The Future of Recruitment: AI Talent Partners, Remote Scaling & Winning in 2025 with James Blackwell

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
Coming up on this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast. You work with a lot of agencies, you work with a lot of founders, the ones that are just absolutely just fucking crushing it. Is there, like, a common thread that you see with each of them?

James Blackwell [00:00:12]:
Yes. Mindset. Mindset.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:15]:
What advice would you actually give to somebody that's actually looking at just starting a recruiting company this year?

James Blackwell [00:00:20]:
Yeah. Not to start a recruiting company, for sure. It is not the thing to do.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:25]:
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. I am so excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast. I have a returning guest, and he's coming to talk about the future of recruiting. We're going to talk about the AI talent partner. We're going to talk about why you need to stop being Superman. And this is. I'm probably going to end up taking this advice, his advice, by the end of this podcast, because I know, like so many other founders, we try to do everything, so the market is shifting, so we have to learn how to shift with the market while at the same time figure out what we need to delegate to actually scale.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:12]:
So I'm super excited to have James Blackwell back. Welcome back to the podcast, brother.

James Blackwell [00:01:16]:
Thank you so much again for having me back. Benjamin, I love having you back.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:20]:
I know you've been part of the few summits that we've had over the last year, excited that you're going to be part of the AI Summit that's happening in September, So make sure to register for that. And I know we always talk about how you ended up in this wonderful world of recruiting, but for the listeners, go back and listen to our original interview with James Blackwell. He will share all the details of how he ended up in the space and do where he's at. So to save some time, let's just dive right in. All right, James, the world's changing. What kind of changes do you think we're seeing? Like, is these changes, Is it real or is it just all hype?

James Blackwell [00:01:56]:
Yeah. So I think, obviously the biggest shift has been AI as we know, Benjamin, and especially in recruitment agencies, we've seen a big shift rapidly with the rise of AI technology and with the growing competition for good talent. A lot of agencies are sort of getting drowned out in terms of the traditional way. And what you tend to see is there's definitely a demand for what I would call, like a new service of offering as an agency. And that's like why I call the AI talent partner, which I'm sure we'll explore a little bit today. But definitely with AI in particular, Clay has been a great thing that actually glues a lot of the tools together that is definitely shaping what I would call the next era of talent acquisition. And definitely agency owners and recruitment professionals that leverage AI in the future are the ones that are going to definitely win in 2025 and beyond.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:42]:
Do you think, like agency owners and recruiters, can they still be successful without the AI and like all the stuff, all the AI stuff?

James Blackwell [00:02:49]:
Look, there's always going to be a need for what I would call traditional headhunting, which is over the phone. Probably the higher placement fees for sure. When you're doing the 20, $30,000 a pounds fee, where it's who you know and how you can get in touch with someone, there's always going to be that demand. But for what I would call the typical recruitment agency where you're working mid tier roles or lower tier roles, you are going to get swallowed up by AI. Because I can do a lot of the sourcing and do a lot of the outreach, can do voice notes like video messaging, as you've probably seen as well. So there's definitely going to be a bigger shift. And I definitely think if you're not with it, if you're starting an agency, for example, and I say this year, 2025, it's harder than ever to be successful in the agency. Anyone can start an agency.

James Blackwell [00:03:32]:
But if you don't leverage tools and technology and AI, it's very, very hard because you're just starting behind all of your competition.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:40]:
And it's just, I think it's. I've talked to some recruiters that are just like, you know, AI. I absolutely love it. It's actually saving me time. I'm focusing on conversations again and then I talk to other recruiters that are just like, it's all hype, it's a waste. Like I'm not spending any time with this. Like, it's never going to replace a recruiter.

James Blackwell [00:03:56]:
Yeah, well, it's never going to replace the, what I would say influence and persuading over the phone. The candidates take a job, of course it's not. But to get it to that point, yes, it's going to replace you in terms of the sourcing, the outreach to find clients, to message clients to nurture that can be replaced. And probably a hybrid between AI technology and remote assistance. So leveraging lower paid employees in different countries where you could do a lot more for more profit is definitely going to be a thing. But I would definitely say that there's probably been three major shifts in recruitment history. Benjamin so obviously the first one I've talked about is the pre Internet era. So this is where everything was Rolodex cold call era.

James Blackwell [00:04:34]:
Yeah. So you had your book of contacts. It was very Stephen Kell like search and placement, one of my favorite books I'd highly recommend. It's all relationship based agencies. So these were the agencies that had phone books, business cards, newspaper ads to get candidates and it was us all headhunts. So it was all cold calling and prospects. So that was like manually building pipelines. Probably a lot of your listeners probably don't even remember that stage.

James Blackwell [00:04:56]:
That was pre 1990s and really the agencies back then were the ones that really mastered direct outreach. And it was just all sales skills dominated in the market. And then, then you had shift two. So that was when I sort of came into the recruitment world around 16 years ago now back in the 2000s was when job boards first came out. So so you had like indeed job boards, monster job boards that was like sort of pre LinkedIn and then you had LinkedIn coming in sort of like 2000 2010. So that was what shift two was like job boards then the digital revolution. So you had job boards that changed recruitment forever. Then LinkedIn really changed recruitment forever because back when you worked in an agency you were only as good as the CRM and which candidates came on the job board.

James Blackwell [00:05:38]:
So I remember when I was in recruitment when it first started, I had to be in 7am to get on the job boards to get good candidates because there was no LinkedIn back then. And then obviously when LinkedIn came amount you had LinkedIn recruiter so then you could finally message candidates without even being first line connected. So the evolution of InMails and then obviously more advanced ATS systems that built in good sourcing techniques, being able to find candidates through the database and do multiple email campaigns and different touch points. So that created a lot more competition in the market because it was an even playing field then. So a good recruiter could leave their current employer and start an agency because they didn't need a CRM database and more they had LinkedIn and they didn't need first line connections. They could have an InMail account. So obviously agencies became more automated so manual outreach was less CV screening. All of these things that originally really consumed a recruiter's time could be sort of delegated with technology and it was the agencies that built personal brands back then, leverage LinkedIn more and automation and systemize.

James Blackwell [00:06:35]:
They were the ones that sort of won back in 2020, 2025, that was sort of when I started my agency. So then obviously job boards came saturated. Agencies struggled because everyone's just competing on price. It's like whoever fastest road to the bottom in terms of agency fees because everyone has this unfair advantage. We're different because we specialize in this niche. I've got candidates you can't get elsewhere. We all know that is a lie now. So companies are sort of bringing it in house.

James Blackwell [00:07:01]:
So like shift three, I would say now is the exact moment, now in 2025 is what we call the AI recruitment revolution. So this is where you had automation probably for the last five, six, seven years, which is LinkedIn automation, voice notes, email campaigns, these type of things. But actual AI automation where you've got the likes of Clay AI, you've got ChatGPT, you've got open source automation platforms can now really replace a lot, round about 60 to 70% of the manual recruiter tasks. So it's never going to replace like fully a recruiter. But to scale an agency for sure you could leverage this. And clients are moving away from traditional agencies. They want to build these things in house now. So this is where I've seen a big demand over the last few months has been AI powered hiring solutions where companies want to reduce their hiring costs.

