Across the Pond: Stewart Roberts, Managing Director at MAYACHI LTD

Francis Larson:

Stewart, thank you so much for being on the Across the Pond show. The first thing is we'd like to hear who you are and what you do.

Stewart Roberts:

My name's Stewart Roberts. I run a company called Mayachi Limited. Mayachi has been going since January this year and it provides an advisory service to recruitment agencies in a non-exec finance director role. Recruiters, as we know, are fantastic at recruiting, but often, when it comes around to the numbers side, it's something that they may not fully engage with. Obviously, if you're looking to grow your recruitment agency, then one of the bits that I do is I help those recruitment directors to understand their numbers and then use those numbers to hopefully grow their new business, either by looking at ways of improving efficiencies within their business, looking at overheads, or it might be moving into contractor markets or requiring funding.

Francis Larson:

Could you explain what a non-exec director is for the people who are going to be reading this and are based in the States?

Stewart Roberts:

Yeah, sure. I'm not actually an official director or shareholder or owner of the company. I'm just there as an advisor but at the board level. I'm speaking to directors, shareholders, and people who actually own the company at a high level to actually help them make main decisions within their business. As a non-exec, my target is to improve the financial situation within the company.

Francis Larson:

From the sounds of it, it's not so much accounting but more financial planning and analysis and strategy around finance?

Stewart Roberts:

That's correct, yeah, because I'm not a recruiter. I've never been a recruiter, but I have worked in large recruitment agencies running their back office. I also ran a back office and accountancy firm, which sold last year, and ran the back office for over 100 recruitment agencies. Now, I've realized that there's a lot of help that recruiters or recruitment directors need, especially when they're just starting out. They've been used to being an employee of a recruitment agency, and now they're looking to start their first business. When they start their first business, they might not be aware of things like taxation. They might not be aware of overheads, they might not be aware of even the whole process of raising an invoice, and then if they are placing contractors, how they're actually going to finance those contractors. That's where I come in from a strategic perspective to make sure that it’s set up correctly and then to help to push the growth patterns of what they want to achieve over that time.

Francis Larson:

The one you said was bought; I'm assuming that was TBOS?

Stewart Roberts:

TBOS, yes. Total Back Office Solutions Limited. We ran that for 13 years, and it was so much fun. I was the sales and marketing director for the company mainly because I'd already done around 10 years of actually doing the hard graft of doing the invoicing and the payment side and was approached by an old business partner to set up TBOS. We ran that very successfully from three recruitment agencies up to over 100 recruitment agencies and we did have some very large agencies on our books in the end, which was good because the outsourcing model is something that definitely does work.

It's one of those things within recruitment, as recruiters and recruitment directors. Everyone should really be doing what they're good at, which is making placements and managing the staff to actually make more placements as well and outsource as much as possible. Things like outsourcing your back office and accounts is definitely something that most recruitment agencies should be looking at. That's why I created Mayachi, because I wanted to, obviously, create something that recruitment agencies don't need a full-time finance director in their business, to have one which kind of pops in either on a monthly basis or an ad hoc basis to actually provide that help and support without paying a full directorship or salary wage.

Francis Larson:

Music to our ears. W see this all the time. Recruitment companies might be very good at sales, they might be very good at recruitment, but doing the back office is a different skill.

Stewart Roberts:

Definitely. It's a distraction as well. I would much prefer for any new business or existing business to be concentrating on growing their business by making more placements. If they have to worry about whether or not timesheets have been raised, whether or not the invoicing has been done, whether or not the debt has been chased, whether all those supplies have been paid, it's just a waste of their time. What they should be doing instead is using that time to outsource to a provider who can look after that full back office element and then use that time wisely. If they also have an understanding of their numbers, there are quite a few times I've sat in front of recruitment directors, and these directors may have run their businesses for three, four, five years and they still don't have a full understanding of how to read their management figures, how to read their accounts from their accountants.

In some ways, they kind of just blur over them and they don't really understand that there is a need for these figures to actually help them with their growth plans, especially if they want to make a lot of money. A large portion of recruitment agencies are looking to sell eventually. And if they're looking to sell, they're going to need to have that financial planning before. You can't just wake up one day and say, "Tomorrow, I'm going to sell my recruitment agency." You can do, but you'll probably end up with not the value that you're looking for.

