Female Founders: Building Your Recruiting Business with Helen Plumridge

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
Coming up on this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast, why should women think about making that move?

Helen Plumridge [00:00:07]:
Because I think it's a crying shame that only 20% of recruitment businesses are started by women.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:12]:
If you had the chance to go have a cup of coffee with yourself at the very beginning of your recruiting career, what advice would you give yourself?

Helen Plumridge [00:00:19]:
Start a recruitment business earlier.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:22]:
Welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with your host, Benjamin Mena, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all, all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership and placements. I'm excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast. The reason is when you look at the amount of recruiters out there and it's about 50% men, about 50% women are sitting there in the recruiting desk, smiling, dialing, changing people's lives. But when you look at who owns recruiting companies, those numbers are not even anymore. It's what, 80%? A male dominated market. When it comes to recruiting company leadership and ownership, only 20% of the companies out there are founded by females. So I'm so excited to have my guests on here.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:13]:
Helen Pramwich. And we're going to talk about why. We're going to talk about why more women aren't starting their own recruiting companies and we're not going to talk about why. We're going to talk about like why this is such an amazing career and business that it can be done. So, Helen, welcome to the podcast.

Helen Plumridge [00:01:30]:
Thanks for having me. Really excited to talk about this today.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:34]:
So real quick, we always start off with like a deep dive, how you ended up in this wonderful world of recruiting. But before we do that, can you talk to us about your recruiting company and also your training company?

Helen Plumridge [00:01:44]:
Yeah. So I'm Helen Plumridge. My business is hyper consulting and it's the home for female recruitment founders. So solopreneurs up to sub five teams offering programs, support tools, resources to help women be efficient, effective and thrive in their business too. I'm also still very much in the game. So I'm a senior recruiter through and through. I still do quite a few headhunting assignments every year. So I'm still on the tools, which I think helps me drive the training part of the business effectively.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:16]:
Awesome. So I got so many questions for you, but before we do that, how did you end up in this wonderful world of recruiting?

Helen Plumridge [00:02:24]:
That age old question. And it is an age old answer, to be honest, Benjamin, because I did fall into recruitment. I'd actually just moved to the southwest in the UK or moved Back, So I should say after traveling and working in the southeast, and I literally walked up and down the high street, fell into a recruitment company and they said, do you want to go and temp in a bank or do you want to temp in our office? And I pretty much bit their hand off to work in the office because I was quite intrigued about the industry. I've heard about working in recruitment, so. And I'd had a taste for sales. I'd worked for the Virgin Group here in the UK and I got a bit of a taste for sales and how that could add to your earnings. So. And a new recruitment was commit, you know, commission on top of your basic salary.

Helen Plumridge [00:03:11]:
So I temped for about six weeks and lo and behold, I didn't realize, but the manager had a different plan for me and someone left, you know, within those six weeks on the perm desk and she said, do you want the job? And yeah, again, sort of bit her hand off for the position. And, you know, I didn't know anything to start off with. I, you know, I was recruiting anything from sort of legal secretaries to construction managers, you know, marketing managers. So it was quite a variety of different positions. But I just absolutely loved it from the start. I loved the variety. I love the fact you were learning on the job. And I started to do really, really well as well.

Helen Plumridge [00:03:53]:
I started to build really well, which is obviously keeps you, keeps going. It was a lot of fun and I knew I was going to make a career of it. But yeah, that was about 22 years ago.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:05]:
And when did you make the jump and why did you make the jump into your own company?

Helen Plumridge [00:04:08]:
Good question. I think I knew from an early age that I wanted to do something big with my career. I just didn't know what it was. After I worked in that kind of what I call baptism of fire. My first job, because it was the boss, was a nightmare. She was really old school and yeah, kept us, kept us there till late at night and things like that. I went to work for a independently owned recruitment company with two women that own the business and there it was called quite entrepreneurial and you could do lots of things with marketing and you had a lot of freedom and any decisions were just right there, you know. So I think that just gave me that sort of taste for thinking maybe I could do this for myself.

