$100 Million in 8 Years: Building Big Billers & the Future of AI in Recruiting with Roheel Ahmad

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
Coming up on this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast.

Roheel Ahmad [00:00:03]:
I don't believe that what we're trying to do with imagine in the use of AI is to replace people. It's got to be to enable and support them to be better, operate better, add more value and also get them focused on the things that they really want to be doing, which is the relationship building, the network building.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:20]:
I feel like you guys innovated faster, you guys did things differently, you guys kind of disrupted like the status quo of how typically you build a recruiting business. What other things did you guys really do to kind of push you guys over that edge? Welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with your host Benjamin Mena, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership and placements. Every minute a recruiter spends on paperwork is lost time making placements. That's where Ascend steps in. A modern employer of record and back office solution built to boost the bottom line. Ascend automates onboarding, payroll compliance and invoicing in one streamlined platform. It integrates effortlessly with all your tools and scales as you grow, saving you hours and cutting your operational costs significantly.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:18]:
Want less paperwork and more placements? Head over to ascend.com and see how Ascend can make the difference for you. I am so excited. One of the things I love about this podcast is a returning guest and a returning guest that has continued the story. What we're going to talk about is how this guest and his team in an eight year window went from bootstrapped to a hundred million dollars in revenue. So we're going to talk about some of the things that they did absolutely different. But here's the thing, the future is AI. We're also going to talk about some of the things that they were doing AI wise, that made the difference. That can make a difference in your business too.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:52]:
So, Rahil, welcome back to the podcast, buddy.

Roheel Ahmad [00:01:54]:
Thanks for having me. Appreciate being back. I can't remember how long it's been now. Two, three years at least.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:59]:
It's one of those weird things about being a podcast Dirt. I feel like it was almost yesterday, even though it's probably been like two years.

Roheel Ahmad [00:02:06]:
Yeah, it's been phenomenal, but it's been a good time.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:09]:
So real quick 30 second introduction and then we're going to dive right in.

Roheel Ahmad [00:02:13]:
Yeah. So background. I co founded a business called Full Size Barns back in 2016 out of London. It was literally out of a basement, if you like, with no windows or anything like that fast forward, we scaled up to about 80 heads globally. Two offices in the UK, one in Manhattan, and one soon to be in Dubai as well later on this year. Earlier this late last year, actually, I stepped away from FB to focus on Imagine AI, which is the technology, the platform that I'm building, and imminently taking to market this month.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:43]:
Oh, awesome. Perfect timing. All right, so normally we go into the deep dive on how you ended up in this wonderful recruiting and you got an awesome story. But here's the thing, guys. Go back and listen to our old episode, because the things that I want to focus on is what has changed since then, how you guys really built the business, what you guys are doing with artificial intelligence. So I really just wanted to literally dive into the meat of the story. So you ready?

Roheel Ahmad [00:03:07]:
Yeah, happily. All right.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:09]:
So you guys literally bootstrapped, like, the early days, and you guys didn't take any money? No investor money?

Roheel Ahmad [00:03:16]:
No investor money.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:17]:
Did you have the opportunity to take investor money?

Roheel Ahmad [00:03:20]:
Didn't even seek it, in a nutshell, no, because we didn't go out and we weren't looking for it either. So it was completely bootstrapped. We didn't even take any money ourselves for the first six months or so. Everything was just planned back into the business. Plan back into the business.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:33]:
Okay, so here's the thing. Like a lot of people, when they're building their business, you know, building their teams and everything, you guys literally, in less than eight years, had $100 million in revenue. What do you think are some of the biggest things that, like, you guys did different in those early days compared to probably most people?

Roheel Ahmad [00:03:48]:
I think if I had to put the one thing down, we were thinking like a bigger business before we even were. So what were the structures of the business? We were kind of fast forwarding a few years in terms of what's our reputation going to be like in the marketplace? What's the organizational structure internally? What are the opportunities for internal growth and promotion and progression and responsibility in the business as well? So even though we weren't, say, at 50 people, we designed the business to get us to 50 people. So we had the roadmap to get there. We just then needed to execute.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:18]:
Did you guys have the roadmap before your first hire?

Roheel Ahmad [00:04:21]:
Not perfectly. There are iterations of it, but we had the ambition to be there and beyond. And so we just iterated and developed and changed. And I wouldn't say wholesale pivoted, but it kind of took us in slightly different paths to some degree or variations of so but it came back to that ambition. We always knew we wanted to be a big business, a legacy business.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:41]:
Okay. And one of the things that you guys have done different compared to many other recruiting firms, you actually have set aside equity for your team. Yes, I want you to talk about that because I think that's huge.

Roheel Ahmad [00:04:51]:
So this we knew we were going to do from day one or from day minus one. We just didn't know the structure that we were going to do it and to what level we were going to do it per se. But we always had this joint ambition that this business was never about me, it was never about Scott, it was always about the business itself. And so all of our focus went on the business. So it was basically, it was our way of saying thank you to those that had the greatest impact and joined us along that journey and trusted in us, trusted in the business with their loyalty, their hard work and everything else. With a big windfall at the end of it. We've got the strategies, take the business public. We're on that pathway now and it's, yeah, the guys are doing a really good job at it now.

Roheel Ahmad [00:05:30]:
So we gave away 33% of the business to our people and that's to all. That's not just the sales people, that's operations. You're eligible from day one. There's no buy in, there's no sacrifice to it or anything like that. So it's a huge scheme.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:42]:
Do you think that had a impact on your guys's growth?

