Today marks the 33rd Recruitment Hero story in our Recruitment Hero Series at Centredexcellence.
This week we are sharing the amazing Rowena Young’s story about the incredible results she has achieved in six months during her RockIT journey.
Rowen increased her average fee, doubled her turnover in the last year, had record months with record placements, discovered aspects of herself that she didn’t even know she had and became financially free!
Rowena has achieved some incredible results since joining our RockIT program, so I asked her several questions to tease out all the actions she took that delivered the results she achieved.
Tell Us More About Your Recruitment Background?
I am the MD of Coconut Lime, and we specialise in Telecom and Technology recruitment. My original background was in Telecom sales, where I had many telecom sales roles, from on-the-phone selling to sales management.
I set up Coconut Lime in 2018 and had no idea how it would work out. At the time, I thought I’d love to do something working from home.
We have three children, who are now 7, 11, and 16, and two dogs: So, it is quite a hectic household!
I wanted a business to take the financial pressure off my husband and give us a better lifestyle.
Coconut Lime was ticking along OK, and then Covid hit, and I thought I might have to rethink our options; luckily, I kept it going, and then at the start of this year, I thought, right, I’m going to make a go of this because I could see the potential and then I heard about RockIt. I decided to take the plunge, and I cannot believe the transformation that’s happened since I started working with Nicky, Katy, and the RockIT team.
I still feel that I’ve barely touched the surface of everything to learn and implement from the programme.
I have had amazing results already, thanks to you guys.
When did You First decide to Get Help; What Was Happening With The Business?
The main driver for me to get help was I was inconsistent. I would have good months where I would place four or five people, but these weren’t happening consistently.
My average month was probably one or two placements, which I thought was a good income for me at the time. The challenge was I also experienced months when I didn’t make a placement, and that’s when I started to panic and think, should I be doing this?
The realisation hit home that I needed to do something, especially as I had brought a resource person in to help me.
What Shifted For You From a Mindset Perspective?
A big part of what I’ve learned in the RockIT program has completely transformed my mental approach. My thoughts about the business and what is possible for me are building positively all the time.
I have changed from having a mindset of lack where I’d think, oh, I need more jobs, and I need more candidates, while at the same time believing there aren’t enough of these good people around or there aren’t enough good jobs everywhere.
So now my mindset has completely changed, and I am thinking, I’ve got so many good candidates and really good jobs to work on.
I think having that mindset where you don’t worry so much about those things because I know now that the candidates and clients will come when I follow the process you teach us in RockIT.
Katy: I think managing your mind supports many people, doesn’t it? Because when you are on your own or maybe you’ve got one other person with you or you have a small team, it’s quite a lonely position to be in as that business owner.
You haven’t got anyone to bounce ideas off, so you sit in your web of fear, which results in you working with just a small part of what is possible for you, not realising that there might be other ways of approaching that situation that could give you a different result.
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What Have You Implemented So Far From RockIT That Has Made A Huge Difference?
I have doubled my business because of the gold job’s process. You helped me to analyse which jobs are the best jobs to work. Because of this, I realised that out of all the jobs I was working on, I was wasting so much time on maybe ten positions that weren’t going to make any money for the business: This transformed everything alongside all the analysis you teach about where to spend our time and with which candidates and clients.
Also, being able to outsource work that I was doing that wasn’t making the most of my talents; my superpowers, as you call them.
I have even saved time by hiring my cleaner! Things like that I just wouldn’t have done before. I’d have thought, no; I can’t, you know, I don’t want to spend money on a cleaner; this mindset shift to outsourcing has freed up so much time.
It helped me understand working with my zone of genius and structuring the business around that so that I could get ten times the output and focus on my higher-value activities.
You Are Building A Team Now; How is That Working?
Before RockIT, I did everything in the business and didn’t even have a defined role. I would do everything from sourcing candidates to interviewing candidates and then the delivery of candidates, sourcing clients, so all the business development, speaking with clients, arranging interviews, absolutely everything.
Now I’m focusing on the delivery of candidates and the business development I’ve partly outsourced.
I work with new clients, negotiating, onboarding, and candidates.
I have more choices now in what I do with my time, whereas before, I thought I had to do everything. I’m still really busy, but because our cash flow is good, I know I can pick and choose when I take time out and spend more quality time with the children and our families.
There’s been a massive transformation, even in the five or six months I’ve been working on the RockIT program, and I know that will skyrocket more and more.
And this feeds into my children, and it benefits our children’s lives, too, because the positive outlook that I now have provides for them. I’ve learned so many things that I teach our children, staying positive and managing their minds and what is possible for them.
It is really amazing. I can’t stress enough how amazing it is.
If someone had said to me at the start of January by the end of the year, you will have a cleaner every week, and you’ll be going to the most expensive hair salon in town, and have booked an amazing holiday for next year.
If someone had said all that to me at the start of the year and I was in the mental place that I was, I wouldn’t have believed it at all.
We went away for the weekend to London to see a play with the children and ate out all the time, and my eldest, who is 16, said mummy, I feel like we’re on Rich Kids Go Skint, but I’m the rich kid! It made me laugh, but I just thought that’s just nice for her to experience the possibility of what you can achieve when you put your mind to it.
What Else Have You Taken Away From The RockIT Programme?
The people on the program are so supportive, and you and Nicky and Lucy and Sally and everyone else, but also the other members of the program taking the course, along with me, have been supportive and helpful.
So many people have given me advice, and I have made many friends on the programme.
I think the outlook, the approach, that positivity in your business and taking risks. I thought I was quite a risk taker, but I’ve been pushed to take more risks than I felt comfortable with or I would’ve taken on my own. We are looking at employing our next person to come on board now, and I probably wouldn’t have wanted to do that had I not been part of the programme, or I’d have weighed it up so much and dithered about it so long that I wouldn’t have done it.
Having more confidence in how I run the business has been amazing, and having the backup and support you give is brilliant and a shout-out to the Q and A and JFDI sessions, which are fantastic which all help and support me.
There’s just so much learning; I don’t feel like this program will ever end for me because there is so much I can learn.
Because I have outsourced and got the help, I have had my best week, where we placed three candidates in less than seven days.
I had my record placement, which was double the size of my average fee, all since starting the RockIT programme; So, so it has been amazing for me. Thank you, and the fact that it impacts my family and my children’s lives is brilliant.
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What Final Words of Advice Would You Give to Someone Who Was In Your Situation Before Joining RockIT?
Go for it; you will not regret it. Probably the only regret will be that you didn’t do it sooner. When I first spoke to Caroline, I said I was worried about the money and failing. I asked her if there were any chance I would fail, and she said, “We only do success in this programme. You will succeed,”
She was so right; I have doubled my business, and I have a better life which is priceless.
So don’t take another week to think about it because you could be getting another placement that week you spent procrastinating!
What Next?
Rowena is an action taker who did the work and implemented the strategies we teach in the Rockit programme and consequently doubled her business in six months and is making bigger placements.
If you would like to discuss how we can help you build your recruitment company to deliver the lifestyle you want, schedule a free profit Accelerator Session with one of our Scale Specialists.
We will help you clarify exactly what you need to do to double your sales and fill rates and increase your fees while you build a business that runs on autopilot.
Warm Regards
Nicky and Katy
