Across the Pond: Antony Baker, CEO of GRC Hub

Francis:

Antony, thank you so much for being on our Across the Pond series. First off, we'd like to know who you are and what you do.

Antony Baker:

I appreciate being able to come on here and have a chat with you. My name is Antony Baker. I am an ex-professional athlete--I like to use that--it makes me giggle a little bit. I come from the windsurfing world, then into the MMA fighting world, and then into professional football, as in, American football, we call it in England.

I have a management consultancy and recruitment company in the FinTech and the financial services sector globally. We have a platform called GRC Hub, which stands for “Governance Risk and Compliance” Hub. It is a community based around the top 15% of risk and compliance professionals globally. We qualify, vet, and test everybody onto it, so it is a legitimate professional network. We house all these people to be able to have a bench for ourselves, but more importantly, we are building a community of the best people on the planet to be able to further the risk and compliance field across the globe.

Francis:

That's quite a background, going from windsurfing into the recruitment world. We'll go over the product and the company of GRC Hub in a little bit, but how did you get into this space coming from professional athletics?

Antony Baker:

I won quite a few world titles, about 30 international and national titles in my time. I spent 15 years living in Maui, Hawaii. I've always had an insatiable appetite for developing myself to the point where, as a windsurfer, you have to windsurf every day, you have to train every day, you have to eat right, you have to do all this stuff, but you have quite a lot of downtime. So, during that period, I did a couple of degrees and a master's that allowed me to further my education and understanding of what it meant in business. When I broke my back motorbike riding and then broke my wrist when I was doing MMA in a junior UFC fight in Australia, I was kind of like, what am I going to do now?

What am I going to do that's going to give me the same appetite for life that it did as an athlete? I ended up walking into a direct sales office, and I ended up starting my sales career, knocking on doors in one of the harshest environments on the planet in Perth in the summer. I really enjoyed it. So, my sales career comes from direct sales, talking to people who don't want to talk to you about something they don't need and getting them to buy it, which sounds bad when you say it, but actually it was a great career and I really enjoyed it. So, I did a couple of years at that, and then I decided to sell that business and move back to the UK.

Going back to the UK was quite interesting, because the UK is very different. I got straight back into a different sales space and ended up selling a product to a recruiter lady who is still a friend of mine now, and she was very high net worth individual. I was like, what do you do? And she's like, oh, I do recruitment, I've got a recruitment company. I've got 40 people that work for me. She was making herself about 750, 800 grand a year. And I was like, oh, I wouldn't mind a piece of that. She's like, come and work for me. So, I went to work for her and it was a shock to the system.

But, because I have direct sales experience and because I've met with more “no’s” than probably anybody on this planet, I took it in my stride and ended up working for her for a year or so, and then progressing from where I live on the south coast of the UK into a London based-role and then started working a bit more specific into the financial services sector, the regulated space, more precisely on risk and compliance. I knew nothing of risk and compliance when I started. On my first day, I sat down at my desk; everyone was 10 years younger than me. Everyone was saying I was old and past it and I wouldn't be successful. But, until I was 25, I sat on the beach wearing shorts and flip-flops, so I'm a 50-year-old-25-year-old now.

So, I started doing compliance, and the phone rang, and I answered it, and it was a business in London that said, we've got a new head of compliance role. Can you come into the office? And I was like, yeah, no problem. She said, great, we'll see you in two hours. So, within two hours of me starting in this business, I sat in the offices with the CEO, the current head of compliance, the head of HR, and some other admin people and me. For two hours we had a conversation, they gave me a presentation about this business. At the end, they shook my hand and said, Antony, it's so great to have somebody that's so experienced in the compliance space, and I'm just sweating the whole way through it.

And on the way out, I just pulled the HR lady aside, and I said, look, I need to tell you that this is my first day in the office. She said, well, if you carry on like today, you'll be amazing at this. And that's where we started off in this business really. From then on I just said, you know what? For me to get a good understanding of this, I need to start speaking to people who are doing this every day. So, I did more phone calls than anybody. I did networking events, I met more people than anybody, and within two months of starting in the business, I was the number one biller.