Helen Plumridge [00:04:49]:
And there was another biller there that we were billing a lot of money and I think we just thought, you know what, why don't we, why don't we give this a try? So we did actually set up in 2008 for a couple of years, you know, the good old 2008 crash. And we did struggle through and to be honest, I wasn't in the right personal situation to do it then. So I went back into employed work for sort of four or five years. And then effectively I kind of got a bit fed up of corporate recruitment, you know, sort of KPIs and reporting for reporting sake and met my husband, had a baby. And during that time I just, my, it was my husband and my father in law who kind of encouraged me to take the leap actually. They said now you're obviously really good at this, why don't you do it for yourself? And my husband runs his own business. So yeah, I decided to start really small whilst the kids were young and decide where to go from there. Really?

Benjamin Mena [00:05:49]:
That is awesome. So I love that like they encourage you to do that. And we're gonna, we're gonna talk about like why women most of the time don't make the jump. It's a story that I've had. Like, you know that if in these interviews it's somebody else's encouragement. Well, sometimes these guys are like, I have a dumb idea, I'm gonna go start a recruiting company. But like, let's sit down. Like, you know, there's so many great female recruiters out there.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:14]:
Amazing. Some of the best, biggest billers I've met. Yeah, I sometimes think that like women recruiters are better than men recruiters but like asking thing but like when it comes down to it, like why do we see less female founders for recruiting companies?

Helen Plumridge [00:06:31]:
It is so interesting and frustrating in a way. But there are some key reasons. One is definitely a mindset and confidence thing and it's that sort of fear of failure. You know, I know people talk about imposter syndrome, but that's quite a big key thing for women to take the leap. And that's one big, big area because mindset is everything, isn't it in business. Another is unfortunately to say in 2024 it is the lifestyle, circumstances and it is, you know, women do have that, more of that key role. You've got this, you know, ticking time clock that you know, you are perhaps going to have children at some point. So that can be quite, you know, quite a blocker to taking the leap.

Helen Plumridge [00:07:19]:
And even if, you know, perhaps someone's a single parent actually taking the risk is quite a big one. Given that situation, I think there would be more guys that would take the risk being a single parent than the Women, perhaps, and interlinked with that is the financial risk. Can I take the leap? Perhaps don't have enough buffer to do it and depends on circumstances. But yeah, financial risk is a really big one, which again, you could argue, guys kind of go through that as well. And then also another sort of key part of this is that kind of lack of support of going it alone. And I think women generally and myself included, feel that you need support somewhere to do something like this. You know, you need that kind of network around you, or you need support, or you need just kind of a sounding board to be able to do it. Those are the reasons really.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:13]:
I want to talk about each of each of these and kind of just like do a breakdown. So, like, in mindset, like jumping into your own business for anybody is a huge mindset. Like, it's a huge jump. It's a huge, scary thing. Imposter syndrome. How can somebody listen to this podcast that's like, you know what? Down the road, I want to make this jump. I want to create my own recruiting business and lead my own path. How do I start working on the mindset to help me prepare for that jump?

Helen Plumridge [00:08:40]:
Great question. Great question. The first step is believing that you could do it. And if you're already sitting in a recruitment office and you're billing well, perhaps you're working three or four days a week at home, too. You're already pretty much doing this job. You're already a micro business within a business. You already run a business. You know, there's not many businesses or industries where it's.

Helen Plumridge [00:09:10]:
You're managing your time, you're managing clients, candidates, that type of thing. So I think it's just knowing that you're almost about 70% there because you know the job, you've got clients and candidates, you've proven that you're a biller, et cetera. And then it's. I think it's about then actually conceptualizing what it could look like, talking to, you know, trusted loved ones around you and actually mapping out what it could look like and what your vision could be for your business. So I think it's kind of bringing it to life and actually, you know, believing it first, then starting to conceptualize it, then starting to do a business plan, and then perhaps actually one step further to thinking, right, okay, I could actually do this. I could actually take the leap and set my own business up. Some of the things that I did, one of the things that I did, one of the key things was I actually did a bookkeeping course when I was on maternity leave, and that was one of the best things I could have done because. And I did some marketing for my husband's business.

