speaker-0: you

speaker-1: you out. Hi and welcome to this week's podcast. Honored to have my good friend and colleague, Emily, on the show today. Hi Emily, how are you?

speaker-0: I couldn't agree with you more. You've become a very good friend over the years. Love you to bits, darling, but very well. I'm enjoying a few days away with my beautiful daughter while the team's working hard.

speaker-1: Excellent, excellent. And today's session is called the delivery engine. Why you don't have time to do what you need to do as a recruitment business owner and how to fix it. Let me start with a moment. There's a recruiter that we're working with right now, solid operator, he's winning good work, getting great fees, things ⁓ that move. But every time you want a client, he felt pressure. I want you to note that word. He's feeling pressure, not excitement. And the reason being because he knew what was coming next, late nights. chasing candidates, giving clients updates. Everything's on this solo recruiter. And he said something that really stuck with me. said, winning business feels like creating more problems. Think about that. A recruiting business owner's feeling that winning business is creating more problems. So I want to come back to that. the brutal truth is this, I don't want to, I shouldn't have put this in any way whatsoever. If you don't have business development, you've built a business that depends on luck. Sales and marketing is the lifeblood of your business. And if you then say, I haven't got time to do it, you're going to have problems. And the thing with luck, it's not scalable. What we know is what's really happening when a recruiter says that is that they're other things a priority. So prioritizing urgent delivery over important growth. They're acting like a biller rather than the business owner. And then you get stuck in this loop. I'm curious, Emily, from your point of view, does any of that sound familiar to you?

speaker-0: Good Lord, yes, and I see it all the time. And it reminded me of a client actually that was brutally honest with himself. And I think as a business owner, you've got to be honest with yourself and identify what you're bad at because there is no way in your business you can be good at everything. You can't be great at sales. You can't be great at delivery. You can't be great at accountancy, marketing. operations, sourcing, all the different functions in your business, you cannot excel at it because they all require different skill sets. And as a recruiter, you know that. You wouldn't hire a marketeer or a business developer to do your accounts. So why would you expect yourself to do that? And it's exactly the same as sales. And this one client, was really sensible, actually. He said, I hate sales. I'm really bad at it. I love the rest of it. And he'd built a very successful business. But he didn't want to do it. He knew that that was his weakness. I think it's really important to fire your weaknesses, someone who is better than you in your weak area. And this particular client, he hired a team of four or five business developers. His business is thriving because he actually was more an operator, wanted to manage the operations rather than selling. Now, that's an extreme example. Most people who come to us to want to be D. Most business owners, they're the best person for selling their business. No one will ever care about your business as much as you selling it. It's just a sad fact. You can hire amazing staff, but you care the most. But if you can get your diary full of meetings consistently, that's the win. So you know repeatedly that it works. as you know, Terry, I'm away this week and I'm not having any meetings, which is lovely. You're my only... bit of work, but spending time with you is never work. Thank you, Emily. When I can see my diary is filling up and I like to have four or five meetings a day in the morning, I'm not doing anything for that. I can relax on holiday knowing my diary is filling up for me with my ICP. And next week will be seamless rather than coming back off holiday again. Right. Plus, I've got other

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: business developers in the business now that can take meetings as well and are bringing business in that has nothing to do with me. And it is a really strange feeling actually when business is one for your business and you don't know anything about that client at all. There's a little bit of a head shift on there, but it's a great head shift.

speaker-1: Absolutely. And what you've done there, Emily, you've created a business rather than the job. Most recruitment business owners, don't have a business, they have a job. They have to work, they have to do everything to earn. When you've got a business, and I always compare it to a major supermarket. If you and I went to a major supermarket, we wanted a pint of milk or a newspaper. We don't have to get served by the CEO of that supermarket. But you and I know if you went to our local corner shop, The person that's serving us that point in the newspaper is the business owner. But if they don't open the store and serve the likes of you and I, they've got no income coming in. And really, a recruitment business is like a treadmill. You're running hard, but if you're constantly staying in the same place, because every time you speed up, the treadmill speeds up, that's when you've got a problem. But here's a question I just want to put out there before we move on. Where in your business does winning more work actually create more stress?

