Recruitment is such a hot topic at the moment, and I know everyone is finding it challenging. In fact, I had my group coaching call today, and we were talking about some of the biggest challenges that each of the members have, and recruitment came up time and time again. So this podcast episode is really timely, and I'm excited to be talking with Ugis Balmaks today. He runs a recruitment company that helps agencies hire great staff. And he has some really interesting insights to share, including thinking about your recruitment process in exactly the same way that you would think about a marketing funnel.

And he also shared some really good tips on how to interview people. And we apply my favourite expression, slowing down to speed up to make sure that you are really thorough in the recruitment process of that, when you hire someone you know you're giving yourself and then the best chance to be successful. So, another action packed episode and let's head over and have a chat with Ugis. Accelerate your agency's profitable growth with tools, tips, and value added interviews with your host agency owner and coach Rob DaCosta.

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OK, on with today's show. Hey, everybody and welcome to today's episode of The Agency Accelerator Podcast. I am really excited to have with me today, Ugis Balmaks from Recruiter Mill. And today, we're talking everything to do with recruiting stuff, which is such a big frequent topic that I am having with my clients at the moment. So, I'm really excited to have you just with me today. Now, normally, I would give a bit of background information, but I would rather you just did that himself because he can share with you some of the stories, both the good and the bad of what he did that led him to create Recruiter Mill. So, welcome to the podcast, and yeah, we hand it over to you. Thank you so much Rob. It's an absolute pleasure to be on. Yes. I wanted to tell a little bit more about myself and what led me to even start working in recruitment. So I actually used to run my own business. That was not an agency that was an information product business. And, of course, I had to hire for that business.

And yeah, the first person I hired was about six years ago, and that was completely atrocious. I'll be honest with you. And yeah, we can even go into some of the details of what happened. So it was a developer that I hired. I didn't know. I didn't know much about development at the time, but what happened, what I didn't realise is that everything he touched basically broke. So, whenever there was something that was working after he worked on it, it didn't. And so after not a very long time, we realised, okay, our passion is not going to get any longer.

But on his last day, what he managed to do was introduce a backdoor into our system. So for a few months, we noticed that our sales, they're kind of dipping, but we couldn't put our finger on it. And finally, we got some weird customer support. I think it's where people are saying, ‘Hey, I bought a course from you. Where's the content? What's going on?’ And so, what happened was that the developer who managed to break everything else actually successfully worked on the back door of our development system.

And he was following some of the cells towards his own account. Of course, finally we figured out with some help from some good friends. But yeah, that's kind of was a huge wake up call to what can happen if when hiring is done poorly, which it was at that time. And it led me to kind of start and explore how I could hire better.  But since then, you know, it wasn't always that awful. And I actually managed to hire quite well afterwards. And, sorry.

So it wasn't always this awful and I managed to hire quite well afterwards, and my business grew quite large to high seven figure mark revenue. So I was quite happy about that. And when I sold my business, I was looking at the next thing I could be doing. And I just kept seeing, a lot of my friends were asking for advice specifically in recruitment and one of those friends, like he kept coming back for it for advice. And at one point I even did a hiring interview for him just to show how it's done properly and after the interview.

He's like, ‘This is excellent.’ I wish you could just do it for me. And that's one kind of the light bulb went off that I actually could be doing this for him and for other people. And funnily enough, now we're hiring the six person for that friend of mine, and I was only six months ago. So yeah, that's kind of how I got started in recruitment. Yeah, it's funny is that we so often in life learn our lessons the hard way, and they are the best lessons that we learn.

And you know, one of these I'm always trying to do on this podcast is be really honest and share their bad as well as the good. So that's that horror story of the developer that you're talking about, or well, I hope that other people haven't had that issue of them finding a backdoor into your software. I'm sure a lot of people will recognise that. You know, hiring is such an inexact science that someone show up really well at the interview, but then they fail to deliver spectacularly once they start working.