And so by having a plan of action in place to actually then make sure that, A, you are growing your business to actually meet that kind of magic number that you want to sell your business for, but also that you've got all of the actions in place to actually make sure that you can actually make that magic number even more reliable rather than actually you find out, when it comes around for them giving you an offer, and you go, "Actually, I've got to work in the business for another two or three more years before I actually get the number I want."

Francis Larson:

Yeah, having a plan. We would love to talk about M&A in a second, but going back to the back office bit, what kind of back office were you offering larger firms and the smaller firms

Stewart Roberts:

We were a full back office and accounts provider. What we did was we became a bit of a one-stop shop for recruitment agencies where they could come and everything was looked after. A lot of our agencies were contract recruitment agencies, so they were providing contractors. That's like day rate contractors on high-level numbers, so a lot of our agencies were in the IT sector or the energy sector or the financial sector. Fewer of them were the kind of temporary recruitment consultants, so we were doing a lot of the consultants. The contractors that were on site were not the lower-paid market. We did also have a large number of permanent-only recruitment agencies as well who were making permanent placements, so just charging a fee based on the salary of the person being placed.

Our service was once they'd made the placement, they didn't have to worry about anything after that. If it was a permanent placement, we were raising those invoices, sending them to clients, and doing the credit control and the bookkeeping element. And if it was a contract placement, we would provide an online time sheet system to then, obviously, get those approved, raise those invoices. We would then pay the candidates from the agency's bank account and, again, do the credit control. And if the agency required the finance, we would also help to set up the invoice finance. That was providing the funding before the client made payment, so we would raise an invoice for, say, 10,000 pounds. The invoice finance company would lend 90% of the value up front. And using that funds, we could then actually pay the candidates.

After that, we would then provide them, the agencies, with monthly management accounts and we would then do all their tax returns and their year-end accounts as well. But the whole service we actually did as if we were the recruitment agency and that's really, really good for the agency. If you're a one-person company, we were actually answering the phone as good morning, good afternoon accounts.

Whenever we were sending emails, we were actually sending it as if we were using the main names of the agency, so it actually made the agency look much larger because we would set up a invoicing@, creditcontrol@, and finance@ email addresses. Whenever we were emailing out to clients or candidates, they didn't know that they were talking to TBOS. They just believed that, actually, we were talking to that recruitment agency. And as a full outsourced solution, it really did make a big difference to us, as I said, the brand new startups or the one or two-man bands, because their agency suddenly looked much larger from day one.

The other thing we did as well, we did offer a funding solution as well. If there was a contractor placement, we would also provide funding on individual contractor placements, which was very successful as well, and we did also run an umbrella company as well to, obviously, payroll candidates if they required an umbrella company. We did offer a full suite of solutions and it did work very well and that's why, I think, we were bought by our buyer last year, which was very good for us.

Francis Larson:

One thing that we're really interested in is we offer back office and we're in the US and do more of the employer of record side, which is a little bit different than the back office services where you're answering the phone to someone else. It's slightly different than that, but branding, very important. Everything we do is white label, similar to how you all were doing emails and things like that and the recruitment company's name. So how big would the companies... You said by the end there were 100 agencies with your company. How big were they? At what point do people start to take these things in-house? In terms of sales, if you don't mind sharing, how big would they get where they still thought that it was really important to outsource?

Stewart Roberts:

Yeah, it all depended, actually, not on the size of the agency. It was often on the ability of the director on whether or not they actually decided to take the process in-house. There was never really a good need to take the process in-house. It was mainly if there were many contractor placements running through the books. That might cause an agency to believe it would be better to control the time sheets and invoicing internally. But based on size, we had agencies of 16, 17, 18 million pound turnover who would just kind of go, "I would never consider moving away from outsourcing because the thought of having to raise all those time sheets on a monthly basis, having to have account staff internally..." I think that's the other thing as well is recruitment directors are often been recruiters themselves and are very much used to knowing how to speak to and manage and monitor recruitment consultants.

But because they don't have that understanding and that knowledge of exactly what happens within the accounts department, it's very hard for them to actually be able to manage and monitor someone who is actually providing credit control or invoicing. And so, yeah, it can be that a director would never want to take the process in-house no matter what the size of their agency because they wouldn't know how to manage those people internally anyway.

