Joe Butler - Hyre | Confessions of a Recruiter #109

Ever wondered how a DJ enthusiast transitioned from spinning tracks to becoming a co-founder of a successful recruitment company? We were thrilled to welcome Joe from Hyre, who took us on his fascinating journey from organizing dance parties to launching a promotions company, and eventually stepping into the high-pressure world of recruitment in New Zealand. Joe's story is a testament to resilience and passion for business, revealing how each step, from the vibrant nightlife to the tech-driven recruitment industry, shaped his entrepreneurial spirit and led to his success across different cities and industries.

Throughout our conversation with Joe, we explored the evolution of recruitment strategies, particularly during challenging times, and how personalized company presentations became a game-changer. Joe shared valuable insights from his time with Ashdown and Vendito, emphasizing the importance of brand consistency and the pivotal role recruiters play in shaping a company’s reputation. We also took a deep dive into the investment strategies that fueled business growth, from initial property purchases to ventures into shares and cryptocurrencies. Joe's candid reflections on both the wins and losses offer a comprehensive view of the importance of smart investments and leveraging supportive networks in tech.

Our discussion also ventured into the dynamics of co-founding a business with a close friend, exploring the complexities and the necessity of communication and support. Joe’s journey through economic downturns highlighted the challenges of maintaining sustainability and the need for strategic planning and adaptability. We wrapped up with insights into recruitment industry strategies, including the value of diverse experiences and the benefits of a boutique agency setting, all aiming towards a future of growth, maturity, and continued innovation in the business landscape.

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· Our Website is: xrecruiter.io

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey guys, I'm Joe.
I'm one of the co-founders ofHire.
We've just been on the podcasttoday with Blake and Deac
talking through my journeyeverything from promoting dance
parties and DJing through tostarting an agency and
everything in between.
It's been a lot of fun.
Give it a listen.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
We have Joe from Hire on Confessions of a Recruiter
podcast.
How's it going?
Happy to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Thanks for coming on Pleasure.
I've never done one of thesebefore, so I'm pretty excited.
I love that.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
So we're excited to have you on because your
background is interesting, superinteresting.
You've done a lot more thanjust the average punter in
recruitment and we'll get intothat in a moment, but from a
high level.
Maybe for people listening,let's just give them some
context on who you are.
So you've been running your ownagency for almost eight years.
You invest in a lot ofbusinesses and we'll probably

(00:55):
dive into that a little bit more.
But do you just want to sharekind of where you've just for a
couple of minutes, where you'vecome from and what you're
getting up to at the moment?
Where you've come from and whatyou're getting up to at the
moment.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Sure, I'll go a little bit back.
Sort of ties in myentrepreneurial journey started
in my early 20s as a DJenthusiast.
I wanted to play house musicand dubstep in nightclubs.
I quickly figured out to dothat you had to sell a lot of
tickets for the promoters.
So I was in a sales job at thetime but I was sort of also just
cruising around selling ticketsand I very quickly figured out
I would rather be the personthat has some other people sell

(01:28):
some tickets for me and launcheda promotions company and threw
massive parties and it was agreat time, pretty wild.
We could do a separate podcastabout that.
But what I realized sort ofafter like a year or so is it
was the business that reallyexcited me more than the whole
like music and DJing scene.
I was really into it.

(01:49):
I also knew I wasn't going tobe kicking around nightclubs at
4am for the rest of my life.
So that was sort of a lightbulb moment for me where I knew
I wanted to be a business ownerof some shape or form in the
future.
But I had no idea what that wasgoing to be.
Just through like a familyhandout.
Essentially after the end of myparty phase I fell into
software testing, which I didfor about a year and a half, and

(02:10):
so that sort of landed me inthe center of the the tech space
in New Zealand, in Auckland.
I was the world's worstsoftware tester, like how do you
test software?
well, just try and use it yeah,basically there'd be like a
bunch of does it do this, if youdo that, you know, if you don't
put an email address in.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Does it give you a warning?

Speaker 1 (02:31):
See I'm struggling to explain it now it's how bad I
was at this Really bad at it,but really enjoyed tech.
I was interested in that.
So now I know I like tech.
I want to start a business oneday and I'm sort of kicking
around thinking like, what am Igoing to do next?
I'm talking to variousrecruiters and an agency says,
like why don't you dorecruitment?
Like have you thought aboutthat as a profession?

(02:52):
I'm sure every guest you'veever had fell into the job.
It's not something you sign upfor in high school, but I sort
of looked at recruitment thereand then for a few different
lenses I could see that thebird's eye view you're going to
have into a lot of differentcompanies and economy would be a
powerful thing.
And I could see that I wasgoing to be selling a service
that was reliant on me myselfand I, as opposed to selling,

(03:15):
say, salesforce, oracle or SAP,and my sales figures are only
going to be as good as theproduct updates.
So that was really appealing tome as well.
So I joined what could only bedescribed as a super boiler room
agency in Auckland.
You can check my link.
I'm not going to yell names onthe podcast, but you can have a
look at my LinkedIn.

(03:35):
But yeah, they're like a globalbusiness 480 offices thrown
straight into the fire pit andyeah, it was brutal the KPIs and
stuff like they just but it'sthe best breeding group.
It was amazing.
It was amazing.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
Sucks at the time, but it was brutal yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
Yeah, and I thrived in it.
To be honest, I actually reallyenjoyed it.
I didn't enjoy the leadershipin that.
So I think those environmentscan be good to lot of toxic
leaders in that space and Icertainly had one.
She used to make people cry ona regular basis and so me and
her had a bit of friction prettyquickly and I wasn't going to

(04:13):
be bullied and basically causedchaos in the office and got
fired from that job.
So that was my first experiencewith recruitment.
But then the second agency waseverything you would want a
recruitment agency to be.
It was fast-paced, you know,had about 30 people, highly,
highly successful, you know,worked with multiple
million-dollar billers, but theywere super cool, just human,

(04:36):
down-to-earth, like we don'tneed to be dicks about this kind
of people.
And that's where I really sortof hit my straps and sort of
found my place in the industry,so to speak, and did really well
in that in my first year andwas loving life as a 25-year-old
in Auckland driving around in alittle Audi and earning
reasonable money, and it feltlike a huge success.

(04:56):
But I very quickly had nofriends because they were all
moving to Sydney.
So I came over and visited themall one New Year's and could
see exactly why they'd moved toSydney and decided I was going
to make that move pretty quicklymyself.
So I moved here 2013.
I joined a really small agency,which you know.
It was a great little shop butprobably a slight disadvantage

(05:18):
to someone that didn't know themarket very well.
So I was there for maybe a yearand then I joined a much bigger
agency and really learnedSydney in that moment or in that
sort of two years again,working around lots of really
really good people, learned lots.
You've got a floor of 60recruiters, you're going to hear

(05:39):
a lot about what's going onpretty quickly and we're all
young, we're single, we're outhaving drinks, you're living,
breathing, eating this culture.
So I feel like I like learnedquite quickly.
The thing about those bigagencies is, once you feel like
you know enough, you then startrealizing, oh, the 10%
commission difference is payingfor these.

(06:00):
You know like conferences awayor the marble credenzas on the
51st floor, and I knew I wasgetting underpaid and I knew I
probably could go to a smalleragency and get a better
commission rate at that stageand look, maybe I should have
stayed longer.
Maybe I shouldn't have, butthat was a decision I made at
the time.
So I joined another agency.
It was a bit more like mid-sizebut they were really trying to

(06:22):
like grow and build somethingnew.
That was like a cool thing be apart of.
But it was also super cool to bearound the founders of that
business, cause by this point Iwas well and truly in my head
like I am starting a recruitmentbusiness.
I don't know when I will knowwhen the right time comes, but
I'm doing it.
So that also appealed to me toget that.
You know day-to-day interaction, seeing what's going on, how's

(06:43):
the business operating.
And I did really well there.
You know smaller business butbecame the top biller within a
year and a half, won some reallybig clients.
And Was that talent?
That was Ashdown.

Speaker 3 (06:54):
Ashdown yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:56):
Yeah, yeah, I had a really good time there.
It was cool.
So at this time I'm living withmy best mate.
Well, I say we're brothersbecause we fight more like
brothers than best mates.
He's an internal recruiter fora finance company from London.
He's been doing it for about 15years and we're sort of having
conversations with each otherabout starting a business and
the timing all just lined up.

