On this week's show, I'm joined by an old client of mine, Matt Green. 

Matt is the founder and CEO of IDEX, a recruitment organisation with an employer branding arm and an advisory arm working with the insurance industry, the financial services sector, and now the legal sector.

Matt founded IDEX 17 years ago and they are now fully remote with 60 people in Manchester, Birmingham, London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow.

What I love about this business is that over 17 years, they've managed to do things the right way. 

• They've built organically without investment.

• They've invested a lot into the business without taking too much money away

They've also built a product with a genuine USP where they go into organisations and sell retainers and employer branding packages. They can genuinely take recruiters from £200k billings whilst working with other firms to 1.5 or x2 in billing by giving them access to their services and technology.

And as a result of all of this work, Matt is now on a mission to 10X the business! 

But there’s no pressure and no timeline. 

Matt has a long-term view, so anyone listening to this episode, especially new founders or even people that are thinking about starting a recruitment firm will learn from this! Matt's a great person to listen to because he’s quite different from a lot of recruitment business owners.

He has patience, sees the long-term picture, and doesn't make rash decisions. He invests in his company and he sees it as his baby. So many people can take advice and learn from him in this episode. 

Hoxo Message

Are you spending hours on LinkedIn and cold outreach and want more business coming to you over your competition? 

Well, if you're the founder or leader of a recruitment agency, here's what we can do for you at Hoxo.

We will give you the training, support, and resources to take you from what I call an offline recruiter, reliant on posting jobs and sending in emails to open up new customers, ultimately looking like every other recruiter on LinkedIn - to an online recruiter, being seen by over 25,000 relevant people driving a 200% minimum increase in engagement on your profile and seeing daily lead lists from LinkedIn that you can follow up with in six weeks time.

And if you don't perform, you don't pay. 

How can we make such a bold, results-driven promise like this? Two reasons

1) Whilst I've been building the RAG podcast, we've actually done what we say we’ll do for our clients.In less than two years, we built a business generating from zero to over 1 million views per month on LinkedIn leading to multimillion-pound revenues with a sales team of me plus two people without making a single outbound call.

2) Our track record - not only have we done it ourselves, but we've helped over 350 agencies and over 4,700 consultants do it as well, all in the last three years. 

Now, if that sounds of interest to you, make sure you fill in our contact form and we’ll tell you how we can help: https://bit.ly/3jpuEWa

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Episode Sponsor: Vincere

Vincere’s portals is a quick-win solution for agencies in need of a no-code candidate and client portal. It’s your one-way ticket to attracting top-tier candidates and clients with everything they need in one place.

Easily set up your candidate, client, and job portal straight within your Vincere account and configure it to your own brand and theme so it feels like you.

You can publish jobs from Vincere’s Job Portal and sync them directly to your website in one easy click. You can also offer candidates a quick and easy job search interface, so it’s made easy for them to find their perfect role.

And for your clients, you can offer them unique logins so they can access everything they need 24/7, so they can rate and review candidates and arrange interviews.

Find out more on vincere.io/rag

On this week's show, I'm joined by Adam Richardson. 

Adam is the founder of Strive Sales, a dedicated go-to-market recruitment agency headquartered in Manchester with an office in Tampa in the US with over 20 employees.

At 33, he has loads of experience in running businesses. He got into recruitment when he was in his early twenties and, within a couple of years, he became an entrepreneur launching his first business outside of the recruitment market. 

Upon selling this credit finance business, he launched his first recruitment agency and later a second brand which he now focuses on fully today. 

Through that period, he's seen so many ups and downs, specifically in the go-to-market niche, which is predominantly recruiting salespeople into VC-backed software companies.

Over 70% of all the candidates in the sales market in VC-backed companies are underperforming, which means the knock-on effect of recruitment has been astronomical. He saw over 50% of the vacancies he was working on vanish at the beginning of 2022.

So as a company, they've had to evolve, they've had to adapt, they've had to become BD focused. 

In this episode we talk about his experience in all his different businesses, but really how using all this experience enabled him to get through such a very difficult 2022.

Now, they’re seeing the upside and it's starting to shift along with economic conditions.

Adam is a young, super ambitious, super motivated, and knowledgeable guy!

I hope you enjoy the episode as much as I did recording it.

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Hoxo Message

Are you spending hours on LinkedIn and cold outreach and want more business coming to you over your competition? 

Well, if you're the founder or leader of a recruitment agency, here's what we can do for you at Hoxo.