James Blackwell [00:07:49]:
They don't want to use agencies for 20, 25% fees all of the time. They've got internal recruiters that don't perform for the salary they bring in because as we know a lot of internal recruiters are quite lazy. They're not the best recruiters. They do work just nine to five, which is fine, but they just deal with a lot of inbound applications. They don't do much outreach. Okay, so that's where like AI can come in to build, where if you build and package a system where you can actually sell that to the end user client as an advantage, which I'll dive into today if we have time. The opportunity right now in recruitment is actually not placing candidates, it's actually selling these AI powered hiring solutions for your clients so then they can do the hiring internally.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:25]:
One of the things I have seen is a shift from clients that want almost like an embedded recruiter, like a specialist coming in. So you're talking about like, and you know, I'm sitting there also talking with a lot of, you know, tech teams and HR tech and they're like everybody, every in house company wants, literally wants AI. They don't actually know what they need. They just want AI in the recruiting process because they believe they can make it better. But I mean, some of the stuff that you're talking about, I know is way over the heads of a lot of internal recruiters. Like, they can't come in a package. Like, you know, Clay's hard to learn. 8N8 is hard to learn.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:01]:
Make.com is hard to learn. Like the integrations between everything behind the scenes. So, like, you're talking about coming in and creating a system for these, like, in house teams to automate a lot of that stuff.

James Blackwell [00:09:12]:
Exactly that, yeah. So what I realized was, because obviously I've been in the mentorship space for quite some time now, six years, and we've, we've helped scale over a thousand agencies now. And what I've noticed, like 2024 was tough for a lot of agencies and some people still did well and some struggled or had to work a little bit harder than they did the year before to maintain the same billings, same profit margins. Okay. And what you tend to find with recruiters, especially in different niches, they've got protected IP and knowledge in their head off their niche, the market candidates, et cetera. But they don't really always get rewarded for the amount of years they've been in their business. So every year they're starting from scratch, every month they're starting from scratch and they have to compete with all of the younger people coming in and the competition. Whereas if you actually take the opportunity where clients actually want to embed a solution themselves, so they want, they want to do AI, they have to spend money to implement AI.

James Blackwell [00:10:03]:
So as we know, every company has got budget to actually implement AI solutions this year in their company. A lot of them have got less recruitment budget. So if you just sort of flip it on its head and you're still sort of doing recruitment, but you're, you're taking the AI budget that a company's got signed off for as opposed to their recruitment budget, and you're not coming in as a traditional recruiter anymore. You're packaging together your niche and industry knowledge and your recruitment experience and leveraging AI. So you're learning how to do AI. So this is one of the things we teach is Clay AI. And like I said, it's a bit complex, so you need training on it and how you can actually craft a solution where you're now paid as a consultant and an advisor with the company. So then you can start to build a more intense relationship with them, get them better results in terms of the talent pooling the pipeline to future proof their talent solutions.

James Blackwell [00:10:50]:
But also you're future proofing your recruitment agency because you can win clients you probably haven't won before. Because clients getting an outreach message now saying, hey, would you like to reduce your recruitment costs and not use agencies anymore? Would you like to reduce your internal talent team costs? Most companies hand raise and say, yeah, what is it that you're trying to sell me? Or what is the solution? So then you get open doors way more, which means you can start to pitch this and obviously making sure that you've present the offer correctly and you know exactly what you're doing. You only need 10 to 15 clients to get to $1 million in your agency, which we could dive into on this session of how you package the offer together and what you actually sell.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:31]:
Let's do that. But I want to take a step back because I actually just had like, I think five people hit me back up this week saying like, we're trying to cut our agency spend so this potentially could come back in as like another way to cross sell back into them. And I also want to bring one point that you said earlier is companies have all this money to spend on tools, you know, some outreach that I was doing this week and they said like, we're trying to drop our recruiter spend. We're trying to take everything in house. That took me back to my days as an internal recruiter. I remember I was working at a large defense contractor and when the recruiting director left, she left a bill of almost a million dollars for LinkedIn accounts.

James Blackwell [00:12:10]:
Yeah, we've actually had two clients in particular was last week they because they've been pitching and packaging together. And one of our clients that did this spoke to their internal recruitment team and they weren't supposed to show them this, but they said, look, I'll show you inside our LinkedIn recruiter accounts. They had a big internal team and they had $500,000 a year spend on LinkedIn recruiter licenses and had 18,000 unused in mills, which is nuts. I just, I've been in recruitment a long time. I didn't realize these companies exist, existed where they spend that much money on LinkedIn recruiter.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:41]:
I remember the first time they gave at the same company, the first time they gave us LinkedIn Recruiter, I actually burned the entire company's inmails in one month and I got banned from using it moving forward. But yeah, like it was like the Same company. Like right when the recruiting director left, she left a million dollar unpaid bill for LinkedIn recruiter accounts. So. Okay. And like, you know, that's just something that like recruiters aren't thinking about. How else can you serve your clients? So let's dive in and I break down. How do you even package this?

James Blackwell [00:13:08]:
Yeah, sure. So obviously what you're going to be packaging together is basically every recruiter agency owner has got some unfair advantages, a way they would maybe look for talent, how they would hire them and clay is the glue now. So this is the piece that you stick together all of the automation tools because you can finally personalize outreach now. You can you rank candidates. So as we know, we can put in a LinkedIn profile and we can say these are the type of profiles we want. You could rate them 7 out of 10, 8 out of 10, 9 out of 10. So even one thing that some of our clients are doing and pitching in is a lot of internal recruitment teams are getting thousands of applications of candidates for each role. So they're wasting so much time just going through irrelevant candidates in their email inbox or the CV profiles.

James Blackwell [00:13:52]:
So you could build something in clay where you could rank those candidates and put the best ones to the top and create a follow up voice note and an email campaign or LinkedIn message to say, hey, thank you very much for applying. Benjamin, we've actually used AI to rank you and you are one of our superstar, talented individuals we'd love to speak to. Someone on our team is going to get in touch with you the next 24 hours. Here's some information. So even just giving the people that are applying a good experience and making sure they're applying to the better candidates, first is one solution. The second is making sure you can and we walk you through how to package. This is you're going to build an internal system for, for them to do the outreach for candidates. Okay.

James Blackwell [00:14:33]:
So if you think that when companies use an internal recruitment team and recruitment agencies, it means their internal recruitment team isn't performing because they're not always going to do outreach. They deal with a lot of inbound, they deal with a lot of HR adverts, interviews, applications. Okay, you're building automation to reach out to their targeted demographic market. So how we package it together, we package together like job slots. So we might say for your retainer, it's a one off install fee for that. We've got people charging between 10 to $15,000 to set up the clay systems and the automation recruitment system. And then the Ongoing management fee covers like two job slots. So what you could do each month you could charge between.

