From Consultant to CEO: The Journey to a Recruitment MBO with Laura Clark

Thank you for having me. Lovely to meet you properly.

Yeah, my career was not linear. I think is probably the best way. And when we caught up before the podcast began, I think you probably have a better insight into my career than I can actually remember because what's not on LinkedIn is also four children in between all of those roles. Joining in a recession, having a growth business that then went backwards, moving it forwards, lots of change. So my career isn't a step by step, and I don't think anyone's career is a step journey, you know, there are side steps, there are backwards steps. So my LinkedIn, I don't know who was in control of that, I think I just randomly throughout my career made some job titles up to get me forward, relationship manager being one of them which was a short stint. So okay, yeah, as close to the truth as I can remember. But then you did, you're now the group CEO, yes. And then when did the MBO go through? It will be 3 years in March, three years ago. Yeah, okay, cool. And I mean that was, we're going to obviously go through that, but that was an 8 figure valuation, and on the journey now of paying that back essentially, yes. So responsibilities today, your role is very much future of the business, what are we doing to keep improving, keep moving forward. Sales, marketing, reporting to you, you're someone that now is getting out in the industry networking, you called yourself a horizon scanner, yes, which I thought quite a good term. You're spending a lot of time with clients. There's 50 people in the organization, there's you then have like three people who are in sort of MD roles. You put here they run the business better than me, they do. And then in terms of, I think this is, I don't remember what your financial year was, but we put here turnover 20 million, GP around 4 million. And then in terms of the breakup of that, I said to you I haven't had loads of founders leaders like yourself that operate in this type of world, is the breakup of that is, I don't know if this is correct, but around 80% like temp, yeah, 78%, 70 to 80% temp, and then the rest is like perm. Sorry, 78% temp. Okay, and then part of that as well is that we do have this sort of RPO solution as well, yes, so RPO and MSP, so high volume on-site temp and perm. Okay, I think that's all the bits that was a lot. You did well, everyone now has like immediate context which is massively helpful. And completely lost as well in that career. So why don't we start with when I think, you said that your career wasn't linear, but something that you shared with me which I thought was quite interesting is you wouldn't have got anywhere near this MBO conversation and being in the position you're in now if you wasn't really proactive in understanding how you can keep moving your career forward. So let's talk about that. I don't know how you feel about this, but I think there'll be a lot of people out there that say the younger generation love to expect things. And regardless of your age, I think it's a fair comment to say sometimes from an employee point you can say I deserve this, I should get a pay rise, I should do this, etc., or I deserve this. But how proactive have those people been, I'm not sure. Something that you shared with me when we prepared for this was you think people should try and be a lot more direct and proactive around what do I need to do to get your job, and that job being the person ahead of you. So let's talk a bit about that because you might have even more insights on this now because I'm sure you advise people on this in your own business and you're aware of this in your own business, but you wouldn't have got anywhere near the MBO if you wasn't always trying to find out what do I need to do today to get me to the next point.

Yes, I think there's a couple of points that I think I'm thinking through as you speak. So one, you have to be in the right environment and you have to be surrounded by people that are really open-minded by that kind of career aggression. And it is aggression, I am and have been described throughout my career as quite aggressive, which I think is also seen as negative. Maybe assertive is a better word. But I would never allow anyone to hold me back on what I wanted to achieve. And if that meant that I wasn't staying within the business, or be it my mom started the company, which we can go into, we were actually laughing yesterday between us both because we were talking about someone who I've recently employed who reminds me a lot of myself, and I was like, 'Oh my God, was I like this to manage?' And she said, 'Yes, you were.' And she said, 'Honestly, Laura, the amount of times you told me I am leaving if you don't let me do that.' And I I was a misbehaved Maverick in my career where I was highly emotional, highly driven. And if I didn't have a clear vision of what I could do next, I would get really upset about it. That's immature as well, right? So we don't want to act immature. I was young, I joined my role when I was 19. But I also think that there's a real amount, if you get a good leader behind you, there's real admiration for that kind of go-getter personality. When I see people like that, I think they are so rare and I'm like, 'Come and misbehave in my business, that's fine, I will help you get where you need to get to,' but you need those people. What I love about recruitment as well is you really can draw your own path. You know, if you hit your target, that's what you're paid to do, so you get paid more for going above and beyond and that's down to you. Of course, there's training and there's people that can support you, you've got to be given the right tools, but ultimately how much you put in in recruitment is how much you get out. And I think that over the last few years, recruitment leaders, and I have actually been a victim of this, have been allowing people to operate without that kind of attitude because the market's been easier. The last 12 months the market's become a lot tougher and you realize how important those skills are when you need people that can go and hunt business and go and farm and grow and push your company forward. So it's a trait that you're not going to have everyone in your business like it, and if you did it would be a horrible place to work, right? I couldn't employ 50 mini mes, it would just be hell. But you need that level of aggression, you need those people that go, 'Hey, I'm here and I'm going to do everything I can to take the next step, what can I do?' And you've got to put yourself on the line, you've got to be proactive with that because no one else cares about your career more than yourself, that's my view on it.

