SPEAKER_01 0:00

I bought my first house. Two weeks after we had bought the house, I quit my job because I needed the salary for the mortgage application to go through. We almost lost the business overnight, probably nearly ran out of money. Probably count that on both hands, the amount of times that that nearly happened in those first few years. We went from 10 million to 50 and that took about two years and then in about roughly two years again we got to 150 million. But really, you have to have a blueprint that everybody works to. The reason why companies don't scale is that they don't have a consistent way of operating. What should have been about three months or six months of payment. Suddenly, two founders having to value the shareholding on opposite sides of the table.

SPEAKER_03 0:42

This episode is proudly sponsored by River, the competitional consciousness platform built specifically for recruitment and staffing businesses. Recruitment firms generate huge amounts of valuable information every day from 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 TRM hygiene, generating candidate and client summaries, identifying commercial opportunities, coaching, or uncovering trends across the business, River helps staffing companies get more for every conversation they have. Unlike generic AI note-taking tools, River is built specifically for the recruiting 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. Good afternoon and welcome to another episode of Recruiting Alchemy. Today's guest is James Parsons, founder of well, I won't, Steely Sunday, founder of lots of companies. But we'll we'll get into that. I won't put a label on you too soon.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Yeah, we can count them along as we go.

SPEAKER_03 2:19

Well, exactly. Exactly. Thanks for joining me. Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here, Andy. Thanks very much for for asking me along. It's great, yeah. Thank you so much. Um I've done quite a bit of research on you, um, and it's been quite the journey.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Yeah, yeah. I think we we share a bit in common. I spent a little bit of time at S3. I think you spent a fair bit longer. I did, yeah. Um but yeah, it's been crazy. It's been um, you know, when you get a chance to have a look back, it's been really exciting, it's been quite scary at times as well. I've got really lucky as well, I've got to admit that, I think, up front. Um, but yeah, it's been uh it's still it's still going.

SPEAKER_03 3:03

Yeah, well that's it. For now. Um well look, we've got a lot to get into. Um so but look, we start every episode with the same format, and and really that is the two beginnings. So the first beginning is really a little bit about you and and perhaps the the genesis story, where did you, you know, where did it all begin? And then the second beginning is really I guess how you you took that first step into entrepreneurship. So for a lot of people, that journey can be instant. Maybe you've lost your job and you've got an alternative. For others, it's a long-held ambition to start their own thing. Sometimes it's a it it's a um it's a bit of both, but we'll get on to that. But I think before we start, um take us back to yeah, where did you yeah, where did it all begin? Tell us tell us about the the the the the genesis story of James Parsons.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Well, I'd I'll give you the brief one. I grew up in the country, I'm the son of a farmer. Okay. Um and yeah, it was pretty normal normal childhood. Grew up in England. Um I was lucky enough to go away. I was in Hampshire. Okay, went away to school at quite a young age, um, down in Devon. Um and then came back. I was the first member of my family to go to university. Okay. Um, which we were which which we were proud of at the time until we saw my grades. Um and yeah, you know, that's that that's my background. I was always really keen on sport. Um I found academic, I got into my academic stride as I got older. I found it really difficult when I was young. Um and I think that was probably one of the seeds that that planted early on around entrepreneurship. I think a lot of entrepreneurs that I've met have been people that have had to find a different way through or or be it forces them to be braver over an idea they have because quite a lot of the traditional um routes may not be open to them. For example, I don't think I was ever going to get a first in maths and go into banking. Yeah. Um so yeah, that was that that was pretty early on, and and kind of getting into I guess looking back, you know, the idea of setting up my own business was was probably forming earlier than I remember it, but I remember a good mate of my father's who was made redundant when he was 50. Right. I think he had quite a big job and he got made redundant at 50. And I think that that had quite a bit left a mark on me because I looked up to him and I saw what he went through, and I think that can to have anybody who's got that much agency over your career and your lifestyle at the age of 50, yeah um was a bit of a warning shot. So that probably gave me um some of the foundational blocks I think around making the decision that I did when I was pretty young. I was 25 when I decided to find alone. Wow, god, probably too young, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:49

Oh mate, mate, or or not, or not. Um well that we'll get on to that in a minute. So you you you're a country boy, yeah. Farming stock.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:58

Never fancied following in the family foot in the family farm.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

And I'm pro I'm proud I'm proud to be of farming stock, and there was there was a chance that I might go into it, which was was pretty short-lived when when my old man saw me in charge of any of his machinery. Yeah, yeah. Um it was pretty obvious that I wasn't gonna have I didn't have the tools that uh uh to carry that on. Um it's actually interesting. Sadly, it's it's kind of a one-man job now, farming too, right? You know, it's been mechanized and and you get big contractors to to outsource a lot of the farming, so you've got to have a pretty big farm to support the um to support more than one family. Yeah. Um, so I'm a I'm one of three. I've got a brother and sister, all three of us have have made our own way. Actually, interestingly, my brother I'm in is an entrepreneur as well. Um, and yeah, you you know, we uh I I mean some of it rubbed off. I now, as I mentioned to you earlier, I've got a farm in West Sussex that I've kind of hidden away in over the past uh 10 years or so. So I definitely it's definitely something that's pretty close to my heart, but I always thought I was gonna try and break out and and go and go and see a bit more of the world. Maybe um dad was dad was amazing, he he sacrificed a hell of a lot for us for me to go away to school and then supported me a bit through uni as well. So I sort of had to pay that back. Um And yeah? Amazing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:20

Um when you were 15 you probably maybe not the maybe not not gonna be a maybe the academic route might not be few. Was there a big dream? Did you want to be a professional footballer, a movie star, a boxer?

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Yeah, well actually, good Christ, I haven't thought about this in years. I I think it was younger, I think I was about 14 when I I was in, I was always gonna go into the forces and I was gonna be a fighter jet pilot. That was it, and I've made my decision, so I didn't have to worry about any other these decisions that came along. I was pretty set on it. And I remember it's the day I remember where I was, and I was diagnosed as being colourblind at 14. You did you ever do those tests? You open up a book and you see all the dots? That's it, yeah. I remember, yeah. I didn't see any of the numbers in the dots, yeah. So, and and that was that career was completely shut off to me from from that moment, which when I was 14, it felt like felt like a really big deal. Um, and when I look back on it now, I realise it wasn't a huge deal. But that was the dream. I always I and I'm not sure whether we I can't remember when Top Gun came out. I don't know whether it had even come out yet by then, but it was a very clear plan I had in my head, right? And I remember thinking that's simple, that's where I'm gonna go, that's what I'm gonna do. Yeah, um, and so I had to have a little bit of a career rethink at 14, which I don't think many people have. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 8:46

Um a good mate mine's colourblind, yeah, and I was like, but and I was like, what's it like? He's like, I've done.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Yeah, how can I he's like it's all I've ever known. He's like just well, one of the tips I've got is that you you know, if you look at my wardrobe, it's pretty much the same colour. Yeah. I think I operate in two shades of of grey and blue. Yeah, well then you're safe. Safe harbour though, isn't it? Well, if you go off piste, you know, yeah. You know, you looks alright to me, but yeah, exactly. Funny looks get explained after that. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:13

I I think when um when my wife is a bit like, oh, you know, why don't you try something a bit different? I was like, no, it's not for me, love. No, um, so you're not the next Tom Cruise, although very handsome chap, I have to say, could have been. Um so you're not the next Tom Cruise, but you you you leave university. What did you study?