We will give you the training, support and resources to take you from what I call an offline recruiter, reliant on posting jobs and sending in emails to open up new customers, ultimately looking like every other recruiter on LinkedIn - to an online recruiter, being seen by over 25,000 relevant people driving a 200% minimum increase in engagement on your profile and seeing daily lead lists from LinkedIn that you can follow up with in six weeks time.

And if you don't perform, you don't pay. 

How can we make such a bold, results-driven promise like this? Two reasons

1) Whilst I've been building the RAG podcast, we've actually done what we say we’ll do for our clients in less than two years. We built a business generating from zero to over 1 million views per month on LinkedIn leading to multimillion pound revenues with a sales team of me plus two people without making a single outbound call.

2) Our track record - not only have we done it ourselves, but we've helped over 350 agencies and over 4,000 consultants do it as well, all in the last three years. 

Now, if that sounds of interest to you, make sure you fill in our contact form and we’ll tell you how we can help: https://bit.ly/3jpuEWa

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RecruitHub Message

Over 70 founders have launched their businesses on RecruitHub in the UK, US, and UAE

One of them is Kyle Winterbottom, founder of Orbition Group, a niche, talent consultancy that operates exclusively in the Data, Analytics and Artificial Intelligence space across the UK, Europe, and USA.

In just a year of trading, the company has gone on to build an impressive client base in the Data and Analytics space and has an industry-leading podcast with more than 20,000 listeners in 128 countries.

Before joining RecruitHub, Kyle had spoken to other start-up support companies which either wanted him to invest a ton of money upfront, then he’d only own the percentage he’d invested against what it costs to start, or they wanted a lot of equity.

For Kyle, RecruitHub was a great option – they weren’t asking for money upfront to launch, they weren’t taking loads of equity and they wanted to be involved; the company has been able to lean on RecruitHub quite heavily.

Since partnering, Orbition has benefited from tech setup, planning, legal, finance, incorporation, and more and Kyle's been able to focus on the other bits he knows how to do well.

If Kyle had known about RecruitHub earlier in his career, he'd have launched much faster.

Read Kyle's story here: https://www.recruit-hub.com/case-studies/launch-stories-orbition-group/

Recruitment owners and leaders: struggling in today’s tough market? 

Well I’m giving you 3 Clever ways to boost your business development using LinkedIn

On this week’s episode of The RAG Podcast, I wanted to release a very special episode, which is based on a webinar I recently hosted for the market, all about using LinkedIn to boost your business development.

When put into action, this advice will help you:

#1 - Optimise your profile and grow your LinkedIn network

#2 - Get the attention of your market at scale

#3 - Find daily inbound leads

This is part of the process I teach on my Personal Brand Academy, where we’re working with 4,800 recruiters globally to teach them how to win on LinkedIn. 

You can take the advice straight to LinkedIn, make some extra revenue, build some more client relationships, and get some more jobs!

This is a 30-minute video session. You can listen to this on the podcast platforms or flip to YouTube and watch this recorded video as I use slides and I show you examples you might want to see. 

I hope you make the most out of this. Listen, take it, put it into practice, and go out there and win in a market that is super competitive right now.

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Hoxo

Are you spending hours on LinkedIn and cold outreach and want more business coming to you over your competition? 

Well, if you're the founder or leader of a recruitment agency, here's what we can do for you at Hoxo. We’ll give you the training, support, and resources to help you stand out from the competition and reach over 25,000 relevant people and drive daily inbound leads on Linkedin in 6 weeks - and if you don't perform, you don't pay. 

Now, how can we make such a bold, results-driven promise like this? 2 reasons:

1. Whilst I've been building the RAG podcast, we've actually done what we say will do for our clients in less than two years. We actually built a business generating from zero to over 1 million views per month on LinkedIn leading to multimillion pound revenues with a sales team of me plus two people without making a single outbound call.

2. Second is our track record. Not only have we done it ourselves, but we've helped over 350 agencies and over 4,700 consultants do it as well, all in the last three years. 

Now, if that sounds of interest to you, follow this link: https://personalbrand.hoxomedia.com/get-in-touch

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Episode sponsor: RecruitHub

Over 70 founders have launched their businesses on RecruitHub in the UK, US, and UAE.

One of them was Stuart Mitchell, Founder of Hampton North in the US.

With experience in both the UK and US markets, million-dollar biller Stuart Mitchell formed Hampton North to tackle the biggest problem in cyber security; the talent shortage.

Before launching his own business, Stuart felt like he had run out of growth and he wanted to achieve a better work-life balance for himself and his team. For Stuart, this meant he could spend more time with his daughter.

He now is on a mission to create the best cybersecurity recruiting team in the industry, with the support of Recruit Hub, The world’s most powerful recruitment start-up solution.

