Welcome From Sunny Mallorca

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Retained Search, the podcast, where we lift the lid on what it's really like to work retained, discuss the stories we've gathered along the way, and give you all a peek behind the scenes of our amazing community and how they're getting ahead. Hey George.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Hello, how are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:24

You're looking very sunny.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Well, I've got about 12 hours of it left.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Oh, I'm glad you've been able to get out in the sun though.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

No, but I've had a nice, I've had almost two weeks of it, which is lovely at this time of year, and the weather's been great. And I can now pass the Mallorca baton onto you.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

I know, I know. I've literally got here last night. We got here in the dark and I woke up this morning to absolute paradise. It's beautiful. Just managed to get a few, um, a quick lunch and a really quick dip in the pool, and here we are, can't complain, can't complain. It's very nice indeed. That's the beauty of remote working, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 1:01

It is, absolutely. Absolutely.

Why Trusted Partner Talk Is Back

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Um, we did have a conversation this morning though, and that's what I want to talk about today, because um one of the things that just has been going round and round in my head, and as you know, is waking me up in the middle of the night. Um, because I was talking about it earlier. I literally woke up at four in the morning and was thinking about it so much that I couldn't go back to sleep the other day. And for years and years and years and years, I mean, I'm going back to my Air Swift days here, and and even before, right? Probably maybe not Hudson, but definitely Air Swift. There are people over the years for me, and I know this is the same, or I'd like to hear your experience, that have banged on about becoming a trusted partner to clients and becoming an advisor and big being a consultant and not being a supplier. And in like every conversation I'm having at the moment with people that we work with, people that we don't work with, people that I know in the industry, it's just coming up all the time. And when we went to the Rec Expo and we were wandering around these stands, and it was like everywhere all of a sudden. And I think 20 years ago, people said it, and some people were acting in that way, but not many people really, it was more just about making money and didn't really care what that relationship was like or how it was forged, or and there are some firms that have really gone heavily in that direction and some that haven't individually and on a bigger scale. What has that been like for you? Like, do you remember people talking about this?

The Bow Tie Account Model

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Yeah, yeah. I mean, uh, like you, I'm yeah, I'm from a contingent world originally, and that's kind of where I learned or certainly my grounding and recruitment was in a contingent world, and the idea of being a trusted partner typically just meant volume. Like someone would class themselves as a trusted partner because, well, I filled eight roles with that client last year, so I'm a trusted partner. Yeah, or we've got a multi-hire, or yeah, or like we work with them for a long time, or we work with them pretty consistently, so I must be I must be a partner and they clearly trust me. But it's just it's just not the case.