Helen Plumridge [00:10:09]:
So those two things were actually, you know, those are the couple of things that people struggle with in their own business. It's kind of, oh, God, what can I do about accounting and bookkeeping? And also, what do I do when it comes to marketing? Something I really struggle with. I hear this quite a lot. So I think if you can tackle that and be your own credit controller and confident in the finance side of the business, that can really help.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:34]:
I know we kind of been talking a little bit like, confidence and, you know, building out that plan and that plan can help create that confidence. But, you know, you're looking at starting a company like, you're a great builder, you've done all this stuff. But almost everybody deals with the imposter syndrome if they're looking at jumping out on their own. You know, how do you create that confidence that it's just like that gets rid of that imposter syndrome to go make the dive?

Helen Plumridge [00:10:57]:
It doesn't happen overnight. Definitely. You can't just, you know, click your fingers. But, you know, there's so much help and support. And that's one of the reasons why I set my business up now is to give women specifically support in their business. And also, you know, for anyone who's wanting to start their own business. But, you know, there's webinars, there's masterclasses, there's, you know, can listen to your wonderful podcast and get kind of advice from that. You can, you know, read books, go on a mini business course.

Helen Plumridge [00:11:31]:
You know, there's so many things you could do to kind of prepare. And I think whenever you're equipped with knowledge of how to start a business and you're speaking to peers, you're listening to things like this, you're getting advice from your industry or network, then all of a sudden, that knowledge is power, and that can give you the confidence. But it's something you need to practice regularly, something you need to be doing day in, day out, week in week out. You can't just go, oh, I listen to a podcast month, and I completely forgot what it was about. You know, I find it now. I've just listened to Diary of a CEO by Stephen Bartlett, and there's just so many takeaways in that book, you know, that you can apply to daily life, to your business. So I think it's getting into an entrepreneurial mindset and kind of you need to shift from this kind of. You've mentioned it in your notes, from being that kind of recruiter mindset to business mindset.

Helen Plumridge [00:12:25]:
Hmm.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:26]:
Yeah, I'm going to ask you about that in a little bit because I got some big questions on that because that's a huge thing that I see. But jumping over to, like, the money, you know, making that jump is a huge. Can be potentially a huge financial commitment or scary financially, but at the same time a huge reward. How can somebody start prepping financially if they want to make that jump?

Helen Plumridge [00:12:49]:
Yeah, very good question. And it's quite a key question for everyone wanting to start a business. There are so many different ways to do it. Speaking personally, I did it where I had a very small wage for my husband's business, doing his bookkeeping, and I was lucky enough that he could, you know, support me in the early days. And I had a recruitment fee quite early on that was able to sort of pay, you know, top up the rest. But, you know, whether it's savings, support from your family, you know, you could go down the sort of loan front. But really, you don't want to look at having, you know, too much debt in your business before you start. But you do want to think about that first six months and then having this kind of buffer for your salary and your costs.

Helen Plumridge [00:13:35]:
You can keep your costs really, really low to start off with. I would argue that you don't necessarily need a website to start off with. You can do that six months to a year down the line once you've started. Because LinkedIn tends to be the platform where everyone visits. Don't. Isn't it? So I think. I think you can keep it low. I think the main consideration is just making sure you're paying yourself.

Helen Plumridge [00:13:58]:
You know, you've got this angel investment. There's options out there for new businesses. If you're doing well on your commission, then why not start putting that away and back all your costs for six months to a year? You know, as a household. Look at that. What does that look like? And then once you're in the business, that's kind of those early days and just, you know, get your strategies right in terms of how you're going to pitch and how you're going to price. Because again, if you work on a retained model, you can get paid up front for work. And that's how I work. I get paid up front for retained work.

Helen Plumridge [00:14:35]:
With this third business that I started last November, you know, I very quickly got a retained campaign on board and that was money in the bank, straight away. That meant that for the first six months I didn't have to worry about it. So it's not just the kind of preloading, it's also how you set your strategy when you start your recruitment business too.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:56]:
So we've talked about some of the fears and we've talked about like, you know, like the things stopping people from doing it. We've talked about kind of like answering the questions that. But you're super passionate about the space, you're super passionate about women making that jump. Why should women think about making that move?

Helen Plumridge [00:15:13]:
Because I think it's a crying shame that only 20% of recruitment businesses are started by women. And so much talent like you mentioned earlier, Benjamin, in terms of some of the best billers can be are women. And therefore I think there's just that opportunity to make impact. It's easier than ever to start a business. Lots of, you know, the figures for women starting businesses generally is going up every single year. So now is your time to start a business and reap the rewards for it as well. And actually it's the kind of fear of, you know, actually doing it, that anticipation. But once you've started and once you've done that first six months to a year, it just feels like business as usual because you're doing what you've always done.

