you just don't need to touch it again. You're going to get replies and you're going to get warm leads. But so Once you start doing that, then you want to build your Dream 100. So we talk about architecting a Dream 100 campaign. So that is like the top 100 clients that eventually you want to work with. These are clients that could give you repeat business that maybe have five or 10 roles of your three job titles, for example, that you know you could work with long term. Because that strategy there is going to be different than just cold outreach to the mass market. Then you've got live leads. So live leads are going to be ones which we'll touch on clear.com because we're working a lot with clear.com for AI that we can just fully build this out fully automated now where it will find the client lead, it'll find the client hiring manager, it'll find the email address, it'll verify the email address, it'll create a customized personalized AI email campaign with follow up sequence. So full end to end. But for live leads you want to make sure that that's low hanging fruit. So these are clients that are hiring right now that are looking for potentially an agency to work with them, but they're inundated. So it takes a little different outreach strategy than just an email, for example, because everyone knows that they're hiring. The whole idea of a cold email outreach, you're, you're going to the full market and you're looking 1 to 3% of the market is maybe looking to hire right now. So let's say if you've got a list of a thousand, you might have like 30 to 50 potential clients in there that potentially could work with you. If you email at the right time, with the right type of outreach and, or then we add in video. So video outreach works really well. Free tool you could use is something like loom.com, like I said, there's some really cool video outreach tools now that can, once you record something, once they can regenerate your voice and customize your first name, the landing page and change the website, et cetera. So you would do video outreach to that. Then obviously dream 100. One of the tactics that we would use would be a letter for example. Like everyone's went remote but old school now in terms of like going back to being sent a letter with a gift, which is normally a book, which works really well with a follow up sequence. That's where it's something we call like giftology. So like giving a gift to a client and saying look, I read this book, I thought it would be interesting for you. I really like chapter X, Y Z I'm going to follow up with you in two days on Wednesday around about 2 o' clock and something like that would work really well. So yeah, so you would do email outreach, then you could do LinkedIn automation outreach. So once you're sending out an email you can connect in with that hiring manager and start messaging them at the same time and cross reference the fact that you've emailed them letters, gifts, the live jobs. So like making sure that you reaching out to clients that are actively hiring right now and then most of that time you can like I said like something with like the like of clay, you can automate a lot of this process now. Um, so that's pretty much like some of the client acquisition but you need to have something that's repeatable so the email campaigns can run, the LinkedIn campaigns can run, your video outreach can run. Because once you've got your va, they're the ones that once you're recording the video they can take it from a Google sheet into an email, into a follow up sequence. Um, let's say once you get some leads for playback then you want to nurture them. So some clients will not be saying yes right now, but it's all about follow up. So like creating a nurture funnel. So we would use a tool called Streak CRM which can sit in the Gmail inbox. Any maybe replies that you get then you can do follow ups every week. So then you've got like let's say you go from a list of a thousand, you get 50 maybe replies back. So from those 50 it's like nurturing them a little bit more, having another customized video outreach message to them, connecting with them on LinkedIn, following up there, sending them a salary guide, sending them some value. We do like events for tech in the tech industry for example, inviting them to something like that, keeping them nurtured. So then eventually you could convert them into a client. So those are pretty much the fundamental strategies. Then you can go on top like sponsoring events, hosting events, trying to meet clients in person is obviously the main thing once you generate the lead is we talk around the signature sales pitch deck. So we develop a custom pitch deck that you have as an asset inside your agency that you can do repeatedly. So you walk in that client through the pain, what you know in the market, why you're different, your unique mechanism. So we talk about you need to create a unique mechanism of like why you deliver different to every other agency, what makes it stand out. So for example we would put in a, we put in something like clay AI outreach, the way we nurture candidates, the way we track candidates, the way we focus on passive talent or active talent. All of this can be compiled into customized pitch that then you can start pitching exclusive over 10 because you don't want to just have contingency recruitment all the time. You can go exclusive retained, which I think goes more into once you hit like 20, 40k months as opposed to 0 to 10k months, you just want clients. So yeah, whether it's 10% you're agreeing or 12 or 15, don't be like stuck on this 15, 17%. Like try and get some clients because then you can get CV sent, you can get momentum. So one of the things that start affairs people fail with is because they're doing things that aren't really moving the needle. You just need to be a recruiter and get active roles. So whether you're getting them at a lower fee just to start off with, it's good because you've got the cycle of being back of speaking to candidates, sending cvs, doing interview feedback and close to doing a deal. Because once you get one placement then you get another, you get more confidence, then you can start increasing your fees and getting better clients and that's normally the better way as opposed to just trying to stick to try and get the perfect client each time. That's going to work with you exclusive retain from day one. They're not going to do that. You need to build the foundations first and just start getting momentum and start getting interviews and making placements so you can consistently get to 10k a month.

So just obviously covers a lot there. So what the only thing that I just want is that I just wanted to focus on for a sec is the, the, the element that you're talking about the email, right? So the client acquisition piece and that the cold email just keep going out. That's like foundational for you. So look, you clearly like proper in the, in the trenches here, like helping people with this a lot. You're going to see a lot of different campaigns but just, just to focus on that for a sec, to make it really straightforward for people listening, like what are, what are you often like leading with on that side of things? Because I can't im being like candidate CVs and these types of things like how are you? Yeah, how are you approaching that? Right, what's the ask what you are you just trying to get replying to say like I specialize in this. Like would it be a bad idea to connect? I don't Know, like what is it that you're trying to, you know, so.

So once you've got the list, you can call email forever. So like it doesn't cost anything to send an email. And I think people run a campaign, say it doesn't work and then they don't do another one. So what we try to do is batch it each quarter so every 90 days you run a new campaign. So the first campaign might be NPC you never touch. I mean the simple things are never put attachment on, don't put a blue hyperlink, don't really put a signature. Like you want to just have black and white text and just look like it's a. You want to look like it's not a cold email. Yeah. Even if it is a cold email, you'll still get replies because it's just all about timing. You're just trying to find the hiring manager that their best employee or whatever job title have just handed a notice in yesterday and you suddenly call them at the top of the inbox and you presented like you're an agency. Yeah, I mean there's plenty of times we've won clients over the years that just ignored every single cold email and all of a sudden year three, they came back. James, I know you keep pestering me with emails like I need your help on this role. So it's just all about timing and just being consistent. So that's just running in the background. Now obviously you test different outreach methods, whether it's mpc, you might be a value in terms of a salary survey guide, it might be a video, it might be a tech event, it might be a variety of different, like email outreach. Like there's, there's plenty of different ways you can test but I think it's, you can make marginal gains on research and testing copy. I mean, for example, we have a full time copywriter that's in our program that will critique your cold email outreach campaign for your niche. So every niche is slightly different. There might be different keywords that you might use in that email outreach. So obviously we customize every single one. You've got the beauty now of chatgpt. So you can create all sorts of email copies in ChatGPT. Once you start feeding in, you have like an SOP doc of like how you'd feed in and teach at ChatGPT about your industry and what you're doing and other email copies that you've done before and then you can just keep creating and iterating it. You don't want to just fully depend on cold email, that is just something that is, I would say is a bonus. It's always running in the background. But it's up to you as a business owner to get a client. So whether that is a LinkedIn outreach message, meeting them at an event, doing a video outreach, sending the letter, you just want to have lots of different funnels, as it were, like a way of how you would attract a client coming into you.

