I’ve heard some people say they were born to run their own business which I think is a stretch of the imagination – put a new born baby in charge of a FTSE500 business and it’d quickly go to crap. I’m more realistic in how I got to this point.
Was I ever that person who really wanted to run their own business? No.
When growing up, did I ever want to be a recruiter? No.
Did ANYONE?!! No way.
And am I doing both of those things right now? Yes.
So, although I’m living proof that you don’t always get want you want in life, running your own recruitment business ain’t all bad.
Let me set the scene as to how we got to be running our own business, me, Gina and the cat.
I have a mixed background in business travel, Taekwondo and Brazilian Ji-Jitsu (hint: two of them are a lie) and I own many leather bound books. I had a relatively good career in business travel spending 15 years in the same firm booking corporate travel for the likes of Adidas and Umbro which I still think this was a great grounding for recruiting - many small tasks and plenty of them all at once - it really suits how I work best. I stay in touch with most of the people I worked with then, most of whom have all gone on to be successful in other sectors, too – they were the glory days of our working life, everyone has had them, where you met friends for life and where you'd probably be locked up now for some of the stuff you got away with.
Then, I got to a point mid-30’s and panic set in - there's only so many BA1305 MAN - LHR flights you can book before your job satisfaction wanes. I was thinking ‘where do I go from here?’ and so I took a big gamble, a complete career change and a big pay drop to move into recruitment aged 35 on £18,000 a year at WRS. Eights years later and I'm on £12,500 - GREAT SUCCESS!
As stated, I’ve never had intentions to run my own business and it sort of came about by chance. I moved on from WRS to another firm which shall remain nameless (unless you go onto my LinkedIn) and it just didn’t work. The truth is, I didn’t do very well in a model that needed instant success and I didn’t buy into the guy who owned it. He let me go without notice and suddenly I found myself in Salford Precinct, crying, half naked and buying a Wimpey burger – the chain that went bankrupt years ago but mysteriously somehow still operates there – I’d hit rock bottom.
Herrera Homes came from that, formed in October 2019 in a hotch-potch sink or swim kind of way (with the 'Herrera' part being my wife Gina's surname - Gina joined as a Director last year). I took out a big loan against my Salford gaff to tide me over knowing it’d take a while for the first payment to come in. After some scary headless chicken-esque months I got my first cheque in January 2020 (and my only cheque since!). A couple more followed, so far so good……and then….the dreaded COVID hit in March - I'd barely even got dressed FFS!
Cue even more panic, applying for the only jobs that existed at that time (fast-food joints, Covid-Tracking for the NHS or whatever it was) before finally landing a gig with Deliveroo roughly earning £400.00 a month. It was a really enjoyable job of riding my bike in a summer of bright sunshine and face mask tan lines but I was up shit creek financially and I was pretty scared.
As first years go in setting up your own business - you couldn't write it - except in this blog.
So, what’s it like to run your own recruitment business?
And how much DO bloody recruiters earn, John?
For me, as a ‘360 degree recruiter’ (a term describing the full life cycle of a recruitment placement from receiving the job spec to sourcing the candidate through to interview and start) there's not an awful lot of difference between when I worked in an agency to now.
Working in an agency, you're almost your own individual construction recruitment firm company anyway and with us having no intention to bring on any other staff the day to days are similar.
However, I do feel that I'm now in a much better environment to offer the best possible service to both client and candidate in this particular sector and I truly believe that a smaller agency, when run correctly, can match and beat for value the bigger ones. We can offer so much flexibility here, the decisions made are always for the benefit of everyone involved and I always say if the client is happy, the candidate is happy and we are happy then it's a job well done. After seven years in the sector I know what works and what doesn't but I'm always tweaking and improving my processes to follow the Team Sky marginal gains ethos.
I still act as a '360' recruiter and so you'll always speak to me with regards to day to day recruitment. And although my marketing was abit naff, I think it now looks fantastic since Gina has now taken over, it's improved massively and so have the results. Everything else has been my doing including the creation of all our design and branding (anything with Herrera Homes on it from website to LinkedIn to stationary), anything website related (with assistance from The Pixel Rooms) including this blog and all of the job adverts you see and anything to do with advertising and all financial and accounting matters that relate to Herrera Homes.
Basically anything and everything you can think of to run a successful company we do. We spin a lot of plates which isn’t for everyone in recruitment or in other businesses - but I think we do it well.
Earnings wise – as with everything, it’s relative. Alot of people think recruiters are going around driving Ferrari's but I'm not - because I can't drive - but I can pretend to, even if it is only on Pablo Escobar's jet-ski (that's another story).
Our business model is simple, try to keep costs low but don't scrimp on what we need to be as efficient and successful as possible – for example, we’ve put a big investment into our website this year which I feel stands with the best.
The basic costs to keep the business running vary each year (the investment in the website was around £2500.00 last year) and roughly, after Herrera Homes has paid me and Gina the basic salary of around £1050.00 a month, we're looking at bringing in a minimum amount of around £35,000 to £40,000 worth of business over a year before we can start to ‘earn’ - and THEN maybe I can get the keys to Pablo's jet-ski - Salford Quays wont know what's hit it!
