It honestly does not make a difference really. Sometimes you don’t stop to think about it. It’s difficult being a pregnant entrepreneur – that is for sure. I remember people asking about that.
In a business meeting one guy said, “You can be honest. I can see you are pregnant”, which was a bit weird. I don’t see any difference really. I think it is perfectly fine. I do get a bit sad there are not more female entrepreneurs out there just to have access to a network and more role models.
I think it is a luxury to start your own business. It is not something a lot of people can afford to do. It does take savings, so unless you have a savings plan or someone to support you it is almost impossible for a lot of people to do – male or female.
To have the confidence to take that step may not be as common as we might like. It is about being prepared to take a risk and back yourself.
For me, I have a husband who is self-employed, so he could leave early and pick up the kids. It’s still hard and I’d be lying if I said I don’t question my choices weekly. The thing about running a business is while there is a lot of freedom on one hand; on the other hand, once you start you can’t get out of it.
I have met opposition along the way. I remember my family lawyer said, “What are you thinking starting a recruitment agency?” He said, “You will look like an idiot.”
To me, there is nothing more empowering than having my own business and being self-employed and having people working for me and working as a team.
Our forecast is $2.4 to $2.5 million for the year. I’m confident we can continue that same growth pattern. We’ve launched a new service on training dealers on how to recruit staff.
We continue to launch new services and broaden our client base and really testing what the auto industry includes, extending to trucks, parts and logistics. So that growth is quite probable if those plans come to fruition.
By increasing the volume of work. We run a pretty lean team with quite lean expenses and we are investing in infrastructure to handle extra capacity. For the first time in a while I feel I have enough people and resources to increase volume.
Typically we’ve been a niche agency doing quite low volume roles but we have just recruited for a large call centre and that was our first test of capacity to take on more staff.
I push our team to sell by having great service. I don’t see recruitment as a sales industry; I see it as service, which is quite controversial. I think if a client rings to look for a certain person they want service and your time and help to do that profitably and quickly.
To have big roles advertised to the industry. When the industry sees us advertising a big role like a general manager at a big car brand they see us as a real specialist in the area. That’s the best marketing for us to represent exclusively for big roles in industry publications, it’s quite old-fashioned really.
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Cara Waters is a former SmartCompany editor. Previously, Cara was a senior reporter for the Financial Times’ website and worked for The Sunday Times in London.
