Ever wondered what it takes to turn a backpacking adventure into a business empire? Mark Wright, the spirited entrepreneur and winner of the UK's The Apprentice, takes us on a whirlwind ride through the peaks and valleys of his awe-inspiring journey. From braving the show's grueling selection process to being named on Forbes 30 under 30, Mark's story is a testament to the power of ambition and the art of being true to oneself amidst the glare of fame.
Navigating the business world with a 'pull the trigger' mindset, Mark shares his insights on risk-taking, strategy, and why paying top dollar for talent can set a company apart. He presents an unfiltered look at the raw intensity of reality TV and the pressures of public life, while also imparting invaluable advice for CEOs on working with recruitment agencies. This conversation is a treasure trove for anyone itching to make bold moves in their career or business.
Wrapping up with a focus on future ambitions, Mark discusses his aggressive investment strategy with Wrighton Investments, aiming for a 100 million valuation through savvy acquisitions. His narrative is a powerful reminder that achieving astronomical success often requires a blend of calculated risks and uncompromising vision. Join us for an episode that doesn't just scratch the surface but gives you the blueprint for turning audacious dreams into reality.
· Our Website is: xrecruiter.io
Ever wondered what it takes to turn a backpacking adventure into a business empire? Mark Wright, the spirited entrepreneur and winner of the UK's The Apprentice, takes us on a whirlwind ride through the peaks and valleys of his awe-inspiring journey. From braving the show's grueling selection process to being named on Forbes 30 under 30, Mark's story is a testament to the power of ambition and the art of being true to oneself amidst the glare of fame.
Navigating the business world with a 'pull the trigger' mindset, Mark shares his insights on risk-taking, strategy, and why paying top dollar for talent can set a company apart. He presents an unfiltered look at the raw intensity of reality TV and the pressures of public life, while also imparting invaluable advice for CEOs on working with recruitment agencies. This conversation is a treasure trove for anyone itching to make bold moves in their career or business.
Wrapping up with a focus on future ambitions, Mark discusses his aggressive investment strategy with Wrighton Investments, aiming for a 100 million valuation through savvy acquisitions. His narrative is a powerful reminder that achieving astronomical success often requires a blend of calculated risks and uncompromising vision. Join us for an episode that doesn't just scratch the surface but gives you the blueprint for turning audacious dreams into reality.
· Our Website is: xrecruiter.io
Welcome back to one of the greatest episodes we've ever had on Confessions of a Recruiter, mark Wright. Many of you do not know him, you've never heard of him, but all your UK listeners you know his name and you know what he's achieved. Blake, tell us what this was all about.
Blake:He's Forbes 30 under 30. He won the apprentice in the UK, which is absolutely huge out of 75,000 contestants. I guess you could say he spoke to us about recruitment, what his relationship is with recruiters, about business success and the mindset that you need to make sure that you push the needle and go the extra distance. Welcome back to another Confessions of a Recruiter episode. We've got a special one today. We've got Mark Wright, who is the CEO of Wright and Group, the apprentice winner and Forbes 30 under 30. Some pretty big accolades there, mark.
Mark:Well done for remembering all that. That's awesome.
Blake:Thank you, I just nailed it. Usually I butcher every intro, so I'm even surprised I got that one right.
Mark:You made me sound fantastic. Now I've got to say something valuable.
Blake:Mate, thanks for joining us on the show today. You have a really, really impressive career and background. I guess let's just start with what you're most known for, and that is the apprentice.
Mark:Yes, I mean I'm known for two things worldwide, which isn't relevant really here being the apprentice winner and being Australian. In England I'm known for being that Australian guy and being the apprentice winner. What I've found since I've moved back to Australia recently is being the Australian guy is not a USP here, it's kind of like everyone's Australian here. They're the two things I'm known for. The apprentice that Donald Trump made famous. He still owns 10% of the format. He took it to the UK. The boss there is called Alan Sugar.
Mark:When I went backpacking abroad the apprentice was one of the biggest shows on the BBC. Still is today. But when I was on there it was about eight million views an episode. Eight million individual views an episode. Wow Big show. It was number one for the BBC. In the year I tried out for the show, 75,000 people tried out. I don't know how many submitted applications maybe hundreds of thousands but 75,000 people went to the tryout. I was selected as one of the 20 that went on to series 10 of that show. You talk about you guys doing recruitment here. I don't know how many jobs there is that 75,000 people are going for. There's not too many. I always say winning the apprentice, I went on to win the show. Mind you, getting on was the hardest part.
Declan:Run astro. What was that interview process?
Mark:like yeah Well, I didn't know what the apprentice was. I didn't know who Lord Sugar was. The boss of the show turns out he's one of the serious, most famous business magnates in the world. I hadn't heard of him In England. There's two big business guys that everyone talks about Richard Branson and Alan Sugar. Alan Sugar is probably more famous in the UK than Branson, but less famous worldwide. The reason is he owns lots of stuff in the UK. He's the second or third largest commercial property holder. He owned Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. This guy's pretty serious billionaire, like serious billionaire. You look him up and you're like okay, this guy's, he's on it.
Mark:I go down to the triats. I was a cold caller at a digital marketing agency and the company I was working for was Rubbish. They treated their staff poorly. They treated their customers poorly. I was like I can do this better than these guys. I definitely can do a better business than these guys, but I have no money Because I'm from Australia.
Mark:I went to a bank and I asked for a loan and they're like you're not from the UK, you cannot get a business loan and I was on a visa like a guest visa thing so they're like no chance. So I'm like shit, what am I going to have to move back to Australia and try and do it there? And then my mate from New Zealand was like bro, let's try out for the apprentice. And I said, what's the apprentice? He's like it's his TV show, where there's this crazy old dude. He's like a billionaire investing. Your company gives you 250 grand if you win.