SPEAKER_01 9:33

I did economics and business up at Newcastle. Um, and I did that a bit, it was a bit like the start of my career. Um, it kind of qualified qualified me for everything and nothing all at the same time. Right. Um I didn't have a vocation. I was really if I'm honest with you, I was really doing my the end of my education was really about getting a box ticked. Right. You know, just getting through it. Get a degree, get a half decent grade, yeah. Then hopefully that'll open up career opportunities that that that come along. I really hadn't found my, you know, the why wasn't really there at the time. It was really like, okay, right, I've got to get I've got to get through this, I've got to get my get get the degree passed, learn something as I go. Um and in the end, some of that was true. I think a lot of it was the people I met, the the you know, the through I learned there that by surrounding yourself by ambitious people, it kind of kindles your own fire as well, and it sets your expect your internal expectations start to increase. And what good you know, where your good bar or where your really your great bar is actually begin to start moving north because of the people that you that you uh that you hang out with and uh and the opportunities that they're able to do to create for themselves. So I think from that, I mean uni was it was just really good with with opening up my horizons, I think, and and maybe giving me the confidence to to think a bit bigger than maybe I would have done.

SPEAKER_03 11:02

I was saying to somebody not long ago, I I think we're broadly the same age or the same generation at least. We're not 50 yet. Not 50 yet, mate. Long way to go. And um and and I was like, the other what people don't rec understand is there was no internet really. So you had no access to like what should I do next? What should I do for a career? Go on this website, watch this YouTube and there was nothing. So you were limited by your exposure and or proximity to people who you might meet along the way, or friend of your friend, or your father's, or your whatever, right? And and I think it was it was much more a process of osmosis back then, you know, just just right rolling with the punches and seeing what comes up. I feel like today's without sounding painfully like my father, you know, today's generation have got an opportunity to be much more strategic about what they do and how they do it, whereas I felt I was a bit more just in bumbling along, taking chances as they came along.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Yeah. No doubt people uh you know, kids uh or young adults coming out now are far more information enabled. You know, you interview people now, they know more about you and your business than than you do. Yeah. Um, and I think you're right. In those days, I think that's why we both ended up in a sector that thrived off the fact that it was all around network and it was all around who you knew and the value of personal relationships. There was a real there was a real premium on that. Yeah. Um, you know, I got my first job. I came down to London, I had a look left and I had a look right, and I thought I quite like the look of what he's doing. Yeah. Um but then you went to go and see an agent, you then got put forward for a job, you then went and did the interviews. It was all really analogue. Um, you know, there was no real place where I could sit down and go, okay, I want to have a look at have a real real thin slice cross-section of the of the industries available to someone like me and really think about what those careers are like.

SPEAKER_02 12:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

Mine was a bit more. If I want to live in this city, I'm gonna have to get paid pretty quickly. So where can I go and get a job?

SPEAKER_02 13:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

Um, where they'll give me a basic salary that I can just about scrape by on, and I've got a chance at improving that through working hard and working smart, you know? Yeah. Um and yeah, very different world than to the one we have today.

SPEAKER_03 13:18

And that's it. That's it. And so did recruit did you find recruitment or did recruitment find you, or a bit of both? Uh was it the classic my house my flatmate worked in recruitment and he got me an interview?

SPEAKER_01 13:27

I sort of that, you know what? You know, one thing I resent in our world is when when people say, Oh, I fell into this job, or you know, it you know, I think I had agency over that. I saw that it was a job that you could get with very limited qualifications that you could earn good money in. Yeah, it was probably easier than getting a job as a trader, yeah, because my maths isn't great. So, but it's not not dissimilar, right? Yeah, it was a high performance job that rewarded well and it had a low barrier to entry. Um, so I think I was kind of smart enough to suss that out and think that that could be a good jumping end point. Yeah. When I did it, there's no way I thought I'd have stuck in it for long. I really saw it as a stepping stone. Yeah. Um, but it just goes to show, right? You know, you're um you you learn as you go along and you get to learn a lot about yourself and what you're good at and what you're bad at pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_03 14:25

Yeah. And you so your first was Allegis Group your first proper job?

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Yeah, yeah. So it was called AeroTech then. Um sorry, AeroTech, right. They acquired they acquired a group. Yeah, I think so, yeah, or or Allegio's was the the holding group, um, and they trade through that now. That was a really good starting point. American firm. Yeah. So I'm straight out of university. American firm. You do two weeks training, first of all, before they let you anywhere near an office.

SPEAKER_02 14:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

So you went down to Winurst Triangle. Winnurst Triangle. This this crazy team of Americans who told you everything from what to wear, white t-shirt underneath your white shirt with a tie of two or three different shades, which is great for me or for reasons we discussed. And then um you got to work at 7.30 in the morning. If you were late more three times after 7.30, you were out. Um and you didn't, you know, aspirationally much.

SPEAKER_03 15:17

7:30 a.m.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

a.m. And so my offices were in Barbican, and I've managed to get a flat on Fulham Palace Road, so I got the district line. I can't even remember how I did it, but it involved tubes, right? And so my my mates were still still in bed, and I was getting up at the you know, I was leaving the house just after six for 13,000 pounds, I think, was my was my salary. Yeah, um, but it was a good grounding because they did everything in a really regimented way. They had a G2, which is their qualification process, which was taken from the US military, and they just drilled it into you. There was no other way. And I learned very quickly that you may have it may not be the right way, yeah, but it was their way, and you did it, did it, um, and and you couldn't deviate from that. Yeah, I think they're probably they're probably the most successful privately owned recruitment company in the world, I think.

SPEAKER_03 16:10

I believe they are the largest privately owned company company. They're probably the largest privately owned.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

Which you know is probably equals pretty successful. They're big in America, they're huge, yeah, and and globally.

SPEAKER_03 16:20

I think the founder and owns the Baltimore Ravens. That's right. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Yeah. Yeah, so that that they that that was really good and it kind of set me up. But I I must admit, I I started looking at they did not pay much, and they did not pay much commission.

SPEAKER_02 16:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

And I had a you know, that's how I ended up. A mate of mine was working at S3 who didn't expect you to be in at 7:30 in the morning, you got a line until about eight. Eight. I mean half an hour's later. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, and uh and but it was but it was more of the same though, right?

