SPEAKER_02 0:00

Being put through my pace is like I didn't really understand I could be. Learning that my limits were significantly further away than I thought they were. A CEO role is five years. Any CEO who sticks around for longer, unless the thing is exponentially growing, they need to get out of the way because other people are developing, or but other people are coming through. 80% of recruitment is people and systems and process and empathy and psychology, and only about 20% is market knowledge or sector knowledge. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I'm I'm I'm very agnostic of that thing.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Ironically, literally the same time that Chat GPT went live, you can track that was the beginning of what was probably the hardest three years in the last three decades.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

But there were some really big goals made in that first year, yeah, like major shareholders exiting and um entire closures of offices. And all the things that everybody sadly has to do. What we did do, and this is part by design strategy, and part by just everything falling into place, was the business was 90 odd percent per month when I took it over. And after two years it was 50-50.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

This episode is proudly sponsored by River, the conversational intelligence platform built specifically for recruitment and staffing businesses. Recruitment firms generate huge amounts of valuable information every day through client calls, candidate interviews, vacancy briefings, and business development conversations. The challenge is that most of that information never makes it into systems, processes or decision making. River captures, transcribes and analyses every conversation automatically, transforming unstructured discussions into actionable intelligence for recruiters, managers and business leaders. Whether that's improving CRM hygiene, generating candidate and client summaries, identifying commercial opportunities, coaching, or uncovering trends across the business, River helps staffing companies get more from every conversation they have. Unlike generic AI note-taking tools, River is built specifically for the recruitment industry with workflows, automations, and insights designed around the way recruiters actually work. If you'd like to see how leading staffing businesses are using a conversational intelligence to gain a competitive advantage, visit River.ai and book a demo today. This week on Recruiting Alchemy, I'm joined by James Whitfield, a man whose career started on the parade ground at Sandhurst in the British Army before he found his way into recruitment at Michael Page. Since then, James has set up and run teams all over the world, run a life sciences business, been on the board of a professional football club, chaired APSCO, worked alongside a founder at Kernel, and then returned to lead the business he left behind, this time as executive chair. He's also building a new MA advisory business on the side, and we'll get into the why he calls himself a finisher, not a starter, and what it's like being called back to lead what you once walked away from. James Wakefield, welcome to the show. Cheers, Andy, nice to be here. Thank you very much. Full disclosure, we know each other a bit, don't we? Um we so for the viewer, for the purpose of the viewers, James and I, we ran a sort of um what's the word? We ran a football team, but I was uh it's like a meme now um for many years. But um but the professional side of your life I've never really got to know in depth. So I'm very excited to find that out. It's been quite a journey. Um a storied one to say the least. Um so I'm intrigued to get into it. As you I think are aware, this show, there's only really one thing that we are consistent with, and it's something called the two beginnings. The first beginning is a bit about James Wakefield, where did the story begin? And the second is really typically it's uh if you've made the decision to step into entrepreneurship where that where that happened, where and why that when that happened. But your journey's been a little bit different, and I think it's a really interesting um story. So we'll we'll we'll come on to that in a minute. But for the benefit of all of those out there, tell us a little bit about um yeah, what was chapter one of the James Wakefield story? Where did it all begin?

SPEAKER_02 4:26

Well, are we going back to a farm up north?

SPEAKER_01 4:29

Well, you tell me right the right the way back. Give us some flavour.

SPEAKER_02 4:32

Okay. Um I grew up in Morkham and Lancaster, which is way up northwest, just before you get to the Lake District, um, after Manchester, before Scotland. Cockles? Basically, yes. And Tyson Fury. Exactly, although he's not actually from Morecambe and Lancaster. Oh, is he not? He just lived there for a bit. And now I think he lives on the Isle of Man.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Tax Tax haven. Yeah, yeah. Um I don't know much about Morecambe outside of the fact that it's it's sort of, I think of it as one of those frustratingly sort of beautiful but deprived northern towns. Is that a fair assessment or not?

SPEAKER_02 5:07

Yeah, it's it's it's very fair. I'd probably um put it more kindly than that, because the place itself, as I'm sure everybody would say about the place they grew up in, um, has got wonderful people, a wonderful warmth to it. And it's in one of the most naturally beautiful settings of any town I've ever been to in the world.

SPEAKER_03 5:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:23

But it's fair to say that for my whole life, up until probably about a decade ago, it was declining, it was shrinking. Yeah, there were never any jobs, there's hardly been any migration into the area in that time.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

Just people leaving rather than coming.

SPEAKER_02 5:35

Yeah, it was it was a it was a seaside town that had its heyday in the 30s and 40s, yeah. And um and then kind of sadly got quieter and quieter from the 60s onwards. Yeah. But um it's actually had a bit of a resurgence in the last 10 years. I think probably it's fair to say COVID might have done it a favour. Yeah. A lot of people have thought, oh my word, what am I doing living in the middle of Manchester or Liverpool or places like that? Um, and more flexibility has allowed it. And so it it is actually on a very, I'd say, natural regeneration journey now, not one that's sort of forced and involving big warehouse sort of um flats and the like. It's it's it's become a really nice place. So that's where I grew up. Um, grandpa was a farmer, dad's an artist, mum teaches people to ride horses.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Okay, so a creative kind of heritage, sort of genetic genetically.

SPEAKER_02 6:21

Yeah, and I got not one veto of the creativity. Oh no. I I am I am my mum in male form, and she's the she's the practical doing sexing, lifting one. Outdoorsy one.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Yeah, exactly. Got it, got it. So a Lancastrian boy by by by birth and by youth. Then what?

SPEAKER_02 6:42

Uh then um nobody in my family had ever been to university at that point. So I was the first person to go to university. I think the second was my nan. He went and studied fine art or Italian art after me. Um and then, you know, lots have followed. Um so I went up to Aberdeen to university, studied there for four years. Um, and then I was gonna go and work in the city, and I had a job with a Japanese bank. Um, but a couple of people pointed out that maybe um I was more suited to something a bit more outdoorsy, and uh I took a very sort of abrupt right turn and without any connection to it, I joined the army and got a place at Sandhurst. And um, you know, the next six years were in the army as an infantry officer, um, going all over the place and doing interesting stuff.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

So I'm not totally familiar, but Sandhurst is the military academy.

SPEAKER_02 7:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

How old are you at this point?

SPEAKER_02 7:32

Uh I came out to university at 22, I think. It's a four-year course in Scotland. So 22-ish. Um, and you do a year at Sandhurst if you get a place.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Where, but why? I mean, is that not like what what was the kind of if it's not in the family bloodline, it's not in the where did what was the inspiration? Was there a do you remember why there was there a moment in time you thought I'm gonna go to Sandhurst?

SPEAKER_02 7:52

I was fishing around and I was doing things like going and um calling people like the the camel trophy trophy and Operation Rally and things like that that went and did exciting things in interesting places because I did a um I did a stint in um Southern Africa in Zambia um when I was at university. I basically spent the summer working for a charity, and that had really kind of got me, oh wow, the world is amazing. Yeah. Um, and I literally ended up in an army recruiting office because somebody said, Why don't you go on and have a chat with them? They sent me over to York to meet with a recruiting officer. He very quickly said, Well, you may as well take the test and see if you can get a place at Sandhurst. And I did it within a few weeks. Wow. So it was a real quite abrupt turn. Yeah, yeah. Um, and never looked back from that. I mean, that was one of the uh not, I wouldn't say it was a decision, that was one of the best things that I fell into that I've ever fallen into.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Sandhurst, what a year's residential training?