James Blackwell [00:15:11]:
Our clients are charging between two to $5,000 a month to maintain that system and provide two job slots, which will be two new campaigns. So two new Boolean searches, strip and CVs. Building LinkedIn campaigns, shortlisting campaign the candidates and then seeing the message sequences that are going out. So you can do voice notes, you can even bolt on a marketing sourcer which we could supply through remote assistance where those girls will do video outreach for the client and LinkedIn selfies to engage talent as well. So what it means is like there's companies out there that might always hire consultants, for example, so they might use agencies, sometimes internal recruiters and ads. If they just mapped out the market and had a constant outreach going with automation, with messages, with voice notes, with follow ups, with value ads, all they need to do is have different touch points with their candidate demographic to eventually get an application inbound and to create more brand awareness. So this is actual real employer branding where a lot of companies that are hiring for certain job titles, that person might not have heard of their company before unless they really be. So even just by DMing them on LinkedIn, sending them an email campaign, sending them a follow up message, this is creating more brand awareness for their company.

James Blackwell [00:16:21]:
And also even if they get one or two candidates through that machine every three to six months, it pays and it saves them a recruitment agency fee. But they've got hiring managers got way more transparency now because they know every job title that they're hiring for. Here's all of the candidates that came from the search, here's the LinkedIn URLs, here's the rating system. So the ones you're really looking for, there's maybe 76, here's the outreach message we're sending, here's the reply rate and here's the responses. So they've got real transparency over the pipeline now so they can start to get more predictable hiring. And obviously as AI gets better with the machine and clay houses, all of these systems, it will get more clever and get better. Now it's not going to replace recruiters overnight, but the idea is you're building actual a tangible asset for your end user client. You lead in with this and you still charge performance based fees on top for the roles they can't fill internally, but you'll do it at a reduced rate because they're a real partner now because they've paid a retainer every month, they paid an install fee and you've also created that intense partnership with them where no other agency will work with them because you're really embedded in them as a real talent partner.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:32]:
Okay, a few different things. First of all, clay is hard as fuck to learn. What's the best way to learn it?

James Blackwell [00:17:38]:
I seen probably clay about a year ago when it really like started to, to take off with like recruitment agencies as well. I hired a few clay experts. One guy called Eric, who's like quite big on YouTube, probably seen him. And it was quite hard for even clay experts to build something for recruitment agencies because you've got all of these tech wizards and you have these clay agencies out online that haven't got a clue what it's like to run a recruitment agency and how to engage with candidates in a niche. So they just, they never get it right. And then one of our employees and one of my partners in, in the agency Blueprint now called George, he had a clay agent, he had a recruitment agency. Then he started just like being a geek with clay. Like he spent hours and hours and hours trying to build different playbooks, what worked, what didn't work, candidate re engagement campaigns, 90 day job changes, all of these things.

James Blackwell [00:18:27]:
And then I approached him and got him to come and consult for us and then committed to bringing him fully on board inside our program so he could actually mentor the clients on. We created a workshop. I think you've done a similar one, partnered with someone similar. It is hard. So you need, it's not just giving you the training. You need actual coaching with it. So we do like live zoom calls. We do group calls every single week.

James Blackwell [00:18:48]:
We have a Slack channel, we have clay experts in there helping them build the campaigns and the tables. But the missing piece and component for all of this is you as a recruitment agency owner or an entrepreneur shouldn't be the one doing clay. Do not waste your time. Your highest leverage task is selling to the client and building the client relationship. So how we package it together is we have our remote assistance AI agency that hires professionals mainly from Pakistan for this because they're very good technically. So they might come from an IBM background or something similar. And we train them in an academy. So we have an in house academy with our head of operations and they go through like a, what we call a clay bootcamp for VAs.

James Blackwell [00:19:29]:
And they know exactly how to build these systems that you're gonna go out and sell. So then when you go on and pitch this to a client, you know the foundations of what it can do, but then the depth of the actual setup is not gonna be done by you, it's gonna be done by your operations integrator who is the geek that's just doing clay all day every day for you. That's the solution. I don't recommend any recruitment agency owner learning clay and I tell my students this because it's not going to make you any money. It's not all of a sudden going to change your business overnight. Like it's only going to be tiny little incremental things. You make more money like just speaking to more clients and get more placements. But to sell this as a solution you can actually monetize it.

James Blackwell [00:20:10]:
So I don't really think clay is a big shift for optimizing your internal agency. Yes, there's some cool stuff but you can go down massive rabbit holes and I've been down them, build on all sorts of like complex tables but it doesn't actually mean any revenue at the end of the day. But what it could do for an external client. So for my clients that I recruit for is they could use that as an advantage as an in house talent acquisition system. So it's sort of replacing an ATS but better than an ATS because really when you get clear good with all of the automations you can do in the hyper personalizations then that's the actual skill of like teaching that to an agency owner so they can actually sell that as a solution and package it together to the end client.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:52]:
I love that you said two things because like there's. I've seen a massive flow of like lead gen companies jumping into the recruiting space and I understand it works in the go to market space when you're selling a SaaS product but work it's a two way, it's a two way.

James Blackwell [00:21:05]:
Sales here it doesn't work because it's like they didn't get that. So. So clay was built for B2B sales and onbound. Just what you said. So it's, it wasn't never built for recruitment agencies even to the point of I would say we've got the best clay experts for recruitment agencies working with us in the company. They can't get registered as a clay expert and get the badge and the reason being clay itself don't want to be associated with recruitment agencies because they know the tool doesn't really work in depth and it was never built for that because like you said there's two end to end, it's two sales. You'll never see a clay expert full recruitment agencies unless they change it hopefully.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:42]:
They do because I know that it keeps on getting better and better. You also mentioned another thing that I think is super important is like at the end of the day, like the amount of hours they could take to master clay as a recruitment founder, you could probably spend that time selling. So I, I think that's one of the things I, I wanted to talk about is like how do you actually outsource? Like how do you actually stop trying to be Superman or Superwoman where you're doing everything for your business.

James Blackwell [00:22:06]:
Yeah. So one thing that you need to understand as an entrepreneur and I had to do this pretty early on, was no one's ever going to be as good as you at any task. Pretty much like, and I don't believe the point of like, oh, you bring in someone better than you in certain departments unless your company's very big and you can afford to pay big wages. And most average recruitment agency can't do that. The average recruitment agency owner takes on between 15 to 20k a month maximum. They haven't got the budget for a big team. There's only a small percentage like the top 5% of recruitment agencies in the world, your reeds and the bigger agencies would afford to have different departments. So as an entrepreneur, you're a jack of all trades, but you need to delegate.

James Blackwell [00:22:44]:
Yeah, you have to be comfortable to delegate. And the first thing is you need to be comfortable making sure that everything you delegate is only ever going to be as 70% as perfect as what you would do it yourself once you start to lower your expectations. But realize if you freed your time up more, you could be more, more influential with pitching clients and winning bigger retainers or making bigger placements. The other things don't really matter. There's the 8020 Pareto law. Especially in recruitment agencies, a lot of agency owners spend too much time on so many different tasks that they think is relevant. Their website for example, branding and all these things, it doesn't make them money. So even if you got something 70% perfect by a remote assistant, that's probably the biggest shift.

