Brace yourself for the Mystery of the 'Classic Reserve'

We are putting the recruitment and software chat on pause this week. Sometimes you just need to spend an episode catching up with your mate on what's been happening!

We kick things off with a massive "Lee's Legs" announcement! Andy has officially launched a fundraising page for Say it with a Smile, an amazing dementia charity close to our' hearts.

He is tackling the 207-mile Chase the Sun cycle and a Tenby Iron Man this year with a massive £10,000 target. (Link to donate below.

From there, we get into the usual chit chat. Andy has been on a cycling holiday so brace yourself for a lot of chat around pedals, tyres and Greek platters. Once we get past the cycling chat we cover everything from providing Vinted tech support for our mums, to using AI to help paint the kitchen forest green, and digging up 15-year-old uni addresses just to play a round of Top Golf.

It also gets a bit deep where I chat about a highly stressful couple of weeks dealing with a family emergency. I forgot how wild A&E can be and did get collared by a swearing Geordie in a wheelchair.

I've also had some fun reading the ruthless small print of care home T&Cs, and the ongoing financial mystery of why my Gran has been paying a classic car storage company called "Classic Reserve."

To wrap it all up, we obviously do our Lee’s Lunchbox to rattle off a highly specific list of our biggest pet peeves.

Here's your link for any donations.

Links & Resources:

• 🚴‍♂️ Support the Lee's Legs Campaign for 'Say it with a Smile': https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/say-it-with-a-smile-1

This week on the pod, we’re balancing the weekend shenanigans with some major updates from behind the scenes at Giig.

We kick things off with a recap of what we’ve been up to outside the office. We cover everything from a 117-mile training ride and committing to a double-denim Sunday roast, to surfing man-made waves in Bristol and spotting a Drum & Bass DJ rolling through the streets on a trike.

We also get sidetracked by our biggest phobias, which brings up the story of a highly questionable, knock-off bungee jump in Nepal.

But it’s not all just weekend banter. We also lift the do a run through on what is happening with the platform:Squashing Bugs: The absolute relief of finally tracking down and fixing a fundamental workflow bug that was assigning rescheduled interviews to the wrong candidates.

The idibu Integration: We are inches away from launching our first major integration, which will allow users to distribute jobs natively from Giig to multiple job boards.

The TEAM Conference: Prepping for the upcoming schedule and getting ready to run a workshop specifically for solo founders.

To wrap it all up, we pull a question from Lee’s Lunchbox:

What have you done more of? Trusted your gut or listened to other people? We break down the difference between being an instinctive, trigger-pulling decision-maker versus needing to consult the group chat before making a move.

Enjoy the Ep!

Selling a recruitment business is not an easy game!

This week on the pod, we sat down with Matt Fox from Exitus Advisory.

His backstory is wild, starting as a rep selling bar crawls on the Malia strip to completely accidentally falling into recruitment.

But the real eye opener of this episode is his journey as an agency founder. Matt built a 30 person agency and could smell the finish line of selling it.

The heads of terms were signed. The deal was done. And then...

Boris Johnson went on TV to announce the first national COVID lockdown. The deal collapsed, jobs vanished overnight, and he was forced to go back to the drawing board.

Matt talks through the brutal reality of dealing with toxic staff, the mental toll of managing a business through a crisis, and how he eventually rebuilt the company to secure a successful exit on his own terms.

It takes some serious grit to be so close to the finish, have it all pulled away and then go back round and have another crack.

After going through all of that, he helps other recruitment founders prepare their businesses for sale, and he dropped some incredible advice on what makes an agency actually valuable, which is super useful for anyone who's got their eye on selling.

In this episode we cover:

• Working on the Malia strip and how it doesn't quite prepare you for management.

• The brutal story of a multi-million-pound exit collapsing overnight.

• The emotional and mental toll of managing toxic staff and bad behavior.

• What actually makes a recruitment agency sellable (and how to increase your valuation).

• Why you need to step away from billing if you want to sell.

• Our most thoughtful gift to date.

• Lee's Lunchbox: If you had to start again tomorrow with no network and no brand, would you still build a recruitment business?