Roheel Ahmad [00:05:46]:
Absolutely. Not just growth, but even the element of responsibility. So now we're given a third away of the business. That makes it everyone's responsibility to make sure that the standards and expectations of business are met and kind of kept up not just by myself or Scott, because we own it, but actually that's everyone's shared responsibility to look at those standards. But it also becomes everyone's shared responsibility to celebrate success and, and make sure you're keeping each other propped up through the tough times and, and you're backing each other and everything as well. There was no other way that we could signify that this is about our people and not just a personal sort of wealth play for Scott and I.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:24]:
Okay, so talking about people like how did you guys hire your first few recruiters?

Roheel Ahmad [00:06:29]:
Great question. Looking back, either we didn't have the money to go through Rectorex or anything like that. So it was get down and dirty approach people yourself. Look at everything from LinkedIn to people applying on job boards, inexperienced, experienced people. And we hired about five from day one. I say day one. Near enough. Day one.

Roheel Ahmad [00:06:47]:
Yeah. And we just went all out. It comes back to that thing. We knew we wanted to be a bigger business, so we backed ourselves. We'd obviously led teams and businesses before for other people, so we're comfortable that we knew what we're doing in that respect.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:59]:
You know, you can hire a bunch of people, you can hire a bunch of recruiters, but how do you like, there's no way that you guys can have, you know, $100 million in revenue within an eight year window if you guys didn't develop people into being big billers.

Roheel Ahmad [00:07:11]:
Yep.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:12]:
Did you guys hire the big pillars or was more of a development of the big builders?

Roheel Ahmad [00:07:15]:
We built them. If you look at any of our big builders across the business, we built them within the business. Again, that comes back to the mindset thing. Our business has not been predicated on Scott or I's sort of relationships that we had in the industry or anything like that. As quick as we could do, we passed a lot of those relationships on because it wasn't about us kind of holding on. We didn't want the business being hamstrung or only able to grow because we were bringing in the revenue, the relationships. We wanted to teach other people to do it. So with support and then as quick as we could, we transition a relationship over to an individual so they can own it, they can take it.

Roheel Ahmad [00:07:48]:
We then kind of put our face to it as and when needed and support and make sure service was good. But it was no longer about us. It was about fb. It was about the individual that was in the face of that account for FBA as well.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:59]:
Okay. So I think you guys did a really good job, almost like delegating fast or sharing fast. But like, did it come to training? Did you guys have to train these people up or was it just like grinding their way to being a big biller?

Roheel Ahmad [00:08:10]:
Both. I think you can't get there without the grind. Right. And that comes down to the individual. I'm a huge believer that it's the business's responsibility to ensure that you provide the right culture, the right environment, the right tools to be able to do the job, and the right clarity and expectations on the individual as well. If you provide those three, that's your side of the equation kind of fulfilled. You've got to keep doing it. It's now up to the other person to make sure they're backing up in their work ethic as well as them implementing it properly to the best of their Ability as well.

Roheel Ahmad [00:08:42]:
And that's where the sweet spot when you look at those kind of big billers are and the kind of records that we had of. I remember I had one 21 year old who'd built a contract book and then a team of five in about 15, 16 months. He'd never had any management experience. He'd never worked at our level in the industry. He had a few months before us, but in completely different area. That was the opportunity we gave him and he.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:02]:
Which is phenomenal. Later on down the road. Did you guys actually use rec firms to hire people?

Roheel Ahmad [00:09:07]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. When we had some money to be able to spend with it, we were really thrifty with the money. So little things like rather than buying a bit of tech, we were looking at how can we kind of build a workaround ourselves. So we didn't go out and buy a job poster like there are some of the bits out there. We hired a developer to write some of the code ourselves that went into the job boards automatically. So we just skipped that whole process out. But it cost us a fraction of the price and there was no or. There's very little sort of ongoing running costs for that as well.

Roheel Ahmad [00:09:38]:
Some change in the codes from time to time when the job boards would change their backend code and everything, but nothing massive though. That's just an example of the kind of things we did early days.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:47]:
Okay, so to skip some of the job board pricing and the costs, you hired a developer to build out code to interject your jobs into the sites.

Roheel Ahmad [00:09:55]:
Not not to skip the job boards themselves. Jesse still work with them. But you get third party middleware like Broadbean and a few others that basically act as the kind of middleware piece to post it out to all the job boards and the websites and everything like that. We didn't want to pay for that. So we built it ourselves. We built a workaround ourselves. Remember we had a legal issue in about our second month with someone who approached us to say that we were fraudulently passing ourselves off as them and we had no idea they even existed. We didn't have the money for it.

Roheel Ahmad [00:10:25]:
So it was a use of any of. My friend, I did a law degree. What did I know from there? What could I pull from there? Any of my friends, some advice. And we fought ourselves because we didn't have any other way of doing it and we won. So those kinds of examples where we were quite thrifty in the way that we operated.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:42]:
I feel like you guys innovated faster. You guys did things differently. You guys kind of disrupted, like the status quo of how typically you build a recruiting business. What other things did you guys really do to kind of push you guys over that edge?

Roheel Ahmad [00:10:58]:
So, you know, if I go to the internal side for a second, one of the bits of feedback I've constantly got over the years and even to this day, well, I said to this day now and to this day recently, until last year was senior experience people. We'd meet them, we'd interview them, we'd speak to them about other opportunities with us, what they're looking for. And they were all astounded at how well structured and thought out our vision was. It wasn't just a grand vision and no clue to get there. We had a clear roadmap to get there, even though we were so early in our business. And they would compare that to businesses that they were speaking to who are kind of 20, 25 years in and say, you guys, your thinking is on par, your clarity is on par with these other businesses. Your roadmap is on par with these other businesses as well. So I think the way we always thought from day one was a big difference maker for us.

