Mastering the Exit: A Founder’s Guide to Building, Scaling, and Selling Recruitment Companies with Marc Cohen - Part 1

Benjamin Mena [00:00:02]:
I am so excited about this episode because we are going to talk about the dream that so many recruiting founders dream about. We're going to talk about with somebody that's actually done it twice. They've exited two recruiting companies. They built, scaled, sold. We're going to talk about exactly how we did it from A to Z. The bumps, the headaches, the things that you need to watch out for. But most importantly, we're going to share the journey of how to get there and how you can take the idea, that dream that you have when you started your own business and you weren't looking at a lifestyle business, you were looking at growing something that you can actually turn produce and sell into a reality. So I'm so excited to have Mark here on the podcast.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:43]:
So welcome, Mark.

Marc Cohen [00:00:44]:
Thank you very much. Love your energy.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:47]:
So before we start doing a deep dive on how you ended up here in America, how you built your businesses, like, all that stuff, can you tell everybody a little bit about what you're doing now?

Marc Cohen [00:00:57]:
Yes. I now help and advise companies on recruitment and staffing businesses, how to scale, how to build value, and ultimately, hopefully achieve the dream of an exit one day. All right. Work with them as an informal advisor giving executive strategy board advice.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:14]:
Okay, so you are doing that now, but let's roll it all the way back. How did you even end up in.

Marc Cohen [00:01:20]:
This world of recruiting is a funny one for me. I got a dream job after college. I actually got a job. Beat 2000 people to this job, which is advertising at M C Startship. Big company, big job. Amazing. My starting salary was $15,000 a year and living in London. That was brutal.

Marc Cohen [00:01:42]:
And I didn't realize I was money motivated. But slowly, the grind of not earning money and living in a big city and living at home with my parents wore on me. So I quit that job. I booked a trip to go traveling, and I then stumbled into recruitment, as many people do. Guess What? I earned $15,000 in my first four weeks in recruitment. First four weeks in recruitment, earned $15,000. So I suddenly realized, wait a second, I'm onto something here. And I think sales and an environment where I can control my own income.

Marc Cohen [00:02:14]:
My destiny is really important.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:15]:
Oh, so you literally had a yearly salary of 15,000, said, Screw that.

Marc Cohen [00:02:21]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:21]:
And then jumped into recruiting. And you had success out of the gate? Like. Like, why did you have success out of the gate? I know so many recruiters that didn't.

Marc Cohen [00:02:27]:
My company played a trick on me. It was crazy what the guys on my desk did. Crazy to think they did this, which is they said to me, every call that you make, you should get a vacancy. Every vacancy, you should get submissions. And every time you submit, you're going to get interviews, and one of those candidates is going to get the job. So I literally operated that way. And I wouldn't let somebody get off the phone without giving me a role because I thought that's what every call supposed to happen. And every time I made a submission, I wouldn't let them get away with it.

Marc Cohen [00:02:55]:
They're going to interview the candidate and the people on my desk. Now, I know obviously that's not reality, but the people on my desk must have been sitting there thinking, oh, my God, what is going on? So four weeks later, I've made seven placements, permanent placements. And I remember it so well because the CEO of the company said to everyone, right, company meeting right now. Get gang, company. Mark, you can leave, okay? And I'm thinking, what have I done wrong? I'm sitting out. I'm the only one in this whole business I've just joined who's not allowed in this meeting. And he just says, yeah, your jobs are all in jeopardy now. This kid's come in, he's done deals straight away.

Marc Cohen [00:03:30]:
And now you're all under pressure. If you're below target, you're under pressure now because it's shown us that he could do it. So people came out the office literally staring at me like I did something wrong. And I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't know. And that was my start to recruitment.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:44]:
Like, I'm just blown away. That is just insane.

Marc Cohen [00:03:48]:
By the way, there is a crazy one for you in that, because it's one of my craziest recruitment stories ever. In one of those seven placements, a guy, they tell me, you know what? Call up his old company because they're going to be looking now. So I call up his old boss and say, this guy's left, obviously, and we placed him at a new company. And he says, he hasn't left, he's just sick this week. No, no, he's taken a new job. I'm telling you, he has. And the CEO starts swearing at me. It becomes a whole thing.

Marc Cohen [00:04:15]:
I put the phone down. Oh, my God. I realized the candidate has started at my client, but he's just taking a week off work. He's just deciding if he likes it. This is so bad. I live at home, my parents. It was my grandma's birthday. The phone rings at home with my parents.

Marc Cohen [00:04:29]:
My mom's like, oh, this. Somebody wants to talk to you. So I pick up the phone, my grandmother family's in the background. I'm 21. And he says, I'm gonna get a gun. I'm gonna find you, and I will kill you. So he says to me, no problem. I just take the phone call upstairs.

Marc Cohen [00:04:42]:
You have to go upstairs. I'm just gonna take you upstairs. I go upstairs, I answer, I will get a gun. I'm gonna find you. I will kill you. He starts just, absolutely. I'm not the one that lied to everyone. I'm not the one that cheated my current employer, the new company, etc.

Marc Cohen [00:04:55]:
I think you got this wrong. And besides, like, you know, I'm just. Just doing my job type of thing, But I had to worry about somebody getting a gun and killing me. He stayed at that company, by the way, and ended up doing pretty well, but luckily I never met him.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:08]:
That's insane.

Marc Cohen [00:05:10]:
That was like, in the first. I was like, on week two, that happened. This is quite a crazy start in recruitment.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:16]:
Okay, that's a crazy start. But it's also like, I think you nailed something that I think a lot of recruiters don't understand, the power of belief.

Marc Cohen [00:05:23]:
Yep.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:24]:
You believed exactly that. This is how it operated, and you actually went and did the work, assuming that's how everything went.

Marc Cohen [00:05:33]:
Yeah, I talk about this a lot, which is a really good observation. I talk about this in my life. I've been able to hustle and get certain things that I wanted and certain things happen. But that started with a belief that that's happened already or going to happen. It's not really a question. And people will say that if you know Mark, once he's made his mindset on something, then that's happening. And that's like, you say it's a belief piece.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:54]:
Do you. Is there a way that, like, did you always have that, or was that something that you had to develop or it was just stupid. It started off as just dumb. Walk. That's a joke on you.

Marc Cohen [00:06:04]:
No, I think I've always been a little bit of a. Without realizing it because obviously we're our own people. You've got your own personality. I think I was always a hustler, always finding ways to make money, have a bit of an edge, be entrepreneurial. As a young kid, I didn't come from any money, came from low income, and I had to hustle to have everything. College. I had to work to afford to be the college. So there was a lot of that was always ingrained in me.

Marc Cohen [00:06:26]:
I think and my parents brought me up to be pretty independent. You're on your own. You gotta live and die by these decisions. And I think that really helped in a way not having a comfort blanket and being accountable for myself and okay, so fast forward.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:41]:
You jumped into recruiting but then you were hustling in the evenings on top of that.

Marc Cohen [00:06:47]:
Yeah, I got offered a job, I moved to Sydney, I moved to Australia, did recruitment in Sydney which was amazing, fantastic. Really had one of the best years of my whole life in Sydney. I couldn't recommend Australia enough and then was head hunted to go to Los Angeles. That was a big opportunity. Spilling a million plus a year. Really good environment I was doing. Interestingly I did. I started off doing graphics and video games.

Marc Cohen [00:07:14]:
Graphics in video is my big customer on trend today. But back in the day they were very different and video games. But most importantly, I think where you're asking about the evening work was I started to really get a passion for learning the game, learning recruitment, learning sales, the psychology of it. And started really spending time outside of work focused on understanding that, becoming a trainer. So Dale Carnegie is the largest training company in the world. I became a master trainer for Dale Carnegie, which is a big thing because I had to learn the game that I was doing. I didn't know any of it. I did it as a hustler, as somebody who's, who's able to make it up as I go along.

Marc Cohen [00:07:55]:
I didn't know what a rapport builder was, credibility statements, I didn't know all the language around it. And I realized that learning that was critical for me and critical for me to pass on that knowledge in future.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:07]:
But okay, you were, you got to the master trainer level within Dale Carnegie at the age of 26. Like I hate to say this, it's going to sound bad. Like I have not seen like many trainers in that world that didn't have gray hair.

Marc Cohen [00:08:17]:
That was their whole thing. That was why they came to me and said most of our trainers that they're retired. We don't have a 26 year old VP who's crushing numbers essentially. And we want somebody who's able to talk and relate to people. In that sense somebody's able to stand up there and say I'm living this, I'm embodying this. I didn't do it 20 years ago, I'm doing it now. Today I'm using these tools and these exercises and that was valuable. Credibility is real.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:43]:
There's awesome. Okay, so I want to. You went from the UK to Australia how did you actually end up in the us?

Marc Cohen [00:08:55]:
So I was, I had a good reputation in the UK and I guess I was hitting big numbers in Sydney and I often would get messages, as people do, to say, hey, when you move back to the uk, I'm going to offer you a job. And I made a flippant comment to one of those companies. I think my next move will be the us. That company said, well, funny you should say that, we have an LA office. Damn it. I sort of gave them an in. They're like, right, we're booking flights for you to go to la. No, no, no, we're not, we're not.

Marc Cohen [00:09:26]:
I was very happy in Sydney. No, no, we're not. And eventually, literally, they, literally, I'm saying they booked a flight and sent me the tickets. Ah, I guess, I guess I'm going to go to la. It's going to be a free holiday now, I'll go there. And then they got me on something which is, and here's the truth of it, I went into LA and the guys that were working in that LA office, they were billing 2 million plus and they were doing large scale international projects. And I sat there and I just thought, oh, no, I need to learn this now. They're better than they were achieving things that I didn't know about.

Marc Cohen [00:09:57]:
It was a growth thing. And I really realized, let alone the fact that I actually had a really blast in la and I'm 24 at the time and LA is a cool place to live, but it was the fact that I could sit there and I think I can grow my career, I can live in a different country, I can have experiences at 24 that I'm never going to get anywhere else. But most importantly, this is going to be good for me long term. I can earn serious money. This was a big career move, let alone a life move with it. So it ticked two massive boxes for me.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:24]:
And they actually, like, without you saying yes, they bought the plane tickets?

Marc Cohen [00:10:28]:
Yeah, they did, they did. And not only that, it was. They offered me the job when I was here. I came out for a weekend of interviews and actually it wasn't interviews, let's be honest. They just wanted to get me out, having a good time, loving la. They did something really smart, had a really good time and they offered me the job and I said no because I'm so settled in Sydney. And I sat there and just thought, actually, I've had a really good time, I kind of need to, I need to experience this.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:52]:
So I took the risk and this was what, 2000.