SPEAKER_03 16:51

You were out of one fairly command and control business into another at that time.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

Massively, but you have more freedom over how you executed the role, I think. Um it had a far more anglo anglophile approach to doing business, you know. Um you know, was very straight jacketed at um at AeroTech. And it was a great, it was a great learning ground because S3, one of the a couple of things they did really well, obviously, because we were there, but they hired really well. Yeah. They set very, very high expectations, but because of the quality of the people that they had, you could you you you could see how you could achieve those quite early on, and it really fired up ambition. Yeah. Um I would say, you know, it taught me a few things around you know, culture and values and what have you that you know I agreed with most, but maybe not all, right? But you know, that's hence hence why you know we we set our own firms up and stuff. But I think as a um as a training ground really for gloves-off high impact professional service selling that you know S3 was um I mean I was crap when I got there, so I nearly got fired in the f after my first year. I I don't know how to build barely anything in the first year. What brand were you working in? I worked for the Huxley brand that just set up recruit first, that became um I think got sucked up to Huxley eventually. Um but I worked for Gary Eldon, who I think you did. I did. Um and yeah, I mean America Square were you? He were probably I was on King William Street in the city. He'd probably back this up. You know, I was I was I don't think I was on his radar for the first year, and I was pretty lucky to keep my job. Yeah. But then I made a couple of very, very obvious discoveries, but you know, they were, you know, I was the top biller in the Huxley group the next year. Right. Um and there were some good billers at Huxley at th in those days. So I was really proud of that. It was the first real achievement I met I had professionally. Yeah. Um, and the difference was that I worked out that if you work to a process and you're absolutely relentless about the process, then you take the luck out of it. There are loads of unlucky salespeople in this world, right?

SPEAKER_03 19:04

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Um but you can actually remove the luck by actually covering each base but doubling up on those bases and just being relentless over that because I was I was the typical lazy salesperson. You know, one week was great, the next week was terrible. Um and specifically when you're selling contracts and and groups of engineers into companies, you you you you need to be pretty fanatical over getting those uh those basics right. And as soon as you do, you get luckier, right? Because you've got more opportunities to to nail the sales. So that was a pretty pivotal year for me.

SPEAKER_03 19:42

It's the first time I earned any decent money, half decent money, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

You know, because I was literally hand to mouth until then.

SPEAKER_03 19:49

But it was I mean, if I remember the first time I ever made any decent money in recruitment, and I was like, I don't know what I'm gonna do with this money. There's so much of it, and I'd never had any before. Yeah, and I remember going out and buying loads of bedding because I was like, Well, I'll just go and buy some like bedding, wouldn't I? That's you know, I was looking for things to spend all this money on, yeah. Crazy, really. I mean, um so so you've you I always say to people, um there comes a moment in your life in recruitment where you sort of make a decision either consciously or subconsciously, you're like, I'm all in on this. Yeah, how long was it do you remember before you went, I'm gonna make a I'm gonna make I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna make some money out of this.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

I think it was all instantaneous. I think um I was 25, or coming up to 25. I think there's some science somewhere that says that you know, particularly males' brains aren't fully formed until they're about 25. Mine definitely. I'm sure we're still going to be able to do it.

SPEAKER_03 20:48

I'm hanging out for my wife, and my wife's anything to go by.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

So anyway, I think my my mine was partially formed by then. Um it all happened pretty quick. I worked out that I had a very good year with S3. I learned a lot about what I really, really enjoyed about working in this industry. I also learned you know discovered that I potentially had a different um some differences of approach that I would really like to explore. Um, the only way I was going to be able to do that was to probably go out on my own. Um so I did, you know, I had a crazy year where basically we earned some some decent money. I bought my first house. Two weeks after we had bought the house, I quit my job because I needed the salary for the for the mortgage application to go through. Um so I had a very understanding um wife to be who was living with me. And I felt like I had just been able that the lights had come on a little bit around how I could do what I did in a particular way that would give us some differentiation and had a chance of being successful. But it was, you know what, if you got me at twenty five when I said Arrows up, you know. I'd say that I'd have probably thought this is a 50-50 shot at best. Um, but you were willing to give it a shot. Yeah, definitely. I had a couple of good things. You've got to have a really stable um home life, um, which I did. I had a good business partner who wanted to come on the journey as well, Adrian, um, who believed in what I believed in, and ultimately it was an opportunity to to build a business, but every recruitment business at the time was completely candidate-centric. Um, and I was building a client-centric recruitment business, which was quite different to the way the the my the firms that I previously worked at had had operated, and most people would tell you it was suicidal to do that because candidates king and they're the they're the scarce resource. Um but what I'd seen was that the most valuable business was repeat business. And if you go to customers, customers' biggest gripe was that recruiters would place one or two at a high fee and bugger off, yeah. Or the the standard of service was poor, or they didn't get value for the fee that they paid. Well, that well, the obvious question to then ask them back is go, well, give me everything, or give me, you know, what's the wallet share that I can take, yeah, and I can start ticking off those needs that you have. Yeah. Um, and that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to launch a business that could do that.

SPEAKER_03 23:22

So But but just to go back a minute though, you at this stage you've only got a handful of years' experience.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:29

Were you sort of an abnormally confident in your own ability? Like, did were you just like, I'm really fucking good at this and I'm gonna make it happen? Because it's it's it's it it's quite a bold move at 25 to just be like, yeah, I'll just I'm gonna turn in this massive salary in this big you know successful role.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Yeah, and and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It kind of depends who you talk to, I think. Um from my my perception was, yeah, definitely I was really confident in what I could do. Right. I don't think I was um I don't think I was overconfident because had a really decent grasp on what those what the challenges would be. I think having got to know myself over you know, you know, as a over my career, I think I'm quite a high risk taker. Yeah. Um, which shouldn't be confused for overconfidence. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's about every you know, everything's about risk management, right, in in in business. And I do think that the higher your tolerance is for risk at that critical point where you're unproven, you haven't done it before, you've got a really big decision to make. My sense was I'm 25, I have no dependence, I've proven that I can operate and I can trade. Yeah, my downsides are pretty small here in comparison to being, you know, late 40s, three kids, house, schools, etc. You when your downsides are pretty, pretty um, yeah, a lot bigger. So I definitely was I definitely think I was a uh I become less of a risk taker as I got older, but I was a high risk taker at the time, but I thought it was a decent bet. Um so and you cannot make that decision unless you go all in. It's not something that you you know, people talk to me about um, you know, I have the side hustle, you know, I do this on the side, or you know, one day I'm gonna do this full time. And you know, for me, if that feels a little foreign to me, it's either, look, man, if you think it's the right thing, then you do it properly and you do it with absolute commitment because only that will will punch through. Yeah. I don't think you can. There's so many good people in our market, there's so many strong companies. We've mentioned two of them. Yeah, you know, they'll eat you alive. Yeah. You know, um, you've got to have you've got to have differentiation, you've got to have, you know, your your talent has to be as good or better than the competition, the people that you actually entrust your brand with. And you know, you've got to be, you've got to be absolutely fully committed. Your you you know, your mortgage has to be you know dependent upon the success. Because then, as you know, having run your own business, then that gives you that extra level of intrinsic motivation that you need, yeah, should you need it, yeah. Um to uh yeah, to get results.

SPEAKER_03 26:13

So the Arrows Group was born in 2003 with a partner, Adrian. Yep. Work together?

SPEAKER_01 26:23

We worked together at S3. Um I still remember it now. We were sat in the car park in Reading having gone to meet a client, he did perm and I did contract. Right. And you know, we used to double up, used to get all these meetings together. And um I just sold a load of I think we both had just sold a load of really big deals, and it was and I think I was getting my head kicked in about not playing ball of some you know some ridiculous some ridiculous corporate rule that I was breaking, and I I you know I I learned to that stage I was pretty much unmanageable as an individual, yeah, because I I managed to get results and I got really good results, and I normally did them through being quite contrarian in terms of doing things slightly differently.