Roheel Ahmad [00:11:45]:
And then the second thing is that mindset as to offering clients value. I still don't think the industry goes far enough. I still think that the industry is playing on tactics and methods that were born two, three decades ago. And largely the industry is happy with just doing that because it makes money. My mindset to it is to try and take examples from the likes of an Airbnb, for instance, when they look at the customer experience side. So how do they upgrade the customer experience? They came up with this 10 staff theory. Okay, so what's our version of the 10 star theory? How can we go in and start to deliver that? How can we start melding a digital marketing agency into talent services and start creating digital marketing campaigns and digital assets for them in the ways that no one else is doing? And we started running these campaigns for the likes of Renault F1 and Real Madrid and Inkey List and Wagamamas and all these guys on a global scale. It's these.

Roheel Ahmad [00:12:36]:
I say little things, they're not little things because there's a point of differentiation. But it was a different way of thinking and approaching the market than others were doing.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:43]:
I gotta ask, like, you know, do you guys get inspiration for some of these ideas from, like, places outside of recruiting?

Roheel Ahmad [00:12:49]:
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So there's always that good list of people you can go to when it comes to recruitment, specific areas and the kind of bread and butter stuff in recruitment. But things like Masters of Scale is a great example, great podcast for business in general, led by Reid Hoffman x LinkedIn founder. And then because of that, because what we've been able to do and the way we slightly differently structured the business, we've been accepted into Masters Scale for two of the summits that they've done as well. Now typically, again, it's on application only, it's on acceptance only. You can't just pay a fee and rock up to or anything like that. And we've been there for the last couple of years.

Roheel Ahmad [00:13:25]:
They missed a few years out for Covid, but we've been there over in San Fran as well. So a lot of the inspiration comes from outside of sector. And that's also why some of the proudest kind of accolades we've been awarded have come from non recruitment specific industries, sort of and awards as well. So Scott and I were voted young guns in 2018, 30 entrepreneurs to watch out for under 30 at the time, I say at the time, got a few gray hairs now, but that again we were voted as the 11th best startup across the UK before we'd gone fully international. That's not in recruitment, that's across all industries, across all walks of life. It's kind of cool to be up in that group with some of the people that are in there, the likes of Stephen Bartlett from Social Chain and everything. We're in the same group as us, he's not done too badly for himself. So kind of give you hope that you're in the right area and it doesn't guarantee anything, but yeah, it gives you hope.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:15]:
So if somebody's listening to this and just like, okay, like, you know, how do they go about looking at their business different? Especially those that have been like sitting in their desk for like 10 years or running a firm for 10 years, like, oh shit, like I need to innovate. Like what's the first piece of advice that you would give them?

Roheel Ahmad [00:14:29]:
First piece is having absolute clarity on what you want your business to be. If it's a lifestyle business, cool, not a problem. But define what that lifestyle business is and the why and then start building in towards that. When you then start looking at the innovation, if it's a growth business business, if it's a scale business, to what level do you want to get to? And then you can start to actually decide on the innovations, then you start to look at the marketplace in your particular area. Once you've got that bit nailed down and you can start to think, right. How do I differentiate across my industry, my sector, Some of the same old things of repackaging things up. It just doesn't really wash anymore, unfortunately. So you've really got to think of innovation as to what truly is it being offered out there.

Roheel Ahmad [00:15:09]:
What are the problems your clients actually have? You can't get to that unless you're having the right types of conversations going. And just asking for jobs or vacancies won't get you there. Actually understanding the problems that your clients have, what they're struggling with, then you can start to build a solution.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:25]:
Okay, so literally you're looking at things of how you can solve the client's problems.

Roheel Ahmad [00:15:30]:
I know that sounds really basic, but taking example, we're working with a beauty brand at the time and, and they're getting off the ground. Really good business, really interesting business, some great products. How do they position themselves against the likes of a l' Oreal and the big guys in the industry? They can't. They haven't got the money, they haven't got the backing, they haven't got the notoriety, they haven't got the time in the industry. So how do you position them as an employer of choice? That was their problem, actually. When you got to the crux of it and you listened to them, you spoke to them and you asked deep questions and you just got to know them, that was their real problem. Okay, how do we now start to try and solve that? The problem is no longer just the hiring of the individual. How do you position them in the right place? Then once you figured that bit out, then you can actually start to look at things like, well, how are we now going to get that message out there? What is the message and how do we get that out there? Do we use social media and the algorithms? Do you craft things for them? Do you go out, you go out on the street, for instance, whatever that might be.

Roheel Ahmad [00:16:23]:
How do you solve the problem you.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:25]:
Guys like, based on this conversation, conversations I've had with you before, you guys excel at delivery. How did you even get in some of those doors in the first place?

Roheel Ahmad [00:16:38]:
So I think that's been the hallmark and strength of our business throughout its whole time. Just from a cultural perspective. Business development, whether it's existing clients or whether it's new clients, whatever, has always been a mandatory piece on a daily basis. I think that's what saw us through the tough years of 2020 and 23 and 24. Is that cultural piece how it's relationship building? It's a doing a Good job. And backing up what you say you're going to do, it's not being afraid to kind of come go out there with some big, bold promises. I. I've sat in front of the CEO of a fashion brand and said, look, if we don't deliver X, Y and Z on this retained assignment, I'll give you your upfront back.

Roheel Ahmad [00:17:17]:
You will effectively have spent nothing if we fail on this. So you've got all the protection of what would be a contingent model that you're getting all the upside of our retained offering. And I'm happy to do that because it wasn't me delivering on it personally, but I trust the guy who sat next to me who was delivering on it. And if we don't deliver on it, do I really want the money in the first place? And the kind of negative reputation that comes in? No, not really. I can live without that bit.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:41]:
You said BD is part of the culture.

Roheel Ahmad [00:17:43]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:43]:
Is it like a KPI that everybody has to hit every day? Is it like, how'd you guys ingrain that?

