Building a US Desk From Zero to $2M: Lessons From the Trenches with Fred Forrest

Recruitment Mentors Podcast

Fred Forrest details his journey co-founding Sourcechange and scaling a US energy recruitment desk to over $2M in revenue. He discusses the

Key takeaways

• Partnering with an experienced mentor like Sam provided essential strategic oversight and accountability that a solo founder might lack.
• Technical setup is critical for US outreach; poor email deliverability and being flagged as spam can render a new business irrelevant.

Main topics

• US Market Entry Strategy
• Recruitment Tech Stack Optimization

Notable quotes

I think we'd have made way more mistakes [without Sam].

Conclusion

A practical guide for recruiters looking to expand into new territorie

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Fred, welcome to the pod. Speaker 3 (0:01) Thanks for having me. Good to be here. Speaker 2 (0:02) You decided to take investment to start your recruitment business journey. So you're 50-50 partners with a chap called Sam. He was really involved in a business called GQR for a long time. As I was just saying to you, there are so many more options now, which I personally think is a good thing. Yeah. Where someone like you with a track record that you had wouldn't have had to give away equity from the start. for financial investment. So always interested to hear people's thought process on that. So bring us into that. What was the thought process around partnering with Sam? What upside you saw in getting investment from the beginning? Bring us into that. Speaker 3 (0:39) I had a bit of an atypical journey to being a founder. I was at Pangea, loved my job at Pangea, loved the founders. I was thinking one day, do this myself, of course, but never, it wasn't in my immediate track. And then Sam was actually mentoring me at the time because we'd known each other from. childhood, but we got reconnected through a mutual contact. And it was one of those scenarios where the mentoring quickly became talking about a thesis for a business markets. I think at one point he was helping me look through my equity plan and dramatically closed the laptop and was like, let's do this. Let's do this together. I think we can do a better job here together. It wasn't on my map and I necessarily thought potentially not ready myself. Yeah, I'm very comfortable and would be giving up a lot of comfort, but. ultimately, I think, went with Sam because it gave me the safety that we can make this work. Sam's brilliant. He's going to push me. He's going to hold me accountable. And also, he had that outside-of-the-trenches strategic oversight, whereas if I was just doing it on my own in the trenches, I think I'd Speaker 2 (1:34) have Speaker 3 (1:34) made way more mistakes. I'm not saying we didn't make mistakes. We definitely did. But he provided a real good strategic oversight. That was a gap for me. I didn't have that in my locker. Speaker 2 (1:43) What I like about that is, obviously, you had a personal... relationship, but there would have been some trust built there through the mentoring. Yeah, that's quite nice organic. Yeah, Speaker 3 (1:52) it was very organic. Speaker 2 (1:53) Like that's quite cool, because that will be where a lot of people will stress test, Fred, you're investing in me to start my recruitment business, a lot of the stress testing is trust, is this part like what they're going to do? Exactly. All that. So it's quite cool that you had those opportunities there to see that experience it, which I guess is a really good thing. Speaker 3 (2:11) Yeah, definitely. Like I didn't necessarily trust anyone to go into business with them that I'd not worked with for years or known. And obviously I grew up with Sam. So he's like a brotherly figure when I was growing up, friends with my sister, we spent a lot of time together and then we didn't see each other for like 10 years. But then when we came back, the mentorship, it was, it was kind of like, oh wow, we're back to how we were. And then you have that like brotherly trust, but also like I knew Sam was a good person. And like, if you're taking, you're giving away like half a business to work with someone and taking investment from someone, you need to like be really tied in, I think. like morally together. So Speaker 2 (2:41) besides money, if we were to meet right at the like early on, how would you have talked about the main upsides that you were expecting Sam to give you and just talk to me about that. And then we'll get like what have been some of the main upsides so far that you've experienced. So at the start, what would have been your expectations, anticipations of Sam's going to really help me in my business journey with this at the start? Speaker 3 (3:04) Having had a few conversations with Sam, it's clear that he thinks about market strategy very differently to how everyone I previously worked with in recruitment does. His market strategy is just world class. He thinks about it like a true economist and he really studies macro trends, micro trends, talent trends. He really thinks deeply about market strategy. So I knew we'd have a world class market strategy or