Mark:I was like cool, he's like I'm going to the triats this Saturday. I was like okay, I'll come with you. And I had no idea what I was in for. So I put in the application, I got into the triat, I go down with my friend Blake to the triats and there's 75,000 people there. And I'm like, god damn, this is going to be interesting. So there's an 11 story building, like a high rise building in the middle of London and all 75,000 people go in in level one and they eliminate 50% of the people at each level. What? It's unbelievable.
Mark:That is what that's like, hunger Games it is like it is the and basically it's designed by a set of psychologists and like engineer type people, and what they've constructed is a set of triats that you can put 100,000 people in and basically what it does is it eliminates all of the people who can't handle the pressure. So there's all of these little tasks that you do that are looking for, or basically here's what they need at the end. They need a good business person. How do you find a good business person from 100,000 people? What is business?
Mark:Business is handling pressure, handling stress on a daily basis. The more pressure you can handle, the more successful you'll be. The most successful business people in the world can handle the most risk and most pressure. They understand this, so they like if we just apply a shitload of pressure, we're going to be spat out maybe 20, 30 people that can handle the level that it takes to be a successful business person. Then we put them all up against each other and we'll be given an individual who is the Teflon Don, who is the rock star.
Blake:That is awesome.
Mark:I did not know that, yeah, so I'll give you an example. So get that eight o'clock in the morning. They line you up in a thousand people and they say step forward. And a guy comes past with a big bin and you pull out a product that sucks and you have 10 seconds to sell it. So I got a lampshade with no light bulb in it. So I start talking this is fantastic. You know, we're all talking about people getting cancer, skin cancer, climate change. Finally, there is a lamp with no bulb. You know like I'm literally like how do you sell this thing? This is so hard. And I start asking the guy you know like do you like the? You know, do you sleep at night? Yeah, I sleep at night. Well, you can't have lights on in there. This is perfect. And this guy's like who is this guy?
Mark:You know, like I just start making it up and I'm like it's hard, like the stuff, the items in there really suck. So it's easy to sell a good product, but a good salesperson is able to sell anything Right, and that's what they're looking for. Step one they I got through next stage, 70,000, 50,000, 20,000, 10,000. And I go, they put you on a stage and they say, okay, stand forward. What's this? Times? This minus, this is a percentage. Go, stop, do something that surprises us, stop, tell us a joke, stop, and they're just putting you under all of this pressure. And then the next week I got into the final 100 and they broke us into groups of 12. And we had to set up an IKEA desk. There was 15 of us had to set up a desk not too dissimilar from this one here, and we had 20 minutes to set up a desk with 15 people and the desk takes, on average, three hours to assemble. And as we got to the 19th minute, one minute before the task ends, the production raced out and smashed our desk up into a million pieces. And I was the project manager for the boys versus the girls team and what they were looking for. So they smashed both desks up and two things happened. Some people started to cry, other started to say like swear words and get really pissed off with the production, and there was a small element of people that continued to work even though the 20 minutes had elapsed and basically what they'd had figured out is, when you apply so much pressure to a group of people and they fail at something, the failure will be too much for most people and there'll be a small percentage of those people who'll be able to continue to work even though they've failed or lost at the task. And that is business summed up. If you think about any successful business, most days is failure. But what do you do tomorrow? Do you give up on the business because it didn't work yesterday or you had an issue this morning? Absolutely not. If your staff see you give up, you don't really have a business for very long and great business leaders understand that you fail more often than you succeed. But you fail every day. And what do you do when you fail? And it's those people who are able to continue as if they hadn't failed. They continue from failure to failure as if that didn't happen until they find success. And that task summed that up for me and fortunately, I kept working on the desk and I got on and on to the show and into series 10.
Mark:It got millions and millions of views. My social media had 83 friends on Facebook. When I went into the apprentice house I had 150,000 followers on social and stuff. When I came out I went from being a normal bloke. I'm still a normal bloke, just no one knew my mum has trouble remembering my name too. I couldn't go for a coffee without taking 500 selfies, all of that sort of stuff, and that was a shock to the system, because I became a business owner for the first time.
Mark:I became famous for the first time and that brought with it a lot of strange things. As a young man, fame is an interesting thing because it brings attention, it brings girls and it brought it at a time when I needed to focus on my business. There were certainly some challenges there and out of 15 winners of the show I'm the only one to ever turn over a million in the first year and sell my business for a third party exit. So some people haven't kept the rubber on the road. They've gone to the free bottle services and maybe let the girls or whatever get to them, and the business has gone in the backseat and their success has gone with it. Wow, that's insane.
Declan:So, mate, hindsight's a beautiful thing. Did you realise the way you summarise it now? Because the show was what? 2014? 2014, 10 years ago? Yeah, so hindsight's a beautiful thing. At the time, did you click and know exactly what they were doing? Or were you like I'm just going to be myself to get through these stages?
Mark:I had no idea what this was.
Mark:I've been able to reflect on it and I've been part of working with the team with the apprentice team and Lord Sugar for eight years after I won, so I got to see it from a different view and how clever it was and the type of person that they're looking for. But I made a deal with myself before I went on to the show, which was I would be my authentic self and that I would never lie, that I would tell 100% of the truth all of the time and just wherever that got me. It got me because then I didn't want to go out and not be able to ever get a job again. A lot of people go on reality TV shows.
Declan:You see it with this stupid married at first sight that's crap.
Mark:Those guys' lives are ruined. It might be cool for five minutes with their mates. Would you hire that individual now? That's said all that stuff about women or all it's? His life is now in the toilet.
Blake:That's a good way to look at it.