Helen Plumridge [00:16:02]:
You've now got all the other considerations of running a business behind it. But it's quite, it's a really simplistic business. If you're just a solopreneur it's actually really easy. But you know, all joking aside, it is quite because you're just managing your clients and your candidates and yourself. So you know, it can be a lot easier than what you think. I think people build it up in their heads to be this big thing. But I also get the kind of risk averseness as well. And I understand that it takes a while to kind of have that risk resilience in business.

Helen Plumridge [00:16:36]:
It take, I think it takes probably take a good year or two before you kind of think, well actually I don't have any issues with having to create money every month to pay myself. And I think you can forget that if you've started a business ages ago. You can forget what those early days. Are. Like I said, I've certainly forgotten, you know, like, you know, I was talking to someone I used to work with only yesterday and you know, it's just that, it's just that fear of what if I don't, what if I don't bill in the first six months or first year. What am I going to do if that happens? You know, that. And that can actually stop progress and it can stop the confidence in those early days.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:15]:
Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, and one of the things I want to do with you is walk through actually getting started. We've decided to make this jump. We decided to, you know, start our own business. We just, like here in the US filled out the LLC or, you know, rebranded our LinkedIn page and you know, sitting down at the beginning of the day, like, okay, what do I do next? So I made the jump. How do you go get your first three paying clients?

Helen Plumridge [00:17:46]:
So, you know, your own network is the key here. Hopefully you would have built a really good. You know, we're just talking about LinkedIn here and I know it's easy just to say Everything happens on LinkedIn, but if you're in recruitment, it kind of does. But there's so much low hanging fruit in your network and believe it or not, a lot of people want to see you do well. So the fact that you've launched a new business, people will want to help you. And the more you can kind of sing and dance about I've started a new business, you know, in messaging all of your contacts. Obviously, if you've got restrictive covenants, you've got to be careful, but a lot of people like new and exciting. So it's kind of, you know, making that pitch that, you know, I've started.

Helen Plumridge [00:18:28]:
And hopefully, you know, if you've decided to, to actually decide on a niche as well, that's even better because you can be really targeted about who you're contacting. You know, if you're doing finance, you can go for your life in terms of contacting CFOs, finance directors, but you'd be surprised how many people will want to see you do well. I very strongly believe in starting with really great candidates as well. And of course that's probably easier to leverage in terms of securing yourself some really good candidates to start off with and then actually marketing them out to your network. So if you make concerted effort and you're doing this day in, day out, when you first start with all the gusto and enthusiasm that you could possibly muster, then it's not going to be long before you start picking up some business. And you want to just be thinking in your head, you know, as long as I've made my first hire or leveraged my first campaign in the first three months and it looks like I'm going to start billing, then actually, you know, it's Small. It's small wins to start off with. And, yeah, that's my main.

Helen Plumridge [00:19:36]:
I don't want to make it any more complicated than that, really. You've just got to go at it.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:40]:
I think that's the thing that also gets like, everybody that's, like, just starting off their own recruiting business. There's so many things that you could be doing. I had a call with somebody that, like, about a year ago that just made the jump. They're like, I've tried making the jump two times before, and I just did it again. And I was like, all right, so what do you focus on? He's like, well, I've been building on my website. And I'm like, you've been a top biller at every company you've been to. Like, how'd you become a top biller? He's like, well, I did this, this, and this. And he's like.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:03]:
I was like, have you done that this week? And he's like, no. Kind of like, stop. Stop working on the website and go do this, this, and this. Those three things are the most important things that you need to do.

Helen Plumridge [00:20:14]:
It's funny, isn't it, because I think all of a sudden you go into business mode or what you think takes all these things. You know, people get absorbed into something like that.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:24]:
Yeah, I mean, we all do. It's like the excitement of getting started. But, you know, I got a few more questions on getting started, because you've done a great job when it comes to marketing. And I know you've talked in other places about building decks and decks. I feel like, probably stand, at least here in the US like, not too many people are using them. What is a deck to a client and how can you easily build one?