No, I think it's a number of different tactics that you need to have in your toolkit, and it will depend on the kind of business that you're in. Right, so for me, you've got your peers that you're working alongside, if you're not respected by those people it's going to be really difficult for you to ever manage or take a step up. So you've got to play that role amongst your peers. You've got to be going above and beyond every day. Don't wait for a one-to-one that happens in one hour for one month or how often you have them. Go to your boss every single time you've got an idea that you think is going to work and say, 'Hey, look, I've thought of this, can I implement this? Hey, I've seen that that can be improved, can I look at this?' Just be proactive about every opportunity that you have. I don't believe I mean we have a clear career progression right because as a business gets bigger you need to have framework around that, but again going back to that linear point, there are really good leaders that will never hit the middle tier of billing because they're actually better leaders than they are sales people, and there are really good sales people that should never manage or lead a team. So you have to play to your strengths as a leader and have someone who is as equally invested in your career as you are in your business that can help you along that way. So I don't think it's a 'okay, this is what you should do,' you should just be proactive about it and thinking about it in everything you do every day.

Yeah, and I think there's also for me, like there's this type of person, you must have met these, there's people that come to you and say there's a problem and they might give you some ideas or a solution, or you get people that say there's an opportunity and this is what I'm going to do about it. And there's a difference between someone who moans and thinks they're coming up with an idea, or someone who actually just gets things moving. Whether it's not in the exact right direction you should be going, but it could be, I don't know, 'I've just been to a new client and they don't like the way that we price our perm placements, this other agency does this, I've actually pitched them this, I hope you don't mind, you might get in trouble for it, but risk it.' Do something that is outside the box and don't wait for someone else to authorize it. There's a saying that I have within my leadership team, and there's a lady that works for me that I've worked with for 16 years, maybe slightly less, and I used to teach her this, it was 'Never ask for authority, only beg me for forgiveness.' So when you do something wrong, come and tell me and apologize for it. Don't ask me whether you think it's a good idea, go and try it and then come to me when it works and tell me how great it was. And there are big businesses where there's framework and you're not able to do that, but if you're someone who's a bit of a Maverick like I was, get yourself in a place where someone fosters that energy and those ideas and allows you to have a bit of the barriers aren't so strict on you, because that's how I think you push a business forward, is that innovation and allowing people to play with it.

Yeah, she started founded the business 30 years ago next year, so it's her 30th, the business's 30th anniversary next year. 1995, she started the business and she was a single parent. So I watched her start the business, become really successful. I joined the business in 2008 after promising her that I was going to go to university, which I had zero intentions of doing, like zero. And I remember I literally got the Yellow Pages and just started dialing, and my first deal was actually with a client that soon went bust. That was a really weird placement, I placed a police officer into a Sales Management role, I remember it now and I still talk to the guy that I placed first. Yeah, I really, I struggle, is not the right word, I'm very aware that people will make judgment on the fact that my mom started the business, and I'm okay with that. I'm incredibly lucky that I ever got given the opportunity. I always had in the back of my head that that was something that I was being judged on, and so I would almost try and compensate with really working harder than everyone else to make sure that it wasn't a judgment that was valid to me. I never, honestly like, I was their first, their last, worked evenings, never took a day sick, continuously. I mean even my first child William who's now 13, I had six weeks off for my maternity leave and then I was back at work. Yeah, so you know people that know my work ethic will know that it was hard work, but there's no doubt to say that I wouldn't have had the opportunity if my mom never gave me that, and I'm okay with that. I feel very lucky and grateful that I was given that chance. And equally, you know the dynamics of mom and I working together, God I could tell you some really funny stories. I think I've grown up a lot in the last five years. I must have been an absolute nightmare to manage, but I was also a terrible manager which I know you prep throughout my years too. But I think what my mom did brilliantly, and I think she would have done that if I was her daughter or not her daughter because she was an incredible leader, was harness that energy that I had and that motivation and tried to direct me in the right place. And actually weirdly now it's turned 360 where she is my biggest mentor. You know, she's not involved in the business anymore, but I actually counsel with her far more than I did when she was in the business. We have a better working relationship because I have nothing to prove now. When she was in the company I had something to prove constantly, it was on my back, yeah, I could feel it, like my mom owned the business, I needed to make sure that no one felt that I was treated in any other way than I was deserving to be there. Whereas now I feel a level of relief that I can use her for all of her skills rather than her being a part of the business. But yeah, you know, and she didn't always manage me, I had managers, she owned the business, I had managers that managed me throughout my career. And there were times where I could have quite feasibly been fired for some of the things that I did. I remember once I decided to move our whole email to Google Mail and I thought it'd just be a good idea to start this thing, I thought Google Mail would be better than Outlook, and it sent our whole company, I think there was about 20 of us at the time, our emails just stopped, blanket stopped for two days because I just thought I'll try this new email. And I remember, I thought I was going to get sacked, I genuinely did.