We did have some people who did take it in-house, and most of the time, they would maybe take on someone who ran the back office of a large recruitment agency previously and made it sound as if it was a better idea to move it to an internal process. But the costs would then always be much higher than if you outsource. That's the whole thing with outsourcing is it goes in line with your numbers. As your numbers increase, so does the fee. But if your numbers decrease, then your numbers go down as well. When, obviously, there was COVID and a lot of agencies saw a drop in their recruitment numbers, that our fees went down because our fees were linked to the number of placements being made. Whereas if they'd actually had those people internally, they would've had to decide on whether or not they furloughed those staff.

It really just made more sense that all those agencies were kind of thankful in some ways that they did actually outsource the solution, because it did give that continuity of service. And then, after we came out of COVID and there was a really big increase in sales, they then didn't have to worry about hiring more staff or anything like that or trying to get those staff back that they'd put on furlough because that was something that we were managing ourselves internally.

Francis Larson:

You turn it into a variable cost, which lowers the risk. You might pay a little bit more in terms of unit basis, but it lowers the risk so dramatically because you're not stuck with people who are going to be on your payroll no matter how the business does.

Stewart Roberts:

That's it. Also, you've got things you've got to consider. If you have only one person running your back office, I always see that as a huge risk because you got the hit-by-a-bus scenario. What happens if that person walks out on the road one day and gets hit by a bus and all of that knowledge about your back office and your accounts and, actually, the processing of all of your stuff that maybe happens on a daily basis go straight out the window? So you've got to consider things like sickness and holiday and you've got to consider all of those scenarios.

To have a backup is vitally important, but if you use an outsourced solution, those things, you don't have to worry about because that's what the outsourcing company's there for because they're looking after multiple businesses over multiple people, and it just makes so much more sense and so much more security for your business.

Francis Larson:

It’s true: if your back office is one person, they really can't take a holiday. They can't go off for two weeks, they really can't. If you have a large contract book, it becomes too vital to the business.

It's interesting you mentioned 18 million pounds as the upper limit of size for full outsourcing. We see the number around $25 million in US, in sales. That's right around the number where people start thinking, "Okay, maybe I'll start taking some of this in-house. Okay, maybe I can do some insurance things in-house. Maybe I can do some payroll items in-house." We see that number as where they start to have sufficient leverage to be able to do that. But before then, from our standpoint, a lot of times the only people who do it in-house were either an accountant or they have a lot of experience on the operational back office side.

Stewart Roberts:

Definitely. Or it might be they're a bit more of a control freak, so they really do want to control it. They do want to see it, feel it, and touch it.

One thing we always prided ourselves on at TBOS was providing the management accounts on time, because that was the only thing that the recruitment directors really should see on a monthly basis is if they saw their management reporting on a monthly basis, then that kind of made sure then that they knew that the credit control was being done correctly, the invoicing was being done correctly, and their candidates being done correctly.

As soon as, obviously, you felt that there was a hint that the management accounts were late, then obviously then they would start questioning, "Oh, hang on a minute. Is there then an issue with my invoicing and my credit control?" But by perceiving those reports and making sure they're correct and accurate, our agencies always just felt comfortable that everything else was running nice and smoothly and it was. It was really, really nice.

Francis Larson:

Yeah. You mentioned financing a few times, and these days you're helping recruitment companies navigate the financing landscape. What are some of the things that you find folks don't know about financing or some of the stuff they need to watch out for?

Stewart Roberts:

In the UK, there are two main solutions that recruitment agencies use for financing their contractor placements. And I say contractor placements, because not a lot of agencies really use it for financing their permanent placements. Financing is needed since you are paying a contractor before the client makes payment. In the UK, the two solutions that are mainly used for contractor funding are we call in the industry a “pay-and-bill solution”, and the other solution is using “invoice finance”.

A pay-and-bill solution is where a company that provides administrative services and funding to recruitment agencies. They will provide online timesheets, they'll raise the invoices to the client, they will actually use their money to finance and fund paying the contractors, and in most cases they will actually then give the profit to the agency minus their charges immediately, so even before the client's made payment.

