They Had No Money Left. So They Removed the Option to Quit

0:00Alex Chisnall:What stops founders from building something meaningful isn't the lack of ideas, it's the fear of getting started. I'm Alex Chisnall and this is Screw It Just Do It. A podcast for people who are ready to stop waiting, take action and make things happen. It's amazing what you can achieve when in your mind you've created a scenario where there is no choice. So the December of the first year, and that was probably the lowest point. 12 months before we'd have a big black tie dinner at a 500 people company and that you know you can see on social media they're still doing that you know my advice would be to really embrace those early days because it's that struggle that builds the resilience it's 10 years it's a minimum 10 years and you want it to take 10 years because if it doesn't take 10 years you haven't built the skills or the resilience skill thermostat to be able to maintain what's going on so my My idea was for two years, I was going to earn as much money as humanly possible.

0:57Alex Chisnall:Before we get into today's conversation, this is genuinely relevant for a lot of founders listening. Are you running a business that pays supplies abroad, receives international payments, or operates across borders? World First helps founders manage global payments and FX more efficiently with access to competitive exchange rates and tools designed specifically for growing businesses. world first have given us an exclusive offer for podcast listeners to get 50 transactions completely fee-free for 60 days head to worldfirst.com forward slash screw it to create a free account and claim now now let's jump into the main conversation so myself and a colleague at the time just said look you know if we if we're asked to be in to start again in a company where we don't necessarily believe in the long-term vision and the working environment why don't we really start again and and you know the original intention about setting up a business and what i've been doing for the last three years kind of married up and it was a recruitment company that we set up so was that your co-founder james that's right yeah yeah so okay so yeah so james and i set up 2000 in the january 2011 and quite quickly after we were joined joined by two other partners alex nick rowe um and it's really you know when they joined is is kind of when carrington western my mind was born when they joined okay yeah and before that was that tell me about the starting out um in a garage was that yeah so he was in my brother's garage in my brother's garage um and it was um very very tough um very very tough it was still obviously you know you know the deepest recession since second world war um and i remember it yeah that's it and we were told it was a crazy time set up a recruitment company it was even crazier to set up a contract recruitment company which takes far longer to get off the ground most recruitment companies are set up to service permanent hires which are much more you know the perm guys at my work will shoot me for this but it's a much more simple way to get started um so we set up a contract recruitment company in a recession against all advice um and we told my brother you know we'll be here for six weeks um just in your spare room, in the converted garage down the bottom of his driveway.

3:12And we were there 14 months. And it was really, really tough. We literally started with two temporary fold-out tables. We had our old slow laptops, two mobile phones. And, you know, in the winter months, of which we saw two, two winters there, we left in the mid-February 2012. 2012 um we had to wear fingerless gloves um to to um stay warm and but you know still type and make calls it was that it was that basic of a start and i think a lot of the time especially these days you know there's a real race on social media to seem and to be seen as being successful way before you are and i think you know my advice would be to really embrace those early days because it's that struggle that builds the resilience it's that struggle that builds resilience and you know that's your story that's your that's your journey that you've been on um but you know there's so many people putting up a facade of like early success when it's that's not that's not true no no absolutely i remember when i was working at virgin startup and other richest companies and people were um applying for startup loans and then literally a couple of months later you'd see like um blacked out rain driver with a personalized number plate and you're like i can exactly where they're like you know brand new macbook yeah brand new iphone and you're just like you don't need that to get going guys no exactly but it also you know i'm a big one on environment and if you if you're flooding your environment with luxury products um all of a sudden subconsciously your drive and your hunger um is starting to dip um and you know you've you've got those things on tick let's face it you know so um so yes we we we forego um and you know any kind of luxury for a long time um and you know i was still driving around in a 250 pound um citron saxo when we had seven or eight staff you know so um that that's what it takes um and and you know these days it's obviously different but you know we're talking 13 years later and it it takes you know people need to wrap their head around how long this sort of thing takes you know Or again, online, you see, do this in 90 days, do this in three months.

5:23And it's 10 years. It's a minimum 10 years. And you want it to take 10 years. Because if it doesn't take 10 years, you haven't built the skills or the resilience or that kind of skill thermostat to be able to maintain what's going on. You don't want to be that lottery winner that it comes and goes really quickly. You need to mature on that journey. You need it to take that length of time. And was this, was Carrington West your first business, essentially, your first business venture? Pretty much, yeah. Pretty much. There was a kind of lettings website at uni that was just like a, you know, essentially a hobby that I thought I was going to tackle right move with, with no budget, which obviously didn't work.