(07:16):
We were very sort of free interms of responsibilities.
I had a good bunch of clientsthat I knew were going to come
with me from Ashdown and Iapproached it in a really
respectful way with thosefounders, as opposed to just
leaving and taking the clients.
That sort of sat them down andwas like, look, I'm going to
leave, I'm going to start my owncompany, I'm your top performer

(07:37):
, like from a PR perspective,like let's make this look like a
success to everyone else.
And if you allow me to continueworking with my clients that
are x, y and z without anyinterruption, I will make a big
effort to embed whoever you wantfrom ash down into the, into
the client as well, and we cancompete head to head, because
there are clients I want.
No one in the business actuallyknew them and so they were like

(08:00):
sweet, like that seems, thatseems pretty cool.
So we left on really good termsand, uh, jay and I went about
launching hire, which was April2017, on the balcony of our
Bondi flat.
Um and um, it's been a wildjourney, like from.
I remember the first day, likeit was yesterday it took me
three hours to figure out how tomake an email signature, so

(08:22):
that took me to about 12 PM inthe afternoon.
The afternoon, by 2 pm in theafternoon, we had eight jobs on
and we're off, and yeah, it'sbeen a wild ride since.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
That's awesome.
That's a really encouragingstory because not many people go
through those transitions,especially on the way you ended
your previous employment to gostart your own agency like nine
times out of 10.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
You've got to give respect to get it.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
I think yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
And you've got to be comfortable having uncomfortable
conversations Like that was anuncomfortable conversation.
To sit two founders down and belike I'm leaving, I'm starting
my own business, I'm wanting totake my clients with me Was
there?

Speaker 2 (09:01):
any awkwardness.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
I mean I felt uncomfortable but I felt the two
guys were incrediblyunderstanding and supportive.
So, no, I don't think there wasany awkwardness, because I
think it was approached in areally respectful way and up
until my time of departure Iworked so hard to get them the
best results I could and go outon a good note, Whereas I think

(09:23):
most people would be like, right, I'm going to avoid that tricky
conversation because it's goingto be tricky.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
I'm just going to book a holiday.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:29):
Go and find myself Totally.
And then, oh, I found I want tobe an agency director when I
get back.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
Exactly.
They're going to do the wholething.
Old mate A and B over here aregoing to feel absolutely
slighted of problems.
So, while uncomfortableinitially, it felt like the
right thing to do.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
So what does Hire recruit?
Tell us about Hire?
Is it perm contracts?

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Yeah, so we are predominantly a perm house.
I would say we're working onchanging that, but that is our
sort of natural happy space hasbeen over the years Our core
area within tech.
We specialize acrossinfrastructure or cloud
infrastructure, data andsoftware engineering.
We'll go outside those linesoccasionally in certain

(10:10):
scenarios, like we have hadscenarios where we've been
building full teams in like ahybrid RPO capacity and that
might include a product manageror UX person or whatever.
We'll recruit those.
I think when you've been doingit long enough you can figure it
out.
But those are our predominantverticals and the areas that we
play in.
In terms of client base, we dohave customers at each end of

(10:33):
the scale, right from theone-person startup that's just
secured their first sort of seedround through to the country's
largest retail bank, thecountry's largest supermarket,
country's largest telco retailbeing the country's largest
supermarket, country's largesttelco.
But our sort of main market thatwe end up working with the most
is probably like mid-sizedproduct-focused companies, and
we like working with companiesthat we think are really really

(10:56):
cool but not a lot of peopleknow about them, because our
sort of unique approach torecruitment from a higher
perspective really is notfocused around knowing 100
candidates from this vertical orthis, that and the other.
We present ourselves as amarketing arm of your business,
so I want to come in andunderstand everything about your

(11:19):
company, start to finish, rightfrom the founders through to
the funding, through to thesocials.
What does the office look likeeverything?
Compare that against the 20other companies I know that are
similar.
Figure out where you'reoutperforming them and be able
to craft a narrative that isgoing to get people excited.
Like.
Our job is to bring people youwant, who don't know who you are
, to the table for aconversation.

(11:40):
So the audience that best fitsthat, sorry, is generally
companies that are growing butaren't that well-known yet and
need a good pitch behind them.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
All right, so I want to pause there.
Yep, you've just articulatedthat beautifully, thank you.
Now, when did you learn thatthat was your positioning?

Speaker 1 (12:01):
Was that at Ashdown?
Yeah, it started at Ashdownbecause one of my major clients
was a consulting firm andtraditionally in tech, people
don't love working forconsulting firms.
They want to work directly forthe company, and so it was
really hard to get peopleinterested in this and we're
talking 2017, right.
So back then people were justflicking out a Word PD and

(12:24):
hoping for the best.
So I started putting, likeGoogle, pictures of the
Macquarie Bank office on emailsand like just doing little
things.
That outliered it up a bit andI was getting a good response
from that and so I just built onthat really, and that turned
into like full sort of over time.
You know, canva decks oncompanies that we'll build

(12:47):
ourselves Followed a similarpath.
Yeah, Like from a sales pitchperspective back in the day,
like obviously starting a brandnew company, we're pretty
conscious of ad spend so wedidn't want to do too much of
that.
But when we were talking tocompanies and sort of trying to,
you know, give us a crack, giveus a go, my conversation would
have very little to do withrecruitment and be more about

(13:09):
okay, get all the informationfirst and then give me a day to
go away, I will come back andpitch your own company to you.
This is what I think is reallyexciting about what you guys are
doing.
And then I think you shouldcall your existing recruiters
who have placed many people thatthey're successful and just ask
them to pitch the company backto you.

(13:29):
They should have more practicethan me.
See what it sounds like side byside and that worked
surprisingly.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
You blew your competition out of the water.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
Well, like I definitely got on the panels.
I don't know about blowing thecompetition out of the water,
but I got on the panels and youknow we really sort of grabbed
onto that concept as we becausewe believed in it.
That's just how we were sort ofnaturally doing the job.
But then to sort of stand backand be like this is actually a
little different.
There's a whole conversationhere.
Yeah, it became a really,really big thing for us over

(14:01):
time and it sort of you know,I've got mates in advertising
and stuff and like recruitment'sa bit weird in a sense,
especially when you havecompanies working with multiple
agencies.
Like coca-cola is never allowingthree advertising agencies to
run rogue with differentadvertising campaigns that
they've created on their ownright.
Like brand consistency.
Um, there's a small pond we'reall fishing in like send the

(14:23):
wrong person in with the wrongbait, and it's a problem.
And I think back thenespecially, it's not so much the
case now because a lot of techcompanies have invested in
really capable people, teams whoinvest in this stuff.
But back then it definitely wasnot as much of a thought about
what recruiters were saying totalent in the market about their
business and we were in atalent short space, like

(14:48):
engineering in particular,really talent, short space.
So yeah, that was our like.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
Just, we sort of fell into it and then defined it
more over time.
Yeah, yeah, that's reallyinteresting.
I kind of almost would do thesimilar thing when I was, you
know, recruiting at Vendito andI love how humble and raw you
need to be for that approach towork Totally, because unless
you're super grounded andconfident with your ability and
confident with feedback, and ifyou butcher it you butcher it

(15:11):
and ultimately if you aren't thebest person for the job, then
you're not going to get the jobTotally.
Yeah.
And so I used to do somethingsimilar where I would probably
in a bit more of a negative spin.
I would probably in a bit moreof a negative spin.
Maybe I'd go, I would get thebrief, I would tell them
everything about, like, who areyou as a person?
I want to really be able topump you up and make sure that

(15:33):
people are excited to work foryou as a leader.
Tell me about you and just tryand get on different avenues.
And then I would plant the seedand go so what are these other
recruiters?
What are they actually sayingabout you guys?
Like, if you're just givingyour job out to someone, what if
they like butcher it and say tosomeone how like good you are,

(15:53):
but in a really surface levelthey don't, they're not
interested.
And then I come in and then doa really good job.
They don't even want to speakto me anymore because they've
already spoken to anotherrecruiter and they've ruined the
opportunity for that candidate.
What do you do there to stopthat from happening?
Yeah, and half the time they'relike okay.