That's what we call in the industry a pay-and-bill solution, because they've paid the candidates, they've billed the client, and they've given you profits straight away. Those solutions in the UK are often based on a percentage of the invoice value, which works really well, especially when you are a new start or you've got low number of contractors or even on the temporary side. However, those solutions can be very expensive when you get to larger numbers.

As a contract recruiter, if you get to the kind of 8, 9, 10 contractors working, if you're a temporary recruitment agency, if you get to the kind of 50, 60 contractor recruitment temporary candidates out, then that kind of size, it might be better to start looking at invoice finance. Now, invoice finance is different because invoice finance is a funding facility provided normally by banks, but there are also a  number of finance factoring companies in the UK, and what they will do is they will buy your book debt. They'll buy whatever your age debtor is or the amount of invoicing you've got outstanding. They will provide a funding limit, so they'll provide something between 80 and 90% of the invoice value as an advance to you until the client makes payment. And then once the client makes payment, that's when they give you the other between 20 and 10%, obviously, depending on what you are being funded.

Now, those solutions are often much cheaper than if you use a pay and bill solution. The reason for that is because when you use an invoice finance facility, the back office processes are going to be handled by someone, either an outsource provider or someone internally. So the amount of work that those funding providers are actually doing is less. But those facilities, if you get the right outsource back office provider and you get the right invoice finance facility, you can make some serious savings on those.

I had a facility that went live last week and that one we saved them nearly 30,000 pound a year, because they were using originally a pay and bill provider who was charging them... I think it was 3.25% of turnover. We managed to get them a new invoice finance arrangement, move them to a back office provider who could actually look after their full back office and accounts, and the overall saving was over 30,000 pound a year. It is definitely worthwhile exploring and those are the kind of things that's a part of my solution, where I'm analyzing and making sure that the facilities and the back office and all of the financial side is in place.

One of the things I'll do is I'll look and make sure that the facilities that they've got in place works for the agency and it's cost-effective. As I said, there is a need for pay-and-bill solutions in the market, but as I said, there is a time when people should also consider moving to something like an invoice discounting facility or invoice finance facility.

Francis Larson:

Are the back office providers usually charging a percentage or is it like a fixed fee per month?

Stewart Roberts:

They're normally charging transactional fees. A lot of the ones I deal with at the moment are dealing on a transactional basis, so it's based on either a fixed fee per week per contractor or a fee per timesheet. If they're submitting monthly time sheets, then that might be cheaper than, obviously, if you're submitting weekly timesheets. And what that will do is that will cover maybe the invoicing and credit control element and then there'll be some fixed fees maybe for the accounting side and VAT returns and management accounts. But what I try and do is I try and go for providers who are recruitment-specific as well, because then they have that understanding, that knowledge of exactly what is involved in working within the recruitment industry.

As I said, working on a basis of a transactional as well compared to a percentage works so much better for the agency, because if you have high-level contractors where you are charging, say, 600 pound a day and you are charging a percentage, then that's going to be really, really expensive. But the process of actually raising an invoice on someone on 600 pound a day is exactly the same as raising someone who's maybe on 150 pound a day. So why should you charge more for the service? It's exactly the same. It's just a different value on the invoice. That's what a lot of the providers in the UK are actually doing. And this is why pay and bill worked for a certain size agency but not for agencies who have a large number of contractors.

Francis Larson:

I know you've helped some folks go to the US in terms of financing or a lot of your customers are trying to do this. What are some of the challenges you’re seeing with agencies expanding to the US with financing or otherwise?

Stewart Roberts:

The agencies that we've been dealing with are UK recruitment agencies who want to make placements in the US. Many of the times I've been to seminars and things like that... And there have been people talking about doing overseas placements, not just to the US but to Europe and places like that. There's been a talk about why you should automatically set up an office and you should start moving and have a presence in the country. As a recruitment agency, you don't really need to. It's kind of a bit of a fool's errand to go straight in and start opening an office before you actually explore the market and see how far you can get.

The advice I would give is, first of all, as a UK recruitment agency, if you're going to make placements in the US, if you're going to make placements over in Europe or anywhere else in the world, make them from your UK company first, speak to the clients, explain that you're a UK company. Obviously, with the US, you've got to get things like maybe your EIN number and things like that. Obviously, there's double taxation agreements between the UK and the US or, obviously, the profit side will obviously be paying tax on the UK. But it's also working with advisors such as yourself. Or if you're dealing with contractor placements or making sure you are paying those contractors in the correct way. Because I know that, obviously, every state has its own tax rules and regulations, so it's working with companies such as yourself to make sure the payroll is done correctly.

