Starting a new business isn’t the hardest part. Making it survive and grow is the key challenge.

In the UK, there are a growing amount of new business start-ups – 589,000 in 2017 alone at one estimate. But how many of those will go on to thrive remains to be seen. Some may have already hit the wall.

Once established, successfully ‘scaling’ a business is seen as the next big challenge. A successful small business won’t necessarily translate to a successful medium or large-sized business. The latest data shows that just under 31,500 businesses successfully ‘scale up’ annually. Given more than half a million launched last year, that’s not many.

Fortunately for people in recruitment, starting a new business is a lot easier than in some sectors. A talented recruiter with several years of experience under their belt, good local knowledge, a decent contacts list of clients and a driven and enthusiastic personality, has the potential to run a very successful business.

The Recruit Venture Group’s established model already offers these experienced recruiters all of the finance they need to get started, as well as providing all the back-office support needed to allow the business to focus generating revenues from day one.

But the Recruit Venture Group’s unique joint venture model not only gets these businesses established but actively supports scaling up. Here’s how.

 

A robust trading statement for the first year or two may be encouraging for a new business, but it might not necessarily impress the bank manager enough to part with the finance needed for serious growth. The Recruit Venture Group’s outlook however is to be ambitious and positive about the businesses it helps support. If trading is going well, it will unlock finance to open additional offices and expand the workforce, for example, without the onerous terms and conditions of a traditional lender. If the growth is there, the finance is there to support it.

 

Taking on more staff, for example, means more demands on payroll and HR. Opening new offices requires legal, marketing and other administrative support. Fast growth requires additional help from the accounts and IT side. These are all material considerations for most small businesses, costing time and money, and potentially holding back growth. But The Recruit Venture Group’s back-office support framework is designed to cope with the expansion of its partner businesses. In short, businesses can scale easily because the back office infrastructure is already in place, and with no financial or time cost involved for the person running it.

 

Business is a lot to do with networking. Knowing other talented people is vital and experienced contacts to call upon when opportunity knocks is hugely valuable. However, many small business owners don’t have fully formed networks to call upon at a moment’s notice. The Recruit Venture Group, however, has a huge array of talented individuals with vast experience in the recruitment sector, and in business generally. If there’s a barrier to growth that crops up, the chances are that one of The Recruit Venture Team will have come across it – and knows the best approach. If there’s a legal issue, marketing opportunity, HR problem, or simply an occasion where an experienced head is needed to bounce ideas off, The Recruit Venture Group is there to lend advice when its needed.

 

One of the best ways to grow a business is, to be frank, to copy the success of others. The Recruit Venture Group has 43 such success stories already up and running. That’s 43 businesses, all in the Recruitment Sector, but serving different industries, in different geographies, in different local economies and all with individual strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges. That means The Recruit Venture Group is the hub through which all of those experiences and learnings can be shared (without giving away anything confidential, of course). This growing vault of knowledge can be tapped into whenever barriers to growth emerge.

 

Good recruiters don’t always make good statisticians and accountants – and they shouldn’t need to. But the numbers and data coming out of a business is vital to understanding how it can grow. Accountants and other consultants are expensive – but can be crucial to spotting a trend or opportunity that could unlock growth. The Recruit Venture Group has a skilled team of accountants and data analysts who can take a good look through the books and spot weaknesses and opportunities for growth. Doing business is a lot about gut instinct and drive, but when the numbers tell a story in black and white, that is usually something worth listening to. Understanding what is driving the growth of business, and, crucially, holding it back, might hold the key to successfully scaling up. The Recruit Venture Group offers that insight as an integral part of its unique business model.

 

Successful joint ventures can redefine what work-life balance looks like

Contrary to popular opinion, breaking out on your own can be one of the best ways to achieve that elusive work-life balance we all strive for.

There’s no denying that when you launch a business, you need to put in the hours. You can forget your ‘working time directive’ of a 48-hour week – that goes out of the window when you’re an entrepreneur.

But while that’s accepted, many people in salaried roles forget just how many hours they themselves are working.

His previous salaried role as a senior operations manager for a large recruitment company regularly saw him working 80-90-hour weeks.

Not just long hours, but also days spent out on the road, with overnight stays, travelling around the country. He also often disagreed with his bosses’ approach and despite putting in those hours, he had none of the control or, for that matter, earning potential, compared to if he was working 80-90- hour weeks in his own business.

 

And Andrew knew it.

He contacted The Recruit Venture Group about support for starting his own business and has not looked back. The Carestaff Bureau has taken off and he now finds, because he chose to set up his business close to home, that his work life balance as an entrepreneur is actually better.

Andrew said: “People say you have to put in the hours to run your own business, and you do, but now I have far greater flexibility in life. I have three children so working locally and being able to take time out when needed for family matters is a huge advantage. That’s a huge transformation from what life used to be like.”

People who are contracted to a 37.5 hour, 9am-5.30pm job may already find themselves working much more.

If they perhaps get in at 8am, work through until 6pm, and don’t take much of a lunch break, that soon adds up to about 55 hours per week. Add in a check of the emails in the evenings, and maybe sorting out a few tasks on a Saturday morning and suddenly you might find yourself up around 65-70 hours per week. Already the salaried employee is starting to put in the hours of someone with their own business. Suddenly, making that leap doesn’t sound like such a great departure from what working life is like anyway.

Paul Mizen, Managing Director of The Recruit Venture Group, said: “Sometimes experienced recruiters in salaried positions are worried about the hours that you have to put in to start a business.”

“There’s no doubt that getting a business off the ground takes a lot of time and energy. But what makes The Recruit Venture Group special is our joint venture model which takes away those time consuming ‘back office’ functions like HR, payroll, accounts, marketing, legal and much more.”