Helen Plumridge [00:20:46]:
Well, you know, it is easy to build one. And, you know, you've got AI. You've got AI. You've got ChatGPT these days to help you, you know, because you could template it up, but you can put all your keywording in and just, you know, keep improving it until it sounds great. But really, you just want four or five slides with that you want to present to your clients. So it's something visual. It's a PDF. There's some great sites that you can create this on and make it look, you know, pretty.

Helen Plumridge [00:21:17]:
And really it's, you know, it's introducing you. It focuses on them as a client, who they are, what they're about, what you're there to discuss. Case studies, even if it's not case studies, because you've just started. But it's case studies from your previous experience. You know, I hired a CFO for a manufacturing business. This was the brief, this was the, you know, this is what they needed. And this was the, you know, the results of the hire together with, you know, added value. Anything you can add in there where it's going to help the recruitment process, such as, I don't know, video interviewing snippets or personality profiling, that type of thing.

Helen Plumridge [00:21:56]:
And then if you can get some testimonials from your previous clients, even just two or three nice words about yourself together with some pricing, if you want to pitch some pricing at that stage with a nice conclusion why you want to work with that company. So it's really just a kind of mini presentation. It talks a bit about you, but you want to be focusing on them and solving their issues effectively.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:20]:
Okay, you mentioned something that I absolutely love, that I think a lot of people are afraid of when they're just starting their own business. They're afraid of talking about the success that they've had in the past. Is it okay to talk about the career success that you've had across recruiting?

Helen Plumridge [00:22:33]:
Of course it is, yeah. 100%. It's your success, isn't it? It's your history, it's your background. This is why they're buying from you today. They're not buying from someone who's just started in recruitment just down the road, who's got six months experience. They're buying from someone that's got 20 years experience, great credibility, a host of clients. That's who you're buying from. So you have to kind of take that company or the company piece away where you, where you've worked before.

Helen Plumridge [00:23:03]:
You don't have to mention them, you don't have to mention previous clients.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:07]:
It's something that I've seen so often that people are afraid to talk about something that they haven't had like they haven't had done that recently. So I'm like, look at the value that you've created as a recruiter. Yeah, look at your worth as a recruiter and what you've done for companies. Include that in your story.

Helen Plumridge [00:23:24]:
Definitely. And you don't can include numbers here. I've hired 500 people for manufacturing businesses across Arizona Sky. Yeah, I mean that's. That in itself sounds impressive, doesn't it? That's going to make people want to buy from you. And some little facts and figures like that actually do wonders in the client pitch. I mean, I would buy from someone that had done that smart.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:48]:
And the one thing I wanted to talk about is because many of us recruiters, we have this recruiter mindset. Like, we know how to recruit so well, we know how to do these things. And like in your first few six months, you can't get lost in all the other thousand things you could do as a business owner. But how do you shift your mindset from the recruiter hat to I'm actually now a recruiting owner hat?

Helen Plumridge [00:24:10]:
I think definitely everything I'd said before about, you know, learning and skilling yourself up and you know, that kind of it's very important to work just as hard on yourself as you do in your business. That's a quote from Jim Rowan, actually, who was Tony Robbins guru for quite a while. But it really resonates that it's important to carry working on yourself. But I think things that people, I guess, need to get their head around are, you know, things like accounting systems, processes are actually all really important things. And I still see that kind of recruiter mindset where they think, oh, compliance, oh, you know, that's, that's something that's a bit of a pain. And also having really good sort of systems planning, accounting, you know, scheduling, making sure you're doing things at the same time each week, month. I think the business mindset is much more of a sort of rigorous, organized, planned kind of approach. And I'm not saying recruiters don't have that, but I think you've got to be more systematic in what you're doing and where you're spending your time as well.

Helen Plumridge [00:25:19]:
I guess you've got less time to do business development because you have to do some of those other things. So it's kind of prioritizing. That's still really, really like your most important thing to do. And you've got to try and fit in everything else around it. So I think it's just kind of, it's just got kind of more of a grown up approach and knowing that you've got to do these things and take them seriously and make a good plan for implementing them in your business.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:45]:
Awesome. Before we jump over to the quick fire questions, we've talked about the things that have stopped women from starting their own company. We've talked through kind of like running through those challenges and breaking through and getting yourself set up for success. We talked about kind of like the first few steps of what you need to do, starting your business. Is there anything else that you want to cover when it comes to women getting started?