Francis:

It's so interesting that you said that in a way your professional life started at 25, because you were doing windsurfing for so long. I played professional baseball and it was the same for me. I was playing baseball until 25 so I didn't do anything professionally on an intellectual level until I was in my mid-twenties. It keeps you young in a way.

Antony Baker:

It does. We both had the fantastic opportunity, we took advantage of it. But, until you have stood there, it's the difference between you getting a contract or not getting a contract for your performance because a lot of people go to work and you know about this in recruitment. You have recruiters that come to work with you, and they talk a big game and they want a hundred grand basic, and they want loads of commission and they drive a nice car and they think they're amazing. They go home at four, they start at 10, and they wonder why they don't do any sales. Whereas, if you've had it hard and you've worked through it and you've pushed through it, and I've been on beaches in the middle of somewhere random in the world and I've been like if I don't do well in this event and I don't make money, then I don't eat. I don't get to my next event.

And I was lucky enough to have decent sponsors, but I remember one story. I was in Aruba, and I flew there, and it was really expensive to fly there from Maui, and it was really expensive to stay there, and I had $150, and I couldn't even afford to get the transit back to the airport to get home and I needed to do well. And I went to bed at 7:00 every night. I woke up, I ate well and I ended up winning the event. And back in those days you used to get, there were no bank transfers. You used to get an envelope with money at the end. It was a big event and I ended up winning 60 grand US and I had $60,000 in cash in envelopes.

I don't know if you've ever been to Aruba. Aruba's an island with casinos on it. And I'm not a drinker, I'm not a gambler, but I was like, I've got to try and make this money more. So, I was like, I put 10 grand on red on the roulette and won, and I just went backwards and forwards, and I ended up winning another hundred grand.

Until that point I'd been very much conscious that my actions were going to determine how much money I made, and whether I was going to be successful. Because, like the same as you found when you are on the field, there is no one else there other than you to support you. I lived in Australia and Hawaii. My parents weren't there, it was down to me.

We are in America now, we’re at our house in Florida, and I say to my kids, America is one of the best places in the world. There's obviously a lot of stuff in the news and all this sort of stuff. But, when you come from where we come from, there are more people, and there's less competition in America than anywhere else in the world. If you can take that work ethic and that work rate, like it sounds like you've done in your business and you can put it forward to something that has some legs, then you can be successful here if you put the effort in.

Francis:

It's so interesting. Former athletes do so well in sales and recruitment. Those are the two best because you get paid on how well you perform and it's very measurable.

Changing gears a little bit, you got into compliance recruiting. What kind of roles are these?

Antony Baker:

So, at that time, and this is a few years ago now, compliance was quite new. Every financial services company that makes sales or has clients needs a Head of Compliance. There are two sides of it. You've got the risk side, and you've got the compliance side. In America, they call it “Governance, Risk and Compliance”, “GRC”. That's why my business is called GRC Hub. These compliance people are in the business and they are conducive to the development and the sustainability of a company. A lot of companies call it the anti-revenue desk in the business, but that's not the way it is. They protect the money.

Francis:

They protect the revenue.

Antony Baker:

Well, they protect the people in the business to make sure they don't go to jail.

Francis:

Tell us about your company GRC Hub a little bit more.

Antony Baker:

We do contractors and permanent people for any financial services company across the globe, everywhere from Australia to London and everything in between. We offer contractors and permanent staff. I've got 22,000 people or something on my LinkedIn and they're all financial crime and compliance people. We talked about the professional athlete aspect of this business. I believe if you've got a good story and it's a convincing story, then you can sit down with anybody in the world and have a conversation with them that doesn't involve business to get them to recognize you and understand you. I've got a call after this with somebody who I met just before lockdown when I was in New York just before COVID here, and he's someone I've never done business with, but he's somebody that I've always kept in touch with. He's a very nice guy. He sends some people to me occasionally, but we've become the work-college-friend aspect of the business and we've got a deal now five years down the road from when I met him.

Francis:

So, speaking of people, you started off in London with recruitment, and then expanded from there. You've done a lot of work in the U.S., I'm assuming most of it is in New York.

Antony Baker:

East Coast.

