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https://go.jamieburrows.net/recruiterrevenuesummit#section-Zzl570uUMM

This week on the pod, we are joined by Jamie Burrows, and his journey into recruitment is one hell of a story!

Before he was in the game of coaching recruiters to get more out of the industry, Jamie was the golden boy of Ted Baker—until a wild turn of events (and a bolted-down chair in a security office) saw him escorted out the door and straight into a 2008 recession-era recruitment desk.

We dive into what it actually takes to survive those grueling first 18 months on the phone, the reality of scaling an agency from a garden shed to 37 staff, and why splitting from business partners is rarely a clean break.

What we cover:

• Growing up in a Crystal Palace pub and navigating the Millwall family stand.

• The Ted Baker "cult" culture and getting sacked for doing the right thing.

• Starting in recruitment just as the 2008 credit crunch hit (and hating BD).

• Bootstrapping an education agency to 37 staff and the messy reality of exiting.

• Surviving COVID by carrying his dad’s gas-fitting toolbox.

• Why one-day recruitment training is basically a "speed awareness course" for underperformers.

  
  

  Enjoy x

Welcome back to the pod!

We kick this week off with Luke's run in with a toaster followed by a surprise birthday party he completely fails to spot.. There was banners up, cake in a box labelled "Luke's surprise birthday," and he still doesn't clock it. Plus there's been a trip to the courtroom for jury service. Then the gear shift.Andy seems to be excited about where the market's at right now. Calls have gone from flat and negative to genuinely positive, and the quarterly planning session hit different without the usual half-day spent catching everyone up.And then the big one: custom fields are live.

Fully customisable across companies, contacts, candidates, jobs unlimited fields, searchable, drag-and-drop import from any messy spreadsheet a client throws at you.Andy backs it up with a story that does all the selling for him: a small agency splits a placement 50/50 through the Team Network, feels great about it until they realise the candidate was already sitting in their own database the whole time. No searchable system, no idea. Free money left on the table because their data was a mess.Then we close it off with a Lee's Lunchbox Question that really got us thinking.. Enjoy x

This week's guest is Dan McDonald from Evelyn GordonHe's a solo recruiter, three years in, and (his estate's words, not ours) "the egg boy." Because before recruitment, before the US clients, before any of it, 12-year-old Dan was running a genuine chicken business. Buying birds at point of lay, door-knocking eggs round the village, losing half the flock to a fox. Proper P&L lessons before he could legally work.Fast forward: one year in a recruitment job, a bad experience with fees that never got chased, and Dan walked out to go solo with £4,000 and no safety net. First deal landed at three months.Then it gets into the good stuff: How he built a business that's now 90% retained, mostly working the US market from a UK number (spoiler: it's simpler than everyone thinks), and why he reckons Americans respect the "I'm doing this on my own" pitch more than UK clients do. Real talk on cash flow, the loneliness of solo recruitment, why BD never stops even when things are going well, and the honest version of "how did you break into the US", which is basically: don't overcomplicate it, send the email, see what happens.Enjoy x