Marc Cohen [00:10:56]:
And it was the worst timing possible. It was 2001 when I moved here. The whole tech economy had crashed and was in pieces, absolute pieces. And that's why actually, that was one of the biggest and best pivots of my whole life. Coming here and realizing that everything's in pieces. I had to develop a philosophy, a philosophy that I believe in to this day, which is if I'm going to be a successful recruiter, I need to map out the future of whatever market I'm in. So I looked at the future of tech. Where's this going? It was becoming entertainment content driven, or where was that big? Big at the time was video games and graphics.

Marc Cohen [00:11:31]:
It wasn't about playing video games. It was about realizing this is a nascent industry that's going to grow rapidly and build a relationship in that industry. And that philosophy has stuck with me and everything I've done from there still to this day. I work the future now. So it's funny, I was, let's say Rockstar Grand Theft Auto again, everyone knows the founders of Grand Theft Auto are in my house in Beverly Hills when it was released, sitting there saying, oh my God, can you believe this is blowing up? Et cetera. Couldn't believe what they'd achieved. Well, it's a tiny industry, so you can dominate these small industries.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:08]:
So we're, we're going to spend some time digging into that in a bit. But like, you were so embedded in that industry that you got at Xbox before it was live.

Marc Cohen [00:12:19]:
Yeah, I got. Got all the dev kits. But I mean, look, you want to go back in the day sometimes I hate saying stuff, this just seems so old. This is 20 years ago, right? There was no LinkedIn. There was no way of getting headhunting people. So what we had to do is we built a relationship with the local video game store who would allow us to go in there and take the video games off the shelves, plug them in to get the credits. We'd have a digital camera. We'd take photographs of the credits of the video game programmers, designers, and then.

Marc Cohen [00:12:48]:
Cause there was no other way to find out who they were. Give the video company, give the video game store the game back. They knew what we were doing. And then contact those people and headhunt them. That's how small and unique the industry was. We'd go to industry events and there's only like two recruitment companies total. Like there wasn't. You could just walk the room and everyone would know who you are.

Marc Cohen [00:13:10]:
It's just A very, very niche, different world out here.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:15]:
Okay, so. And then when did you decide to actually, like. Like everything seems like it was working good, like you were crushing it, like you built up a space. When did you decide to actually start your own business?

Marc Cohen [00:13:28]:
I always knew I was going to do at some stage. It was a matter of time. And that was the Dale Carnegie thing. Learning the training, learning knowing that this is the path and the journey for me to do it myself. But the truth is, I wanted to hit maximum maturity in life. There's a piece where I was needed to dedicate myself. 110%. We just spoke about this with yourself, where nothing else matters.

Marc Cohen [00:13:49]:
And I wasn't ready for that. When I was 26, 27, I think come my late 20s, I started to be able to say, I'm ready to stop earning money. I was earning a lot of money. No money, no life. Just changed my lifestyle 110%. So age 29, 2008. I did that, moved back to England to do it. So there was a catch for me.

Marc Cohen [00:14:11]:
I had two things come up at the same time, and I always said I would move, leave LA for love or money. And both came at the same time, which is a girl in England who's now my wife. So thankfully, that was an amazing move and went really well. But I met a girl in England and obviously we started a relationship. And then a guy in England, who I know, my business partner, he turned around and just said, look, something I really rated, I respected somebody who was a bit of a mentor to me, said, hey, if you were ever to move back to England, I'd leave my job tomorrow. We'd start a business. Funny you should say that. And that then started that.

Marc Cohen [00:14:47]:
That path.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:49]:
So, like, when he said that, like, was he expecting you to actually be like, hey, guess what? Next week?

Marc Cohen [00:14:55]:
We were. Yeah, it's funny. We were in our company, we were both like, number one. We worked in the same company. I worked in the US Business, he worked in the uk. We were both like number ones, number one and two. And people would make a joke of saying, you two are the dream team without ever realizing that I might move back. And if I did, the dream team suddenly becomes the dream team, which is what happened.

Marc Cohen [00:15:16]:
I don't know. It's one of those funny things where maybe he did realize because he knew that I was in a relationship. He knew that some of that. Maybe he thought I'm planting the seed at the right time. I don't know. It was the perfect timing.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:28]:
And I know you actually, you guys built the business together. But let's talk about just the relationship that you actually have with him or, you know, had with him. Because like, I've seen a lot of like partnerships fail.

Marc Cohen [00:15:40]:
Like the number one reason a business will succeed and number one reason a business will fail is the leadership. It's the number one. So if the, if the partnership is together and aligned and I talk about philosophical alignment, don't forget all the day to day stuff. If we have the same. Just like you with your partner, if you have a partner, we have the same vision in life, what we believe in, the direction we're going in, that all the little decisions are very easy to interact on. And I really align that philosophically. And we knew each other for a while and we really went into it like a big relationship. And somebody who.

Marc Cohen [00:16:15]:
Graham. Graham Huber. I love Graham to this day. I talk to him all the time. To this day. We talk about, oh, we'd love to work together. And if we were in the same country, he's actually just moved from England to Dubai, but in the same country, we'd be living next door to each other. And that's a bless.

Marc Cohen [00:16:29]:
Honestly, one of the biggest pleasures of my life being able to do the business with somebody I trusted and interact with. And the team knew that, they knew that we were aligned. They knew this stuff. They're not going to be able to get between us. And that's really important for their direction. But mom and dad are on the same page. That's really important.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:47]:
Mom and dad are on the same page. I've seen the chaos of when founders are not on the same page. And I think it's one of the reasons why so many people have started their own recruiting company is when the founder is just like chaos.

Marc Cohen [00:17:01]:
It's so important. It's so hard. There was a couple of businesses that we were very close with when consoles set up and those businesses we'd go out with the founders and everyone was really close. Both those other businesses broke. They broke up. The founders, both those other businesses are nowhere near where they were even at that time. They never, ever recovered from the split, ever. And they never exited either one of those, despite them being their big goals and having a serious business.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:27]:
When you guys actually got together and said, we are actually doing this, did you guys do a bunch of like behind the scenes foundational work? Did you guys do a bunch of planning? Do you guys like. Or was this kind of like a. Did you guys put together a structure and a strategy or is It a scenario that you guys actually like, let's do this and then start building the airplane after you guys already jumped off the cliff.

Marc Cohen [00:17:47]:
No, we were the guys that mapped out everything that happened, mapped it out, the valuation on an exit, the strategy, who would buy us. We mapped out day one. And there's a really weird thing that I have, which is we had this whole vision. You know, we built our knowledge, we then developed the plan and we executed on it. And it didn't feel. It was really hard, don't get me wrong. But I felt all along that was what was going to happen. There wasn't any other.

Marc Cohen [00:18:10]:
There wasn't any other option. There was no other breaking up, not selling. We were going to build this business, we're going to build value, and we're going to make the exit. We did that. It's only after I exited, when I started to talk to so many other founders, that I realized, oh, actually we're more the exception than the rule. I didn't really know that. I didn't probably have. I was just living my life not caring about other companies.

Marc Cohen [00:18:32]:
Now when I talk to other advisors, there's so many, and I'm so surprised at some of the gaps that I see. It gives me value that I can hopefully help them bridge that gap. But no, we were very much the opposite. We sat out even in. We gave directors, some directors that we brought into the business, we gave them equity and we put in what we felt the equity would be worth, and they achieved pretty much exactly that number eight years later, which is crazy to think. And that was really important to me to map that out. So they knew the journey they were getting in, they knew the value to them and why that was important.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:08]:
And maybe this could be a whole separate talk that we probably need to put together for this. But can, if you've already started your business, can you take a step back and restructure and restrategize to actually. And what are these, like, foundational structure that you need to start mapping if you want to go build your business big? Like, what are the things that. Like the bullet, we'll say the bullet points that you need to make sure that you're thinking about early on.

Marc Cohen [00:19:36]:
Yeah, really good. So I start talking a lot about philosophy and it sounds like, what do you believe in? For example, today the trend is that is that hybrid in office. What level of management do you believe in? What hours, what's what you're really starting to develop. A philosophy is absolutely fundamental. That's the personality of a Company, Right. That's what every decision comes back to, that philosophy. Then you set a strategy. But the truth is with people, they need to understand so many different levels around an exit.

Marc Cohen [00:20:03]:
It's quite complicated. So are you building recurring revenue? That's why the contract piece is important. Are you now AI? You will not exit if you don't have AI layered into your business. Why? Because who's going to buy a business that isn't future proof? They're not buying your business today. The way to think about it is no one's buying your business today. They're buying the opportunity to scale your business. So you're like that young athletic talent that somebody wants to bring in, not because they're ready to start and win every game, but because they will be in a few years. And if I get this young talent, that's how to think about it.

Marc Cohen [00:20:34]:
So that's step one, Step two, which is greed kills all deals. We didn't go to market having stripped out all the profit of the business because that's just too obvious. We went to market saying there's massive opportunity for us to partner with a company and grow together and both make a lot of money out of this. Had we stripped stuff out of the business and optimized our profit, that wouldn't be a realistic journey. So one of the things that we need to know is on an exit, you're not going to get a check. No one's going to say, oh, there you go, there's a check for 50 million, walk off into the sunset. They're going to invest in your business, probably lead you in, keep you in there for two to three years. So it's the whole journey.

Marc Cohen [00:21:11]:
To answer your question, Cam, yeah, absolutely. You can pivot your business at any stage. It's all a story. And if you said, hey, the first five years was a lifestyle business, I did really well and I realized I have a market opportunity. Well, the buyer is just going to hopefully buy into the story and where your business could be in 3, 4, 5 years time.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:28]:
Awesome. And what multiple did you guys end up exiting on the first business?

Marc Cohen [00:21:33]:
8.6. So, you know, obviously we should do a whole thing around this. I don't know if you're. If everyone's aware of multiples in the market. So typically today multiple's a little bit suppressed given what's happened the last couple of years, but many companies are going to try and achieve a multiple of five or six. We were aiming for seven. Multiple eight would have been incredible. And then we actually achieved 8.6, which was huge for us.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:58]:
And when you say 8.6, did you guys have direct placement? Was it a contract or was it a combination of both?

Marc Cohen [00:22:07]:
65% contracts, we had 350 contractors out. 35% perm though was the average deal. Size was $47,000. So it was good size business, good relationships, all in emerging tech. So that's really the big thing. Why did we get an 8.6 multiple or what did we do? Our philosophy has always been to work the next big thing. So we were doing content, video streaming online, all that online content world, that was our big focus and mobile networks. In 2008, 2014, we pivoted to AI.