If you're a UK business, then a lot of the banks and the invoice finance companies will actually lend and provide facilities in US dollars or in any other currency that you require to actually finance those contractors. Even though you're a UK agency sending an invoice over to the States, they will actually provide funding on those and provide credit insurance and all the insurances along the way as well. So, yeah, it could be fairly easy to do. I remember one of the TBOS clients that we looked after for many years before he sold his business was that he was probably around about 10 million, 11 million turnover business, had about 75 contractors working for him, and all of his placements were based in the States and he was a UK recruitment agency.

He had funding provided to him by a UK invoice finance company and we did the back office for his company and we never had any issues with making payments. He used reputable payroll companies to, obviously, make sure the candidates were paid correctly and he did have a lawyer and a tax expert in the States just to, obviously, make sure that his tax returns were done and things like that. Obviously, he needed to do them, but he grew to a significant size, probably over a good five or six-year period, and in the end, he managed to sell it to an American company that was only making permanent placements, and he did very well out of it.

It does show that you can actually make some really good money in the States and overseas. The margins in America are fantastic compared to the UK, especially on the contractor market, and it does seem to be that the UK recruiters are going over where permanent placements are being offered. UK recruiters are going in and actually offering contractors, teaching the American clients how contracting works, and then they're actually taking on the people that they need as contractors rather than as permanent staff. It's a big market for it, definitely.

Francis Larson:

Yeah. We've seen that the UK recruiters do so well in the States. I'm curious, you mentioned about the invoice discounters, the financing facilities will work in the US. Have you noticed any challenges with credit constraints?

Stewart Roberts:

No, not at all. No, because the credit insurance companies in the UK are worldwide ones. The banks are working with international providers because they're able to fund placements all over the world. I've done placements before where we financed and we've got credit insurance in places like Colombia. We've done them in Australia and New Zealand. We did some in Canada, lots of various different countries. I think, over the years, I've done... If I think back to the number of countries that we actually did placements with our agencies, we were probably looking at about 30, 40 different countries and in various different currencies as well.

Obviously, there's a currency management bit that needs to be done, but all of these were done from UK companies who were actually just making placements from their UK company getting contracts signed. As I said, the invoice finance companies were very keen on, obviously, making sure that, yes, there was a credit protection limit behind those, but, no, they didn't require the agency to have a presence in the States at all. That kept the cost down and made it much easier. All the profits were being brought over to the UK and taxes were being paid in the UK accordingly, but the directors were living over here. There wasn't any plans for them to actually go and live in the States or live overseas. It's a case that they could quite easily run their business from the UK and pay taxes on the profits in the UK.

Francis Larson:

Yeah. We've seen this as well. We have many customers who use their lender in the UK and they do fine. We, as a company, Ascen, most of our customers we offer financing to, but what we found is that if they have a credit facility already set up, we love it. It's cheaper for them, it's easier for us. We love it when our customers have their own credit facilities. On the other hand, new agencies in the States really struggle with getting financing and so use us as a one-stop-shop. But frankly, we do it out of necessity as opposed to preference.

One of the things we've seen with customers that are using invoice discounting from the UK is the credit limits are often-- this is just from our experience-- pretty low because they'll be based on the insurance limit, which is usually very, very low. If you're with some of the big trade credit insurance providers, they'll do a $20,000 limit for a client, and the client will be pretty big and will have a net 45 firms or net 60 terms, and very easily, the client will go to like 100 grand, 200 grand, 300 grand. We've seen that the trade credit insurance providers just don't do it. So often, we've won financing deals because the existing lenders have been far too restrictive for what the US clients want to do. But for folks that can get it and it expands to their needs, then we love to see it because it makes our lives easier.