Mark:So I was like I want to go on here not to be famous. I want to go on here to become a better businessman, to get a business partnership with one of the best business leaders of all time, Get 250 grand, which I can't get from a bank. If you want to go and be famous, Ricky Gervais has got a great line Just go out on the street and shoot someone. Just be a murderer you want to be famous Going on maps to be famous.
Mark:fame is a mask that will eat your face. A lot of people chase fame and, as someone who's had fame quite significantly for some time in the UK, it is not what you think. It is what is it?
Mark:I think and we're young guys, because I think young men particularly think that fame makes you cool. Fame brings you girls, fame brings you money and it does bring you some of those things, but you lose a sense of yourself. You lose your privacy, and don't underestimate how powerful privacy is. Being able to go down to coals and get you shopping on a Saturday morning is pretty cool. Someone like Brad Pitt or Taylor Swift would give their eye teeth to go for a coffee and sit there with their mates and not have to take 300 photographs.
Mark:I was nowhere near that level, but I experienced something and everywhere you go, you have to be polite, you always have to be on and it is tiring. It's cool for about three, four months and then it gets old and it gets hard, because you see reviews about yourself online or in the press, or about your love life, or the people who have dated you, or people who you've thought friends, who have sold a story about you, and you can't believe the stuff that you're reading from people that you've gone for a beer with and now they've sold a story to the newspaper about you or put your WhatsApps from a group chat in there, and it's different. It's a lot to process and I was 24 when I you were a head fuck. It was insane and I was doing this while trying to run a business for the first time, dealing with fame for the first time, and that was really difficult. And they've got a big problem in the UK. At the moment, a lot of reality TV persons are killing themselves, committing suicide, particularly from a show called Love Island.
Declan:Really.
Mark:Yeah, and basically the support you get before the show is fantastic, the support you get while you're on the show is fantastic, and then you leave the show and what's really weird is the next season comes out and you're sort of old news as soon as the next season comes out. Now, that didn't happen to me so much because I was the winner, so I had this sustained. Like they always flash back to the winners or we go on panel shows or like where are they now? So you kind of have this slower descendancy. Let's call it. The contestants who don't win they're civilians, super, super, super famous, can't go down the street. Next season comes out, they're nobodies.
Mark:So you go through that mindset of you're working in a normal job. Then you're the coolest cat in your group, you've got all these social media followers and then in six months no one cares who you are. That's a lot to process for a human being and we're not built to be able to handle that fluctuation. I don't think, and a lot of people really struggle to decompress it. So that was. I was learning about all of this stuff on the fly, on the stuff, but it was. I was lucky one because I won. I had a good team around me, alan Sugar, my business partner. He put a good team of people around me and I was busy founding and working on my business and that kept a lot of the distractions to the back burner and I just got my head down in my business and I probably didn't realize at the time what I was going through. And it's only now I look back and think God damn, what an experience that was.
Blake:That's hectic, that's what. What were some of the guardrails that you had to put in place when you're trying to build your business and you've got all this crazy chaotic external things happening to you because you're so famous Like, was there any types of rules that you're like right, I have to be home by nine o'clock and don't go out more than once a week. What was the strategy?
Mark:All of my friends who were my friends before the apprentice are still my friends now. I didn't let new people into my circle so I didn't let the smoke being blown up my bum everywhere I went go to my head too much because I had all my mates around me who reminded me daily that I'm a nobody, that I'm just that guy from Armadale that you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That I'm you know. And I would go for beers in the same pub with the same blokes. I played in the same footy team. I kept everything the same. I didn't become a different person and the pool was really there and at times I said things in the press or I got a little bit cockier. I did things I wasn't so proud of, but you know, I was young and I was learning. But the best thing I did is just keep my circle the same. That was my best guardrail.
Mark:The other thing that really took some controlling was the dating element, just not going nuts in that environment. And you know, having a good if you're straight, like I am, having a good woman in your life that really keeps you grounded is so important for success because men, in my experience particularly, can get very distracted by chasing women and their eye goes off the ball of their business. And if you watch a guy who's going through a divorce or going through an affair, you watch the P&L of their company. It is like craziness, because their life is craziness. What you need in your life for your business to have stable growth is you need stable growth in your private life, with your relationships, your health, your family, all of that stuff. And as soon as your private life starts to yo-yo, your business will start to yo-yo, and I learned that as well.
Blake:That's a really powerful takeaway, because we often talk quite a lot. You need to have your house in order to be able to be successful in business, and how you operate as an individual flows over into work and how you show up at work as well. But the way that you've just put it there is probably A lot better summary than yeah, have your house in order, mate. What?
Mark:does that mean? Who knows? It's so true. I mean, how can you help others with your success or be a good leader if you can't lead yourself? If you have no discipline in your life, how do you have discipline with your staff? You know, I don't understand that 100%. Yeah, and great leaders are a world discipline.
Declan:And you made another point about being the first person to ever do you seven figures in your first year of business. How rare is that for someone to do you seven figures in their first year of business?
Mark:Almost impossible, almost impossible. I didn't know that. Again, my naivety and my self-belief is both skill and my superpower. In my head I said I'm gonna turn over a million pounds, so two million bucks, in my first year. I didn't know why I said that. I said that I had no idea how hard or easy that was, I just said it. I was like I'm gonna do a million pounds first year. My business partner laughed at me and said it was impossible. I did 1.7 million in my first year.
Mark:Wow, good job yeah so I've always dreamed big. I always think big, I dream big and I always think, if you're gonna be doing stuff, why not just do it big anyway? Running a business is really hard. Being a business leader is really hard. So if you're gonna come in here and put yourself through that, you most will do the big numbers, because I've been in business where we've done small numbers and big numbers and the difficultness is the same. So I may as well drive a Ferrari for the pleasure. If I'm gonna be stressed and I'm gonna hate life and be tough, most days I'm gonna go home to a mansion and I'm gonna drive a nice car and provide my family a great life, because it doesn't matter. Each level's the same difficultness.