Marc Cohen [00:22:45]:
So 2014 I mapped out a future of the world. Being AI driven seems so obvious now, by the way, in this world, when I say it, we got to remember in 2014 there wasn't this stuff around. We mapped out a future of AI, including for me it was about AI interviews or automating the whole stack. I had this whole document I did and then had to wait 10 years for reality to kick in. But we recruited heavily in those markets and so then for come acquisition time in 2016, they obsessed over the markets, over the sexy customers that we had. TikTok was, you know, Bite Dance now that was one of our biggest customers. And so these are big brand names. We got in there in a really, really highly specialist and highly valuable way.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:28]:
Is there was there things that you guys did outside of like sexy customer, sexy market before it was sexy, that you guys were really, we'll say on an operational scale that really moved that, that multiple up.

Marc Cohen [00:23:43]:
Really good question that. I mean we talked. There's so many factors that go into multiple. You could start looking at margins, you can start looking obviously the customer base, the type of things that we did, the locations that we were in. We built out some US contracts, which is really valuable because it almost showed that you can build more contracts on top in the us. But I think that the big thing for us, we had a massive emphasis on L and D, on internal marketing, documenting what we were doing, the strategy and what that meant is you got to imagine come exit time, you're talking to companies where we could demonstrate everything I could demonstrate. Here is 2017. Here is a step by step guide documented for progressing your career.

Marc Cohen [00:24:24]:
You come in as a junior person in our business. I have a step by step labeled out. You want to become a senior consultant, you can do that within six months. This is what you need to achieve in terms of billings, behaviors, Operational. We had that all mapped out. Almost an answer for everything. So should someone come in, say, well, but let me show you this, let me show you this. And that was a really polished professional approach.

Marc Cohen [00:24:44]:
Somebody said to us, I even remember the guy's name, but he said to us, you need to pretend that you are operating as a billion dollar company from day one. And would a billion dollar company not have any marketing material? Of course they would. Would they have this? Course they would operate that way because the company is going to buy you, is probably going to be a billion dollar company and they're going to expect that you've operated in the same way. So it's really good advice.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:09]:
Were you tempted not to sell?

Marc Cohen [00:25:13]:
No, it's a hard one. I tell you why. There's a really interesting thing because I do hear this a lot and I've got like one of the companies I'm closest to is that does really well and they're almost like, I don't know what we should do here. We built the business, we built a vision, we had a whole map to do and we built it to create value for shareholders, to create an exit opportunity. And it wasn't just me. There was, we had seven, my business partner, there's seven other minority shareholders that came on that journey. For them to realize and exit themselves, they, they knew they were going to then take that money themselves and parlay that into setting up their own businesses so they could become multimillionaires one day. And they have done that successfully.

Marc Cohen [00:25:55]:
It's one of the things I'm proud of those, those people at console have now pivoted towards their own businesses. But no, I think it was always set up to exit. It was then just coming about the timing of the exit. I could have held on a little bit longer and built, continued to build the business. I was worried about the macro economy. Now bearing in mind I actually made the final exit. I walked out the door in December 19th. It turns out that timing was really, really, really key.

Marc Cohen [00:26:24]:
You know, it's funny, when Covid hit, people gave me messages like, can't believe you timed that. I can't believe you the way you did. I didn't. No one knew. What are you talking about? Time? They didn't time anything. I just got lucky on one thing in society or unlucky as society got. But yeah, there's was no timing. I can take zero credit for that.

Marc Cohen [00:26:41]:
But I was worried in 2016, went to market. I was worried about the macro economy. So to some people listening today, I Actually think it's really interesting. We have had a really tough period and hopefully we're going to have a few months of sustained growth and that leads to a few years of sustained growth. Economic cycles typically work every seven to 10 years. Let's predict eight years. So we can feel good about five years, six years of growth. After that you got to start thinking, are we going to have another five, six years of growth? And therefore, if you're on, if you're on an exit journey or you want to build a business, I love it.

Marc Cohen [00:27:12]:
Now's great timing to build something for the next two or three years, potentially think about and realize an exit and don't get sucked into doing it one step too late. The economy changes and you won't get an exit because obviously your business declines and the buyers run.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:28]:
For people that even are thinking about exiting, the economy has a huge impact on that, doesn't it?

Marc Cohen [00:27:33]:
Correct. It has probably just as big an impact as their own business does. So going to market with an amazing business when the economy's down, you get a lower multiple, probably less interested buyers, less level of competition and a higher perceived risk. So yeah, it's a little bit more challenging. Whereas the markets up. Typically we had, let's say eight offers, but six were legit offers where we really sat down and had to consider it. And that was an honor to have six different offers there.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:01]:
So, you know, looking back after the first sale, why did you decide to do it again?

Marc Cohen [00:28:09]:
So the what? My first business I sold as a minority shareholder and so I made money, but really I was able to parlay that money to set up my business console. And if you look at that, we didn't take salary for two years. I said to you, I came from low income, right? It's not like I'm sitting there and I've got a million dollars in the bank. I earned a lot of money in my 20s and I was able to make a small exit on my previous company to then enable me to set up console and not earn any money. And people, by the way, they love to not think about that where your office manager is earning more than you and you're literally not taking anything, no dividends, no nothing, reinvesting it in the business. People don't talk about the fact that, you know, it wasn't even 12 hour days. I was doing long days, coming back home, going to gym and then coming back online at 9, 30, 10 o'clock at night for an hour or two every day for two years until the business was really yeah, people don't. Don't talk about that.

Marc Cohen [00:29:04]:
But it was, it was a hard draft, but there was no question that that was going to be done. There was no question I was fine doing it. I never complained about it. There was no issue there because I knew the rewards would come our way.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:16]:
Those early days where it was two years before you took money out of your business because you kept on reinvesting, was there other things that you were doing that you recommend other founders to do during that window of time where you probably made some of the biggest impact on your company?

Marc Cohen [00:29:34]:
Yeah, I mean, there's things that. There's a couple of things that went wrong in that time. Right. So here's one, the biggest takeaway, actually the most negative thing that happened in our cons, one of the most negative thing in our console journey was in year three, two top billers left, number one and two, and these were key hires for us. And it was like, oh, my God, we've got a small business at that time, it's 25 people. Like, this is a disaster. Is everyone going to leave? Is this the beginning of the end? You start really thinking and fearing that way. So we took advice.

Marc Cohen [00:30:04]:
Advice is very handy. And the advice from two advisors that we spoke to was, you need to start cutting costs. You need to know what's going to happen and get ahead of. Just didn't feel right for me. We're growing business. We've done really well. Every data point is really positive. It just doesn't feel they can't cut up.

Marc Cohen [00:30:21]:
Until day before, we were struggling to hire enough people. Now we're going to cut staff. And I turned around. Here's a bit of advice, and I really passionately believe this, and I'll say this to you as well, which is, in life, you're going to live and die by decisions. Make sure they're your decisions. Make sure you feel good about your own piece. I didn't feel good about the advice. And by the way, nothing wrong with the advice.

Marc Cohen [00:30:41]:
I love them, but I didn't feel good about it. And I sat there and I'm so lucky. I've got a business partner that almost believes in me so much. I sat there and I was like, I don't. I don't feel. It doesn't feel right. And we had. I said, there's a big point here.

Marc Cohen [00:30:54]:
We're going to make a decision right now. If this business is going to succeed or fail, it's going to be from our decisions. That's it. And I'm okay with that. I could handle making a different decision here and the business collapsing. I can't handle listening to the advice that doesn't feel right and the business not going the way it wants to go. So the tipping point is I'm going to be responsible for the decision. So what did we do? We turned around and said we haven't lost the two biggest billers because guess what, me and Graham are going to get back on the phones.

Marc Cohen [00:31:20]:
We got literally on the phone to start doing BD the next day in front of everyone. They hadn't seen it because I hadn't needed to do it as much and suddenly started winning big customers, handing them out. And what we didn't realize is the team suddenly just thrived. Craig was one of our best ever years, to be honest. In year three, we could have had a big exit because we had massive profit. Great story. It was. It would have been actually really interesting.

Marc Cohen [00:31:42]:
We didn't realize that year three was an outlier year over the six. Took us six years to get back to that profit number. But. So the worst thing that happened in that business turned out to be one of the best. One of the best tipping points for our business really made us look at that.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:55]:
I love that you guys literally lost the two biggest billers and turned around. It's like, you know what? We are the owners. It's take extreme ownership. It's us on the phone and the whole team needs to see that.

Marc Cohen [00:32:06]:
Yeah, exactly that. And that's why one of my favorite times in the business, we grew up a mature business in the UK and we decided to establish ourselves in the US And I still had my green card from living here previously and I wanted to return to the US Funny, I talk about this as one of those best. One of the most memorable moments in my life was Graham and I were sitting next to each other and like I said, we're super close. Really close. And he says to me, I need to talk to you about something. And you can tell, you know, the tone of someone's voice. This is serious. What is it? He goes, I'm just going to come right out and say it.

Marc Cohen [00:32:38]:
I thought he was going to say, I'm leaving or something serious, like, my heart is skipping. He goes, we need to set up in the US You've got to go set up in the news. You just got to go move and do it. And I was like, fine, I'll do it, but I pick the location, obviously. You can just pick whatever you want, right? Done, done. We both sat there in silence, I'm like, yes, I'm moving. I wanted to move back to the us but I built a valuable business in uk. I can't tell my business partner I want to leave the country.

Marc Cohen [00:33:03]:
He's sitting there thinking, I can't tell my business partner he needs to go and set up, move to another country. So we both sat there and that was the tipping point. I think that that really solidified that journey because we come the exit, it was all about the US they were so interested in what we did in the US despite having the bulk of our business in the uk.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:19]:
How did you keep that partnership, that magic going with your business partner with what is it? A six hour, depending on where you're.

Marc Cohen [00:33:28]:
At, eight hour time difference. So to start early every day on calls, it's. I'm a gym guy, right? So I used to do my gym workouts at 7. I couldn't do gym workouts in the morning anymore because I had to be on calls as soon as I woke up. So just, just, you know, pivoting, making that time. Suddenly my day went from 7 till 5 o'clock as opposed to 9 till 8 o'clock. And so that, that just enabled me to pivot there. But the truth is, and this is funny because I just spoke to somebody today who was struggling with this, a founder.

Marc Cohen [00:34:00]:
It was just trust. We trusted each other. I never ever, ever I'm so blessed with having the right founder. I didn't question what he did and him vice versa with me. And I, and I believed in him, what he was doing and that was so key.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:13]:
I love that. I feel this whole podcast is going to be about finding the right partner.