So it's that. Yeah, so okay, so it just sounds like there you are literally leading with like, hey, I do this like, like would you be. Yeah, would you mind if I send something over or like you. Because obviously at that stage you're trying to get a reply, right?

You just want to get a reply.

Yeah, okay, okay, right. So that. Because I feel like, I just want to make sure that straightforward for people to. Because the reality of it is how many people listen to this at this stage have that consistently going. Like the reality of it is a lot of people don't.

They don't because they've either tried it, they say it doesn't work or they're not consistent with it yet. So again like a lot of information is on there for free, but it's implementation, consistent consistency. So you want to just make sure that's set up and built and running. You'd be very surprised as many agencies we have that come in to work with us that have been going 10 years and haven't got that. Oh yeah, tried that four years ago, it didn't work. We still do cold calling or outreach. You just want to make sure that you're trying different touch points and different channels. So you want to make sure you've got a cold email channel, LinkedIn automation channel, a video outreach channel, live leads channel, dream 100. Like all of these different pillars, you want to make sure that you've got built in the business, they're systemized, there's a process for them and they can be handed off to either your virtual team or one team member.

And then the next thing I want us to focus on then tell me about this. Working your job 10 steps. What's that?

Yeah, is exactly what it says. So like again, people are surprised that when you be a recruiter, then you start your agency, you forget a lot of the fundamentals that you did in order even just to work a job. For example, like we just have a 10 step process of making. It's like pretty much a checklist of like every single thing. Like you do when you get a live job in, you want to Sop it. So it's like, have we done a LinkedIn search, job board search? Have we done in Mills? Have we done video outreach? Have you done voice note follow up? Have the sources started doing that? Have we asked for referrals, join groups, events and then done the advert, done job of the day advert, done the post, done the social post each step and then it rinse and repeats. So once you've done that 10 steps, you can check it off on whether it's the Trello board you use or your sheet. You know that that job's pretty much 70 to 80% worked. Because once you've done the 10 steps, there's not much more you can do. As we all know as good recruiters, yes, you can headhunt, you can keep cold calling, asking for referrals, but there's probably 10 steps and once you've done them, 80% of that job is covered off. The rest of it might come back on an advert that might come back off an InMail, they might come back off a video that you've done a week ago. But the majority of the work's done now. On most recruitment agencies, people are still doing some of the steps and then redoing them and they don't know where they are with that. So like once you get a volume of jobs, you want to be able to manage 10, 15 jobs. The only way you can do that is have a clear checklist of each job and what's been done at each stage. So it's more like systemizing it again, like a McDonald's franchise. As Michael Gerber talks about in the E. Myth Revisited book, we want to have a step by step process for that.

Okay, that makes sense. Again, probably something that people know they should do but they haven't got. And like you said, it's. That enables people to walk away from the live job and go, I've worked that onto the next. Right, because like you said, I can maybe find myself working it for a bit. I get some bites, don't get some bites, and then you go back to it and then you're going over the same ground. So what you're saying there is, yeah, have like a clear step process of like these are the each steps that you do once you've done them onto the next. And then like you said, you then might have a system around going through those steps again to make sure everything's covered. So before we move on to the 10k to 30k, then you've got here higher first VA like I speak to a lot of independent founders that don't have a va. So that seems quite, you know, fundamental. When we then go on to like the later stages to talk like, what should this first VA be doing? Is it elements of like you said if over. If I audit my time and activities over like the last month or last week and I'm like, right, okay, I spent two hours putting this LinkedIn job ad up or I spent three hours replying to people on LinkedIn or whatever. What should this first VA be doing in your view at this stage?

Yeah, good question. It's the first form of leverage. I did this when I first started my business. I hired a VA in the Philippines nine years ago now. It was the best hire I did. And people's mindset of being a recruiter or agency owner. When you're 0 to 10k, you've only got like I said, 40, 50 units of time per week. So you're trying to be a recruiter and start your own agency and run a business and do everything. So. And what you end up doing, you get distracted going the full end of the spectrum. Forget about the fundamentals of being a recruiter. So you need to buy back 20 hours a week of your time in order to like at least scale your business. So to do that like there's low income generating tasks so we want to just eliminate them. So whether it's like respond to certain emails, your calendar building your CRM, responding on LinkedIn like there's so many things in your activity inventory that you can start to delegate but you can't do it overnight. It's step by step systemized process is a loom video about it. Is there a step by step Google Doc? Can you hand that off to the va? And then you'll be surprised like in your weeks that you spend your time when you allocate of like what you've done every hour of the day, a lot of that time is like 10 to $20 an hour. Tasks that you should not be doing. There's a great book on this by Dan Martell called buy back your time. Highly recommended. Some of the fundamentals we've been teaching in our programs for a long time, but Dan covers it very, very well. Even when you break it down, save you earning 100k a year. You first 0 to 10k, like your time per hour, like 40 hours a week. Everything below, I think it'll work on £30 an hour or whatever. Anything below that, you should be getting a VA to do that because you need to Be training your mind as a business owner you need leverage and you need to be hiring that VA from day one to start buy your time and then that goes on when you build out your marketing sourcing team, your delivery team, your executive assistant eventually as well which will graduate from a beer. It's one of the first hires that you do before you hire a recruiter which is again the biggest mistake people make is hire360 recruiter, come and work for them, get stress, burnt out, hire them for 30, 40k salary and they've got no jobs to give them or anything else. So you don't attract a players anyway because they not going to come and work for a startup founder as opposed to an established agency. So the, the main thing to buy back your time so you can make more placements to get more money. So then buy more systems, buy more people, buy more time back is a VA for four or five dollars an hour.

So can we just, can we just walk through this really quickly and then we'll move on just to make this like really easy for people Because I've, I'm a huge advocate for this as well and I feel like Pete and I'm sure you've seen this time and time again people just like over complicate it or like worried about certain things. But like my experience has been pretty much what you're saying. So like my experience has been I recognized things that I was doing repeatedly which were low leverage tasks that I shouldn't be doing which isn't like a good use of my time. Then what I did was then document like what I like how I did the task. Then I recorded a short video of like me talking through the task and then I gave that to a VA which I found on artwork. So just talk me through just to make it really easy for people like what you teach it. So if I'm a recruitment founder right now I don't have a va, I'm feeling stressed out, I'm doing so many different things. I've done the audit and let's just say like managing my LinkedIn inbox, let's just say is the task that I want to delegate and is one of those things that is below like 30 pound or whatever. Just talk me through how I go from there to having someone do that.

