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What were the key drivers in starting your own business?
For us what was important was ensuring that our business supported what we wanted to do in our lives.
For me, that was flexibility, but it was also just being my own boss.
I’d always managed myself and grown functions and grown teams, but fundamentally I was reporting into a business that was owned by someone else.
In forming Dataworks, we took a lot out of other businesses that we really liked, but we also took a look that we really didn’t like.
We wanted to put all that together and create an environment where people really want to come in and perform and enjoy it.
What's the most exciting element of running your own company?
Making the decisions and standing by them.
When you work for any other firm - and I've worked for really large businesses and so has Wes - you always make a decision but it's never 100% your decision.
We are the vision and the strategy of the business - for example, launching in the US on day one wasn't something we'd initially considered, but now we're there and my team will be fully focused on building out the US market.
Every decision you make is yours, and you live and die by those.
Do you and Wes have different natural skills and strengths?
We definitely do!
Wes is very strong around systems, CRM, data and processes – he also loves training and development of staff.
I’m very much focused on finance – our cashflow, looking at our commercial model, the services we’re offering.
We’re beginning to gravitate to certain things already and that’s really important as people start to join the business with a clear point of contact for different things.
When you founded Dataworks, what options did you look at and how did you choose your launch partner?
We spoke to a lot of agency-led owners who wanted to invest in our vision and start-up, we spoke to pure investors who wanted to invest cash into our growth and also other platform providers as well. We spoke to a lot of people and we settled on RecruitHub because they were head and tails above anyone else we spoke to.
We wanted a to focus on sales – I’d been in an operational role for many years, and you move away from the job you fell in love with: the sales, meetings and business development.
We wanted a platform that could give us all the tools and technologies so that we could plug in and start billing. We also didn’t want to align ourselves with lots of contracts and work with vendors and suppliers and negotiate rates. We just wanted to come in and turn things on and just crack on.
You sourced investment to launch Dataworks, what was the process like?
We had our own capital but we always were mindful that we didn't want to get into this journey as a lifestyle choice. Of course it fits around your lifestyle as you can make the business work for you, but we didn't want to put our entire life savings into it and leverage ourselves against our houses - for me it was quite daunting and scary, with a family and a wife to look after.
We secured investment purely with the objective of growth - we're already benefitting from that as we've got two hires due to start with us in the next 4 weeks, and that's been facilitated by that investment.
The process was good - RecruitHub worked all the models up and we looked at what the equity splits would look like, and they were more favourable than any other vehicle we spoke to.
Were you happy with the investment deal that you structured?
Yes.
We got a couple of offers from similar types of platforms and in all honesty the equity deals were horrendous. We would do all the heavy lifting, we would do everything but our percentage share of the equity was not worth doing, especially when we're the ones taking all the risk.
The RecruitHub platform and the investment were the most favourable.
It gave us complete control, which was absolutely key. We didn't want to be 'managed', because what's the point of doing this if so?
What RecruitHub gave us was the confidence to think "wow, this is ours - right, let's go and do it!", and that's quite liberating.
How quickly were you able to start focusing on building revenue after launch?
Day two!
Day one was a lot of 'firsts' - logging in, working out the CRM... The training and support we got from RecruitHub in terms of our induction on all the various tools was great. The team supported us, they have a really good all-encompassing platform that gives you all the webinars, all the training, pretty much everything - but it's all still new!
So day one was about getting settled - but day two we were already working positions, already on it.
And that for us was really valuable.
Perhaps the most valuable piece of advice that RecruitHub gave us was that there's so much to focus on as a "business owner", but all you have to focus on at first is the money-making activities, and that's really what we've been doing for the last ten weeks solid. We've not done anything outside of getting CVs to jobs, booking interviews and making placements.
Wes, my colleague, also found that side really liberating - he didn't have lots of admin to do or lots of wasted effort, it was purely on sales.
What advice would you have for recruiters considering setting up?
Do it, 100% do it!
It still blows me away that a lot of really good, solid billers don't have the confidence in their own ability to do it on their own, or who don't know that there are platforms out there like RecruitHub who can take away a lot of the pain, because it is very daunting.
Say you're a Principal Consultant and you've never worked with finance or P&L's or supplier contracts or onboarding... you look at it and think "Wow, how am I going to do this? It's going to take too much time..."
But if you're billing any figure north of £100-150k for your current employer, I guarantee you're going to make 3-4x more money for yourself, and you can manage your week as you see fit.
So I'm definitely in that "do it" camp.
I've spoken to a number of people and asked "why aren't you doing it?", and it's always "not a good time".
Let's be honest, I was having a baby, doing a house renovation, had just got Covid... and it wasn't "great" timing for me, but I did it. Because I just knew I'd regret it if I didn't. I had a really supportive wife behind me going "Just do it - why are you waiting?".
The market's there, and let's be honest - it's easier to manage yourself than 10-15 people in your team anyway!