Why Transactional Relationships Break Now

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Well, I think what um the thing that woke me up in the middle of the night was there's an image that Cranfield University used to show the differences between a transactional relationship, and in fact, I've got it up. So, those of you watching the um uh uh video of this and not and not just listening to the audio, and for those of you just listening to the audio, maybe we can save um the image in the folder. But this is the image, right? Um, and for those of you listening, it's basically two triangles, but they're inverted. So the points of the triangles together and the wide end of the triangles are apart, like a bow tie, basically. And the point where they meet is the interaction between the selling company and the buying company. And in this diagram, we've got a key account manager on the left-hand side and the key customer contacts on the right hand side. That might just be recruiter and line manager, same thing, right? It's the seller and the buyer. And then behind each of those people, you've got the other functions. You've got sales and marketing, purchasing, ops, finance, and the directors and the executives of the business. And that is, as Cranfield University puts it, and lots of other establishments, um, is a basic transactional relationship between a seller and a buyer company. And that is how I dealt with a lot of my clients when I was kind of growing up. And I know that a lot of recruiters do, even now, still do. Lots of people have that kind of relationship. And the um next stage to that, or the um the objective is to get to the stage where these triangles flip, and they're actually got the bases of the triangles together and the points on the outside, and that's where you get this integration of interdependency, uh, where you have the functions of the business all integrated and communicating with each other, and the one single point of contact sits in behind that rather than at the front end. And what that means in terms of what I've learned over the years is that rather than selling, for example, a single service to a business or providing CDs and hoping to make a hire, or making one placement, or even a few and having a single point of contact to do that, you've got the people in that firm that provide contract or uh short-term response manpower dealing with the people in that organization that need it. You've got the people that do the financing and the invoicing, talking to the finance and the invoicing side in that company. You've got the people managing succession planning and um future talent pipelining, talking to the people in the business that um that need that. And all those different services and different um integration uh activities are happening across the organization with a key account manager or a customer contact that is then overseeing some kind of agreement or way of working together. And that means also, as you see on this image, the directors, the the people that need the top-level information, like uh competitor intelligence or talent insights in that firm, or talking to the people in the recruitment firm that can provide that intelligence and that information. And this is where you get this. In my mind, it's like a zip, and that was what woke me up in the night. This rather than this tenuous kind of pop pop button that can just be broken so easily, you get this um interdependent, like dependent relationship on each other where uh it's so much harder to break because you need, they need you, you know, your clients need you. Um and the reason that it's so like it's so much of a thing for me right now is because at the moment a lot of firms with the economic climate and with the uncertainty in the world aren't necessarily hiring, and so they don't need recruiters right now or CVs, but all the other things they do need, and if you don't have those other things and you aren't integrated like that, then at the moment you're dispensable, and that's where this well, we've noticed a pattern, haven't we, in terms of who's doing well right now and who's not.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They the the ones that are performing at the moment typically have those relationships.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

And you said they like these people that that see relationships like that are very different and behave very differently and come across very differently. Tell me about that.

Curiosity As A Business Skill

SPEAKER_00 8:29

Well, yeah, the the example I used was um I'm as you know, I'm in Miork at the moment, and I've been um I've been playing paddle first thing every morning um locally, and there's a few business owners there that are very successful. And the example I use is one of them. Like you spend 15 minutes with the guy, you feel like you've been interviewed because he's constantly like probing, asking questions, interested, cares. Well, why'd you do it that way? And what about that? And have you thought about this? And tell me how that works, and it's that kind of inquisitive nature, but also probably probably learnt that over years as well. Like there's an element of him that that probably comes natural, but it's probably a learned behaviour to a point, too.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

Oh, yeah, without a doubt. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

I I think there's a capability thing there with consultants, but I also, if I look at a lot of recruitment businesses, I think there is a potential issue with the core structure of business development. Because actually, in so many contingent firms, it's so short-sighted and narrow-minded that each consultant is only really rewarded for, well, I only need to build a relationship with this hiring manager because that's all I can do and that's how I earn my money. I don't give a shit about the guy that needs contracted over there or the person that's recruiting for this over there, because that's not my market. And actually, if they were to understand the value of creating that zip or that true partnership and how that helps everybody, they'd be more willing. And then you can probably teach a lot of it from there.

Learning Consulting From The McKinsey Way

The Shift From Contingent To Retained

SPEAKER_01 10:06

Oh, yeah, totally. I mean, I'm reading a book at the moment, which is really interesting and making me think about it even more, call the McKinsey Way. And if whoever recommended it to me is listening to this, I would love to know who you are because somebody recommended it and I can't remember who, and I bought it. And I started reading it on the plane all the way over, and I've read half of it already. And this this is consultant management consulting at its finest, right? This is how they grow their management consultants from you know, they've their business grads, and then they've come through, you know, a couple of years in industry and they've done their uh MBA, and now they're in the field, and they teach them the formulas at every stage of the fact gathering, the questioning, the deep probing. Sometimes the problem isn't the problem, and there are methodologies and systems to it all, but it's it's all like getting to the heart of the problem and understanding the problem first. And what makes me realize why you know, one of the things that that I yeah, I realized as well was the retained work and the model that I ended up working to was a direct result of doing this. It was a direct result. And the a lot of people come to us because they say, Oh, we want to sell retainers, or we want to um, you know, we want recurring revenue, or um, I mean that those are the main things, isn't it? That's what they want. Teach me how to sell retainers. And what we what we teach them is solution sales. We teach them consulting, we teach them where to start with that from a business development perspective and how to find those opportunities. And the outcome of what we teach people is that they win retained projects, they win pieces of consulting, pieces of insight, mapping, pipelining, they go into the executive world. And I wanted to ask you, because uh you've most recently been, you've more recently than me been on this. Like what in that journey from uh contingent to retained has been what things have been like what things are most different? You know, if you take what you were doing as a contingent recruiter, your activities were there things like straight away or early on that you were like, Oh, this is different. I wouldn't normally do this. I'd normally do this, not like this, or yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