Yeah. So the first thing like especially LinkedIn you need a little bit more too. So we build like we call it a candidate response sheet. So that means that in their LinkedIn let's say 80% is going to be candidate replies 20% might be client replies. So you need to create a candidate response sheet of if a candidate replies this, we send X back. Now the great thing is with ChatGPT now is VA in the Philippines can put in what the reply was and a story of like I'm a recruiter, I specialize in this market, I'm working this job at the moment with this criteria. I've sent this message and this is a reply. What should I reply back? So back when I first started I would have to explain to the VA these are the type of responses that you need to respond in Slack and then they will put it in a Google sheet, which is a candidate response framework because pretty much you've got it three buckets. Like it's a yes reply, it's a maybe reply. I need more information. I know I'm not interested. So most of the replies on LinkedIn are going to be that. So it's just teaching the VA what to reply when it comes into one of those buckets. So that's the first thing I would do is create an SOP candidate response sheet and I would tie that to ChatGPT. So we train our VAs on how to use ChatGPT like it's the first thing that they do and that's the first thing that you can outsource. I mean going all the way like when we discuss maybe 40k agencies and above is we place like operations, integrated VAs. These are people that are very trained on Xavier, Clay, Automation, Stripify and something that can handle everything all for $1,000 a month. And that's pretty much buying back your time tenfold. But yeah, step by step, exactly how you said, documented video, Google Doc, review it with them on a zoom and then it just. Most agency founders haven't got the time to tell them what to do and get frustrated because they're not clear yet. So you need to be passionate about building systems and it comes back to the first principles like what is the business you want to create because you can create systems and automation and a bit of a virtual team and then obviously have a in person team or you might just cut straight to an in person and office team. But you're going to have big overheads, big risk and not as get as much leverage at the start. So there is going to be a trade off between yes, I'm going to invest this 10 hours now training this VA every week for the next four weeks, but it's SOP'd and then it's clear and then I've Bought back my time. But you're going to have to invest more time initially to then get the.

Time back and then where do you find this person? Fiverr Upwork.

What's the we don't teach? I mean I wouldn't advise on upwork or fiverr because that VA is already gone as it were. They're overpriced in the market because they're used to working with multiple clients and they will charge too much. So we would try and find a VA that is not on upwork or fiverr because you want someone that wants to work for you full time that is not like into just making extra money and because they'll start to increase the price. So like you don't search for a recruitment VA on five out work. That's a lot of mistakes people make because.

So how do you find this?

We would use online jobs Ph for example like as a Philippine VA one, something like that. Like Filipino job boards. Works well we outsource a lot now. More in South Africa market. So I mean I've got a team of 12 out there.

And how do you find people there as a job board sort of thing again?

Yeah, I mean we've got a full in house recruitment team now. So we've got a team that hires more people from there and yeah, we go through a process. Typical hire how you would like a LinkedIn, like a LinkedIn job, an indie job. We have an application funnel that will go through a few questions. They have to do loom video and then they'll go through an interview process with the team and then we would onboard them with everything.

So okay, my just to share my experience for anyone listening. Yeah would be like my approach always a bit like what you're saying is my approach with anyone not working Fiverr. I have a VA who I've had over two years now who's actually UK based. I wanted that personally. I'm paying more for that.

Yeah.

And I've also got a video editor who does all the podcast stuff. He's in Australia again, worked with him for over two years. But I met both of them on work and fiverr but the intention was I wanted to get them off.

You take them off?

Yeah, yeah. So that, that's just my experience of like you can also you might shortcut this to what you just said, you might pay a bit more. But then if you want this consistently then it's in their interest to get consistent work. So I've then jumped on the zoom with them, qualified them. I've been like I want someone to work me consistently. So how are you going to feel about that? Is that something you want to do? And then they're more interested. But I get, I get your point. But okay, so like if you, if you're listening to this, like you have to do that in my opinion, and all I would add to what you just said is if you still have ambitions to hire people, the way that I look at about in my business now, because I've done that upfront work. Firstly, when you do that upfront work and you've got that system documented, that work's done. So like if that VA doesn't work out, you can give that to the next person, right. The next VA that you try.

I mean the ideal scenario, which is what I always Recommend is Hire2. So we would hire, we build on like sources, but I would hire two because one's going to work on, one's not. And if two work on double bonus. But at least you're not training them up again. So for the price of your time per hour, it's better to hire two people. $5 an hour, that's $10 an hour. It's a way below your hourly rate. And you've got two assets and the likelihood of at least one working out is very, very high. You've still got a likelihood that two would work out. And if one doesn't work out, you've saved a lot of time by not having to onboard another one. Because that's what the mistake people make. And they're like, I need to go and hire again.

Fair. Okay. And then the bit that I would just add to what you just said, which I found beneficial. Beneficial is that by doing that, if you then hire full time employees, they can leverage that person as well. That's the thing as well. So then if you do all these systems, you hire someone, it's like, well, actually all of this, you know, the low activity stuff you won't be doing because I've got a system for that. So you could. That. Yeah, exactly. So that's the other benefit. Okay, so 10k to 30k then. So if I've, so if I've, you know, I've now hired my first va, I've really understood. I've built out this activity, inventory, delegation. I've got my client map, I've got my client acquisition system going with the foundational stuff. Why don't we just start like what is typically stopping your agency clients consistently hitting 30k months? Like, what is it that they're maybe struggling with You've put on here on your education stuff, business issues at this stage, hiring employees, hiring ops, management, working in on the business, productising services, exclusivity with clients. So what's stopping me from consistently hitting 30k months?

Yeah. So again, like it's hiring a good recruited delivery consultant to replace you. So again, you need to decide is it lifestyle solopreneur agency that you want to do, which means that you're always going to be the recruiter, which means you're always going to speak to candidates and make placements or you're actually going to build an agency. So this is the crossing chasm that a lot of people struggle with, is certain intention of what they want. There's nothing wrong with keeping it at 30k months and just being a solopreneur. Like with a couple of years, a couple of sources, you make 300k. Yeah. And have some freedom. Etc. But then the hard part is hiring a delivery consultant.

Now let's go down the other stuff. When we're talking here, let's go down the other route. So a lot of people. Yeah. So people that may not want a huge agency but they want to be doing seven figures and however you structure that. But yeah, not. Not the one that you just said, the other one.

Yeah. I mean I don't advocate having a huge agency. I always say maximum 12 to 30 employees is always the cutoff. Yeah. So going from solopreneur to like boutique agency phase, like three to five remote employees, the first thing you need to do once you've done that is you need a consistent way. If once you've managed to know how to get client leads in and convert them, you need to start getting them exclusive returns. So it's like getting more platinum clients, which means that it's repeat business so you're not having to go out and win new business all of the time. Once you win one client, that could feed you 5 or 10 roles a year. So it could be like a 500k a year account because then again, you know, you need three or five of them for it to be very profitable and then to attract a delivery consultant, which is what we call like maybe a 180 recruiter, that type of thing. You need a solid sourcing system. So one thing that I advocate on is building out a marketing sourcing team. So these are people that would reach out to candidates on LinkedIn. Whether it's like a LinkedIn selfie, video, a loom video, outreach, a voice note, follow up, messaging, emails, the sourcer is the one that's going to reach out and do a lot of the legwork of the sourcing. Because when you're trying to buy back your time, you'll realize 20 to 30 hours of your week is trying to find candidates. Once you got the client, it just the rest of the time is searching on LinkedIn job boards, trying to speak to candidates and get them what they.