Francis:

Mostly East Coast. What have you noticed that is different about recruiting for roles in the U.S.? Are the clients different? You mentioned the titles of the roles might be slightly different. What are some of the big things that stand out to you from recruiting in the U.S. versus the UK?

Antony Baker:

Do you know how many recruiters there are in London?

Francis:

How many?

Antony Baker:

96,000 in London.

Francis:

Wow.

Antony Baker:

So, your competition, and because the market's so tough, if you are good, you are bloody good. It is hard work in London. I know I can name 20 recruiters who do what I do who are really good, who are just as good as me at recruitment. Whereas, you come to New York, and you've got 7,000 to 9,000. I know it's a bit of a smaller market, but you've got much fewer. No disrespect to American recruiters, but you have not had it tough until you've worked in a UK London-based market.

My first ever candidate call in London was the first call that I did after coming back from Raymond James. So, I looked on the system and it had something like 6,000 heads of compliance. So, I just started at A, and it was a lady who I won't mention her name now, but at that time she was, because she's a friend of mine now, but she was at Bank of China and I called her mobile number. I mean, I don't know how many calls you've made in your life, but I've made a lot and probably nine times out of 10 they don't answer the phone. So, I make the first phone call to somebody about a role that I've got no idea about, in a market I know nothing about my first day on the job. And as I pick the phone up, I can see the boss who was like 10 years younger than me pick up the phone and I can see him look round at me, like he's listening to the call.

So, I get on the call and I go, hi, this is... And I kind of stuttered a little bit. And then, I got a bit like when you fall over yourself on the call and she just shut me down. I'm not going to say what she said to me, because it's a little bit colorful, but she shut me down and just put the phone down. Honestly, the whole office was listening to the call, just absolutely fell over laughing and I was like, geez, that was kind of, we are with the big boys now we've got to pull up our pants and get on with it, you know what I mean?

Francis:

So, my first business was in London. And we got an investment from a venture accelerator there [Entrepreneur First] that invests in really new companies. One thing that was so interesting to me was how recruitment is so prevalent--in financial services you run into so many recruiters, so many people that either have their own firm or they're working for another firm. Not the case in the States.

Do you think the different levels of recruitment competition in the US and the UK translates into a different style of recruitment?

Antony Baker:

Yeah, it's different, but the people are different as well. We've never met. We met for 10 seconds before this call and we're having a conversation about this and we'll get on fine, and by the end of it we'll know each other a bit more. Well, I did this test yesterday for another meeting I've got a bit later on. So, my GRC Hub that houses risk and compliance people globally, so I said, I'm going to send 100 direct LinkedIn messages to heads of compliance from digital asset firms in New York specifically, and 100 to exactly the same, but in London. How many do you think I got back from the U.S. and how many do you think came back from the UK?

Francis:

I want to say 20% U.S., 5% London.

Antony Baker:

70% U.S., less than 5% London. So, my first wife was American and I lived in Hawaii, and in Maui, and we lived on the beach and we had a great life, and I loved it, and I just loved the way of life. I loved the traffic, I loved the cars, I loved the food, I loved the people, I loved everything about it. And I think American people have got this the way about them, everyone. Like in England, we take the biscuit out and sometimes they're like, ooh, high five when a salad comes to the table and stuff like that. I just find it when you're surrounded by people that are grumpy and miserable the entire time, it's that joke isn't it? That when people walk into London, they get on the tube and they say hi to someone, they're looking around going, are you talking to me? Sort of thing.

Whereas, you can walk anywhere in America and go hi to somebody and they'll go hi back. The people are nice. I'm sure there's grumpy people out there, but I've met very few of them, especially in our industry. But also, in London there's a lot of people for one job, whereas there's not as many people for the same job in U.S. So, we get a lot of people coming into England, a lot of immigrants that come into the country from Nigeria, India, Pakistan and so on and so forth, and we've got quite large communities of people from this space.

So, probably 80% of my workforce or people that we have that are going into this field are from Asia and Africa, whereas it's very few UK-based people that are working in these roles. Whereas, in the U.S. that doesn't happen. You've got predominantly U.S. based people working on these roles or people from America. So, where we are looking at one job in London, I might get a thousand applications for the same job, I might get 50 applications in New York. So, the salaries are higher. Also, if we are looking at temp roles and we are charging 30% in the UK, we can charge 50, 60, 70% in the U.S. There are a bit more inherent costs with the person, but the salaries are higher, 40 to 50% higher for the same roles in the U.S., and the commission's more. So, where do I want to go?