What doesn't impact us is WHEN we do our business as LONG AS WE DO IT - and of course as long as we get paid on time. The difference between this and working in an agency is that agency recruiters normally have to clear a threshold in any given month or quarter with commission earnings increasing as their billings go beyond that threshold. Ever wondered why a recruiter was pushing you abit too hard for that candidate to start before the end of the month? Commission, innit.
The long and short here is working for yourself rather than in an agency you can earn more by billing less. Not only does that improve our work/life balance, it puts more quality control in our work - you don't just have to slam CV's over to any client possible to hit agency targets and we can pick and choose who we work with to more align with our values.
It took a couple of years after 2020 to get back up and running financially, paying off the substantial debts I had of setting up the company and then the extra I’d had to take out to make sure I didn’t go bankrupt or lose my house during the first few months of Covid. I’d say the back-end of 2022 was the first time I could finally feel all the hard work was paying off financially. So, thank God the conservatives put paid to all that hard work with their shitstorm of a budget last year which has affected the housebuild industry badly.
But that’s the industry we're in as recruiters, subject to market conditions, there’ll be good years like last year when everything feels like it’s clicking and into place and there’ll be years like this year when I’m keeping my Deliveroo account active JUST IN CASE. Do you want fries your Site Manager, sir?
On to the good bits.......
One of the best and most unexpected bits of setting up my own business has definitely been the financial flexibility – not in how much we earn but how you can take your money. It’d never really entered my mind but paying myself as I do (a monthly minimum salary and then via Dividends) really suits me – as long as there’s profit in the business you can pay yourself whenever you want and however much you want which really sorts you out if there's an unexpected bill or you need to book a holiday immediately to tie in a cheaper price.
Another unexpected one was my preference working from home - I've always considered myself a sociable person and enjoyed the banter in the office but I've not missed it as much as I thought I would. You miss having people to bang your head against but since Gina has been more involved in the business we've worked really well together. The recruitment environment can be a TOUGH one, even toxic sometimes - whilst you're on your shittest ever day with deals falling out and candidates not turning up for interviews there always seems to be someone sat opposite you who's on their best ever day - it can be galling and it's a tricky environment to navigate.
With so many highs and lows in the job anyway, I feel it's much easier to manage away from an office full of up-and-down emotions. And it's much easier away from the daft targets which often weren't relevant - the energy I save each day not being in that sales driven agency environment is massive.
And all the other best bits are incidentals but they all add up. I've hundreds of CD's at home from my indie days, when I need to knuckle down with admin I can ramp up Oasis and have a little indie disco. Have you ever been sat in office midweek with the sun beaming outside, willing the weekend to arrive, only for the clouds to tide over Friday afternoon and the rain to start pissing down? That never happens anymore. Find yourself awake at 3am dreading your 6am alarm? Not me, I just get up a little later and the day ain't ruined. I now wear shorts, not shirts. My meals are a big deal, not a meal deal. Amazon parcels always arrive and toilet time ain't a dodgy cubicle lottery.
We can also holiday whenever we want and if we want extend it whilst away - something I've always wanted to do that and have done it twice in the last two years. Unfortunately, the laptop always comes away when we go on holiday so we're always working (although I've never minded that) and so if there's no pressing need to end the break we'll book THE EXTENDER.
And most importantly, the best bit of being your own boss is that I can post random pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger whenever I want. DO IT............DO IT NOOOOOWWW!!! Howdy, partner.
And the inevitable bad bits....
As with running any business it can be stressful – we can work long hours when things are very busy which normally starts from 0730/0800 up to around 1900/1930. Realistically, the busy weeks need to be between 50-60 hours a week to be successful. As the old adage goes in recruitment, you’re only as good as your last placement and that’s even more stark as a business owner – there’s no salary to fall back on, placements literally keep us going and if we don’t place, we don’t earn. A Director had said to me recently ‘if we lose the candidate, we lose him’ which was a flippant remark based on something easily avoidable and that’s the reality – months of hard work can turn into £££ZERO – recruitment is a very frustrating business, there's alot of knock-backs and rejection and you've got to have a really big dumb hard head (check!) to keep going.
And unfortunately you do get bad clients or bad candidates. Alot of the good year we had last year was taken out by a well known contractor that recently went bust leaving us around £10,000 out of pocket - that's a massive amount and has left us struggling even more this year.
BUT we're still OK and we look forwards to the future.........
Overall, I'm really happy with how Herrera Homes and myself and Gina have established the business and I feel we are in a very good place, we have been very resilient and I'm proud that Herrera Homes has become a go to agency for various housebuilders in the Northwest. And we won't go away - this is our business now for the next 10 years and beyond - even through the bad times.
Recruitment ain't hard when done well and hopefully we'll continue to hit the high standards that Herrera Homes has become known for.
Thanks to all our candidates and clients thus far - feel free to get in touch with us at
Comments