Send it from their profile or someone in the team's profile.

Their profile. So like they're going to be. Yeah, like I said, I mean we build them out in South Africa and we've got a full service for that where we'll hire, train and manage them for you. But like they're the ones that are going to do all our outreach, so they're the ones that are going to connect up with the candidate on LinkedIn, they're going to do all of the message follow ups, the video follow ups, etc.

And they're getting them interested in a specific job. You just build in talent pools or both.

Like that's the thing, you create an omnipresence. So I see it as buying paid advertising. So I've spent millions on paid advertising. People are probably annoyed with a lot of my ads and apologies for that sometimes, sometimes they can't stop the algorithm of like showing it so many times. But you want to create an omnipresence in your market, your niche. So for us, like software engineers, every software engineers knew who our agency, Ronald James was because our sources are reaching out with them with a nice vibrant video and a personal touch. Because at that point if they watch our video, that kind of is going to come back at some stage. And which agency are they going to come back with? The one that was like with a highly vibrant video from Lucy, for example, that took the time out of her day to message me like, it's not going to be another recruiter that just sent a DM or an InMail. So imagine all of those touch points in your candidate market that you're penetrating over a long period of time. I see that as paid advertising. And if I'm only paying $1000 or 1000 pounds a month for that saucer, or 1500 pounds a month, that that's worth it. Because I only need one placement every three months for that to be still very profitable. And a lot of the sources that we get up to speed now can help source an extra 2 or 3 deals per month, which could be an extra 20k.

So how do they, so how do they, how do they help the delivery person and Are you saying like they do a lot of that legwork and then are they getting them to the point where they're like I'm happy to have a conversation and then what they pass over to?

Yeah. So a bit like what we did in the first stage of buying back the agency owner's time, now we're buying back the recruiter's time. So for you to attract a good delivery consultant, you need to attract them from a recruiter, that is they might be already doing one or two deals a month and I'm saying we'll come here, you can do three to four deals a month and you're going to get a sourcer and a VA and automation and I'm going to give you exclusive retained clients. That's going to be a lot better offer for you to attract good talent, not just a recruiter that you know isn't very good and is going to come in, you're going to pay them a big basic and they're not going to do anything. So the whole point of a recruiter, a delivery consultant is to buy back their time so they can focus on what we call high income generating tasks for their job, which their skill is, which is very hard to replace, is speaking to a highly qualified candidate, persuading them to go to an interview and persuading them to take a job. We all know when recruitment, it's the highest form of sales. Like it's like the top of the top psychology in terms of like dealing with people's emotions.

How have you typically like sip that then? Is it like I what I book in a calendar with the delivery consultant? Is it like a jump on a video call? What's the typical. Yeah, what's the system there then?

So we run two models so you can run a hybrid model in the office. So I've got actual sources in the office and I've got sources that are remote. And the same with all the agency owners we help. A lot of them are remote. They work with that recruiter in Tangent, in Slack. So they're speaking to them every day. They're working jobs with them every day. They're saying, what about John for this role? What about Sarah for this role? I've got Sarah available for two o' clock call. Can you take addition type of thing? So that SOP is like we have a full academy for this, where we've trained this source up for six months of like how they do video outreach, how the source candidates and you're building in that asset where that sourcer can Then go into being a full time marketing expert in your business. They can be a full time recruiter in the business. We've had many sources do that. There's a lot of different ways that they could be a full executive assistant. For example like a build out the full marketing sourcing team. So buying that time back is again like from 10 to 30k months. It's like building a sourcing team because if you can start buying back the time for a recruiter to come in then you can attract a good recruiter and then they can do more deals profitably quicker rather than trying to do everything when they come in from day.

One and like just quickly on that then where, where do people. Where, where are often like the common pain points around getting this right then I can imagine is it challenging to get really good at like briefing like this sourcing team or like the quality of like the candidates they're pulling through maybe can take a bit of time, bit of work where, where's the often like pain where maybe people might give up on really trying to make it work?

Well one you need to know how to hire the sources for example attract them, get a good pay model in of like how they would, would work. What do you do?

Incentivize them on the number of profiles.

Yeah so we have like a unique system of like how we would pay them but like it would be a flat base of between 800 to 1,000 pounds a month and then they would get like you can do it where you would pay per call booked or CB sent and interview or deal. So you could go all the way up to the spectrum. So we'd like to for instance they might source two deals in a month. They might get paid £2,000 for example. And then yeah it's just making sure you as an agency owner as onboarding them correctly and that recruiter is, is like being their body as it were. Like I mean back in the day many years ago we used to, I think some of the top billers used to get a resourcer. It was a luxury.

Yeah, it still happens.

Yeah and it should have happened a lot more I think just a lot of businesses didn't do that. And I mean looking back over my time like when I used to be a recruiter many years ago was if I'd had like these VAs or sources working for me I would have built even way more for the business. So it is highly profitable. But yeah like the biggest thing is making sure that you're, you're training them and you're giving them the industry knowledge and you explaining what is a good candidate, what is not a good candidate, who the top companies are to attract that talent from all the type of knowledge you would give someone sitting next to you on a desk shadowing you, you would do via zoom and loom and slack.

Okay, yeah. So over communicate. Okay, I got that. So, okay, so let's say I'm at this stage. I've really got my marketing sourcing team going. So if I'm in this stage and between 10, 30k months as the agency owner, then should I be spending most of my time trying to attract companies in their stream 100 and you know, having as many presentations as possible to go through the client signature service pitch deck. And the main thing that I get from what you're telling me is with the having a pitch deck and a service, the way that you approach it is you're selling how you do, how you do it, not what you do. Right. So like you just said, you're breaking down like this is how we work and this is what, this is actually what we would do for you. Which is different. Right. So you're going through like we don't just say james, let's work together. We worked 15%. You're saying you're going through a whole sales process where you like if we were to work together, this is what we would do.

Yeah.

And how we would fill your job. Right. Using all these tools, using our resources in etc etc. So is that what I should be spending most of my time then at that stage to consistently hit 30k months pitching and taking clients through that journey.