Honestly, it really does. And I think wherever I would have ended up in my career, I was always a really driven person. Even when I was doing my A-levels I had three jobs, I'd work in a shop at the weekend, a bar in the evenings, and then after school before the bar work I'd work in a teddy sales environment. And I was always extremely money motivated as well, so recruitment just was a natural place for me to land because you can just make money, really, you know. Especially in 2008 when I first joined, I was doing temps and perms and all kinds of placements, it wouldn't matter what kind of job I picked up, I'd just make sure I filled it. So yeah, I think it's, like I said, it doesn't affect me now, but just throughout my career I've just been really conscious of it.

I think when we talk about you know how I've always wanted the next thing, the next thing was naturally me taking over. By this point I'd already done all of the roles in the company, we'd taken on a director that helps out one of our RPO sides of the business, and my mom had the dynamics was that my mom was still involved but had taken a massive step back and wasn't involved half the amount that she was, and I was technically really running the business still with her being there at the board meetings and various things. But the natural next step was for me to take over the company. And I sought many options in trying to do that, whether that was to exit and then me stay on and her be bought out, whether it was an MBO, there were many conversations and variations of what a deal could look like. And I think naturally for my mom, you reflect on some people you know that might one day want to do an MBO, when someone's founded a business it is like their child, the business was like my mom's baby. And so she was only prepared to sell it or for someone to take over that she trusted, and I think the person she trusted the most was me, not an external buyer, not someone else coming in to invest. So that's kind of how it happened, but it didn't happen overnight. The timeline was technically about six months, but I mean I'd been talking about it for five years really. So it wasn't, I think anyone that's look, I can only speak from my own experience, but if there are people that are thinking, 'Oh in 5 years I want to be doing an MBO,' you've got to put that on the table now, really, absolutely, because I think it just takes a really long time. And I've spoken to people that have sold businesses, founders, it takes a really long time to come to terms of the fact that you're not going to be involved in what has been your purpose for every day for your whole life, you know, for 25, 26 years, however long it was. My mom got up in the morning, that was her purpose every day. So I think that the conversation needs to happen, you need to lay your cards on the table and be like, 'Hey, this is what I'm here for.'

Continue as we were or an MBO. And I think the continuing as we were frightened me because you mean continue with her just being within the business and not ever making a purchase, you know, because at this point she was, I think that there would have been another journey of her being even more of a silent partner. But the way that I looked at it and my mind is quite data driven is wherever I was paying her yearly as a salary could have been reinvested in the business. And I still felt that on my back of like I need a time now where this is mine and I can do everything that I want without anyone else. I don't wrong, I have lots of counsel and I ask lots of questions in the business, but it's mine. So I guess they were the three options. When it came to a PE firm, I think again going back to like what my mom really wanted was, and there's actually some detail in it that I kind of missed out, I was pregnant with my fourth child during this period, yeah, and um so Margot who's now two, she was two in August, when the conversations first started and we were looking at other options. And this is obviously where my mom being my mom has really played favors, she just said to me, 'Are you mental? You know you're going to have four children and you're considering someone coming in and then being your essentially boss, if you had a PE firm come in?' And I didn't care, we spoke about how I'm a massive under thinker, I was, I don't worry about it, I'll make it work, I was fearless like it really doesn't matter. That was the best bit of advice she ever gave me because having now spoken to so many people that have gone down that route, whether it's right or wrong, and it might be something I do in the future who knows, like no door is closed for me, I think the timing would have been really wrong. You know, juggling four children, an MBO, a business with 50 people, then COVID, during COVID it just would have been too much because I like to think that I can do anything but I think that might have been a bit much to take on.

Good question. Well, firstly I'd say that if anyone is ever thinking of growing a business that isn't a lifestyle business, it's an asset, absolutely go and get some interest from a PE firm because whether you're looking to sell or not, it was eye opening. The data they wanted from us, we were like, 'Oh my God, we don't measure that, oh my God we don't know that.' And so actually what it did for us was put our past in order to now be an asset that we know if that ever came down the road again, you know for sure that you are measuring and looking at the right things. In terms of what they saw that we maybe thought was great, I think driving a scaling business, the culture is really important to me, like really, really important to me. I want to get up to work, to leave my kids at home, to go to a place that I enjoy working, and you can't put a number on that, there's no data that shows that. And so I think that that's really difficult to show when you're talking to people about the value of your business. And I think what's really evident is again, I haven't sold externally, right, so there people that are way more competent at that. I think for me is getting people that understand that you're looking at your company. So whoever it is that you're going into business with next, if this is for people out there listening to that, if that's one of your key drivers which it is for me, making sure that people don't just look at the numbers because the numbers are one thing but there's a massive story behind the numbers, and the data and the culture I think can soon be stripped apart if you're looking just at numbers. So I don't know if that answers your question.

There are, I use this saying which is like kindly ruthless. I speak about being quite aggressive, like I am a really kind and caring person. When you choose to own a business, you get to choose who you have in that company, right? So I want people that in the business that feel the same way about it as I do, obviously not to the same degree because it's not their business, but you have to weigh up culture versus profitability and that's a really difficult balance too. But you don't want to have a business that's really profitable but it's a really horrible place to work. And if you're not hitting targets after one month you're out, that for me isn't the place to be. I'd actually rather slightly underperformers that have got good behavior and values that you can skill up to be really great performers, that's a preferred cultural environment for me.