SPEAKER_02 8:45

Yeah, a year being turned from a person who doesn't know one end of the rifle from the other to somebody who is commanding 30 odd blokes. Okay. Um and straight onto operations straight after Sandhurst. To where? Northern Ireland, first.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

Okay. In a period of calm at Northern Ireland?

SPEAKER_02 9:01

Relative to the period that had gone before it, yeah, but still um not so calm that we couldn't do anything other than um be moved around in helicopters, no road movements. You got out of your wits about you. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um and I did another tour of Northern Ireland about a year or two later, and then um my final operational tour was in Iraq in 2003. Okay. Highlights? Uh Iraq in 2003 was was probably it's a weird thing to say because there were lots of challenges and lots of what you might call difficulties, as you can probably imagine. I can imagine. But in terms of what we achieved and in terms of the impact that I felt that we had, and to an extent I had because of the job I had, uh, I don't think I've ever packed so much into another six months in my life since. Really? Amazing. What regiment are you in? Queen's Lancashire Regiment.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

Is that because you're from Lancashire? Yeah. Or is that just is it just happenstance?

SPEAKER_02 9:57

Local boy, Lancashire lad, Queen's Lancashire Regiment.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Right, okay. I've never really totally understood the the ontology of the regiments, you know.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

Ontology? That's a great word.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

That's a good word, isn't it? You like that? Taxonomy, yeah. I got loads of them. Um so but you're you you are talking about proper frontline hard hats and regular line infantry. Yeah, you are properly you're you're an active soldier. Yeah, very an active yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, Jesus Christ. Do you look back on that time with yeah, what what are your enduring memories of that period of your life?

SPEAKER_02 10:34

Uh being put through my paces like I didn't really understand I could be. Yeah. Um, learning that my limits were significantly further away than I thought they were. And also significantly um, I don't know if the words higher or lower, but just learning what you're capable of. Yeah. Um that tour in Iraq was was was pretty um transformational in terms of what it did for me from a confidence perspective. Yeah. Um and then yeah, it got to the the point where I'd planned actually to leave a year or two before that, but I stayed in order to do that tour. Right. And so I was ready to go, and I'd kind of done everything I wanted to do, and then a bit more in that period of my life. Right. And I was ready to kick on and try a different career.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Got it. Because so did you always see the army as a period in your life? Yeah. Rather than a career.

SPEAKER_02 11:27

It was something I wanted to do. Um, and lots of wise people back then would say, you either do four, five, or six years, or you do 16 and you get the amazing pension. Don't go somewhere in between. Right. That in between it's no man's land. Yeah. If you come out, I came out at 28 and I was young and still looked about 11, and I and I could start a new career without really breaking stride. If you come out in your 30s or your 40s, it's more challenging and you've become a bit more institutionalized and it's a more difficult adaptation. So I'd always intended to do a shorter period, and yeah, yeah, it turns out if you just shy six years.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

And do you are you connected to the military community today, or is that just a period of your life that's kind of come and gone?

SPEAKER_02 12:07

I'm more connected to that community than maybe the university community. Um, I've got some very, very good friends who you know I can keep in touch with, and even if one's living in Florida and another one's living in uh Lithuania, the people who I do connect with, the sorts of mates that you do actually have a Skype call with or a call or a Teams call with every now and again.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

There's there's something about it that people say that it's like that bond for life thing because you've been through stuff that you just can't really ever um you can't emulate it anywhere else, right? It's it's a it's a unique situation to be into with with other men, essentially.

SPEAKER_02 12:40

Yeah, yeah. And women. And women, yeah. Okay, on the front line even then? Well, there was always medics and engineers and artillery officers, and yeah, they're always attached to the infantry and doing everything that we would we would be asked to do.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

Yeah I feel like I'm about to say something that might get me cancelled. But do we we do have female sold frontline soldiers today?

SPEAKER_02 13:01

Absolutely do now.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

And we never but did you when you were a soldier?

SPEAKER_02 13:04

So at that point it was um the other arms that were attached to the infantry. But as I say, if you're a medic attached to an infantry unit, or an artillery officer, or an engineer, you're doing exactly the same thing, you're carrying the same rifle, you're taking the same risk. There was literally, you know, it's only the the what you got, what are called the teeth arms, the bayonet arms, the people who are designed to do nothing but fight. Yeah, it's only those that at one point restricted. Right. Now they don't at all, and I think that's a great thing.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

Amazing. So 28, you're um you're 28-ish. You're um you're you've been blessed with superb genetics, because you even today look half the uh you've always looked 10, 15 years younger than you actually are. Um so you're 28, a baby-faced 28-year-old, you decided that the army period in your life has come to an end. How do you get into recruit? How does that translate to a job in recruitment?

SPEAKER_02 13:59

Just a lack of imagination, really. Um I had two really good mates, one who I'd been in the army with, the other Charlie Appleyard, who um you know very well indeed. Um, one was at Michael Page, the other was at S3, Huxley. Yeah. Both were doing really well. Both were, in my view, a bit like me and had similar aspirations and values and um ambition. And I thought, well, they're doing really well, and they've been doing it for a couple of years each.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

So I'll copy that and I'll do that too. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 14:26

And then did you do the classic kind of like get a rec to rec and get loads of interviews? No, I went direct because I had the advantage of Charlie and Adam's advice. So um I picked the sort of the five firms that I wanted to work for. Yeah. Um, Charlie told me not to go for Huxley, which was fair enough. Um, two of them were uh Michael Page and Robert Walters, which was fairly obvious. But both of those firms had a track record of hiring people out of the forces, especially ex-army officers. And if you had what it took to be a recruiter, they would accelerate your career from a leadership perspective. Right. So Michael Page basically said, listen, if you turn out to be a good recruiter, we will push you through as quickly as possible. Yeah. That appealed. And so I picked Michael Page in the city office doing front office recruitment for um banks doing leverage finance and structured finance and the like.

SPEAKER_01 15:11

Okay, so sort of professional, fairly big money, I would imagine, in terms of salaries that you're working on.

SPEAKER_02 15:18

About as big as it got because it was 2004. So it was just before that sort of leveraged and structured finance boom. Yeah. Um, and it was everything from the banks on the sell side to the funds on the buy side. Yeah. Did you were you good?

unknown 15:33

I was pretty good.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

I love it. I love it. I would never ever have doubted you. So I I um shout out for Nick Kirk here. Uh Michael Page, who's uh an old friend of mine, I remember saying, Oh yeah, we've got a mutual friend, you know, um James Wakefield. He said, I remember James. He says, I remember how much money he used to get paid. Um so obviously, by all accounts, your commission checks are fairly healthy back in the day. So you join Michael Page, big business, probably the largest recruiter in the UK, one of.

SPEAKER_02 16:04

I think it was the biggest professional purity in the world.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

It was three or four thousand people at that point. Yeah. So you joined a very big business. Did it feel at home quite quickly? Did you were you like I want to build a career here?