So trying to work more on the business. So I would be obsessed with systems marketing automation and then just dealing with clients. So like that's the key thing I would be doing from 30k months is I used to target myself like always doing three pitches a week. I knew if I did three pitches two out of three would convert or 303. One client might give me one job, one client give me five jobs, one might give me seven jobs. So I know I'm feeding the team and then that's like feeding the cycle and then all of the 10 step process, the sourcer and recruiter all there and then I'm just watching, making sure that we're getting the right amount of interviews and making placements. So that's probably the hardest stage is going from like the 30k months to then breaking through is because you're trying to hire your first or two, three employees. And that's why I Always think it's good to start with the sourcing team that you can get maybe two or three sources and then one recruiter and get the delivery. Yeah, because you might still be doing 50% of the placements. Traditionally what I've seen with hundreds of agencies we work with, they're still doing some. Most of the placements right at that stage. At that stage. And then like the whole idea is you need at least probably two delivery consultants to at least. So you can start to step away right from doing the recruitment side. Because I don't think many agency owners really in their heart wants to just still speak to candidates and send CVs and, and do the wrong placements. They want to be. Because you touched on they're not a business owner. Like you're not a real business owner. You just got a high paying job like you've got handicapped to because it means you can't step away from the business. You know a business isn't running without you.

So at this stage for me to break through that. Okay, Mark. I need to be obsessed with what systems do I now have in my business? The marketing sourcing team. Like what? Yeah, like in terms of systems automation around how can I get to the point where three times a week I'm in front of like our ideal client talking about our service, how we can work on an exclusive basis, getting a number of jobs and then getting to the point where then you're hiring one or two delivery consultants.

Just you doing clients. That's the last thing I would ever delegate. You don't automate that. You automate the outreach to get to the conversation. But it was the last thing I handed off in my agency after five years was I was always still dealing with the client side because I enjoyed that as well. So you need to be the one that's out there meeting clients in person, going to events, going entrepreneur events, going to the networking events, sponsoring the events, hosting events. Key person of inventor and Stanley Priestly. Exactly. That I was up till the end. That's what we need to be doing as a business owner. So the first thing you want to try and hand off is eventually like the recruitment side in terms of doing the sourcing. And then once you've done the sourcing, hand off the deal side and bring in a consultant, give them the 15, 20% commission, 25% whatever it is that you need so then you can free your time up so you can just get bigger and better clients that are more exclusive retained.

And then because I'm sure you thought about this and seen a lot of this. What does a good financial incentive look like for these delivery consultants? What have you seen work well there? Right. Because if you're normally people that bring on the clients and like do that element, they often always get paid the most and that, that's you, the agency owner. But like how, like what does the financial incentive look like? Because you've got these sources that have been financially incentivized. You've got stuff there. Like what have you found work to be effective there? Because we want the delivery consultants to be financially incentivized. What have you found work? Is it like a typical method of like depending on what the fee is, they get a percentage. I don't know how have you typically done it? Because oftentimes it can be weighted mainly towards James who's brought on the client. Right. You might get 8% of the fee and then the delivery consultant gets 20%, for example. What have you typically found to be effective then? The financial incentives.

Yeah. I mean personally, what works? Well as we'll do like a 70, 30 split which is 30% goes to house account management. So that's. It's a 10k deal, £10,000 deal. 30% of that goes to management because they brought the client on board and they looked after the clients. Because. Because eventually as you scale, you're going to have if you're replacing yourself. So like my team, there needs to be an account manager that looks after the clients and they're going to need incentivize. Yeah. So you'll come up with a problem. If you just suddenly start giving 20% of the recruiting nothing, then you won't be able to hand off the account management side of the key clients. So you want to have a 70, 30 split which just says. So it's 10,000 pound deal, 3,000 pound goes to house or the client, whoever's dealing with that client. £7,000 is commission and then we will give 20% commission on the £7,000 for example.

Right.

And then we'll still pay the source because the sources unsourced in a different country. It's low fee. So I don't mind giving away it's another tuna pounds or 250 pounds.

That's a lot to them.

It's a lot to them, yeah.

Okay, cool. So in terms of like getting to this next stage then. So in terms of what have you found to be. If I'm leaning towards I want to be doing seven figures for me to break into this 40k to 100k a month. As I'm going into that, what does my. Just wrap that up? What does my team probably like then? Is it like media agency owner, probably two delivery consultants and then like a marketing sourcing team with what, two, three people?

So you want to have OPS integrated va for sure. Because they're the ones handling all the tech. Because like for you to get as.

Much 10k photos or to buy in 10k to 30k or the next edge.

I would still be having that as 10 to 30k for sure. Okay, so it's a thousand.

Oh, yeah, you put hiring ops management. Sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

So you want to be having an OPS fear because again, you don't want to be going on your website or fixing a LinkedIn automation or an email campaign or a zapier link that's broken inside of Slack. Once you start systemizing a 10 to 30k, you want to observe that runs it. Two or three marketing sources, again, like that team of four is going to cost you like £3,000. It's like the cost of one salary in the UK. Then a delivery consultant and then as you go from 40 to 100. Yeah. You can start to build that out. So you were talking about when you get a Ford.

Yeah. So like the team then, that you just said. Sorry, the bit I was missing was it'd be agency owner, maybe one or two delivery consultants and then like three or four marketing sources, but then also like a OPS VA person.

Yeah.

And if you have that all working really nicely, you'd be confident that you should be consistently doing 30k a month.

Yeah. Like, I mean, you can do it with less. Depends on your average fee. Like, I'm based on average fees off the. I would say the industry average, from what I've seen is like £10,000, 8,000 to £10,000. So that's like three deals. Yeah. So three deals can be done with one consultant, really? And probably two marketing sources you could do that with. I mean, there's definitely people in our program that would do 500k a year with two marketing sources and Ops VA, and then they're doing the deals themselves. Or then they might have two delivery consultants.

Okay, fair. Right, cool. Got you. So this next stage, then, let's break this down. Let's really talk about how do we get to the point where we're doing 100k a month. So why don't we start with like challenges that you've seen and get into this. So you've, you've broken it down into letting go, expanding clients Revenue hiring a manager system processes KPI again obviously, which is expected. So talking about here, what, what are the common stumbling blocks where I've got to that point that you just said things are working really nicely. But now my ambition, you know, from when I started this business, I wanted to get to a point where yes, I did have more freedom, but also freedom from an earning standpoint. And like we're doing seven figures and like that's really profitable for me. Talk to me about that. What are some of the common issues or stumbling blocks for people getting up to that stage?

People like hiring. I know we spoke offline. When you're hiring humans, you just can't control everything. So it's very hard to hire good people. So the key thing is once you've got the good systems in place, a good way to get clients, the sourcing. If you see I've started to delegate chunks of the role. So the delivery consultant doesn't do everything. The source only does one compartment. The client acquisition system can pretty much run most of it. And then you're pitching so you're keeping control of the client. The ops VA is winning all of the tech. You've got your VA or executive assistant peer that's helping manage your time back once you've got these pieces. And then it's like the biggest shifts are going to be hiring probably two or three delivery consultants that are going to be good again. It depends on type of business that you want. If you want to self manage an agency that's going to be 10 to 11 employees, the Sweet spot then like what worked well for me was a lot of my employees are mums that came back in the recruitment game that work three days a week. They come in the office or they work remote most of the time, but they'll do two or three, four, five deals in a month. That worked really well for me. I've went through the stage of hiring really good recruiters that came from S3 background. I mean that was always easy. I always try and hire them that come from that background because I think the training there, the art of recruitment is the best. Like how I've been trained of like cat string the candidate and the offer close and that type of stuff. It means you don't have to train that. And then obviously bolton out with systems good jobs and sourcing. Then like they're always going to do two or three deals with their eyes closed. But you're going to be in a position where if you're not with a growing agency that wants to go to 50 employees and above. You need a person that I would call not an A player recruiter. Just and this is no disrespect, like my employees are amazing and lots of people in the program is just someone that wants to come back into recruitment or in recruitment and is happy doing three, four deals a month because they've got a source, they've got jobs given to them and they've still got a skill. But like recruitment's not their life.