Roheel Ahmad [00:17:48]:
There is a KPI element, but there's a drive element. There's a watching the best in the business do it as well. And so everyone coming through the business understands that it's not just a mandatory thing for KPI sake, it's actually what has driven this business through. If I come back to that thing, I'm saying, if you look at the three leanest years over the last decade of 2020, the world had fallen apart. And then post boom of 23 and 24, and the more people I speak to now, they're kind of saying 25 is heading in the same direction and the data is kind of pointing in that way as well. Then you start to understand, well, actually it's because of our culture and that kind of forthright approach to business development and being out there. That's why we grew through those years. We didn't suffer.

Roheel Ahmad [00:18:32]:
We grew in excess of 40% when others were going backwards, sort of 15, 20, 50%.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:38]:
I've talked to a lot of firms that during those years, they went backwards. So, like be, culture, clarity, what else got you guys through those lean years.

Roheel Ahmad [00:18:45]:
To still grow a mindset, absolute mindset of that. I'm a huge believer when we go through Covid, huge believer of there was nothing I could personally do about the situation and there was nothing I could do about the government's response, whether it's in the UK or in the us. Borders were shut. I'm not going to be the one to change that. Unless I'm going to take my placard and start standing outside number 10 of the white House and start protesting, which isn't going to get me very far.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:13]:
It doesn't do anything.

Roheel Ahmad [00:19:14]:
Exactly. That's not going to get me very far at all. Right. It was. Shut up. Stop getting distracted. Don't worry about what's on the news and focus on the things that I can control and that I can influence, which was the business and my people. Make sure that as best to my ability, that they could see some light, that they could feel some confidence, even if they didn't have it in themselves.

Roheel Ahmad [00:19:35]:
It was coming from me. And that they knew that there was security there as well as belief. And that's the kind of coverages you look through the last couple of years. Doesn't matter what the market's saying, doesn't matter what the industry saying or the kind of geopolitical climate is or the economic climate is. What really matters are your figures and your ratios in your business. Focus on improving those ratios. Most people, it'll be a ratio thing. Focus on improving those ratios.

Roheel Ahmad [00:19:59]:
How could you have closed stronger? And I can promise you now, economic climate, geopolitical climate is not impacting your ratios anywhere near as strong as your own behaviors. The way you're controlling your processes, the way you're influencing in the right way. I'm not talking about Jedi mind tricks and underhand things, but influencing, controlling your processes is a key thing that will have the bigger impact on your numbers than anything going on external. If you double down on that, you will get back into growth.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:29]:
Love that. So one of the biggest things is like, you actually expanded internationally.

Roheel Ahmad [00:20:35]:
Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:35]:
You were from the UK to the US and you're in the process of potentially going into the Middle east too. Doing business in a whole other country is absolutely daunting. Like, how did you guys even get over that?

Roheel Ahmad [00:20:44]:
Honestly, I think I might sound like a broken record here. Most of the answers to all of these is mindset and belief. Scott and I spoke for a good while of what we expected of each other and what we expected the business and the vision for the business that we had. One of the key things in that was we said from day one this would be an international business. Now, we didn't have necessarily international background at the time. Neither of us had, not from memory had ever really worked international remit, but we knew we wanted this to be an international business from day one. And then the culture started going more towards the U.S. and doors were open more into the U.S.

Roheel Ahmad [00:21:16]:
i remember when I was a consultant, it was more Europe and Australia. The US Never really got spoken about much. So it was that belief in the first place of us being in an international business and then just go for it. Like the process is largely the same. Yeah, you've got some cultural nuances and differences. People in the US are willing to help you a lot more. When, honestly, that was the biggest thing that I had to get over. So when we were starting to do business out in America and people are offering their networks and to recommend us and to put us in touch with people, my British personality was, why? What do you want? What are you gaining from this? And I remember the first few people actually asked that from.

Roheel Ahmad [00:21:58]:
So look, if you don't, I'm going to ask this directly. Why are you helping me? You've got no reason to. We've just met those types of questions. And very quickly I cottoned on to the fact that it's just a cultural difference.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:10]:
Okay, so real quick, I was like, me and all my buddies, like, like, we share stuff, we help each other, we give each other calls, like, hey, I can't work with this company. Do you want them? Like, that happens, but that doesn't happen really in the UK with friends.

Roheel Ahmad [00:22:21]:
Yeah, it will do. But I'm the kind of, like, there's one individual that I can think of who was putting us in touch with the C suite of his previous business and he was asking for nothing. And it was the kind of question came to this that those kind of recommendations and that door opening doesn't happen in the uk, especially after a first conversation. You do not get that culturally in the uk. You get that once you've known someone for a few years and they kind of trust you and so on and so forth. And the same in the Middle east as well, by the way. They are so much more open with making introductions for you off the back of one or two conversations. In the uk that takes a couple of years to kind of get to that level.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:59]:
Okay, so I've had the chance to meet a lot of UK recruiters, you know, because of this podcast. I think my UK downloads average is like 3% per month. So it's like minute nobody listens in the uk. Yeah. Have you seen a big difference between UK recruiters and US recruiters?

Roheel Ahmad [00:23:14]:
Yeah, I think there's. It's much more based on relationship. The UK market, unfortunately has become very saturated where it is heavily based on. It's a transactional style, not just from the agency side, but from the employer side as well, and those that kind of running the internal functions as well. Because there are the same amount of recruiters essentially in the UK as there are in the US as well. But the market is three to four times larger in the us so it's a heavily saturated market. It's kind of become a bit of a rat race down to the bottom when you start to look at just fees and prices and things like that. Whereas the US market is much more based on relationship skill, expertise, value, add those kind of things a lot more than it is in the UK market.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:56]:
Okay, so real quick, do you think like US recruiters are kind of missing out on realizing the advantages that they probably have?