I mean, the first one is is is is that diagnostic?

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Like, Jesus Christ, and that's the first part of the BD process, really. So it like I remember it like slapped me in the face. And actually, sorry, I know I'm meant to be talking about my journey here, but I want to just kind of talk about one of my things we can. So uh there's a couple of guys, very successful, super talented. Um, they've been in recruitment for many, many years and have just kind of broke out and started their own firm. And the first thing they did was join us and do our program. And these are two individuals that are very well respected in their space and have built millions.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Yeah, very wealthy. I know exactly who you're talking about. Yeah, very successful. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

And like I think they said to both you and I, Lou, the first thing they took from the program is like, how on earth have we been even remotely? Yeah, the diagnostic piece of them have realized we've spent 15 years not even asking the customer what they need and why they really need it.

SPEAKER_02 13:49

Yeah, and how they've gone about it before and how it's gone for them.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

So I think I think I think that was that was the first thing. And the follow-on from that is designing a solution based on what the customer needs, rather than just constantly saying, basically, I don't give a shit what shape your hole is. I'm forcing a round peg into it.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

Yeah, yeah. I don't even really care what the pro what your exact problem is, how you've gone about it before, whether it works or whether it didn't work, this is what I'm gonna do. Yeah, and if you're like I'm gonna go and get you some CVs, yeah. Yeah, it's so funny, you know. And one of the pieces in it's so it's so true, it made me laugh so much. I think that, and there are so many, so many people that we work with that go, like, we know that we're gonna win with aim work as a result of this. We know we're gonna get deeper, you know, uh more recurring revenue. But this fundamentally has made us a better business. You know, learning the process of of operating in this way um has made us a better business because we now have an ability to be able to diagnose what the real problems are, to be able to create solutions that fit those problems and a framework and a system for doing that. And one of the things that stood out for me in the first couple of chapters of this book is, you know, the problem isn't sometimes the problem isn't actually the problem. You know, we're so fast as contingent recruiters to go, oh, you need that kind of person. Okay, great. You know, how have you got on? Well, it's really hard to find there aren't many candidates. Okay, great. So we'll take that problem as face value. When actually sometimes that isn't the problem, it's the hiring manager. Like, do you remember that piece of work we did? And the hiring manager that was going to interview the candidates was like, oh my god, he had like zero charisma. Brilliant, like high C, total high attention to details. An engineer wasn't he, but he had the personality of like yeah, I don't know. It wasn't brilliant. Lovely, lovely guy, but he wasn't gonna sell anybody anything. He's not uh, you know, it was not gonna get anybody inspired about um fire alarms or whatever it was the um the product was, I think it was, wasn't it? Fire systems, yeah. Um, and and just by making that change, we opened the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, he did.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Yeah, the shoes didn't match the person out there.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

Um and yeah, that that was exactly the same for me. I mean, those two things really stand out, the diagnostic, and then the uh the way in which you start to tailor and the these the solutions that open up um for you as a result. And I'm you know, for me, that that evolution of the suite of solutions now, you know, I see firms that haven't haven't done that. And that, you know, if that that um the one I was just reading an email uh from that are progressing into the next stage of our course earlier, I won't mention their name, they've done phenomenally well so far. They have one service that they were providing to their clients, and all these years there have been so many missed opportunities that they're perfectly capable of providing pieces of Intel, mapping, um, you know, competitor structure information and um uh gap management in terms of you know, while we're doing the search for the big high, they've only just started doing it. That I kind of can't believe that so many recruiters and recruitment businesses are so far behind with that.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