Right.

So when sometimes when I was in recruitment, it's like 60 hours a week you suited and booted. Like recruitment is everything. Like anything outside of this recruitment agency isn't the real world. No one wants to do that anymore. So like recruiters that just want to work as a recruiter, not set up on their own. Because again you've got the risk of if you hire someone really good, an entrepreneur style recruiter, why would they do that for you when they're just going to go and do it for themselves? Yeah. So you want to have the, the middle part where you know that someone's going to be good, loyal, can be good at the job and yeah work for you. So it's making sure that knowing that they're happy with that and they're making good money. So as long as I'm making between let's say 50k to 80,000 a year type of thing, obviously we're more in the north but a lot of people, or maybe 100k, they're happy with that and they know that your company is not going to be going to 40, 50, 60 employees and you're promising shares and a big exit type of thing. Yeah, that's like normally the sweet spot.

Okay, so in terms of like. So is that when you're talking about their hiring manager that we're talking about, you're just saying recruiters you want in the business, Is that what you're saying?

So the manager's really the last, last thing you need the first like so the last thing I handed it off. Obviously once you've handed the client piece off is running the business. But anyone can really like 10 to 11 employees. It doesn't really need a manager. Such if you've got an executive assistant stroke PA office manager and then you've got a source up with like a head sourcer. So like one gets promoted a head sourcer. Then you've got two or three recruiters to manage. That's pretty much it. Like that can be managed, pretty much self managed.

You can do 100k a month. Yeah, you should definitely be doing that because it's.

It's 10 deals. It's like three deals each recruiter. So.

Right.

It's easily done.

So just break down that team again. So. And then we'll just break down how we get to that point. Sorry. So.

So three delivery consultants.

Yeah.

You could have three sources to maybe four depending if you want to bring an extra one in. Because some of the sources can turn into a delivery consultant as well. Like we've done that many times. An OPS VA and a general VA stroke pa. Yeah.

And then the agency owner.

And the agency owner. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, I think I've done that. Right, so three, three, six. Yeah. So that's like the team of eight or nine.

Yeah, yeah. So like. Okay, so let's break this down. And so like what if I'm. If I'm doing 100k a month and that's what my team looks like, what is it? Because you've got a few other elements here that we need to master. So you've got things like under attract, you've got candidate funnel 2.0 inbound marketing, marketing source of team, which we've spoken about. So I'm assuming it's just making those more efficient. Making like getting even more out of them. You've then got. Yeah. Dial in sourcing teams. I'm assuming it's. Yeah, just make it like improving them. You've got rock niche events, I'm assuming talking about your strategy of how you're always being omnipresent and attracting people. You've got systemized, systemized ops, high PAs, API, automation, dial in metrics. Like. Yeah. What is it that you found consistently at that stage? Agency owners have got really good at that has enabled them to do these 100k a month. What are the things that stand out to you? Are those things that you've broken down?

Well, all of them. At some point you need to have pretty much all of them to be consistent with. As long as the lifeblood of your business is like the clients that are coming in. So as long as you've got good platinum clients that you're looking after, giving you repeat business and then making sure. Yeah. Like things like Zapier clay, like all the things that you can work on optimization and optimization. So you can make things a little bit more efficient, that's going to increase revenue as well. And then just staying on top of making sure the team's delivering like it's just. Yeah, you're just overseeing the business and you check in core KPIs so you have a good dashboard of visual. Visual dashboard, A CEO dashboard, I call it. Of like non metrics.

Let's break that down.

Yeah.

What does that normally look like?

So it'll be client leads, so outreach. So like how many have you outreached per week? Like, how many client leads have come in? How many client meetings have you had? How many clients have you closed? How many live jobs have you got? What is the value of the live jobs? What's a live job to CV sent ratio? What's the CV to interview ratio? What's the interview to deal ratio? And then obviously you've got your standard ops costs and staffing costs and then your profit margins. So like every month you'll see, okay, I made 72% profit this, this month. Next month I might made 55% profit. And then so they're all a lifeblood of like, none. Obviously the number one metrics you look at is interviews. So like, if I know my interview conversion ratio to deal is 3 to 1 or 4 to 1, I know we've won this amount of interviews, I know we've got this amount of deals coming in this month. As long as you've got that dashboard. And then obviously you can go into a lot more detail in terms of like the cash flow side of things as well. But I just know that like the client leads, outreach, the client leads coming in, the client meetings, the conversion, the live jobs is a good metric. So you know, like the live jobs of like, if you've got 85 live jobs, for example, I know we've got a healthy amount of jobs. How many have sourced or how many book calls are in, how many even loom outreach, how many video outreach, how many book calls, how many CV sent, how many interviews? I think most agency owners will know those type of metrics.

So if I'm an agency owner at that point, I've got my CEO dashboard. Why am I spending a lot of my time on then? Like, what does that typically look like?

I mean, for me, I was always learning. So I'm like, still, like, I'm trying to look at refinements of my business. Of like. So we mentioned candidate funnel 2.0. So I was building things on like, how can I nurture these developers in the Northeast? So that would be. I create like active campaign sequences where we create touch points. So I know like every time a candidate's opened an email, they get a point score. Every time they download something, whether it's some value add, every time they're on LinkedIn or responding like there's things you can work on to attract candidates. But yeah, it's like making sure the team's in place. That look like every day like we do a meeting in the mornings, 9:30am so we'll go through the meeting with them like the three wins from yesterday and what they're looking to achieve today. Yeah, yeah.

What with the delivery, what with everyone or.

Yeah, I mean that's my team in my education company for the recruitment agency. My business partner Dan, my brother does that.

Okay, cool. So in like where. Okay. And then like if I'm, if I've really got this going then what have you typically seen in terms of like, like where did the profit margin sit then? Because like this is the, a big part of. I feel like what you teach is like you are building recruitment agents in the different, different way. You're leveraging tech, you're leveraging like resource, you're systemizing what you do so you're less reliant on. So like what have you typically found in you know, the agencies that you work with? Like if I'm doing yeah, 100k a month, what does that then typically look like profit wise?

Yeah, generally 50 to 60%.

Really?