“That’s a huge administrative time-saving. We therefore enable the people we support to actually get on with the job they do best – building networks among clients and providing them with the quality candidates they need. The people we have supported to launch their own business – 43 in total – were already working long hours before they got started with us.”

“And when you’re building up a profitable business, it’s surprising how quickly the time flies!”

Not only does The Recruit Venture Group save time by handling the back-office functions, it also provides 100% of the finance to get started, so the only things recruiters need is a few years of experience under their belt and energy and enthusiasm.

Andrew’s Carestaff Bureau business has certainly benefited, with a second office opening within 18 months of launch and is on course to launch another four within the next few years.

 

 

A decade in a day is a great way to describe what we do?

No, I don’t plan on spending the next twenty years of your life, or mine, talking through your business plan. What I am happy to do is listen to your idea for starting up your own recruitment business, and then giving you the benefit of all the experience and knowledge we have here. That amounts to decades of insight, skills, business acumen and wisdom. And it’s all available to you in a day or so’s discussion.

It might sound like a lot to take in, but if you’re a budding entrepreneur in the recruitment sector you really need to put your idea through its paces. And we’ll do that.

It will be a discussion that will cut out the weeks of conversations with banks and lawyers that you’d spend if you tried to go it alone. It will be a discussion with people who really know about business, and the recruitment business.

Once you’re up and running with 100% risk free funding from The Recruit Venture Group, you’re instantly miles ahead. In fact you’ll get another decade or more of experience delivered to you every day. Because with full access to our tried and tested administration systems, and the support of our compliance and legal teams, you’ll be drawing on some of the best minds in the business.

And your mind will be clear, and free to focus on driving your business. Able to concentrate on finding and developing clients you’ll be scaling up your operation from day one.

At The Recruit Venture Group we specialise in helping recruitment professionals start their own businesses. Our Joint Venture model is working for successful start ups all over the country. You could be next.

 

 

Mind your own business. At first glance I suppose it sounds a bit rude. But honestly, the best advice I can give you if you want a happy and fulfilled life, is to mind your own business. Or to put it another way, run your own business.

Having the autonomy to do things your way, and taking control of your own commercial destiny, are two of the most rewarding objectives you can achieve in life.  They define you. They set you apart as someone who is willing to take the risk, because they can see the rewards. Someone who has ideas, and actually wants to implement them. Someone who makes things happen.

Everything you’ve achieved so far, (which I’m guessing is not to be underrated – but probably is) pales into insignificance against the thrill of launching your own company. Your own logo, your own brand.

In the recruitment sector there are thousands of consultants, some running their own desks, who, every day, think about setting up on their own. Why wouldn’t they? They’re practically running a business anyway, but not seeing the rewards.

At The Recruit Venture Group we help recruitment professionals make the step from employee to employer. 100%, risk free, funding and a package of support that includes access to our back office systems are available now. All you need to do is talk us through your business case and prove to us that you have the drive and desire to do this.

We’ve helped launch over 40 recruitment start ups, all over the uk. Every single one of them feeds back that our financial support was essential, and easier to access than a bank loan. All of them acknowledge that our continued support and back up is what made their dream become a reality; free of worry they focussed on growing their businesses.  Not one of them regrets taking the leap into running their own business.

And it really is ‘their business’. Just like it can be your business. We’re there to help, providing advice and services like accountancy and legal guidance, but after that you’re entitled to tell us to mind our own business.

 

Right now our group has a combined sales turnover of around £138m. You don’t grow a business to that size without making a lot of right decisions and minimising most of the risks.Continue reading

The franchise route is one way to say goodbye to being an undervalued, unappreciated employee and hello to being your own boss but it doesn’t give you the freedom that comes with being a joint venture;

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In an ideal world, we’d all be perfect. All our business deals would be planned and executed down to the finest detail.

Marketing campaigns, recruitment campaigns and business plans would be put together with military precision, and all aspects of running a company would be taken care of instantly and faultlessly.

However, as most people will realise, we don’t live in an ideal world. In reality, deadlines are sometimes missed, details are overlooked and not all employees perform to their full potential day in, day out.

Company owners who fail to understand that perfection isn’t always possible can actually damage their business and fail to achieve their full professional potential.

 Striving for perfection can make you stressed

One of the most negative aspects of perfectionism is that it can pile a lot of pressure onto your professional life and make you very stressed. If nothing is ever quite right, you’re probably going to end up with a fairly negative view of your business, yourself and the people who work for you.

Instead, focus on doing the best job you can and try to avoid creating unrealistic expectations or ambitions. As long as you’re good at what you do, and have the right backing, achieving your professional goals should be easy.

Perfectionism can stifle growth and creativity

Often, people who strive for perfection can become very risk averse as they fear making mistakes or doing anything that could damage their business. And though no one should take any unnecessary risks when it comes to running a company, a little bit of creativity can make a big difference when trying to make a name for yourself in a competitive industry.

Perfectionism can make it hard to delegate

Perfectionists often find it very difficult to delegate – a trait that can make running a successful business a challenge. Company owners need to be able to trust their employees to do their jobs to the required standard. Being able to let go and delegate important tasks to employees will make bosses less stressed, help the business to run more smoothly and free up owners to focus on growing their company.

 How to achieve your goals without being perfect

 Striving for perfection can be a real achilles’ heel in the world of business. Relinquishing unrealistic expectations and focusing on doing the best job you can is important if you’re going to make a success of your new venture.

The best way to ensure you achieve your business goals is to get the backing of an experienced and dedicated partner – and that’s where we come in. With our team behind you, you’ll be able to build a dynamic and successful enterprise that will likely exceed your expectations and bring you big financial rewards. With our help, there’s no need to settle for second best.

To make your move and start your joint venture adventure, contact the Recruit Venture Group today.