Temp book, okay, temp book, client retention, client growth, your tech stack was really important, your leadership succession planning. I mean it's really funny because now we have in every board meeting that we have once a quarter, we talk through every single pillar that we believe are the fundamentals we need to be on to grow the business. Your market, knowing your market, you know, just understanding who do you operate with, your clients, how, what's your strategy to grow those clients or obtain new clients? I think you have to be able to show clearly, 'I've got from here to here by doing this.' If you don't know that, then how do you know how you're going to get how you're going to deliver value for the next step? If you didn't really have a plan, if it just happened, how repeatable is it? If I put this money in, how are you going to keep doing that? Show me that. Interesting, and I think between the businesses, so we have OA Recruitment and OA Solutions, they're two separate sides. How do they talk to one another? So how do we get a lead that comes from recruitment that might need five temps tomorrow, but actually they use 100 temps and then turn onto an on-site, how does that journey happen for a client that's different to another business? There's so many factors to be honest with you, but I think one of the biggest drivers that I've heard, you've had better insight, is your temp book is really important because it is contingent revenue. And we really aim now for contractual temp business that so our larger clients now we get them to sign to exclusive terms for a period of time. There's SLAs and there's break clauses if we don't do what we say we're going to do, but that's really important as well. And often underlooked because you're just on a mission, you don't always tidy up what you're doing, but it's just making sure that everything you're doing behind your growth is tidy and explainable, if that's the right word.

So there's inputs and outputs. We have dashboards and we have like an 11-page dashboard on Power BI, right? So there's a lot of information in there. So I'm going to tell you some of the main things that I keep a real keen focus on. Obviously your revenue, massive one. That is actually not visible but I can't stress this enough because I've been burnt on this, get your debt insured if you're working on temps. Debt insured, debt insured? My God, like we had a client that I worked with for 15 years go under and owed us 140 grand, not insured. That was really painful. So just that's so when it's not insured, just get a bit technical here, yeah, what does that mean? Like there's no way you can go to get that money back? Yeah, so we had like 30 temps of them, paid them for 30 days, and had our margin on top, and it just all went with no warning. They went out of business. Then there'll probably be other money there to other people, you might even get a chance to get money. I think I don't know how, I don't know technically, but you have to be a certain value of their debt to be able to go and claim for it back. We weren't a big enough debt for them. So get your debt insured, like it just helps me sleep. And be really clear about your client terms. I'll go back to the dashboard. But that, since we've recruited our FD who's phenomenal, she gives me on a Friday every Friday, it's my most favorite email which makes me incredibly sad, but is my cash forecast. And so she will tell me how much money is in the bank, how much is due, how much is going out, and then what the next six weeks look like. That's class, I can't tell you how important that email is. Because for example on Friday I read the email and I only had a couple of minutes and I looked at how much money was in the bank and I got excited, I thought, 'Oh, you know, we're doing great.' Then I read the context and we've got the VAT bill, the corporation tax, and I thought, 'Actually no, that's not that great, it's only in there for a few weeks.' So it actually, it's not recruitment, it's the finance side, but I didn't know any of that before I did the MBO. I just thought, 'Oh, P&L, I've made 50 grand profit this month, it's in the bank.' It's not in the bank. So make sure your debtors is clean and tight and everyone is paying on time, and if they don't charge them interest, you're not a bank. That's what I'd say. But back to the dashboard, I look at client meetings, the quality of the conversions. So we look at how many client meetings people have, how many terms of business get sent, how many terms of business get signed, and how many terms of business then invoice, and the correlation between those are really vital. Because if you're just targeting people on client meetings, they can go and see someone who doesn't use agencies and it looks great, and they've seen five people, then they send terms of business, they get signed, no intention of using you, then they don't get invoiced. What a waste of time, what a waste of expenses of them going out, finance team sending terms, that's our process, finance chasing them on the terms and they're never to even invoice. That's just a waste of time. So the quality of the conversion of the client meetings. Really important. Interviews, simple. Jobs qualified, and we have a jobs so that it means that they're exclusive with interviews booked. So just some real key fundamentals. And if I take my eye off the ball with those figures for a week or two, I can quickly go, 'Oh crap, I can see a bad month coming now because we haven't got the job flow through.' And that's when you end up in recruitment getting into that funny phase where, 'Oh my God, we need to close Jan and we've got three more weeks and start dates aren't going to happen and you've missed the month for perm for example.' So that's really important for me. We are now tracking more than ever our clients. I did a post about it this morning actually. The best thing, we kind of knew our client grading, we get client reports, FA's been really good at that, but we now do our client grading by letter based on their spend. And then if we have clients sitting in, for example we've got a client in let's just say think of a big brand, Lori Hill, right, we know they could spend a million pound turnover with us. What are we going to do alongside marketing to make that happen? And we talk about it every month. And that's been really eye opening because when you get to a certain size, I see the client list, we invoice 200 clients a week, some come in some come out, where's the business? You do so much work to win these clients and then for them to leave you, you've got to track.