So yeah, we're at 50, 60% and a lot of people that are in our elite Mastermind that do 100k months around about 50, 60%. The reason why it'll vary, it just depends if the agency only decides to make some placements. So like one of the agency owners still makes like because he's got 20k 25k average fees, he'll still pull in one or two himself. So he's not paying the 20 or 30% commission he's paying to recruiter for example and his team. So yeah, typically the profit margins you're looking 50 or 60%. Some averages it does depend but because we outsource a lot with the sourcing obviously like these are low cost as opposed to traditionally what it used to be is like it's all in office employees. Yeah. Where you pay in salary, national insurance, like pension, all of this type of things and the higher salaries so you can, you can get a higher profit margin. But for me I would personally then I mean the goal after that recruitment agency, everyone's thinking well the next level for me was education and now software to get me to nine figures. But it's like that means you've got a revenue producing asset business that is spent on cash every month. Once eventually it starts running without you that you can use to invest in property or the ventures, you might go and start software, you might invest in other companies, you might do something else. As an entrepreneur that's like a goal for a lot of recruitment agency owners is like they don't want to be in recruitment forever, especially in the trenches, doing it forever. Unless you're going for exit. So I don't help. That's not my forte in terms of like if you want to go and exit and go to 40, 50, 100 employees plus, I'm sure there's other people out there that are more experienced to help, but most people don't really want to do that and it's very hard, it's a hard slog to exit the company. Recruitment agency I think starts on 95% of businesses don't sell. So the sweet spot is like have it as a revenue producing asset and then go and invest in other things and keep it operating.

That's why you put convert profit to wealth.

Yeah.

So why, so what I just want to get your take on then. Like we've broken down a lot. I think there's so many things in there that would be really helpful for, for people to go through each stage. I'm sure may have come across things online, but I feel like people definitely in our industry are really like advocating like AI and the like tech element. Just like not being a good thing in the sense of like oh, I've just like LinkedIn just wrote this job ad for me. I use the AI function. It was terrible. Just got this outreach message. It was terrible. So I'm sure this is why you've mentioned, you know, tech, AI, chat, GPT. But then a lot of the things that you've mentioned a lot are things like loom, voice notes, all that. And that's the one to one element, right? That that's going to be. There will be obviously tools at different points where you can put things in and it generates a voice or whatever. But like how, how are you balancing that? Because I feel like there is a balance there. Right. I think you'd be foolish to really lean against like I'm not going to use any of this because I just feel like it's going to make everything unauthentic and like in person impersonalized. But a few times you've broken down your systems, it does involve a human being sending a personalized video or whatever. So like how, how do you talk about that balance with your clients? Because I'm sure that's something that makes people skeptical or a bit like I'm not sure this is going to work, James, or I don't want this to be the case when people receive things from me.

Yeah, but you mentioned obviously hit the nail on the head, Hisham, with using automation to a point. But you're never going to replace the human element. So everything that we do with the outreach is still going to have a human point of contact. It's just leveraging it to get it there. But also it's using AI in the right way. So the reason why some AI messages just don't hit is because people aren't training the AI in the right way and given the right descriptions for it to not sound AI generated, for example. So I always like would use it and leverage it but not like be fully dependent on it. And I think yeah, it's a balance between not automating AI everything but for instance, like clear.com for example, of how we build out these playbooks, these recruitment playbooks of a live lead that can be fully automated with the full email outreach. But then you would do the email outreach, but then you would do maybe a customize personalized loom video or LinkedIn video to outreach with a client. So yeah, it's definitely a balance, but it's definitely like people that take advantage of this early like will win for sure, but you don't. You're never going to automate the full process of recruitment. You're always still going to speak to candidates, you're still going to influence a candidate to take a job and you're still going to influence a client to work with you and you're still going to influence the client to make an offer to a candidate and make the placement. Like these elements are always like the human contact.

And then I have to ask because I feel like again like your whole thing is about helping agency owners build like a different type of recruitment business. It's very marketing led, it's automation led, it's systems led. But again, I think in our industry, what, what I feel like personally, if you're in a recruitment agency right now, you don't have your own business. One of the quickest ways you can stand out is actually by being willing to pick up the phone and that you're, you're building a software business from my, from everything that I've read and learn, like a big element of these successful SAS companies is outbound and actually picking up the phone. It's like a lot of the things that you've broken down doesn't really involve from you. Correct me if I'm wrong, but on the agency owner not really doing, you know, cold calling, sprints and these types of things. Like where does this fit in for you just said that obviously there's a personalized element, the human element. But how, how do you, how do you feel about like your agency owners and your clients getting good at selling and you know, sell it, you know, uncovering issues and challenges and using outbound as a tool.

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean in my education company we, we use unbound. Like we have dialers. I have said as the dial leads, but they're warm leads but the dial. So cold calling like it can still be an option. I mean for me personally like and, and everyone that I've taught in the program, I just had an ethos from day one when I started the agency. I will not make a call. Call. Okay, Okay. I think this was like eight, nine years ago. Everyone was like. I think because when you're in an industry where you come into work when you used to be recruiter and the first thing was just on the phone all the time, it still works but it's up to you. Like it can just be, it's just another channel. Cold outbound is just another channel. Like email outbound, LinkedIn, video, voice, note, AI follow ups. Like everything's just like a channel. So you can choose to put that in if you want. Like if you're buying back your time with everything else and you've got a two hour slot of fire mode where you're going to do cooldown bound for two hours a day, do it. But to find a cold out Mount Dallas is very hard. Like people don't want to cold call.

Where does it fit in your business then?

In our education company we do unbound darling.

But I'm assuming your intention about who they're calling, right? Is it people that have opened X number of emails?

It would only ever be if they've wanted to download a workbook or something of value for that we give them then we would give them an outbound dial.

Right.

And if they're interested. But again the conversions are low. It's a numbers game. So like my outbound dialers are targeted to do 150, 200 dials a day and from that they might have three good conversations. The connection rate on a cold amount dial you're looking at like 1% to like 3% of like where you're going to get a conversation. So you need to like this is why when you build a business, having dialers is a different business. So it's a different culture, it's a different type of person you're hiring like because not everyone wants to do it and those people are again high egos or like unbound, hyperactive, like wanting to get things done. So you need to be in a high driven company like a grant card owned type sales company. But most people don't want to create that type of business. So the only way called unbounder work really for me would be in an office where everyone's like pumped up and everyone's like ready to do dialing and everyone's doing it together. That's the only way it's going to work with the energy. But that's very labor intensive and that would have to come from you as the agency owner to drill everyone to make dials so you'll get burned out and you just don't want to do it anymore. So I leave that for maybe the bigger agencies and everything else. Or you can hire, outsource it or you can add it in, it's fine. Like it's, it's not a big thing. It's not against, I'm against cold outbound, it's, we use it in one of our companies but again it's just a.

Channel because that's the thing. Like when you think about what from your perspective a 100k a month recruitment business looks like, you haven't got like 360 recruiters in there.

