Welcome back to the pod! This week, we hit a massive milestone. After 80 episodes, we finally have an actual Giig user in the studio: the brilliant Becky Kitson from Kitson Associates!To celebrate, we are officially in fancy dress (safety first, obviously), and this episode is an absolute rollercoaster. In this episode there is something for everyone! In Becky’s own words, she is a great all rounder... First, we get into Becky's journey into recruitment, moving from being a debt advisor to starting out in a freezing cold, high-pressure agency, and eventually breaking out on her own to build Kitson Associates. She talks about the realities of being a solo founder, the isolation that comes with the job, and why she leans into the "small business" narrative when pitching to clients.But this episode isn't just about recruitment. We take a massive detour into Becky’s property investments, including her wild experiences managing an HMO, finding some questionable items left behind by tenants, and the unbelievable story of accidentally renting her first house out to a brothel.We also get serious for a moment. Becky talks passionately about the lack of women in construction, the discrimination pregnant women still face from hiring managers, and why 70% of her job currently involves acting as a counsellor for burnt-out senior executives in the construction industry.Finally, we dip into Lee's Lunchbox to answer a question left by Jeremy Snell: What is the number one thing in recruitment that pisses you off, that you would make illegal if you could?This is one of the funniest, deepest, and most chaotic episodes we’ve ever recorded. Enjoy!Links & Resources:🏗️ Connect with Becky Kitson: https://kitsonassociates.co.uk/📈 Check out Giig: https://giighire.com/

Welcome back to the pod! This week is a proper catch-up episode as the lads prepare for the upcoming team conference and get stuck into some massive product updates.

First up, "Lee's Legs" delivers some fantastic news—the fundraising for Say it with a Smile has officially hit £1,120! Andy talks about the massive 15-hour training weeks leading up to his grueling 207-mile cycle, while Luke contemplates turning up to a dementia charity event dressed in full Lycra.

We then get into the chaos of the weekend. Luke recounts a complicated, multi-stop treasure hunt he built for Lucy’s birthday (which required AI and some questionable grid-reference advice from his dad) and talks about supporting his mum during her recent triathlon.

Andy shares an update on his Gran and reveals the unbelievable things they found while clearing out her old office—including his Grandad’s provisional driving license from 1955 and a genuine treasure map complete with coordinates!

Finally, the recruitment tech chat is back! We break down the massive new email launch for the Giig CRM. If you are a user, you now have a fully integrated global inbox, bulk email sending with tracking, and the ability to choose whether you send formatted, redacted, or original CVs directly from the platform.

We wrap things up with Lee's Lunchbox, tackling the ultimate philosophical question: If you could ask a higher power one question, what would it be?

Enjoy the episode!

Links & Resources:

• 🚴‍♂️ Support our £10k Goal for 'Say it with a Smile': https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/say-it-with-a-smile-1#

  
  

• 📈 Check out the new Giig Inbox features: https://giighire.com/

Welcome back to the pod!

This week, we have our very first returning guest. We're back on the farm!!! We took the studio on the road and headed back up north for another chin wag with Mr Jeremy Snell (if you missed his first appearance, go back and check out Episode 31!).

We kick things off with an update on farm life, bottle-feeding lambs at 2:00 AM, and his adventures at the secret "Pink Umbrella" society at Glastonbury. I also decided to roll out another highly questionable AI-generated quiz—this time, guessing famous movie quotes. I feel like I peaked with the first quiz and maybe should have left it but oh well these things happen.

But when we do finally get around to the recruitment chat, Jeremy brings gold.

We dive deep into his massive business transition, rebranding from Rookie to Recruiter to his shiny new platform, Your People Engine.

He breaks down why he completely overhauled his tech stack, why he refuses to lock agencies into 12-month software contracts, and why he’s highly skeptical of the new "vibe coding" trend.

He also shares some of his top-tier storytelling tactics for sales, including the legendary "Yellow Paint" strategy for uncovering hidden money in a client's supply chain.

Plus, we cover:

• A wild medical tangent about surgery for sweaty hands.

• An unbelievable interview story involving a candidate, a roof rack, and a bungee cord.

• Lee’s Lunchbox: If we had to permanently live as an animal, what would we be?

They always say it's hard to record a second album but I felt like this was a cracker filled with laughs, farm animals, and genuinely brilliant recruitment L&D advice. Enjoy!

Links & Resources:

• 🚜 Check out Your People Engine: https://yourpeopleengine.com/

• 📈 Check out Giig: https://giighire.com/

It’s another massive, unedited update on the pod this week, where we manage to completely bin the recruitment chat for the majority of the episode.

First up, the serious news: we are officially off to the races with our fundraising for the Say it with a Smile dementia charity, and "Lee’s Legs" has a big announcement regarding the current stats and total.

Andy breaks down the terrifying £10,000 target the charity set him and reveals what he’s actually aiming for. We also discuss our upcoming team conference workshop and debate whether Andy standing in the corner in his tri-suit and goggles will help our conversion rate.

Once we finish updating you on the miles Andy is putting in, we get SMUTTY. We cover everything from "human centipedes" and Snickers adverts to why Luke energy-crashed hard after 40 miles on our last cycle.

The main segment is dedicated to Lucy’s massive 30th birthday party. We discuss the creative dress code and reveal our costumes: Andy is Hercules, a bunch of guests are forming The Flintstones, and Luke has spent an uncomfortable amount of cash to dress up as Ginda the Good Witch from Wicked, complete with a very tight tiara.

Finally, we dip back into Lee’s Lunchbox for an I'm A Celeb special: if we were in the final, what would our three-course bush tucker victory meals be? Hint: one of them involves eating prawn tails but absolutely NO guts.

Enjoy!

Show Notes: * 🚴‍♂️ Please Donate to 'Say it with a Smile' here: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/say-it-with-a-smile-1#

This week on the pod, we are joined by Rohit Kapoor, the Co-Founder of the recruitment business development platform, Paiger.This episode came out of the gates quick.... Rohit definitely brings the energy, which could be something to do with the Ginger and Turmeric drink that he bowled in with.After 20 minutes of chatting about barbershops and waxing, Rohit takes us right back to his early days, sharing his completely unfiltered journey from dropping out of a university building surveying course to landing his first recruitment job by randomly flipping through the Yellow Pages. We discuss the grind of his early recruitment days, the pivotal moment he moved to Broadbean, and the drive that ultimately led him and Darren to build Paiger from the ground up starting off in a shed. But this episode is far from your standard corporate founder interview.Along with his journey, we also cover off his family life including: his mum working in the money-counting dome at Securitas, his dad ultra fit dad (Jim) who's doing triathlons on the daily and how he was called up to deliver his son at home back in the madness of the COVID days... This ones energetic to say the least.. Enjoy x

Brace yourself for the Mystery of the 'Classic Reserve'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here's your link for any donations.

Links & Resources:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy the Ep!

Selling a recruitment business is not an easy game!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In this episode we cover:

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

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

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

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

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

• Our most thoughtful gift to date.

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