I'm not going too deep here. Go on, but from a recruiter perspective, I think there's an element of of self, there certainly was with me, but more self-respect. Right. In that back in the day when I was working contingently, I had very little self-respect. I I didn't truly believe I was adding value. I almost felt like I'm kind of just like throwing TVs and I might get lucky and then I can't believe that I charge them 15 or 20 grand or like shit, God, like it almost feels like I'm robbing them. Whereas when I with this course and and with your help, kind of realized that I could work in partnership and I could add real value, all of a sudden my self-belief grew. And I knew that I could provide a real service and I knew the value that I added. And actually, that meant I was much more comfortable slowing down into that diagnostic and asking the bigger questions because to justify it whereas before it was kind of like, I just want to try and get through this as quick as I can.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

Are you enjoying this so far? Don't miss a single episode. Hit the subscribe button right now so you can be part of the conversation that's shaping the future of recruitment. So we dive really deep into the strategies, the stories, and the truth about retained search. So if you want to hear more about it, or you know someone else that needs to hear this, then share it with them. Right, let's get back to the good stuff.

SPEAKER_00 19:00

Yeah, yeah. I almost don't want to be exposed.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Yeah, it takes um it's multidimensional, isn't it? It's one thing kind of knowing that these are the emotions that I need to go through, or these are the questions I need to ask, or this is the activity that I need to be performing. But to be able to do it, I think one of the reasons people do is they've got a bit of support network around them. Like for me, you know, as you know, it was it well, partly there was Graham Lewis at Air Swift, he was very good at this. Matt Howell, my old boss, was very good at it, and gave me the confidence to just sit there and slow down and absorb and ask another question and be interested in the answer to that question and then ask another question, and to help me with what questions to ask and where I was trying to get to with it, and to know that we could help with whatever the vast majority of whatever came out of those um conversations, and that there were solutions to be formed, and my confidence grew that way. You're right, I can't imagine trying to do that on my own. I don't, I don't think I ever would have. And it's difficult, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 20:11

Because of everything that we teach, I think, in terms of that partnership, the diagnostic is the most important piece of the sales process. And it's also the hardest bit to kind of teach because well, what do you say next? Well, I don't know. It depends on what they say, depends on the answer.

Mapping White Space Across Functions

SPEAKER_01 20:29

A lot of it is a mindset, isn't it? It's a mindset, it's confidence and and knowing the destination and the possible solutions and the possible ways in which and all of those kind of come you know together, don't they? Um I think the other, the other thing that I really learned over the years about becoming a trusted partner, and all those things are are true, very true, um, as well, is the confidence to then develop the account once you know, is like once you've got that first piece of the zip in, you it's then getting the other pieces in. And there's loads of challenges I came up against because so many times, especially in some of the big organizations I've worked, we'd have an account manager, there'd be somebody that's managing the account that wasn't me. Yeah, and that person was fighting to be the front, that single point of contact, and pushing everybody else behind and saying, no, no, everything's gonna be rooted through me, you know. And it was so fucking difficult to try and you know, turn that triangle around and integrate that business with ours when there's somebody, you know, physically almost in the way stopping, you know, that from happening. And that can be a real barrier, especially in like, you know, mid and big, big size companies. But it really um once we started to see the benefit of understanding, and Cranfield University is a great source of um of knowledge and information for account development. Development and forms a part of the session that, in fact, the session that I'd really like to run at our Manchester event, because we've been talking about that this morning, which I'm really excited about. Can't believe we're going back to Manchester. I'm so excited to go back to Manchester. I'm really happy about it.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

I'm there about four times a week. So it feels less like a going back to Manchester for me.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

I know, I feel like it would just be a real momentous occasion, really, for me, because that's for where it started. That's where I started in recruitment, like Spring Gardens, the Chancery.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

That's where I like I'm thinking about going back to Manchester. I'm thinking, do I play paddle early morning before the event or late evening after the event?

