The RAG Podcast - Recruitment Agency Growth Podcast Sean Anderson

I’m thrilled to have Kevin Frater join me for the first episode of Season 7 of The RAG Podcast! 

I usually interview founders and leaders of recruitment firms on the show, but this week we’re interviewing our first unemployed guest. 


Kevin is an absolute legend!


He was part of the Frank Recruitment Group (FRG)  for over 10 years and left in January of 2023. He started off in a role where he was doing client development, having spent four and a half years with the Allegis Group.


He soon became the fixer. This guy would go to different offices and effectively turn them around.


He started in London, then went to Singapore, and then he spent six years in Germany where he walked into a team of 12 recruiters and six years later left with over 180 staff, with one of the highest performing teams in FRG globally. 


He went through two events with the business where he realised some wealth and he finished up at the start of this year to take some time out before starting his next opportunity. 


In this episode we talk about:


🎙️ Turning around underperforming sales or recruitment teams

🎙️ Kevin’s ability to let others do the hard work, but what it took to be a true leader behind the scenes so that people could flourish

🎙️ The personal and professional challenges of international travel, and balancing everything in between.

🎙️ Rapid growth and what it takes to go from 12 to 180 staff in six years


If you’re a recruitment manager or recruiter that wants to get into recruitment management and grow your career by being behind the scenes, this is gonna be an amazing episode. 


And if you’re a recruitment business in need of a recruitment director, someone who's going to run the business, take on international operations, and drive a really scalable, repeatable model then again, listen to this conversation, because he might be your guy! (And if he isn't your guy, he's going teach you a lot in the process :) )


Hoxo


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


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


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


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


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


Now, if that sounds of interest to you, follow this link: https://academy.hoxomedia.com/get-started59434285 


Episode sponsor: RecruitHub


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


One of them was Stuart...

On this week’s show, I am joined by Louise Campbell, Global Head of Learning and Development at Robert Walters.
Robert Walters is a global, household name in our sector, with over 4000 employees around the world.

Louise is based in Ireland. She was the MD of their Irish business for over 20 years.

Recently, she reinvented herself and moved into L&D wth the goal of making a difference across the global team. 

I love understanding Louise's mindset. 

I've personally worked with Robert Walters for three years. They’ve just signed with us for another year, and we're working with over 500 of Robert Walters's consultants on their personal brand.

Louise has been instrumental in both bringing us on board, and also working with us to ensure that training is delivered well across the organisation.

L&D is normally something that's under-invested in and not very well managed in recruitment organisations. 

What I think is so special here, is that Louise went from being an MD of the usiness to then using all of her knowledge for L&D. 

So she's not just a trainer, she's a business leader, and we talked about her intrapreneurial journey through Robert Walters, why she loves the organisation, why she's been there for over 20 years, and everything in-between. 

If you are looking to develop a strong L&D function in your business and grow organically by building the best team possible, you need to listen to this episode.

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Hoxo Message

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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You can publish jobs from Vincere’s Job Portal and sync them directly to your website in one
easy click. You can also offer candidates a quick and easy job search...

I'm super excited to be joined by Alexander Antoniou, the founder of AL Solutions, a Life Sciences specialist recruiter headquartered in London, just over five years old, with 25 staff.
Now, the reason I wanted to interview Alexander is because he’s not only grown AL Solutions, but he's also built a portfolio of five other businesses that he does the back office support for. They share infrastructure, and he's basically set other people up.

Alexander is only 25 years old!

He got into recruitment at 18. Having said to his parents, who wanted him to become a lawyer, that he was going to have a gap year and just work in sales to save some money for university. 

He then became the top performer at a local life science recruitment firm, and two and a half years later, at the age of 20 years old, he went out and set up AL Solutions, which stands for Antoniou Life Science.

Alexander is an incredible guy with incredible energy. He’s so young and has achieved so much.

He looks at the business with energy, passion, and a level of simplicity. I believe we could all learn from the way he runs his business.

You’re going to enjoy this episode if you are a recruiter looking to start your own business in the future or if you're looking to grow and you want to think a bit clearly and a little bit more simply about the whole solution. 

__________________________________________

Hoxo

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

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

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

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

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

Now, if that sounds of interest to you, follow this link: 

https://academy.hoxomedia.com/get-started59434285 
__________________________________________

Episode sponsor: RecruitHub

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

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

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

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

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

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

Link to his full story: a...

On this week’s show I’m sharing one of the most powerful episodes I've ever recorded with a lady called Janette Marx. 
Jeanette is the global CEO at a company called Airswift, a huge workforce, staffing and solutions organisation headquartered in the US with 62 offices worldwide, 900 employees, and 7500 contractors that they support. 

