Adding management consultancy as a service offering of your recruitment agency can potentially increase your revenue. But the question is, is it easier said than done?
In this episode, you will hear insights from Colin Kleine, co-founder of Scalerr. They’re a growth advisory firm that helps Tech companies reach their revenue goals through Strategy, Execution, and People.
Colin discusses why he made the pivot from Recruiter into Management Consultant, and why recruitment was so fundamental in helping him successfully do it. He shared the challenges, key learnings, and how this transition benefits their business.
I have known Colin since 2014, he’s a former client and I’ve tracked his remarkable rise, especially since he launched Scalerr.
Episode Outline and Highlights
- [02:07] Colin shared how he came across Mark and the learnings he took that transformed his billings.
- [05:34] The highs and lows that led Colin to start Scalerr.
- [11:45] Thriving during the longest COVID lockdown.
- [16:21] From recruitment to management consulting: Colin explains how their advisory services help clients expand internationally to increase their valuation.
- [28:49] Mark emphasizes how understanding the client’s objectives rather than just filling roles can add more value.
- [38:14] How having a co-founder who is aligned with Collin’s passion became a game-changer.
- [48:30] Colin shares the biggest challenges that he had to face when building Scalerr.
- [56:13] Key success factors and milestones that led Colin and Scalerr to where they are now.
- [1:00:46] Colin thanks Mark for being a mentor and inspiration throughout his career.
Recruitment Skills and Experience Leading to Management Consulting
How Colin pivoted from being just a recruiter to a management consultant is a story that I find fascinating. Aside from talent acquisition, Scalerr helps startup companies scale up and expand globally and increase their valuation. What propelled this shift? Colin shared three takeaways:
- Understanding their client’s objectives and challenges. Colin and his team are focused on being consultative and understanding their client’s journey, stresses, and pain points.
- Learning from experience: having helped more than 150 companies, Colin and his team learned what makes some businesses successful and some businesses fail. They have come up with a playbook that
- Leveraging his recruitment experience, Colin took lessons from the CEOs, VPs, and other key positions he placed. He said, “You learn information that somebody else is prepared to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for. So you start learning what is it that made some companies wildly successful? What is it that successful CEOs did to grow and scale a company and also understand how all of this ties in ultimately into valuation?”
The management consulting arm of their business skyrocketed, leading Colin and his team to start a venture arm.
Challenges and Solutions While Building Scalerr
Just like all business owners, Colin faced a multitude of challenges when building Scalerr. I wanted to hear what his top challenges are and how his team was able to overcome them. He shared one particular challenge that resonates with many recruitment business owners:
“Not enough hours in the day, as many entrepreneurs will do, and make this mistake of trying to do too much of it yourself. And I know there’s going to be a lot of people listening to this podcast that know exactly what I’m talking about, not realizing when it’s now time to start delegating things out and bringing somebody on board to do that, not knowing when to give up control and relinquish.”
Colin emphasized the importance of systemizing and delegating tasks. Not doing so and becoming overwhelmed with tasks you can delegate will be a constraint to scaling your business.
Creating a Flywheel: Pivotal Factors That Propelled Scalerr to Their Current Achievements
Another topic that stood out to me is how Colin and his team were able to create a flywheel – their consultancy work feeds their recruitment segment and vice versa. Instead of solely relying on placements as a revenue stream, they were able to establish their consultancy to the point that it could be a standalone revenue source. Colin described it this way: “I think there’s a lot of mutual value added and then you start speaking to them and introducing yourself and building a relationship, and more and more people know you, and guess what? They end up giving you recruitment work.”
Colin also elaborated on the three pivotal factors that he believes contributed greatly to their current achievements:
- Diversification of where they source their leads.
- Foundational understanding of their clients on a business level.
- Creating their own flywheel and not solely relying on placements as a revenue source.