SPEAKER_01 22:39

No, you're coming out drinking with us after the event, Jod.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

And then I'll go paddle. Gives the other people a chance if I'm after.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Oh gosh. No, you're staying out till the end because you've got to make sure that I get home safely, you know. Um, yeah, is that is that then the confidence to map the white space in that account, then and the opportunity across all of the different functions, you know, reward that's the function I used to ignore completely. Head of compensation, head of reward, like the amount of work that we can do with them is like limitless. There's a long-term partnership and remote machine.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

When I say worries me, I say it all the time where these primarily contingent firms, the leadership, the ownership, they have this vision to move to this kind of partnership model. And so often the idea is we're going to develop one person in the team, or we're going to train one person how to do this. And and the problem is then you've got eight people targeting the same account, seven of them only care about themselves and bring CV to and then you've got this one person. You know, I I I faced this when I first went on this journey. Yeah, yeah, we both did, yeah. But one person viewing everything in a totally different way to everybody else, and it's got to be like it's a ground-up culture shift.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

Yeah, it is, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

So that everyone has to see the bigger picture, and that actually we all win together.

Why Culture Blocks Real Partnership

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Yeah, and and I, you know, I was trying to think about why so many firms have not so far behind this, right? And have not done anything about it, and have just been focused on KPIs and you know, getting CDs and number of interviews and all that shit, um, and hoping that you know they somebody else needs some CDs tomorrow that you know didn't need CDs today. That why is it now that suddenly everyone's talking about it? Everywhere I go, everyone's talking about it. And it's because that pop button, that transactional relationship that's just so fragile and so easy to break is breaking because they don't need that service anymore.

SPEAKER_02 25:02

Oh, that was so funny. That was so funny. I've not laughed that hard. It was so, so, so funny. For those of you that don't know, we were sat, we were doing meetings in Australia and Sydney, and we were sat in this really nice hotel, and we'd seen loads.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

We were about to see clients, weren't we? We hadn't had any meetings.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

I bought this new shirt from Ralph Lorenzo, and then as I was coming down in the lift, I realized there was a slight malfunction with the shirt. And basically, if I moved my shoulders, even just three degrees this way to just like stretch my shoulders, the buttons went. But I do want to make I want to make it clear the shirt wasn't too small for me, it was gorely a design for yeah, the buttons just didn't meet the required standard in the same way contingent relationships don't meet the required standard.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

They just true. Oh, it was so funny. And I yeah, I managed to just get a little video and say, John, just do that again. And he just turned around and just put your shoulders back, and your buttons just went pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

AI And Cheaper CV Supply Pressure

SPEAKER_01 26:10

It went on LinkedIn, it's still there if you want to find it. Um, yeah, it is so trans, it's so fragile. It is so fragile that um that that is easily being displaced by, well, AI and you know, all the tools and tech and outsourcing and cheaper ways of getting that kind of service, which isn't hugely valuable anymore, um, but also by people that are providing more than that. They're integrated with the business, they're they're in they're providing intelligence and insights into their executive team, they're providing um salary information and uh uh comp data into the reward teams, they're providing uh interim and short-term um gap management solutions to people that need it across the organizations, they're becoming advisors to them in terms of uh what the competitors are doing and how the competitors are dealing with the landscape right now, and that is more valuable than that kind of thing.

The Doctor Analogy For Diagnostics

SPEAKER_00 27:15

I was thinking it's a bit like it's a bit like imagine you just cut out the doctor, and every time you go ill, you just go to the chemist and they just throw loads of medication at you and hope they get lucky.

unknown 27:25

Right.

SPEAKER_00 27:26

And then actually, people realise the true value is in that consultation, it's in the piece with the doctor.