No, never would. I just, I just don't believe in it. I get so flawed. It's beyond like everything I've learned. To get to 10 million plus now in my life is like leverage and keeping things simple and focus on the few, not the many. Get one thing right before you go on to something else. How is a360 recruiter going to be great at marketing, Going to be great at cold email outreach, going to be great at cold dialing, going to be great at getting a client, pitching a client, then find len sourcing on LinkedIn, then doing outreach on LinkedIn, then messaging on LinkedIn, then managing the diary that, managing their emails, speaking to candidates on the phone, trying to get interview feedback interviews, trying to close a deal, trying to count off a deal, trying to make sure they're staying in rebate, trying to make sure you like the client's paying on time and then going back to Dream 100, then going to pitch them, going to events, going to meet them like it's impossible. Like it's. That is so undated it's beyond belief. And any good360 recruiter wouldn't need to work for an agency, I don't think. Start on your own, you'll make way more money. They'll come and do my course or someone else's. Like, it's like they wouldn't need to do that unless they're getting shares in the company in equity, which is totally fine and that's good. So there's some businesses I used to work for, one that would give you share equity and some people have done very well out of that, but they're few and far between those type of companies.

Like I, I agree with you. I mean my, my business helps those people with those issues.

Yeah, right.

Free training and stuff. But from my point of view, if I, I do feel like, I don't know what you think about this, but a big part of why I feel like it's going to take a long time for that model to change like in a drastic way in terms of like more companies don't have that model than do is where they adopt some of the things that you teach. And so many people, so many agency owners don't. So they come from an ex frank group or whatever or even just a small agency and they've seen how it's been done.

Exactly.

And they're like, I'll just build that. Maybe I'll just hire a couple of people and then we'll make it work or whatever. And so I do feel like a big part of like so many companies I speak to, that's, that's their model. But a lot of the time they don't have anything like what we spoke about today in their business.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, and I don't, don't, don't know the other way that they don't know the alternative.

Yeah. But that comes down to not being like interested in business. Like if you're really interested in business and you look at the fundamentals of like a business like you would start to unpack thinking this model is flawed. And I'm going to do things slightly different because people like, yeah, look, it doesn't not work, but it's just very, very hard and very manual. And yeah, like you're not really building a moat around your agency because you're building no assets. Like you're just hiring people. It's a people business. And yes, recruitment is a people business, but you can still leverage yourself a little bit more and de risk it. But yeah, a lot of people go into starting an agency just seeing what they've done before in the previous agency and think it's going to work, which is why what, 70, 80 of businesses fail within five years.

So yeah, I think if you're listening to this and that is your business, all I would say the smart thing to do would be what things that you shared today can I implement, right, to help me get more out of my 360 recruiters. Right. Would that be the marketing sourcing team? Would that be like, you know, I.

Mean you don't need to change those things. Yeah, don't change a full model. But there might be one or two things you could implement that gives you a little bit more leverage and it increases profit margin and de risk things a little bit. So whether it's like having your 360, having a sourcer, having VA, having some automation is if like any one of those elements you could add in. So it doesn't mean you change your model overnight. Which is another thing I would never recommend is like from day one coming in and suddenly changing your model like you're already used to, like it'll take time, it might just be 10% element here and there that you're taking and then you start to make a little shift and you might have a hybrid model between that.

So before, before we round this out then I wanted to, and it is sort of a nice segue, I wanted to ask a, a friend of mine who works in recruitment, been in an agency for 10 years, has an opportunity to have equity, exit all these types of things. He's a 360 recruiter, that's sort of what he's done, really enjoys your stuff. And I was like, look, what, what would you love me to ask him? I think this is the perfect question. Just so then to get your take on a lot of recruiters listen to this. They work for a company and they work for a company that isn't as open to having a systemized approach. Right. They're doing it because it's always worked a certain way. So like the question is what from your perspective, what could be some of like the low hanging fruit a consultant could implement to his or her desk that they could see results from, that they've learned from this because we spoke about, from the agency owner.

Right.

A lot of people listen to this, might be championing their manager and owner to like we would need this product, we want to do this but oftentimes they get shut down. So what would your response be to that or what comes to mind?

Yeah, it is a tough one. I feel for people like that because I was in their shoes at some point and got frustrated where I was because things wouldn't change if you're allowed. Like I would leverage my time back so I would be hiring a VA on the side that is just going to delegate and do a lot of things. So like do LastPass share. It depends. I don't know what company they're in but they might have a IP block around like some of like their logins for certain things. But I would try and hire a VA to buy back some of my time just to organize candidates. I would maybe even still hire a marketing sourcer that's going to do some video outreach and voice on a follow up for me for candidates and help me source some candidates and pay them so they could pay them out on their own wages and hire them freelance for £1,000amonth and if they get an extra candidate a month, that's an extra deal like that could leverage his time. Yeah, but it is a tricky one. Like I would just be trying to, trying to buy back my time so I can double my output. So how can I get 40 hours extra per week? So doing the activity inventory and then hiring the source or a VA would be the first thing. I don't know if you would be allowed to do automation on a LinkedIn account, but something like that, email automation and then leveraging ChatGPT and maybe leveraging clay.com, like research app for some AIPS. But yeah, it's, it's a tough position he's in. But yeah, I would start with those.

No, I think that's smart. Like it's not going to cost a whole lot. You'd learn a lot actually. I think there's also the net positive actually learning of actually doing that.

Right.

Writing your systems down, outsourcing it, getting someone on board to do it. I, I think that's, that's where I'd probably go. Like could you, could you hire a VA out of your own money? Could you even get to the point where you have a market source, as you said, resource that goes out and does some of the legwork or even have someone that does your market map up and does that like, you know, I mean, yeah, awesome. All right, we've covered a lot. That's the journey then. So obviously if we get to that point, you know, I think what, what I just love about, what I love about what you teach is just the systems piece. I think that's what people need to take away. Like you are helping people avoid having so much chaos in their business. These people start this entrepreneur journey because they want to do it on their own, they think they can do it better, they want their own business. But a lot of people that I speak to, they work in a recruitment business, they don't have a recruitment business. So I think, you know, like, for me, if you're listening to this, it's just about what things can I take, how can I challenge maybe the status quo of like how I've been doing things, kind of be open minded to trying some of the things that I've learned today and with the simple goal of can you get more of your time back and actually get more freedom back? Which is probably some of the things that you thought about when you started that entrepreneurial journey. Right. But it hasn't quite planned out or maybe you've had moments where things have gone well and you feel like have more freedom and then it's been challenging. So that's just what I love about this is like the system and everything that you teach. So hopefully people listening to this can get a ton of value.

Yeah, hopefully. I always be curious, like you should always be wanting to learn and listen. So like people that are successful, like, and I've got many successful friends now in Dubai, everyone's still curious and always learning. So they're always investing in themselves, reading books, getting mentors and always curious about how things are done. Whereas what I've seen in some of the recruitment world, and I was one of them, was like, no, no, it's done this way and you've got blinkers on. For you to be successful, you need to know and look at different things, how are things done in business and try and be a little bit more open minded with different solutions, try and test and try these things to sort of be open. But hopefully people have took a couple of things like I said. Even if it's a 360 model, is it elements that you can implement that can be systemized or a different unique hybrid strategy that you could put into your own agency?

Love it. James. Yeah, thank you.

Thanks for having me, bro.