Speaker 1 (16:09):
I didn't think about that.
It's a massive, massive issue.
Yeah, yeah yeah.
And as well.
Then you'll have sometimes ascenario where you've managed to
go and save the candidateessentially repurchase, get them
excited, it's all happened andthey've, they've got a, they've
got the role and then originalagency is trying to send the
invoice.
Yeah, I've encountered that afew times, um, but I think I

(16:31):
think it's a, it's the mostimportant thing.
And, like, when I think aboutmy own business and if you know,
if we engage rector x to everrecruit for us, like I want to
know what you're saying about us, yeah, um, I don't know if I
could trust a Rector Rack toever recruit for us anymore.
Yeah, look, have you used RectorRacks?
Yeah, yeah, it's a real supermixed bag.
There's one in particular whois incredibly amazing.

(16:52):
Who Barton Mills Mark?

Speaker 2 (16:56):
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard of him.

Speaker 1 (16:58):
He's incredible.
Not only has he placed me inAshdown, but he's recruited
easily, over the course of thelast eight years, our most
successful staff, and his levelof meticulous care and the clear
sort of pride he takes in hiswork just shines, so I would
give him a big recommendation.

Speaker 2 (17:18):
Nice, I find with RectorX I struggle to get them
interested.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yeah, well, that's a big problem.
That's the problem I've had.
Yeah, yeah, so you're afour-man agency.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
Why would I send anyone to you?
I've got my clients thatthey'll pay me a higher fee for.
Yeah, exactly, had the sameconversation.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
That's a real soul-destroying, like absolute
dick.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
Yeah, yeah.
Sometimes I've said to themI'll pay you full fee, I don't
really care, they just go.
Yeah, but like why would I sendyou a good person?
I've got someone else that Iwork with, so I'll just send
them to them for full fee.
I'm like, well, how can I winhere?
Yeah, it's really weird.

Speaker 3 (17:53):
What if you told that to a client.
They'd tell you to fuck off.
Don't worry about recruitingthe role.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
Totally, yeah.
Yeah, I've encountered thatlevel of arrogance before.
I've been pretty amazed by itbecause it wouldn't fly in our
world for a second.
Like I've definitely satcustomers down in our business
in the past and been like look,for whatever reason, whether
it's on your side or our side,and there's many variables in

(18:21):
that equation this isn't goingto work.
Like I think you should look atdifferent partners and here's
why but only in the most likerespectful and polite possible
way.

Speaker 3 (18:26):
Yeah, you've drowned everything out, not in the first
conversation of the time.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
Oh yeah, trying to get a job brief and they just
brush up.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yeah, yeah yeah, no, yeah.
These conversations arehappening way down the line.
We've absolutely flogged it bythat point.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
So tell us about your team.
What size team have you got?

Speaker 1 (18:39):
So at the moment we're four, probably a little
bit smaller than usual.
Natural scale points, probablysix or seven.
At our biggest we were 10.
Last 18 months pretty brutal intech.
So yeah, there's a whole storyaround that, but we basically
needed to make the team a bitsmaller through that time.
So you've got four billingconsultants.

Speaker 2 (18:58):
Yeah, that's a solid team.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
Yeah, I know you kind of prefaced it with it's
smaller than you'd like, butwhen I say team Jay and I are
two of them, that's fine, yeah,but we're billing consultants
ourselves, we're in the weeds,we're doing deals yeah, totally.
I love that, like I wascomparing numbers from 2018 to

(19:22):
2021.
2018, there was four of usagain sitting in a WeWork.
2021, which was a boom year,there were 10 of us bougie
office, all the rest.
The revenue was massive overhere, but the profitability was
exactly the same in both yearsand there was a lot less hassle
in 2018.

(19:42):
So definitely, I think, as ayou know, I don't think you
necessarily know what you wantto be when you're starting a
recruitment business.
We just sort of rode away, justnaturally, organically, got
bigger, like for us it was arace.
For the first six years, we hadtwo months in that whole period
of time that were notprofitable and we just sort of

(20:02):
hired people as it made sense tohire people.
And just you know, withouttrying to sound like arrogant,
my memory of it is it was likepretty easy.
But then the last sort of 18months, that's been a different
story.
And so now we have those twosort of viewpoints, which is
really allowing us to look atthe two sides of the coin and
figure out, you know, what'sgood for us and approach that

(20:27):
sort of future problem with alot more kind of knowledge.

Speaker 3 (20:31):
Yeah, well, I think where you get unstuck is depends
who you hang around as anagency owner.
But, like, you think stuffmatters like vanity, metrics or
ego measurements, caring abouthow many square meters your
office is, whether you own yourown office, what your headcount
is, and those things lookimpressive when you explain to
people, but when you get yourinvestor sheets you don't give a

(20:52):
shit about that stuff.
You care about theprofitability and the run rate
of the cash injection and theROI of your investment.
Yet when we're new businessowners, we care so much because,
like, say, you go to yourparents and neither of my
parents were in business but yougo, oh, mate, we've got X
headcount.
They'll be like whoa, you mustbe killing it.
And you're like no, mate, I'mactually making way less money
than I ever thought and I'm morestressed.

(21:12):
But yeah, thanks mum.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
It's such a phenomenal point because any
time and any social interaction,you know what do you do Like
I'm in a tech recruitmentbusiness.
First question how many peopledo you have?

Speaker 3 (21:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
It's like the measure of success, yeah, but you know,
definitely like it's differentfor everyone, right?
Like I'll be honest, like at 10, I actually really didn't enjoy
my job too much.
Like I had turned into afull-time people manager.
I'm looking at spreadsheets allday, I'm doing operations, I'm
figuring out the money, stuffLike that for me.
I went from being the strikerto the football manager and I

(21:47):
didn't know that I wouldn't likethat until I was sort of in
that position.
So you know, if we ever grewthat big again I'm sure we will
I'll be hiring a manager to bemy boss.
Like I want to be be in thetrenches.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
Did you ever get coaching or advisory throughout
your business journey?

Speaker 1 (22:02):
No, and I think that was probably an oversight on my
part.
So, yeah, I want to be, and Isay this now for any future
business owner out there wespent no time, from the very
beginning, really focusing onour business.
We spent 100%, 110%, yeah, none.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
We were too focused on everybody else's business the
very beginning, really focusingon our business.

Speaker 1 (22:20):
We spent a hundred percent, yeah.
No, yeah, we were too focusedon everybody else's business.
So did we put effort into awebsite?
No.
Did we make salary surveys andyou know tech papers and stuff
like that?
No, um, did we focus heavily onum contracting, which we found
a little bit boring?
No, did we get coaching?
No, like we didn't do any ofthis stuff.

(22:40):
We do all that stuff now, butit didn't kind of seem to matter
at the time.
In hindsight it's a beautifulthing, but at the time it was
just going well and so we justsort of ran with it.
We were just too busy for itall.

(23:04):
Where do you think you would beif you did do that from day one?
It's a really interestingquestion because you've got some
big world events that tookplace in that mix, like COVID
and essentially a recession overthe last 21 months.
But if I had all that hindsight, I think we'd be in a similar
position.
I think that we would probablyhave a bigger contract book.
I think we'd have maybe one ortwo more staff.
But yeah, actually, yeah,that's the answer.
I think we'd have one or twomore staff and I think we'd have
maybe one or two more staff.
But yeah, actually, yeah,that's the answer.
I think we'd have one or twomore staff and I think we'd have
a bigger contract book.
I think that would be thedifference.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
That means you'd be 25% to 50%.
Better, yes, better off, yeah,we'd be good.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
And so, okay, you'd be running your business for
eight years.
You did mention before aroundyour first correct me here if
I'm wrong but maybe the firsthalf of your business journey
you really focused on yourselvesand maybe investing outside of
your business and just usingyour agency as a vehicle to get

(23:54):
more income to do the thingsthat you're passionate about.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah, totally, that's super true.
So happy to chat about that.
So I think, like everybody hasa why when they get into
business, I think for both Jayand I.
Jay's my business partner.
I want to make sure I give himmore airtime on this because he
really should be sitting herewith me.
He's in the office doingrecruitment.
Jay's got the short end of thestick.