So, let's kick off with a big topic. First of all, one that I muscle the time, which is talk about the pros and cons of hiring an in-house person versus hiring a remote worker, especially in this very changing world that we currently live in, where actually those lines are getting a bit lower blood because in-house workers, for the last year I've had to be remote workers, but what would you say the advantage of me, hiring someone that's gonna be a full time employees in my office versus hiring someone that might be somewhere else across the world?

Absolutely. So how I look at this is I tried to keep the end in mind and on my personal end, and what I'm going for is that I'd like to have a business that's an asset that's generating income for me, but also that's worth something. And if I treated as something where I hired help here and here or there on these people can be really good. But it all depends on me at the end of the day. To me, that's not a business. To me, a business is something that can run on its own.

If need be, I can step back for at least for a while, and hopefully in the long term, for a longer time. And because of this, for me it was never really a question because I know I want a business for myself, to build a business. I want to build a real team with people who can run it by themselves eventually. Yeah, yeah, and I completely concur with that always, I believe, although I know this isn't a hard, fast rule. But if you try to build your agency solely using freelancers, then it's like building houses on quicksand.

And, another good point that you've made is that you're not really building much equity into your business if you're just hiring freelancers. And you know I'm all about building the self-running agency, and you can't build a self running agency if you are completely intrinsically stuck in the agency as well. During, while recording this as well in the UK anyways, we started to come out of the pandemic, and it's been an interesting time for recruitment, and I thought, maybe this will still happen, but I thought that it would become easier for agencies to find good people.

But in the UK, for sure, it's not true, always still really difficult for people to recruit. So what's your take on that at the moment? Yeah, in my experience, it actually has been a good time for hiring, and I think that the theory is kind of clear to anyone who thought about it is that there are many people who lost their jobs, many talented people. So now they're open to the job market. And yeah, for this, for the same number of jobs there, there are a few more people applying for them, so you should be getting better candidates.

And generally, to be honest, that's what I'm seeing. It's hard to comment between UK and the global market, ‘cause my clients they usually work for the English speaking market, but the candidates are coming from all over the globe. But, yeah, I can think of a person that used to be, being in airline. And now, of course, that's no longer a viable option for him but a super talented person, and we were able to tow him for one of the clients. They also run an agency or a friend of mine runs a photography information business.

And so he hired a person that used to be in charge of photography for cruise ships. So he was running a team of 80 people, I think so. Somewhere on that scale and his team is not that big. It's maybe around 20 people. So he got someone again, really, really experience, really talented, just because their industry no longer offers viable options for them. So, for in my experience, it has been good in recruitment. You know, I think maybe in the UK it's because we have I pretty robust furlough scheme.

So a lot of people are still being paid by the government to not work. And it will be interesting in September 2021 when that ends, whether we will then suddenly find it a lot easier. But I have certainly been having conversations, my clients who finding it, challenging to recruit. And I had, you know, conversations morning where clients tried to find a design director, and it's just really difficult moment. But I said, I think here people are just staying put where they are and keeping their heads down while they're on furlough.

But when that ends well, you should see what the fallout, what the fallout is. So just talk it through like the recruitment presses. Can you share some, if you were advising someone on hiring someone, can you share with them some of the do's and don'ts that they should be focusing on when they're recruiting. Absolutely, and there's so many tactics that I want to share today, and I think we'll get to the best ones. But I think it's worth starting with kind of the mindsets and how you should look at hiring in the first place.

So I've kind of going through you through three stages of having a mindset about hiring. So the first one was gonna I didn't know what what I was doing and and you heard a horse or your earlier, and that's that's what it led to. And there were other mistakes that where maybe not spectacular but still quite bad. And that's kind of not knowing what to do. And usually you end up copying someone else, you posted general job ad,  and yeah, on my first interviews, I had no idea what to say.

The interviews didn't seem productive. I didn't feel like I was learning about the candidates, and that's kind of one approach. Of course, you don't want to be in that approach. The other kind of way to approach hiring is what I call the headhunting model, where your rider approaching people in LinkedIn. But even more commonly, you ask every single friend of yours. Are they interested, you probably have a few people that you spotted over the years that you think.  Yes, I would like to work with them somehow, someday.