we'd have a way to really ground the thesis for the markets we're in. And then he's just brilliant in himself in terms of like ruthlessly ambitious, but also like very intelligent. So I knew he'd push me, but he would also like push me in a way that was constructive. But also he'd upskill me. Like I've learned so much in the last two and a half years or nearly three years that I just wouldn't have learned if I had a hands-off investor. And I think the accountability when things get tough and it's hard, like having someone to like keep you accountable that you really respect, I think is like key. Speaker 2 (3:54) Yeah, especially when you're a solo founder. Speaker 3 (3:56) Yeah, yeah. Because if I just had a hands-off investor, I feel like the trajectory would have been very different, right? Because it's like standards. Like we have standards with our staff, but then he has standards with me. But it's in a way that's like constructive and we trust each other. Speaker 2 (4:08) Anything that we'd put in the upside column so far that maybe you didn't expect? Like we just mentioned there, accountability, world-class market strategy going to be pushed. Is there anything that so far you feel having someone like that in your corner, part of the journey, has really helped you with that maybe you... didn't expect. Speaker 3 (4:25) He's obviously historically scaled GQR in the US, which was really successful business in the US markets. There's so many nuanced understandings of the US and the markets, the geography, how to specialize within the US and how to really take advantage of some of the quirks there, but also some of the small business quirks that you have in the US that you just wouldn't know if you'd historically operated in a UK business. So that small stuff was just so useful, especially early on. I think I heard stories of people getting checks in the post. Yeah, yeah. And we were very close to having that happen to us. But small things where it sounds like... right make it clear on the invoice we don't accept check stuff like that just saves you like 60 days of not being paid because Speaker 2 (5:04) remind me so obviously october 2023 they're about to be launched right because i know you said we're getting to third year so you didn't do your first placement until january 6 2024 so there's a bit of time there but remind me your track record experience wasn't in the us was it touched Speaker 3 (5:21) on the us i'd done sort of like a dual desking early on when i was doing us in europe And then Pangea was predominantly Europe with a little bit of US. So Speaker 2 (5:29) had a bit of exposure. But Pangea Speaker 3 (5:32) as a business had like strong exposure in the US market. So I knew the value there. I'd seen that those were the most successful teams at Pangea, the New York team. So I had a good exposure, but I hadn't operated in them full time. Speaker 2 (5:42) I'll just highlight that because you won't be surprised to hear the amount of people right now, which is where this is relevant on this early on period in the trenches of... working really hard to get that first client win body of work in the States. There's a lot of people that are in that right now, or maybe 12 months in. There's some really interesting lessons in this first year, which we spoke about, which I thought were really cool. So why don't you first just give us a bit of like a typical day, typical week in this first year, that first period leading up to getting your first big win. What did that actually look like? Because I found this interesting. Speaker 3 (6:20) It was full on. We had this tiny small office in Oldgate East, which is, I'd call it like the armpit of the city. It's not ideal. And we called it the box room. You could fit about four people in there, a couple of screens to start with. It was just me and actually Sam was in there quite a bit, like just I think more support. And we were doing, I would say nine till nine was a typical day. The morning was just huge market mapping in these specialized niches that we'd identified. And we just had like a massive spreadsheet. that we populated with names, disciplines, companies. The goal of every day was just to speak to as many people on that map as possible. You know, we'd do that till about 1pm. That's when it become, I guess, acceptable to start calling people in the US, 8am Eastern. And the first three hours was just speaking to candidates and just like building relationships, getting intel, insights, generally just trying to understand the market as quickly as possible because it was new to me. 4pm onwards would be like actioning that. There was like no secret sauce here. It's just... every BD method possible, seeing what works. It was relentless. It was like very focused, very hard. There's a few like tactical mistakes we made, which made it even harder for us, kind of amplified the pain. Speaker 2 (7:26) That's where a lot of people get benefit from. What were some of the standouts? I know you shared some of them with me, but what were some of the tactical things that you felt maybe just held you back, which you didn't realize early on when you was doing so much volume and in this