(24:17):
He's got the short end of thestick, he's got the short end of
the deal, but he's very alignedwith me on all these things.
But you know, we were havingbig conversations and, you know,
keeping in mind, we're bestmates as well, so you're having
pretty real chats.
Our kind of vision for life was, you know, we want to one day
have a nice family home, we wantto have freedom, we want to
have freedom, we want to kind ofdo things on our terms, right.

(24:38):
And so for the first leg of ourbusiness, you know we never sat
there.
I should go back.
We never sat there and saidlet's build a 50-person
powerhouse agency, like thatkind of wasn't what we were
after.
You know, maybe we'll decide todo that later in our career,
who knows?
But yeah, the beginning was wewere really interested in using

(24:59):
a business as a vehicle forinvestment and it was
interesting.
Like throughout my career Ikind of got introduced to these
different things, like in mylast business before hire, where
I was working with a startup.
They were planning a listing,they were going to go public and
the CTO was like well, look, ifyou can get X amount together
amongst all your friends, youcan buy some of the pre-IPO

(25:25):
shares.
I think it's going to go well,and so I did and we did, and it
did go really well, and so thatwas like a first taste in
investing and it was pretty cool.
We were really excited by it.
It was this whole new world.
And then when we started ourbusiness, we were in a WeWork.
You're sitting around, you'renetworking with different people
and the guy that we ended upsitting next to the most was a
property buyer.
He focused on buying propertiesin Brisbane like a strategy

(25:48):
really focused on land value,old houses, up and coming
suburbs, and we sat with him for, you know, this is probably
like the better part of twoyears before we could actually
do this.
You know like we were a smallbusiness and like figuring out
life.
But by the time we got to thepoint where we could make that
decision and do it Buy aproperty.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
Yeah, like we knew so much about it.
We sit next to Old Mate everyday and so all that stuff just
really excited us.
You know, like it could beargued too much at times and
maybe at times took our focusaway from what we were meant to
be doing.
But I think that's like a shinytoy phase anyone goes through
with anything.
But, yeah, we really enjoyedthat phase of the business.
So, yeah, when the business wasdoing well and we would get to

(26:32):
the end of the quarter and belike, right well, there's X
profits, we could increaseheadcount, we could do this, we
could do that.
There's there's x profits, wecould increase headcount, we
could do this, we could do that.
Or we could invest in propertywe can invest in shares, we can
invest in crypto.
We did all of that stuff atvarious times over over the last
few years and it was a lot offun.
There were some great wins,there was a couple of losses,

(26:52):
but we're, you know, prettyeducated about it now.
But you're, probably the mostmeaningful stuff that we've done
in that space, directly relatedto our industry, is sort of
private investments intodifferent companies that are
growing in Australia.
So we're investing in like 11different tech companies.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
Is there a minimum, like do you have to minimum
amount you have to put forward,or how does it work?

Speaker 1 (27:17):
No.
So I mean, it depends whoyou're doing it through.
So, like some of the times,we've known the founders
directly and they've had clearminimums.
But sometimes you know, whencompanies are doing investment
rounds, it's not just aboutgetting money to the table, it's
about getting expertise withshared interests.
So there were times where wewere like, oh, we want to put in

(27:39):
X, and they would come back andbe like, no, no, it has to be
less than that.
We want you to put in Y becausewe want to let this other
person in as well.
So that happens quite a lot.
Actually, the main thing that Iexperienced throughout that is
yeah, your allocation isactually getting pushed back
because they would want morepeople in who are going to be
able to bring more Smart money.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
Yeah, yeah, totally.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
But no, like you don't need large amounts of
money, like some of them couldbe as little as $5,000, but some
of them could be a minimum of$50,000.
It just sort of depends on thesituation.
And we joined a network called1013, a headquartered out of
Brisbane.

Speaker 3 (28:16):
Is that old mate who runs that?
Steve Baxter, the Shark Tankguy?

Speaker 1 (28:20):
Yeah, so it's pretty cool.
It's like he's basically outthere.
It's a syndicate yeah, it's asyndicate investing where
they're out bidding for portionsof VC rounds and they get some
pretty cool companies like MrYum, go1, chipper would be like
just three off the top of myhead that we've been involved in
anyway, and so these are reallycool companies that Jay and I

(28:41):
already knew about from arecruitment standpoint and
understood how amazing thetalent in these businesses were,
and so it seemed like anexciting thing to get involved
with.
But I think as well, morebroadly, outside of that, we
felt it was a statement asdirectors of our business to the
tech space saying like you guyshave been very accommodating of
us and supported our business,like we want to support the

(29:03):
industry that we're a part of,so there's that element to it as
well.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
Okay, so there's a recruiter out there who's
listening to this.
They're getting jacked up,getting excited, they're going.
I want to do that.
So you started your agency.
Initially, it was toessentially create a vehicle
where you could earn more moneyand then reinvest in things
you're excited about, and soyou've been able to now invest

(29:27):
into 11 different companies.
Is there a kind of a blueprint,a method to that?
I'm going to put away 20% ofthe business profits to invest
in X companies.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
Is it gut?
Feel like, what actually is theprocess to do?
Yeah, it's a really goodquestion because, um, like, we
probably started with nostructure with that and now we
have quite a quite a structure.
Um got a sort of when westarted and just to like, paint,
paint some context, and this isnot to pick, but this is just
to help create context.
Our first full year we didpretty close to $2 million, and

(30:02):
again we're in a WeWork, so it'scosting us nothing.
The profits are quite big, butwe also didn't really understand
what's the tax component here,what's coming up?
So it took a really long timeto understand what was actually
going to be ours out of that andso, out of caution, we just

(30:24):
didn't touch it.
So by the time we reallystarted this, we're kind of two
or three years into our businessand, you know, a reasonable
amount of money had sort ofpiled up, allowing us to do
things in a not overlyanalytical fashion.
Whereas, fast forward to now,where we are thinking about
right, what's our headcount,what's our burn rate per month?
Based on, like I work out mymetrics like this, I'd be like,
what is the worst quarter we'veever had in our lifespan as a

(30:46):
business and I want to know thatI've got.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
From an OPEX standpoint or revenue.

Speaker 1 (30:53):
From a like I'm real simple with finance, like win,
lose, like what's the?
What's the biggest loss we'veever taken in a quarter.
So I don't know, let's say,just making up imaginary numbers
, let's say it was 50K I wouldwant to know that I have enough
in the bank to survive for ayear, a year and a half running,

(31:14):
consistently at that worstperformance rate and anything
outside of that.
Once you've had the growthconversation.
So you're at the end of thequarter.
Right, we've got the runwayhere.
We're secured for a year and ahalf, based on X and Y.
You know what are the growththings that we want to do.
Do we want to hire staff?
Do we want to invest more inmarketing?
Do we want to invest in AI?

(31:34):
Do we want to invest in ourwebsite?
Is there anything?
Yes, no, yes, no.
Okay, well, based on based onthe quarter.
There's x here.
We can take y, so it's kind ofhow we do it now.
Like to start with, I'd behonest, it was a bit just like
hands in the cookie jar when youfelt like it, which is I do not
recommend right literally everyagency owner does that right I

(31:54):
would, literally I'd be sayingto you like the two most
important things of starting abusiness is pick your partner
really wisely.
You know, like me and Jay arebest of mates but we also fight
like brothers.
But if I've got a flat tire atfour in the morning, he's
showing up and vice versa.
What's?

Speaker 3 (32:08):
it like you said, he was a 15-year internal finance
recruiter.

Speaker 1 (32:11):
Yeah, so sorry, not quite 15 years internal.
He was internal for seven years, Jay, he was internal for seven
years.
Jay's a bit older than me buthe was, so he was internal for
seven years.
But prior to that I think he'dworked five years in agencies in
London all in tech Gotcha andthen he came out here to build
the Lab 49 office in Australia,which he did really successfully

(32:37):
and was just kind of he wasalways an agency recruiter at
heart.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
Jay, I'm thinking, geez, you're partnering.
He was always an agencyrecruiter at heart.
Yeah, that's just the situation.
I'm thinking, geez, you'repartnering up with an internal.
What are you?