His only regret once joining Recruit Hub? Not joining sooner.

Link to his full story: https://l8.nu/ryze

On this week's show, I am delighted to welcome back a previous guest, David Spencer Percival, known as DSP. His last episode was one of most listened to episodes I ever recorded!

David is the founder of Life Science People, a specialist life science people recruitment firm headquartered in London with offices in LA. 

They've got over 85 heads and they're only two and a half years old!

I interviewed David in November 2021, where he'd grown to 65 staff  in 11 months.We'd also talked about his story. 

Before he was the founder he was part of a number of businesses. He’s most famous for Spencer Ogden but he was also involved in two other businesses that grew to a £100 million in growth and over 500 staff. 

The reason we brought him on this week was to talk about the reality of the recession right now.

When we interviewed in 2021, the market was going mad. 

There were deals going in for fun and it was an easy place to make money. Life science people were growing super fast! 

But by September 2022, the whole market changed. 

In this episode David explained how perm recruitment literally ‘fell off a cliff’, and it was only because of contract revenue that the business was able to stay afloat.

He lost £800,000 in three months at the end of 2022. They're now seeing a change as there's some positive signs. 

In this episode, we cover:

• Launching the US office just before the recession hit and the impact of that. 

• How he kept himself sane, focused and positive despite confidence dropping all over the place

• How he's managed to work with a whole team of rookies, bearing in mind, his whole model is based on academy graduates - training and keeping a lot of these guys

• What he sees happening and predictions for the future. 

If you are suffering and you're feeling that the market's a little bit turbulent, listen to David. You'll get some real quality information that you can action.

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Hoxo

We’re on a mission to help brand recruitment agencies, giving them the means to stand out in the most competitive markets in the world.

Here’s how we can help:

- Recruitment Agency branding

- Personal Brand Academy for recruiters

- Personal Brand Management

Check out our website and social profile for examples of our work in action and to hear what our clients have to say about us. Like what you see? Reach out: https://bit.ly/3jpuEWa

__________________________________________

Sponsor

‘Wow’ your clients by uncovering tactics and power plays for high-impact candidate submissions.

Download Vincere's eBook "Techify Your Client Experience Strategy"

 -Learn Candidate-driven strategies

 -How to offer the “VIP” treatment

- Leverage tech for high-impact collaboration

Link: https://personalbrand.hoxomedia.com/vincere

On this week’s show, I am joined by Adrian O'Connor, the founder of Global Accounting Network (GAN) 

Founded in 2011, GAN is a business of over 27 people headquartered in the UK with an office in Atlanta. 

In this episode, we talked about his journey of growth during the last 12 years, including:

How he has built a remote-first culture with UK headquarters and a US based business all whilst personally living and working from Lisbon, Portugal

How he and his team have built a methodology and a process that has enabled them to have a much higher fill rate in the downturn of the economy. So as job flow has decreased, their fill rate has gone up to 78%.

So if you're interested in building a remote-first company, having a US-based office, living abroad and working completely remotely, or you just want to know more about how you can have a much stronger fill rate in today's economy, this episode is for you.

I hope you enjoy this episode!

__________________________________________

Hoxo

We’re on a mission to help brand recruitment agencies, giving them the means to stand out in the most competitive markets in the world.

Here’s how we can help:

- Recruitment Agency branding

- Personal Brand Academy for recruiters

- Personal Brand Management

Check out our website and social profile for examples of our work in action and to hear what our clients have to say about us. Like what you see? Reach out: https://bit.ly/3jpuEWa

__________________________________________

Episode Sponsor: RecruitHub

Thinking about starting a recruitment business in the UK or US? 

Download your startup blueprint from RecruitHub and access key information including:

- Funding – how much do you need, and what are your options

- Knowing where you stand - decode your non-compete and understand your restrictions

- Co-founder MUST-knows

- How to automate your way to faster billings

- Business plan basics – what are they, and how do you write one?

- Naming & brand-building – creating a brand that stands out

And more…

Get your copy at recruit-hub.com/startup-blueprint

James Leighton on how you can build a business like his, which is eight years old, in two years!

On this week's show, I am finally joined by a good friend and client, James Leighton. James is the founder of Anderson James, a specialist construction and property recruitment firm, headquartered in Manchester with over 30 people operating in both contingent,RPO markets, public and private sector in the US.

And I'm delighted to finally have him on because I didn't actually know the story of him building the business.

Now whilst the business launched in 2015 and is effectively eight years old, the business didn't really get moving until 2017, 2018.

So they had at least two to three years at the beginning where they didn't get the business moving for a number of reasons. 