Yeah, they spoke and actually I don't know what this stands for but I remember them being in a metric called CAGR, C A G R, and it was like your accumulative growth year on year. Because from what I understand, not actually from the event but just from talking since then, is that there's a kind of a real key time in which you should sell, and it shouldn't be when you're doing the best you've ever done, it should be when you're on the journey to do your best, because obviously in any buyout there tends to be an earnout, see upside, you've got to be able to prove that there's the growth trajectory.

Following year was going to be as good as the year that's just gone. So there was this metric and I had no idea what it meant, and I clearly didn't remember that well because I still don't know, but I'm sure people can Google that quickly now. But that was really interesting. I remember them being quite impressed with that growth that we were able to show. Oh God, if I say that's fine, I'm going to say I do remember there being like about retention of staff being quite important. And actually weirdly, not too many levers but not too many stayers. You need a good mix. You need longevity but you also need a level of churn in a business. How can you grow if you've not got new people or new ideas coming in?

I think you've got to go with your gut. I know that sounds really... We can talk through some red flags, but if you've got a founder and I've been there. There have been times where my mom will unannounced have someone sitting at the desk—she's going to laugh when she hears this—like, 'Why have you not hit your target this month?' or 'Why...' And managing up is so important. Whoever that is, you have to have the—I was going to say balls, but I'm going to say—you have to have the guts to be able to say, 'Step back, leave me alone, you trust me, I've got this.' And if you're not having those conversations, that's on you. As a future leader of a business, not many people do that. If you're doing that and you're still not getting the freedom or the autonomy, then you need to run that business for a potential future MBO. I would say that there are some really big red flags. One of my biggest motivators aside from money is freedom. I need to be able to know that I can operate within my framework as best as I can without someone breathing down my neck. That doesn't suit my leadership style. And if you're the same, listening to this and thinking about moving into or having a conversation about an MBO, and you just can't get that founder off your back, and you're reporting things that you think are minutiae that isn't going to move the business forward, then I think you've got to have a really frank, upfront conversation. And if it still doesn't improve, then I think you have to really reflect and say, 'Is this person ever going to be able to let go?' Because if they can't during the process, they're not going to be able to let go when it comes to a sale.

You've got to be able to evidence that you have or can lead that business. But actually, sometimes it can be disruption. That level of involvement is not always helpful. I'm a firm believer in just avoiding distractions in a business to get forward. Whatever those distractions are, they can be tiny things, just avoid them. And sometimes a founder breathing down someone who's running a business's neck is a distraction. You're wasting time not moving the business forward. So I think you've just got to be really firm and say, 'Hey, this isn't working. If you are serious about me stepping into this role one day, you're going to have to give me some space.' Because I guess looking at it from a different perspective, if that's your baby and you've been running it every day for your whole life and you're now told, 'Can you leave me alone?' Well, when do I next hear from you? When do I next know how things are going? So just set up some framework that you both feel comfortable with. Say, 'Once every other week, I'll give you a report. You can come into the office for an hour and I'll tell you what's happening. You can ask me what you want.' Be really transparent and give them some peace of mind that they're still going to get all the intel, but it's just going to be a bit more structured and a bit more on your terms, to leave you to do the things that you need to do throughout the rest of your time. Coming from a founder's perspective, I do get it as well, because you want to know what's happening, you want to know that you're going to get paid and the business is growing and that person is trusted. So I think it's just how you manage that. And if it doesn't stop, you have to question, 'Is this ever going to happen?' I know so many people that say they want an MBO to happen, and I'm like, 'Okay, have you told them that? And how much do they actually want to sell the business for? 10 million? 20 million? How much is it worth now?' Good luck. It's never going to happen, or it is but you've got 10 years before that. So I think it's just understanding the expectations of that person.

And you know what's also really funny? The moment you're willing to walk away will be the time that you'll get your opportunity. Because if the business won't run without you, go and explore other opportunities. Why not? You don't owe anyone anything. We're loyal—I'm incredibly loyal to people that have worked for me for a really long time—but I'm on a mission, and my mission is going there whether these people decide to join me or not. If you're on your own personal mission, don't feel in debt to someone because they've given you a great career or journey. Thank them, keep in contact, and be prepared to move on if and when that happens. And if you go to your founder or boss and say, 'Hey, look, I've been trying for 12 months, I've tried these things, and we both know it's not working. I'm not sure this is going in the direction I'm going to move,' that might be a pivotal point as well. I'm not saying go out and threaten your boss, because I think there's two different things, but I think sometimes if you've tried and you've got evidence and you don't act really immature like I used to and throw your toys out the pram, it can work in your favor. And what have you got to lose? If you then do leave and you go into another business that you get that opportunity, that could be great.