Then you ask, your employees used to do the same thing, and I've messaged or kind of scroll through my friends list on Facebook at least six times when I was in this stage, kind of hoping to find something, someone that I haven't thought of previously. And that's not a bad approach. Honestly, many of my first best hires where people that someone else recommended or that I knew from contacts. But it is a limited approach because I'm at least not the kind of person that goes out and networks and meets a lot of new people.

And the people I meet usually own their own businesses, and they're already looking for someone, so they're not really helpful in these terms. So the last approach and the one I've kind of evolved to is treating hiring as a marketing funnel. Basically, So, yeah, making sure that you know who you want to approach, making sure that you know where to approach them, how to approach them, help to filter them later on the process and that's brought me by far the best results, because then it's kind of. Yeah, it's almost like any other marking funnel where you see the numbers and when something's not working, you can see exactly where it's not working, and then you go in and I can fix it.

And that's been by far the biggest breakthrough for myself and then everything else around it is tactics, kind of figuring out where to post, what kind of job ad to write, and so forth. Then, yeah, I'm happy to show that. But this one mindset, which was the biggest one for me. Yeah, I guess it's interesting as well, because you also have to like a lot of my clients are agencies with sort of 5 to 20 staff,and they might be trying to hire their next big person, but they need to have a positive mindset about their agency that this person should be honoured to come and work at the agency and not,  ‘Oh my God, I will be so pleased if they chose to come and work with me’ because I think it makes recruitment much harder. So there's that mindset of peace. I'm just interested in the whole marketing funnel analogies. That's really interesting. Can you just got it, iIf you could break that down a bit and look at some of the component parts of that funnel from a recruitment.

Absolutely, and over the years, kind of. It's not even necessarily working with my client's. Initially, I started sharing with other businesses ‘cause it was kind of a pain point for us, kind of a painful for them, And everyone's trying to figure it out, and kind of learn about it, and we learn to get her in. What I see now years later for many of them who also implemented a similar approach successfully, is that they're always kind of the same steps. So the first step is knowing who you want to hire, and that's not as simple as it may sound.

So, what you do there is kind of list all the attributes and all the things that you were looking for in a person away usually break it down is what I'm looking for in anyone. That's that I'm working with, so general attributes that make a solid team player and someone I like working with and then its role specific attributes that I'm looking at. Some people call this the top score card, and I think that's a fine name on. That's pretty much the first step realising, Okay, who am I really going for?

And a great way how to realise what are those attributes that you should be working with and how I first came up with him, was looking at every single person that I worked with in the past and kinda of realised. Okay, what's great about them, what's not so great or people that didn't work out, why didn't it work out. And by the end of this exercise, you come up with a few around 10, maybe attributes that's that you were looking in someone, and yet then you kind of know, Okay, now we know them beforehand, and when someone applies, I can kind of run them against the checklist and see whether they'll be a good fit or there's already that I see now this is a deal breaker for me.

I just can't work with this person and because you have this mindset that you mentioned previously. You don't have just anyone who can walk into a gum. This is hired by you. If you don't have that mindset, then you have the confidence to say no to someone who might even look good otherwise. And that's the first step that into the process. Yeah, that's really interesting. And then what's next after that? So next, you have to kind of learn about the brawl and that's kind of also works in the first step, but you have to know who you're going for, and then you have to really understand the person.

So I'd say you're hiring a link builder, which is a quite popular position to hire for it could be anything else really that you're hiring, could be a video editor, could be in main marketer. And one thing that I often like to Google is what's awful about being a link there, what's awful about being a videographer, or customer support person, and I kind of read some forums, spread it, Quora of whatever it is, and I understand what did this that they don't like about the job and I compared to my job and see oh, can I offer something that people usually don't don't receive in these roles and kind of try to approach him from an angle.