Marc Cohen [00:34:19]:
Actually should be about. The big thing though is it's about developing your philosophy and really sticking with your philosophy. And I say that if I'm setting up a business tomorrow, you can guess what that would look like. It would be heavy L and D. I'm all about learning and development, educating the workforce force. It'd be a real brand awareness and it'll be working in future markets. Something that's hot, sexy, big in future renewables could be tech related. I mean for example, I was doing AI 10 years ago, I wouldn't, for me, I wouldn't do AI now, for example, like there's a huge difference in the way that we operate and having that philosophy means, and this is the same with your employers and by the way, if your recruiter listening to this, you can ask a business what's their business philosophy? How do they like to operate what do they really believe in? If that aligns with your vision, then that's the right fit.

Marc Cohen [00:35:04]:
And if it doesn't align with your vision, doesn't matter how nice the people are, what they offer you, et cetera, it's not going to be right for you.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:11]:
And so going back to the sell like you guys were able to, and this is something you told me offline, you guys were able to double ebitda.

Marc Cohen [00:35:17]:
Yeah. So one of the things we did is we went to market in 2016 seeking investment, seeking a partner, and we sold 65% of the business and 8.6 multiple. We knew there was still good growth in the business. I knew no one's going to offer us 100% so I played into that. Then what we did Is we doubled EBIT. The remaining 35% became worth more than the initial, initial exit.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:46]:
What were some of the secrets that you guys did to double the ebitda?

Marc Cohen [00:35:50]:
So as we talk about optimizing and this is the thing, when you're in a growth mode in a company and it was really interesting because obviously you're growing, you're spending so much time hiring so much time, the failure of hiring different systems, the cost of everything, and then also all the leadership, their energy is spent onboarding, retaining, doing all of these things. Once you slow down that growth pump and you start focusing on profit, you start realizing that I don't need to hire the same volume. It's more about getting more out of the people that I already have here. Then I can be more hands on with the team. The leaders are spending less time interviewing, hiring, onboarding, retaining reviews, etc. And it's much more deal focused. So I had the, I call it a little bit of a hero role at the end. I love my role at the end.

Marc Cohen [00:36:33]:
I was just helping him close deals. Basically the guys would just be like, I would be all over every deal, every placement and really work on it. So let's touch on that for a second because I'm really hot on this, on the offer process. It's an emotional connection. It's the reason that we do everything in life. It's about a feeling people don't. People walk into at the minute we're going to, you and your wife are going to buy a beautiful new house. They don't walk in and say it ticks every box.

Marc Cohen [00:36:59]:
Walk in, say, I feel this is the one. You'll feel it when you walk in the house despite you having an exact criteria. And therefore we talk about that a lot. That A candidate accepting an offer is based on feelings and therefore you really need to get an emotional connection. So sometimes when the candidate saying, look comfortable with this, not comfortable, take a step back. We need to get your conversation with CEOs. You can talk about the future vision, talk about these things around the company. It's not about the offer at that stage.

Marc Cohen [00:37:23]:
It's about I haven't quite got the buy in and therefore we miss that sometimes and we focus on the offer rather than the emotional connection and the attachment. By the way, I did this with Console in our process. If I was trying to hire someone, I'd say, Benjamin, you're a top level recruiter. You're going to get offers from anywhere you go. And that's the beauty of the experience that you have. So I want you to take a step back and decide, is Console the right place for you? If it is, and you say, I want to join Console, you and I are going to work together. I'll come up with an offer that's exciting for you, we'll agree it and we'll be there. But it's not about the offer, it's about the company.

Marc Cohen [00:37:57]:
And therefore I'm not going to get suckered into like making you one of these five offers. You got to decide on where you want to be and why. And if that's Console, I'm here for you. And really, and I mean that, I, hand on heart, mean that for everyone, decide on the best company for you and then negotiate the best package with the best company rather than the other way around. That's how a company that isn't so strong is going to blindside you with an amazing package. Look at this money, look at these benefits. And actually they might not be the right fit for you.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:24]:
You got to figure out where your future is. Love that. Well, and I'm going to take a step back before we jump back into the M and A process again. You've said this a few times about future proofing. You've said a few times about like, if you were starting over today, like, I wouldn't be touching AI. How do you actually look at the market, map the market to figure out what's going to be the next biggest thing before it becomes a big thing.

Marc Cohen [00:38:46]:
So really good question. And I look at this in the stock market, investing in Tesla today, though Tesla has had 60% growth, but investing in Tesla today isn't what it was previously. So there's some people that would invest in small stocks and they'll map out the small companies that they think are going to go to become unicorns. I look at that similar philosophy with where I consider recruiting. So let's take a step back and you've got things. Consider any industry, let's say tech or hospitality, even mature industries like construction, for example. Well, what's the future of those industries? Where are they looking at in 5, 10 years time? Where's that money going? The investment going and starting to track some of that investment, some of the opportunity and then going mega, mega, mega. Niche.

Marc Cohen [00:39:30]:
I always have to niche is in England, but niche as niche as possible. So you map out the future, a nascent industry, whatever that might be, map out the types of people needed and then contact that where the money's gone, you can chase the money in that sense. So it's really important. That's how you future proof it. And then there's another layer that's externally in your market approach. Then there's the piece. There's two things that you can do internally, the use of technology. You and I are big on this, right? So we're doing sequencing in 2012.

Marc Cohen [00:40:01]:
Like I sort of when 20, when the first AI boom came around in 2021, people started saying, yeah, I'm all over AI, I'm all over AI. That's sequencing, that's automation, that's not AI. They're two different things and these tools have been around for a long time. So I think step one is really getting used to tools. I mean I'm all over clay now and actually doing these sort of tools internally and making that fabric of your business and everyone understanding. So we were tracking emails in 2012. So any email sent out, we'd send proposals for large scale retained projects. We would see the customer being able to open it, who they forwarded it onto and know that they're seriously interested or not based on the amount of times it was open.

Marc Cohen [00:40:42]:
So using use of technology and then the other element that I'm always going to touch on is trying to think of advanced solutions. So I said to you, we set up console in 2008. It's the worst economy for 50 years. Can you believe I waited my whole life to set up a business and did that in awful, awful economy. And I'd get on the phone and I would pitch solutions, large scale projects for 25 to 50 people. They'd be laughing at me, hiring managers, laughing at me on the phone. Well, you don't know. I know that's what I'd say to them.

Marc Cohen [00:41:12]:
What you don't know. I know you want to look at any major company. You know what they do when the market happens? They have a hiring freeze. You know what they do? They make significant redundancies. You know what else they do? They hire a lot secretly. It's their number one chance to grab talent, to get rid of the bottom 20% of talent and to hire the top 5%. So they're all hiring. I was very fortunate enough to talk to John Chambers at Cisco, the CEO of Cisco and he's been there for like 35 years and he's like, I love a good recession.

Marc Cohen [00:41:40]:
I get rid of all the deadwood and I hire loads in and the market allows me to do it. It's the only time the market's going to allow him to make major changes in his business. So we often looked at that and advanced solutions and educate the customer. So people were laughing at us for these large scale solutions. And then guess what we're able to say to them? If you're not hiring at least two or three people, you're going to miss an opportunity. And then we get small amount of retainers. And it was almost comical to think by pitching so high, by having such an advanced solution, that meant that we're able to beat the contingency recruiter.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:12]:
You guys, with you guys pitching so big, literally at the start of your business, like, you know, just recently read a book, it was at 10x is easier than 2x.

Marc Cohen [00:42:20]:
Yes. Yeah, I want to read that book now. I absolutely believe I'm actually going to write that down. I'm a fiend on reading these sort of books.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:29]:
Is it because you guys went so big while other recruiters are going so small, you guys were able to win this work?

Marc Cohen [00:42:35]:
There is, but there's a credibility statement attached to it, right? I looked at it, you're right. But there's genuine, I talk about this, there's facts, then there's an opinion based on top of it and then it enables you to make your decision. So you're the hiring manager. The fact is, every company, every large enterprise company that goes through large scale changes like shareholding and the economy will absolutely start doing this process. That's a very known process. And therefore I'm educating you on a fact, I'm giving you my opinion on top of it. If your company isn't hiring, you're going to miss market share. Even as you're getting rid of people, you will miss out on market share.

Marc Cohen [00:43:12]:
And therefore then that encourages an element of thought and process and credibility in it. I think sometimes you could just pitch that and they could laugh at you. And if you don't have a comeback and a way to respond to that objection they feel is credible, then you're not going to get anywhere. It sounds too easy just to say pitch the big thing. I was pitching the big thing, letting them undermine it and then telling them, will you carry on thinking that way? And that's why you're going to lose out. And having the confidence to say that. Arrogance at times, the confidence to say that.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:42]:
Okay, so picture this, you know, like moving the direction, the future proofing, figuring out the next thing. Like a lot of people think it's, this is the business, the recruiting founder is what is going to be able to do this and jump in this next thing. But there's a lot of people that listen to this podcast. They work at an agency, they work with a team. How can you in the agency as a recruiter, somebody in the recruiting chair, like I'm looking at this like, you know what, I need to start future proofing where I want to go. How do I do that from the recruiting chair while I work at another agency, like maybe where I can help.

Marc Cohen [00:44:16]:
Them is a really good, this is a really good example. Let's think about that. Recruiters, I always say, me as an advisor, as an executive, et cetera. It has to impact the person at the desk. Otherwise it's just the S board level advice. We have to get back to the individual. So now if you're listening to this, hey, cool, this sounds good. How do I future proof micro? You hopefully have a book of business customers, you've got an established thing and we need to pivot away from that.

Marc Cohen [00:44:38]:
Now I'm not saying drop that and don't go do something different. You've got a BD list. Obviously depends on the model, right? Then here's the thing. If you're a recruiter, you're beholden somebody else doing that bd as in if you're, if you're literally just sourcing somebody else is doing the BD and bringing the roles for you, then you're not necessarily totally in control of that. And it does become harder. If you look at those that are doing BD or 360 model, what I would say is if you have a BD list instead of doing your BD list to let's say tech and you've always done Java and SAP and some of these more historical legacy based and say cool, what would I do now? Well, you'd still carry on with that bonus. But your new bd, you start Pivoting more towards those new customers and looking for trends. Now, your new BD isn't going to give you the instant thing, but what your new BD will show you is as you start making calls, you'll start to get bytes and those bites will hopefully lead to trends that you can then capitalize on.

Marc Cohen [00:45:32]:
So I said we did AI in 2014. We actually broke that down into computer vision, robotics, machine learning. And it was only when the guys started to start to target the car driving companies, autonomous vehicles, computer vision, that they got massive traction. So they had to almost play the game a little bit and put some calls out. And then they realized, oh, actually we don't do AI, we don't do computer vision, we do autonomous driving and those sort of niches. So it's about playing a little bit, thinking about what's the future, doing BD into that market and playing and be willing to speculate with wherever that takes you. But a bit like a stock, if it's hot today, then you kind of missed it, right? Like I was talking to clients back in 2021 on AI, but they were making so much money in 21 and 22 from just their existing things, why would they pivot away? They couldn't. But obviously now we know virtually every company is going to say I do AI and machine learning, et cetera, and it becomes a real race.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:30]:
Okay, so want to jump back over to the M and A, the exiting. I'm kind of curious, what are the things that kill the deals?