speaker-0: We can't have a

speaker-1: Yeah. And sorry, when I say question, this is a question as you listen to this, I want to go into the things that you need to know. Growth doesn't break your business. Weak delivery does. And I'm going to put this out as it is. You don't have a client problem. Well, it is what your real problem is. You're still doing everything. That's the problem. And if you're doing that, you have a major problem. You might win that retained role, you might feel in control. What happens? You're sourcing, you're screening, you're chasing, you're updating, you're back in the weeds again. That's not scale, that's survival. You've got it on a retained basis, so it's probably helps with the cash flow and you've got better fees. But is that really what you set your business up for? If your delivery lives in your head and the amount of times I've said to recruitment business, How do you do that? And they go, haha, Terry, I've got it all up there. You haven't got a business. You've got a job with clients. See, I always think, if you feel that your winning client is like a backpack, every client you win, you put another backpack on. So you've got more weight, more pressure, and eventually you're thinking, I don't want any more. And if you've ever been in this situation where you've held back on business development and look, I'm marketing and make more places, we're marketing out to potential clients every day of the week. And when I get a message about saying, Terry, thanks for reaching out, but I'm too busy at the moment delivering to have a conversation with you, there's something wrong. Have you ever held back because the business definitely went because you know that you couldn't handle it anymore? What are your thoughts on that, Emily?

speaker-0: But I totally agree with you. ⁓ I think in recruitment, there's quite a lot of discussion about what's, well, every time I speak to recruitment, recruitment, there is a, should I do the 180 or should I go the 360 role? And I see that, and I personally don't believe in the 360 model because you can't be good at both sides. And... It's better and you can't have a straightforward pipeline because one week you're focused on development, the next week you're focused on delivery. And I see that with business owners, that's exactly what they're doing. They get clients in, work, work, work, work, work, deliver, deliver, deliver, get some money in fantastic and then go, ⁓ God, I've got no pipeline. And so it's almost like starting from scratch again. Yeah. Every time. And That's a horrible position to be in, where going back to what I saying that I'm on holiday, I've got a full diary next week, I can take time off and my business is stable. You don't want those peaks and troughs financially because it makes it very hard to plan, scale or even exit the business if you've got those peaks and troughs. You want stability to know each month. For the last 12 months, I've brought X in and it's increasing by 20 % per annum. And that's the trajectory you want. because your comment about actually running a business is like a job. I'd actually say it's the worst job ever because actually if you're employed, you have the stability of an income. You can have paid holidays and go off and relax. And as a business owner, you don't have any of that. You're doing the 14 hour days, the weekends, and hopefully you're earning more than if you were actually working for somebody else. So it's actually the worst job possible. And that's not why people start stand up to have their own business. It's not. The only way you can reclaim that is by getting good help in and getting not just the business development, but getting rid of the bits that you are bad at because you know, I've said this all the time, Terry, but the bits of the business that you are bad at are the bits that you procrastinate on. And those are the parts that hold your business back.

speaker-1: Absolutely.

speaker-0: Or get rid of those items, whatever it is, and hire somebody who's better at it than you. And instantly, your business will do better because there's that pressure that you know what you should be doing. And if you're not doing that, you have stress streams, you're having time with the kids, you're on holiday, and the whole time it's in your head going, have you done this? Have you done this? Have you done this? You don't need that. Get rid of it.

speaker-1: Absolutely, absolutely. And whenever you talk to, and I touched on this earlier, know, if you've got a business, if I came in and said, well, how do you do this? And they go, you know, it's all up there. There's something wrong, you know, they're just tapping their head because it indicates that the belief is nobody can do it like me. But here's the truth. If you create a process and then the common terminology, the standard operating procedure, and you document it and document it properly, what that means is now you're now creating a business rather than a job. As a business owner, it's not your job to be the best recruiter out there. It's your job to build a process that produces the results that you want. Well, I'm not sure you know, Mike, he was away last August. took a whole of, was it August? Yeah, August or July, took a whole of the month off, but still as a solo recruiter, he had invoiced nearly 70,000, because he had a team around him. So he admitted he worked every day, but only for about an hour, just checking in and everything and making sure everything was okay. But that's when you've got a business and you still raise that kind of income. I want to repeat, it's not your job as the owner to be the best recruiter. It is your job to build a process that produces the best recruitment results. It only works when you're in it. It's not a system. It's a business. It's a job that's dependent on you. Think about it. Imagine the best chef in the world. I know, Emily, you're a bit of a foodie and ⁓ you love good quality food, but imagine the chef who refuses to write down the recipe. The food is great, but nobody else can create it. That's not the business. It's Alan, Captain of Prison. And part of the control is what makes your business scalable, not the candidates, not vague reach, not slow feedback, not unrealistic expectations. Because when that happens, you compensate. You work harder, you chase more, and you're constantly trying to fix problems. If you want to scale your business, you don't work harder, you scale by controlling the environment. I want to repeat that and really let that one hit. You don't scale delivery by working harder. You scale by controlling the environment. Massive difference. Sorry, I'm saying that there. Sorry, by the way.