Yeah, I'm providing something special between these hundreds of job ads they could be choosing between. They should go with me because I have something no one else has, and that's that's the second step. Another thing to do here is to go on actual job boards. So first of all, you need to find them and see where you could find a person that you're looking for. See if they're more ads like the one for your position. Because if there aren't any of unfolding, builders are going, though they're no videographers air going there.

No, If no one's advertising there, the videographers won't be going there. So then you know it's not worth boasting there as well. But if there are, if the job ads are there, then you can look what everyone else is saying. And usually they're not that good. So once again, you have the opportunity to learn from others’ mistakes and see what this that they're not, including kind of really try to put them into shoes of a person that would want to work with you, or that you would want to hire on kind of make them., yeah, make them want to work with you. You know much that Zagat So that's some really great tips, their ecstasy doing that research. So now we're at the interview stage and we're sitting down with these people. What's your tips about separating the superstars from the kind of time wasters, useless people, That's all. Yes, so my number one tip is actually to get rid of the people who would waste your time in the first place. So before I go to interviews there, a couple more steps. A number one is the application and so what I see people usually doing is some of your cover letters, send me your resume and we'll get back to you. And to me, that's kind of an awful approach, to be honest, because whenever someone's writing a cover letter, there's no set standard. There's nothing, there’s no guidelines. So whatever they write in there, it's kind of hard to judge. Of course, if it's completely awful, it's full of mistakes or the sentences, that makes sense. Of course. Then you can disregard them. But if you want to hire someone good, which, of course you should want. Then it's much harder to learn anything from a cover letter.

So what I do in my application forms is ask a few specific questions and I even give instructions to how they should fill out the form. I say ‘Show off. Don't be shy to do it. We want to work with the best people. So show us why. Why? You're one of them. Give us thorough answers. Give us complete answers. Don't skip fields.’ Yeah. Instructions like that. One word like those. And then from the application, you can see often you can see in seconds, OK, This person will not fit because they skipped questions or they're not giving me one sentence answers, and you'd be shocked how many people you can just discard by doing this. It's 80 to 90% of people don't make it to the next step. And so that's one step. And this is kind of how you filter everyone who was definitely not up for the job and of course, you can also look at their experience and see. OK, this looks like a very solid person, but they just don't have the experience that you're looking for. So the other thing that you do once people have passed application stage is you give them a test job on, and that is how I like to look at things here is that this is the best predictor of how well they do an actual job.

So if you give them something that they will actually have to do on the job, and they can do it well, chances are when they come on the first day and they have to do the same thing, though, they'll keep selling. Whereas if there's someone who can do the job or they can do kind of poorly Uh, yeah, probably not much is gonna change by the time they join your team. So I've also had this experience where I learned okay, I can be having these awful people that are making backdoors into my development system.

So let's really check for a fit and that they are a good person and check references and so forth, and that needs to be done. But you also need to check for their technical ability so that they're able to really do the job. And still to this day, most people, if they're able to do the job really well fit. Yeah, usually we can figure out. So yeah, that would be my number, number one. Have them do something. Show them their input.

Because from the interviews, people might appear really cool. Really nice, nice people. But if they can do the job, that doesn't help you. So you need someone who can get things done. And how do you assess cultural fit as well as competency? So I think in a small agency, having someone that's gonna be a team player and fit culturally is almost as important as their competency to actually do the link building or the graphic design or the website or whatever it is you're hiring and force her any thoughts on that cultural fit piece?

Yes. So that's the other important part. And there is a really helpful resource for that I recommend to anyone who's taking hiring seriously. I mentioned the business owners that I've talked to in the past, and the ones who follow this framework, they pretty much hiring is not a headache for them any more. And the book and aren't the best way to learn about this is called ‘Who: The A Method for Hiring’ , the author's last name I believe is Smart, and that's one resource that I can recommend.

They kind of go through the entire process, but especially this checking forfeit stage of the interview process really, really thoroughly, and they pretty much have a foolproof process that you need to follow. And so, I can talk a little bit more about the process just to give the listeners a better idea of what it's all about. So, what you do is in the interview stages you go through after you screened them. So you get on a quick call and ask a few questions and see that you have this.