SPEAKER_03 27:05

So I was a pain in the ass for um for the um I hear that a lot is that people say I was just a nightmare.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

I wasn't you know, I was really I was very polite, I was really well behaved. I'm just I think I was probably just a bit passive aggressive, I just didn't do what you asked me to do, yeah. But I got the results anyway. Anyway, so we we were having a conversation, and um you know, to his to his credit, which I'll always be um massively thankful for. I think Aid and I just had one of those moments that you have in your in your life where you you go, yeah, let's do it. And and if he's just said he's gonna do it, then and I've just said I've told him he's gonna do it, yeah, we're gonna do it.

SPEAKER_03 27:44

I can't back out now.

SPEAKER_01 27:45

Yeah, so we had that moment, um, and things move super quick. You know, you you've got to, you know, one thing I wasn't gonna do was start, you know, um running something you know under the under the table whilst I was currently being paid by S3. Yeah, there are certain values that that that that I hope we've instilled in our businesses over the years that yeah that run true. So that was it. So had a difficult conversation with at S3. Um and yeah, we we started up probably too probably too young. Yeah, we're both, I mean, 25, you know, I had the grand amount of about four years work experience to to base it off, and not a huge amount of kind of management or leadership experience at that stage? No, barely any. Barely any.

SPEAKER_03 28:31

I'm just gonna work it out, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:33

I think so. I think um, you know, it's if you're gonna set a business up and it's gonna mean something and it's gonna be differentiated, not just internally, but to the customer and to the outside world, you have to build that in your own shadow. You can't ape stuff that you've done elsewhere, in my opinion. That didn't I'm sure you can, it didn't work. That that I didn't have that option, I hadn't been I haven't been put through management training at either company. So, yeah, definitely had to work it out on the fly. But I had a really clear idea about how we wanted to operate, and that gave me a certain level of confidence and what I'd learnt from those those businesses around standards, you know, and um just the you know, just how you manage people when they're underperforming. I've managed to pick up some of that as we as we went along.

SPEAKER_03 29:32

Yeah, painful lessons along the way.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

Yeah, you know what, so many I can't remember, probably. Yeah, um I think we've got some statistics there about how the business grew, and that probably reflects our competence as a as um as as as owners and the and and and managers, but I think as the founder of Nvidia said, you know, entrepreneurialism is about eating glass about 80% of the time. I can resonate with that. Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, you have these amazing moments where it goes right, yeah. And and obviously, they're fleeting, and they're the ones that everyone talks about, but it's it's not the it's not the gritty bits where you know we got sued when we were my first son was born, so was that 2008. We almost lost the business overnight, um, probably nearly ran out of money. Probably count that on both hands, the amount of times that that nearly happened in those first few years. Um hired some just incredibly unfit people just to be in an office environment, let alone to be to be representing my brand. All of those usual mistakes we made, we made, but you know what? The one thing that we did really well is that we really cut quick if it if someone wasn't right, or we learnt fast if we got something wrong. Yeah, and we were very humble over that because you know, you have to be prepared to learn and learn fast if your boss is the bank, and the bank doesn't care about the detail. Exactly. It just asks you, they ask you the same question at the end of every month. So um, yeah, we learned really quick. We started closing that gap on you know, that experience gap. Most people would have waited for longer to to um to get going. Um and yeah, it was a whirlwind, man. You know, it went really fast.

SPEAKER_03 31:25

So we're not a lot so at this stage, you're an established entrepreneur, you've got a successful recruitment business, and we're not going to cover every chapter of that 23 years in the short time we've got. But if we fast forward you've got the global financial crash of 2008, you've then got you know a very tricky economy for several years beyond that. Yeah. And then and then a relatively fallow period, and then obviously all of the drama of COVID and and and all the all and loads of noise in between. If you were to reflect on that journey as the organization grew, because at its peak, how big was the organized what's what's the biggest you've ever been from a headcount point of view?

SPEAKER_01 32:11

That there is so when we when we when before we sold uh in 2016, we were about we're over 300 people, six countries, sales north of 150 million. Yeah. Um proper big business. It was yeah, it w it it got grown up on us actually quite quickly. Were you still the CEO? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had, I mean, I think I I shared it with you, but you know, to put it in perspective, I think it took us um, you know, it took us the first 10 million, took us, you know, eight years or something to get to. Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, over the the next six years we went from roll round numbers, we went from 10 million to 50.

SPEAKER_02 32:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

And that took about two years, and then in about just uh roughly two years again, we got to 150 million. Wow. So if you think about it, we were knocking around at the lower end of that scale, up to 10 million for quite a long time.

SPEAKER_03 33:08

Yeah, that's turnover.

SPEAKER_01 33:09

Correct.

SPEAKER_03 33:10

Got it.

SPEAKER_01 33:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:10

Primarily contract?

SPEAKER_01 33:12

Uh primarily, yeah. I think we were about 65% contract. Yeah. Um so you know, net for income was was was three three, four million. Yeah, uh no, I think we're probably our net for income annually at the end, we're about twenty-five million or something. Oh, sorry, I was thinking on ten. Okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, no, no, sorry. So we kind of we you know um, and there's a whole bunch of contributing factors to that, which we would need a whole different conversation to go into. But the very summary point was it's when we when when we got the formula right, you can unlock growth really quickly. And there's a load of contributing factors that we did, which helped that. We had great people we'd hired. A lot of the a lot of the hiring we'd done over the first 10 years was re-started to bear fruit. Yeah, um, we were in a uh a unique environment post-financial crisis, recovery bounce back years of the 2010s, low interest rates, high borrowing, you know, debt was cheap, companies were growing quickly, and we were in the right markets, we had the right customers who who could scale. And you were tech? We were tech and healthcare. So we launched ICG in 2008, 2000, yeah, late set late 2007, sorry. Good timing. Yeah, it was quite good timing because healthcare at the time, healthcare and still now, healthcare and tech were the fastest growing sectors. Yeah, right. We had a bit of an oil and gas boom in between that, but fundamentally, have you looked over the last 20 years? They were the fastest growing sectors, and they also they levelled each other out, so they were a good strategy hedge against each other because technology was completely economy cycle driven. Yeah, so you know, price of debt, um, the markets and what have you. Whereas healthcare is political cycle that that's you know, the drivers that affect that market around who's come into has has Labour just got in in the UK, for example. Um because they want to spend lows money on the NHS, yeah. Um or have the Tories got in and they want to put price capping in there and they want to kneecap some of the suppliers to try and get the cost of the you know the cost under control. Yeah, they they provide really different trading environments, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:26

Um so we had and did you do were you think I mean I'm sure the answer is not really, but was that part of the strategy? Was like let's let's let's hedge this tech recruitment business with something that's kind of the anathema or the opposite of it, or was it like we had a guy who did healthcare and that was that you know, because that's sometimes that's also legitimate, right?

SPEAKER_01 35:46

We I think it was I think it it it it was the former, really. We knew that we wanted if we were gonna I mean let's let's be frank, Arrows launched an insurance brand, which died. Um, what other ones? Telecoms. We went into two that died, but you know, we cut them quick, as I said earlier, we learnt fast. So we launched healthcare, we would incubate them. So you you know, we pulled a team out of a competitor. Um, we recruited the whole team. That's when I got sued and nearly lost. By the competitor. Yeah. So 2008 was when my son was born. So it was then that um that things got that that was that was tricky, period, right? Because they're a big company and they were like, we're not having this, you're taking a whole team.