James Blackwell [00:23:23]:
I start hiring virtual assistants. When I first started my agency 11 years ago, that was off the back of reading Tim Ferriss the four Hour Workweek. I'm sure many, many other listeners did the same. So I went really big on Filipino VAs for many years. I had a big team in the Philippines and they were great. That bought me back a lot of time. But as my agency evolved and my business evolved, I realized I needed another skill set. And one of the things was it needs, you need to either be client or candidate facing for this job to replace the real either recruiters or sources.

James Blackwell [00:23:54]:
So then we shifted everything over to South Africa around about four or five years ago. And that's where we have what we call like marketing remote assistance sources. We have people that do client outreach and pays and like your general assistant, they're all great from South Africa. So we hired and trained over 350 remote assistants in South Africa. So we've got actual full recruitment team in Cape Town. And that works really well because for your listener or viewer, they could hire someone from there for around about a thousand US dollars to 1500 US dollars per month, which is at least a third of a cost of what you would hire in the us and that's a very good salaries for someone in South Africa. So $800 $1,000 US salary in for a South African is the equivalent of 3x like that in the US. So it's like an equivalent of like a 50k to 70k salary in the US.

James Blackwell [00:24:49]:
So what it means is you can leverage way more talent, way cheaper and it's way scalable. And a lot of business owners don't actually want to have a big team. When you really drill it down and you ask them, they don't have a desire to have 20, 30 people in a business have to get on zoom calls where they have to personally manage. They want as lean as possible and as high as profit as possible. So to do that the only answer is remote assistance and making sure you hire someone that can do a lot of these tasks for cheaper than maybe in the US or the uk. And it helps you scale way quicker.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:22]:
Okay, I'm going to like hit you up later on this year. I need some help hiring somebody to stop being superman, but I'll say that. Okay, so you're listening to this like crap. Maybe I need to like outsource some things. What is the first thing that an agency owner should or a recruiter should be delegating?

James Blackwell [00:25:39]:
So my personal opinion on this, and this is just off the back of doing this for a long time, is I would hire a sourcer first. I wouldn't hire a general admin, I would have a saucer. Because if you're a recruiter right now and you've got live jobs, the hardest thing, get your jobs on, get clients on. That's the main goal as an entrepreneur. But then you've got to fill them and to fill them it's just time intensive. So you've either got LinkedIn and mails, you've got LinkedIn automation, you might do videos yourself, you might do learn videos, you might do follow ups, you might do cold calling. But if you get an assistant that all they do every single day is source for you. What we do inside our program and we always advise hire a source of first because they can buy back 20 hours a week of your time.

James Blackwell [00:26:23]:
So as a solopreneur recruiter, you spend a lot of your time on your LinkedIn inbox or LinkedIn newsfeed or messaging candidates. If you can get someone in South Africa then can do that for you. And all their job is is to connect and engage with candidates in your market that could fill one of your positions. They do video outreach, they do LinkedIn selfies, they do voice notes, they do loom videos, they do follow ups, they do email campaigns, they do your social media posts that do your company social media posts or your company page. There's so many tasks they can do as a sourcer that's going to buy you back easily 20 hours a week. And the goal is there are instant ROI. So when someone hires their first employee, normally they've hired and fired a VA in the past most of the time. And so for it doesn't work.

James Blackwell [00:27:04]:
I've got time to train them up. Okay, they're not going to do it as good as me. I'll just do it. So that happened so many times and I'm sure that's probably the same for you. Yeah, we've all been there. It's just you haven't got the time to do it. Which is one of the reasons why my agency, Remote Assistance is we actually have a training academy and we have trainers that train these sources up from scratch. So you can't go out and hire a source in South Africa for example, because that was never really a role for most of them out there.

James Blackwell [00:27:33]:
There is some recruiters there for sure. You could hire a recruiter but obviously they're going to be way more expensive. The goal here is to have a social media person. So she might have did marketing as a degree at university. She's looking for a first or second job, either part time or full time. She's presentable on camera, she's bubbly, she's enthusiastic, she's happy to do some video outreach to learn a job and get paid a thousand to $1,500 a month. So it's not just finding them, it's having the time to train them. So either you train them up yourself with like some loom videos and have some sops on how they do outreach or obviously use one of our services or someone else that actually can train them up.

James Blackwell [00:28:10]:
So we put them in an intensive academy for four months whilst they're working for you on how to source, how to reply to candidates, how to find candidates, how to do presentable video, how to do follow up. But once you get that person, their ROI is if they find you one candidate every month that turns into placement. It could be 10, 15k fee, they could generate about $200,000 a year for you and you're paying them between 10 to $12,000. So that's like you buying back as a solopreneur recruiter. Your time per hour is. Or you've only got so many units of time every single week and your goal is to get as much money as you can per hour for your time until you buy someone which is by an employee basically to sort of give you more leverage because you've got no leverage apart from some automation and some systems. So that's what I would say with the delegation hiring you first one it was. Would definitely for me be a sourcer because they can actually give you cash or return on investment because they can find a candidate and that turns into a placement.

James Blackwell [00:29:08]:
So that, that's the closest thing to money.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:11]:
You know, I know a lot of people like were just like, okay, cool, like I get it, I hear this, I do this. What's some of the mistakes that you've seen people make when it comes to actually hiring the first va? Probably wor.

James Blackwell [00:29:24]:
Yeah, the first one is you need to understand the vision of what you want to create in your life and business. So it comes down to mindset first actually Benjamin of what it is you want out of life and this business. And then you can pin back off the revenue you want to achieve the profit you want to achieve. And you need to recognize you need to hire this person for you to ever achieve your goals in life. Because you're never going to get rich just working for yourself, just you. Independently, you might live an okay life, but when it's heavily dependent on you and you've got no one, when you go on a holiday, you're sick, nothing happens. It's not a business, just a high FA job. So the leverage is you can still be a what I would call a hybrid solopreneur where you've got remote assistance, automation and AI and just you, you could make way more money.

James Blackwell [00:30:06]:
But things will happen when you stop. So when you stop work, maybe for a weekend or whatever, there's things happening in the background. So with the remote assistant, it comes down to your vision first. And then when you're onboarding them, you need to spend time with them. So you have to have daily huddles with them, you have to keep them engaged, you have to give them a good onboarding process. You have to let them know when they're doing something wrong, but not tell them off too much and give them encouragement. But also I think it's important you hire two as fast as humanly possible. No one wants to work for a one man band, okay.