Stewart Roberts:

Yeah. One of the things I've always said with contract recruitment and it's one of the things I always taught all my agencies that I was working with is before you start really engaging, going down the route with any client is always make sure you get a credit check done first. You don't want to be going down the route of you're almost close to signing a client up and then you do the credit check and then you find out that you can't get the credit limit, which could restrict you actually getting the funding. It is a case that I've always said to clients, "As soon as you get a sniff of a contract placement, let the credit insurance company know or the invoice finance company know so that they can actually run those credit checks and provide you with the appropriate funding limits and credit limits before you actually go too far down the route of actually not being able to finance those placements after you've done all that hard work."

But it does work as well, as you said, where you might be getting an initial limit and you think, "Oh, that's fine. I can put some more contractors in." It's about maintaining those limits. Again, if you've got a really back office provider, then they should be managing and monitoring those limits for you and they should be managing and monitoring those credit insurance policies to make sure it's actually working in line so that there is no risk to you at any point.

Francis Larson:

That's really good advice. We wish that most of our customers would take that advice and actually focus on the credit before they make a bunch of placements, but the reality is that for a lot of recruitment companies are... Credit is the last thing they care about. They care about the deal.

Stewart Roberts:

Yeah. I think it's one of those things that recruiters always come to you once they've done the deal and then they want you to finance it and then you go, "Right. Actually, if you told me before, then I could have given you a better answer or there's more time to do it." But, yeah, it's a case of that there is, as you said, solutions out there that can actually facilitate it, even if it's just on a short-term basis. It's just knowing where to look and where to go, but, yeah, there's plenty of opportunity all over Europe. Even though Brexit has happened within Europe, obviously, and there's a kind of push towards not using UK recruitment agencies in favor of using European recruitment agencies, the market in America has definitely opened up and opened with welcome arms actually to UK recruitment agencies to say, "We'll happily take those candidates because we've got a shortage of those people that actually you are providing."

So, yeah, I recommend a lot to my recruitment agencies to do that. At the moment, I've got two clients who are working in the energy sector and probably one of them does nearly all of his placements in America and the other one's just starting to do placements in America. It really does seem to be the area that the energy sector for them is renewable energy and the oil and gas industry really is still pumping over in America. It's case of I definitely would recommend it to agencies. But I would say that while I was at TBOS, about 40% of our agencies were doing some kind of overseas placements, whether that was in Europe or in America. So, yeah, there's a very large number of placements out there and a skill shortage in every country. It's a case where the UK recruitment agencies can happily make those placements if they've got the correct candidates.

Francis Larson:

Wrapping up the conversation, you work with a lot of startups and startup recruitment agencies or newer ones and also existing ones that want to outsource their finance to you effectively, their finance strategy and this type of advice. If you could say a couple of things that new recruitment agencies should focus on when they get their first contract deals or things that they should watch out for that are really going to hurt them later, what do you think those things are for newer folks to look out for?

Stewart Roberts:

I think, for new agencies, definitely get your set up correct. But when I say that, I mean get started on the phone as soon as you actually want to start your recruitment agency. You only need a phone. You need a domain name and a company set up. That's what you really need. But at the same time, start looking at all the other things that you can outsource so that you don't actually need to worry about those. If you are looking at something like placing contractors, look at a range of pay and bill providers maybe to start off with. If you are going to be going into the contractor market and you are going to grow very quickly and you know you're going to grow very quickly, then consider invoice finance as a way to start as well, because getting invoice finance arrangements for brand new startups is quite easy to do as well. I've done lots of them over the years.

But I would just say it's that first year is the year is when you're going to actually probably be working twice as hard as what you've ever worked previously. You're going to be doing a lot more hours, but after that first year, you will look back and you should then have a really good successful recruitment agency if you put the time in. It's the ones who sit back and maybe have relied on previous relationships. You should start a recruitment agency. You might be under restrictive covenants or something like that that says you can't speak to prior clients or candidates. And if that's the case, then you've got to be good at actually generating new business with new clients and then don't rely on those old clients.

It's a case of that you can make some really good money by doing it alone, but you just have to be making sure that you've got the belief and the understanding that you can actually find new clients, new candidates that you can outsource a large portion of your recruitment agency. Then you just have to sit on those phones and actually just make those placements. If it doesn't work out, the only person you can really blame is yourself.

Francis Larson:

Great timeless advice. Stewart, thank you so much for being on the series and we'd love to talk to you again soon.

Stewart Roberts:

Fantastic. Great speaking to you, Francis.

Francis Larson:

Thank you.

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