SPEAKER_02 16:15

Uh it was a bit easy in that regard. The city office in particular had pretty much a succession of ex-army officers. Oh, really? So there was like almost like a weird, I don't know what the word is, but a weird group of people who were a year or two or three or five ahead of me. Um got it. Um and to be fair, they were as good as they were. So I was managing a team of five within nine months. Right. Um, and and then 13 by the end of year two. Right. Um, and that's what I wanted. I wanted to like to lead things and you know, try and affect positive change. And so how long did you spend at Micropage? Uh I was started in February or March 2004, and I left in the middle of 2007, so shy of shy of three and a half years.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

Yeah. And then um what do you remember about that period in your life? I was because you were living in London, single man?

SPEAKER_02 17:10

Yeah, well, this is when you and I were playing football on Sundays together. So this was that sort of period of core MDP old boys, which is the football team that we used to play together in. Um, and it because I'd had a wonderful time in the army in my 20s, but uh, you know, the army is a slightly more constrained and less free environment. You know, you sort of you know you walk into the office on a Monday and you're told that you're going to Germany on Saturday, and there's not any sort of conversation about it. So I'd say that that was kind of when that was probably what you might what you might describe as you know as your salad days, that sort of period in your life where you're young, you're free, you're single, you're earning a lot of money for the first time, yeah, and you've got a good group of mates and everything's possible.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

Yeah. And so you decided that it's time to make a change for Michael Page. What are the different options over to you? Because obviously, a very, very energetic, I think of you as a supremely ambitious man. Did you consider going on your own?

SPEAKER_02 18:10

I did. And I was I considered going on my own with another guy that I worked with. A firm approached me that didn't have a business but had a whole load of money um for private equity, and they wanted to set something up. And their pitch to me was that I could set up the contingent side of a search firm, which I'm in hindsight very glad that I decided wasn't quite for me. Um, but at pretty much exactly the same time, one of my major competitors had called me, and their pitch was listen, you don't need to set something up. We'll give you um, you know, a meaningful stake in this. We really want you to be part of the future of the business. There's already something here. Um, you know, we'll we'll make it like it's an entrepreneurial play. And I think maybe at that point, um, and this is maybe something we'll come on to in a bit, I thought that sounds that sounds the right, like the right, the right balance for me. Yeah, yeah. And I again, I think since then I've thought, well, you know, what would it, what would it have been like if I'd set something up? Um but no, I just I just didn't.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

I went for that opportunity, and yeah, and I never really looked back from that. Yeah, because you spent 14 years there, right? Yeah. And you went to to become the CEO. Yeah. And I think you and I had a conversation before this, this, and I think one of the common, and I truthfully, I think I felt a bit like this, is I couldn't see a sort of I couldn't really see a road ahead at the business I worked in. And I kind of was like, right, the only alternative to start on my own. But I think there was always a middle ground where had I been more confident, I might have gone in, because there's tons of recruitment companies out there looking for succession, looking for somebody to come in and and you know, whether it's an MBO type candidate or somebody who's got a somebody who's got it in them to assume some responsibility. And I think a lot of people don't consider that because there are so many firms around. Um reflection, was do you do you think that still think that was the right choice for you?

SPEAKER_02 20:03

Yeah, I think not least because at that point I'd not done exploring. Um, and within a year of joining Cobalt, I'd sat down with the two founders, um, Tim and Adam, and they'd said, listen, we want to go international, which to be fair was pretty brave because this is mid-2008 and the world is um starting to work out what's happened with the financial crisis. But they said, Todd it, we're not gonna batten down the hatches, we're just gonna go international. And we'd like you to do it because we're not at the point in our lives where we think we're we're right for that and we think you'd be best at it. So it wasn't quite there's a ticket and go, but it it was we're gonna go international, and James, you you you you'd be one of the first to go, right? And that was for me, like I I still get excited start walking around an airport on the way somewhere now at 50. Yeah, to be doing that at that point, and yeah, I'm not I'm not even 30 yet. And somebody says, Do you want to just go off to the other side of the world? I'm like, Yeah, absolutely. Actually, I I am 30, I'm early 30s at that point. But yeah, I I I hadn't done exploring, yeah. And it was an opportunity to go and set things up all over the world, which we then did for the next five, six years. Yeah, and where did you well you went to Abu Dhabi? I went to Abu Dhabi and um I lived in Abu Dhabi for the vast majority of that period. Um, but pretty quickly we recognised that the business in Abu Dhabi could only ever get so big, it's actually a very small place with a very small population. Yeah, um, but then we set up in Germany and we set up in Singapore and we set up in New Zealand.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

And you and you were this is all under your remit.

SPEAKER_02 21:32

Initially, I was helping those slightly more junior um managers or directors to set them up, and then it naturally sort of occurred that I ended up becoming MD of International, and and at one point we had more flags in the map than really made sense.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

Um, so we removed a few of those. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I I spent from 2000 and probably 2010 through to 2017 doing 100 nights on a plane a year and just I was just gonna say, I mean, f London to New Zealand.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

New Zealand is a it's a hell of a portfolio.

SPEAKER_02 22:03

I mean, it's awful for the environment. And but I mean I'm talking, I'm thinking about myself back then. I did three or four trips where I went all the way around the world. So I went sort of from Abu Dhabi to Singapore, Singapore, New Zealand, New Zealand around to the US, I fly a ship in Vegas or wherever, and then back to the UK for a few days to see the mothership and then back out again. And I did that more than once.

SPEAKER_01 22:22

Right, it's a lot.

SPEAKER_02 22:28

Yeah, why not? Experiencing new places. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

And if you're, you know, if you're um young, free, and single, then you know, why not make it make the most of it?

SPEAKER_02 22:37

I did meet my wife quite soon after I got to Abu Dhabi. Um, thankfully, she is somebody who is fleet of foot as well and loves travelling as well. She'd intended to go to Australia and meet a surfer with long blonde hair and instead met a boring Brit with short brown hair. Um, but but yeah, we were both of that mind. You know, we went to some incredible places during that period because it was just the two of us before kids. And yeah, you know, we'd be Beirut one weekend and Sri Lanka the next.

SPEAKER_01 23:00

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess, and I don't know the Middle East particularly well, but you you you're within four hours of a lot of places, aren't you? You could go pretty much anywhere, and obviously I think it's probably Dubai is the hub, but you can you can get pretty much anywhere from Dubai these days.

SPEAKER_02 23:16

Yeah, yeah, you absolutely could. You absolutely could. And um, and you know, half the year is obscenely hot, so you tend to want to do some travelling during that time. Um, but even when it's even when it's just work traveling, I'm going back to places I've been sort of three, four times a year. I find you get to know a country better when you when you're working in it. When people who you are working with are living there and they are from that place, you get to really know places, whereas a holiday's up to holiday, yeah. You're only going to see the surface of it.

SPEAKER_01 23:41

Yeah, I mean, I I'd never lived abroad professionally, you know. So I've travelled, I did a ski season, so I've done some bits, but I've never like lived in a I've never gone and put root, you know, set up camp in a got a job in a. I wish I wish I had, it's probably one regret. I've got not haven't got many, but it's probably one. And I remember um, you know, my boss at S3 saying, like, you know, you can't beat it from a from a sort of personal growth point of view. Yeah, it it changes how you see everything, you know, going and doing business in another culture.