James Blackwell [00:30:40]:
Like if there's someone else that works with them. So what we've tend to find if you hire two sources or one of them could be ops, a VA ops integrator, or they could be general manager, they have someone else to work with. So you see that you're actually a real business and you've actually got a community and you've got a team. So I would definitely say once you hire your first one, try and hire a second one, ideally the same time. And also because one probably won't work out. So the problem where most people go wrong is they just hire one. So you're in everything that I've hired in any department. It's normally a three to one ratio where you hire three people.

James Blackwell [00:31:16]:
One will be really good, one will be average and one will quit. That's happened throughout my careers and my businesses. That's normally what's going to hire. Unless you get really good and really lucky at hiring and you just like pick one off and you interview and they work for you for the next five, 10 years and it's turn into being a superstar. It's normally when you're hiring humans, you just don't know until you hire them. And they could interview great, they could say all of the right things and all of a sudden something changes in their personal life, they've got to go. So then you get deflated because you've only hired one person and you've got to go again. And then most people don't hire again, they just say, I'll just do it myself.

James Blackwell [00:31:51]:
So when you hire two, you're just increasing the chances that if one works on really well, perfect, the other one can drop off to three months. It's maybe cost you $3,000 in wages, but it saved you so much time because you managed to figure out like one of the two worked out or both worked out. So then it's a win win. You've got two and your remote team and they can start generating revenue for you.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:12]:
Awesome. Can you like give like a real world example? I know you've worked with a lot of entrepreneurs that have done this where like they've saved time, they've made a hell of a lot more money by actually implementing this.

James Blackwell [00:32:22]:
Yeah, a remote assistant. Yeah, tons. So I would say most of them get results within like four to six weeks. Where they be this candidate is sour. Dylan's a great example. He's on remote assistance AI website. He just comes to mind as a case study where he made a €13,000 fee in week seven from embedding their sourcer from South Africa. They found the candidate, they did the video outreach, they booked the call and gave it to Gary.

James Blackwell [00:32:48]:
Gary sent the cv, got the interview, got the deal done within week seven. He was really happy because that paid for her wages for one full year. So, like that's how it goes. It depends on a number of factors, how good you are as a recruiter because you still got to close the deal, how hot your jobs are and how fillable the roles are. Yeah. Because you could get a source on a role that you're looking for unicorns and there's only 40 on LinkedIn. It's not going to happen. Okay.

James Blackwell [00:33:11]:
So obviously you want to be realistic, but that's like. Yeah, tons of people that have come in that probably get a result within three to four weeks in terms of sourcing, but also buying back their time so they don't have to be just sourcing a lot of time. They could be focused on growing their business and actually working on their business.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:29]:
And I know you had Julia Arpog.

James Blackwell [00:33:31]:
Yeah, Julia, she's great.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:33]:
One of my friends. I know she's had a lot of success with somebody that she hired from you guys.

James Blackwell [00:33:37]:
Yeah. So she's hired a marketing source and an operations integrator VA as well. But Julia's great because she's very enthusiastic, she's got great energy, she's a great hustler and obviously I'm really proud of how far she's managed to grow her business and especially whilst being a mum as well, has been inspirational to see. So hats off to her.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:54]:
Yeah. And if you want to see her story, I actually had her at the last summit. For those that are listening, she's actually going to be at the finish the year strong 20, 25, going to be sharing on the first day. I think she's done like 900k in her first like 16 months, so definitely tune into that. So. But also to definitely check out what she's going to be sharing. We've covered a lot. We've covered the AI talent partner, We've covered how you need to get your butt in gear and actually start outsourcing some work so that way you can buy back your time.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:21]:
You know, before we jump over to the quickfire questions, is there anything else that you want to go into bigger detail with in those two things?

James Blackwell [00:34:28]:
I would just definitely plant the seed for every agency owner that listens that they need to come up with something unique and different in 2025 this year. Because you can't just be selling in an MPC candidate anymore to get a client on. Clients don't want more agencies, they want more efficiency and they want to reduce agency fees. And I really think everyone should adapt, at least understanding AI before and start using AI that's eliminating jobs to help you make more money, like be on the ride with AI instead of fighting uphill against it. So double a little bit in clay. Don't go all in and trying to learn it. But can you figure out how you could present a client a solution that's a little bit different than just a placement? So like, I honestly think the opportunity this year is embedding as a consultant these AI solutions so you can be seen as a partner and start to get predictable revenue. So I go through the model on one of my YouTube videos on, you could scale up a million dollar agency with a really lean remote team.

James Blackwell [00:35:27]:
You could have 3 to 4 bas remote assistants and you could have 15 to 20 clients that all pay you a 10k in store fee and 3k a month recurring on the job slots. And you get to a million a year in your business with that. You've got like roundabout 60 to 80k a month recurring revenue and all you're doing is keeping the system optimized, making sure the client's happy. And then you've got the opportunity. Which we haven't touched on what you said at the start of the call, which is interesting as well. The fractional recruiting as a service is definitely, I think that's a big thing in this year as well. So if you don't want to pitch AI, I would sell yourself as a fractional recruiter embedded in a company. And the beauty about hiring a sourcer is a lot of sources which we haven't touched on.

James Blackwell [00:36:07]:
And I think that's the same with Julias. They can turn into junior recruiters. So if you've got a source in South Africa that's learning the trade and all they learn is candidates Every single day for 6, 9, 12 months. I've had a lot of people that have had success where they've moved into a recruiter role and actually doing deals for them. So Instead of paying $10,000 a month to a recruiter in the US or the UK with commission, they're probably earning maybe 2,000 to $3,000 a month, which is a lot of money to them, but you're making way more profit. But what you can do with the fractional recruiting services, you can sell yourself in first and then you could provide your source up. So what you can start to do is charge a 5k a month retainer and say that might cover three roles a quarter that you're going to work 10 to 15 hours a week on and you're going to provide a certain amount of CVs, you might get a certain amount of placements and then you start to bolt on your sources. So we've got people that are selling in these sources into the companies as fractional mini recruiters that do the video outreach, the applications of first screen interviews for 3 to 5k a month.

James Blackwell [00:37:03]:
Another great example is a gentleman called Guy, he's based in Dubai, one of my students. He's doing over a million dollars now in recurring revenue with this model with selling in the sources to companies as their internal recruiters. And he's got I think 15 to 20 of them out in companies right now, no placements. So this is the thing like as a recruiter think differently. Just shift it a little bit where you don't have to do the full end to end recruitment because double sales is very, very hot. You have to be very good at sales and recruitment to find a client and get a client on board and win. The candidate especially it's getting more and more competitive. So if you could just go on one side and provide a consultative sell and maybe sell in these sources as recruiters.

James Blackwell [00:37:43]:
Fractional recruiting as a service is definitely the way to go to get to. If you're not at like 20, 30k a month recurring, that's definitely the way to get. So you got cash flow in, then you can start to grow your agency. Genius.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:54]:
And I love how you broke down the numbers too with the real world examples. Well, jumping over the quickfire questions, we're going to mix it up a little bit. First of all, what advice would you actually give to somebody that's actually looking at just starting a recruiting company this year?