speaker-0: So true about scaling the environment and getting the right people in. it's easier than it has. I think it's the easiest it's ever been to achieve this. You mentioned SAPs. I can place, I've got a pool of incredible people, but it doesn't matter how brilliant those people are. If you're not prepared for it and you're not ready for it, It will be a disaster. It's not just about having the right people to bring in. It's about your mindset. It's about processes and alertness from you and making sure that you know what good looks like. So working on the basis that you're the best person for selling in your business. If you haven't in today's day and age got a note taker in every meeting you do, you're a numpty because you are literally building this resource pack with no effort. have the note takers in, and then you can easily build out fabulous SOPs. When I have a new business developer start, ⁓ it appeals to my narcissistic side this immensely, but I make them listen to two days of my calls and my meetings. Just listen and immerse, and you can then see the pattern. I then ask them to put together the script from my meetings rather than give it to them because then they're actually having to think and work for it. And then they learn it and there's a formula and follow that formula. Most clients think that every meeting they do is different and they work through it. Rubbish. You have a sales formula. We all have it. if you can pass, if you can document that formula and pass it on and train it, which you can so easily, you're going to have an amazing team.

speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. And you've made a good point there because most people don't do that. Let's be honest, they search when they need to, they message when needed. ⁓ So they qualify inconsistently. That's not a system, that's all based on hope. Imagine that you've got a business based on hope. know, special extremes, you're going away on holiday and you happen to talk to the pilot in the airport and you say, how are we going to get there? And he says, well, hope we're to get there safely. look at him or her and say what this this flight is based on hope are you kidding me how many businesses are based on just that it's just hope what you need instead is you need defined inputs defined outputs you need defined standards what's acceptable what did the word that Emily the words that Emily used there what does good look like? judgments are one in a process not at the end most people talk about i just need to find better candidates no Patients are won by how you qualify the role, how you position the candidate and how you manage the client. Delivery is not steps. It's a controlled journey. So, yeah, by the way, yeah.

speaker-0: Because when I started, I was that business owner right at the beginning, doing everything myself from the kitchen table. And letting go is terrifying. It's because you do believe that you are the best person to do it. And you probably are, but you can't do it all. So start with a bit that you're worst at, get rid of that. That frees you up to do more of what you're good at. That brings more revenue in. And then you get another person and another person, and that's how you grow the team. But in terms of I would urge anybody, and obviously if you're part of your program, you're there to support. But if you're not for any reason, take some time at one weekend ⁓ when there's no other noise and write out what the dream scenario looks like. How many messages you'd be sending a day, what those messages would look like, how many calls you'd be making. Get rid of the constraints of the real world. Sounds a bit arsey, but just write the dream. And then you can reverse engineer and go, OK, it takes me 40 calls to get one meeting or 20 calls, whatever it is. And I need 20 meetings a week or a month to achieve my revenue and work it backwards. And then you can see what you need in your business by doing that. And that's the quickest way of solving it.

speaker-1: Absolutely, I was going come on to that actually, but I pulled the delivery engine. So look, here's what we need to do very quickly as you listen to this. Grab yourself a pen and paper and I want you to write these down. It's the six stages of the delivery engine as we call it. Number one, client control. Number two, role clarity. Get crystal clear about the role itself. Number three, ⁓ candidate generation. Number four, candidate qualification. Number five, submission and client management. Number six, ex-placement and expansion. Now this is your pipeline, not for tracking, but for delivery. And here's a question for you, and I'm going to go through those again. Number one, client control, role clarity, candidate generation, candidate qualification, submission and client management, placement and expansion. That's your pipeline for delivery. Here's a question to ask yourself, which of those right now pulls you the most stress? Because this is, because if you can understand that, that's going to create what we call a, every business has got a blockage and that's going to release from the blockages in your business. You have this, what must be agreed before you work on the job order? What does a bad client look like? What does a good client look like? What are your non-negotiables? In your kickoff call structure, include things like questions that you always ask, standards that you enforce, expectations that you expect. And factoring things like, what if one of my clients or candidates were to skip one of these processes? What would happen there? What could go wrong? Because if you can answer that, you'll know what really matters. And really, turn it into ⁓ a playbook or some operating procedure. One, or candidate submission or whatever it is, what looks good. And ask yourself, when I've documented this, could somebody else follow this? And this is a great question I was going to ask when we were doing, going through this process six, seven years ago. If a 13-year-old came to work for you and you gave them this process and all disclosure, not only we documented it, we also recorded it on Zoom as well, if a 13-year-old followed this process, would they get the same outcome as you're getting now? We never tested it with a 13-year-old, but we're quietly confident that that would be the case. Add me what's called step four, the operator layer, so we make it real. The tools that you use, the templates, the daily and weekly expectations, the quality standards. But this is where most people stop because they do this, but they never use it. But from Emily's point of view, I I just want you to share with us where exactly where you come in and the sort of things that your people could do to ensure that this is done. Because as I'm saying all this, I'm quietly confident that most people are going, well, yeah, that makes common sense. But it's not the knowing, it's the doing. And intellectually, as you're listening to this, you know that you need to be doing this consistently. But most of you don't. How would it be for you if had somebody that was doing this consistently for you, whether you were in the mood to do it or not? So I want to hand over to you Emily, these the sort things that your guys could do.