Roheel Ahmad [00:24:03]:
Yeah, I do. I think there is less structure in the way an American recruiter will approach a process in terms of the control that they have on their process and moving things along and so on as well. But that comes from there's so much pressure and there's so much competition in the UK market that unless you kind of take that control that's needed in an overall process, you won't get anything. And so I think there's a world where we should be. And that's what we've tried to do with fb, where you're trying to meld and ensure that it's relationship led, but to the benefit of those involved in a requirement as well, both to the applicant and to the client, that the process is controlled by us. Because we will ensure that for everyone's benefit, we're moving it along as efficiently as we possibly can.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:55]:
Awesome. So I'm guessing and this is just based on like chatting with you offline, you guys actually behind the scenes, invested. I mean, I saw it from the very beginning, like you guys hiring a developer to kind of skip the middleware.

Roheel Ahmad [00:25:05]:
Man.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:06]:
What else did you guys innovate behind the scenes that probably has helped you guys out?

Roheel Ahmad [00:25:10]:
So the digital marketing piece that I was talking about before, if you look at some of the campaigns that we've run, we've got some examples on the FB YouTube page. We've produced those. Now usually you'd go to a third party digital agency to do those, but we invested in the ability to do so, the technology as a people to be able to produce those kind of things in house. Even to the way that we deliver offers for clients as well. It's completely unique and tailored to the client and to the individual. And we're the ones who can produce it. So the applicant never knows it's from us. It looks like it's been produced by either the marketing or the talent team of the client themselves.

Roheel Ahmad [00:25:44]:
It's us doing it on behalf of them.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:47]:
I love that the Elite Recruiter podcast has multiple summits coming up that you need to make sure that you are registered for. We have the AI recruiting summit 2025 coming up and on top of that, finish the year strong. These two summits are going to help you move the needle, help you achieve your goals, help you achieve your dreams, and make 2025 the year that you started out and you wanted it to be. Make sure you get registered and also stay tuned. Got something cooking for you guys. Guys working on another project that you guys are going to absolutely love. All right, see you guys at the summit and see you guys soon. And I know when we first sat down, you were actually working on some AI products.

Roheel Ahmad [00:26:24]:
Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:25]:
And it sounds like some of that stuff has been developed and you guys like implemented your business. Talk about that.

Roheel Ahmad [00:26:30]:
Yeah. So originally it was kind of born from needs and desires for fb. And then I just saw a much wider ability for this, not even just in recruitment, I think in so many other industries, service led industries as well, that require a CRM at its core. So we started building Imagine AI and then I ended up stepping away from FB and my whole focus and only focuses on Imagine now as well. So I don't like to call it a CRM because it's not a CRM, if anything, in that area, it's more of a customer relationship development system. But it's even more than that. It's a scaling platform to support senior leadership or ownership of a business, to help them scale their business, basically. And so there's a whole host of things that include right from your core kind of CRM and ATS piece, as well as your NND agent, as well as your marketing agent, as well as your HR agent, as well as your data analysis agent will all sit in this one holistic platform that will help owners and leadership scale their businesses and grow their businesses.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:31]:
Okay, so you guys are taking something that you guys built internally for you guys and. Yeah, sharing it with the world.

Roheel Ahmad [00:27:38]:
Yeah, we've. We've. So as build was happening, I made sure that it was applicable for them for fb, but always built it with a view to take it to market as well. So you kind of build a whole piece overall, but then to ensure that it can be tailored for each specific business. So FB will be able to use it how those guys want to use it, but then the next customer will Use it, how they want to use it and how he wants to use it, and how she wants to use it, et cetera, et cetera.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:07]:
Well, and it kind of goes into the conversation I have with a lot of people. We keep on seeing AI is going to change your things and AI is absolutely changing things. But let's talk about the real impact using Imagine AI. How can that change recruiter's desk or a firm owner's company?

Roheel Ahmad [00:28:22]:
There's so much I can talk about in respect to this. The first thing I'll always say is I don't believe that what we're trying to do with Imagine and the use of AI is to replace people. It's gotta be to enable and support them to be better, operate better, add more value and also get them focused on the things that they really want to be doing, which is the relationship building, the network building and network development, not the repetitive tasks and so on. But it should arm them with intelligence as well. So as an example, one of the things that we're working on right now is when you're having a conversation with someone at the end of that conversation is what key insights can it give you based on the speech analysis and the body language analysis of the individual and how to utilize that in the next conversation in your relationship building with them. And I don't just mean the basic thing of oh, you mentioned X, so I'm going to bring that like this is your favorite basketball team, so I'm now going to just bring that up in the next conversation or anything like that. What are some of the things that you've mentioned in that call that are really frustrating you? What are some of the things mentioned in that call that are really adding value? How can you then start to expand on that either through questioning or through just talking about the conversation in more depth and detail and so on as well? You're now getting to a point where you're talking about the real impactful things when you're speaking to someone as opposed to kind of general chit chat and so on as well. But it also helps steer your next conversation.

Roheel Ahmad [00:29:40]:
So if as an example, you're on a BD type of pitch or a call or someone, the typical things that are doing out there right now is right here's your call transcript and here's a summary of that call. Good. Better than what it was if having to take manual notes. But I don't think that goes far enough. What's the summary piece? What should your follow up actions be? Next phase to that is Actually, how do you make sure those actions are followed up by the consultant or by the user? Because too many times it lives in notes, but they never actually follow it up. And what's the point of having the conversation in the first place? And again, other owners and leaders will know this, how infuriating it is. Great intelligence, great information, never followed up because it lives in notes. You may as well never have had the conversation in the first place.

Roheel Ahmad [00:30:26]:
So how do you help the individual to guarantee follow up? And when you're on the next call with them, how can you have pre summarized the last interaction as a bit of a reminder for your next conversation? What areas do you need to delve into further and touch on further and explore further so you really get to understand the individual properly? It's those types of things. Suggestions of next conversation, talk about this, discuss this, ask more questions on this, et cetera, et cetera. That's the kind of thing where I say it should be arming people with intelligence and helping to direct conversations and calls. And then it's up to the individual to then actually go and follow that through and make sure they do it to the best of their ability.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:07]:
So the AI can also help with the follow through too?