stage? Speaker 3 (7:39) Yeah, like something you never think about when you launch companies. email deliverability or domain strength. It's not like an exciting topic. I generally think there's a point where maybe 5 % of our emails were being opened. So when you're doing 5%, yeah. And you don't know until maybe you're like a month in and you're like, why is nothing working here? So that is... Big problem, because if no one's opened your emails and you've just launched a business, you're irrelevant. Speaker 2 (8:03) What did you use to, a lot of people advocate that, Warmly, I think is one that I hear a lot about. Speaker 3 (8:08) We're kind of fixing it on the fly. And obviously, tech sales, email deliverability is so important to them. So I delved into that area. I think we used an email warming service, which did fix it, but it was fixing it on the fly, so it took some time. And then domain strength is still something like we really think about in deliverability. Is it attachments? Is it links? Is it sending things in mass? So we just kind of tweaked it around and we did improve our domain strength and we generally got to a point that maybe half our emails were being open, which is better. We're phone-centric anyway, but we had to then pivot to a lot of phone-based work, which is fine. But then we had issues with that as well. Yeah, tell us Speaker 2 (8:42) about that because that's a common thing as well, coming up as spam on the other side. Speaker 3 (8:46) Yes, we had these US numbers and I think maybe we didn't use the best VoIP that we could have initially. very quickly after making a high volume of calls. And sometimes even as soon as you get the number, it's like flagged Speaker 2 (8:58) as Speaker 3 (8:58) spam. In the US, they can see you calling and it's like possible spam, Speaker 2 (9:01) unknown Speaker 3 (9:01) number, like no Speaker 2 (9:02) one's answering that. So there's Speaker 3 (9:05) a couple of routes we did to fix that, which is like you can register your number, you can make efforts to not come up as spam. But I think once you're flagged, you're flagged. I mean, it's hard to do that unless you want to create another number. So we kind of pivoted to like, okay, how can we like get our message across to these people without them answering the phone, which was like crafting. really structured voicemails, like with a hook and like making it very interesting. And then following up with like an SMS text, because actually in the US, like they love text. I think most of our consultants now, there's like texting all day with not WhatsApp or just not WhatsApp at all. No, just like SMS. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 2 (9:39) What did you end up going to? We Speaker 3 (9:41) moved to Ringover. Nice. Because they've got like a really good SMS, like texting platform. It Speaker 2 (9:48) tends to be a ring over or device typically is what I find. Speaker 3 (9:50) Yeah, our sister company uses device. And I think device sounds like it could even have some like even cooler like LND functions. Yeah. I Speaker 2 (9:57) know we're very tactical here, very quick, but it's all these things that just could prevent people making similar mistakes, which is really helpful. I Speaker 3 (10:04) would just get a number, check it's not spam. registered already because sometimes they're just recycling a number that someone else has used and benched. I think that's what we had with our initial VoIP. Don't want to name and shame them. But texts are so useful in the US. Voice notes on LinkedIn. If you can get connected with the individuals, like popping them a voice note, pitching the role, the response rate on those are through Speaker 2 (10:24) the Speaker 3 (10:25) roof. Speaker 2 (10:25) What categories, headings would we put the markets that you're in? under just so we're clear on that power Speaker 3 (10:30) infrastructure within that i would say we specialize in like low carbon energy technology so particularly around battery infrastructure battery technology in the us that was an area we saw as like a huge growth area we tied mainly to a couple of like key trends which is decarbonization so the low carbon piece is huge ai driven power demand we want to target energy technologies that can serve the power growth demand from ai and data centers Because like power is arguably like a bigger bottleneck to data center growth than silicon. So like compute. Our thesis was driven around those two like big macro trends. And then within that, we're looking for like very talent scarce markets where super high growth, very technical roles, not enough qualified individuals to do them. So clients really need to invest in talent. Speaker 2 (11:13) Really big on volume at this stage. But I think I said to you, if we were to boil it down to what ended up being the sort of 80-20, what ended up being the thing that typically rose to the top. that helped you progress things, move things forward, get you to your first client win. What ended up being those things from a strategy tactical sense? We Speaker 3 (11:35) had a huge top of funnel and a very low conversion to begin with. Ultimately, what proved to come through