Speaker 1 (32:43):
doing.
Internal recruiter for aconsulting business, I think is
a bit different.
Okay, internal recruiter for,maybe, a product business, but
like Jay, like he loves deliveryand recruitment, like he's
flipping amazing at it.
So you know he was like, yeah,glove foot back into agency land
, no worries there.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
Did you have any moments as business partners?
Because getting into businesswith someone is actually really
challenging.
We see recruiters getting intobusiness with each other all the
time.
We see other business ownersobviously not part of our
network constantly fight,dissolve the business, start a
new one.
It's probably one of the mostcommon reasons why companies

(33:22):
fail because the two businessleaders fight.
They go separate ways, one halfof the business goes that way,
the other half goes that way andit's a massive mess.
So have you had any moments foryou two where you've thought
I'm going to punt this guy outthe door and I'm going to go
this other way.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
Oh no, it's weekly basis.
Sometimes I know he'll laughwhen he hears this.
No, I'm super real about that.
Like I would say the firstthree years of our business, if
you said what was the biggestchallenge, it was me and Jay
navigating our relationship asco-founders and figuring out who
does what and how things shouldbe done.
And because when you're matesbefore you know, like quite

(34:00):
often the scenario you describeis two colleagues meeting each
other at work and you knowprofessionally knowing each
other and deciding to go out andstart a recruitment business
where we're mates Like I've seenhim throw up after too much
alcohol.
Like you know you're close, soyour lines of professionalism
aren't really there.
So you're always going to saywhat you think, which is a good
thing.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
Okay, I was about to say is that a disadvantage or an
advantage?

Speaker 1 (34:22):
It's an advantage for us, because when we have had
arguments it's like a storm in ateacup because we couldn't
escape each other.
We have the same friends, we'reat the same barbecue.
So you can have a mad argumenton a Friday and then on Saturday

(34:44):
he's at the barbecue.
You're like oh hey, bro, youwant a beer.
You know what I mean.
So that was really reallycommon with us super.
You know, sporadicallythroughout, but funnily enough,
anytime that we've experiencedchallenges whether it be COVID,
personal challenges, you knowthe last 18 months of the tech
space there's no fighting.
It's like this dream team thatcomes together.
It's really weird, um, becauseyou know when.
That's when you have to supporteach other totally it's super
easy to ride the bike down thehill and you've probably got

(35:04):
lots of time to focus on littlethings and get pissy about it
and have an argument.
But when you're focused ongoing up the hill and like all
your energy just needs to go ona straight line, yeah, we don't
have time for it.
Um, but I think the strength ofour relationship has been a big
part of the success of ourcompany, because clients can see
like we have a pattern betweenus Partners and talent.

(35:24):
They know we're mates.
It's kind of like a packagedeal and you know like Jay is
everything, I'm not, and viceversa from a business
perspective.
So it works really well.
But yeah, we definitely havehad arguments and we've had some
like real sp at each other andlike I guess my only advice to
anyone like dealing withanything like that, uh, give it
time, because it's just like anyother relationship, like it

(35:48):
will just inevitably get better.
You'll just get used to eachother's quirks, um.
But also, like in thosescenarios it's good to have a
mediator.
So we've, we've.
There was three of us that livedin this infamous flat.
The third one actually owned arecruitment company at the time.
He was kind of like our mentorfrom afar.
We're all really good mates.
He's gone on to start a fintechbusiness now but he would know

(36:10):
when Jay and I were fighting hewould almost sit us down and
have a chat to us, a bit likedad, and that was always really
helpful.
So yeah, bringing a third partyin, I think like can sometimes
just create perspective.
Like you find over nothing.
It's stupid.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
How did you?
Was there something thathappened after that third year
in business where you kind ofgot over those little fights?
And I guess, just to add tothat, how did you figure out
who's responsible for what?

Speaker 1 (36:38):
Yeah, it's a really good question.
So I think after three yearsour jobs naturally started to
change and take shape becausethe business was getting bigger.
You know, to start with, whenyou're two-man band, you're
sitting there both billing like,oh, like, how many interviews
have you booked, how many clientmeetings have you booked?
And like you're doing the samething.
Whereas as you're gettingbigger you just naturally assume
different roles.

(37:00):
Jay sort of probably gravitatedmore toward the hands-on
recruitment, hands-on winningloads of business, being out
there, networking, being social.
He's probably a more likefree-spirited big picture kind
of guy and I sort of gravitatedmore towards, like the

(37:21):
operations, the finance, lookingafter the staff, you know,
being really clear about who'sdoing what and why, because I'm
a little bit more detailorientated.
That's not to say that each ofus didn't play some of those
roles occasionally, but that'ssort of how the partnership
started to form and over time wejust respected the fact that
that's how it worked and we werekind of grateful for it,

(37:43):
because I know that he didn'twant to be talking to
accountants or looking atspreadsheets or doing people
management and you know I wasn'tbuzzing about going out to 100
events all the time.
So you know we were picking upthe slack for each other and
operating as a team, but, yeah,it did just sort of take its

(38:03):
natural path because we bothtook turns at those other jobs,
um, but that's, you know, whenthings are.
That's when our head count wasa little bigger, whereas, like
at the moment, we're probablydoing the exact same job again.
But I feel like we're bothreally enjoying it, like being
back in the saddle and just youknow, after two years, a kind of
being kind of in the backgrounda bit, now being really
hands-on, the buzz is just thatwe're having fun with it.

Speaker 3 (38:24):
Nice, yeah, you spoke about the tech sort of downfall
over the last 18 months.
Yeah, how bad was it.

Speaker 1 (38:32):
I'd say pretty bad man and like, especially if
you're not a big contract houseand especially if you didn't
work with lots of corporates.
But then again, like anyone Italked to in techs, had it
pretty bad.
We noticed that August 22, wewere like, oh, that's a bit
weird, we had a pretty bad monththere.
Like seems odd, no worries, itwill be fine.

(38:55):
And yeah, it sort of kind oftrended like that until the end
of 22.
And then 23 just kind ofcontinued.
I think we were as an industryin a bit of denial, probably
till mid-23.
And yeah, it was going down anddown and down.
It was completely driven.
So the tech industry is, I think, very led by investment and

(39:18):
liquidity right.
So when you have aonce-in-30-year global event
where you know the whole worldtightens up interest rates and
in a serious, serious way, soyou track it back, Like we
started April 22 in America,they start lifting interest
rates aggressively.
You can see the tech companieslaying off people in droves
Didn't get to Australia untillike August and then the trend

(39:41):
continued and, like you willknow, you know it's nothing, we
hear nothing.
We constantly hear about it inthe news.
You know we've had like 13interest rate increases in
Australia over the last littlewhile and the you know cash
rate's highest it's been in 30years and the GDP last year is
0.8%.
It's the worst GDP recorded in30 years and it's, you know,

(40:03):
reflective of the 1991 recession.
And we've been in a householdrecession for seven consecutive
quarters and the only thingthat's really kept it up is
government spending andimmigration.
So all those things combinedback to the tech space, there's
no VC money going in.
There's companies that alreadyhave their VC money, but that
Series B you were going to getthat.

(40:23):
We said like 12 months you'llbe able to get the Series B hit
these milestones.
No, that has to last two yearsnow.
So that, just running down thechain, everything tightened up
and so, yeah, like naturally,recruitment like dried up along
with that.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
So are we talking like a 50% drop?
Are we talking?

Speaker 1 (40:43):
10%.
I think in our business at itsworst we're, yes, 50, sometimes
60%, Like it depends on what youwant to compare it against.
You want to compare it againstyour?

Speaker 2 (40:52):
best month or a?

Speaker 1 (40:54):
normal year.
And then there's thevariability of size.
You know you're a 10 there butyou're an 8 here, so it's hard
to like pinpoint it down.
But I think like 50% is a fairguess, maybe more.