Marc Cohen [00:46:39]:
Yeah, they're really good. We touched on greed killing all deals and that's the same for everything in life. It's really important. I believe in a win win. As soon as it's not win win, then.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:49]:
Okay. When you say greed kills deals, what do you actually mean?

Marc Cohen [00:46:52]:
So there's a piece here that people overvaluate their businesses. Oh, look at this. One of my best man at my wedding, right, we went to market, funny enough, he had a really valuable, amazing, he has got a really valuable, amazing recruitment company, 2016. And he went to market and he was given a really, really punchy valuation. And I felt that valuation was not accurate. He really felt it was. Valuation was accurate. And unfortunately he got offers that were nowhere near that valuation.

Marc Cohen [00:47:24]:
He rejected them. And then now today, here he is, eight, nine years later. He hasn't made that exit, regrets not thinking about it, and basically was given a number that just wasn't realistic. It's like a real estate agent or realtor coming to your house saying, oh, your house is Worth this money, oh my God, it's amazing, I should sell for that. But it's not. You're not going to make an exit. You're going to spend a lot of time, effort, energy, trying to hit a number that's not realistic. That's step one.

Marc Cohen [00:47:48]:
And as we look at the win win, because you're going to be locked in, you need to make sure that you have got growth ahead of you, that you can actually continue to build, that you're not checked out, you're not just going to leave. So I talk about, ideally want to go one step early and one step late. We try and time the market, it's really hard. So go one step early, you'll get more buyers, they'll think this is amazing. So good, they're getting a good deal out of it. You're going to get the right partner, multiple offers, increase your multiple and then you go one step later. You realize on the second exit you really juice it. You get the right profits up and it's a good win for everyone.

Marc Cohen [00:48:22]:
That company, we doubled the EBIT in three years. So that was a good win for them as an investment. That was the right type of investment. We did what we said we were going to do.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:31]:
When you're going through this process of exiting, how is it on the founders?

Marc Cohen [00:48:39]:
It was the hardest working year of my life, in my entire life. It was really challenging because I had to run a business. So it just was another job. You run your business day to day. I still had to run the business, make the right decisions, make sure that numbers do not slip. This is not the time for numbers to slip, this is the time for numbers to excel. And therefore you have to be more focused on the business and performance than ever before. But then you've got this massive thing happening on the outside where you're developing marketing documents, you're going to meetings, you're doing things.

Marc Cohen [00:49:16]:
And for me, when we're right in the heart of the diligence, once you start to get offers, then they start to do their due diligence and investigate the company. They are looking for skeletons. They are not going to give you a big check. They want to find faults in your business. That's their job. So I remember stuff like literally Graham waiting for me to wake up and I was waking up at 5am to do calls because I had to go be in the office at 7:30. So I've got a couple of hours to crank out whatever I could going, oh my God. I remember there was one he said to Me, they've hired a firm, an HR company in the US just to look at our HR policies.

Marc Cohen [00:49:48]:
Everyone documents, emails, interactions, any complaints, how we handled it, all of this stuff, like, massive thing. And obviously he was really worried, wait a second, this is a big, deep thing. And I was, I laughed and said, thankfully, we did it the right way. Like, I didn't, we didn't hide, we did it, we paid the money, we did everything the right way. There are no skeletons. I'm not fearing skeletons. But you do fear it. Yeah, it was really stressful, really challenging because also it's myopic.

Marc Cohen [00:50:15]:
And what I mean by that is you either get the big check or you don't. There isn't. Ah, you know what? Close. We're going to give you most of the money. No, no, like my, the one I was talking about, one of my best friends, he didn't get a check. He, you know, carried on and eight years later he still hasn't got that check. So it's very, very different.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:34]:
So what kind of skeletons are they looking for?

Marc Cohen [00:50:36]:
They're looking for client concentration. Do you have too much with, let's say one or two, three clients? If so, that's high risk. They're looking for risk. High risk. Do you have one? Do you have it focused on a few billers? And if you do, are those billers making money on an exit? If so, guess what they're going to do when they make a couple hundred thousand dollars? They're not going to hang around. Is there any legal compliance being a massive one? Talk about compliance being. And I think you had Michael Napolitano on recently. Excellent, excellent guest.

Marc Cohen [00:51:08]:
And he was talking about compliance. A really boring thing for me to talk about, especially as an advisor, but it couldn't be that much more important. Like if you're not compliant, they're not going to buy your business. So stuff like that. And then we start looking at the little things like avoid tax schemes, avoid anything that might undermine your character. Now tax scheme is like, well, I'm just doing something smart around taxes. So although billion dollar companies do it, they kind of want to buy a company that doesn't do anything like that and don't play any games and nothing that can kick back. And then there's all the contractor piece.

Marc Cohen [00:51:41]:
So there's a massive thing there. And then there's things that we can do to juice our business. Having margin, having high margins, having sexy industries. But it's the story, that's the thing. We look at all the data, there's a story around it and that's what hopefully the buyer is going to buy.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:57]:
Into and, you know, doing all this. So you still had to keep the business going, but you had to keep it growing. You had to do all this stuff and they were literally looking for skeletons in your closet. How did you stay strong and focused during this time? Or was just the end goal is so close?

Marc Cohen [00:52:13]:
Yeah, it was hard. It was hard. Genuinely, I'm a guy who works hard, right. I'm pretty serious in what I do. And it was hard, it was tough, it was very, very. A lot of stress, a lot of hard work. So glad that it ended with the success at the end of it. Right.

Marc Cohen [00:52:30]:
That makes this journey all worthwhile, all easy, etc. But at the time it wasn't easy. Yeah, you just have to get through it. And I'm amazed. I had an amazing, supportive wife who understood that this is what's happening. There is no, you know, this is work mode now. It's a big thing happening. And I had an amazing business partner that I trusted that we could interact and share life with and share the stories with, et cetera.

Marc Cohen [00:52:54]:
And that was really important as a sanity check, being able to talk to each other about it.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:57]:
You know, I love that. And when you were, you know, kind of looking back on the growing stages, what were the, some of the most important metrics that you guys were looking at and working with during that scale phase that helped you guys get to like a great exit.

Marc Cohen [00:53:15]:
This is a good question. Margin was a big one for us. So I'll give you an example of that. ASA released a report that said something. The 23% average margin, perm margin across the whole of the US direct, higher margin. As an average, we were operating at 21% at the time. This highly niche, sophisticated, sexy, AI driven business. So I just said to the team, you're working at below average, you're not even average.

Marc Cohen [00:53:45]:
You see, you can say that fired them up, that then led and that then juiced our margins towards 25%, I think ended up at 24% as an average across our entire book of business. And so therefore margins are really important. We talk about having a scalable business and that would be proof of that. How do you prove that? We had the ability to onboard people, to train them, to get them billing and retain them. And you need to prove that, you need to show that as a documented thing because that's what they're buying into your processes, et cetera, client base. And then for us, it was just about, we had A very diversified approach. We'd made placements in 60 countries. We only, I think 15% of our business at the end was in the UK.

Marc Cohen [00:54:25]:
It was heavy across Europe and the.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:28]:
US 60 different countries.

Marc Cohen [00:54:31]:
We made placements in 60 different countries. Yeah, I mean, I got so many of these random stories. One of the guys we used to do a lot of work with, Cisco. We were a partner with Cisco. And some of that work took us into Africa because Cisco expanding networks in Africa. Oh. Anyway, one of my consultants, one of the guys I said to was number one, and he left. He.

Marc Cohen [00:54:53]:
He ends up going on holiday. And he said, I'm just. Can I give you the client's info? Whatever. I got a guy starting in Nigeria. Yeah, no problems. Whatever, man. Just give him my info. Anyway.

Marc Cohen [00:55:02]:
Get a phone call. The guy's like, cool. I'm at the airport. Like, where's the. Where's the guard? I don't know what you're talking about. Just get a taxi and go to the hotel. He's like, no, no, no, I need an armed guard. You don't need an armed guard.

Marc Cohen [00:55:13]:
Just you're in, like, get. I had to Google it. I Google. Yeah, no, you need an armed guard. And like, well, I didn't realize he gets an arm. I had to then order an armed guard to pick him up from the airport to take him to an armed hotel. Well, I didn't have the freaking armed hotel. The armed guard picks him up, takes him to the hotel.

Marc Cohen [00:55:28]:
The guy books. It's not an armed. Here I am, suddenly get this guy in a hotel. The hotel was. The hotel in Nigeria that we paid for was $4,000 a month. I remember it so well because I remember living in Beverly Hills at $2,000 a month thinking, I've just spent. This guy's living in Nigeria in a place that he can't go anywhere. The only places that he can go is the hotel and work site, and he has an armed guard to take him.

Marc Cohen [00:55:53]:
Yeah, so those are the things we were dealing with. So, yeah, placements in 60 different countries. We actually. We stopped counting at 60, but. So it's a really diversified business.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:03]:
You just had me taking back, like, I was the recruiter dealing with this. But it was something like a scenario like this. Like, I didn't have to figure everything out, but we hired some people, and they're like, hey, where's our arm facility at? Overseas stuff? And I'm like, we're like, I don't know. That wasn't part of the contract. What are you talking About. No, we're supposed to have walls and everything where we're staying. I'm like, yeah, let me talk to contracts.

Marc Cohen [00:56:29]:
It was exactly like that for me, except I was dealing with it and there's a lot smaller business at the time. I'm like, I cannot believe what I'm dealing with here. Right, yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:38]:
Did we factor that into indoor pricing?

Marc Cohen [00:56:42]:
We're doing a lot in the Middle east for a while, Dubai and Middle east, et cetera. I think the truth is US became a better market and almost took our attention more this way than some of the African and Middle east business.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:53]:
Okay, curious. You've been in the uk, you've been in the us. Why are UK recruiters just fucking crushing it over here?

Marc Cohen [00:57:04]:
That's a really good question. I talk about this out here. We have three or four $10 billion staffing companies and they dominate, they really, really do. And they dominate the contract market. And therefore there is sometimes a gap in direct hire. And where we've seen the UK individuals come in. Why have they done well over here? Or some of the traits that they have, maybe that are different. Some of their UK colleagues, they've been brought up probably in a harder sales environment is the truth.