SPEAKER_03 36:26

And I guess for them, it's just probably a bit of um I mean, we used to do this at S3, you know, we would essentially just do it for the PR.

SPEAKER_01 36:33

Yeah, PR just and uh and you know it definitely set me back. Yeah, it was hard, you know, because my mind's not on the job, it's you know, we're with our lawyers trying to trying to you know fend off Armageddon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The destroyers coming. Yeah, um, so yeah, so we um we knew that we wanted to launch in the high growth market tick. The team were right, half of the team were right, so then it got past that incubation stage. Yeah, and then look, we were just super fortuitous because you know the market timing was really good. They they they were just launching big national frameworks. We got onto the frameworks, we managed to deliver all of those really smart, sharp business practices that we learnt doing technology for S3 in the city, yeah, and I applied those to a market that had never really operated like that before in healthcare because the incumbents were often what, a bit old-fashioned, a bit more old-fashioned. It was far more, you know. I call it we were a digital service for an analogue sector. We felt just a little bit faster.

SPEAKER_03 37:41

Um and I think if if your people believe that it's an incredibly potent mentality, is and you've you know, it's one thing saying we are, but if the people really think they are, it's like we can, you know, yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_01 37:54

And you know galvanizing. Yeah, and I have not like, you know, I get to sit here and talk to you about it, but I that performance that we got to from you know the growth that we experienced in those, you know, between 2010 and 16 was really not down to me. You know, there was there were some impressive, hard-working um leaders within our organizations and teams that were on the way up who were just they were just pulling up trees, they were they were excellent, they were really good. Uh they still are, yeah, yeah. Um, and so it was you know, I was partly guess my job in the end was ultimately just ensuring that there was an environment where they could really, really perform. Yeah, and that's a great job because you have that same job when the market during the financial crisis, when everything's going tears up. Yeah, that's your job. I'm in charge of performance. Oh god, you know, the performance is here. So no, I I look back on it really, really fondly. It was a it was it was crazy, it was really exciting. A head count you know grew really fast. We had to deal with all of those operational um challenges that come with going from a small company into a you know a medium-sized, established brand that's operating in different countries, um, you know, adding in vast amounts of complexity. Um but yeah, it was cool. We enjoyed it, you know. Yeah, it was one of those proves it back on.

SPEAKER_03 39:23

So let's talk about that because you know the whole concept of this show when I started it was why is it that some organizations are able to scale to enterprise level, whilst others flounder flounder is maybe an unfair word, but but maybe are stuck a little bit at that kind of SMB level, maybe they never get past five or ten or fifteen heads. Um and of course, you know, is it strategy, people, leadership, management, market, investment? The answer is it's both all and none of those things at the same time. What would you ascribe, apart from your management genius, to what would you ascribe why Arrows was able to outperform the average recruitment company and get to 300 heads, 150 million turnover?

SPEAKER_01 40:12

Um I think blueprints, the main thing. All of the things that you mentioned are obviously key parts of the ingredients, you know. Um, your your hiring come, you you know the effectiveness of your hiring comes, those chickens come home to roost, right? You know, after about two or three years. So you need to have made the right hires up front. But really, you have to have a blueprint that everybody works to. The reason why companies don't scale is that they don't have a consistent way of operating. So if you look down, uh you know, in the old days you'd have a big line of desks with loads of consultants on it, you know that you can pull one consultant out, put another one in, and they'll do the same job. Yeah. Um, and they'll do it in the same way, and they will follow bright brand guidelines and they will not negotiate outside of what our commercial terms are. And it's not, it's around having a level of consistency across the business. That's the only way you can scale because otherwise you're personality driven, and then as soon as you pull a personality out, or the personality isn't there, yeah, there isn't a rule book that everybody lives by. Um and it's not like we were a super overmanaged environment, quite quite the quite the opposite. You know, I'd say we were pretty laissez-faire when it came to our economics internally. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We just had a way of working. We hired nearly all of our staff were were hired at graduate levels, they didn't know any other way. Um, it so that meant they all get the sheep dip training was exactly the same.

SPEAKER_02 41:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:37

And they did it again and again and again. Then they everybody held themselves to the same set of values that people, their predecessors, had held themselves to. They saw that the promotional criteria hadn't changed in three years. They were going to be judged on the same outputs and the same values and the same results. Yeah. That that the uh the guys and girls that were that that had progressed in front of them had been as well. And so it just created an environment where there was a really high degree of self-m self-determination, self-management.

SPEAKER_03 42:08

Um were you a rebellion crusher? Because my experience and the experience is that it's not easy to maintain a consistent that way of working because there's always some smart arse who's like, oh, I've got I can do it better, you know. Yeah, and and so you either have to have one of two things. You either have to have a a ruthless approach to like, no, no, this is how we do it, and if you're not part of that gang, you're out, yeah. Or you have to accept that, you know, you know, it's like the Eric Cantonar thing where there's always one outlier, you know, he's good enough. As long as he's good enough, we can tolerate one or two outliers. What was your how did you how do you how do you resist that? I pretty have zero pretty much had zero tolerance for it.

SPEAKER_01 42:54

Right.

SPEAKER_03 42:54

You know, and did you learn that the hard way? Um or had you because it sounds like you were always clear.

SPEAKER_01 43:00

Not really. I was uh you know, I have responsibility to the bank at the end of the month. You know, it's it was the brand that that Aid and I were building. Um and you know, we did things a certain way, and we expected everybody to to to fall in line to live up to those, yeah. We learn a lot through having super talented, slightly maverick people within the organization. We changed and we adapted to learn and to embrace the best of what people do, right? But really, when it boils down to it, you do it our way. Yeah, that was it. Um because it's too complicated, it's too hard to manage, there's too many moving parts. And our way was cool, it wasn't draconian. You know, it gave people a lot of you know, it was it was high on training, it was high on EQ, you know, we you know, the the way the way that the way the the people that we wanted and the people we wanted to r reward had high emotional intelligence. They weren't, you know, that old school, you know, um hardcore. Sales mentality that didn't that that didn't leave room for different types of characters in the room.

SPEAKER_03 44:07

So yeah, that's kind of how we you know the I had Russell Clements on this show not long ago, and he was saying that you know recruitment companies by and large don't fail because of a lack of opportunity, they fail because of an abundance of it. And and what they end up doing is chasing every every rabbit down every hole, trying to trying to leverage every opportunity that falls in their lap, and then you just end up with this strategic mess where there's no there's no um there's no clarity over who we are and most importantly who we're not. No, we don't do that, we do this.

SPEAKER_01 44:41

I th I absolutely I think that's probably true for most most sectors as well, but definitely for us. If you're looking at SMB, I think you said, you know, small smaller businesses that that don't scale, it's because they don't mean something really, really clear and concise to the buyer. They are, yeah, we you know, we have an abundancy of opportunities, so we're just going to start picking and grabbing and you and delivering on those. I think you know the discipline is around creating a service that's really easy for customers to understand. Yeah. Like super, super simple. Oh, I know. They're you go to Arrows because you need software engineering and data. Yeah. Yeah. And they do it faster than everybody else.