Speaker 3 (41:07):
It was even rougher for some people Like Matt was
one of the guys at work.
Matt, he's 20 years in the techspace and he coaches a lot of
recruiters and he was sayingthat some of his mates that are
good for a million dollars yearin year out were just getting
over 300K.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
Yeah, that sounds super accurate and I think that
the tough thing about thatsituation for most people was
like our business model when weemployed people and they came
into the business.
Right, you're a consultant,you're going to go in business
and bring in clients and it'sgoing to grow the whole shebang.
That really never happened.
Like Jay and I won all thebusiness and here you have the

(41:45):
jobs and fill them.
That's sort of the 90% of likehow our agency worked and so you
know we have to take someresponsibility for that.
We should have pushed thenarrative more of doing do more
BD.
It will benefit you in the longrun or help build your brand,
your business.
But we had so much work onagain so it was just like it's
all going well people arebilling, people are happy,

(42:06):
people getting paid bonuses,just let it be type thing.
But those same people sadly hadto start trying to build this
network and and like a downclimate, like the only people
answering calls for me were likepeople I'd known for for years
and years and you've got thatpersonal relationship with them
and they're going to want tohelp you because you know you've
done business for yearstogether.
The greatest recruiter in theworld is not going to be able to

(42:29):
create those relationships and,essentially, a recession.
The doors just get locked andthat's basically what we
experienced.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
So what did you do there?
Because I'm sure that it wouldbe pretty daunting.
August 2022 hits and you gogeez, we were doing 150, 200,
250k months and now we've justdone an 80K month and we've
broken even, and now we'restarting to go a little bit
backwards.
Were you thinking do I need tolet people go?
Did you let people go change tomake sure that your business

(43:01):
could withstand, as you put it,50k a quarter or whatever?
It was your worst quarter, or Ican't remember exactly the
number?
But how do you withstandconsecutive bad quarters if this
continues longer than youexpect?

Speaker 1 (43:13):
Yeah, I mean it was pretty similar to how people
approach the COVID thing.
You did have to start gettingcost conscious real quick.
We weren't in a situation ofsitting everyone down and being
like, right, we're going to haveto make X amount redundant,
which was a blessed position forus at the time.
But with hindsight don't reallyknow if that was a pro or a con

(43:36):
.
But essentially, yeah, like wecut operational expense
everywhere we could and this iscoming off the bougiest time you
know.
21 and 22 were, you know Bestever.

Speaker 3 (43:45):
Yeah, you get a super yacht at Christmas Mate you
would trip over a deal.
Yeah yeah, totally.

Speaker 1 (43:48):
It's through rocks and you're making placements
Like it was very easy back thenand I'm sure that will happen
again at some point.
But what we really had to sitdown and be honest about with
all of our staff who had beenhired into consulting consultant
positions was guys like youknow and I had said this loads
and loads of times to the teambefore like the sun's not

(44:08):
staying out forever, like youknow, put some effort into
making your own networks andstuff.
Again, I'd, like I mentionedearlier I didn't push it that
hard, but it was always a aconversation.
But yeah, we had to and it wasprobably not till really like I
don't know.
I'm gonna say like jan 23,where we were jan, or feb 23,
where we're like no, this isn'ta bad quarter, this is something

(44:30):
much bigger.
This is real 23 or 24, 23 yeah,yeah, yeah, so we've, we've
experienced some like bit oflike bumpiness in 22.
We've come into the new yearbut like, ah, to be grand, like
we had such a hot period, andthen it's definitely not.
So we've really recognized atthat point like it's not like a
light on or off switch.
It takes time to really sort ofrealize what's going on.
You're seeing all around youmedia, etc.
But yeah, we had to sit down,have difficult conversations

(44:52):
with with our staff andbasically say we're not going to
be able to provide all the workthat we have been providing for
you guys to fill.
Um, if we get it, we'll give itto you, obviously, but you need
to be independent here.
Like you have to basically goout and win business and we'll
support you as much as we canwith that, but you ultimately

(45:12):
have to make that happen.
Um, and yeah, it didn't go downthat well.
People self-elect.
They weren't buzzing.
They weren't buzzing aboutabout that.
No one was excited about the2023 let's Go meeting Mate.
No one actually left, because,I mean, we do have a really nice
culture and a really nice teamand so, you know, anyone
listening to this there was apart of that.

(45:33):
They're all phenomenal people,and you know, have landed on
their feet well, and you knowsome are in the industry and
some of them are out in theindustry and wish them nothing
but the best.
But the facts were it was likewe're not a huge contract house,
we've got a little book.
It's not going to pay for thewages of what was it?
Nine people at that time in anoffice.
You have to win business andthat's actually how recruitment

(45:54):
has been for the Forever Forever.
So, it almost kind of pissed meoff a little bit when I was
getting the sort of shock andall Like, what do you mean?
We've got to win business.
It's like, come on, like you'vecreated monsters yeah, created
monsters, um.
And so we we fought like hard,um, throughout that year through
to all October to make thathappen.
Look, I'm just going to be real, like we didn't really win that

(46:16):
much business.
It just it was not theenvironment to to really do it.
So we had to make some toughdecisions in terms of reducing
the business headcount.
We did that as respectfully aswe possibly could and we'd
happily have a beer with any ofthem in the street or happy to
bump into any of them.
So I think it was on the bestterms it possibly could be and

(46:37):
just get really smart aboutoperational expenditure.
But also we did use that timeas a bit of an investment period
.
You know, like I mentionedearlier, we weren't really too
focused on doing the, on thebusiness stuff, because we're so
busy that whole time.
So we use that time to do thefull brand facelift.
Last year we did the website,we started the salary guides and

(47:00):
tech papers.
We retooled the whole businesswith different stuff that allows
us to do all this new coolstuff more.
What's the word I'm looking for?
No, it's gone, but it's good.
It helps us be more efficient.

Speaker 2 (47:15):
You know what?
I resonate with that a lot.
I went through a similarscenario during COVID.
Yeah, you know, vendito's aperm agency, right, I think we
had maybe 12 consultants at thetime and COVID happened.
It was the first month ever inVendito history.
I think we brought in six granda month.

(47:36):
Yeah, and I had 12 consultants.
Yeah, and I think we've gonebackwards like 120 grand a month
.
Yeah, and I sat there and youknow I speak to my mum about
this a lot.
She's, you know, a bit of amentor kind of someone that I
bounce ideas off.
Yeah, and I was almost a littlebit heroic at the time.
I'm like, yeah, mum, it's allgood.
You know I'm not letting anyonego.

(47:57):
We've got a bit of cash in thebank, We'll just keep it going.
Mom turns around, turns aroundand goes you'll be fucking
broken three months, mate.
Yeah, and I was like I lovethat.
She's like you need to fuckeveryone off.
Yeah, it's not performing and Iwas like oh okay and then had to
just go out and just go.
Hey guys, look, this is the layof land.
No one's winning business rightnow.
All our pipelines dried up andI think that was the first

(48:20):
moment that I ever thought mayberunning a recruitment agency is
not for me.
That was the first moment everI thought I might not actually
be a recruiter, like, I don'tknow what my career is going to
be now in the next six months iflike this continues.

Speaker 1 (48:33):
Thankfully, it was like absolute gravy, you know
you just have to hold on forthree months, and then the moon
comes and you can go Plusmillions in government stimulus,
yeah, yeah, Plus millions ingovernment stimulus, yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
And so when I look back on that and the reason why
your story reminded me of thatis I was very bougie back then
too.
Great office, nice car, handsin the cookie jar.
And it wasn't until thathappened where I became a much
more wiser, wiser business ownerto go that's fat Don't buy that

(49:09):
, don't put that in.
We don't need this software.
I started cutting up mybusiness card every three months
to stop all the subscriptionscoming up my account.

Speaker 3 (49:16):
Yeah, I've done that.
I'm getting a new account.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
Yeah, and so it's interesting that you share that,
because at the time it's notgreat but in hindsight, just
like the boiler room that youmentioned in Auckland those are
the things that actually makeyou like wiser, smarter, more
robust business people.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
Yeah, I mean, you going through that can empathize
exactly with how we're feelingin that scenario and like COVID
for us similar, but we wouldn'thave had as many consultants.
In COVID it was yeah, it wasthree months and you know it
boomed after it and so it waslong.
And then the governmentstimulus right, whereas this it

(49:56):
was like, well, there's nogovernment stimulus, the
expenses are way higher because,you know, having mentioned in
this equation throughout thiswhole period, you've got
inflation.
Like you know, having mentionedin this equation throughout
this whole period, you've gotinflation.
Like you know, linkedin's moreexpensive Job ad is more
expensive, so you're gettingpushed on both ends.
And then your clients aregetting pushed as well, so
they're like, look, you know, Iknow we used to work at 15%, but
can you do 8%?
You're like what we neveragreed to?

