The Long Game in Business and Recruitment, with Michael Phillips

Michael Phillips, Tom Hitchcock, how are you? Very good, Tom. How are you mate? Not too bad. Not too bad. So, at first glance, just in the corner of my eye, I thought you had a purple T-shirt on. I thought you were on brand, but now you've changed your head. I've been fighting with James, my business partner, to get some key moves, brand, its gear over the years, but I think to be honest, I think it's, yeah, wouldn't be for us and the teal and the navy doesn't go too well with me. No, you get me a casual close to that. Mate, I'm not going to criticize your choice of dress code. It's all good. So anyway, you and I, we don't really know each other. So I'm really keen to hear your story. Where do you want to start?

Do you want us to start at the beginning, if you want? I'm not sure if you remember, but I think we crossed paths very briefly at another agency in the previous life. I think Europe and Sydney, I was down in Melbourne. But now, look, as you can tell, I'm not from around these parts. I grew up in Scotland and I was at Aberdeen in particular. And of all my mates and basically everyone I know, I was probably in the 5% that didn't end up in like oil and gas. I come from Aberdeen. It's similar to a product over here. It's the main industry there. But despite it being in the family, I just never really got into it at all. but stumbled into recruitment like most people did. I did a placement year at university and I was doing business management degree and you go and work for a company for 12 months and basically as long as you don't get fired, you get an A.

So, did a right and yeah, stuck at it and here we are basically. So it started quite young I guess for recruitment but I don't know anyone that grows up wanting to become a recruitment consultant for a countenance in Melbourne, but yeah, I wasn't smart enough to become a lawyer. And I wasn't good enough for football to play for Man United, so like I said, here we are. I'm just going to red jersey instead now and I'm going to be in enough of a miserable season. Don't get me started. It's a tough watch at the moment, especially when you've got a week up at 3.30 in the morning or five in the morning, whatever it is. It's a thanks load, but I've got three beautiful children and sometimes I was feeding as well, so I'll help him with the feed.

So I can cut the limps here and there, but to be honest, it's a sense we've got to sleep. So maybe it's a good thing. I grew up on Fergie Time and probably your glory years, or some of your glory years. And most of the main supporters that I knew, whenever they drew, they had a nose bleed because they weren't used to it. It's all up to everyone. And in the nine minutes of Fergie Time, always scored an extra goal. And I'm not even infuriating for the opposition, but to be honest, it was that, it's breaking me. Um, and we had, we had a good, very good run there for, for two years, I don't know. I started following my night when I was like three or four, I think. And I remember, um, yeah, going to like family functions, everything I would get late for it to say, we're all mean up for Christmas.

I would get you magnetic kids and I was the only one not in like fancy, I don't know, fancy outfit, whatever. And I was sitting there on my mind and I golling it golly outfit because here's my goal is my idol growing up. Um, here's Michael and then David Beckham, but I definitely don't have his right boot or his left boot. And it's a place socially now, but, um, just with the dads at school, um, every now and again, you get too competitive, but you've got to remember your, uh, your drop off and pick up with these, these guys for the next 10, 15 years. So he probably should, uh, read in a little bit. Now, obviously it's interesting that the season that you guys have in on West Ham, we're having a terrible season, but we're equal in points here.

And I wish when you put it in perspective, it's definitely a reminder of just how things change, how you can have a full from grace. And it doesn't matter if you find loads of money at it, et cetera, et cetera. If things are not right, you're going to suffer. You know, it doesn't matter about a few years ago. No, it doesn't and then like you can you can live up those past glories But it comes back to recruitment. That's why I always tell people come back to recruitment our recruitment I think absolutely shopped in for ten twelve years and the last good player repose The trials for nine beds would be pretty good But the last good player for that was van Parveen. He wanted to league and It's been steady steadily downhill since then so maybe maybe they should have caught up a good recruiter and try and try and yeah invest back in the squad It's a tough ass to turn around from here. We've got no money.