Helen Plumridge [00:26:07]:
Good question. Yeah, I think it's you know, I'd go back to that kind of support side of things. There is a lot of support out there and I think that is one of the massive things that does hold women back. So, you know, you've got a peer group, you've got a network, there's companies out there that can support you on your journey. You know, why not reach out today because you're thinking about it and start that conversation. That's what I would say.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:35]:
You know what's kind of funny is a lot of the women that we've had on this podcast that have started their own recruiting companies probably share more than the guys do.

Helen Plumridge [00:26:44]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:45]:
And they're even way more encouraging than many of the guys that have been on. So it's been awesome to see. Well, jumping over to the quickfire questions, what advice would you give to somebody that's just getting started in our wonderful world of recruiting this year that's never been in the business before but are looking to be successful?

Helen Plumridge [00:27:04]:
Wowzers. I would say that this is a really great, rewarding career and that if you want a really great rewarding career, you've got to put the time in and you've got to give it a really good shot and you need to give it six months to a year before you can kind of decide whether it's right for you. So don't go into it sort of half heartedly. It's a full on, you know, adrenaline industry that is so much fun. You have to put the work in to start off with. You might have some luck straight away, but actually that's probably just beginner's luck. So you need to do the legwork and that will pay off after, you know, a year, two years, and for the rest of your life. So, you know, get your head down, do what your manager's telling you and, you know, kind of get on some really good business development and be consistent in what you're doing and the rewards will be there.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:04]:
Same question, but for somebody that's been around the block 5, 10, 20 years, 25 years, but you know, they've gone through some ups and downs. Recruiting is a challenging career. The world has changed. What advice would you give to them to keep on seeing success?

Helen Plumridge [00:28:19]:
I think it's never too late in recruitment to have a really good reflect on what you're doing and how you're doing it. And I think you can always learn something new or perhaps relearn something that you'd forgotten. So I think if you're in a bit of a rut, or you're finding it frustrating, or you kind of want a change, whatever that might look like, maybe it's just you need some additional new skills or a new focus in what you're doing and to remind yourself of, you know, what's been before and how you kind of keep on, I guess, accelerating in this industry.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:56]:
Awesome. Do you have a favorite tech tool that you absolutely love?

Helen Plumridge [00:29:00]:
Oh, God, I do love tech. Yeah. I mean, I've got to say, I do really like ChatGPT at the moment because it's, you know, my business. There's a lot of content in my business and it's a fantastic tool. And recruitment is much more marketing content led than it's ever been. So if you're not using ChatGPT to help you on that journey and create things like multiple blogs, albeit that you're going to put some effort into it as well and you're going to tweak it and all those, I'm not just saying just print it off from straight from ChatGPT, but you can create 20 blogs rather than one in a shorter amount of time. And I think that's fantastic. Like, why wouldn't you use that?

Benjamin Mena [00:29:44]:
I keep on forgetting that I need to, like shove my blogs that I've written in there. Chop it up. Great idea. Has there been a book that's had a huge impact on your personal success?

Helen Plumridge [00:29:56]:
Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss, obviously a big podcaster himself and author of Four Hour Working Week, which is also a really good read, by the way. What I love about the application to recruitment is in the book, it's all about top performers and what they do daily, weekly, monthly to help them perform at the best. That's why they're so successful. And actually, when you meet CEOs, when you meet sort of business owners and people that are doing really well in their career, you see the similarities. So you see someone that's high performing in exercise, for example, or you see someone that gets up and meditates every morning. You find someone that's an avid reader. And I find a lot of successful people are avid readers. So, yeah, it's a great book to have on your coffee table and just dip into it.

Helen Plumridge [00:30:44]:
It's phenomenal for understanding, I think, understanding people.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:49]:
Tools of Titan is a great book. Like, he does such a good job pulling together what makes all these people successful. Kind of like on the thread of that book, what have you seen that's been a key similarity to successful recruiters?