Roheel Ahmad [00:31:09]:
Yeah, in a nutshell. And there's, there's loads more. The vision I've got for the L and D agent is essentially a mix of a live coach as well as the ownership or the leadership of that business on every desk in lifetime, supporting a consultant in lifetime. So every time like I've been through that, that journey, right, where just onboarding someone new, just hide them, they're getting onto the phones for the first time. I've got my own things to do in terms of running the business. I've probably got some clients that I need to handle and so on as well. And I'm training this person on this is the expectations of my business. This is what I want you to address this and this is how you handle this, and this is the information you've got to get here, et cetera, et cetera, you do your training, but we all know that 80% of the job is learned by doing and being on the job.

Roheel Ahmad [00:31:58]:
So unless you're cutting out all the other stuff you've got to do and listening into their calls and supporting them live post, doing all that is a bit late as not as effective as it should be. My vision is then how do I help that owner or that leader still be on the call with them and support them in lifetime, whilst in actuality that Owner or leader is doing their own thing and they're not really listening in. How can AI do that? It can do it. That's the next phase of what we're building now.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:27]:
Well, that's exciting. I was actually just at the Pinnacle Society meeting and they were actually. One of the firms created a GPT based on. They said it was about a hundred pages of data. You know, a thousand pages of data. And we're doing like live coaching calls. But if you're able to like input that into the system outside of like just creating a GPT where it could be live as they're doing it, that's incredible.

Roheel Ahmad [00:32:51]:
It will take the statistical data of the individual. What works for them, what doesn't work for them, their style, the region, the specialism, the industry, the business's performance, the performance against the client, all of that. And in live time will give you the next prompt, depending on the situation.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:10]:
That you're in, what other fun things are in.

Roheel Ahmad [00:33:12]:
Imagine, I mean, that as an example, is what we built, the kind of foundational engine for it. And that's what we're working towards now. But I keep using the word imagine in just general senses for it now as well. But we will create this holistic platform that helps you to increase and improve individual user performance as well as helping them to progress through their careers in terms of upskilling them as well as addressing promotional areas as well through the business. So that whole holistic place of, right, we're now talking about HR and people type responsibilities, we're now talking about L and D type responsibilities that fit in there. We're now talking about improving sales numbers, we're now talking about making efficiencies and cutting out the wastage of outbound dialing, for instance, and repetitive emails and campaigns and CV formatting and so on and so forth. So the users, we've gotten beta testing, right now we're saving them in excess of three and a half hours a day. Wait, say that we're saving them over 40% of their day.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:14]:
We're giving them three and a half hours.

Roheel Ahmad [00:34:16]:
Three and a half hours a day. We're giving them back.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:19]:
Are they actually using their three and a half hours productively that they get back? I'm kind of curious.

Roheel Ahmad [00:34:24]:
There are more conversations. Yeah, that's like, there is no better. I'll wait for someone to prove me wrong on this. There is no one activity that will impact your billings and what you're bringing in and all of that. Then more conversations where it's fine, whether it's meetings or whatever. More conversations. I don't just mean volume for the sake of volume. Obviously being targeted in the right place, but that is your number one difference maker.

Roheel Ahmad [00:34:51]:
So that was our first task of how do we get people more conversations? Using technology and using AI and using automation and ML, et cetera, and all the other acronyms that people want to use and put into this one badge of AI to solve that. And then how do we start to take away the stuff that they don't want to do? No one wants to format a CV in this day and age. You shouldn't have to. No one wants to be specking people out in this day and age. And you shouldn't have to. And take people to market. You shouldn't. You shouldn't have to.

Roheel Ahmad [00:35:19]:
And actually trying to figure out who to call and who to contact shouldn't have to.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:23]:
Well, that's at least some of the developments I've seen that I'm excited about when it comes to AI is like, you know, figuring out who you need to call next or who to reach out to next, which is, you know, how much time a va, a researcher, this and that. Like, how much time does a recruiter spend doing that? I mean, that was literally hours of prep for every single day is now being done in minutes.

Roheel Ahmad [00:35:45]:
The big question for me takes that the next step forward. So you're right. And that still needs to be solved in a better way, right? Where you then don't need things like SDRs and stuff like that. But then it's, how do you figure out who to contact before they have the need? And that's the real thing. Because when they have the need, you're almost a bit too late. The ideal position for anyone to be in is to be part of that conversation when they're formulating the need.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:09]:
Okay, so I love that, like, you're actually building this on the focus of, like, relationships. And here's one of the things that I've been kind of like, I don't want to say complaining about behind the scenes, but I feel like half the recruiting tech is coming from Silicon Valley that isn't actually solving what we actually need. So I love it, always love it, when a recruiter is like, oh, you know what? This is the problem that I have. Here's what I need to do to be a better recruiter, and here's something that we're building to solve it.

Roheel Ahmad [00:36:34]:
I think that's a big difference as to why Imagine is being built by someone and people who come from the industry like over 15 years experience personally and I've run a business. So I look at this as what would I wanted as a consultant, what would I wanted as a manager, what would I have wanted as an owner and leader to help me scale my business? And then look, there's a much wider market as well. A lot of what we're building. This can and will go into the internal talent teams direct to employers as well. Because this isn't just an agency side platform. When we look at the AI matching and what we're doing there, and then the kind of dei, et cetera and so on and so forth and the large data sets that we'll be employing. Absolutely. Internal teams and talent acquisition teams will be able to use the same underlying engines that we're building now.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:20]:
Let's take a pause here. Look, maybe three to five years out.

Roheel Ahmad [00:37:23]:
Yep.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:23]:
What does a AI powered recruiter actually look like?