Francis:

So, on the one hand, the Americans seem more open to new people. Maybe that's one thing, like new business, new people. And then, on the other-

Antony Baker:

They want to talk. They're happy to talk.

Francis:

So, they'll at least talk to you, especially if they have a need. On the other hand, there's just not as much supply. The demand is just higher for roles. There are not enough candidates to fill roles. So, they really do need your help, maybe that. So, there's the supply and demand issue, but there's also something cultural as well.

Antony Baker:

America's a big place. If you look at the size of it, just the size of it compared to the UK, but actually, the financial services market is actually really small compared to, if you look at per capita or per size compared to the UK. So, we get a lot of people in the UK. A friend of mine, Gerard Jordan or Jess Jordan who is a personal good friend of mine, he was at Lehman when it fell over. He was then moved to Barclays Investment Bank. He then went back to Ireland, worked in Ireland for a bit, and now he's here in New York. England's been at the forefront of development in the financial services space, especially with the way the regulator is, and the SEC now has its own way of doing things. Predominantly clients love people from the UK, because they know the regulator in the UK is hard as nails.

Before Brexit, you could go from Singapore with an exchange and go to something like Lithuania. You could build an office in Lithuania for next to nothing and then you could passport your business to London. So, you could go from a business in Singapore with a million clients very easily to Lithuania where they've got a very good regulator, you passport your business across London. Next thing you know, you are in the largest financial services market in the world, and you've got all the clients.

A lot of that has changed with Brexit and with the way that passporting and the rules on advertisement and stuff like that in the UK, a lot has changed in the crypto space. But, now we are on that development and evolution space where the regulator is, if you do something wrong, they go, well, you did that wrong, you need to fix it, and you go and fix it. Whereas, crypto, they're kind of like, well, we don't really understand, so we are just going to not let you do that or we're going to not let you do this or not let you do that.

So, it's in its infancy in the UK. Whereas, in the U.S., the SEC has got their hands quite well wrapped around what they want to provide to their community and what they don't. So, it's very different the complexities, because no one's passporting into America. You're either in America or you're not. So, we ended up with bankers in America going and doing roles in digital assets, in digital payments, in digital banks, that sort of stuff. Whereas, in Europe and England, they've been getting people who are not necessarily experienced to do that role. So, there's 40,000 crypto firms in the world. Those crypto firms range from people living in Russia in their mum's basement doing some dodgy crypto company to companies like BCB and BTC too, which are market makers in the UK. I was going to say things like crypto.com, but I know there are compliance people, I'm not sure if they're doing everything they should be doing. You look at Formula 1, you watch Formula 1, all you see is crypto.com everywhere.

So, the markets are different—very different. I love a difficult market. Now's a hard time for recruitment globally because of all the things that are going on in the world. But if you are offering recruitment as a service to clients and you are actually servicing your clients rather than just waiting for them to send you a job so you can fill it, then you'll do well.

Francis:

So, going back to the crypto market in the UK versus the U.S. My first company was a forex platform in London in 2015. One of the reasons we decided to base it in London was the regulation was so much better than trying to work with the CFTC  and the SEC in the US.

Do you think the different regulations mean that the demand for compliance talent is slightly different in the U.S. compared to the U.S.? Is there a different level of urgency?

Antony Baker:

I could work with two different companies that do exactly the same thing. They've both got different urgencies on who they want because they interpret what the regulators told them two different ways.

You can have two different companies, depending on the infrastructure they have. You can download an AML policy, an anti-money laundering policy right now from the internet. I can tell you that is definitely not the way to go. If you are not getting the right people in the compliance business to do this, then you are making a huge mistake. You want to get the best people to interpret the laws. You want to spend the right amount of money for it, not try and scrimp on it. Because, if you are spending loads of money on salespeople and you're not spending money on risk and compliance, then your business is not going to last.