Now, James shared in-depth issues that they faced and the different steps they've gone to grow to where they are now. And he broke down exactly how he would get to where he is now in two years. 

So for anyone wanting to know how you can build a business that's eight years old in two years, you need to listen to this episode. 

He gives some really clear advice, practical examples, all the way through the show as to how a startup founder or someone trying to grow to 30 and above can do it in record time.

__________________________________________

Hoxo

We’re on a mission to help brand recruitment agencies, giving them the means to stand out in the most competitive markets in the world.

Here’s how we can help:

- Recruitment Agency branding

- Personal Brand Academy for recruiters

- Personal Brand Management

Check out our website and social profile for examples of our work in action and to hear what our clients have to say about us. Like what you see? Reach out: https://bit.ly/3jpuEWa

__________________________________________

Sponsor

‘Wow’ your clients by uncovering tactics and power plays for high-impact candidate submissions.

Download Vincere's eBook "Techify Your Client Experience Strategy"

 -Learn Candidate-driven strategies

 -How to offer the “VIP” treatment

- Leverage tech for high-impact collaboration

Link: https://personalbrand.hoxomedia.com/vincere

On this week's show, I was joined by Matthew Wragg, the CEO of Gattaca, an organisation with 500 people, headquartered in the UK.

Matt has been with the company for over 21 years. 

From his first role in recruitment, he's worked his way up. He’s had eight or nine different roles in that time! And then, just over a year ago, in early 2022, he got given the CEO job. 

While he never vocalised it, this was something he’d always wanted. 

In this episode, we talked about his journey to becoming CEO, but also the work he's done beyond becoming CEO. 

He talked about:

- His visibility both internally and externally

- How he still meets with clients

- How he sends out messages to his whole company every single Monday

He gives some really practical advice on how you can run a business and focus on growth and attrition. 

We also talked a lot about how Matt's super proud of working in the recruitment industry and wants his whole business to share that sense of pride. 

Matt is a young, energetic, highly inspirational CEO and a huge advocate for the industry. 

You're gonna learn a lot from this one!

__________________________________________

Hoxo

We’re on a mission to help brand recruitment agencies, giving them the means to stand out in the most competitive markets in the world.

Here’s how we can help:

- Recruitment Agency branding

- Personal Brand Academy for recruiters

- Personal Brand Management

Check out our website and social profile for examples of our work in action and to hear what our clients have to say about us. Like what you see? Reach out: https://bit.ly/3jpuEWa

__________________________________________

Episode Sponsor: RecruitHub

Aaron from IXL launched his own recruitment business with RecruitHub, which offers start-up support that guides new business owners through the process and takes a lot of pressure off their shoulders.

Aaron can focus on recruitment, fully supported by their finance and operations teams as well as benefit from discounts and a full tech stack that he plugged into from day one.

He started at the beginning of this year and is already profitable!

Find out more about his journey here:  https://www.recruit-hub.com/case-studies/launch-stories-ixl/

On this week's show, I am joined by James Wardle, who is the founder of Alderson James, a specialist talent acquisition and HR recruitment agency headquartered in the UK with seven staff. 

Now, what was so unbelievable about this episode is how honest and vulnerable James was.

We spoke about the 10 years of running this business and how he started life with pretty much no plan. 

He was a rec-2-rec who wanted to effectively work for himself before getting married and having children. 

Whilst the business has been running for over 10 years, everything changed during the pandemic!

Here James had to be honest with his wife, family, and friends about the fact that he was a gambling addict. This came as a huge shock to his nearest and dearest, they had no clue this was an issue.

He was at a point where he was spending - and winning and losing - on ridiculous bets. 

He was searching for daily things to place bets on in the first lockdown, like football games in Singapore and Thailand. Anywhere in the world he could find sports to bet on, he was betting and he was also investing in crypto and different highly volatile stocks.

It all culminated in September 2020 when he lost $50,000 in a day. 

His business nearly went under. He only one member of staff at that point. He was at rock bottom. 

Since then he's gone cold turkey and stopped betting. He turned it all off, and his business has grown as a result!

James soon hit $2 million in revenue with three people, personally billing £1.6m.

He's now built the team to seven. He is working with clients all over the world - some of the most unbelievable brands. He's switched on, he's focused and he's got a growth plan. 

He wants to get to 20 staff in the next couple of years. 

Now James is not a guest from the biggest business I've interviewed on the show, but it is one of the most honest, vulnerable, incredible episodes I think I've ever recorded. So I really hope you find as much value as I did having this conversation.

__________________________________________

Hoxo

We’re on a mission to help brand recruitment agencies, giving them the means to stand out in the most competitive markets in the world.