James Blackwell [00:38:06]:
Yeah, not to start a recruiting company for sure. It is not the thing to do what I would say Is if you're going to do it the traditional way and start a recruitment agency, don't bother because it's going to be too hot, you're not going to win clients, it's going to be very, very tough. Then you've got to find a candidate, you've got to build a candidate pool, you've got to get first line connections on LinkedIn. It's going to take three to six months to do your first deal. What I would sell is yourself, because you've got time, you haven't got money, you've got time. So I would start fractional recruiting as a service. I would win 3 clients or like 5k a month retainers and I would just recruit heavy for them. So 20 hours a week each week, 60 hours a week, that's 15k a month guaranteed.

James Blackwell [00:38:43]:
In Funko that for the next three to six months you've got about 8800k cash, which is more than most agencies get in their first year of starting out. But then you start to hire a sourcer or someone that can start to embed in those companies. Instead of charging 5k, you say, I'm going to charge you 3 UK, but I've got someone I'm training up, I'm still observing it. And then you can start planning that way and then you could start to do maybe performance based fees and start to win traditional clients the other way. But I would just be the goal is to get a 10 to 15k a month as fast as humanly possible and that is the fastest way because you get paid on month one once you win the service.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:17]:
That is true. Same question, but for people that have been around the block, I mean, you know, they've gone through at least like one or two of the different eras and changes in recruiting. Like what advice would you give to them?

James Blackwell [00:39:26]:
Well, I actually a couple of calls yesterday with one agency she was in for the last 30 years. I mean I've spoke to a lot of agencies that you've got, the old schoolers, yeah, they've been doing it 20, 30 years. They're playing the same tricks in the new market and the problem is like it's tougher and tougher. When I was speaking to her, she still hasn't got to a point where she's getting consistent 20k a month, she's getting peaks and troughs of fees because every month you have to start again and all you're doing is the competition increases all of the time. The competition is way smarter because you've got automation and AI, you've got big internal recruitment teams. You compete with LinkedIn Recruiter as well, internally with the external teams like the example you had with the million dollar budget and the five hundred dollar budget. So what I would say is they need to adapt with some sort of leverage of technology. So I would be selling in your recruitment service as an AI talent partner or something like that where you can get some recurring revenue in where you've actually got a business that's worth something.

James Blackwell [00:40:17]:
Because if you're in business for 30 years and you still don't have any predictable income, you still haven't broke past consistently 20k a month, something is went inept wrong because it's not been through trial and error and effort like for 30 years. If you've been in the game for 30 years in the same market, you should be financially rewarded for that time and input. But it doesn't work like that because you've got to adapt. And a lot of those people that have been in the game a long time, they don't adapt, they don't invest in themselves, they don't want to learn something new. They were a bit burnt out. No one wants to really do recruitment forever. Let's be honest. If it was my advice, I would say you need to get in and out of recruitment as fast as you possible and make as much money as you can because you will get burnt out eventually.

James Blackwell [00:41:00]:
If you're burning the candle on both ends, which is trying to win clients and candidates and you don't want to scale a team, you just need to try and at least get some predictable revenue in which is retainers. So you've got to find a way of like how you can sell that in your market so you've got more predictability. Otherwise your nervous system is going to be shot. If you're still pinning your hopes on a 30k fee coming in and then it drops out and you're thinking, wow, I blanked for the month and it's only been 30 years I've been doing this. It's going to be very tough.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:25]:
Well, I mean that kind of goes into. My next question for you is like, you know, what's the signs that you've actually like outgrown being a solo recruiter? This is probably a two part question that will go into like the same answer but like what's the difference between having an actual recruiting business and having a job in recruitment?

James Blackwell [00:41:42]:
Yeah. So I would say that there's a few examples. Obviously you've got your startup phase, you've got Your solopreneur phase, which is where you are literally just you doing everything, winning clients and candidates and running the business. You might leverage some automation and then you might have one VA that's just a jam over here. The other model to that is a solopreneur with proper remote assistance. So you've dedicated sourcing team, so you've maybe got two or three sources that are doing outreach every single day for you. That's your marketing machine to get candidates. You've got automation, maybe some clay and AI to have email campaigns and LinkedIn follow ups and voice notes done to get clients.

James Blackwell [00:42:18]:
So then all you should be doing is winning new clients, pitching new business and speaking to the qualified candidates on form, making replacements. That's what I would call like a new type of era type of solopreneur, which is good because you've actually got a team, but it's not what I would call a full in house team because then you've got seven figure agency, which is like where my agency Ronald James is. We've still got a team in an office of 10 people for example, and then five people remote. That's a hybrid solution. But that's hard work because you've got mouse to feed. Every month you need more jobs coming in, you need more clients coming in and your profit gets less. But it should be the beauty about that business is every month it makes money for me and I don't do anything in the business because the team is doing the deals. So there's a big difference between being a solopreneur where you have to drive all revenue and you've got a team that drives the revenue but you just orchestrate it.

James Blackwell [00:43:09]:
So you could take a holiday for six weeks and you still got maybe 60, 80K coming in the bank. So that's a business asset. There's a difference between getting it to a point where it's sellable because it might still be reliant on you heavily on like managing the team and everything else. But you've got it to a point where it's a revenue generator, it's a cash machine. Whereas a solopreneur you're just always going to be that person. So it relies on your energy. And one of the key things, I'm big on energy and I realized like if you get a business that's depending on you to drive it for marketing, for winning new business, getting candidates over the line, if you have a bad one feel, the one it lands on, that gets draining over time and recruitment's probably the worst industry to be in when it's like that because it's very lonely and it's very. It's not the best.

James Blackwell [00:43:51]:
So I would say there's no right or wrong. Some people want a solopreneur business, but I would say get leverage as much as possible. So use automation AI to get leverage and a team, which is a remote team. So it's less cost, but at least you've delegated the remote side and also the operations integrated. I always say everyone should have like a VA that does all of the tech stuff. So that removes you away from that. You should just be selling, winning clients, building client relationships and closing deals.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:17]:
So I know we've talked about tech tools a lot and like AI tech and all the great things, but is there a tech tool that you absolutely love outside of clay?

James Blackwell [00:44:25]:
So I'll be honest, I've started using Lemlist again. I used to use Lemlist 10 years, nine, 10 years ago. I actually got it on the. What's that? AppSumo. I logged in the other day. I still have that account but obviously they've got restrictions on certain things. I just paid for the tool again to. To get the voice notes and these type of things instantly.

James Blackwell [00:44:43]:
Is obviously been a holy grade tool that we've used for a long time for email campaigns. And one of my best friends, Nils, is the founder of that software. Fi is still like the one we use for LinkedIn automation, which works really well. I'll be honest. Like I've went all down the rabbit hole, Benjamin, because obviously one of my businesses, systems and automation and that's what we help people. But I think there's a point where it's too much tools are detrimental. So I just think having a simple tech stack is important, especially now you've got ChatGPT, so obviously you've got ChatGPT operator as well. But having cleared a house, the open API, ChatGPT, something like Lemlist instantly and then your LinkedIn automation tool for your email and your email campaigns and then your ATS system.