Haven't got the players that the manager wants to invest in. Yeah, it's a with laughing stock, to be honest. But I also know that it's it will come around again. I'm sure. Not long might continue. For sincerity. The good thing is that last few years,

I'm 35, but I don't know any Liverpool. I don't know any city fans or all the city fans that I've ever heard of in their early 20s. So I've been happy with them winning the league. It's when Liverpool start winning the league. That's when you're, you know, got few mates in recruitment as well, but just their Liverpool fans and it's insufferable. But I imagine I was insufferable for 20 years. So exactly. These forces, of course, isn't it? It goes around the other way. So this is so. So you form everything, which, you know, am I right in recording that that was known as the Silver City or the Granite City? Granite City, yeah, Granite City. So it's the couple of weeks a year that the sun shines and it catches the granite just right. It's beautiful. But the rest of the year when it's raining, it's pretty great. And obviously it's dark there as well because it's so much further north than like here, London or anything like that. I mean it's dark by three o'clock in in the afternoon in the middle of winter. And it doesn't get like till 10 in the morning or something. I love growing up in Aberdeen. A lot of great memories there. And obviously well because of the oil there, like, I was quite, yeah, quite a lot of wealth there, quite a lot of people wanted to live in Aberdeen didn't really have what weren't affected to the smog by the recession and whatnot that happened in the late 90s.

But yeah, look at some, it's certainly sort of not the city that I grew up in and a lot of me to move away now. So whenever I go back there and visit, we go back quite a bit with my family. And yeah, it's just very different to what it was. I remember reading or watching something about the city a good while ago, where it was a bit of a film center. Yeah. Back in the heyday where it took its nickname from the granite city. Yeah, yeah. What's your trade with yourself for? I'm not massively into sort of, yeah, your film and your art and stuff like that, but yeah, because it's always been there, music hold down on Union Street, so yeah, great for a gig and, yeah, we always try to get it on-bound to what you can when you're growing up, so yeah, just not stay at home and just be miserable inside. So, yeah, it's great to start coming come to Melbourne and like all the all that sort of stuff that comes here as well. My wife's big into musicals and plays and shows and stuff like that.

So I'd be dragged to them a few of them over there. Nice. And how's your accent compared to how it was when you left? Well, I think it's I've got a very soft Scottish accent. If any Scottish accent it's all like people from England or Australia or America, they always think I'm at something straight up a set of braver or something, but anyone from Scotland will tell you this is a pretty weak accent. And I probably sound pretty English to be honest. So my parents are both English, the Queen's English. So I've been here 12 years now, just over 12 years. I came for the British National Arts Tour back in 2013 and just backpacking and yeah, stuck out and actually applied for a sales job at Hayes and I had that option.

Or they were like, oh, well, you've done a recruitment back home. I used to hear as I'm staying for a few months. Like, nah, you should stay and yeah, I got stuck into it. And yeah, here I am. Toby is like, nice. I remember that last line. So are you going to be doing the tour this time? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. We've got some tickets to the second test in Melbourne. And I thought the rebels, but It's TDC at the moment. I don't know who's still kicking around there, but I think that'll be confirmed in the next few months, no doubt. I've gone to a comment up in Sydney, so try now to go and get to the test match up there as well. It's just a good time to like rugby when the line's going on. Always get to the pub to watch it.

And yeah, there's when all the line's fans to send on Mel when it's a sort of Sea of Red, which was pretty special. Yeah, 12 years ago. So I'm having grown up English in Scotland, never really sort of one of the insiders when it comes to supporting teams and being a minority fan as well. Yeah, so it's good to go to the power of the net once during the same time. So you can have a bit of a band for about that. Yeah, good. So, and you said that we worked together briefly. And I think I recall meeting you once when you came up to Sydney. So I think you're in the Melbourne office with the Anderson partnership. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So now I try and come up quite a bit and get around the officers and yeah, it's just a bit a little bit easier when I didn't have three kids hanging off me.

So it's good to get out and about, but not, yeah, works very briefly at Hayes. and they put me on a manufacturing and operations desk and it wasn't for me at all. Like I was, at Hayes, you'd sort of, you'd borrow the director's car, so I was rocking up to some factory out on Altoana and English accent, fresh suit, Mercedes car.

They just looked at me and thought, you're a wanker. So I was like, I'm not getting any buying at all. And then, yeah, manager at that time approached me and said, look, I can't at least not the sexiest industry in the world, but it's pretty reliable. You know what I'd say about deaf and taxes, like your recruited tax is always going to be fairly stable, fairly reliable. And yeah, just sort of working a bit in each area. And yeah, as you know, the longer you work in an area in recruitment, the easier it seems, why your network grows. That's what I try and install in any of the junior guys that you just got to get through the first couple of years in any desk in any market. It does. It gets easier.