Helen Plumridge [00:31:03]:
I think, again, it's discipline, really. It's Discipline. If I was going to sum it up, it's the day in, day out practices of, yes, I'm going to get up, I'm going to do my exercise. But it's the same in recruitment. I'm going to get up, I'm going to do my bd, I'm going to do this. Those are the most successful recruiters, are the discipline ones that are consistent. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:24]:
So you've been a top biller, you've started your own company, you now have multiple companies, you have your own recruiting agency. You're influencing women and helping them do some of the things that you've done. Looking at kind of like the core of yourself and like the ups and downs that you've had. What's been a key driving factor into your personal success?

Helen Plumridge [00:31:44]:
I think it's simply that I'm just, just always been really determined. I was talking about this with my husband this morning, actually. I've just always been very determined, but I'm also really independent, a decisive person. So I think that's been the key to having business success because I don't feel, although I do reach out to peer group and might ask my husband a few questions, I kind of don't need too much validation to kind of just crack on because I've got my why and I've got my focus. And once I've got that, I'm just very determined to make a success of it and make it work. I'm very passionate about it as well. It's really hard. It's a really hard question to answer that, Benjamin.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:32]:
That's the fun of this podcast.

Helen Plumridge [00:32:33]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:35]:
Introspection on the same line. Like, you know, successful businesses, you actually have an incredible partner. But like being any business owner, being any recruiter, there are hard weeks, there are hard months. Like there are times you get in a funk. How do you pull yourself out of that funk and out of those hard weeks?

Helen Plumridge [00:32:52]:
I think it is obviously your, your strength of character yourself and how you find ways of getting out of it, whether it's, you know, you need a break, we need to do exercise, whatever that is. But I do think it's sort of an accountability thing and it's having someone there. I'm going to get back to this sort of theme of support. I think it's having someone that you can go to. I've actually got another female business owner that she does something completely different to me. But we have a couple of accountability sessions a week and actually during the winter, we both found it quite hard. We felt quite isolated in our businesses because you don't see so many people, all those types of things. So it's a lot harder to motivate yourself and get up every morning and go, oh gosh, you know, it's a bit of slog, etc.

Helen Plumridge [00:33:37]:
So I think having someone both personally and professionally that you can lean on at any time and pick the phone up and literally just either have a rant or use as a sounding board, you know, sit down for an hour, have a cup of coffee with. I think those are the types of things. Instead of sticking your head in the sand and I guess not being self aware enough to know that there's an issue, that you've got to have some things that you do in that situation to pull you out of it. And it's okay. It's also okay to feel like that it's okay to have a bad week and feel a bit rubbish.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:14]:
Awesome. You know, many women, the household kind of follows on them. Like, you know, just looking at stats, looking at facts of. At least here in America. How do you balance running a recruiting business and also a family?

Helen Plumridge [00:34:32]:
Are you talking generally? Generally, Generally.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:35]:
I mean, if you want, if you want to go personal too, but like we'll go general, like this is like a general question.

Helen Plumridge [00:34:40]:
Certainly if you're a solopreneur or you've got a small team, which is what, you know, my business is focused on, I think you can, you can manage it well with, you know, a household and children. I think it is about being as sort of as efficient as you can and using your time as effectively as you can in the time that you've got. So if you've just got to work around school hours, for example, then you know, you just make sure that that time is valuably spent. I mean, I know some recruiters that don't, and I wouldn't necessarily do this myself, but they don't, you know, go out and meet their clients, for example. They might just meet them on teams and things like that. So there are things that I think now post Covid, you know, there is that opportunity to kind of be quite efficient in the time that you've got. So again, if you're thinking of starting or you're already doing it but finding it challenging, I think it's just kind of making the most out of those hours and think, and actually do you have to work 40 hours a week to make this successful? You probably don't. You could actually do it in less hours, but do it in a more efficient way if you want to work.

Helen Plumridge [00:35:47]:
If you've got the ability to work in the evening as well, then you've got the evening. And I mean, I wouldn't advise weekends, but yeah, I think it's just, I think it's knowing that you can do it in a shorter amount of time efficiently. And maybe it's a case of maybe I won't hire people, maybe I'll just be a, you know, solopreneur and then I don't have to worry about, you know, paying salaries, motivating people every day and that type of thing. Awesome.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:12]:
And this is actually one of my favorite questions, and we're going to ask this two different ways. The first way is going to be the very, very start of your recruiting career. The second is going to be the start of your recruiting business. You've had tons of lessons learned. You've placed so many people, changed their lives. You've had hard weeks, you've had hard managers, you've had success, you've had failure. Looking back, if you had the chance to go have a cup of coffee with yourself at the very beginning of your recruiting career, what advice would you give yourself?