Marc Cohen [00:57:31]:
And some of that's good and some of that's bad. And what I mean by that is the whole cold calling, the 360 approach, BD being a lot more aggressive and fearless than some of their US counterparts. However, those that come over here, they need to learn how the US counterparts are often more polished, professional, have more credibility, have more insights. So the best ones come here that I saw that we relocated here and they adapted immediately to the US markets. They took their already current skill set of I can get on the phone, I can hustle, I'm KPI driven, I'm going to be managed quite hard, which is much more of the culture in the uk. And then they adapt to the US market and suddenly they can excel. But it doesn't always work out that way. I'm talking to somebody tomorrow morning that says his business isn't getting anywhere here and he doesn't know why.

Marc Cohen [00:58:17]:
I know why. I'm going to tell him why tomorrow. I don't even want to tell you. Actually. The podcast isn't going to go live, so he's not going to hear it. Yeah, I mean, doesn't really have. He's got a UK strategy that isn't fit for the us. What does that mean? US is about being very, very niche domain expertise, really knowing your market and having a Legitimate pool of candidates and clients.

Marc Cohen [00:58:37]:
And the UK is slightly different to that. But remember, the UK market's also got some issues. It's very saturated, low margin business actually in the uk, which is why there is a proliferation of UK companies coming into the US more.

Benjamin Mena [00:58:52]:
And this is going to be another question based on like, you know, you were using automation back before most recruiters even knew what the word automation was. In the recruiting space. Where do you see recruiting and AI kind of going in the future?

Marc Cohen [00:59:07]:
This is a big one. You know I'm hot on AI, right? So I've been very fortunate to make a lot of AI investments and that's been my main crux of where I invested. That exit money was into AI. So there's a gap that we have here at the moment with technology and society's acceptance of it. The technology is a little bit ahead of society right now and will continue to be so. And there's a gap until that gap catches up. So let me elaborate on what that gap is. Let's look at AI interviews.

Marc Cohen [00:59:36]:
Most people will say, I don't want to be interviewed by a bot, I want to be interviewed by a human, really, because that bot's got more knowledge than I do, more knowledge than any other recruiter on this planet, can ask you far superior questions, can actually give you a tech test, a construction test, can talk to you about healthcare policies, can actually have a much more tangible interview with you and, and be equitable and reduce bias and then represent you with the right notes and structures around it. Once society sees the benefit in that versus the human piece, they're going to choose to obviously go with the AI AI systems where possible. So on one level there's going to be a catching up. Society is going to catch up and accept it. And this was like similar for emails and any other technology that's been introduced, there comes a piece for society to accept and integrate it first. Like our grandma saying, I'm never going to go online. Then suddenly they're buying or they're shopping online, right? Ten years later, but that ten year gap. But there is a bigger thing here.

Marc Cohen [01:00:32]:
There is something hard for recruiters and I'm developing my theory around this. We spoke about, right, we talk about, hey, I've got to predict the future in my mind. I got to figure out what the future is. Now the future is going to be an email. A world that's flooded with AI calls, flooded with AI content, flooded with AI emails, which is going to make it really, really hard to get your message out. There these tools are going to be so easy to get your message out there. That's going to dilute everything and that's a gap. So we have to, we've got two years now to create communities and create pools.

Marc Cohen [01:01:04]:
In two years, I think everything changes. So by correct, what does that mean? It means create pools of candidates that know who you are, that trust you, that have got consistent interaction with you as a person. It means create pools of clients, get that presence on LinkedIn, humanize what you're doing. Leave voicemails. Why? Because you're human and you can make a joke on this and on your voicemail. This is not an AI voicemail. I'm leaving this type of thing to prove that I'm real to you. So when you get the email from me, you don't just think it's a bot and actually trying to separate yourself.

Marc Cohen [01:01:34]:
And this then means questions. Okay, cool. How do you do that then? It's all well and good to sit here and say, build a community, do these things. We spoke about something, you and I recently, about offering value without monetizing it. And I think that's really important. I'll network with anyone, I'll genuinely hand on offer, try and offer advice. I'd be so disappointed if somebody said I wasn't open and person around that because I believe that what goes around comes around. And therefore by being more open, interacting, offering value to candidates, to clients, giving them free salary, surveys, whatever you can do will build an element of stickiness where they can use you in future.

Marc Cohen [01:02:10]:
They will still need you. But yeah, it's going to change dramatically. I would fear it a little bit if I was some recruiters, I could see they have to get on top of it, they have to master the tech.

Benjamin Mena [01:02:21]:
I was messing with OpenAI's operator and operator was just like, oh yeah, I can literally told me I could do like 60% of a recruiter's job.

Marc Cohen [01:02:28]:
Yeah, I can see.

Benjamin Mena [01:02:30]:
I mean, it was kind of crazy what it was doing behind the scenes. Out of curiosity, were you one of the investors in splendip, the recruiter community tool?

Marc Cohen [01:02:37]:
No, Tell me, I need to know.

Benjamin Mena [01:02:40]:
We can talk about it later. I was just like, I know you've been like investing in stuff. They just did a raise.

Marc Cohen [01:02:46]:
I put a lot into private equity. And then, you know, one thing that was really interesting for me now, we always worked with private equity and VCs, but now I've learned so much more because I'm now putting my money in. And so I learned all the how they operate, what they do, the different people to interact. I now learn that from have I had this knowledge when I had my business, it would have been so different to how we pitch and how we interact with VCs and PEs, which is a massive tool that people should be using. There is. But if there's not an industry that doesn't have dominant VCPE players, not any industry, don't care what it is. And therefore, if you want to know what's happening, chase that money. They are going to be on the cutting edge.

Marc Cohen [01:03:24]:
They're putting money in and you should be building relationships with those companies.

Benjamin Mena [01:03:28]:
I'm drawing a blank on the name, but he's part of the Pinnacle society and his entire business model is based on the relationships with the VCs and the PE firms in his space. And he actually gives out like a free candidate, like a free exec every month. And it just turns into like a bunch of backend searches. Like literally the relationships seal the deal for him.

Marc Cohen [01:03:48]:
I started to really focus on it towards the end of my time because it was like another string to the bow. And we got in with a vc, that VC referred us to a company and this was in like, basically we made 76 placements with that company in two years. 2.6 million. And it was still going when I left. So, like, because you're following the money and that and that CEO, he was told, oh, you should work with this guy. He just didn't really go out to anyone else and we just filled his roles and it was just like a really easy, quick relationship. It was amazing to have that.

Benjamin Mena [01:04:23]:
So we've covered a lot. And before we jump over to the quick fire questions, is there anything that we've chatted about that you want to expand on?

Marc Cohen [01:04:30]:
I think there's something big for every business owner, but also every individual is. You need to take control of your own learning and development. And what I mean by that is I have been fortunate enough to make my money. I only work a couple of hours a day doing the advisory thing. I never need to work again. I do it because I like it and I want to work again. And what do I do? I spend my time looking up LinkedIn tips and tricks, latest BD SAA reports. I'm still obsessed with learning and being up to date.

Marc Cohen [01:05:00]:
And I sit there and I think to myself, I don't even do any of this. So if you're a recruiter who's every day is, you know, has a performance, needs to use tools like LinkedIn or Secrets, you should be researching that you can get YouTube education for anything. And I've always felt that being almost like a slight gap, you know, and there's no joke. When you said 10x is better than 2x, I wrote that down. That's I'm going to download that book and almost like within two weeks I'll have finished that book because I love the learning piece and that's so key for staying ahead. And I think that's something that maybe that some people miss out on. Likewise, if you're a founder, you need to be obsessed about your business. Having L and D, learning, pushing the message out, talking strategy, engaging.

Marc Cohen [01:05:41]:
So our whole thing is we had really standards up, but then I'd be able to take a senior recruiter, somebody who's billing a million and help them how you're going to scale, how you're going to advance, what you're going to do, the ratios you're going to look at. And that's all through L and D. It's really fundamental. Awesome.

Benjamin Mena [01:05:54]:
Well, jumping over the quickfire questions, they don't need to be quick answers. But here's like, I'm going to like reword some of these just because of the way the conversations went. Like you, you're sitting down with a founder and the founder sitting there like having a, you know, cup of coffee with you and they're like, hey, looking at bringing on a whole new group of brand new recruiters. They've never been recruiters before. What are some of the things that I can do to set them up for success, to turn them into top billers down the line?

Marc Cohen [01:06:20]:
Yeah, really good. I'd say step one obviously is hiring the right people and that's where sometimes we make a mistake. And that's why I talk about the culture, the philosophy, the type of person you want. Do they buy into your culture, philosophy, whatever that is? I don't think you have to flex that, but you have to get the right people. You have to start with serious L and D and I mean proper learning, educating them, interacting them, giving them the tools. And then we had this ramp up period where they would essentially work with a senior recruiter. They'd be sourcing for the senior recruiter. They're learning the game, they're seeing how it works and then there's a tipping point where they have to go on their own.

Marc Cohen [01:07:00]:
And that tipping point came after four to six months. So we're really hand holding that first four to six months. The other thing is as a founder, I enjoyed an element of control over the markets they moved into in the way we operated. That was one of my philosophies. Some people would say, some founders, I talked, oh, why are you doing that market? I don't know. Johnny just thought that would be good. All right. Like, I want to set the strategy.

Marc Cohen [01:07:24]:
I want to say to Johnny, I've mapped out the market. This is the opportunity. This is how you're going to work it, this is what you're going to do. And hopefully he or she buys into that. So there's really creating a path and a strategy for them and then making sure there's that piece of accountability. It's one of the biggest things I talk about, which is if you don't do it, you let yourself down. No one lets me down apart from me. If I do something wrong, to me, you're letting yourself down.

Marc Cohen [01:07:49]:
You have your own standards, your own life, your own income, your own goals. And therefore, the accountability is on you. It's never on me. I'll help you. I'll do whatever I can to help you succeed. But, you know, you've got to want it for yourself. And that's really important because when you get that as a part of a culture, as in a core group, you then really, that can resonate and people take it seriously. They work hard, they do what they have to do.

Marc Cohen [01:08:11]:
Not everyone, but you create a culture of that.

Benjamin Mena [01:08:15]:
Out of curiosity, for the next question, have you ever had a chance to have a chat with Adrian Byra by chance?

Marc Cohen [01:08:21]:
No.

Benjamin Mena [01:08:22]:
I think you like him.

Marc Cohen [01:08:23]:
Yeah. I think it's funny because my network has been so UK based, I'm now really expanding into that US network. And he's all. He's Australia, not brilliant. Okay, good. Even better.

Benjamin Mena [01:08:35]:
Yeah, yeah, he's Australia.

Marc Cohen [01:08:37]:
He's in Australia.

Benjamin Mena [01:08:40]:
I think he's actually, if I'm trying to remember, right, I think he's like UK that moved to Australia.