SPEAKER_02 24:12

The biggest thing for me, and this is part business, but also just part life. I think I see the UK through very different eyes to an awful lot of um my friends, my colleagues, um, people I know, and I really appreciate this place. I really do see this country in a positive light because I've genuinely lived and worked in so many places. Yeah, it does give you a sense of perspective and it makes you realise just how great a place this is.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

Yeah, exactly. And look, you know, it's incredible. Look, the the UK has got a huge number of issues, you know, structural, economic, political, but it's still an amazing place to live. It's the fifth largest economy, fifth or sixth largest economy in the world. Um, and obviously it's incredibly easy to go, oh, well, why don't you just go and live in Dubai? And I'm like, mate, go and live in Dubai if you want. Yeah, go and give it a go. Go and give it a go. See after a few years how you feel living in a 50-degree heating place on it.

SPEAKER_02 25:02

I mean, it's it's a it's an old and trite saying, but the grass is always greener. You never know about the challenges and the structural issues of other countries. Yeah. Because why would you? You just see what's attractive. Yeah. Whereas everywhere it's got its structural challenges. Yeah. Everywhere it's got its issues.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

Exactly, exactly. And yeah, it drives me, it drives me kind of nuts when um when you when you see it, you know. Um so, okay, so you're living in the Middle East, you are the director of international, you work for the two founders. How's that triangle?

SPEAKER_02 25:35

Pretty good, actually. Um, in fact, very good. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been there for a decade and a half. Um, one of them stayed in the UK, the other moved to Mitch actually moved overseas. Um, and between us, the two of us really drove what was international. Yeah. We quite quickly moved the business from something that was 100% London-based to, you know, at its peak, it was, I don't know, 75% of its operations, its revenue, its people, everything was overseas. Yeah. So the the non-UK part was the biggest part of the business. Yeah. Um, and I think I went it wasn't just the three of us. There was a brilliant MD in Germany. There is still a brilliant MD in Germany. There was good people running the other countries as well. Yeah. Um, but we yeah, we had it, we had a we had a really good group of people, and um it was, it was a it was a good dynamic.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

Yeah. And what is the at this point? Do you want to be the CEO? Yeah. And have you made that clear? Yeah. And because I always think the challenge, and it depends on every situation, is is unique, but getting founders to step away is easier said than done. And and my experience, and actually, my old boss was like you know, Nigel Fox, who you know as well, was like, you know, there are times where someone says you just got to get out of someone's way. Like you, and that's physical, you know. If you're in the office all the time, you just can't help yourself but chipping in. Is that an experience you had? Eventually, did you have to be like, look, lads, you're gonna have to give me some room to do my thing here?

SPEAKER_02 27:04

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I'm you know, I'm I'm now working with one of them again. Yeah. Um, and we still occasionally have the conversations where I sort of go, and he goes, Yeah, all right, fair enough. Um, but but no, it it because we we openly talked about that, yeah, and because the business had never had a CEO before, so we were sort of starting a sort of an executive leader team from scratch, yeah. I think we got it right most of the time.

SPEAKER_01 27:26

Yeah, yeah. And so you've been there, you you're in this business for an awfully long time, 14 years. It's a great, uh great innings. What did you, you know, if you think about the things you learned an sorry, I'm gonna ask you another question, but international has that become kind of part of your sort of calling card skill set? Have you been is that what is that where you would say is that oh well actually I'm the I'm the guy that takes you a international type thing?

SPEAKER_02 27:54

Is that that was definitely that was definitely my um my sort of biggest um you know thing on the CV back in 2021 because that's what I'd done. And I think also it was not just the being international and setting things up, it was understanding how to run a very international business from a mothership, whether that be in the UK or the US or wherever. The biggest challenge I think with running an international business is not just being the guys out in the outposts, but it's being the guys in the centre and recognising how challenging it is and recognising the difference in achievement to somebody who maybe one day is doing a deal, the next day is hiring somebody, firing somebody, the next day they're fixing the printer. Yeah. Whereas in you know the motherships in London, it's an awful lot easier. All of those um natural biases that come into leadership, you know, proximity bias, recency bias, they all favour whoever is closest to the people in the business. Yeah, of course. So so I think my calling cards were yeah, setting up and sometimes just deciding not to be in places anymore, um, but also running something where you really do run it as an international business.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

Yeah. What do you think? Like, why were you successful at that? I mean, and I guess are you are you ruthless? I'm not ruthless, but I'm objective. Right. And I guess what I mean by that is you know, you know, when you are running something from a distance, such as an international office, you don't have that sort of warmth, or that that's not fair. That's not the right word. What you don't have is that proximity and that kind of like water cooler stuff. So you're a bit like the the numbers aren't there. What we're doing about it. Do you know what I mean? So and that may, yeah, maybe objective and ruthless are are interchangeable depending on your perspective, your life perspective. But are you do you think you're good at that kind of stuff, like you know, being objective from a distance?

SPEAKER_02 29:43

I'm much better now than I was then. Really? You know, though that that's something that I've learned along the way. Yeah. Um that's the classic uh Rod Stewart. I wish that I knew then what I know now. Yeah, yeah. You you've got to learn this stuff unless you you you you know you're some sort of superstar. Yeah. So um so I've become better much, much better at that. Yeah. But also, you know, whenever if I if I ever see a problem, if I ever see underperformance, I go looking for why before I make a judgment. Always. Yeah. Always. Like even no matter what it is. Yeah. And and that helps because as long as you go looking for the why and you find out what that is, then when if you when you do make a ruthless decision or a decisive decision, yeah, it it's it's it's it's fair. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

Yeah, yeah. You've you've not it's not been it's not been a um a snap decision, it's you know been a well thought through one.

SPEAKER_03 30:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

Um so how long were you in the Middle East?

SPEAKER_02 30:33

Um, I lived there for uh eight years, but really for the last sort of four years of that, I was wasn't actually doing anything in the Middle East, I was doing all of the other stuff.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

Kids born there?

SPEAKER_02 30:43

Both kids born there, both will have Abu Dhabi on their passport forever. Right, okay. Look back on that period fondly. Yeah, really. I met my wife. Yeah, she's amazing, have two beautiful daughters, they're amazing. Yeah. Um, saved quite a lot of money. Yeah, that was nice, but that wasn't the reason to go, which was even maybe nicer in a way.

SPEAKER_01 30:59

Um they do say that it can be like a trap, the expat trap is a one if you fall into it, it's hard to get out. You become addicted to the income, the lifestyle, the tax.

SPEAKER_02 31:10

That's a choice, though. Yeah. And I didn't ever feel particularly comfortable amongst large groups of expats in places like Dubai. Right. I I would quite quickly be thinking I'd far rather be paying tax and actually in a pub with normal people. Right, okay. Um maybe that's so coming back was always part of the plan. It was for me. Uh it Chris would have probably preferred to go on and go to the US or Australia or wherever. Okay. But um, but the business needed to see. Yeah, she's British, right? She's Scottish. British, yes. I've I have to say she's Scottish because she's obviously a proud Scott. And she's listening. Hi, Chris.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

Um, but she had she ever lived in London?

SPEAKER_02 31:43

Yeah, so she's a she's a she's a lawyer um and she'd worked for big firms in in London. Okay. Um, and yeah, we we we decided to come back because it was also from the point of view of we had two little girls and um one of them was rapidly approaching school age. So you like it's that conversation about when we want kids to go to school, and and the UK is one of the best places in the world to go to school.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

Yeah, yeah. So um, so so tell us about the journey towards the end of your time at Cobalt. Um, and yeah, I'd love to know more about that.