speaker-0: Perfect, well, anything. That sounds such an ambiguous statement, but ⁓ it is literally everything. And it goes back to that, where have you gone, Terry? About firing what you're bad at. ⁓ So in terms of business development, SDR, accountancy, marketing, sales, resourcing, sourcing, headhunting, every business, every role in the recruitment business we can provide for.

speaker-1: We're here.

speaker-0: And a lot of people will say, well, actually, don't have enough work for a straight up recruiter or one particular role. And it's something that I've actually really developed for you guys. Don't cry, Terry. It's all right. I'll help. Is almost an everything person. especially if you're in a small business, this sort of everything person can be fantastic because most people have a role. And especially people from the UK, they say they want to stick to that job description. And that's not what you actually need as a small business. You need someone who, when you've got a lot of jobs in, to help you with the resourcing and screening. But when your diary is empty as well, make sure every day your diary is full, but also help with the marketing and just be able to roll their sleeves up and be your right-hand person. We do that really well. And then what tends to happen is after a period of time, the business has gone from here to here, which is fantastic. And that everything person will become one particular role, whether it's marketing or sales. ⁓ And then you hire another person and for the other other role and it grows. And something that I would encourage people to do because this is something I do all the still about every three months because I slip with it is put some value on your time, say 100 pounds an hour, or whatever you think you're worth, it can be a thousand pounds, it doesn't matter, but put a high value on your time, so at least 100 pounds an hour. And then have a pad of paper or notes on your laptop or whatever. And as you're going through your day, ask yourself, is this a reoccurring task? And if the answer's yes, is it a 10 pound an hour job? or is it hundred pound an hour job? And you start listing those 10 pounds an hour jobs. And it doesn't just have to be for your business. It can also be for your personal life. Life admin is really boring and it takes a lot of time. So your school, kids' calendars, things like that, medical forms, holidays, booking taxes, all these things that happen hopefully regularly.

speaker-1: Yes.

speaker-0: Just again, the stuff you're bad at, write it down. And before you know it, you'll be on page three, four, five, and you think crikey. Then stop and look and say, right, actually, if I could get all of this out, how much extra time would that give me? And typically, it's about 20 hours a week, 20, 30 hours a week, more than it would give you back, if not more. And then say, actually, What would I do with that time? What would I do? Would I make more sales calls? Would I spend more time with my kids? Would I? do more painting or whatever tickers you fancy. And you're, because we run a business not just for money, but quality of life. It's absolutely game changing doing this at a time audit. I really recommend everyone to do it every three months because I find, I think I've got quite good at delegating over the years, but I still fall into the trap of, it, let me just do it myself. And You have to be really strict with yourself and say, no, let me delegate that because business is exciting and there's so many opportunities in business if you have the time to stop and think and find them and see them. But if you're busy screening a candidate or sending a LinkedIn message, you're going to miss that opportunity.