(50:18):
8% To the full audience.
But you know, everybody'sexperiencing the same thing and
that absolutely, um, yeah, itwas a really tough, stressful
time, I think, if I you know,it's funny you mentioned your
mom because my dad, he literallysaid the same thing to me and
probably like halfway through 23, it was like you just need to
make some tough decisions andlet these people go, but we,

(50:41):
empathically, as humans, did notwant to do that.
It's quite a seriousresponsibility, I think, when
you're an employer and you knowthat you're responsible for
paying this person's rent fortheir life.
I don't know if people thinkabout that too often, but I took
that pretty seriously and so Ididn't want to just be like
sorry guys, the party's over,you have to all leave now.

(51:02):
I wanted to give it a decentrun.

Speaker 2 (51:06):
When someone says that to you for the first time,
you go holy shit really.
Like when my mum said to meyou've got to get rid of half of
these people tomorrow and I satthere and I thought, no, that's
a bit dramatic, mum.
What are you talking about?
I'm not doing that.
I sat on it for like a week.
Mum's reminded me again.
You're going to have to letthese people go, blake, it's
either you let them go and atleast half of them survive, and

(51:28):
so do you, or you sit there andtry and float everyone's 12
people's salaries, not makingany money, and all of you don't
have a job.

Speaker 1 (51:37):
So which one is it?
Yeah, it's so, so, so tough and, like you know, it's not what
you want, it's completely out ofyour control and yeah, it's
just.
You know it's the mostuncomfortable position to be in,
I think, as a business owner.
But again, it's.
You know, it's almost similarto the conversation I explained

(51:58):
when I was leaving Ashdown withthe founders.
Once you actually have the chat, it's almost like a sigh of
relief for them because you knowthey end up finding something
better.

Speaker 3 (52:08):
They're better off.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
Yeah, and like they've been disenhardened, like
through no fault of your own,but like they're not able to be
successful in your businessright now.
Yeah, it doesn't matter whetherit's the economy's fault, your
fault, their fault, who cares?
Their fault, who cares Likethey're not successful?
It's your business, that'swhat's in their head.
So yeah, it is.
I did find almost every time itwas like a bit of a sigh of
relief.
They landed on their feet, itwas all fine, and so if I had

(52:34):
hindsight, I probably would havemade some of those decisions
faster.
But again, when you're in it,you just don't know.
And then we were, you know,super blessed.
From about July last year,things just started to tick back
up again.
Blessed from about July lastyear, things just started to
tick back up again, and it'scertainly looking really
promising for this year.
Why is that?
What happened?
It's a great question.
I think that.
Okay.
So a lot of money startedflowing back into the market.
So I would like to think thatsmart investors are six months

(52:58):
ahead of the curve, right?
So America made their firstinterest rate cut in September.
It was pretty clear that wasgoing to come, and so we're
starting to see things go goodfrom July.
So I'm making assumptions thatinvestment is starting to happen
, because I feel like that wasthe bottom and I feel like
people who were really in theknow with that stuff were
investing and it felt like therewas liquidity flowing back into

(53:21):
the space.
But I also think we encountereda lot of scenarios where people
in their roles wereunder-resourced, they were
getting burnt out.
The companies are putting offhiring more people to help
because of this sort of costconcern.
The July term would have been anew financial year budget.
There would have been some kindof budget, so a bit of that as
well and I think towards theback end of the year, inflation

(53:45):
figures started to look better.
There's more chatter aboutthere will be a rate cut rather
than a rate increase and, likegeneral sense of like, I think
it's kind of getting better.
But I'm still being a bitcareful.
You know that.
And our small size at thatstage was enough to shake enough
work out of the tree where wecould be quite successful, and
was enough to shake enough workout of the tree where we could
be quite successful.
And we won an exclusive companythat got like an $8 million

(54:06):
funding round and, yeah, we hadsome really, really positive
partnership with them throughoutlast year, which was great, and
then, yeah, this year it seemslike the optimism's definitely
there.
So, like I'm not saying itwould be back to like before
2022, but it's definitely on theroad to recovery, as far as I

(54:28):
can see.

Speaker 3 (54:28):
Yeah, the actual business sentiment is way more
positive than any time last year.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
I think it could be any company.
It doesn't have to be tech.
There's only so long you cansit still before you're
irrelevant.
One thing we've learned runningour agency, and I don't know if
this is a good thing or a badthing, but you know, when I look
at the clients that we workedwith in 2017, we're not working
with them now, or maybe like oneof them, and that's not because
we had any type of fallout.

(54:53):
Those businesses have changed,the people have changed.
Our service isn't relevant tothem, for whatever reason.
They've grown to a point wherethey have a large internal
talent team, et cetera, etcetera.
So kind of, if you're not likegrowing, you're dying, and so I
don't think companies can sitstill for too long, like we sort

(55:14):
of saw last year.

Speaker 3 (55:20):
And, like you mentioned before about the
source of information mostrecruiters get, where do you get
your source of information,like your industry intel and?

Speaker 1 (55:25):
finding stuff out.
So it's a really good point toraise, because I think this is a
game changer for recruiters,depending on how much they want
to invest in and it depends onhow interested they are as well.
Like you have to have a genuineinterest.
So you know, I referenced thebird's eye view of the market at
the start.
It's your choice how big thatbird's eye view is.
If it's just on what's going onwithin the software engineering

(55:45):
space in banks in Sydney, thenthat's totally fine.
But you're going to be able tohave super powerful
conversations if you understandwhat's going on domestically in
the economy, if you understandwho's getting money and why.
You'll be able to have evenmore powerful conversations if
you understand globally what'sgoing on, if you understand what
GDP is doing, gdp is doing likewhat immigration's doing, like

(56:06):
all these different things thatlike contribute to our economy
that we then recruit in um.
So I spent a lot of time on theafr um.

Speaker 2 (56:14):
I've spent a lot of time.
Any, any businesses that havecome up recently that um you may
recognize.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
You recognize on the afr, none that like are jumping
out immediately.
Yeah, why were you guys lookingat that?
You may recognize, yourecognize On the AFR.
None that like are jumping outimmediately.

Speaker 2 (56:28):
Why were you guys in the AFR, were you guys in the
AFR.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
Oh God, the egg on the face.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
I think we were yeah, yeah number one.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
actually Am I getting ejected now?
That's a huge achievement.
Congrats, guys.
It's amazing.
Yeah, clearly I need to read alittle closer.

Speaker 2 (56:44):
You don't look at top 10.
You look at like 20 to 50.
They're going to be easy to getinto.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
I definitely could read a little closer, but it's a
great source of information.
Smart companies, really goodwebsite.
Just, I don't know like.
I follow loads of people onLinkedIn, loads of people on EX
or Twitter or whatever it'scalled now, loads and loads of

(57:13):
podcasts on YouTube or Spotify,but it has to be stuff you're
generally interested in, and soI've got a mortgage.
So over the last two years I'vebeen pretty interested in
understanding what this wholeinterest rate thing's all about,
and I've now learned a lotabout it and understand how it
ties into business and la, la,la, la la, whereas you know, two
years ago I wouldn't have knownmuch about it or cared.

Speaker 2 (57:28):
So your consultants at the moment, do you have like
a bit of a game plan, a bit of a101 of how to educate yourself
to have more powerfulconversations with clients?

Speaker 1 (57:39):
Not massively, to be honest, because it's not
everyone's style.
So not massively, to be honest,because it's not everyone's
style.
So you know the differentpersonalities we have operate
different ways.
And one thing I learned reallyearly on and people maybe not
early on, but I've learned inpeople leadership over the last
few years is like in my earlydays of people leadership I'd be
trying to clone myself.
Um, you know, get interested inthis, that and the other, all

(58:01):
the stuff we just mentioned.
But what I realized reallyquickly is like that's actually
like no one else is going to beme and I'm not going to be you
and everybody's different andeveryone has their own vibe and
so I think I'm more focused onbringing out that vibe in each
person, no matter what that isindividually Like.
Some people are just like themost lovable social butterflies

(58:24):
professionally and just kickaround the place and people just
want to work with them butmight not know that much about
any of the stuff, but still getthe job done.

Speaker 2 (58:31):
Yeah, true, good point.