Marc Cohen [01:08:44]:
Oh, funny that.

Benjamin Mena [01:08:45]:
No, Canadian. Canadian. Canadian.

Marc Cohen [01:08:47]:
Australia. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [01:08:49]:
But, like, they spend, like thousands of dollars before every single person starts, like, doing a lot of, like, stuff that you were doing. And they, in about five years hit 41 million in revenue.

Marc Cohen [01:08:59]:
Really good. Really good. Yeah. Same sort of model, same idea. And look, I'm not going to deny the fact that also we were okay at saying to people, this isn't right for you. And there's a maturity around that, by the way, it's really important. I have a maturity to say, I owe you the responsibility not to patronize you and say, let's give him another month. Or if he doesn't do it.

Marc Cohen [01:09:23]:
No. I owe you the responsibility to say this is the gap and you either need to bridge that gap or I get it. And you might not want to. And if you don't, there's no problem. Doesn't have to be a bad thing. I'll help you even pivot into a new role. You need to find the role and the company that's right for you. And there's many people that can could have joined our business.

Marc Cohen [01:09:39]:
We hired some people that were so successful elsewhere, for whatever reason, it didn't work for them at Console. And likewise people that were average elsewhere and they come and they exploded at Consol. And that's going to happen. I'm okay with that. You know, it doesn't have to be all so serious and moody and almost bad blood. Likewise with other owners. I talk to other owners all the time. I'd give them insights, I'd help them.

Marc Cohen [01:10:00]:
I'd do whatever I can quite hard. I have high expectations, but at the same time, I try and network and help, and that whole piece of, yeah, what goes around comes around. I look at this from a legacy point of view, which is I am so fortunate that I have a relationship still. I'm chairman of one of the company. One of the guys that used to work with me. I'm chairman of his company. I got a relationship with all those people that used to work for me. And that's really important because you never know when you're their boss.

Marc Cohen [01:10:25]:
Is it a real relationship? Well, you know, when I'm not paying you anymore and we're still having that contact or all the time, we know that when you come to me for advice, you're doing that because you believe in our relationship.

Benjamin Mena [01:10:37]:
Well, I'm going to ask that question, but then the next question. As a founder that's had a company for, we'll say, five to 10 years, they have a team of recruiters. Their original goal was to scale, grow and sell. But they've almost been stuck on a bit of a hamster wheel that they have not been able to get off of. Where it comes to, like, how the business operates, where it's at. What kind of advice would you give to somebody in one of those situations?

Marc Cohen [01:11:07]:
Hey, I don't want to accidentally sell myself. I'm not trying to do that here. I believe in advice. I talk about learning. I talk about advisors and mentors. At Consol, we had at least one, if not two advisors every single board meeting. Every year of the business, outsiders are helping Us, they're analyzing this, even helping with our mentality. You know, one of the best bits of advice I got is just about I need me.

Marc Cohen [01:11:28]:
Mark needs to live in the fact that I'm trying my best every day and what will be will be. And that's one of the best advices I've ever had in my whole life. And that came from somebody walking out a board meeting, just saying, you seem unhappy. And I know you work hard to. Let me tell you this, you need to just live and die by your effort, and that's okay, rather than just only by results and stuff like that. So I really believe in the advice. I really believe also that if we say it's a story, let's say they are able to turn it around. They can.

Marc Cohen [01:11:55]:
They cancel Exit. Why? Because their story is, we had a lifestyle business. It drifted and it fell away. But guess what? I did. I went and I restrategized. I built this business and now I built it to where it is today. That's part of the story. There's nothing wrong with that.

Marc Cohen [01:12:08]:
That's a good story. In fact, if anything, it shows resilience. Now you're able to craft something from nothing. So it's all a story. So they can absolutely do that. So get advice, recraft your story, but also look at what's working and not working. The amount of times I talk to people and they'll say, this isn't working. Cool.

Marc Cohen [01:12:23]:
Now let's look at your hiring plans. This area is working and it's got the same hiring plans as the area is not working. And they look and say, it's so obvious. Yes, double down on what's working and put all your resources into that and start to understand, live in the data, what's the data telling us, et cetera. So these are really fundamental things I think, that people can miss out on. And it's hard because you're working in the business. It's really hard. Somebody like me can come in and analyze and say, oh, you're missing xyz.

Marc Cohen [01:12:49]:
Doesn't mean it's going to be easy to overcome, but it's easier to see the gaps when you're not in it.

Benjamin Mena [01:12:55]:
Can't really see the forest when you're in the woods.

Marc Cohen [01:12:57]:
Yeah, exactly that. And then, look, we have this all in all walks of life. I said to you, I said, I'm really into my fitness. And if I said, you have a personal trainer, you wouldn't think that's crazy at all. You say, of course you would. I played high level golf. I get golf lessons still, even though I'm pretty good at golf, you know, stuff like that. But yet in our personal lives and our career, we're going to say no, we're not going to get a mentor, despite saying we need it for everything else in life.

Marc Cohen [01:13:19]:
That's where I have a slight detachment to me and I think it's one of the best investments that people can make. But I hate that I don't like selling myself. It's so funny. I was a hard salesperson, I was a million dollar biller. I built my business and I was unapologetically going to sell and I made the money. And I hate. I cannot do it. It's so bad.

Marc Cohen [01:13:37]:
I need a lesson. I need somebody to advise me on how I'm going to close people and what you do around that because it's just so not me nowadays.

Benjamin Mena [01:13:45]:
Well, you've been around AI before. AI was even cool. Do you have a favorite tech tool that you use right now that you love?

Marc Cohen [01:13:57]:
Clay. It's a game changer, you know that. I know we sort of touched on this stuff. So let's just talk about some of the AI tools. If you are not sequencing now, you're dead in the water. I mean this is way done. If you're listening to this and you're saying I don't know what sequencing is or I don't sequence, get out today and do it. Your database, LinkedIn have a sequencing feature built into their messaging now.

Marc Cohen [01:14:19]:
So it's everywhere and it's really logical thing to do. So step one is that. And then you've got obviously note takers and I think they're absolutely critical. And that is almost comical to me because when I do notetakers sometimes I'll email them to someone after, after a course. Oh my God, this is incredible. Please, please don't tell me you're just seeing this for the first time. And then there's Obviously all the LLMs and I urge people not just to consider GPT. I have, I have three that I subscribe to and I use them differently and I actually think Claude's excellent.

Marc Cohen [01:14:52]:
I've been using Claude a lot more lately and I never did before it was only GPT and now I use a lot more to get me different levels and different interactions. And then there's finally there's a piece. If you are a recruitment owner. I invest in the business called chat automation, for example, just automated. It's bots, it's creating autonomous bots that are specific to Your business bespoke bots. And they'll take away some massive back office infrastructure contract compliance, contractor invoicing payments. This whole back office piece can be done in a really great way with bots as well. And I think that's where people will start to.

Marc Cohen [01:15:34]:
Over the next six to 12 months. I think the back office bots will be the biggest impact on staffing and recruitment companies because they're already looking at the sales tools, we all are. And you think about what you and I would talk about. We talk a lot about outreach and using clay and using these different models and personalizing your approach, et cetera. And there's so much around that and efficiency with AI and sourcing candidates. Actually the biggest and easiest win is just some of the back office infrastructure piece that no one likes to do.

Benjamin Mena [01:16:03]:
Well, there's money in the unsexy.

Marc Cohen [01:16:06]:
Yeah, exactly.

Benjamin Mena [01:16:07]:
I mean, it's AI.

Marc Cohen [01:16:09]:
Boring businesses make money. It's amazing to think about that. The boring businesses, they're the ones that just print money. They know what they're doing.

Benjamin Mena [01:16:16]:
Well, okay, you've been a hustler. You started off not having that much money to your name. Like, you've had success, you know, two exits, you've. You've had success that a lot of people haven't had. Like, but looking back and kind of peeling away some, like, some layers, like, what do you think is a huge driver for you on why you've had this kind of success?

Marc Cohen [01:16:43]:
There's two things probably. There's an element of fear. It's fear based. It's not actually success based, it's fear of failure. That's what it was for me. I always sort of knew that. I always knew that. I feared, I expected, somehow in my head I expected to win.

Marc Cohen [01:16:57]:
Expected it. I don't know why or how that was. I just, I'm winning. And therefore everything about that was I'm fearing I might lose, fearing. So therefore it was always one step ahead, working towards that. But here's an interesting thing because I've recently gone through this. I can't switch off now. It's really hard.

Marc Cohen [01:17:13]:
I have a CEO's mentality. I have that high energy piece. But here I am, I've got three beautiful young boys at home that I want to spend time with. I've got a slightly different life and I have to force and encourage. My brain is wired to be moving fast, high expectations, and I'm having to really focus at times on slowing down. And that's really hard for me. So part of it is Like, I don't know why, as a natural brain wiring. And I have the opposite.

Marc Cohen [01:17:40]:
Slowing down and relaxing is not easy for me.

Benjamin Mena [01:17:43]:
Well, and, you know, looking at, you know, all the, the sexy success that you've had, you know, building a business and trying to sell like it will absolutely beat you up, how did you get through those, those hard weeks or like those hard days where you're literally just being kicked in the teeth non stop.

Marc Cohen [01:18:01]:
It was really. There's some things and I look at this work, I could handle most of it. Where it got tough sometimes was when you know that you're, you're there opening and staff could get frustrated. Nikki, you don't care. You do this. And that would be really tough for me. Oh, wow. Is that really what you think? Because I go out of my way to try and give the opposite impression.

Marc Cohen [01:18:22]:
Yeah, it was hard sometimes. There's two things. I had a business partner I could call up. There's always on my side. Always, always, always on my side. As in, like I said, can you believe this came. How can you just happen with a client? Can you believe this? So I always had someone in my corner, which is why I say I admire some business owners have started up their business on their own. I really have a lot of respect and admiration for that because I think I couldn't have done it really without having a partner.

Marc Cohen [01:18:44]:
Hence, at least have an advisor, someone, a mentor, someone that you can just sound off to that's always in your corner. Resilience is the number one challenge I think we all face. If you ask me, the number one skill set the recruiters need today is resilience. And it's really hard. And I think that's the number one thing missing from some young individuals in society today. I'm going to be all about teaching my kids that resilient factor. The question is, how do you do that and what do you do around that? It's about realizing that we're rewarded well for those little pockets of success. And I accept the failure.

Marc Cohen [01:19:17]:
It's about me sitting there and saying, I'm not outcome based. It took me a long time to get that one in my head, which is, I will judge myself based on am I putting maximum effort in, am I focused, am I doing what I need to do? And if I am, I'm okay with everything. It's where I wasn't. There was the odd time where we all know, let's be honest with ourselves, we didn't focus. So the whole day didn't. Whatever reason you weren't into it or maybe that was two or three days and you just weren't as focused, happy, whatever. That's where I would struggle. That's where it's not good enough for me.