SPEAKER_02 32:16

Um, yeah, so we actually did a whole load of other cool stuff over the next few years. I was CEO in London for about four years.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

So so yes, sorry, we've jumped ahead. So you you moved from international to become the group the company CEO, but still in Abu Dhabi.

SPEAKER_02 32:32

No, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 32:33

Oh, so you relocated back to London to become the CEO.

SPEAKER_02 32:35

Came back to London to become the business's first CEO. Right. Um, and we built an executive team and we had a cracking CFO at the time, and really good operations director, and and basically started to run the business. And Tim and Adam did that um that that sort of stepping back, and mostly that that was quite effective. And sometimes it's on the executive team to be better at their jobs than just to the the owners to step out of the way. But we went through that um and we were named International Recruitment Company of the year. Yeah, and we set up in the US, and we actually set up then um another two brands. So we did we did some really cool stuff, and it got to sort of um 2020, COVID hit. We were still a largely built environment focused recruiter, so perm mostly perm built environment, so real estate. And I think I've never I've not ever spoken to a CEO or a founder who had to furlough as many people as we did in the UK and Germany, or the German equivalent, because nothing happening. Literally, it was that it was right down to a skeleton crew and just attempt to keep all relationships warm and um and try and make sure that everybody who's furloughed isn't isn't giving up. Um so we got through that, and then obviously we experienced the same that everybody experienced, which is once it bounced, it bounced quite quickly. But I think having got the business through that period and having sort of sat down and we sort of said, Well, this is great, this is a really good business. We don't need any more new locations. We don't actually need anything new to be added for a while. So let's just run it. And I'm I'm not great at not being challenged. So you won't always want to move forward and just do yeah, yeah. I I think I I don't like I don't like not having a positive impact. So once something becomes samey, I'm I'm I tend to get uncomfortable quite quickly. Not in life, not like you know, with wife and children and everything, but certainly in terms of like what I'm doing and my purpose. Things got to be moving forwards.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

I've always thought of you as a man with like an like a restless energy. Yeah, you know, like you need to be at something all the time.

SPEAKER_02 34:34

Is that fair? Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. I still walk faster than anybody in the world apart from my mum. Um, and I actually, this is maybe a bias that I shouldn't um expose, but I have an inclination to like other people who walk fast too.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

I have never heard, you know. So what did you like about Dave? Well, he walks fast and I love him.

SPEAKER_02 34:54

He's you know, he goes places with a purpose. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

He moves other well, do you know what? There's probably something in it though. Maybe you know. Um okay, so so you're you so you I guess you've did you feel that at the end of your time at Cobalt, that perhaps you'd done everything you could. CEO, where do you go from there?

SPEAKER_02 35:17

Where that, and also, and I'd made I've been really explicit about this with quite a lot of the people who who were working for for for me and for us back at the time. I'd said a CEO role is five years. Yeah. You know, anybody's any CEO who sticks around for longer, unless the thing is exponentially growing, yeah, they need to get out of the way because other people are developing, other people are coming through. So there was also this, you know, really good set of people who could take on more responsibility if I wasn't I wasn't there. Um so yeah, it was it was a bit in me, and then a little bit of you know, doing what is right for the organization as well.

SPEAKER_01 35:50

Yeah. And so um, so in terms of um the business itself, built environment, did you ever look at expanding into other sectors?

SPEAKER_02 35:57

Yeah, yeah. Um, and and when we were operating in countries that um were smaller from a population and therefore an opportunity perspective, we actually did break out and do other things. So we did legal recruitment and finance recruitment and tech recruitment in New Zealand. We did pretty much everything that was going in Singapore because you have to. Yeah, yeah. Um, and the business has always been true to its its its roots, its colours, and done what it's what it's what it was set up to do, but there's always been agile enough to think, well, here it makes sense for us to do that too. Yeah, yeah. Um, so we have done other things, and then actually um the business set they set up other brands. There is a contract recruitment business in Germany, uh, there is a search firm also in Germany, and then there is a renewable energy. Um it's not just a recruitment business, it's a recruitment and solutions business that's focused purely on renewable energy. So there are different brands, but the cobalt brand was always retained for that environment and associated things.

SPEAKER_01 36:50

Yeah. And then so yeah, let's so tell us about the next chapter of your career then. So a couple of things happened.

SPEAKER_02 36:58

Um one, I sat down with Tim and Adam and said, listen, at least for now, my time is up, um, and it's time for other people to come through.

SPEAKER_01 37:05

And did you was that an easy just did you know it in your heart that it was time for a change? Yeah. You did.

SPEAKER_02 37:10

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was just it was just the right time, and and it was um, yeah, it felt comfortable, felt, felt right. Yeah. About a year before that, I'd also, and this is a voluntary thing, but it became quite a big part of my life in the next couple of years. I had the opportunity to go and become a director of um a football club, Morecambe Football Club, my hometown club. Yeah. And that was um, I was getting very excited about that because it was, you know, like playing football manager, but in real life. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:36

I mean, that was. Can we talk about that? Yeah, absolutely. Because that was it was like, it was like um, it was like football manager in real life. So you and Charlie were like in the director's box with Morecambe ties on. I was like, this is incredible. You would negotiate with the manager and everything. We like we I mean, how does that even happen? How does how did two lads in recruitment end up on the board of of the hometown football club?

SPEAKER_02 37:57

You can do it in about a sentence and a half. Charlie got Parkinson's, decided Carp DM, he has to do everything he's ever wanted to do at once, sponsors the first team shirts. As a result, he's in the director's box because he's the first team shirt sponsor. I go along with him. We realise that the owners and the director, the then chairman were really struggling to see eye to eye. We got to know them both, and they all collectively said, Can you come and give us a hand?

SPEAKER_01 38:19

Oh, right. You you got you two seemed to, you know what you're doing too.

SPEAKER_02 38:22

Well, we we both run companies and we've both been in board situations where people don't necessarily have the same objectives, aren't necessarily aligned. We lived in London but were from Morecambe. The owners lived in London, the chairs and the directors lived in Morecambe. And it was it was a really it was a tiny board. It was like, you know, it was the two owners who weren't really involved, and then it was um three guys up in the north of England, and that was it, running a football club that hadn't got a CEO or a general manager or even a you know, a chief operations officer. It was like the board, and then the head of catering and the head of the shop and the head of recruitment.

SPEAKER_01 38:56

But I mean it's a I mean, it's not I mean, I'm a I'm a Port Vale fan, right? So, you know, by you know, not you know, being on the board at your hometown club is like every boy's dream, you know, just being involved in any capacity. Um, so yeah, that must have been a an unbelievably epic, sort of slightly surreal experience.

SPEAKER_02 39:17

It was surreal, it was epic given that you know perfectly well I've got two left feet, and therefore my involvement in football was only ever going to be on the business side. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um and it was it was incredible because it was it was hands-on. You know, I I it's not a silly claim. I negotiated the sale of the biggest transfer fees that the club's ever had. Which I guess was in your wheelhouse, right? Yeah, it was more than them anyway. We need to sell this player, the manager's busy recruiting for the new season. James, can you take this on? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Give me the numbers of every club that scouted it. That's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and then you know, sitting around a board table and the kits come round, and Charlie being Charlie is blunt and sort of looks over and goes, Oh no, they're awful. James, you'll just be able to do much better. And you for three years I led on designing the kits. Um, and then we, you know, we did some really cool stuff as well. Like the the fan base prior to 2019 for home games, typical home games, was sort of 18, 1900, 2,000 on a Saturday and a few hundred to early thousands, 1,000 on a Tuesday night. And in 2021, in a single summer, through an initiative that we designed and launched, we took that to four and a half, five thousand. And you know, the fan base actually doubled in the space of a year, and even though the club's had some difficult times since, a lot of that fan base has been retained. And yeah, and yeah, it's um it's a it's a more it's a more fun place.