speaker-1: Absolutely. And that point you made about the time audit, know, if you want to earn 100,000 a year, your hourly rate is 50 pounds an hour. So if you're doing something that actually is a 10 pound or 10 dollar an hour job, can you see what a waste of time and money that is? And you're absolutely right there, Emily, and just get your head around that. And the often statement I hear is, But Terry, I haven't got enough work to bring somebody in to do this for me. And you're missing the point. If you're busy right now and you bring somebody in, and then we gave the example, know, saving 20 hours, but let's say that they only saved you 15 hours a week. What could you do with that 15 hours? What would that mean to you? How many more meetings could you have personally, have somebody to do that? This concept of I'm going to get really busy and having to work for them. What you need to be doing is letting go of some of the things that you're doing right now that are frankly a low value. Arranging interviews for candidates can be done by somebody remotely. Arranging the meetings with hiring managers could be done by somebody remotely and a fraction of the cost to you. As a business owner, you've got what we call, there's a book on this actually, it's called B &B roles. you know, that have to be done that will generate income for you. So I would imagine for most recruitment business owners, if you could sit in front of decision makers who were looking for what you do, that would be really good use of your time. And you would be best off doing that in the range of interviews or trying to source candidates or trying to track down candidates or whatever. But you've got to build this engine. So this engine, this system runs all the time. Candle outreach is going on all the time. Client outreach is going on all the time. ⁓ Follow-ups are going on all the time, regardless. Admin, you're on top of it all the time.

speaker-0: would also say as well, it's such a valuable process to stop and look at your processes because people are just, as business owners, you want business in, that's the result you want. You want the clients, you want the client to pay you, that's the end result. And we're so busy chasing that, very often we don't stop and think how and why we're doing something. And by a team member in, It makes you stop and think about your processes. Rather than just doing and going 120 miles an hour, bull in a china shop, you have to stop, breathe and look at what you do. And I see this all the time with business owners. People say, I don't know why I was doing that. That's ridiculous. Because you're putting in something that you don't need to do and you can take it out. The other thing is you should be hiring people that... are at least as good as you. And if it's a sales position, obviously they should have a track record and it should all be about numbers. But if you're somebody that is doing something that you don't enjoy doing, they should be better at it than you. So they're going to bring new ideas and a new energy into your business. Because I think one of the hardest things as a business owner is keeping your energy up to 10 all the time. and the value of having somebody else that cares about your business, and especially if they're remote and from South Africa or another country because they really need your job. is to have an energy and excitement that will lift you up on those days where you think, God, what am I doing here? Which we all have. And that's also incredibly valuable.

speaker-1: Absolutely. So if we bring this all together, you don't have a time problem as a recruitment business owner. You have a dependency problem. Because right now, every client needs you. Every candidate needs you. Every stage needs you. Every decision needs you. So of course you don't have time. Because the business is dependent on you. And I'll repeat, that's not a business. That's a job. As we go back to the recruiter, the one who said winning business feels like creating more problems, what changed? He didn't get more time because it doesn't exist. What he did do though, he built a delivery system. He documented every stage. He brought in resources and he worked very closely with Emily to bring in people to do those essential jobs. He said, I know Terry that I should do more business development. I know I should be doing Examples should be posted on the regular basis. What happens in there is I start it then get some business in and then stop and it's you know, it's a spawning and feast situation, but it documented everything now as MNIST team does all of that for him and this team got the appointments for him He's working less now, but generating more. Different structure, different life. And he said, well, he didn't prevent this, said, things are different now, Terry, because for the first time ever, winning client now feels like progress. You see, right now you don't have a delivery system, you have a way of working. And the moment you say this, well, we've always done it this way, you've just got a way of working. And that's why growth feels heavy, because every new client still needs you. Every moment still needs you. You don't just win clients, you want to create capacity. I can almost guarantee you didn't set up a business to work 19 hours a day. That wasn't what it was all about. You don't scale by working hard, as I said earlier. You scale by making sure the work gets done. But here's the important bit, without you. And again, I want that one to land. You scale by making sure the work gets done without you. Emily, before we wrap up, anything you'd like to add to that?

speaker-0: Yes, if anyone's listening to this and thinking, yes, but, I'd love to speak to the yes, buts. If you're stuck and you don't, obviously I'd love it if you want to take some people from me, but I'm here for a chat about how to get to that stage and what you need to do to make it successful. And I think this is really our point of difference. Because there's a lot of people who will just throw you CVs and hope for the best. That's not us. We will listen, undiagnose and work with you to build the solution that you need for your business based on what you've just said and what we know works. So reach out ⁓ and we would love to have a chat with you because we're here to help you and help you grow and get those goals.

speaker-1: Fantastic. Emily, once again, really appreciate you joining us today and sharing your insights. This is Terry Eddard from Make More Pleasance. Until next time, folks, take care, take action, be relentless.