SPEAKER_01 27:31

Do you know what? The piece of the doctor analogy is in the McKinsey Way book, actually. And I was laughing, like chuckling to myself on the plane, reading it, because I'm like, God, we use that all the time. Um, not that we're McKinsey standard of, although, like, we're not bad. Um, is they talk about the doctor doing the diagnostic and and how at the end of the diagnostic, they wouldn't, you know, the patient might come in and say, Look, I've done a bit of Googling, or I think I've got the flu, right? I've got these symptoms and I think I've got the flu. The doctor then starts to ask the questions about you know how long and where it hurts and all the rest of it, might do further tests to get the data that they need. And but ultimately, they wouldn't then let the patient diagnose themselves.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

No.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

And so it's the same with McKinsey, like they don't then let, after all the diagnostic and all the question, they don't let the customer then go, Well, I think this is the problem. And so often I think with if consultants that uh consultants, I use that in adversive commerce because a lot of recruitment consultants aren't actually consulting. Um, you know, ask it, might ask a few questions, but then actually the client will go, yeah, I think we just need to go to contingent on this. Effectively, that's not a diagnostic, is it? They basically just diagnose themselves, they're diagnosed their own solution.

Friction Now Creates Value Later

SPEAKER_00 28:55

The only in defense of contingent recruiters, the only difference is it's like you go into eight doctors and one of them is telling them you need surgery, and the other the other seven are saying, No, just take some paracetamol, you'll be all right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's like we've got seven other recruiters saying, Oh, contingent's fine, I'll just hold some CVs and I've do this all the time, don't worry about it. And and that that's the issue that what we're what we're dealing with is like a historical wrong way of doing things as an industry, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:27

But also, I think you know, it was certainly when I first started working on that basis, I didn't know what came next. You know, I didn't know what a proper proposal looked like. I certainly didn't know what the terms would be like or have any fucking understanding of what needed to be in there, really. It was just yeah, proposal was like botched together, and terms were just just changed the finances, so something's up front. And you know, there's it's different, it is different, and I can see why people have been afraid of it. I still am staggered that there are so many firms that are further ahead, a lot further ahead. And like looking back, I have deep respect for people like a shout-out to Andy Brack. I don't know what he's doing now, but Andy Brack at the time was at Evolution and he bang this drum so loudly, and nobody listened to him. You know, I think the only person that was listening, well, was me, maybe and one or two others in the organization. And it's very, very hard in a culture where it's heavily contingent and KPI driven to, like you say, change the culture because that's what it is. It's a mindset and a culture shift, as much of as a changing in operations and process.

SPEAKER_00 30:39

We help people on this journey, right? Most of whom are fully on board, right? You know, small businesses that are fully on board. It's difficult enough when everyone's on board.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:51

Never mind swimming against the water, and half of your business are pushing the other way.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

And you've got to remind people like there's a reason, there's an output from this, you know. I think we constantly, you know, we're constantly through the program having to say, This is what happens if you do this.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

Here we first thing you've got to get kind of over the first bit of the hill, haven't you? And so for me, it was that I remember the first time a customer said, Can I just say this has been incredible as an experience? And I was like, ah, that's why I'm doing it.

SPEAKER_01 31:22

I think when you're first doing it, it feels like all you're doing is you're putting friction in the way of a sale. Why am I why am I asking all these questions when I could just get CVs over tomorrow and make a fucking placement? Or why am I sending a proposal or why am I writing a proposal when I can just I know someone that's good for this, you know, or and you really have to kind of push against the tide of of that's overwhelmingly powerful of learned behaviour, habits, you know, path of least resistance, to where they've got a where you do create some friction around, well, hang on a minute, I know you're telling me that that's what you need, but talk to me about what you've done before and how you've gone about solving this and what's happened and the bigger picture around this and what's worked and what hasn't worked. And that's really difficult. And we always have to constantly remind people that it isn't about this one project. It isn't this is a this is how you move into becoming an advisor, which which puts you up the value chain, which means you move into having executive level discussions, which puts you in the room for executive level hiring, which increases your fee value, which puts you more profitable, but it also brings you into conversations about strategic services, which makes you interdependent with your clients. And like I know that resistance and that friction feels like counterintuitive to begin with, but all of the benefits like are overwhelmingly.

SPEAKER_00 32:50

It's like saying, Why would I repair that why would I repair that knee ligament when I can just trap my leg off? It's like that the path of least resistance isn't always the right solution.