SPEAKER_01 40:38

So though all those years as the chairman stroke president of MDP All Boys really was just preparing you for a life of professional football.

SPEAKER_02 40:46

I remember joking, I think, to you and to Perry. Um mine and Charlie's real football qualifications were entirely earned in South West London on a Sunday. Yeah, the coach of the season.

SPEAKER_01 40:57

I uh given that given that this has been recorded, I'll and and for the I'll tell the story about how I mean it's it I think it's still the greatest story of all of all time. So I can't remember who the first person was. I think it was James Ballard. So he gets nominated for player of the season. And some someone says we need a prize. So we go and get him some fish, some goldfish from the local vet. No, the local vet uh pet shop on Clapham High Street. We were in in Clapham North, I think it was. So the next year we took it off a level, and somebody got two cats. I think that was ballad too. Somebody got two cats. Oh mate, it was. I mean, I actually I felt terrible. I can't believe they sold us these cats, mate, right? So we were in, we were obviously we'd had a few drinks, and we're in a shop, we're in a pet shop, and we we bought two cats. And then obviously, being like lads, everybody's like, next year we've got to get him a dog. And I and I was like, mate, I can't get him a dog, we're not getting him a dog, and that's just that's just crazy. And and also you shouldn't be selling like a load of lads that have obviously been on the lash on one and a dog. Um, and so but but those two cats were, I think he's I think that's maybe still knocking them up, maybe they've gone now. They became a big part of his life.

SPEAKER_02 42:23

They were very happy cats.

SPEAKER_01 42:24

And they were very happy cats. So um, I mean, yeah, well, I mean, that was I mean, that was I mean, I just remember the unveiling of those two cats in the back room of that pub in Clapham. I think was the wildest thing I've ever seen in my life, mate. I mean, I I've never seen a man so aghast um at winning player of the year and then being presented with two cats. Incredible.

SPEAKER_02 42:44

Yeah, wonderful stuff.

SPEAKER_01 42:45

Um so so you you life's pretty good. You've achieved a lot in business, you're married, you've got you love the young family, you're on the board at your hometown football club, you know. It's check, check, check, check, check. Happy?

SPEAKER_02 43:04

Yeah, happy, very happy. I don't know. Yeah, I've I um I've always been happy, I think. Yeah, maybe the odd occasion, especially after a you're a glass half full kind of guy, though. I'm a glass four fifths full full really.

SPEAKER_01 43:19

Is that a is that a family treat? I think so, yeah. Yeah, the Wakefields, they're a happy bunch. Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_02 43:25

I think so. You get what you what you are from your mum and your dad, don't you?

SPEAKER_01 43:29

Have you always been like that? Just a sort of like infectiously positive guy. Yeah, I think so. Because yeah, you you've certainly always been the energy whenever I'm in the room with you.

SPEAKER_02 43:40

Well, you you know, as you get older, you you learn maybe things that explain stuff that you already are.

SPEAKER_03 43:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:47

And I I think you get back what you give in this life. If you are somebody who is naturally and not, you know, insincerely positive, yeah, you get more positivity back. Yeah, you have more interactions with positive people, you you meet other people who are more inclined to. Go, yeah, I'll go to see Metallica tonight, or yeah, I'll go and live in Abutape, or whatever it might be. You just you sign yourself by more people like that.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

Yes, man. Yes, man. Danny Wallace was it? Yeah. Do you remember that? Yeah, classic. Really good. Um so what's the next chapter of your life then? You've you've decided to to bring to wind down your role and and move on. You're at the peak of your powers, really. You're a healthy, fit, young, you know, ambitious guy.

SPEAKER_02 44:28

What's next? So I met with um Logan, who's the founder, Logan I do, who's the founder of um Dartmouth originally.

SPEAKER_01 44:36

Yeah, has also been on the show.

SPEAKER_02 44:37

Yep. Shout out, Logan. Obviously a great bloke. Um, Logan um was um not just running Dartmouth at the time, but he was launching Kernel, which was the group brand they just acquired pure reasonably recently, acquired pure search. They were uh incubating other brands to launch and they were considering acquisitions. Um, and he said, Well, it's it's not a CEO job, but I need somebody to head up international and generally help us from a senior leadership perspective. Um, and that just seemed like a very different challenge to the one that I'd had at Cobalt. Um, and it was maybe the the only time in my life that I've stepped up in terms of scale of organization. Everything else, everything I might I've done in my life has been going from sort of army to Michael Page, which is still massive, to Cobalt, which was tiny. Yeah. And then, you know, even getting involved in a football club, you know, it's small beer in terms of the scale of the organization.

SPEAKER_01 45:26

Yeah, yeah, relative.

SPEAKER_02 45:27

So that was the only time I ever went up in scale. Yeah. Um, and that was really interesting. Um, I worked for a year and a half with with Logan and the guys, and um, I learned quite a lot in that period, but I wasn't actually making the decisions. Yeah. And I think again, it was probably one of those periods where I realized, okay, one of my great, well, not great strengths, that's a probably obnoxious thing to say. If I've got a strength, one of them is that if I I can I can assimilate a whole load of information, I can listen to a whole load of points of view, and then I can be the person who, in a reasonably um inclusive way, gets to a point where a decision is made, and then we move on and we plan on that decision.

SPEAKER_01 46:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:05

And I wasn't in that role. I wasn't, I wasn't the CEO, I wasn't the chair. I was I was contributing to the conversation and then letting decisions be made. And I it just didn't sit as naturally with me as what I've been doing for the previous few years. Yeah. Um, so I really have a lot of positive things to say about Logan and about Colonel. I learned a lot. I learned a lot about you know the valuing of recruitment businesses. Yeah, yeah. I was sitting on kind of the side of actually meeting potential acquisitions and all that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01 46:32

Yeah, yeah. Um, but because it was an extraordinarily successful, it is an extraordinarily successful vehicle.

SPEAKER_02 46:38

It's an incredible business. Um, and you know, it's it's done some some pretty special things, but yeah, I needed, I needed to, I needed, I needed more responsibility. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, and so then what? So then again, probably opportunistic, but um some really good people who were running a life sciences business, which was going absolutely crazy because it was 2022, and like life sciences boom had literally been off for two years.

SPEAKER_01 47:04

And had you done life sciences? No, because that's a theme, isn't it, in your career? You've gone from front office structured finance to built environment, and then from built environment to private.

SPEAKER_02 47:14

Private equity, private.

SPEAKER_01 47:15

Yeah, and then and then to life sciences.