Jeanette's been with the business for nine years and in the recruitment industry for over 20 years. She previously worked for Adecco and was leading a huge operation for them across the US.


What I love about Jeanette is her mindset and how she's done what she's done while going through so much!


She's an author of a book called Together We Rise, which she co-authored after the pandemic with 16 other female leaders in the staffing industry globally.


She shared how she’s grown her career as an entrepreneur and become a global CEO as a female whilst having a baby and running a business. Everything she's done to get to where she was at the beginning of 2023. 


And then we talked about the impact of finding out that she had stage two breast cancer at the beginning of March this year and how she dealt with the news.


Because the book she wrote was about dealing with crisis moments and stress and how to stay calm, she managed to put everything in the book into practice and between the beginning of March and the end of April, she was back to work, cancer free.


She went through a series of different operations, she built a team of doctors around her and she took control of a life or death situation and has come back to work with a different sense of appreciation for life. 


She's still incredibly motivated to give back, build a business and help her people, but she also has calmness, which has come from getting through something so serious.

In this episode there were moments where I had to take a deep breath and as I was getting quite emotional myself. I'm just inspired by such an amazing woman who and what she's achieved. And I think anyone out there who's dealt with serious illness themselves or seen their family members or friends go through it can resonate.


And anyone who's at the helm or wants to be at the helm of a larger business, you can also resonate with with different things we discussed. 


If you’re interested in reading ‘Together We Rise’, you can find it here: https://amzn.to/3KglF41

__________________________________________


Hoxo Message


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


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


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


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


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

1) Whilst I've been building the RAG podcast, we've actually done what we say we’ll do for our clients.In less than two years, we built a business generating from zero to over 1 million...

On this week’s episode, I'm excited to be joined by an old friend, Joe Curtis. 
Initially, Joe was the founder of a recruitment company called 3Search, which then led to building a bigger business called 11 Investments. 
11 Investments is a series of niche recruitment organisations that work together and share a common goal with a central operational function. 
Joe's role as founder is to bring more people into the portfolio, both people who want to start their own recruitment company and also people who want to work for the portfolio. 

He's been responsible for growing the business to 100 people, which they’ve managed to do sustainably and profitably with a clear plan.


In this episode, we talk about:

Joe’s journey of nine years of growthHow remaining profitable throughout that process is really important. Manyrecruitment organisations don't make any money, and as a result, they suffer in times like thisThe importance of running a business with a clear directionThe debate around working in the office and working from home. 3Search, 11 Investments, and the whole portfolio believe in working together in an office in London three days a week with a little bit of flexibility, and they're very clear on how and why they've built it that way

So, if you are in a position right now where you are feeling that, post covid, you don't really know the best way to run your firm - whether it's remote, in-house, or a combination - then you need to listen to this because Joe explains it perfectly. 

He's got to a headcount of 100 and they’re going towards 200, so there's a lot to  learn from this episode.
__________________________________________

Hoxo Message

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Epispde Sponsor: RecruitHub

Our trusted partner RecruitHub helps new founders launch their own recruitment business in the UK, US & UAE. The community is growing rapidly with over 70 founders on the RecruitHub platform.

Everything you need to launch your own recruitment business with ease.

- Receive 100% of the fees you bill
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-...

Part 2 with Ben Wallin and Dan Cox on growing their business to 31 recruiters and being no longer reliant on their own billings within 24 months of trading!
On this week's episode, I'm excited to be joined for the second time by Ben Wallin and Dan Cox, who was previously on the show 12 months ago in August 2022. 

Ben and Dan are the founders of Edison Smart (previously Edison Search).

When I interviewed these guys in 2022, we talked about how, in just over a year, they billed £1.7 million in revenue, grown to just under 20 staff, and they were on this absolute mission called Project 2024.

So a year later - have they achieved even more growth as predicted?

In this episode we find out how:

👉They've grown to 31 employees
👉They've opened up an entity in the US
👉They've got boots on the ground in Dubai
👉They're absolutely flying from Basingstoke recruiting internationally

They specialise in smart technology, which is super niche and they work in a very specific way. 

Ben and Dan are so methodical in their approach that not only have they grown to 31, but they've done it by building an infrastructure around them of core teams, including leadership, operations, marketing, and L&D. 

Now their personal billings are a really small % of NFI.

This is almost unheard of in our sector inside the first 2 yrs!

Now, I often get asked:

How do I become more operational?
How do I work on the business, not in the business? 

This episode tells you how to do it and gives you a roadmap to follow. 

__________________________________________

Hoxo Message

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode Sponsor: Vincere