SPEAKER_02 45:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:18

They don't care about how much it costs if we're the fastest and we have the best every time, every time. Yeah. And we never let them down. Yeah. And if they chuck us a customer services job or something, we do we we look at them with a slightly strange stare and say, we we don't know what that is. Right.

SPEAKER_03 45:31

And and I think that's exactly what it is, right? It's about saying we don't do that.

SPEAKER_01 45:34

Correct. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:35

Because this is what we do.

SPEAKER_01 45:36

Yeah. And then and then that's what I meant about the blueprint is because everybody does the same thing. It's repeatable. Yeah. And it's scalable. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:43

You know, we But it takes balls to turn business down.

SPEAKER_01 45:46

Yeah, it does, especially in the early days, and we didn't in the early days. Right. So so let definitely learn that lesson the wrong way, um, or the hard way. Uh, but we learn it really quick. Yeah. You know, and you're pretty desperate when you when you first start. But what we learnt pretty quickly was people will keep coming back to us if they get a great service and it's and it's delivered at speed. Yeah. And there's and there's a degree of understanding and passion behind it. Yeah. Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:12

So one of the things that most people, everyone I suspect, aspires to is the glorious exit.

SPEAKER_04 46:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:21

Um was it glorious?

SPEAKER_01 46:24

There were exit. There were glorious elements to it. Um, you know, I think that's one thing you know, recruitment companies are are are brought up to chase an exit, you know, because you're young. You know, when I if I look back at the 30-year-old man that was that was that was preparing for exit, right? Um, or building a business that he wanted to exit, what was his motivation for doing that? Wanted loads of money, didn't want to have to work hard. I was feeling super, super uh stressed and tired because I was running a company, I'd just had a baby. Time was really, really precious. Um, you know, I'm 49 now, my kids are finishing school. Yeah um I have time on my hands. You know, I have a job that generally, you know, requires me to be around, but I'm not I'm not in in execution, I'm not tactical. Yeah. Um, so my ambitions now, if I could tell that 30 30-year-old, look, you know, when you're 49, this is how you're gonna feel. You know, I'm ambitious, I still want to be engaged, I still want to be doing stuff. Yeah, I've got loads of experience that I want to leverage. Yeah. Um, I still got the the drive to, although financial independence, you know, I do it from a position of financial independence, I still have the ambition and the drive to want to do um what I'm good at. Um, but you know, you can get, you know, when you're younger, you're like, yeah, it's it's a badge of honour, you know, it's a kind of a you know, a validation thing, being able to sell your business and uh and for lots of money. So I don't devalue that at all. We really we we worked really hard, we went through it, it was a really difficult deal.

SPEAKER_03 48:01

Um so let's let's talk about it because I think for a lot of our listeners, it's not just the the Hollywood stuff, it's the maybe the um that the it's the tactics and the and the and and what goes into it. So you're you're you're a big business, you're in good fiscal shape, it sounds like at the time. Yeah, we're in good Nick. Yeah, you're in good Nick. Just did you think to yourself it's time? We you know what I mean? Were you I guess was it like let's try because the mistake a lot of people make is they they wait too long. And before they know it, the market's taken over, market in it's that shit, we've missed the cycle, we're back, we're on, and I think you know, the last few years have been chastening for a lot of founders who thought they'd be retired by now and are not.

SPEAKER_01 48:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:44

Um so so your story were when how long before the exit did you start considering it? And then I guess the second part of that question is there's all these different options. There's trade sale, there's minority investment, there's full exit, there's I don't know, a flotation. What what what things are how do you how are you learning about what might be available to you?

SPEAKER_01 49:07

Well, I think, yeah, look, if I knew now, uh if I knew then what I know now, you know, I've done quite a lot of MA since then. Um what I did in that through that process is I learned a lot of lessons really quickly. Um can go into a process like that where you or you're very fixated on the outcome. And right, why are we gonna sell this business? Oh, because you want to make loads of money and want to sell it for for X. Um and what you what you can do is you can start to lose sight of the drivers and the motivations that that kick that off to start with. And by that I mean once that train's once that train's going and you're selling your business, it's quite hard to stop it. And that might sound really crazy, but you've got teams of lawyers who have been given a mandate, who are um driving it. You've got every man and his dog sifting through your you know, your data room, all of your detail, all of your um you know, your inside leg measurement as a as a as a business. It's it can be pretty disruptive because you can't keep something like that too quiet across the organization. Yeah, you're also growing at 45% a year in a business which takes quite a lot of um time.

SPEAKER_03 50:27

And you have to keep growing while the deal's happening, otherwise you're gonna derail the deal.

SPEAKER_01 50:31

Yeah, and so and so we we we we got to a stage where um we were gonna sell it uh strategic. There was a strategic deal to be done. Yeah. Um and then Adrian and I, we our motivations for for selling it were, I think, were quite different. Um you know, I'd I'd wed myself to the technology business, you know, that's where I spent most of my time, it's what I really enjoyed. The arrows kind of we it was we were quite early to get into that SAW um vision, um the strategic stuff. Um, and Aid was very much in charge of ICG, which was the biggest brand within our business, and that was the one that we were looking to sell. Um, and it got to a point where we had to agree. Actually, Aid I Aid Aid decided he wanted to stay with that business rather than sell it to a strategic. And it was it we could we could do the deal ourselves, but it was going to be an MBO where we would split the split the group up. We would sell uh he would take he would lead the sale of ICG and I'd retain um the arrows business, which was a good result for everybody concerned by the end of it, but the process of doing it was um it was just it was just a lot more strung out than we than we anticipated. When you see a business, everybody when you see your business at the beginning of that process, everybody tells you how much it's worth and and who's gonna buy it, and they don't actually get into the the minutiae of how a deal works. Um and we had never done it before, you know, we were quite young. So we learnt a bit of that going through the process, and it was um what should have been about three months was six months of pain. Suddenly two founders having to value the the shareholding on opposite sides of the table rather than both being sat on the same sides of the table. But you're still friends, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:28

No, sorry, I mean at this point, yeah. It you're your your this this strategy where where now you're looking at your two sides of your business, but it's done through a supportive and constructive and collegiate lens, you know.

SPEAKER_01 52:41

Yeah, look, I think it's it's it's gonna a process like that is it's it's abrasive and tasty, right? And it's a proper tester. We probably needed a bit of a break post-that before we could um you know, before we wanted to get back together and and talk it all through. Yeah. Um, and those were just the things that I learned up front and early on. You know, the big learn was that you know, if you are in if you're a partnership, if there's two of you with equal voting rights and you're going into an event, into a process together, you've got to be absolutely crystal clear over each other's motivations all the way through, and you need to keep re um uh returning to that and making sure because because the scenario changes as you go through a deal, you know, different bars come in looking for different, they might want to take one of you with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They may not want to take either of you with it, they might want both of you, but one in a role and another in another role that he may not like. Yeah, do you see what I mean? You haven't worked through those scenarios as a partnership, yeah. Because whilst you've been coming up, everything's even.