This seems like a reasonable person to talk to, and usually they are. If they can complete the job, then you move on to a much longer interview, the kind of brand name for it called top grading on. And in that interview, what you do is go through every single job on their resume and you ask the same about 10 questions. So ask: How did you get this job? What did you have to do? What were your responsibilities? What were your successes? Mistakes? What did you enjoy most? Enjoy least? How is it working with your supervisor and what with a supervisor tell about you? And, why did you leave the job? I think those are pretty much all the questions that we always ask. And these injuries take about three hours. So in three hours, it's impossible to fake. So the real you is gonna show up. And I actually tell candidates that it's a good thing because we're trying to learn about each other. So we're not not trying to hide anything. And before both of us invest hundreds of hours into training and on boarding and leaving our jobs sometimes, that it's a good idea to spend these few hours in advance and kind of really, really get to know each other. So, yeah this process is so worth it, because in these three hours, you pretty much learn everything you can, at least in this amount of time of other person. And by the end of that call, you have a great feeling of what they'll be like. And what is great is that no one's perfect. So you also learn about what are the potential weaknesses, and you can already start thinking about him. Okay, can I work with this? How can I work with this? And usually they're awesome candidates.

They have one or two flaws, and because you know them in advance, you were kind of already working around them. And that's not only great for filtering candidates, but also learning about them, and kind of working with them effectively once you’ve hired them. So, yeah, I can only recommend this. Yeah, I really, really love that bond is interesting because I've done a few interviews with clients, and when you ask them those negative questions. Sometimes they get a bit flustered about it because, of course, they prepared in their head or the positive things to say.

But now I'm asking the negative things, and I always think if someone says, ‘Oh, I can't think of anything negative,’ then that's a big black mark against them. Because, of course, we can all think of something negative about where our skills are strong as other areas and we need to show a human being in the interview. So if we're not willing to review that, reveal that. And for me that would be a bit of a warning flag that perhaps they know the right handed it absolutely.

And that's why I have a little script for by introduction of every single in tribute that I do. And that's one of the things I say. That's no one's perfect. But we have enough experience to realise that we take these things into context and kind of take the good with about. But we do expect honesty. And if there's no honesty, that's that's a much bigger red flag then than anything about that ever happened. So yeah, if someone's not willing, open him up about things. There's usually a reason to be honest, and it's better to stay away from that.

So to the listeners, you just is really encouraging you to do the thing that I tell all my clothes all the time. My favourite expression, which is slow down to speed up, like take your time, go through these steps that we've just been talking about, be really thorough, don't feel that you can't take three hours to do an interview because you're only a three-man agency. Of course you can't, because you know you want to get that hire right, and you want to make sure that they will be able to do the job and they will also fit in.

So let me ask you one other big question that's always asked to me, and I know that you're gonna have a slightly biassed answer to this, but that. But I'm still interested to hear your view. Should I am looking to recruit, should I use an agency or should I do it myself? Yeah, I'll definitely have a biased atmosphere, but so I mean, I guess it depends on where everyone has had, but, um, yeah, it's such an important part of the business. That's, I've just seen so many changes by what happens before you.

You're hiring, right, and what happens after that. It's really, really important to get it right than, whether you use an agency, whether you read books, whether you learned from someone else. Just Yeah, it is something you have to get, right? So whatever way you get it right, make sure you do it. And, of course, as always, doing things on your own is the longest path. So if you have six years like I had tio kind of spend in getting hiring rights and for some reason it might be the right choice.

This, because they're building for really the long term, then absolutely go, go ahead and learn about things. If you're unsure and there's seven other fires that you need to put out, then I would encourage getting help. Yes, you're giving me the plight answer. But I'll give you. I'll give the arts. This is what I would tell my clients is to hire an agency because we, our clients to hire us because we're specialists and we should do the same thing when it comes to recruitment and fundamentally, you either have time or money and most agencies don't have tonnes of time.