I don't know. I think it's hard. When you were saying that and it sounded so great and lovely, I was thinking, imagine just waving goodbye, driving away over the hill. I think I'd always still have a tie and think, 'Well, it's still my responsibility to make sure they're doing okay.' So emotionally, you need to be able to decide whether you can attach and detach from that or not. Not handing over, but giving it to people that they love and trust and essentially still have relationships with, so they can still get an insight into whether the business is doing well or not doing well and can still dip their toe in. But then when you sell to someone external, it's a much more cut-off process. I think it just depends on where you are in your journey.

So in our deal, the NED first of all—we've had our NED, John O'Sullivan, for eight years, okay, so way before the MBO happened. And actually, that was a really pivotal moment for my career because he made me have to mature. I was... there was someone in the room that I had to be accountable for my behavior. It makes me sound like I was terrible—I wasn't, at times I was—but it made us level up because we had someone external looking at us. We had to make decisions that all of a sudden we had to be accountable to the next board meeting. He would ask us, 'Well, how did you get on with this objective or that?' And all of a sudden, you can't say, 'Oh, you know, I was busy the last three months, I did this instead.' It really gave us a sense of direction. I would say it's a relatively inexpensive, really valuable chess piece in your game of scaling a business. I cannot stress that enough. And the more you can afford and go and get counsel and mentors, the more you should. For example, I've just done our last year-end board a couple of weeks ago, and we actually had one of our client's MDs as a guest adviser on our board. Honestly, it was absolutely invaluable. The amount of strategy that's come into that for the next year, and they're not even in the recruitment space. This person has grown and sold a business outside of our space. The more input you have from mentors, the more knowledge you're going to get, and you can pick and choose what you want to do. So that's that. In terms of the deal, I owned 100% from day one, and then the payment was deferred in loan notes. What that means is that I essentially paid for the business—it's a non-transactional but kind of on paper it happened. The amount went over, she then lent me back a certain amount, and now I own 100% but I loan her the money back. She's loaned me the money that I owe her. It's like a loan note in the company. The valuation came from a combination of where she felt the business was and what she felt she had earned throughout her 20-odd years of career, and the external advisers we had—lawyers, solicitors, auditors—we had so many people involved that came up with a fair valuation, and then it has to be signed off by HMRC as well. I actually just thought what would happen was we'd just agree a figure and it'd be a bit of paper and it'd be like, 'Hey, look, that's great, well done.' It was not. I remember the actual night that the business went through. We tried to get it done before a new budget was coming out because we were frightened that the budget would change the tax of capital gains tax. It was about 11:00 at night—I go to bed at half 8 or 9, I am an early bed person—and I was up reading in Reading with my laptop from our lawyer, the papers. He signed this document, signed that document, and then I messaged him—a guy called Chris—and I said, 'Chris, I'm absolutely [expletive], can I go to bed now?' And he was like, 'I think you've signed. I'll let you know when it all goes through.' I woke up in the morning and at about half 12 at night I got a message from him saying, 'Congratulations, you own the business.' That was it. I know that was right. That happens on Wednesdays. I haven't been in here when that's happened. That is the biggest celebration I've had of owning the business. I was asleep when it happened. I actually thought that maybe you'd get some sort of confetti or celebration. It just is such an anticlimax, but it kind of was.

No. So you didn't take on any debt to make these payments? No, so that's what I mean. You're paying it through how well the company does? Actually, the payments aren't linked to how well the company does. I would say that if I was to do it again, I'd make that part of the deal upon reflection. I didn't realize that off the back of a really good time after COVID, the business was really performing well, but it's not performed as well this year, yet the payments are still the same. So you're saying you would have given them X amount based on their performance? That makes sense. If I had to make that payment no matter what, right? But the one good thing about this, and this is actually in my favor, her being my mom, is that she's a friendly lender. I don't think she would want the business to go under for her to have her payment. But if it was external, if it was a bank and I borrowed the money and then had to pay it back to a bank, they don't care, they just want their money. So I think that's one respect where an MBO is really good because the founders still have a care about the business, they still want the business to succeed. But equally, I have to be conscious of the decisions that I'm making within the company. I can't invest too heavily in the business that then means that I can't pay her, because that's not fair. So there's just this constant balance. We do investor meetings every three months where we report to her and we tell her the decisions that we're going to make over the next three months, and she'll say, 'I think that's great,' or she'll say, 'Oh, not sure about that one.' For example, we're just doing a new CRM that's costing a lot of money, that goes live on the 20th of Jan, but it's hopefully next year going to make us more return because it's an investment, it's an asset. So it's more technical than I thought it would be. Going back to my kind of natural style of just being quite fearless, I was like, 'We'll make the payment every year, don't worry about it, sign the papers off, go to sleep, done.' I would be more thorough with that again.

Five years. So it'll be my third year payment in January. So let's go into looking... I know we went into detail there, but I think that's where a lot of the things that people can learn from from your journey.

Go on, I can see you trying to work your words.