6:06Yeah. But, you know, again, I think a lot of people are scared to try. And those early sort of dabblings with, you know, complete fantasy kind of outcomes actually built, you know, like a resilience to kind of put yourself out there. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. You know, you need to try a fair few things before something takes off. And why do you think, because I was chatting to, probably being on the show more than anyone else, Piers Lenny from a Dragon's Den investor and he was we were chatting and he was saying I think his fourth or fifth business venture was the one that that got him in mind is like the fourth I think with a podcast agency so interested to know like kind of rewind back to start that business you know what kind of foundations did you put in place that you think have helped it make it such I mean 100 million revenue business is unbelievable you know most people listen to this couldn't imagine building a business like that in 13 years or 130 years simons yeah yeah um so yeah great question i mean you know we we were fairly guilty of leaving our permanent versions of of the you know business related kind of service that we were going to set up thinking that we knew 90 of the of the journey um we in reality we knew 15 20 and that was a very very um purposeful you know um decision to to obviously you know um keep the the you know inner workings of how these things work from us by our plc employer they don't want people knowing the you know the full life cycle and you know going up and setting up sort of thing um so we were you know i mean the year before christmas 2010 i'd won a national award is the best contract recruiter in the uk my colleague james was um top three in a company of 500 that we left um nick that came on won one that won the award i did the year after um alex kerr was you know really excellent recruiter blaine who was our first employee had also won won the award i'd won so we've got three national award winners in four years in in a small room and we still almost failed so you know my my point is you can be true experts in your in your field um and if you don't take on you know the the sort of broad knowledge about how these operations run and really get into the bits that make you feel uncomfortable and really understand it um even if you outsource absolutely everything other than what you're comfortable with at that time you still need a real grasp on it because you're outsourcing it to to companies that then outsource it to someone else etc etc so you need to have a really tight grip on on the things in the early days because that that can um you know that can see you come unstuck and when you said you nearly failed tell us a little bit about yeah in the early years in the early years in the early years i mean we can't pin that on on alex nick and blaine it was very much me and james we're in the hot seat when that happened but um so we got to the summer um of the first year um we're obviously still in this you know still in the garage this time it's it's too hot not too cold um and um we we built up i mean that's where that 500 pound headline comes from we we we actually started with 10 000 pounds um which was you know fairly pitiful savings for two people that had been earning what we'd earned him but you know we were young lads um but that 500 pounds uh headline which you know i think's from the daily express or something right but that was the first um amount of money that we we were about to pay ourselves monthly so that we built that up for for six months to the june so we again we thought we'd be paid after about six weeks you know we're gonna we're gonna be doing 10k months after six weeks we we weren't um by any stretch of the imagination and bear in mind we're experts at what we do so it had taken six months to build up about a thousand pounds a month of revenue which was residual um and we were going to pay ourselves now bearing in mind you know i've got a mortgage james has got a mortgage and this isn't in covering even covering that so a lot of our lives went on sort of credit cards in that first year um and then we were like right you know this this 500 pounds is going to really really help us um and then one of our uh former teammates from our previous company became available um we hadn't seen him for about a year he'd been off doing something else about six months to a year before we left so we hadn't seen him for about a year 18 months and he was an excellent recruiter at our previous company um he he was got switched off by what he was doing for the last 18 months wanted to come on board with us and it was a real you know real star signing um so we explained we're still in the garage we've got these great plans etc etc yet no problem don't mind being in the garage for a few months um and came in and for whatever reason it just didn't work and i think he'd he'd he'd changed hugely um and i don't think you know he no longer believed in it he'd had children etc etc and it got to the christmas so the december of the first year and that was probably the lowest point personally that i've that i've had you know possibly in my life um certainly my business career but um you know we you know if you think 12 months before we'd have a big black tie dinner at a 500 people company and that you know and you can see on social media they're still doing that we're in a pub decide whether to carry on and there's three of us um and we said to we said to our our colleague we said look you know we we we we've got two choices we either all fold this business or we're going to have to let you go and james and i carry on um and forego uh any more salary and just try and grind this out and almost start again we'd literally run out of funds we had no choice um and there was various invoicing issues we we thought we'd outsource things to people that have you know weren't doing what they said they'd do um and it was a very very stressful time and it was real it was a real that that christmas was you know really difficult there's some real soul searching going on i'd be honest i was looking at i was looking at jobs back in recruitment i recently told james that a few years ago um and it was one of those and and but you know in the january we we kind of refocused we you know it was one of those screw it let's do it let's moments let's say where we we'd spent the last 12 months it you know building a recruitment business a recruitment business to to take on you know our previous company and and various other companies you know nationally with no brand and and no office presence and no you know no real revenue and and you know how how how are we going to do it you know it was it was it was ridiculous so we actually almost completely reframed what we were trying to build we we decided that we were no longer going to try and build a recruitment company we were going to try and build a very very attractive place to work to attract top talent to attract excellent graduates to attract people that are currently doing it so we'd be focused on building a recruitment company and that was now second we were gonna just try and you know create the best place in the uk to work that was on our goals create the best place in the cut in the country to work where did that come from that who are you looking at um that would have somewhere like that anywhere in the world so those comparisons came came later but we were like you know if we're gonna do it that that's our north star let's create let's create an amazing place to work you know first things first we need to get you need to change our environment which we did and we went to um you know the the sort of best business part locally um used to be a big ibm uh building nice shiny glass thing and we got like essentially a broom cupboard in there um and um you know still hugely expensive um and from there it grew and we looked at everything we looked at the benefits package we you know our first 20 hires were essentially our friends so it created a real sort of you know strong cult environment you know culture uh came came from came from that um and then you know from there it it kind of grew and obviously bringing in alex and nick helped hugely they came in with different opinions different ways of looking at things and blaine's been unbelievable um and and from there it's kind of snowballed and you know then we started to get recognized and then we started to get um you know some heat from our previous company and you know you you know you're really doing something if they're starting to prod you um what was that like uh fun um you know it's um yeah there's there's there's still a few of them there i mean you know um i've still got you know i i can be motivated by you know positive things i can be motivated by a quite a darker side um and um you know some of the comments and and some of the um you know comments about our business in the early days have literally been burnt onto my brain for the past 13 years and i'll be honest it's some of those is some of those comments that have that are probably 20 percent um you know to do with to do with my personal success within the business that's got me out of bed and driven it forward yeah um so thanks you know for that um but um but yeah no and and it's grown and and you In November last year, the investors and people did award us the UK's best employer.

15:32Alex Chisnall:If this conversation resonated with you, don't just sit there, act on it. Make sure you follow or subscribe for more game-changing conversations. And remember, the only thing standing between you and your business breakthrough is the decision to screw it and just do it.