Blake:Really 100%.
Mark:I've bought a property. I've bought properties for 400 grand and tens of millions. The paper works the same, the lawyers you use the same, the count is the same. The paper works the same. So all that changes is the number that you write on the piece of paper. So I just thought why don't we just do bigger numbers? If you go bankrupt for $100 or you go bankrupt for $100 million, the bankrupt proceedings is the same. There's no levels of bankruptcy. So if I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go big in either direction.
Mark:I decided and it's the way I've lived my life and it pays. Generally the people who are successful unfortunately are not the smartest people, because my friends that are engineers and surgeons and all of those people they got no money because they don't take any risks. They overanalyze everything Like. I'll give you an example. There was a guy in my first office. He was an engineer and we needed to order the office building. He said we're ordering new chairs. So to me my brain quantifies how important something is to my success really quickly. Chairs mean nothing to me. That just seems like a nonsense job. He says, oh, the building's ordering new chairs. And I said, okay, how many staff? We got 45, order 50 chairs and get this fucking thing off my desk. This motherfucker gets the chair in the other office. He's measuring the leg and it's spent half a day on the thing on the chair. We'll order one in and we'll trial it with Susie on this thing. My chairs have arrived. We're cracking on right With the dialing out, people are busy, whatever, and he overanalyzed the chair.
Mark:Now in my deals, in my properties. I own a property portfolio. I've only ever seen one of my properties. Now in the time my team see a property. We make an offer, we've bought it, we've done the paperwork Other people are going through. What about the damp in the living room in this thing? My theory is just get into a deal. It's much easier to get out of a deal than it is to get in, because competition's high. You wanna get into as many things as possible, and anything you overanalyze a human being will talk themselves out of. We overanalyze everything. If you go and look at a new car, you go and look at a new house, you'll get home and the longer you take to think about anything, you'll talk yourself out of it. So I just do stuff, don't think. Do I think big? And I just do, yes, constantly do, and it creates me an amazing life.
Blake:Has it backfired on you, like what's some of the things where you thought, fuck, if I just held horses for a few days and slept on it, I wouldn't have been in this scenario, that's a really good question.
Mark:I can't think of anything where it's backfired tremendously. I'm a big believer in gut instinct. I get a good feeling about people, I get a good feeling about businesses, I get a good feeling about deals, and if I walk in and it doesn't feel right, I don't do it. If it walks in and my first instinct is this feels good, I do it and that is, and then my accountant will always go well, mark, the numbers don't really make shut up. That's why there's no accountants on the Forbes list with me.
Blake:So how do you, if someone is sitting there listening to this, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, ok. So if there are any recruiters out there that are interested to find out what it's like to have a VA, support them in their role whether that be to bill more, reduce tasks that they don't enjoy doing or be a more effective recruiter in their niche then we definitely recommend reaching out to the outsourced people or top. Reach out to them, inquire on how they can implement a VA in your agency and to support you. And if you mention ex-recruiter or Confessions of a Recruiter, they will give you a 13% discount off your bill per month on this VA. That will allow you to scale your business, scale your desk and to bill more and make more money. So go reach out to the outsourced people, say Confession, sent you, get your discount and see what is possible. If someone's sitting there listening to this and going, I'm that person who is constantly overanalyzing, procrastinating and then missing opportunity. Is there any advice that you can give them, or tools, or is it just you know?
Mark:I would put a big sign on your desk saying pull the trigger, because you're probably, if you're, an overthinker, over procrastinator. The first thing is that's probably good, you're probably a smart person. That probably means you've got a lot of the right ingredients, but you're probably talking yourself out of success. I know guys I went to school with and they were like forest gump they couldn't tie their shoelaces. These folks, they're millionaires now because they go into opportunities, they take risks from their stupidity and it works. And a lot of the guys I know that have got, you know, hsc results and degrees through the roof. They're working for $65,000, $75,000 a year for the council or all of this stuff and they're so smart. But that smartness is holding them back and if I was as smart as some of these guys, I'd be a billionaire already with a, b and so it's just switching that off sometimes and think if it feels good, let's do it. Make some noise, fucking oath.
Declan:I'm the exact same.
Blake:Yeah, declan thinks big and then just makes really quick decisions himself, so he probably he probably thinks you guys are very aligned right now.
Mark:Yeah, well, they had a saying at Apple and then his mates called Blake.
Declan:Yeah, exactly, and he's even crazier than me. Oh well, that goes same here. He's nice.
Mark:But Steve Jobs saying at Apple was move fast and break things. And I think that's such a powerful saying because, you know, I think companies make a habit of just trying to. You know, I say to a mentor and work with a lot of people at the moment and so many people hold themselves back because they want everything to be perfect in their business. Well, when I get the CRM right, I'll hire the first. You know, sales CRM is never going to. I've never met a company with a good CRM, so forget about that. Right. When I get the marketing right, well, nothing in business is ever going to be perfect.
Mark:You, if every business is sort of like a bit shit, when you're in it it feels a bit chaotic, but that's how it's meant to feel. That's every business. You could go and work in Telstra, but, trust me, that place is fucking chaotic. I'm a customer. It's crazy in there. You go and work in Qantas it's chaotic in there. You go and work in the salon across the road it's chaotic in there because that's business. Everyone's business is chaotic. No one's business is perfect and each day we're trying to fix all of that stuff. But you just need to move quickly. The great F1 driver, mario Andretti, said if you're not, if you, if you. It was something about if you're not going fast enough, if you're not scared, you're not going fast enough. And that's the same as business If things aren't breaking, if it's not scaring you, if it feels under control. That was the saying. If your business is feeling under control, you're not taking big enough risks. If it's not scaring risks, it needs to feel a bit out of control. That means you're heading in the right direction.