SPEAKER_02 47:18

And then to life sciences. I don't, I'm I'm pretty agnostic when it comes to the sector. Um and I think that maybe there is something slightly intentional in that. I in the same way that when I left the army, I didn't want to go and work in like, you know, bridg BAE systems or anything. I wanted to get out and do something completely different. Yeah, exactly. Um, but yeah, I think 80% of recruitment is people and systems and process and empathy and yeah, psychology. Um, and only about 20% is market knowledge or sector knowledge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, I'm I'm I'm very sector agnostic, always have been. And so that was a business base in Crawley, if I remember rightly. It was headquartered in Crawley. Uh it had about half of its people in the US, um, spread across largely Boston and San Diego. So Crawley, Brighton, Boston, San Diego. It's a fairly nice, diverse set of offices. I was gonna say the obvious places to go. Well, you know, you've got one sort of hub with a big airport and one seaside resort. Yeah, they're just different.

SPEAKER_01 48:14

Yeah. I can make perfect sense. Yeah. Um, because Crawley is like a hotspot for live sciences recruitment businesses. There's loads of them.

SPEAKER_02 48:24

It is because um there's been a couple of businesses that have grown up there and then just vessel. Yeah, a bit like S3. Yeah, people just yeah, exactly. There's there's one down there in particular called Barrington James.

SPEAKER_01 48:35

Was that the was that the was that the original?

SPEAKER_02 48:37

Well, certainly it was it was one of the whatever you would call that style that yeah, it was one of those. Yeah. Um and and actually, you know, this was a no way a factor, but for once it was actually quite close to where I lived. And because you were you were in Surrey at this point. I lived like you know, 20-minute drive through the countryside from it from the from the head office. Yeah. Um, and they basically said we want somebody to run this, we want to step back and step out of it, we really need to crack contract. And we agreed a plan and went in there with CEO and uh and led that. And so you were there for how long? Three three years. Almost exactly three years. Three years, actually. Enjoy that chapter? Yeah, I did, I really enjoyed it. It was about the toughest time that the recruitment industry has had in our entire recruitment careers. So you joined End of 22. So you joined probably just after the peak of the craziness. So we you could literally see in all of the KPIs and also in the market data from external from outside, you could see that the tail off and it was happening pretty much the day I joined.

SPEAKER_01 49:39

So you were like, how do I, yeah. That must be a brutal baptism into a new business coming in after because the thing is, you we didn't know what was going on. No. Like it nobody, you know, like often when there's significant crises, 2008, COVID, you it's triggered by an event. That particular market decline was not triggered by specific one event, but it but it happened in a moment, but nobody nobody informed you that that chaos was about to be unleashed. But I I think if you look back to probably October 22, ironically, literally the the same time that Chat GPT went live, you can you can track that was the beginning of what was probably the hardest three years in the last three decades.

SPEAKER_02 50:25

Well, it's certainly taken more professional recruiters out of most of the developed markets than I know. Yeah, I mean, most businesses have at the very least reduced in size by a third, some by half, and an awful lot of just disappeared in that. So, so yeah, it was tough. That said, it would there was an acknowledgement from everybody in the business, and certainly remember myself and and uh Nick and Richard, the two founders, of what was happening. We weren't blind to it, and therefore there was an alignment from the beginning that tough things might need to be decided, and that there was going to be a need to make some decisions that would see the business through that period. Again, none of us had the benefit of knowing how long it was gonna last or exactly what would be required, but we were aligned from the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 51:10

Yeah, because I mean, you know, when you're the frog being boiled, you don't often realize it until it's too late, right? And I think for a lot of people, they some people went hard and went early in that in that decline, but for a lot of people it took them too long.

SPEAKER_02 51:24

And it wasn't a natural time to go hard and early. Like, you know, it COVID was one of these things where a lot of people went quite hard and quite early because they didn't think the market was ever going to recover. But what was happening in 22, 23 was nobody understood it. It wasn't really, you know, yeah, the Dow Jones dropped and the FTSE dropped, but nobody had understood that recruitment was coming from such a high place because it had been such a silly boom that that correction, which was just affecting the whole economy or the you know, the whole of the market in which we work, was going to be so much more pronounced for recruitment.

SPEAKER_01 51:54

Yeah. I mean, I I've told this story before. We used to get um, so when a company goes closes down, the administrator sends everyone this. So it's not always an A4 envelope with a little window and it's it's about that thick, the administrator's pack. And you used to get one every six months, because obviously we sold recruitment technologies to recruitment companies. Maybe we were getting like three a day. It was mad. Now, in the main, there were small businesses where they were shuttering the business. So I somebody's gone, fuck it, it's too hard. I'll go and get a job or I'll retire or or whatever. But every now and then, yeah, it you would open it up and it would be like, bloody hell, they've gone. Yeah, they were 100 people. Do you know what I mean? And and you think like, as if they couldn't rescue something from that, but for some people, they were so over-leveraged on rents, on salaries, on COVID debt. I mean, it was horrific.

SPEAKER_02 52:45

Horrific. Yeah, yeah, it was. It was really, it was, it was, um, and it's not just that, it's all of the everything. The the gravy chain was never going to end in 2022. Well that's a good thing. So everybody's you know taking on the world's biggest LinkedIn contracts, and everybody's taking on, yeah, we can do a five-year office lease and we'll fill it exactly.

SPEAKER_01 53:01

I think that's what killed people with the office leases, you know. And LinkedIn contracts. Yeah. Some of those were I mean, and they were circular, and they were not flexible. No. Which, you know, that's a that's a that's a podcast for another day. That is, yeah. Um, so you've so you've gone in to what really is a shitstorm.

SPEAKER_02 53:17

Yeah. Well, not a shitstorm, but it it it was obviously challenged. We didn't know how long the challenge was going to last for. And then over the course of that first sort of 12 months, it became more and more apparent that this is gonna last a while. Yeah. But even at the end of the first year, we were still thinking, well, we'll retain that and we'll not get rid of that, and we'll keep that function because it's got to bounce, it's got to bounce. Same as a lot of businesses, yeah. But there were some really big calls made in that first year, yeah. Like you know, major shareholders exiting and um entire closures of offices and all the things that everybody sadly hasn't had to turn. Yeah. Um, but what we did do, and this is part by design strategy, and part by just everything falling into place, was the business was 90 odd percent um perm when we when I when I took it over. And after two years it was 50-50. And that was partly a decline in perm, but it was also a massive growth of contract. And we did it US and UK, sorry, US and Europe. Um, and and yeah, that's that was that was that was what I think has retained all of the value in the business. Um, and actually during that period, as some people left and other people really sort of stepped up, yeah. You started to recognize that there's a really good team in this business, yeah, ready to lead. And towards the end, it was or towards the last sort of year, it was really clear there was somebody who could run it as CEO. Yeah, it was a lot smaller than it had been when I went in. And so um, I think you know, myself and and the founders all acknowledged that well, this isn't what we planned, yeah, but the business is in good shape. It's 50-50. Somebody who really like in the prime of his career ready to become CEO. So I spent the last six, seven, eight months working with him to do a proper succession. Yeah. And then he stepped up and became CEO in uh towards the end of 2025. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:04

So that's that's the second time you've achieved well, you've you know you've kind of gone in, you've you've led a business and then and then I guess handed over.

SPEAKER_02 55:11

This is a good comes back to that same principle. A good leader, unless what they're leading is growing exponentially, should be making themselves redundant. Yeah. Not actually, but you know, in function. Yeah, philosophically. Yeah, you should be stepping away so that other other people can come through.