Look, what we do isn't seen as sexy. We're not like these high-tech recruitment businesses that supply these cool brands like Google or whatever. It's not a sexy business, but I really love it. Because who we operate with, whether it's a large global business—and we have some massive companies in our books as our clients—or some SMEs, we partner with companies that really care about their workforce. And I love that. Just to give some context, a large proportion of our demographic of temporary workers are warehouse pickers and packers, lower minimum wage people. I feel like this is a group of people that are continuously overlooked. The reason why you're delivering on Amazon and you've got your package sitting in your door is because these pickers and packers are doing it on time. Without them, every product has a warehouse that has these people within it. I really love it because I think that there's real opportunity in being undervalued. That sounds really weird, but where our competition and our USP lies is that there are these big agencies that just see it as, 'I'm just going to supply 100 warehouse staff, it doesn't matter, bums on seats, let's get it done, this is a contract worth X amount.' Where we see it is, you don't need 100 people, you need 70 better people that you care for, that turn up to work, that have less sickness and absenteeism. We drive our whole delivery on just treating these people well, because actually they're not treated particularly well a lot of the time. In terms of what's coming up, you're right, National Living Wage increase, massive cost. The decrease in the threshold for NI and the increase of the percent of NI is going to mean that these people are costing more money. So I look at next year and go, that's going to be a problem for us. Businesses aren't going to be able to afford the same number of people. So how are they going to do it? It goes back to getting better people that they train well that do a job. Instead of... I'll make it really tangible. You've got someone who... and I tend to go to a man in a pick and pack, but you've got Laura who works in your warehouse and she can pick 30 parcels for you. Well, what happens if you paid Laura 50p extra an hour, trained her better, and she can pick 50? All of a sudden, you don't need 1.8 people, you need one person doing a better job. So it's about how those conversations are held with our clients around not just how many temps you need, which is just transactional, it's how many parcels you need out the door and then how many fewer people can you need that are of good quality. So that's kind of our big unsexy part of the business that I just love. And then we also have our perm division which only makes up 20%, but it's around a million pounds GP for us, 800 grand this year. We do a variety—engineering, commercial, and industrial perm placements.

It is, but some of our on-site clients we do some of their perm RPO piece for them as well. The one bit we don't touch is tech. We just don't know what we're doing with it, so we don't touch it. I think that there's all these really cool brands that do this cool recruitment that I don't understand. I don't understand tech recruitment in the slightest. I know the fees are great and it looks nice and sexy, but actually the impact that you can have on a client by getting this piece right is profound. Literally profound. The financial impact, the culture impact, the service. If you've got 100 pickers and packers and they do a good job and they pick the right stock to go in the box, that's increasing your customer service. So it is on the outside it looks really unsexy, but I love it. There's so much money to be made in unsexy industries.

Ultimately, people are going to follow money, so you just have to be okay with that. But then that's your job to partner with a client to make sure that they're offering a fair and benchmarked fair pay. And not just that. I'll give a case study. One of our biggest clients, they do so much. They do well-being mornings for their temporary workforce where they'll talk them through how to let someone know if you're not happy, how to let someone know if you're feeling unwell. Actually, genuinely, people just want to be cared for. That doesn't have to cost a lot of money. If they feel they've got someone they can pick up the phone to and say, 'Look, I'm dropping my kid off to school, I'm going to be 20 minutes late,' and they don't go, 'Okay, you're sacked, just get someone else in,' it's no problem. 'No worries, we'll see if we can get you a bit of overtime to make up your hours.' That goes a mile. So I think it's not about one big mad strategy of how you treat your people. We try and get sold all the time these well-being platforms where people can get gym memberships, and that might work, but people just want to feel like they're cared for. That is one of our key selling points: we show up every day for our temps. There's an example actually. I'm working with the REC. We placed a candidate this year and he was homeless. He registered with us and he registered with many agencies. This one lady that works with me called Bez—she won't mind me telling this story, I might get her in trouble actually—she registered him and she said he was just a lovely guy, just needed a chance. She put him to work and the client said he's doing okay but clearly homeless, few personal hygiene issues. This is the dirty world we live in. She stole clothes from her husband—who I still don't know if he knows—and gave them to him. He made a permanent role out of it. He's now employed full-time by the client. That's huge. There are also some other really bad stories I could tell you about people that don't do stuff, but that happens all over the place. I just really enjoy seeing people succeed in a really undervalued world.

We have what's called Candidate Relationship Resources, CRR. They will look after all of the new candidates and the existing candidates and just build that relationship. They do a fab job. I've not had an experience of any other world than where I'm at, but I feel like they're really grateful candidates when they get treated like humans rather than just, 'Hey, can you be in work in half an hour? Oh, you can't? Next person.' I think that's the massive gap in our market. But then equally, there's a lot of clients that don't want that level of service. We've pitched for business before that want to have 100 people on Monday, don't care who they are, they just want to pick the boxes and then they're there for a week and they go. That's fine, and that is a need of a client, but that's not the kind of clients that we want to work with because that doesn't sit well with our values on how we treat our clients or our candidates. You can't impact a client positively if you're just being measured on numbers. That's not what we're about.