for us was a couple of things. I think like long term, like high value candidate relationships. So really getting to know like key players in the market, the top 5 % candidates. nurturing those relationships, not being too pushy and trying to flip them on the first call, because I think they can sense it, you can sense it, it's a little bit awkward. I think just building long-term relationships and then giving them a really good experience as a candidate and knowing that they're very good at what they do, it would often yield meetings down the line, referrals, referrals lead to opportunities, opportunities to vacancies. So I think high value candidate conversations, like spending like three hours a day talking to candidates, you never know where those phone calls will go. And if you're just yourself and authentic and give them a really good experience that can yield like business development opportunities down the line. How Speaker 2 (12:22) do you try and walk away feeling like you delivered value to that person when you haven't got the best energy company or whatever that you're currently working with? Because that was the stage it was at. How did you approach that? Is it, I don't know, owning, like you've been in this market, did you speak to open to work people first? Did you get really good at, I've heard this, I'm hearing this, is this something? Did you connect them with other people? Speaker 3 (12:43) Did Speaker 2 (12:43) you say, oh, I saw this company's hiring, maybe worth having a look at? Just give us some of that because I know some people will then start thinking that, like, what is it that I can give them? Speaker 2 (12:54) We'll jump back into the episode in just a moment. But first, I want to shine a light on our partners, Raise, who, in my opinion, are one of the most powerful ways to fund and run your contract book. Raise work with hundreds of agencies across the UK and US from ambitious solo recruiters to fast scaling teams. They ultimately help you unlock cash flow, remove admin headaches. and make sure contractors get paid on time every time so you can stay focused on doing deals and growing your business. Today, I'm joined by Dan Mills from Hire, who's going to share how Raise has supported his journey and the impact it's had on his growth. Speaker 1 (13:35) Just a few words for Steve and the team at Raise. As a tight Yorkshireman, spending money on anything causes me internal turmoil, but it's one of the few bills I actually don't mind paying for business, partly because whenever we WhatsApp, please help at... silly o'clock and whatever time is usually met with a really quick fix and a laugh from just genuinely Speaker 2 (13:54) nice people who want to help. The guys have been Speaker 1 (13:57) instrumental in helping hire build our contract book to date and I genuinely can't thank them all enough. Speaker 2 (14:03) So as you've just heard, Rays aren't just another finance provider. They're a genuine growth partner behind some of the most exciting recruitment agencies out there. If you want to scale your contract book with confidence, keep more of your margin and give your contractors a first class experience, I'd really recommend checking them out. You can book a demo with Raise and mention Recruitment Mentors podcast to get 50 % off your first month. Hit the link in the show notes or go straight to raise tech.io forward slash RMP. All Speaker 3 (14:35) right, let's get back into the conversation. Treat everything like you're trying to give them a good experience, do them a favour, but not expecting anything back straight away. You know, often I would speak to candidates and be like, look, We don't have anything right now, but this is where we specialize. This is my track record. This is what we're building. I want to know exactly what's going to get you out of your seat because often these candidates are quite passive. And then they would describe what would excite them. And I'd be like, cool, I'm going to go and try and look for that for you. I'm going to try and find that and I'll bring you ideas. And we'll just keep trading ideas on the market. So that was one route. Also, we did strategic introductions. So it's like, look, we're not working with this client, but we know they're hiring in this area. You should check them out. I just spoke to this candidate. He's thinking about launching his own. business he needs like a software guy you guys should connect and talk stuff like that where you just got to trust that it's going to come full circle at some point and it does it definitely does saying that when you've got like a target on your back and you need to be like pulling jobs every week i get it and i get it i just say the same to my consultants so i think that needs to be like one channel of your bd other stuff that works is more specialism led outreach as opposed to candidate led outreach which didn't work for us at all when we thought it would so that was very surprising we thought sort of candidate-led bd so i think everyone tends to call them specs uh would work really well Speaker 2 (15:45) especially in the particular markets you've been very intentional scarce talent yeah Speaker 3