There's a lot of grafts. You still miss out on candidates and it doesn't matter how much you build on a quarter. It's the ones you miss out on that are still rubbish. But yeah, the longer you can stick at it, definitely the better. And that's the accounting blue you got in the background. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. We, um, yeah, when we were sort of coming up with the, um, I hope I've seen the name key moves, but then like the, the colors behind it. Um, geez, you, you look into all the meanings behind all these colors and avoiding, avoiding reds despite being my net fan. And, um, yeah, all these things. And then by the time you lock it in, you don't think about it again. And that was like agonizing over for two months about what color it's in all that, but, um, no, it's just, just public practice accounting to be honest for us.

It's professional services, public practice, chartered account firms, whatever you want to call it. A lot of people don't actually understand it because people say, are you working the accounting? So can you help? I may use the CFO somewhere, but it's very different to that. So it's anything from big form and it's tears to suburban account firms and everything in between. So yeah, very very stable industry is very under staff. then so that's why we sort of come in just to get really networked, get some of the kind that it's like it's a thing that we do a lot more on the consulting where but I sort of deal with less cushy than most recruiters but yeah, unfortunately, recruits do have the best name. So you've always got it so for that relationship when you first start speaking to some people, but not firmly believe that we add a lot of value to the industry and always try to get out to industry networking events and host events ourselves and do sorts of things that just try and put our name out there and not just be like everyone else because yeah that becomes pretty firing.

So I find this interesting because obviously every recruiter I've spoken to whether on the podcast or not but the recorded ones are easy because the time standard people could reference them but the recruitment always finds you for starters. But I'm speaking to people that have gone out and have set up their own businesses and it's really interesting because these are the people that when they're doing the work for someone else in recruitment, they are attentive enough to see that they're running a business within a business and how this works to how these functions so that they can take that that leap of faith with sort of a soft land and if you like. Was you like that when you were working for a tap and what have you?

Well, I always loved, I was always sort of sort of entrepreneurial, loved that school, loved that uni. And so I've always felt like I would want to own my own business at some point. I didn't really know what that would look like. But yeah, I'd say right, when you're running a desk and you're sort of junior or senior consultant, you've got to run it like your own business. like the more you put in, the more you can out, you've got to think, are you profitable? Are you, yeah, so where the revenue's coming from? And I always find it tough like working in those, what sort of names of businesses and whatnot, but like running with businesses and people just look at the KPIs or your finance. So like what your forecast is, and it's like, it's, that's, some people like to operate like that, we really don't.

It's more about that's just sort of taking from people that don't understand the account these days, they'll look at it and like, oh, what are you going to build by the end of the month? I don't know because this week I could find a candle and I could place them by the end of the week. And that dramatically changes your forecast. I'd always go into those meetings that started the month. I'd always just say the same figure. I know it or just like I say, oh, 35k. That's all do that by the end of the month. And luckily enough, it was always at least that. And it's something that someone's used to do really well. And some of you just sort of believe that's the month after that. But ultimately it comes down to Billings.

And you look at it, and I think pretty early on, I was like, is this company adding the value here? Or am I adding the value to that desk? And I really like my time at TAPT. So we're gonna be on the team there with greats in Melbourne. Went on various trips to where we go, Vegas with Bali, Fire and Bay, yeah, for all those sort of incentive trips and stuff like that. So had a really good time. But just wanted a bit of change to be honest. And then the opportunity to present itself with future you. I was thinking again about going, sort of starting business then and just, yeah, wanted to see how another recruitment agency here operated. And they were making a bit of a splash at the time and sort of talking a really good game and a lot of good people going there. And yeah, again, I had had a great two, two and a half years there. Before ultimately, yeah, sitting down with James over a beer and, and deciding like, well, I'm gonna do this by myself. He's like, well, I'm gonna do it by myself and get a couple more beers in and like, we're good friends outside of work as well, having met at TAP.