Marc Cohen [01:19:50]:
And I found a way to then catch myself and say, right, I'm not focused, I'm doing something wrong. So the results, that will be what they are. It's about my input. And that's where I sometimes see people struggle. Like there is an input thing. It doesn't have to be bothered. When I say input, let's not mistake input for work hours. That is, that's a fallacy out there.

Marc Cohen [01:20:08]:
You do not need to work 12 hours a day. I did because I was earning a lot of money and there was so much to be done. But for a biller, when I was billing a million, I was billing 1.3 a year, I was not working 12 hours a day. Nope. I was going to work 10 hours a day and then the odd call in the evenings. And it was about focus, about genuinely coming in and focusing for as much as I could in that timescale. So I don't want people to think when I talk about working hard and blah, blah, blah. It is not just an hours thing or an in office thing.

Marc Cohen [01:20:35]:
It's why I talk about in office. It's about focus. I get more done at home and people are getting more done and they're achieving more, then that's what matters most.

Benjamin Mena [01:20:44]:
For those recruiters that and firm owners that haven't made focus a superpower, how did you go about rewiring yourself?

Marc Cohen [01:20:53]:
So once we realized that we want to be have everything in life, I think most people would sit there and say, I want this, I want the high money, I want to. There are certain things that are fundamental that I wanted to have and the only way I could do that, I could only achieve what I wanted to achieve work wise. I realized when I increased my focus, I didn't have to increase hours and I increased opportunity. So basically I could build a million plus a year. I could go out as much as I wanted to, go to the gym every night, had a real routine and I was going out a lot. I was in my 20s and I talked to you about how to mature before I was able to set up console. But then the secret thing was really focusing at work, really not getting distracted. I have something at the moment and you might be able to help me with this great conversation.

Marc Cohen [01:21:39]:
LinkedIn. I wake up in the morning, I look at LinkedIn, oh my God, I just lost 20, 30 minutes doing nothing. I don't know what I just did, but it's really valuable. You know, I listen to your podcast, I look at the content and it's actually really good, valuable content, but it's a real distraction from my. I must get these things done. So I think I'm gonna have to build in like almost LinkedIn time for me to sir. But there is that piece there. How do you get the focus? I do think it's a bit maturity.

Marc Cohen [01:22:05]:
I do think like having a kid coming along, stuff like that. And also running a business, you should start to get. But I would say to somebody, your biggest benefit, your biggest superpower is knuckling down. And how. Just start catching yourself. If you're looking at alternative sites going onto Instagram or TikTok in the middle of the day, try and cut that out. Try and be disciplined. And I'm saying this so you can achieve more and leave earlier.

Benjamin Mena [01:22:27]:
Yeah. If you want a good laugh. I have this app called the Brick and my social media is locked out of my phone until the end of the workday.

Marc Cohen [01:22:33]:
Oh, really? Brilliant. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [01:22:36]:
Just because I catch myself.

Marc Cohen [01:22:37]:
When I had kids, the whole thing became supersonic around my phone. Right. Like, because I knew that if I don't I'm not going to see my kids at night, I'm not going to put them to. I'm not going to do anything and won't get any time with them. So like me messing around, spending 10 minutes doing something else means they're not going to see daddy. And that's big for them. Just being able to see me at the end of the day, you know how that game works.

Benjamin Mena [01:22:58]:
I love that. Well, you know, with everything, like, you know how the end ended up being of your story with console. But if you had the chance right now to literally go back in time and have a conversation with you and your founder within the first month of you guys saying, like, fuck it, let's do it, what would you tell yourselves?

Marc Cohen [01:23:18]:
There was one thing that we did, so we did a really good journey. I felt that we were focused on trying to get Ebit every year going from we made profit in year one to a million in year two, 1.5, year three and almost going through that piece. And now I realize it's actually about where your Ebit gets to at the end and what I tell people. The reason I tell them that is that you can have a choppy road and you could have moments where you're not making as much money as long as you're investing and building and then suddenly boom. We see this in tech. Losing, losing, losing, losing, losing. Bang. There's suddenly monstrous level of profits like what just happened.

Marc Cohen [01:23:53]:
I feel like reinvesting, really doubling down on the business because we had a good business, the right markets, the macro economy probably would have helped us even more. We could have grown to a bigger size. So there's more. But guess what? That is more greed. I said you create kills or deals and here I am giving you a greedy answer to say I could have hired more and done more. So there is that piece there. I like the fact that we had people come on with us on the whole journey. That was really important.

Marc Cohen [01:24:20]:
There's a grad that we hired with and he made over $500,000 come the exit, etc. He came on that journey and became a director and was a key employee for us. He started off as an entry level individual. So that's a great example of some of the people that came on the journey with us.

Benjamin Mena [01:24:36]:
I love that you created the opportunity for other people to join the journey.

Marc Cohen [01:24:39]:
Yeah. And that was a key reason for the exit. Those people were really good and they needed at some stage their own opportunity and they started to have a realization in life. Hey, when is this journey finishing? I'm enjoying this journey, but I need it to finish. And I realized with any exit, there's going to probably be a few years tied in. So realistically, I don't want to rebuild the whole business again or the whole leadership team. So let's help them achieve their exit. We can all achieve our goals and this is the right time.

Benjamin Mena [01:25:06]:
Well, you talk to a lot of recruiters, a lot of founders, and I don't know which way the question should go, whether founders are just recruiters in general. But they ask you this, they ask you that, they ask you all sorts of questions. Is there a question that they actually, that you actually wish they would ask, but they never do?

Marc Cohen [01:25:30]:
You know, there's the thing here about fear. I think people operate in a lot of fear and that's probably the big thing that I wish they'd asked me about how we can conquer fear in a relationship with fear. And what I mean by that is, as you know, there's people that won't do things in life because they have assumptions and those assumptions that something might go badly or they don't want to hear from me or I can't say that to a CEO, I can't advise them or do something around that. And it's all just fear based Founders and recruiters and they can live. I've seen some really good people that just didn't want to pick up clients. That's just fear. They're smart, they could add value and they didn't necessarily see or believe in themselves. So I think their relationship with fear is something really big.

Marc Cohen [01:26:13]:
And the same for founders. Some founders are scared to grow, scared to make the decisions, scared to invest because they fear it going wrong. And sometimes I have boards where I'm on and they'll sit there and any scenario, any idea, they'll instantly go to worst case scenario. Well, what if this happens? Yeah, that might happen. What if it doesn't? Then it's actually really successful. Like, I don't know, I can sit here all day and say these things and say, what if I step out onto the road and get run over? What if I step out on the road and find a million dollar briefcase? It's irrelevant. We have to make smart decisions and try not to let fear rule us.

Benjamin Mena [01:26:47]:
Important.

Marc Cohen [01:26:48]:
It's a really hard one because I don't think people know that that's something inside them. And obviously, and I probably think more as an advisor, I see that board level where I see them basically fear, meaning they get every decision turns into a cynical decision. And I like that. I like being cynical. But if that's all you're going to hook your anchor to, then you're not going to do anything ever.

Benjamin Mena [01:27:08]:
Well, Mark, this has been an awesome conversation and we're definitely going to be talking like later on this year about some other stuff that I think need to happen or be put on. But for anybody that's listening to this conversation that wants to follow you, how do they go about doing that?

Marc Cohen [01:27:25]:
LinkedIn arccohen m a r c o h e n LinkedIn network nowadays. Yeah, it's all about LinkedIn. I also have mdc-ventures.com I'm a network guy. I believe in just helping people. If I can help in any way, I've got materials, I'll send you whatever I can. I'm always going to be honest, no BS guy. And if I can't help you, I'll try and point you in the right direction. You know, you and I spoke about that whole concept of what goes around comes around.

Marc Cohen [01:27:50]:
I think that's really important to me. So feel free to reach out, connect, try and do more on LinkedIn. Trying to be more vocal and getting my message out there. And I think that's really important.

Benjamin Mena [01:28:04]:
Well, before I let you go, is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners?

Marc Cohen [01:28:08]:
No, I love what you're doing, by the way. I love the whole. I spoke about educating and I think it's really important. And this isn't just a plug for yourself, because, you know, I've spoken about this throughout. If you're not trying to get ahead, going to the conferences, you've got a Rock the Year conference coming up. You've got AI conferences, BD conferences. It's exactly what people need to be doing and getting amongst and really learning and educating themselves. We talk about how do you build a philosophy, strategy, get ahead all these things.

Marc Cohen [01:28:33]:
That's what we're covering in these sessions and that's how you're going to learn. And it isn't about them changing everything overnight. It's about learning and starting to learn who they are, learn the industry, learn how they're going to find their space or then their niche in the industry.

Benjamin Mena [01:28:47]:
Awesome.

Marc Cohen [01:28:48]:
Well, have fun with it. It's not that serious. There is a piece here. It's just not that serious. Have some fun with it. There are a lot of serious things that are going to come up in life and hope and our career and our goals are absolutely serious. But we should be trying to have fun and enjoy it every day. And I don't mean that in a cheesy way.

Marc Cohen [01:29:04]:
I mean that you need to focus on that. And if you're not, you're going to have a very short life, miserable life in that sense, because we're spending so much of our time at work that we need to find pockets of fun with it.

Benjamin Mena [01:29:15]:
Before I let you go on this, if you're talking about fun, I just got done doing a podcast interview with a million dollar biller. He's in his 60s and he actually looked younger than a lot of, like the recruiters in their mid-30s. And he just was smiling the whole time.

Marc Cohen [01:29:30]:
I love this guy. That's so good, right? It's just amazing. And it's one of those things. There is something. Look, when we should. We should do something around the Exit series, because I also could talk about post Exit, getting a big check, having a check, never needing to work again, but being in an off, being in the office and having to deal with that, mentally having to deal with the grind of you've got to work, you've got to hit the numbers that you said you got to hit. And sometimes thinking, I just want to walk out of this office literally thinking, I just want to walk out, go home and not come back. And that's a weird.

Marc Cohen [01:30:02]:
That's the thing that there's a side that people will not talk about. The exit was easy. Amazing. Let me high five. Look, I made all this money, but there was that. Money comes with a challenge.

Benjamin Mena [01:30:12]:
We'll put something together.

Marc Cohen [01:30:13]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [01:30:13]:
So stay tuned.

Marc Cohen [01:30:14]:
It'll be good to do that.

Benjamin Mena [01:30:16]:
Well, if you're listening to this, I just want to say thank you, guys. And you know what? I really, truly believe 2025 is going to be the year of abundance. So let's go get it, guys.