SPEAKER_03 53:46

Well, exactly. You're just a team and that's that. Correct. And and when you were looking to exit, was it did you want to sail off on a yacht into the sunset and never to see, or were you always committed to staying involved in some capacity?

SPEAKER_01 53:57

Yeah, so it's fun, it's funny, like before before the process, absolutely, I was just you know that you wouldn't have seen me for dust. Yeah. Um post post that I took some time off and I realized pretty quickly that you know I was just too young to take time. I was like 40, you know. But young kids as well. So you just got to put young kids, and my wife doesn't want me knocking around the house all day. Yeah. Um, and you know, you need to decompress, you need to rest, you just need to switch everything off. But then very quickly, you you you realise the fires are still burning pretty strong. Um, and we'd only just got going. You know, we you know, I've been able to now move out, you know, we've you know, we've built a group now based upon a strategic shift into really moving from providing the capability, which Harry's used to do, used to deploy loads of engineers, to owning the whole outcome for companies. So actually outsourcing big, big technology strategies, which is actually an opportunity to learn a lot, it's it's more rewarding in a funny way because you're you're taking on a lot more risk, but you're also taking a lot more responsibility for customers to build stuff. Um yeah, and I've got lots more to learn.

SPEAKER_03 55:08

Do you do you still see yourselves as a recruitment business today, do you think? Or is it really interesting? Um because that's often the um I um I had a guy in called Jim Ryan um a few weeks ago, yeah, and he runs ESRG big oil and gas deployment business. And he's you know, they're putting 50, 60 man crews into big projects. They do everything from you know um immigration, they they organise the flights, I mean they do the lot, it's proper what I would consider um well, how would I describe it? Anyway, I posed the same question to him, and he was that absolutely, we are a recruitment business first and foremost. I was like, not an answer expected, because I think for a lot of recruitment businesses, especially in this modern SOW frenzy, they are desperate to call themselves anything other than a recruitment business. I will call myself anything as long as it isn't a recruitment business. But he was very, very clear on on unequivocal about the fact that they embraced the recruitment badge. Well, tell me about your view of it.

SPEAKER_01 56:20

I was just slightly I was just slightly different in that um we're unequivocal about arrows being a recruitment business. Right. Um and that business has got a really, really sharp niche. It's it's in it's all in LLM, AI, and data. That's all it does. Um yes, it does deploy big teams under statement of work. Yeah. It does some more strategic bits around the sides, but it's a recruitment partner. If you look at the way that we're engaged by most of the big customers, we are a recruitment partner. Where we differ is we we uh as a group, we're a professional services group because we bought Build Circle, which is a technology consulting company that we bought in 2022. Um and they are that's they're the business that outsource, they're the outsource technology company that own the outcome for the comp for the customer. Yeah, and that's a very, very different service provision. We're an anthropic partner, we're cloud partner with AWS and Google, we go into companies and do the strategic advisors, the advisory piece up front, and then we will be given you know projects of X million quid to deliver over over a given amount of time. So we outsource that outcome, and it's not all under time and materials, we take some risk and we then we um we build customers based on outcomes as well. Yeah, so it's a really different, it's actually quite a different model that we moved into. That's now the predominant brand within the group. It's fastest growing business I've ever been involved in. Wow. Um and that really is um a you know, we we we tried to we tried to do that organically with arrows. Uh I think there's an issue where it's a logical step for a company that's out that deploys engineers and provides capability to then move into owning outcome. Yeah. Because those two projects look quite similar. And there's there's been a especially in my experience in our sector, there's been a there's been a history of customers, whilst that's a logical extension, they very often don't trust the recruitment partner to deliver the outcome for the number of the reasons I've spoken about. You know, to have that trust, you need to have been able to obviously deliver those projects before. You've got all of the skills in-house, so that's you are a technology company, not a sales company. Yeah. Um, and you're able to bring partnerships to bear in cut in programs to either accelerate, help build, or deliver more for less, which is what we could do with Google, for example, or or Amazon. That's what we're doing with Anthropic at the moment. Um, so actually, when you peel a couple of layers back, they're really chalk and cheese. They're very, very different, but they are a parallel service to the same customer base. Yeah, yeah. So where the the where the synergy lies is really around how you can, you know, share from a sales perspective, sharing customer data. So being able to go into, you know, because Arrows is deploying doing a fantastic job at Sky, they've been there for 12 years and they're they're pretty much the the number one provider to Sky in the UK for all their non-perm in in engineering. We can elevate that relationship with Build Circle because we can go in and help them look at you know, strategic piece of work around how they're going to integrate AI into a broadcast environment. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:47

Um, and do you and do you leverage the the contingent nature of arrows to feed the opportunities to Build Circle? Because that's the most common thing I see is we've got this contingent business that actually is really effective, but it's probably not the most sophisticated solution because they're selling bombs on seats. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna build some kind of rayer um wrapper or layer across the top or around it, and we're gonna try and turn that into a consulting business. Yeah, sounds easier than it is, but if you get it right, it can be incredibly efficient and effective.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:24

Yeah, I agree. I think um I think the the the contingent recruitment businesses are amazing sales tools because they're they're jammed, the good ones are jammed full of really good salespeople, and it's a low barrier to entry to be able to win a customer that can make a placement of an individual. So you're at you know, your customer your customers can start with a wallet share, you know, the it could be 10 grand, right? It could be the starting starting transaction. You know, the average transaction if in technology consulting, I think the smallest is about half a million, and they uh and it goes north of that. The sales cycle on those is about six months. So you don't have the the you know, the you don't have the same flu you know um fluidity that you do with a with a recruitment business, which is winning new customers every week. Yeah, you know, build circle great, but they're not winning new clients every week. Yeah, um, so there's some really rich customer data there that we're able to you know to to to look at and then and then make logical, sensible decisions with. And it goes back to the beginning of the conversation, right? It's all about your network, and it's all about if if people are spending two, three, four million quid with you on a technology transformation, there's got to be a level of trust, and it's all about the network. And if you're trusted by those people and you've delivered, then suddenly the network becomes richer, yeah, because you've got far more credibility within it.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:45

Um But there's a high greater this risk of jeopardy, right? Because you're owning the outcome now, it's not somebody else's fault if it goes wrong.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:53

Yeah, I think I think you if you look at the model, there you it's you've got to be prepared to take some risk in there to be taken seriously on some programs. Um but you know, we're building you know, we're building market data platforms in New York, we're building brand new fintechs in Europe. We're um we're probably close to being number one in the fintech space in the UK for AI integration within regulated markets. We're doing you know, as a result, you know, margins are a lot higher, you know, so the profits that you make on the business that that you're delivering is is are much richer because of the risk that you're taking and because of the credibility that you have uh in terms of the expertise, yeah. You know, we can we can we can bring some of those partners into play when we let me just demystify this a tiny bit for the listeners.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:45

Yeah. So when you talk about we're building market data platforms in New York, so what that is is so a typical scenario is what? A big organization says we want to do a thing, and rather than try and do it themselves, they phone you up and say, look, how much is it gonna cost for you to do the thing? Yeah, and you say it's gonna cost X millions of pounds, and that's a fixed price, a bit like your builder building a conservatory in your house if he makes if it goes over, that's his problem. Yeah, isn't that am I broadly? Is that I I mean, I know that's incredibly simple language, but that's absolutely right.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:20