Blake:So so walk us through your experience with recruiters as well, because you're obviously a business leader, You've dealt with a lot of recruiters and I think it would be really fascinating to get someone with your experience and the insights that you have on the other side of the fence to understand how we can position ourselves better to people like you and win deals.
Declan:Yes, and to put it in perspective, you've been in the heartland of where recruitment started.
Mark:The UK. This is the bloodbath.
Declan:This is where the best come from, so it's a powerful industry.
Mark:I know that, and there is some very rich folks in your field, particularly in the UK, and it's a good time to tell you that I usually start most podcasts or speeches that I do on stage by saying hell is filled with three people recruiters, lawyers and web developers. So that gives you a taste of my feeling about recruitment people because of some of the invoices I've paid to them. But how ironic, yeah, and my arch nemesis, a fellow apprentice winner, is a recruiter and we play an annual football soccer game against my eight companies versus his companies, and it always results. The last one resulted in me being sent off and banned and a serious altercation in the car park. That's our love for recruitment to set the scene for you. And so what's my feeling with recruiters?
Mark:I've worked with some of the worst and best, I'd say, in the world over my years, and my feeling with recruitment is always as a CEO of a company and as someone that's always hungry to hire in bulk salespeople, marketing people, engineers or et cetera, et cetera, into my companies. I'd be spending on average, sometimes millions of pounds with recruitment agencies and I would feel my HR department would always report back to me that they felt the poor companies were always just trying to place anyone with us. They were just trying to get a deal. Let's say, they get their commission, they just sell you shit. Basically, this person's fantastic, they're exactly what you want. They would tell the person how to meticulously get through our recruitment process to say the right things. They were almost like robots and bang. They would get into our thing and we wouldn't have a very good individual and the cost of hiring the wrong person was substantial. We send them on a boot camp, we give them IT equipment, we give them training, only to let them go. That's a huge burn to the company. And then we met some great people along the way who really cared about our business.
Mark:So my whole theory was I can do recruitment better because I think that about everything, so I'll hire an in-house recruitment team. It didn't really work. Why is that? Because you're dependent on one person and their work ethic and their level of ability. But most recruitment agencies will have a good list of people. They know all the systems. They work on all the job boards. They're resourcing pretty significantly in the back end. They've got a bigger pool of people where in-house teams still have to talk to recruitment agencies.
Mark:So I had the realization that recruitment's always going to be a big thing and if you can't beat them, join them. So you've got to find people who care about you and your business. You've got to care about them and their business and work together. So I was like I'm going to partner with recruitment agencies and I'm going to make them a deal. I'm going to make you rich. I'm going to make you so rich.
Mark:I'm going to be your biggest customer. I'm not going to work with anyone else, we're just going to work with you. I'm going to pay you. What do you normally charge? Commission, 15%. We're paying 25%. We're going to pay you more, but you're not going to work with any other people in my sector.
Mark:I'm not going to work with any other recruitment, but I'm going to guarantee I'm going to hire this amount of people. Now you can go and work with other people, whatever, but I need to go and find 100 people and you 100 times 25% on these salaries. Your life's going to change, because I've seen your accounts, by the way. So this is an opportunity for you, but it's an opportunity for me. So I created good partnerships. I got recruitment companies to care about my business, understand my business, and they found the right people that fitted my culture, because I'm a bit different when it comes to culture and my businesses. They say if you read my LinkedIn, trolls, it's not popular at the moment my style, which is some say old fashioned or Ice Age style, but it works for me and my recruitment companies found the style that worked for me because there's no good placing some woke, freaky, deaky in my business.
Blake:We're on the same page.
Mark:I sort of treaded reasonably carefully into that.
Mark:But if you want to come in and you rip jeans on your beanbag and work from home and pat your dog and have a green juice, it's probably not going to work in my environment. Because we come in, we work in the office, we build a team, we build a culture. The culture is success. Money is important. Success is important. Now, it might not be to you and your hippie jeans and all your lattes and all of that sort of stuff, but that's not. That's cool. We don't want to work in your environment. You don't want to work in ours. We don't have to, and that's what's worked for me. You either get on the bus and we're heading in this direction or you don't. It's fine if you don't, but my program is working out pretty well. So if you want to come and be successful, come on this bus. Don't tell me you want to be successful and tell me I need to change my bus because this is working perfectly.
Blake:That's interesting. So your approach to you found a recruiter that you really trusted and said look, I'll pay you X amount more than you're already demanding, but you can't work with any other digital marketing agency in the UK. It can only work for my business. How, and they were receptive to that, I mean they thought I was.
Mark:That was manner from heaven.
Mark:It took them five minutes to get off the floor and back to the, because I think the first thing is what happens to most recruiters when they get a customer on board well, the percentage is too high. We've got to nail the percentage down. There's not many that say let's take it up. So straight away. I'm now the leading the conversation because I've said something so unusual Well, this is not high enough, let's take it up. I'm going to pay you more and I stole that strategy from someone I learned.
Mark:I learned a lot of cool things. I did the marketing for some of the biggest companies in the world. We did TikToks marketing, some of the most insane travel companies in the world, and over my career of working in marketing, I met some of the greatest business people in history and I met some of the worst. And what I found is all of the great companies were pretty much doing the same stuff and all of the shit companies were pretty much doing all the same stuff. And I was working with them and I was like well, if I just do what the good companies are doing, I have to get the same results. And so I started borrowing into my company all the stuff that the great companies around the world were doing and sure as shit it worked. What were they we're?