SPEAKER_01 33:00

Yeah, yeah. It's so worth it, it's so worth it for those people that that that realize that it's possible. And I guess I like the fact that you know what we get is people that come to us from all walks of life, in all different locations, of all ages, of all in all industries, all levels of experience that that are able to do it, that are able to do it.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

Always makes me become some people realise this is what they need to do at like 23. And some people realise at 53.

Manchester Workshop Invitation And Details

SPEAKER_01 33:32

Even 63, some of them are. Yeah, yeah, it's true, it's true. Which is why, and the one of the reasons I wanted to talk about it today is partly because it's been waking me up in the middle of the night, um, but also because we're doing an event on it, and that's exactly what we're gonna do. We are gonna, yeah. Oh, I can't wait. I can't wait. I think I might get emotional drawed after a few drinks at the end of the day. I can I can see me getting emotional. And as many of the people that I've ever worked with, I really want to invite, you know, be there, all of the firms that I've worked with in Manchester right at the very beginning of everything. I'd love to see there. Um, and everyone else too. That uh, yeah, we're doing an event on the 12th of June, and we've put together or in the process of putting together, basically a full day's workshop where we're gonna go through the individual like component parts of the pathway to becoming a trusted partner and all of the different look at it from all the different perspectives, and we've got um sessions for you. I'm running one, you're gonna run one, Sarah's running one, Dave Wilsonholm's running one, Dave Plummer is running one, and those of you that don't know who he is, you will do soon. Um, and we've got a couple of others lined up that is going to be right the way from the simplest way of carrying out diagnostics through to the most beautiful way of shaping your solutions and ways that you can work with clients to actually a culture and a business and building a business that that speaks, that creates the kind of culture that people want to be in and want to behave like this and ultimately is valuable and people want to buy. Um, and all the little bits and pieces in between. Um, that we wanted to get the message out there, really. For those of you that are around on the 12th of June, it's gonna be a full day at the Edwardian. We've booked the book the venue, the Edwardian Hotel in Manchester. It's not gonna be prohibitive from a cost perspective. You'll be able to buy your own ticket. You don't need your boss to buy it for you. It's gonna be a hundred quid. That's all, and you will make more money, so much more money than what it costs you to get the ticket. We're really just covering the cost of the hotel, we're not making money on the event. Um, so put it in your diary and you'll start seeing the promo for it soon because we're gonna start sharing the links to get your place, and we're gonna have restricted places, so there'll be a hundred places.

SPEAKER_00 36:07

That's me and Albert Schloss from about nine.

SPEAKER_01 36:11

And me. I'll go wherever wherever you go, George.

SPEAKER_02 36:16

It'll be great.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

So um, I know you've got a webinar to go to, so I'm gonna let you go. Um, thank you. Pleasure for joining me from Sunny Mallorca. I will, you too. Good luck with your webinar.

SPEAKER_02 36:27

Good afternoon. Thank you.

How To Connect And Join Programs

SPEAKER_01 36:29

See you, bye everyone. Well, that's another episode of Retrain Search, the podcast in the bag. Thanks for listening to our wild tales, LinkedIn controversies, and our top tips on how to sell and deliver retained search. Get involved in our next episode. Send in your questions and share your experiences with us by emailing podcast at retrainsearch.com. And don't be shy. Connect with us on LinkedIn and come and say hi. We don't bite, unless you're a track firm, that is. We want to say a special thank you to our retrained members for showing what's working for them right now and innovating new ways to grow and evolve. It's an incredible community. If you're wondering what exactly we mean when we mention our communities, well, we have two separate programs. Our search foundation's program is for recruiters who want to learn how to sell and deliver retained search solutions consistently. And we have our Search Mastery program. That's for business leaders or owners already at 50% retained or more, and looking to scale and grow and structure their search firm. We cap membership to these programs to protect the integrity of the community. If you want access, just talk to us. Okay, thanks for listening. We'll be back very soon with another episode of Retrain Search, the podcast.