Helen Plumridge [00:36:38]:
Start a recruiting business earlier. That's what I would have done.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:41]:
Why?

Helen Plumridge [00:36:42]:
Because I think if I'd done it in my, I guess late 20s, early 30s, I just would have had. You do have more energy, more time, less responsibility. Not saying I don't have all the energy in all the time now. I mean, I'm doing a half ironman in a few weeks, but you know, yeah, I just wish I'd done it earlier and kind of maybe made some of the more mistakes earlier.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:09]:
Same question, Bill, let's fast forward. You've started your recruiting business, you made the jump, you launched yourself. You know, you're a month or two in with everything that you know based on your experience. If you can go back in time and just have a cup of coffee with yourself, two months in, what would you be telling yourself to do?

Helen Plumridge [00:37:26]:
I think I would have said, you know, have more confidence in myself to go for bigger, bigger positions. You know, I didn't start off doing retained and executive recruitment, I grew into that. But I think what was holding me back was fear. And actually it's just such a great space to be in the exact search market and it's lucrative, et cetera. So I think it would be great to kind of not go for so many low hanging fruit in the early days and actually got my pitch better. So I was going after, I guess a more senior, more rewarding end of the Market.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:08]:
Awesome. I think that's a great advice for everybody right there.

Helen Plumridge [00:38:13]:
To say easy to say one exactly person. Well.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:17]:
And okay, so you had your company, you founded your company, you've been running with your company, you've started working with other women to help lead them into starting their own company. So you probably get all a ton of questions, I guess, right?

Helen Plumridge [00:38:29]:
Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:31]:
Is there a question that you wish they would actually ask you but they never really do? And what would that answer be?

Helen Plumridge [00:38:41]:
I wish it would be more around the how can I be less operational in my business? How could I be more strategic and you know, be more efficient so I can have more time to either spend it, you know, in my personal life or grow my business? Because I think, yeah, a lot of people kind of get caught up in the day to day and that is important in the early days of your business. But actually in terms of actually growing, you know, profitability, efficiency and having more freedom, actually stepping away from some of those, this is based on the fact that you, you know, having more people in your business, really. And I guess my answer would be that it's a decision that you, you know, it's a decision, it's like anything else in your business, right? You look at it, you go, right, okay, is there a business case for this? Should I really do this? What would be the benefits of me doing it? Could I earn more money? When could I implement this and what could it look like over the next year? Two years, three years?

Benjamin Mena [00:39:41]:
I love it. I absolutely love that. So, you know, I'm so glad that you got to come on and share. You know, I did not know. I mean, I probably should have known the numbers when it comes to recruiting founders out there. I did not realize it was like the 8020 rule when it comes down to it. But I know so many amazing recruiters that are way better than me. So I'm really glad that you're like, you know, encouraging people to make that jump, encouraging women to make that jump, make that leap, to go set themselves up and start charting their own path.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:12]:
But for the listeners out there, they want to follow you. How do they go about doing that?

Helen Plumridge [00:40:16]:
Thanks very much for that, Benjamin. I'm delighted to have been on the show as well. I've really enjoyed it. I love your passion, enthusiasm too. Yeah, just on LinkedIn, Helen Plumridge, you can download my 18 revenue enhancing hacks to simplify your business and give yourself more free time. Send me a message. DM me. Happy to help.

Helen Plumridge [00:40:36]:
Happy to jump on a call and yeah, hope to hear from you soon.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:40]:
Awesome. And before I let you go, is there anything else you want to share with the listeners?

Helen Plumridge [00:40:46]:
Just go for it. Just go for it. Life's too short. So if you're thinking about it, you know, don't hesitate. Take some action. Take some action today and yeah, go look at setting up your own business. It's a great and rewarding career.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:01]:
Helen, thank you so much for coming on for the listeners. Exactly what she said. Take action. We're coming into the close of 2024. Try to make 2024 your best year yet. But here's the thing. Whatever you are doing right now between now and the end of the year is going to set up the foundation for success for 2025. I want you to win in 2025.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:20]:
I want you to crush it. So let's make it happen. Helen said take some action and let's go guys.