And also, it's really difficult because if you're ever experiencing a business where you need more business, it's easy then to go, 'Okay, we'll take it on below the margin than what we're happy with,' because we know we need the business. And then you end up being in a race to the bottom, and it's very difficult to get out of that cycle. This year, I think that we've probably suffered as a business because of that financially, but I'm brave enough and hopeful enough that that will pay off next year in the long term. But it's nervy. There are times where I've had our sales director say, 'Laura, I mean, she must hate me sometimes. I've got this client, they want to sign terms, these are the rates,' and I look at it and go, 'You know, we can't agree those rates.' And she goes, 'Oh, I've got this deal so close to going live.' I'm like, 'Absolutely not.' There are times where I just think, 'Oh my God, that must be so annoying.' But I think that if you say you are something, you have to live and breathe that even when times get tough. And that is hard. I found that hard this year.

Absolutely. It is difficult. There have been times this year where I've gone, 'Oh my God, it would be great to have an extra 50 temps out, we could win that account.' But then it's not just that. If I then have to employ someone to manage an account within a client that I wouldn't want to work for, I've then got to employ someone that's got to work for me in an account that we don't want to work for. So the turnover internally is then going to become a problem, because they're going to be calling on the phone at 4:00 AM. There's so many things that it affects. But it is really difficult. In our space, the margins can be tiny. We can go into a pitch and just go, 'Whoever's quoted X, Y, Z agency has quoted that rate, they're breaking even. How are they going to deliver a service?' But when there's all the cost increases we've had this year, clients just go, 'I just want the best price.' That must be hard.

We do the studies, everything. The thing that I find interesting having this conversation, and I appreciate being really honest about it, is there's a lot of crossover here. Whenever I sit down with people who are in the opposite world to you, I'd be interested to hear actually, honestly, it's wild because what I still hear time and time again when I sit down with people whose average deal size might be 5x what yours is, is when they boil it down, how can you be different? What makes up your value proposition? All these things, and it only comes down to doing the great things well consistently. Service, all the stuff that you're talking about that you're trying to create, advise on, deliver, be truthful about in your world, is the same for people in the opposite world. So I think there's a lot to be said about that because it's easy for us to sit here reflect on your business and say you care about your temp workers, you're doing this, you're doing that. The hard work isn't actually delivering that. And I can imagine even more so, again maybe it's not fair for me to even imagine, but as you grow your business, there's more people that could cut corners. There's more people you're more susceptible to going, 'I'd be all right, it'd be fine.' But that's what you've got to protect for OA to be still profitable next year, doing well.

It comes down to delivering service, being truthful, doing what you say you will. Because so many people look at the potential pound signs and they cut corners. It's easy to, and I get it, I really do get it because I've been tempted myself this year. But I think you've got to trust the people that are leading it as well. The people in my business I trust. When it comes down to it, when it really boils down to signing some paperwork with a new client on these terms, I don't think there's anyone in the company that would sign something that I wouldn't sign. We all talk about it and we all sometimes have that, 'Oh, imagine if we got that account, it'd be 100 temps at this many,' and we go, 'That would be nice.' Then we go, 'It wouldn't. We just imagine something that isn't real. It doesn't exist. Let's stop pretending that number's going to sit on our balance sheet and it's not going to be hard work. It wouldn't be worth the money.' So I think you've got to just make sure that everyone buys in. Also, you've got to be open to be wrong. If we pitched for a deal and we thought actually this is a great client and it would win us loads more business and they'd pay on time and we could do great stuff with them, the margin isn't quite what we want, should we consider it? There is gray sometimes, and you have to be okay with that as well. So you just got to weigh up your options. But I know what we don't want to be known for, and that's poor service. And I know we can't deliver a good service if our margins are so low because how can you do that as a business? So it's a no-brainer.

One of our main focuses is GP per head. Upskilling the people that we have. We've spent a lot of money this year on training and L&D, and we'll do the same next year. We've recruited five new people in the last few months, which we've got to make sure that they're doing what they should be next year. That's our responsibility to get them there. Marketing is huge. I've just doubled our spend for marketing next year. That's brave considering we should be cutting costs going into next year, but I have a belief that with the right marketing team and vision—it's taken me a long time to learn this, you're a marketing guy so you could maybe help me after this podcast—I just want us to get out there a bit more, our brand to be better known, and us to build communities. I think there's so much value in what we do that other businesses can learn from, whether they work with us or not, that we could be sharing. So that's one of my main focuses next year: building those communities within our area of service.

It is, but I'm managing the marketing, so God help them. I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm trying.

Hopefully. And you know, we haven't even... I know we wanted to be a bit focused in this conversation, but we haven't even really spoken about along this journey, you growing, building a family. You have four children. I mean, we haven't really spoken about that. So I just really respect that even though maybe like you said you would have back in the day been a bit rogue, you fully deserve to be in the position you're in. In terms of what you're learning now and everything that you've been through, I just think it's super cool. And I do think this is the thing that makes our industry really cool as well. The amount that you've been exposed to, learn, the people that you've impacted, I think it's really cool. So thanks so much for joining me.

Oh, it is a pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for having me.