It's it you know, to make it even more simple, we used to be asked, so let's say let's use a market data business in in New York, they're gonna build that. In the old days, they would come to me and they'd say, I need 50 or 40 engineers to build this, we'll manage them, we'll run it, you guys recruit them, and you know, you make sure you get paid on time. Yeah, and we would do that, and we would do that for a margin, as you know, at the time and that would be a great, a great run, right? Awesome program. Yeah. Um now in scenario B, you know, customer comes to us and says, Okay, we want to build a market data platform, our technology internally is pretty, pretty ropey. We're carrying a lot of techno technology debt, which means it's just loads of old systems that don't really talk to each other. We don't know where our data is, it's it's hidden around there somewhere. Yeah. Um we you know, we need expertise as well as execution. We need both. Can you guys can you guys come in? Can you scope it, do a discovery, and then you know, pitch us a project with a cost on it, and then do it from cradle to grave.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:21

Um and when you talk about taking risk, the risk for you is you underprice it, you commit to the client at a price, and you're like, shit, we can't deliver it for that price, so we're gonna have to eat the the eat the the.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:34

Yeah, exactly. So if it was fully fixed price, yes. Or you know, what what we you know what you may like to do is something around, you know, we share some upside and downside. So if it's late, it hurts us because I've I've pitched it for five million dollars, let's say, yeah. And you know, we we've worked out our margin within that, but we're starting to run over that because it's taken too long. Yeah, but we also share some upside. If we do it quicker, then we take more profit from the from from the deal, or we might have a commercial arrangement around once they once they're up and running. Yeah, so it's taking a slightly more um I don't know, like a nuanced approach to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it it does it, you know, it just enables you to have those those relationships are really rich, and there's a level of dependency there, which you know, our model is around creating zero dependency where you know we come in, we do it, we train your people and we leave. Right. But through that process, you build an amount of you know, trust and depend, you know, the dependencies on the trust. It's like actually, if we're gonna do another program, maybe we should talk to these guys first and they can scope it for us, and then we'll work out whether we could do it ourselves or they do it. Yeah. Um so it's totally it's totally a logical progression for for recruitment for recruitment businesses. I really recommend it. I think it's a great strategy. Uh my personal view is that you probably need to acquire to make it really land. I think so. I think so because I mean arrows, you know, we we've Work really hard on that. I I don't think when it comes down to it that we're trusted to deliver a service and we're really good at it. To ask our customers to then trust us to do something different is actually quite complicated. Yeah. Because they're like, What happens here? And we're used to only paying you X and now you want to charge us Y. Yeah. But you're still the same people. Yeah. How do I justify that cost increase? You're on this list over here. It's a bit weird. Yeah, talent have got you over there, and they're they're looking for stuff to do, so they're just trying to, you know, go through that. Yeah, they're going through your uh terms, yeah. So it you know, it's a it's a hard transition to do, but if you're able to acquire it, I think it's like you can never and what does the group look like today for for the from the outside?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:44

So you you you obviously have remained consistently involved.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:48

Yeah, I so when I got came back from the time off, uh we we started building out arrows into that pure real real you know, that engineering deployment business that it is today. Um I probably had a bit too much time on my hands, so decided it was it would be good to to buy some businesses that would potentially you know it was it was really being buying companies that had that synergistic um opportunity where we could share sales, we could increase wallet sharing companies. Yeah. So we bought, I mean, I bought three businesses. Um Build Circle was one of them, excellent, you know, it's been amazing. Another one was major players, um, which is you know, I think it's like the original, you know, uh creative markets recruiter. I always loved that name. They're super cool company, actually. I know the the yeah, it's a punchy name, isn't it? Yeah, but they're super cool company, um, and loads, loads of client crossover with what we do in tech. Right. Um, and they're doing really well. I haven't been able to make that synergy really work because actually creative and technology, you only have a little bit of crossover. Um, but we've learnt loads like getting under the skin of that business and being able to look at ways in which we can we can use technology to deliver elements of what they do, which is cool, which is ongoing, which is interesting. Um and I had a shocker with the other one. I bought a German company literally just before COVID, and that murdered it overnight. It kind of, yeah, they were Berlin, they worked for all of the really fast tech startups in Berlin. So all the rocket internet brands, you know, like Zing and all of those ones. Rocket Internet, that's a massive. Do you remember that? Yeah, yeah. So they'm massive, yeah. And these guys were a headhunting company and they didn't do any contract, they just had really deep relationships with these with these businesses, and you know, my my simple math was like, well, hang on a second, we've got a million you know, candidates on our database, and we a lot of them are German, and you know, most of them are contractors. Why can't we go and get get those relationships and upsell them into big contractor um rich uh relationships, which on paper look really good? The reality was interest rates went through the roof, all the funding stopped for a lot of those businesses. Yeah. Um COVID hit, and we just couldn't it was not a business, as it turned out, that could be managed remotely. It they had to be in together the whole time. There was a bit of a union kind of feel about it. And businesses in Germany have complications around how you structure the staffing internally, and and um yeah, I just spent my time basically just reading HR reports about you know what was going on in Germany and about people I didn't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it wasn't it, you know. I learned my lesson on that one. And I think, you know, look, if you're gonna get into MA and you and you're looking to build a group, you only need one of them to go right, but you really want them all to go well. Yeah, of course. But we learn you, you know, that one didn't go well.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:46

Well, then that's life, right? You you um Yeah, we learned a bit. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You're either you're either learning or you're earning. Yeah, exactly. Well, I wasn't earning on that one for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:56

So hopefully I was learning a bit.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:58

Um well look, I mean we've come to the end of our time. Um you know, firstly, thanks for coming and being so candid. Um what does the next chapter of your career look like? You're still at it every day, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:12

Yeah, I think, you know, I mean I I get to I get to work to my own schedule, which is nice. Um but uh but I've obviously I've still got I've still got a lot I want to do. I'm learning learning a lot with Build Circle, which is cool, but really I'm on my final lap. Like uh, you know, I've got a board that run the that one run the businesses in the group, they're really good, they're super ambitious, it's getting pretty close to time where I think they'll probably need to want to take over full time. Yeah. Um, you know, I'm really in a chairman and owner role anyway, at the moment. Um we may not be done with our M ⁇ A. Um and that's that's an area that I can add value with you know to the board. So I don't know, what's your space? We're doing a bit at the moment that that's that's exciting, but yeah, I think it's uh it's scaled now, and that was my job. You know, I wanted to scale the scale the group, get it to get it to a level of um to a size um and position where it would be valuable um on the outside market, and and I've done that and I've got a great team of guys who want to want to take over. So it's time for the yacht. So the yacht the yachts exactly, it's time for the yacht, yeah. That would have made it that that would have been a simpler answer, wouldn't it? Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:28

Well look, um when the uh when you when you whatever whatever you do to whatever you call launching a yacht, um maybe you'll invite me on for a beer and um definitely. But in the in the meantime, mate, um I wish you um I wish you every success and and thanks a lot for coming on and um yeah, it's been great.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:46

Thanks, Andy. I really enjoyed it. Cheers. Cheers, mate.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:51

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