SPEAKER_01 55:27

And then, full circle moment, you're back to Cobalt in an executive chairman role. So tell us about that and how does that come about?

SPEAKER_02 55:37

Well uh this is um this is quite difficult. So there were two founders of Cobalt, Tim and Adam, and um very sadly Adam passed quite suddenly um early in 2025. And I obviously go to the Memorial Service and all of the great and good of Cobalt's history. Had you left Cobalt on good terms? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, left on good terms with them, uh, with everybody, actually. And you know, like again, rule of life never burn a bridge. Just don't, just don't ever burn a bridge because you never know. Yeah, of course. And also, why would you why would you? There's no value, is there? No, there's literally no value at all. There's no value in anything that doesn't have some sort of positive intent at that work. Um, but I was at the memorial service, I was catching up with all these people who I'd worked with for a long time, got chatting to um to Tim and to Stephen. Um, Tim was the founder the remaining founder, and Stephen was the CEO. And um, the conversation quite quickly evolved from that day on to what do you think there may be a need? And exactly at the same time, I was chatting to a good friend who I respect enormously, who's been running his own MA firm for the last um 14, 15 years. And we were talking about doing something together, and it it just kind of all fitted together in that well, I could actually join the MA firm as a partner and try and bring some real business leadership expertise to the work we're doing with companies that are either trying to sell or trying to scale so they can sell in the future, yeah, and at the same time go to Cobalt as as exec chair um to help out, really, to sort of you know get to grips with one or two things that needed to be got to grips with. Yeah. Um, and those two things, I mean, the the the the timing of it was perfect, and I started them both pretty much within a month of one another as I departed RBW.

SPEAKER_01 57:28

Amazing. And so you you you currently now have you worked both roles, so execut chair and partner at at least M ⁇ A. Yeah. And and and the MA business, is that something you you you're familiar with? Is that a new challenge for you learning about how that world works?

SPEAKER_02 57:43

Yeah, it's it's well, obviously the transactional side of it, um, I'm entirely reliant upon um Dave, who who has been doing this for his his entire professional career. Yeah. Um, but so much of the work that we do and that he's been doing for years, which is why we both thought it might be a really good idea, involves sitting down either with founders or with management teams and explaining how the process is gonna is gonna go, what due diligence looks like, what decisions they might be able to make if they don't sell now, but if they wait a year or two or three, and if they put in place a proper CEO or actually get a really good CRM installed and really making a positive impact in the business, or reduce their client concentration, or any number any one of the number of things that as a business you can do to actually increase your multiple. Um, and between the two of us, we we've got quite a nice combined perspective. Yeah, and then we've literally, I just had another director join the business whose experience is more similar to mine and uh John. Um and so yeah, the three of us are we're good, we're coming at it not just from a if you want to sell your business, you can come to us and we will sell your business. But if you're thinking about selling your business in a year or two or three or four, yeah, and we'll sit down with you and we'll give you a valuation now, we'll tell you exactly what's wrong with it. Yeah, and we'll also practically help you to make the changes so that you get a seven times multiple instead of a four times multiple. Yeah, which is life-changing, right? Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 58:57

If you know, yeah, if you if if you're because 90% of these things are about positioning, presentation, getting the getting all the things that getting all the issues ironed out, and if you get that ahead of time, then it's it's a game changer.

SPEAKER_02 59:09

Well, I I again at times I've sat down with people who are valuing businesses that I've been involved in. Um, and it's only when you have those conversations with somebody who's maybe a chairman or a director in a private equity firm and you point out something that's glaringly obvious that you really should have been fixing five years or three years, or maybe one year before. But if you're having that conversation with that firm at that point, it's too late. It's already there, you can't do anything about it. It's reducing your multiple, or it's at the very least reducing the quality of your earnings. Yeah, why? Why not fix everything? And why not have a business which is as good as it can be? Of course, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:43

And so do you see, you know, are you a portfolio man now? Is that is that the future for you?

SPEAKER_02 59:54

I hate cleaf, yes, honestly. Like like Ug Boots, fractional and portfolio, things like that.

SPEAKER_01 59:59

I'm not comfortable. But you've got a huge amount of experience now.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:02

Yeah, so um, so I'm I'm actually I'm really enjoying getting my teeth into exec chair at Cobalt. The reason I'm exec chair is because I don't want to sit in that role for another five or six years and run it as CEO. I want to bring through people, yeah, ideally internally from within the business to run it and take it on to its next phase. And then hopefully I can step back and just be a chair. Yeah. Um, but at the moment I'm running it and um and I'm and I'm making all of the changes and taking some positive strides to really improving it. Um, and it at the moment that's taking up much more of my time. Yeah. Some of the stuff that we're starting to launch and push out into the market with Leaf is really exciting. So, in an ideal world, I will move Cobalt to the point or the Cobalt group to the point where everything's motoring and really making sense. It's all cooking on gas, there's good people and ideally a person who is ready to lead it. I can step back and be chair, and then I can focus our efforts on actually growing an MA business, which we we'd like to attract investment into in a few years' time.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:59

Yeah, of course. Um I think that brings us neatly to the end of our conversation. I guess um looking back on a 22, three year career, you've seen a lot. 28. Good lord, you are you definitely look younger than you are. Um I mean what a journey from from university to the military to to all of those different places. Have you got any um have you got any sort of enduring uh thoughts on you know on the future of the sector? What do you see happening out there? And and I guess I say that because most of our listeners are CEOs, MDs, aspiring, or they aspire to be that. And so there's a lot of unknowns out there, AI, the future of work, the future of knowledge work in particular. Have you got any thoughts? You see, you know, what's your what's your worldview on that?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:00

Um I think everybody's got to be approaching the future generally, and not just the next one or two years, but everybody's just got to assume that volatility is normal and stop banging on about oh, it's so uncertain at the moment, and it's different to how it's ever been. Volatility is normal and it's always going to be normal from now on, and it probably always has been has been all the normal if we're honest. So I think people have got to adjust to that and just accept it and get on with it. Um, obviously, technology is is a huge factor, and I think that um the days of human beings doing anything that you could genuinely label as administrative are gone. And and any business that's not literally looking at what its human beings are doing and making sure that they're only doing the selling, the negotiating, the persuading, the empathizing, the understanding of human connection, yeah, if they're not focusing all of their people's efforts on that or doing everything they can to make sure that's the case, I think those businesses will really struggle. But I I'm not a catastrophist. I believe that there will be a thriving recruitment industry in the years to come. Yeah. But I think it will be made up by made up entirely of businesses that have adapted and have just gone with it.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:05

Mate, you should get a job at River AI, mate. You're a brilliant salesman for that, I think. It's uh yeah, I promise we didn't we didn't pre-script that last line. Well, on that note, um James Wakefields, thank you so much for coming in. It's been a pleasure. And um, yeah, I look forward to doing it again sometime. Lovely to see you, Andy. Top man. Before we wrap up, a quick thank you to the team behind this episode. This episode was proudly produced by Vertical Drop. At Vertical Drop, we help founders, leaders, and businesses turn conversations into content that builds authority, creates opportunities, and drives growth. From podcast strategy and production to social content, guest management and distribution, we handle everything required to help great voices reach the audiences that matter most. If you're thinking about launching a podcast, elevating an existing show, or building a stronger personal or company brand through content, then we'd love to help. Visit vertical drop.com to learn more. That's vertical drop.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.