James Blackwell [00:45:27]:
So we have a partnership with Recruiter Flow, but there's plenty of other good ATS's out there. That's pretty much the tech stack, I would say. Then obviously you've got Apollo and lead finder tools as well. But I haven't been into like all of the new. There's always like these AI tools that are coming out in recruitment, but all of them aren't really AI. They just say the AI just because it's a good buzzword. And it gets you, gets you noticed, doesn't it?

Benjamin Mena [00:45:50]:
Yeah, true. I think you've nailed a point. Like to be successful, a simple tech stack is probably the best. And you can easily get Shiny object syndrome and spend all year testing products that takes away from your business.

James Blackwell [00:46:02]:
Yeah, because a lot of entrepreneurs, when they do shiny object syndrome, they're hiding behind because they don't really want to do the work. They're looking for this like golden tool that is going to eliminate everything. Like there's no such thing in recruitment. So yeah, I mean, you're right with that. Just trying to keep it simple as possible. The only time you're going to get a little bit more complex is if you're actually building those tool stacks for your client that you're going to pitch it in with. Because then that's at least you're making money every single month from that point taken.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:28]:
On that. I've known you for years, so I've watched you talk about, I've watched you share, I've watched you make an impact. I've watched some of the recruiters that have actually learned from you, implemented and you know, have great businesses now. What do you want to do beyond helping recruiters build scalable assets?

James Blackwell [00:46:47]:
Yeah, good question. Funny enough, coming back to the point, you asked the question about the different stages in your business and what I was going to say, in recruitment business, I really think you have a five year. What I found in my personal experience and just other friends that have been successful is you have a five year journey of starting a business. Really enthusiastic, you're hustling, you got your sleeves up, you win some clients, you want to scale. Year two, year three, you get excited. Year four, it's like very much more of the same. Year five, you've either made it or you're just like, you're just getting by and you're like grinding your teeth and you haven't got the energy you had in year one to start again. So unless you get your business to a scale where you've actually got a team building revenue, it's very hard to go again in year six doing the same thing.

James Blackwell [00:47:31]:
And that's what I've noticed. A lot of recruitment agency owners are stuck. They exist. Some people have been going 15, 20 years longer than me, but they're not profitable. I'm going to business, but they haven't got the energy to go again. Yeah. Because they don't want to start up again. So what I would say is like, when you're starting out, make sure you've got a five year run of being very clear what you're building.

James Blackwell [00:47:49]:
If you're building a solopreneur business, that's totally fine, but make sure you do it with at least some remote team to give you leverage because trust me, you will not be enthusiastic jumping out the bed at 7am, excited to go and win a new client or like look on the job boards or get in your LinkedIn box. That's not going to happen after year five. So yeah, my personal journey for that was obviously with Ronald James, my recruitment agency. They're in year 11 now, but I sort of manage myself on the business. After year five I fought the agency blueprint and that's been going six years now. We launched RemoteAssistance AI, which is the direct recruitment agency for the VAs. That's been going 18 months to two years. And then my goal now is actually to buy a total different business in a different vertical.

James Blackwell [00:48:30]:
My goal now is to build my own private office, micro private equity, where I'm looking to buy a different business so that I can leverage my skillset on automation and remote teams to make that a bit more profitable. So I'm actually going to be like buying a business next quarter. Totally different industry, not going to be B2B service based. I want to test myself again on a different level of business now. So like going into something, whether it's facilities management, it might be storage units, it might be manufacturing company that does warehousing, I'm putting my sales skills, marketing skills and remote team skills into that and actually not being operating the business. I've already got a team, it's not owner dependent and then compounding. So my goal to get to a hundred million is going to be compounding my wealth from acquiring other business assets that are five, six times multiple. Leverage some bank debt along with my personal finance that I'll bring in and then I can buy bigger and bigger businesses and roll them up.

James Blackwell [00:49:27]:
So that's the goal here.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:28]:
Well, I follow you on Instagram, we chat on the summits and we chat kind of like here and there. You are a ferocious reader.

James Blackwell [00:49:34]:
Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:35]:
Let's just say maybe since the last time that we spoke. What's the top three books that you have really dug into?

James Blackwell [00:49:42]:
I'll tell you on my Audible now actually, because I've got that life normally because I'm in Spain at the minute. I drive with the top down, listen to Audible books and get some sun. One simple book I think everyone should read. And I've read this like probably 10 times now is called Life Was Never Meant To Be A Struggle by Stuart Wild. I don't know if you've read that. It's only a few pages and it's such a simple book about not worrying what other people think, doing what you want to do in life, how short life is, how it shouldn't literally be a struggle. You should enjoy and go with the flow of the river and just enjoy the journey. But there's a lot of things that just really resonated with me with that Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill is a stable piece of.

James Blackwell [00:50:23]:
Again, read probably 10 times. People need to keep programming the mind with these things, Benjamin, which is. Don't do. When you read a book once, it's not going to land. You need to read it a few times for you to see different things and different parts of that. But only books that have stood the test of time. I'm not big on. I used to be, but I'm not really big on all of the new books that come out and very modern and it's got a nice glossy title and everything else.

James Blackwell [00:50:45]:
Because when you get through the actual book, there's only certain elements you would probably take from that. Whereas the older books have stood the test of time and they're there for a reason. Reality transfer, things. Obviously my go to. I'll call the Holy Bible for me in terms of providing that consciousness and enlightenment and energy. So I always go back to that as a key book. Business book still comes back to Felix Dennis, How To Get Rich Again. I've listened that so many times and read that so many times.

James Blackwell [00:51:11]:
Every entrepreneur should read that book from front to back. Because Felix was almost worth a billion. I think he was worth £700 million in the UK. Self made. And he just gives so much raw advice. And as I keep reading it back, because I read that on my entrepreneurial journey 10 years ago to where I am now, because you had the different levels of rich and wealthy and all of the different things and I was like, wow, like I'm miles behind where I need to be. And it opened up my eyes of like, what it takes to actually, really be really successful. Not everyone's got what it takes.

James Blackwell [00:51:40]:
There's just different levels. And I know I'm not at a level where I could, like Elon Musk, for example, the amount of stress he puts himself under and risk that he takes. I'm nowhere near where I would want to be as a level of entrepreneur and business owner. But everyone's got a certain level and you want to make sure you push yourself on your comfort zone enough, but not too much. Like you sort of know the level that you want to play at. So I would definitely recommend that book as well. Felix Dennis, how to Get Rich.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:04]:
You work with a lot of agencies, you work with a lot of founders, the ones that are just absolutely, just fucking crushing it. Is there like a common thread that you see with each of them?

James Blackwell [00:52:13]:
Yes, mindset. Mindset, like they show up, they ask questions. If I give advice, they go and do it and implement it. They don't overthink it. So a lot of people have got a lack of self esteem. So they haven't got the confidence in themselves. They always want to ask another question or feel comfortable to do something. But the good successful people just get it done.