Roheel Ahmad [00:37:28]:
What I imagine, no pun intended, closer to what a recruiter would have looked like in the early mid-90s, late-90s, where back then they were not getting bogged down by sending emails, they were not getting bogged down by data entry, they were not getting bogged down by all these other things. They relied on relationship on networks, on developing those, on utilizing those and leveraging those. Because a lot of that kind of typical stuff of the data rent and everything now is being done for you in its majority, it's still approving things and tweaking things, but is in its majority. And the real currency of people would be the strength of their ability to build relationships. I think for the last several years now, too many people have been over reliant on LinkedIn and messaging and so on and transacting with people. I think that will start to dwindle in a big way now and that age of relationships really does come back in a bigger way.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:25]:
Love that. Well, before we jump over to the quickfire questions, is there anything else that you want to cover? About 0 to 100 million. Imagine AI systems mindset and clarity.

Roheel Ahmad [00:38:36]:
My advice to anyone out there who is looking to kind of grow their business is make sure you've got a plan and you've got clarity on why you're looking to achieve that plan and so on as well. And then think bigger than what you are thinking. Like if you're looking to grow and you're say 10 people don't operate like a 10 person business, what's your next milestone? It's probably that 30 person business. So what should your structure look like for a 30 person business? What should your progression route look like for your people in a 30 person business? What is your tech stack look like for a 30 person business? What should all that be? Operate with that in mind and then start executing that and work towards that. That will stand out to people naturally in terms of your clarity of vision, but also you'll grow into it as opposed to outgrowing yourself and then being stuck. And too many people kind of dip up and down, dip up and down, dip up and down. It's because they're not thinking up there and they're struggling to go part beyond where they are now. So they end up naturally coming back because that's the way their business is set up in the first place.

Roheel Ahmad [00:39:34]:
Love that.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:35]:
Well, picture this. You got a new person walks in the door to fb. You know, they've gone through their onboarding, started recruiting, they grab you, sit you down and just like, you know what, this is my first time in recruiting period.

Roheel Ahmad [00:39:46]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:47]:
I'm so excited about this opportunity. What's the number one piece of advice that you can give me to succeed in this space?

Roheel Ahmad [00:39:52]:
Trust the process. Absolutely. It's something I used to say to those joining FB all the time when it was my responsibility. But it's trust the process. The process works. It's a conveyor belt of people that have come through FB to achieve these amazing things. An age that a lot of other people in other businesses aren't given the opportunity to sort of. How many sort of 21, 22, 23 year olds do you know that a lot of other businesses are able or allowed to speak to the CEO of a business, for instance, for fear of them messing it up or ruining that relationship.

Roheel Ahmad [00:40:24]:
We never stopped people from being able to do that ever, because they weren't going to develop without it. And they'd always put people on a pedestal from day one and they weren't really going to do anything too bad that we couldn't recover if they did make a mistake. But what I would say to any recruiter in that business, you've joined that business for a reason. You see something in that organization, they clearly see something in you. Listen, trust the process.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:49]:
Second question for a firm owner, like, you've done an incredible job like building a team, building a culture, building everything. If a firm owner sat down with you, I was like, man, if you can narrow down like one piece of advice and how you guys absolutely crushed it, like help a brother out, what would it be?

Roheel Ahmad [00:41:03]:
Don't get comfortable with your own success. I think the benefit that I've always had and vice versa, is I've had Scott and Scott's had me. So we were up until I kind of stepped away from FB nine years in. I can't think of too many times when we set up New York, maybe to a degree, but I can't think of too many times that we kind of sat there and pat each other on the back to say, well done, or we've made it. We're the first people to hold each other accountable and probably dig each other out first as well. To say, take 23 and 24 growth years, record years for us. Amazing, great. And we outperformed most of the market.

Roheel Ahmad [00:41:43]:
And yet we both sat down and said, should have been better. Like if we look at our own ratios and our own performance, we had the opportunity to do another half a million, a million, whatever the numbers might have been, and even numbers or whatever should have been better. And so we've never been comfortable or rested on our laurels to say like that excuse of yeah, but the market never came into our heads once, or we didn't allow us to think that way, let alone even say it.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:11]:
For those listening, I have like 75 questions in my head that I want to go back to talking with him about, like dealing with a partner, finding the partner, working with a partner. But here's the thing, I actually asked a lot of those questions in the last podcast, so you got to go back to that episode. Is there a book that has had a huge impact on you?

Roheel Ahmad [00:42:28]:
There's a number of books, but you never really had to say anything. I'm a big believer in the small things make up the big things. Atomic Habits by James Clear. Great book, fantastic book on eye opening on the way you operate, little things on the way if you want to kind of operate in a different way on a daily basis and actually practical on how to make the changes in your life to do so as well. Majority of it's around environment and so on as well. But 21, I'd recommend Atomic Habits.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:55]:
What is one of the biggest failures that you've had to work through?

Roheel Ahmad [00:43:00]:
We once set up a third UK office and that didn't work out after I think in about a year. I interviewed the individual when I was on my honeymoon from Hawaii about 3, 4 in the morning. So we invested a lot of money, but also our own sort of time and sort of personal capital, I don't mean financial capital, but personal capital into that office. It was the first time we'd set something up outside of Me being directly there or Scott being directly there at the time as well. And we thought we'd kind of taken preemptive steps to try and not guarantee success, but try and minimize the chance of failure. And it just didn't work out. And there were a lot of things going on which we just didn't see at the time as well. And I remember feeling really downbeat on that because I was getting up 4am now, leaving my place in London at 4am to get there pre 8.30am on a Tuesday and a Wednesday every week, having just recently been married, because that was my commitment to that office.