Blake:paying more. You know what?
Declan:Oh, that's the biggest life hack in the world.
Blake:When I've realized in business when I first started Vendito I would try and see who I could get for the least amount of money, and that was like my mindset. I was like, all right, this guy's pretty good, Fuck you to be a steal if I could get him for 45 grand salary. And so that was like my mindset is how much value can I get with as little money as possible?
Mark:And everyone does the same thing.
Blake:And then it's flipped with Ex-Secretary. It's like how much money can I pay someone to have them so bought in and so juiced up to perform that it's almost they feel obligated to make sure that they do a good job 100%. So the more you overpay people, the better return you actually end up getting, rather than spending half and getting fuck all.
Mark:Way more winning.
Blake:You spend double and get triple.
Mark:You've nailed it. I mean I can't improve that much further, because-.
Declan:Make sure that's on camera set.
Mark:I'm not recording. Biggest mistake I made in my career was when I first started. I hired cheap. I churned a load of customers because we were doing poor work. I got a load of bad reviews. I almost had to start again. It was me trying to make my investment that I got go as far as possible. Instead of hiring one really good person on 100k, I hired four on 25k and they were all shit.
Mark:Basically, let's use your example Try and hire someone on 45k, I think you said, and you get them down to 45k and you get them in here and they start working. Then the guy cross road, offers them 50. They'll leave you for 5k. Now you've got to go and spend all that time and energy on getting the next person. If you overpay or pay to a high standard, first of all the employee is thinking I need to stay here because I'm no chance of getting this salary elsewhere. So I'm going to work my ass off to show that I'm worth this salary, if not more. So I'm now committed to this organization. No other organization is going to pay me to the same level, so I must do my best to stay here.
Mark:So you're buying in retention because a lot of companies. That low price thing that they do creates a load of employee churn and they spend so much time and money just replacing people at those low salaries who just go and work for 5k up the road, and it's actually holding the organization back. So pay well, but look at people. Bring in great people into your organization, because no person can become successful on their own. I've never met any billionaire that owns 100% equity of their business. I've never met a billionaire that hasn't got a great team or is surrounded by great people, that doesn't have a mentor, that isn't a great self educator, that isn't savage about self improvement and self development. There's a pattern here Success leaves clues, so why don't we just copy that and get the same results?
Declan:Is it ego? Because it's the same with us, mate. You said it's very rare for what's near impossible for someone to make seven figures. We have multiple people doing that in their first year at X Recruiter. So to have the weight of that, and people go. I'd rather do it myself and end up making 150 grand in their first year, like most people. But is it ego that stops you from just copying? Because that's what Blake's taught me? He goes, mate, just fucking do a course, pay a thousand bucks, learn from the expert, implement, repeat, and that's how you get successful.
Blake:Yeah, yeah. You just get really fucking. Just look at what someone else is doing and then you just go. That's a fucking great idea. I think I could do it a little bit better 100%, 100%.
Declan:Is it ego?
Mark:It is, it's ego and it's a bit of stupidity. It's a bit of thinking you know better, I can do it better. Most small businesses that stay small have leaders that are still doing the payroll, still raising invoices in zero, still doing all this themselves because they feel like they can't trust anyone to have zero access. They can't trust anyone else to do it because they won't do it as good as I do it. Now, how naive do you need to be to think that no one can do anything as good or as better as you? And the truth is there's people out there that can pretty much do everything better than you do. So my goal in my business, and what great business leaders understand, is it's my job to do as little as possible.
Mark:My job and this feels really weird, by the way, because great business leaders are normally hard workers by nature and telling them you need to do less. And every time you find yourself doing something, you write it on the list and you hire someone to do that, and at the end of your career or towards the sale of the business, you should basically be doing nothing except checking. You're the chief checker. Show me that. Who is that? Let's look at that proposal, how we look and what's the graphs, how's the accounts, how's legal? Sweet, I'm a multimillionaire, mic drop. Do you know what I mean? Instead of that guy running his small business answering the phone, doing the accounts, he's so busy. Being busy, he's stopping his own success.
Declan:Mate, you can see it when the recruiters resign, say, from their job, a one to 10 person agency they're like what the fuck have you done? They're scarcity mindset freaking out. And then the 30 to 50 year, like mate, wish you all the best, thanks for everything, and the big dogs go. Who the fuck?
Mark:was that? Yeah, it's fascinating when you learn that success is just a formula. Every business, no matter. Oh, people say we do things differently here. Our industry doesn't work the same. I have consulted for hundreds of businesses. Pretty much every business is the same. The only thing that changes is the mindset of the leadership, and that determines the success of the company. Simple.
Blake:And you wanted to get a bit of a pulse check on what attributes they have, that they go through this 10 level process to handle the stress and all this kind of thing. What are you looking for?
Mark:I look for People that are hungry, that want more out of life. I like people that sort of scare me a little bit because they want so much more than where they are at the moment. And I'll tell you the story behind how I met Declan. Here is the guy who introduced me. He told you go, I move back to Australia. I don't know anyone in Australia in the business scene and it feels weird to have to make connections again in the business scene. I'm sort of back in hustle mode. So I go and meet some of the guys that run the shark tank here and all of the who's who of the business scene in Australia. And the guy one of the guys I met with he says um, there's this guy running this company, extra cruder. Now he's either gonna Go big and be like a billionaire or is he's gonna go broke like you've never seen. I need to meet him Because that's the type of individual who I know's got something. There's something going on there right, there's a formula there somewhere. So we're talking said yeah.
Declan:Yeah, he's gonna be a billionaire, or bro. At least I both start with fucking baby. That's 50, 50.