Speaker 1 (58:32):
Fair play to them.
They do a great job, they getresults.
Like I'm not going to sit thatperson down and tell them to
start studying economics, yeah,so no, I try not to be too
overbearing in that sense Like Iset the expectations as simply
as possible, because anotherthing I've kind of learned over
time is too many expectationsand too many different things
and too many different metricsjust create like cloud in your

(58:57):
brain.
So, like I'd just be saying toeveryone just do two placements
a month, that's it, we're allhaving a good life.
If you do two a month and thenif they're like all right, well,
how do you?
I'm stuck here, how shall I dothis?
Or I'm not getting wins here,why Then you peel the onion back
and be like okay, this hasworked for me or let's look at
this or let's look at that.
But yeah, I think Ipredominantly pissed people off

(59:21):
in the past doing likeone-on-ones.
I mean like how many of thishave you done this week?
How many of that?
And that's how I was trained.
But it's just like while it'simportant, it wasn't popular.
So if people are beingsuccessful, I'm not going to
really ask too many questionsabout all that stuff.
If they're not, then yeah, wedo.

Speaker 3 (59:45):
But I kind of want people just to be themselves and
I sort of tend to hire based onpeople's individualism.

Speaker 1 (59:49):
Do you hire recruiters or do you hire
outside and train them up?
Just thinking back over theyears of stuff and what's worked
better.
All recruiters so far of someexperience level, some
definitely more junior thanothers.
I'll be real I've had the worstsuccess with the most senior
people I've hired.

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
Oh, me too.
Yeah, it's always the worst.

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
I've had multiple people in almost 200K, yeah, and
it was a disaster.
What I really think works well.
So like one of our biggestsuccess stories.
He's actually, you know, he wasamazing but he actually chose
to leave the industry, become abuilder because he's very
passionate about it.
But he started as a personaltrainer and then got into
recruitment and that background.

(01:00:27):
You know it's similar to me inthe dj promoting days like you
have to walk around the gymevery day, you have to hustle
new clients, you have to be ableto pitch while you're different
to the other 50 personaltrainers standing there at
fitness first.
Like I look at that experienceand and hold quite a bit of
value in it.
So if I ever see anything like,yeah, personal trainer,
anything to do with like sportsor athleticism, where it's like

(01:00:48):
quite a lot of disciplineinvolved, even door-to-door
sales, like ideally a bitfurther back in your career, but
like these things, they layfoundations that allow you to
not be phased by no.

Speaker 3 (01:01:00):
Or feedback in general, like if you can be on
the fly, someone say, say ordoes something on the phone, you
can be like, hey, look reallylike this, let's fix that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
and they're like, yep , sweet yeah, totally yeah, um,
yeah, team sports as well, justthat like collaboration piece.
But yeah, that type ofexperience I value really really
highly.
I've had the worst success withhiring super senior people or
as bad as it sounds supereducated people.
You know, I don't know why, butit just hasn't worked.
So, yeah, but the type ofagency we are been really

(01:01:32):
boutique, been reallyspecialized, quite often working
really closely with foundersand C-suite stuff, I don't
really have the capacity or theroom to probably have someone
super, super, super junior,because there's like it's not
like when you work with um, youknow big insurance company or
something and you know the rolescome in and then I can just

(01:01:53):
throw them down the trough toold mate down there who's just
gonna like find some cvs andcome back.
It's just sort of not how itworks.
Like you are going to need toengage with them directly if
you're involved, because we'resmall like that.
So somewhere in that likemiddle ground is like I'd be
looking for me after my firstagency, like finding people out

(01:02:14):
of a big agency maybe onsomething a little interesting
sales related in the past whoare just hungry.
That's a good fit for us.
But also I think that weprobably offer a pretty good
level of work-life balance andfreedom.
Like we only do two days a weekin the office.
You know Jade's got aone-year-old daughter, like I've
got a little dog.
Like we've all got stuff goingon.

(01:02:35):
If you work with us, like wetrust that you're not a child
and can figure it out, likeobviously always there to help.
But I think that's sort of theappeal of working for a smaller,
more boutique business.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent.
So what's next then?
What's next for hire?
Like what are your goals?
Have you done your 2025 goals?
Yeah, you knew me.
Like what do?

Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
you hope to achieve this year.
They're like they don'texciting, uh, when you say them
out loud, but like, really, forus it's just about um continuing
doing what we're what we'redoing because it is going really
well.
Um, you know, we we had a awildly successful period, sort
of call it 2017 through to theend of 22.
We learned a lot in that period.
We did some things really well.

(01:03:16):
We also made some stupidmistakes.
I feel like this period ofdowntime, we've really refined
what that looks like and I thinkyou know, like Jay said to me
at the meeting, it's the quote Ikeep teasing him about it the
quote in our sort of beginningof year meeting or whatever he
was like it's time for us togrow up, and so you know that's

(01:03:37):
a mantra that we're taking on.
So it's sort of slow and steadyis going to win the race.
For us, a much biggerinvestment into the contract
side of our business is going tobe a big part of it.
But also this year, I thinkthis year is just probably see
how things continue to move.
It's too early to say becausewe're in January, right, like

(01:03:59):
we've had so many times where wesit and make these grand plans,
but it's like planning asailing trip without knowing
which way the wind's going tofly, like it's just there's no
point.
So I think by like March we'llstart to have a way better feel.
If it feels like things are likeback, yeah, we would definitely
increase headcount a little bit.
We'd be really focused oncontract.
We'll make a much bigger effortto proactively market ourselves

(01:04:22):
, moving forward.
Again, back to that, likealways on other people's
businesses, not our own.
We never really did much ofthat.
We have started doing that.
We're really seeing value fromit, so want to build on that.
See what, see what that can do.
But I think, um, after the last18 months and I reckon most
agency owners will feel the samelike we'd just be happy to just

(01:04:42):
to like have a good year, notbe stressed out about anything.
Work with some cool partners,work with some cool talent.
Um, you know it doesn't need tobe zigzag constantly.
You can have some calm in there, um, so it's a very like
nondescript answer, that'sawesome, and so how would anyone
get in contact with you if theydid?

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
if they're listening to this podcast and they go jeez
, I like the vibe of this guytwo days in the office, sign me,
yeah.
How do they get in contact withyou?

Speaker 1 (01:05:11):
uh, linkedin or um joe at hirecomau, I'm always
super happy to chat to anyone inthe industry about about
anything.
Um, you know, I thinkrecruitment's such a great space
, um, where you can do a lot ofdifferent things.
I don't know if, like, peopleappreciate that as much.
Like recruitment is notrecruitment.

(01:05:31):
The options are pretty broad interms of what you can get into
and I think you know, if I lookat every other professional
service like law consulting,accountants, whatever, like they
have all these industry bodieswhere they all catch up and they
have lunches together and wedon't really have that in
recruitment.
You're kind of trained thatyour agency, you know competitor
like fight them if you see themat the pub, whereas I really

(01:05:53):
feel like Do you?

Speaker 3 (01:05:54):
reckon we need that no.
No.

Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
Definitely not.
You don't punch on with anyoneat the pub, do you reckon we
need the?

Speaker 3 (01:06:00):
industry body.
Yeah, just a punch on at thepub.
You actually need a bit morepunch on at the pub.

Speaker 1 (01:06:06):
I don't know necessarily about an industry
body, but I think it would becool to have a lot more
collaboration with people in thesame space, because you've got
a lot in common, a lot to talkabout.
You know, I think most peoplewho I've met that are any good
are always happy to share.
There's always going to be thenext generation coming through.
If you are taking pride in whatyou do and it's your craft, of

(01:06:29):
course you want to talk to otherpeople that do the same thing.
So, yeah, I think it would begood.
And I see the internalrecruiters.
They do it amazingly.
We go to the internal recruiterone.
They have a meetup like everythree months.
They all show.
So, yeah, I think the agencyworld does need it.
There has been some good onesover the years, but they haven't
lasted too long.
So, yeah, I'm always keen tonetwork and chat.
If anyone has any questions,you're welcome to get in touch.
Awesome, mate.

Speaker 3 (01:06:48):
Well, thanks for coming on and providing the
value to this.
No, it was fun, guys.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
Thanks for the invite .
I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):
Cheers, Awesome Cheers brother with Blake and
Declan.
We hope you enjoyed and got alot of value and insights out of
this episode.
If you do have any questions oryou would like to recommend
someone to come on theConfessions podcast, we would
love any introductions andremember the rule of the podcast

(01:07:14):
like share and recommend it toa friend.
Until next time.