Here’s how we can help:

- Recruitment Agency branding

- Personal Brand Academy for recruiters

- Personal Brand Management

Check out our website and social profile for examples of our work in action and to hear what our clients have to say about us. Like what you see? Reach out: https://bit.ly/3jpuEWa

__________________________________________

Sponsor

‘Wow’ your clients by uncovering tactics and power plays for high-impact candidate submissions.

Download Vincere's eBook "Techify Your Client Experience Strategy"

 -Learn Candidate-driven strategies

 -How to offer the “VIP” treatment

- Leverage tech for high-impact collaboration

Link: https://personalbrand.hoxomedia.com/vincere

This week I  was joined for the third time by Elliot Dell.

Elliot is the CEO of Salt, a global leading digital recruitment agency with over 400 staff across 20 offices.

Now, Elliot joined the RAG in person in 2019, just before the pandemic.

At that point, there were 220 people in the company, spread across nine offices. So in three and a half years, effectively doubling the business while dealing with a global pandemic has been an interesting journey for him.

In this episode, we talked about:

🎙️ The reality of the boom post-Covid and how it helped the locations he's expanded into

🎙️ The introduction of an academy for hiring trainees and growing the organisation

🎙️ The reality of a global company - 20 offices located on every continent, and different regions suffering with different issues due to the economic downturn

Elliot also talks about protecting your time as a business leader. He discusses his routine and how he still finds time for his family, the gym, and his own self-care.

As always, Elliot was super honest and very passionate about the Salt business, sharing a vision to grow it to a thousand people in the next few years.

This was a really refreshing conversation that highlighted how high growth doesn't necessarily mean burning yourself at both ends. You can find time for everything else too.

Any business owner or recruitment leader looking to grow their headcount significantly should listen to this episode.

Hoxo

We’re on a mission to help brand recruitment agencies, giving them the means to stand out in the most competitive markets in the world.

Here’s how we can help:

- Recruitment Agency branding

- Personal Brand Academy for recruiters

- Personal Brand Management

Check out our website and social profile for examples of our work in action and to hear what our clients have to say about us. Like what you see? Reach out: https://bit.ly/3jpuEWa

Episode Sponsor: RecruitHub

Aaron from IXL launched his own recruitment business with RecruitHub, which offers start-up support that guides new business owners through the process and takes a lot of pressure off their shoulders.

Aaron can focus on recruitment, fully supported by their finance and operations teams as well as benefit from discounts and a full tech stack that he plugged into from day one.

He started at the beginning of this year and is already profitable!

Find out more about his journey here:  https://www.recruit-hub.com/case-studies/launch-stories-ixl/

On this week's show, I don't have a live guest. I have been away, and unfortunately, a few of the guests have not been able to record their own yet.

So, instead, I'm bringing back one of the most listened to and interesting episodes I've ever recorded, and that's with James Caan CBE. 

Most people know James Caan from his time on Dragons’ Den. What most people don't know is that James made his money from the recruitment sector.

James launched his own business, Alexander Mann Solutions, and is now the founder of Recruitment Entrepreneur, helping recruiters startup and scale up recruitment organisations all over the world. 

James is a celebrity, and in this episode that I recorded at the beginning of 2021, we got right into James's story and advice for anyone else growing, starting, launching, and becoming a successful recruitment owner.

We covered:

🎙Launching, growing and selling Alexander Mann in 2013 for £260 million

🎙How he felt when he had enough money to retire at 42 years old

🎙Growing Humana International and moving into private equity with Hamilton Bradshaw

🎙Launching Recruitment Entrepreneur in 2014, investing in more than 32 founders to date

🎙The impact his 3 million LinkedIn followers had on his career/business?

🎙Why he loves the industry and keeps on going when he simply doesn’t need to!

James is really humble, honest, and genuine. I hope you get value from this episode. 

__________________________________________

Hoxo

We’re on a mission to help brand recruitment agencies, giving them the means to stand out in the most competitive markets in the world.

Here’s how we can help:

- Recruitment Agency branding

- Personal Brand Academy for recruiters

- Personal Brand Management

Check out our website and social profile for examples of our work in action and to hear what our clients have to say about us. Like what you see? Reach out: https://bit.ly/3jpuEWa

__________________________________________

Sponsor

‘Wow’ your clients by uncovering tactics and power plays for high-impact candidate submissions.

Download Vincere's eBook "Techify Your Client Experience Strategy"

 -Learn Candidate-driven strategies

 -How to offer the “VIP” treatment

- Leverage tech for high-impact collaboration

Link: https://personalbrand.hoxomedia.com/vincere