Mark:That's a sort of that's gonna be an interesting conversation. And then we went and met up for a coffee and I liked you instantly because I was a few things you did in your demeanor, which we'll get on to, which tells me you're successful, and one of the things he does is blow hot air mate. No One, I said something like in, like the third sentence that went when I met you that you didn't agree with and you interrupted me and disagreed with me. That's Declan mate, we interrupts everyone Um believe it.
Mark:No one interrupts me ever, because normally when I'm the last company, I'm the CEO, right, I have a. We had 130 employees. No one interrupts me ever. I meet you. You fucking disagreed with me in the third sentence. It's not even out of my mouth yet. I'm like is this mother fucker? I like him because I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I.
Blake:I I.
Mark:I.
Declan:I I.
Blake:I, I, I, I, I I.
Mark:I.
Blake:I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I I.
Mark:I I.
Blake:I I.
Mark:I.
Blake:I, I, I I.
Mark:I, I, I I.
Blake:I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I I.
Mark:I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I I.
Blake:I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I I.
Mark:I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I I.
Blake:I, I I.
Mark:I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I I.
Declan:I, I, I, I, I, I, I I.
Blake:I, I, I, I I.
Mark:I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I I.
Blake:I.
Mark:I.
Blake:I.
Mark:I.
Declan:I, I I.
Blake:I I.
Mark:I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I was well known. I could get a meeting with pretty much anyone I want in the UK. I had, I own, seven businesses which were doing very, very, very well Some incredibly well and I walked away from sort of 80% of that. I'm still running some stuff over there, but it's hard running it from here and I'm building up here again and I'm excited by the challenge. There's days where I think, fucking hell, why did I do this? Because the pace is a lot slower here. In all due respect, it's like going from six gear to third. It really is the pace I mean.
Mark:Some people have said you always seem like you're in a hurry. It seemed like you're in a rush constantly, and I am. I'm in a rush to be successful. I'm in a rush to live my best life. I'm in a rush to do more. I want to. When I go in the box, I want to leave it all on the table. I want to say, geez, he fucking had to go. He teared it up while he was here. He did some great things. He did some bad things, but he did some stuff and that's why I'm in a hurry. Yeah, interesting.
Blake:I like the way that you put that. That you want to leave it all out on the table Reminds me of a quote and I don't even kind of remember what it is, but it's I think it was a book that I read where you know, when you get up to God and he goes, this is the life you could have had and this is the life you had, and if there's a big discrepancy there, then it's going to be.
Blake:It's going to be pretty heartbreaking if you're not living up to your full potential. So so you're in Australia, you're building up. Now what's what's the plan of attack? You've got right, and group yes. What does right?
Mark:and group do so that's my investment company that buys businesses. So what I'm looking to do at the moment is roll up businesses in certain industries, take shareholding, sit on boards. I want to roll up businesses to achieve 100 million valuations. So my goal at the moment is to work with people or companies that are looking to scale, and my biggest disappointment so far is when I've gone and sat with some Australian businesses, how uncommon it is to hear someone say I want to hit 50 million, 100 million. They're like saying I want to hit 5 million and that's crazy.
Mark:I don't feel like businesses here are ambitious enough at the moment and that's why I'm so excited when I met you guys is you're saying stuff that scares me. You're saying stuff that scares you. You're saying crazy stuff and that's really cool because that's how you've got to think. In my judgment, to be super successful, you need to know one. You don't need to understand how you're going to get there, but the goal has to be ambitious. You know, turning over a million dollars, in my opinion, is not hard. It isn't hard. You can sort of fumble your way to that point. Turning over 50 million dollars is really hard and you have to have good people, processes, structure. You need to really understand your market, who you're talking to, to be able to do that, and you need great people to do that. So I know wherever there's big numbers, there's great people, and that's my search.
Blake:Okay, is there any industry that you're focusing?
Mark:on Healthcare, gaming, gambling, recruitment and property.
Blake:Okay. So when you say roll up, are you getting lots of let's just call it recruitment? Let's say, lots of recruitment agencies, rolling them together and then trying to exit.
Mark:You've got it. So starting a business, you have a 95% chance of failure. Starting a business from scratch Buy and build. If you look at any VC, any investment firm, they don't go and start businesses. They go and buy companies that have existed for a long period of time but they're stagnated in growth or on that tipping point of growth, they buy them and they roll them up because buying revenue is a lot easier than creating revenue. So to get to 100 million quickly, you buy, you slam them together. You will have, you know, bits that fall off in that process. But if you have a good process during that, you should, through your diligence, be able to build quickly, much more quickly than building it.
Blake:Okay, that's exciting. That'd be pretty scary though.
Mark:It's really scary because I sold my last business, some say for a lot of money. The Sun newspaper reported it was for 10 million pounds. I won't confirm or deny that. I'll just tell you what they reported. And that's quite a lot more money in Australian dollars, thankfully.
Mark:But my fear is and I think it's like most people's fear is am I a one trick fuck? Or have I got a few more slices of the underbelly in me and I have this money and I start investing it? And if I lose it, what do I do? If I lose all my money, I'm back to the drawing board, but I've got to have faith in myself and my ability and who I am and what I've built. I know I can do it again and I'm not scared about going back to zero.
Mark:The truth is, if I really lost everything I don't wear fancy shit, I don't really have a fancy lifestyle, I live well, but I could live just as well as I did, you know, 10 years ago I'm not scared of going back to zero and I think really that's an important metric or key lever in success is, if you start to get scared into the point where you are, because you don't want to lose it, you stop making decisions. And when you stop making decisions, you stop achieving more success. And I find myself doing it in my own head and I just have to switch it off, literally. I have to coach myself and say that's you talking yourself out of this because you don't want to lose what you've achieved. But you'll never achieve another thing if you don't make this decision.