James Blackwell [00:52:35]:
Like there's just an innate like attachment to the goal they want to get to and they just take action. Most people take action. It's not a shiny object like we discussed. It's not a new tool, it's not a new feature. It's actually just your mindset and you have to reprogram your mind all of the time. Even me, I still do that every single day. Most people aren't prepared to do that. They've got personal lives and family, kids, they're watching Netflix on the nighttime.

James Blackwell [00:53:01]:
They're doing different things. Just be good at the level that you want to get to. But the successful people, 99% of the time get there because they deserve it. Now that's not just through effort. That's through planned learning, through application, through being conscientious, through daily habits, rituals. All of those little tiny little things add up to success. And yes, you might get a little bit of luck along the way. We all have a little bit of luck to be successful.

James Blackwell [00:53:28]:
But it can't just be all be luck. And it can't all be hard work either. It's being smart about it and being conscious about what you're learning and what you're actually doing every single day. Because when people are honest with themselves and yeah, I could say that now because we've helped 1,200 agents. I was looking back, I've been through my recruiter accelerator program since I started it back in 2019. So I've seen all sorts of different levels of entrepreneurs and agency owners. And yeah, you can see people like talk a lot but don't do action. They'll talk a lot and say they're going to do this and they should have, would have, could us.

James Blackwell [00:54:01]:
Sometimes it's the Quiet ones that don't even come on the call sometimes, but they just ask for one little thing. Go away, implement it, follow the steps. And that all comes down to their mindset and their. Their personal belief of who they want to become. Because everyone needs to evolve as humans. And some people aren't prepared to make the change that is needed on themselves to get to where they want to get to in life.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:21]:
You've talked about, like, reprogramming. You've talked about putting into work behind the scenes. Like, what does it actually look like?

James Blackwell [00:54:27]:
Yeah. So, I mean, even if I would say my day now is like, I start off with my journal, I take my notebook, I go and get a coffee. I'm in ChatGPT a lot now, actually. So ChatGPT is pretty much my best speak to three hours a day, asking it different scenarios, what I should do, and everything else. Daily habits is obviously meditation, thinking, planning, learning. I spend a lot of time thinking. I was actually watching a really good podcast yesterday with Naval Rabikant. He's one of my favorite entrepreneurs.

James Blackwell [00:54:51]:
His book is definitely one to check out as well. He's very similar in terms of, like, I like to have an empty diary because I think a lot now and just contemplate life and business and the smart things will come. That's not always in startup mode, but always learning. So reading a book every single day. If I'm walking, I'm listening. If I'm driving in my car, I am listening or I'm thinking. So I'm either thinking about business or I'm learning about business, or I'm learning about law of attraction or energy or consciousness. So when I'm working on myself, that happens every single day as a daily habit, and it's just a hunger for learn.

James Blackwell [00:55:26]:
So you have to have a high teachability index, which means you're willing to learn and adapt, and you have to be a ferocious. In personal development, I am obsessed. Like, my addiction isn't drink or anything else. It's like learning. So when I look at, like, the successful people there, they have the blend of learning, but it's the application and taking action. So it's not just watching YouTube for five hours a day and thinking, oh, that's great, that's great. But actually don't pull the trigger and reach out to a client and do the pitch and these type of things. It's having the blend between learning and application.

James Blackwell [00:55:56]:
So learning consciously of trying to pick something out and how can I apply that to my recruitment agency or my business?

Benjamin Mena [00:56:05]:
You've had a thousand two hundred people go through your accelerator program. You've had a few hundred companies like work with you for virtual assistants. You've talked to recruiters nonstop over the last like I'm sure like at least 10 to 20, 25,000 recruiters over the past like decade. Many times like I'm sure they're asking like tactical advice, what do I need to do for my business? Like they ask this, they ask that. Is there something that you actually wish they would ask you and what would be that answer?

James Blackwell [00:56:32]:
Yeah, good question. Probably what you have asked me what it takes to be successful and it's just what I've listed on it is your mindset thing. It's not a tactic, it's not a new tool, it's not a new strategy. Like everyone comes for like wanting a golden nugget. The thing an automated email campaign is going to Suddenly win them 20 clients. That's not going to be the case. It's a mix of 20 different inputs to get that client on board. Yeah, I would just say it's, it depends on your level of success.

James Blackwell [00:56:55]:
It all comes down to your Polaris stuff, what it is you really want to achieve in life. And I know this sounds really basic Benjamin, but if you asked all of your audience realistically do they have their goals written down? I'm looking over just because I'm looking over my journal, the ten year plan, their three year goals and they one year vision. One year vision. So the ten year vision, the three year goals and their one year goals. Most people haven't written it down on paper. They don't even know where they want to go. So they just go unconscious in life and their business just floating around and every year that goes by they just don't have this desire to where they want to get to in their Pilara store. They're just going through life unconscious.

James Blackwell [00:57:30]:
So I would definitely say just working on the mindset high teachability index, willing to learn and implement.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:36]:
Awesome. James, for people that want to follow you, if they don't already, what's the best way for them to do that?

James Blackwell [00:57:42]:
I've got a YouTube channel which is just type in James Blackwell we have on YouTube and then theagencyblueprint.com is our main website. And then if they want a remote assistant they could follow RemoteAssistance AI on LinkedIn or the website. That's probably the best ways.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:57]:
Awesome. Well before I let you go James, this has been an awesome conversation. Is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners, I would.

James Blackwell [00:58:02]:
Just say if they've took the time to listen to the full podcast, that means they're intrigued by something. So what I would say is just go and take action with something. So either go and hire your own remote assistant, like from tomorrow, put an advert on, go and find someone in South Africa on LinkedIn. You could do it yourself, but at least take something when implemented, to write it down. Two or three golden nuggets. Hopefully there was a few that I've shared in today. But don't just do nothing about it. Most people listen to the podcast to feel good and then they go off to the normal life again.

James Blackwell [00:58:31]:
So actually, like, I want you to take some notes today, even just putting it in your note in your Apple phone, which is something I always do. Go back to, to put an action plan in place, like, top three things you took away that you want to implement in your own business.

Benjamin Mena [00:58:44]:
Absolutely love that. So top three things go implement. But this has just been an awesome conversation, you know, talking about how, you know, clients are looking at changes. They're looking at, like, how recruiters can actually help them. And as the world's changing, because they're looking for AI, they're looking for this, they're looking for that. So we think about how you could possibly change your offer and take advantage of the AI and make money with it. Secondly, it's also like, I think this is one of the biggest curses when it comes to, like, recruiters and founders. It's a curse of trying to be Superman or Superwoman and do everything yourselves.

Benjamin Mena [00:59:15]:
And, like, you know, James said it best. And, you know, later on this year, I'm actually asking for help from him, like, how do I take stuff off my table, free up some time so I can be more effective within the zone of genius, where it comes to, like, the actual recruiting work and the selling or working on the podcast. So go take something, implement it, and then just go Crush it. Make 2025 your year. Thank you.