Roheel Ahmad [00:43:57]:
And about a year later, it didn't work out. And I remember being really gutted by that at the time as well, because some of the stuff that was going on wasn't great. And it was ultimately, it was my responsibility. And all I could think about at the time was, how did I not see any of this? It's my responsibility to see it. I didn't see anything that was going on at the time. So that took me some time to get over. But then at the same time, New York wouldn't be what it is today without the lessons learned in that office, because we learned from that. And then we iterated and evolved our plan a little bit as well.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:29]:
Love that. I know one of the last times I, like, sat down with you, I asked you, like, if you can go back in time, talk to yourself, what would it be? I know I asked you at the very beginning of your recruiting career, but I, you know, with the lessons that you've learned now since the last time we spoke.

Roheel Ahmad [00:44:42]:
Yep.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:42]:
What do you think you would go back and tell yourself, don't compromise some.

Roheel Ahmad [00:44:47]:
Of the values that you hold and believe for the details of that moment? I think I've been guilty of doing that in the past in certain situations. I don't think I'm the only one as well. Where in your heart of hearts, if you're advising someone else, you would say to them, because you're objective and you're not too close to the situation, either this is what you need to do, or don't get caught up with this, or don't get distracted with this, or whatever. But when you're in the moment yourself, it's easy to kind of compromise those values or those beliefs to say, but if I can make this work, or if I can just get them to do this, or if this lands, et cetera, et cetera. You're kidding yourself. You might pull it off one in every ten, but the problem with that is then you can then kind of hang on to, then say, what if this is that next one in 10?

Benjamin Mena [00:45:32]:
And then last question before I let you go. You know, you being a firm owner, you being public on LinkedIn and sharing leadership thoughts and stuff constantly. Yep. You probably get asked by a lot of recruiters like, how did you scale? How did you grow? What's the secret to business development? How did you set up your systems? Is there a question though that you wish recruiters would actually ask you, but they never do?

Roheel Ahmad [00:45:54]:
I think a lot of people ask the how to questions. Very few ask the kind of pitfall type questions like what should I avoid? And similar to the one that you talk about the mistakes, like very few people look at the upside of things and very rarely kind of consider the downsides. So not enough people recognize, especially those newer starting out. How do I get through really bad times? How do I manage my own mindset when money's really tight and I can't guarantee that I can make certain payments in a month or two's time? How do I manage my own emotions? How do I stop letting my personal situation or circumstances be a distraction to me on the daily. So it could be a breakup or it could be moving house or having a child or anything like that for a business. They're all great life things don't go wrong, but they're also business distractions. How do I stop that becoming a distraction? It's those kind of questions that people don't really think about or don't ask.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:50]:
For those that are interested in checking out, imagine AI. How do they go about doing that?

Roheel Ahmad [00:46:56]:
LinkedIn. You can grab me on LinkedIn. I did one webinar about two months ago and off the back of that it's just completely blown up. I'm averaging so four or five demos a day at the moment. And it's all me in terms of doing those demos, so heavily booked out with those. But it's going great. So yeah, you can be able to get me on LinkedIn and then there's a link on there to book in. If you want to book in for a demo as well, imagine AI.com there's a website, you can book directly through there as well.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:19]:
And how can someone go about following you?

Roheel Ahmad [00:47:21]:
Again, majority of LinkedIn, I'm not really that active on the other platforms. In terms of Instagram, I'm not on Twitter or X as it is now. LinkedIn is probably the one that I keep an eye on the most and most active as well.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:32]:
Awesome. And I'll have your LinkedIn profile in the show notes. I always enjoy chatting with you just because always so much to learn and like, you're like laser focused every single time we chat. Before I let you go, is there anything else that you want to leave with the listeners?

Roheel Ahmad [00:47:46]:
I'm a huge believer in give it a go. Whether you feel ready or not, give it a go and like, leave it all out there in terms of what you're doing. And at least you know if you weren't good enough to do it, you weren't good enough to do it. But at least you don't sort of walk away wondering, could I have done that? Or the excuses of, oh, no, I could have done that, or I could have been that if I had just if this circumstances this or whatever as well. So my advice to everyone is give it a go. The second bit I'd probably advise is utilizing networks and those who have been there and done it before as well. I've been quite blessed at being able to come pick up the phone to people who have been there before. I was to say, how did you handle this situation? How did you handle that? I bought advisors into the business previously as well who have been where I wanted to be.

Roheel Ahmad [00:48:29]:
I think not enough people do.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:30]:
That's super smart. Like I said at the very beginning of this conversation, I've been looking forward to this for a while just because it's been awesome to watch your growth. It's great to catch up. It has been a crazy few years and you guys had insane growth through those. So definitely lessons learned for everybody on, like, whether you have a desk, whether you have a team, whether you're working a desk yourself. Like, there are things that we can definitely all take away from this. But man, excited to see where Imagine AI goes because, you know, it's kind of funny I was joking about this with some friends. Like the pre AI days, the phone AI days, where everybody's focused on this but the experts back on the phone again and like, really, that's where I want the tool to actually work for me.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:08]:
I want the tool so I can focus back on the relationships, to do what we need to do, to make money, to do what we need to do, to change lives, to do what we need to do to help our clients. So excited about the AI future. And yeah, keep me updated on this and maybe we'll have you back on.

Roheel Ahmad [00:49:22]:
Soon after joining a few years again. Yeah, we'll see where Imagine gets to.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:26]:
Awesome. Oh, for the listeners, guys, I want you to crush 2025. Make it happen. Every minute a recruiter spends on paperwork is lost time making placements. That's where Ascend steps in. A modern employer of record and back office solution built to boost the bottom line. Ascend automates onboarding, payroll, compliance and invoicing in one streamlined platform. It integrates effortlessly with all your tools and scales as you grow, saving you hours and cutting your operational costs significantly.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:55]:
Want less paperwork and more placements? Head over to Ascend. Com and see how Ascend can make the difference for you. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit, subscribe and leave a rating.