Francis:

If you were starting over, knowing what you know now about going to the U.S. market for recruitment, what would you tell your earlier self about going into the U.S.? What are some strategies to market your firm when doing recruitment in the U.S.?

Antony Baker:

I have a marketing company that does my marketing for me and they do really well.

But, as far as the difference, the disparity between what it is like here in the U.S. compared to in the UK, it's hugely different. You could throw a rock in England and you'd hit five recruiters. You would struggle to find a recruiter walking around the streets in New York.

I used to sit next to a guy in an office in London who placed a guy for an insurer, a very high-paid person, somebody who balances the risk algorithm. Super high-paid job. It was a 75 grand fee. He sent the invoice and put his bank account details on it.

Francis:

Oh my god.

Antony Baker:

At the end of the day he got a slap on the wrist and he had to give the money back, and then he carried on, and he's now got his own recruiting company. I'm not saying all recruiters are doing bad things, but because it's so challenging, you've got people that try to cut corners. If you are a recruiter and you listen to this, the one thing I can say is cutting corners doesn't make you keep the money. And if there's two things that a recruitment business owner should educate you is, the first one is how to make money. The second one is how to keep that money. If you are not being taught those two things and you don't want to learn those two things, then go and do something else. Do you know what I mean?

Francis:

That's such a good point. We've heard it again and again, and this is maybe too broad of a statement that a lot of times in the U.S., because the demand is there because there are just so many fewer recruiters in the U.S. that it's a lot more relationship-based, at least relative to the UK. Whereas, I think in the UK people, the reputation is that it's very transactional.

Antony Baker:

I've worked with people, my old business partner was the same. He's like, well, just get another one. Don't worry about that contract, so just get another one. And I'm like, well, I think to be a good recruiter, you've got to have a good sales technique, you've got to have a certain amount of empathy. Because, you're messing with people's lives and their jobs, lives and their companies, which are the two, I think is super important. Someone's career is obviously really important, but someone's company is really important because they've built it and put a lot of effort in it. If you are just lying and cheating and messing around with these people then, which happens a lot in recruitment, which is why recruiters have really bad names. I used to be embarrassed to say I'm a recruiter, and I'm not anymore because I've obviously matured a bit and I've grown up a little bit from that, and I'm quite happy to say that that's what I do.

I think there are many really good recruiters, especially in my space. There are lots of great people out there, and I recommend those people to other clients. I go, I can't do it, but you know what? That guy down the road can definitely do it for you. And I think that focus on what you can do. Make sure that you've got a decent product that's out there that could do it and try to find a unique way of doing it, which is exactly what we do. I do a thing called the Daily Bake, which is a daily video on motivational talks about what's going on in the marketplace, all these sorts of different things. I don't actually do it every day now, but I used to do it for five years, four years I did it every day.

Francis:

Is the focus on compliance?

Antony Baker:

No, it's more just people. I was in London recently and I was walking across the London Bridge and someone went, Ant, and I was like, hello? And he went, oh, I don't know you, but I watch your Daily Bake. It's amazing. And I was like, you know what? That's cool. Because, I get about 100,000 views a week from people watching me just say, today's motivation is this. And I have a list of stuff that I talk about, and the one I'm going to do this afternoon, funnily enough, it's going to be called, he who learns the most in the classroom is the teacher. And because people want a little bit of motivation.

They don't want something that's war and peace but drag it out. But they also want to talk about what's going on in the marketplace. I talk a lot about what's going on in the U.S. People who speak to me feel like they know me, not in a weird way, but they can happily pick up the phone and go, hey Antony, how are you doing? I love watching your post. That way they feel a bit closer to me, so we don't have to cross that threshold of them trying to figure out if I'm the right person for them to talk to. I've got people who think I'm annoying and obnoxious, and that's fine, too. You need your haters as well.

Francis:

Well, it sounds like that sales experience in Perth many years ago has really paid off, and it has helped you expand to the U.S. and globally. So, I'm super excited to hear about GRC Hub growing. Compliance is getting more complicated daily, and financial services more so than any other industry. I think you picked the right niche. Thanks for being on the show.

Antony Baker:

Wonderful. Worth it. Well, thank you very much, Francis.

‍