There are already stretched in 20 directions. They think it's going to be much cheaper Tow, try and do some LinkedIn advertising or some advertising on one store or wherever, and then they get inundated with a million CVS that they need to work through. And most of them are rubbish and, you know, and suddenly then they're rushing through the interview, and then they make a higher and then it's a mistake. And then suddenly, as costume way more in time and probably money that it would have done if they'd have reached out to a good agency in the first place.

So my advice to all of my clients, its bite the bullet spend the money upfront with an agency like yours so that they get the right person, because that is worth a heck of a lot of money. Hiring the wrong person isn't just costly in terms of, you know, the money that they paid. That person is costly in terms of the impact on the business, the other team members and the clients. So my advice is hire an agency. On that note, how do we separate again?

Another unfair question to ask you, but how do we separate the good agency from the not so good agency? That's a great question, and I wish I had a good answer here because I'm also working with agencies, and that before that exact reason cause I want certain things that happen in my business. But I just don't know how. And I would rather spend my focus on the very, very, most important things one or two that I definitely need to get right before I start. Like trying to every single little thing but hiring an agency, I mean, so why I. Sorry.

So let me just interject because I'm misinterpreted. I mean, I've decided I want to refuse a recruitment company to hire someone like you. I'm talking to three different recruiters. How do I decide which is the good ones and which is the not so good ones? Uh, yeah, I see what you mean. So I kind of look at and anything else that's that you'd be looking at when hiring the agency. What's are there? What sort of risk are they taking on? When do they get paid and what are their incentive structure? And kind of go buy those things and more specifically in recruitment. So one thing that to look out for is how much and when do you pay? So, of course, every agency will want a little fee upfront because they're investing some work but the bulk of their kind of return or their income should be based on success, I believe, because you only get the benefit when you get the employees. So they all should also should only get the benefit when they get an employee.

And the other thing is how they approach hiring and what what is their lead time. And that's one of our brand promises is that will hire as strictly for you as we hired for ourselves and many times has happened where I talked a client out of hiring someone because I just see it won't be a fit. I've made this mistake before for myself, or I've seen other people making this mistake. You don't need to do it and they're appreciative. That's that. I'm telling them these things, but yeah.

Ah, it has to be kind of a thing that that they're willing to do, and I don't know how to cheque. Put out beforehand, maybe from references or abuse. But that's a really important thing, because it's the most natural thing in the world. If you're getting paid when you deliver someone, then you're what you're gonna want to deliver a soon as possible. And sometimes you're not checking for the quality of what you're delivering. So that's one thing when I'm setting up my business that I'm looking out for, I can forget this.

And I'm telling every single employee of mine as well that this is not something we can afford to do ‘cause yeah, we want to work with our clients for the long term, and we don't want to just make one hire, we want to make several hires of course.That's a very huge thing to look up. Just a last quick question, because this came up this morning with a client. So I said I'd ask you, I told them I was in fear in you today.

What should be the guarantees that is there a typical example of a guarantee that a recruiter will make like we will return if the person leaves within three months to get this much back? If they leave in six months because this client telling me that they had someone that cost a lot of money to hire. But they left after eight months frustrated with the recruitment company. And I was like, well, I'm not sure you can really blame the recruitment company after eight months that person's height left.

Maybe you need to look at your own management processes in that. God, I don't know what your view is on that. Yeah, so on that 18 months is a long time to expect kind of some sort of reimbursement for hire that state for that long. But one thing I would recommend for is you are looking out for is actually being involved in the hiring process. So you want the help and you want someone to kind of show you how things are done and do bulk of the work. Once the decision is made, you at least want to participate, and you want to review the candidates in detail.