And yeah, just sort of snowballed from there. Yeah, good. I love this. So some of the best ideas and conversations happen over a cold one, don't I? I do. I always remember where I was as Dan at the Arborette and I was thinking a couple and we were like, right, let's say that we're going to do this. We're going to do this. And that's when you start the process of naming companies and colours and all that sort of rubbish that you don't even think about now. But yeah. It's all part of the journey. And it's kind of the fun stuff. It's when you're all exposed. It's new. How are you going to be next best thing, etc. Yeah, it's nice to think that. But certainly a lot of headaches have come with it as well.

but now we've been incredibly fortunate timing-wise. I actually started a little bit earlier, but that was always going to be the plan. But I ended up starting a few months before COVID started. So in November 19, I went out and started it, and then I had a few months billing and the best placement, best seven and a half grand I've ever built was the retainer in the first week. And I got a bit retained a page and I was like, that's all my concerns gone for the first couple of months. Like, because you always thought that's the nervousness that I'm starting a new business and like, are you going to be able to cover your costs and where's the money going to come from? I'm like, suddenly going to realize that actually everyone's going to realize I'm rubbish at my job and I'm not going to bill anything. But no, that was that seven and a half K with the business to be honest, I didn't think I'd work with, but you came through a referral and pitched a retainer and got the money in and then now we're away for there for a few months and then

everyone shuts up shop then for, yeah, I think it blanks for the first time in my career, it blanks April, May 2020 and then June it sort of like it was going on and it dropped off and then it bounced back the other way. And it's been a sense then the demand for accountants and accounting firms has been through the root because during COVID everyone needed access to their like stimulus packages and all that sort of stuff. A jobseeker, you remember all that, that was all that all came through your accountants. So we're a partner, all our clients, which like the demand is huge. Like we just need staff and a few of the big companies that sort of panicked and let go of a lot of stuff. So we're replacing all some candidates into some some some really good firms that were doing some great things. And yeah, just um, there's not so many candidates around nowadays, but certainly for for a good couple of years it was it was very very busy. And yeah, you don't want to shout from the the rooftops about it. A lot of people had some really tough times then. But yeah, selfishly from the accounting and business perspective, yeah, it's quite a lucrative then and we're still trying to ride that wave as best we can now.

Yeah, good to hear. So what are your plans for the future then with the business? Do you have maybe like a five year plan or anything like that? Yeah, so look, we're not one of these recruitment owners and I interviewed a bunch places over the years and everyone's like, oh yeah, we're gonna grow it and we're gonna do the grow down the bluefin model we're gonna sell and we're all gonna have 30 million in the bank and nah like I think James and I so yeah we're both like five quite young um we've both got young families both got three kids so we're very much in this for the long haul um we're both on the tools where um we know for the next 15 20 years we're gonna be um unless unless everything dramatically changes, then we're gonna be on the tool.

So I think like, so growing into like, I mean, we're 10 now, we will be next week, we'll be 10, I'm hoping to get it sort of that 13, 15 sort of head count. And then, yeah, probably just leave it at that. So while we're just doing accounting, we're sort of growing out the legal division as well with in professional services, because there is a crossover there. And then we do sort of the business support and administration side. So, look, it'll be led by who we meet, but yeah, I think it's important for us to remember why we started the business and to have that sort of good work-life balance and ensure that we're not just growing headcount for the sake of it, because that's a frustration that came with the two previous businesses that I was at.

I was just like, just add more staff. Like your business unit is doing well. you add more stuff, you'll be a little same. It doesn't work about that. If you split someone's desk, they're doing 100k cores fairly consistently. If you split someone's desk, it doesn't mean that two people are going to do 100k cores, you have to underperforming 50k core stuff. And it's yeah, some smart people out there, but yeah. They say it's interesting lessons you learn from working elsewhere and what you're like yourself thereafter. Okay, That's us wrapping up now. Time flies quickly. We've been listening to this. They want to make contact with you, Michael. I know you can add your contact details to the links, but what would be your preferred method of communication?

Always on the phone. A phone or LinkedIn, to be honest, if you want to shoot me a LinkedIn message, I'll always then just say, look, give me a call. Jesus, sometimes I feel a bit old school, but there's nothing better than just picking up the phone. So, yeah, my mobile number is everywhere on my LinkedIn or job ads or wherever you want to, or on the website. So just, I'll sit and chat to anyone. If you're not an accountant, I'll point you in the right direction to get jobs with another agency. It's, I firmly believe that the more time you get people, the more time they'll give you. Yeah, I agree. Well, William, thanks a lot for your time. Appreciate it. Thanks, Tom. Appreciate it. Hello again. It is I am Mr.

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