Blake:Wow, so you're prepared to go back to zero, to just go? All right, we're going to. We're going to dial this up and keep this party going.
Mark:Every day. I treat my business like a casino. Full monopoly money. That sounds like a very polarizing statement.
Mark:It is because I know that's how I got thinking like I think got me to this point. If I change my thinking, what will happen to my track record? Because I've always been like this and it is always worked. So if I start trying to second guess the game now, will that change the results? And you know, I'm just being open about that.
Mark:My internal thought process I often think about like my dream when I started out was to make a salary $50,000. That was impossible, seemed impossible to me. Then I did it. Then my dream was to get to $100,000 salary and I did it and I was like, god damn, what if I could get to $150,000 Australian? Then I did that. Then I got to 150,000 pounds and 250,000 pounds. What if I could make a million pounds in a year? Then I did that. What if I could make five million pounds in a year? And I kept achieving all of these and I was like actually I can basically do whatever I want. And it was crazy that impossible to me seemed like $50,000. When I was working at Hogsbreath here in Brisbane at Petrie Terrace, it was pretty hard to make $50,000 there. So it just is.
Mark:You put so many limiters on yourself in your own mind. No one's putting limitations on you no one. Maybe some of your family members, who want to protect you, keep you safe, don't want to see you do poorly, but most of your limitations are coming from yourself on a daily basis and it's just. You won't even hear them half the times. You won't even hear you putting limitations on yourself. And I try and catch myself and say, hey, fuck off, we're doing this whether we like it or not. And all of my great success has been on the other side of taking huge risks. Do you think it was risky going down? Do you think when I went on the apprentice they made me quit my job and give up my house? I was virtually rendered homeless. I had no job and if I walked in and got fired on week one I'd given up. A was 85,000 pound salary at that point, 150 grand salary. Given up my flat, I brist it all. I risked the whole house on that, on that undertaking and I want it.
Mark:I've always been of the mindset let's burn the boats at the beach and see where we get to.
Declan:Nice, fuckin' nice. I love that. That's awesome, mate. Another big thing we spoke about, who you flew around with a lot, who you know recruiters know very well, is Grant Cardone. Yeah, gc.
Mark:Yeah.
Declan:What was that like?
Mark:And any like important messages or takeaways that he passed on to you that, oh gosh, I could do a whole podcast on what I learned from just him. One of the benefits of going on the TV and one of the things that came off winning the apprentice was I got asked to do public speaking a lot Just go and do interviews, do podcasts, go and speak on stage about business, about marketing, about success, about the stuff we've talked about today. And I got a call from this guy and he said Grant Cardone is coming to do the 10X UK tour. And I was like I know Grant. I followed that guy when I started in sales. I used to have his picture on my wall on my desk. So this is like a full circle life moment the guy's picture I had on my desk. They're asking me to be his like warm up gig in the stadium. So I go in because I'm known in the UK and business and I say you know, tell some stories about Alan Sugar, about the apprentice, please welcome Grant Cardone. I was like 100%, I'll do it.
Mark:So we spoke to about 25,000 people and we just flew around on his Gulfstream 550. And it was incredible because I've worked with a lot of world-class speakers some of the most famous speakers in the world on business and sales and what I found was when they were on stage versus who they were when we were just behind the scenes or on the plane or, you know, traveling between venues were very different between their values. When they weren't in the public, they'd be on there saying don't drink, don't smoke, don't you know bubba, and they'd be fucking eating ice creams and drinking and doing all the stuff that, going out an hour later and telling thousands of people they shouldn't do and they weren't really true to the values. I found Grant to be the same person on the stage is off the stage. I found him to be the most motivating person I've ever met in real life and we got on really well because he's just like a lad. He swears, he's a nightmare, just like you guys.
Mark:And it was real. He's real and he's a real billionaire. He has hundreds of millions of dollars in his bank and he makes you feel like it's possible for you. And that's really cool Because at each level, like I said, there's always a bigger dog than you and you need that person to help you.
Mark:And when I went to go on his jet the first time, he put his hand across my chest to stop me from going on his jet and he said to me there was no one around. There's no cameras, there's no press, there's absolutely no one. It's in the middle of an airfield in Wales and it's just me and him. And he puts his hand across my chest and he says before you get on my plane, you need to make me a promise. And I said what's that promise? He said you're about to get on my jet and you're going to be the first person outside my family that's ever got onto my private jet. This is brand new $55 million G550. And he said I know people who are going to be successful and you're going to be super, super successful and you're going to have your own jet. But you got to promise me when you have your own jet, you bring other entrepreneurs onto your jet and inspire them, because it's our job that when you get successful, you help other people find success. And I thought fuck, that's cool, that's awesome.
Declan:What a way to wrap up the podcast, because we're now going to the fucking airport.
Blake:We're going on your jet. Oh, that's awesome. You got some incredible stories. I reckon we could be here all day talking about it. Boys, I loved it.
Mark:I absolutely loved it. Listen, you've got a fantastic business. I love what you guys are doing in the recruitment scene. It's finally someone's coming in and just consolidating and making it sick, helping people do recruitment in the right way, and that's why I love what you guys are doing. Awesome Cheers, man.
Blake:Appreciate that. Thanks for coming on my pleasure. Thanks, mate. Thanks for tuning in to another Confessions of a Recruiter podcast with Blake and Declan. We hope you enjoyed and got a lot of value and insights out of this episode. If you do have any questions or you would like to recommend someone to come on the Confessions podcast, we would love any introductions and remember the rule of the podcast, like share and recommend it to a friend. Until next time,