You want to at least watch those long interviews that you're recruiters hopefully doing. And if you don't have a good feeling about the kind of guy you think something's off, then you're probably right in. No one else knows your business better than you do. So for that person, that's that. I see this question. I would ask, how involved were you actually in the decision making process? And if they were, unfortunately, that's on them. Yes, they have to be, I don't know. But I think one thing I said to him, what you just said, which is good to hear is that you can go through this process, but you also need to listen to your gut instinct. You can measure them against roles, responsibilities and job descriptions, and you can have application forms and tests. But your gut instinct is also going to give you a lot of safety and security. And I think we quite good at ignoring. I got sometimes. Absolutely, and one thing that I've also painfully learned over the years is that there's never been and that's like not actually about hiring, tt's about keeping people on the team. I never made a mistake firing someone on my team and I've made many mistakes by not firing people.

So whenever you were in that situation, you probably have to do it, you have to master the courage to do it and to bring it back to recruitment. If there's a candidate that's you really want to take home But in your gut, you feel No, it's not gonna work. You shouldn't take that person cause that never, never, ever works out. If there is someone who you feel great about, it may work out. May may not work out. Then you shouldn't trust you. We got in a positive sense.

But if your gut is telling, you know that, don't you listen? Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree with that. I think that's true in business, in all senses, isn't it? Okay, so I'm conscious of time. But let me ask you the question that I ask all of my guests on, which is, if you go back in time and give your younger self just starting out in business. One piece of advice, what would that be? Yes, so I was thinking about that then the answer I came up with is that I would want to trust my employees more. And that's something.

Actually, I'm still struggling with and kind of working my way through because it always feels like I'm the person that knows how the business should be run. I started. So yeah, I can, of course, help them Only helped him by being involved. But I'm just saying when I take a step back and reflect that it's not always true. And I also I'm conscious of the fact that I need to let my employees grow, need to put them in a position where they can actually grow the business for me.

Not necessarily. I'm always the person that's doing the growing. So that's something I wish I've started on earlier and now started them. I'm still working through it. So I think many people have had a similar problem, but I think that is the good fight to fight. So that's so that's what I'm trying to do. A great piece of advice, and I'm always, always surprised that I've almost never had the same response to this question in the with the guests I've had on the podcast known you know, must have had 40 guests.

Now, that's why I love asking that question. Such a good piece of advice you know entrepreneurs, a terrible letting go and relinquishing control. Yeah, if you want to build an agency that's less dependent on you and you want the flexibility and freedom, you have to be willing to relinquish control because you can't have one without the other they'd like mutually exclusive. So I guess on that note, hiring the best people you possibly can afford so that you can delegate down and relinquish as much control today as possible.

Listen, you just thank you so much for today. I always know I've had a good guest on the podcast when we go over time and there's so many more questions to ask. But we'll get you back at some point in the future. We can dig into some of these things in a little bit more detail. I know the listener, they're going to find this episode really useful, especially some of those kind of funnel steps that you outlined. And I will also put a link in the show notes to the book that you mentioned.

But if people want to get hold of you and find out more about Recruiter Mill, where is the best place for them to go? Yeah, absolutely so the best place is to go to recruitermill.com and so you can learn a little more about my kind of hiring philosophy and how I approach it and hopefully learn something from that. If you'd like to work together, the best thing to do is to book a call and my approach there is to have a 30 minute strategy call.

So in those 30 minutes, we kind of outline What are the things that need to be done? And if you have the resource, if you have the kind of willpower to go through that journey, I'm happy if you do, if you'd like to work to get it afterwards, that's of course. Also, an option yeah, going to our website recruitermill.com is that the best thing to do. Fantastic. Okay, so we'll put that into the show notes as well. And I just want to say a big thank you for your time on the podcast today.

Thank you so much. I hope you'll agree. That was a really action packed episode, and I hope you had a pen and paper and took some notes. If not, then head over to dacostacoaching.co.uk/recruitment and you can grab a summary of the key points that you just made today. And don't forget to check out the show notes for the book that he mentioned, and obviously links to his business as well. Other than that, I will see you next week for the next episode.

By the way, make sure you've hit subscribe on, please consider leaving a review on Apple podcast. Otherwise, have a great weekend and I will see you next week.