S2 E8: "Be Your Own Boss" With Kim Eveleigh

What do you do when you are the top-performing biller in your agency, but you are still subjected to toxic micromanagement and rigid KPIs? For Kim Eveleigh, that was the exact catalyst she needed to fulfill her childhood dream of "being a boss."

In this episode of Origin to Ambition, host Sean Dunne sits down with Kim, founder of Ivy Recruitment Partners, for a deep dive into her 20-year career in specialized financial services recruitment. Kim shares the raw story of co-founding her first agency in her mid-20s, navigating a surprise pregnancy on her honeymoon just as the business launched, and designing an irresistible $3,000 offer to gain market traction while working around strict non-compete restraints.

Kim discusses the difference between transactional sales and relationship-based recruitment, her decision to establish Ivy Recruitment Partners to support her family lifestyle, the invaluable support of having an accountant who acts as a business consultant, and her exciting new venture—developing a technology-driven temporary recruitment app.

Connect with our guest, Kim Eveleigh:

Website: Ivy Recruitment Partners

LinkedIn:  Kim Everly's LinkedIn Profile

Key Takeaways from the Conversation:

1. Protect Your Top Performers: Micromanaging highly effective team members who are already meeting their targets is a fast way to drive them to start their own businesses.
2. The Power of the Irresistible Offer: When launching a startup against massive, established competitors, offering a low-barrier, high-value trial can help you secure early market share and demonstrate your capability.
3. Rely on Expert Sounding Boards: Having a trusted advisor—such as an accountant who acts as a business consultant—is crucial for making big decisions, structuring transitions, and planning for growth.
4. Scale Your Expertise with Tech: Kim didn't get distracted by unrelated business ideas; instead, she used her deep industry knowledge of recruitment to design a scalable technology platform.
5. Authenticity is a Referral Engine: Building a business on integrity and relationship-based communication means you don't have to constant do cold outreach; your clients will organically refer you.

Connect with Sean Dunne & Origin to Ambition:

Website: https://dominiumcapital.com.au/dominium/

LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/sean-dunne-76067429

Thank you for tuning in to Origin to Ambition!

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. It helps us reach more aspiring entrepreneurs just like you. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi, I'm Sean Dunn, and welcome to this episode of Origin to Ambition, The Entrepreneur's Journey. In this episode, I sit with Kim Everly, the owner and founder of Ivy Recruitment Partners. Her entrepreneurial journey is a great story. She's a delight to talk to, and I think you'll pick up plenty of lessons out of this discussion. So I invite you to sit back and enjoy this episode of Origin to Ambition. Welcome to Origin to Ambition, the show where we explore the small business entrepreneurs' journey in business. I'm your host, Sean Dunn. Let's get into it. Kim Everly, thank you very much for being on this episode of Origin to Ambition. I really appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

It's been a while since we've spoken. We were just talking before we started this uh podcast. It's been a long time, but it's nice to reconnect and I'm really looking forward to this conversation.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Yeah, likewise, likewise. It has been a very long time.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

It has, it has. Now, so what we'll do, we'll kick off. Can you take us through your business and what you do and how long you've been around and so on and so forth?

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Yeah, sure. I've been around in recruitment for about 20 years now. I started in 2006, but for the last eight years, I have been running Ivy Recruitment Partners, which is a boutique financial planning specialist recruitment firm. So I look after small to medium-sized financial advice and accounting firms, predominantly across Melbourne.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Awesome. Awesome. Thank you very much. Can you take us through a bit of your background, Kim? Let's go back in time now. Way back in time. Way, way back. So just can you yeah, can you take us through a bit of your background and sort of how you ended up, you know, coming to where you are today?

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Yeah, yeah, of course. So back in 2006, I had decided I really wanted to get into recruitment. It's what I always wanted to do. I hadn't found my way into it about four years out of uni. I was still sort of working in another space, made the conscious decision to want to get into agency recruitment. So explored a few agencies, went through the ringer with you know interview processes with big agencies, small agencies, and identified the one that I was really keen to work with. They liked me, but they were reluctant to want to take me on because I had no experience. But I was pretty persistent and I managed to end up convincing them to give me a go, which they did. And I joined a boutique recruitment firm called Freeman Adams at the time, which eventually sold and turned into Alliance Financial Services, which is where I think I met you uh all those years ago.

SPEAKER_02 2:30

I was with that must be right. Yeah. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

I think I started working with ING, it was one of my first clients back when it was Freeman Adams, and then yeah, we turned into Alliance Financial Services, which came under the candle umbrella of recruitment firms. Was there for about three years and decided I wanted to work for myself. So I joined forces with a fellow recruiter and we started an agency called Me Recruitment, which we ran for 10 years. And during that time I had three children and on the back of maternity leave from the third child, decided that I wanted to go out independently and take a different path. So I sold out of Me Recruitment and started Ivy recruitment partners and have been running that for the last eight years.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

No, that is uh it's a long career in recruitment. You've been around a little while. Not to suggest you're not to suggest you're old, Kim. Uh I'm not suggesting that by any strict. Still on the right side of 50, so I was gonna say you probably started when you were about 16 in recruitment or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Oh my gosh. Yeah, yeah. In my twenties. I have been around a very long time for a recruiter, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

You sort of went out, you know, some time ago into a partnership but self-employed. And did you always think that was something that you would do? Like did you always think even back and going back to high school or something that you wanted to run your own show or something like that?

SPEAKER_00 3:55

I did, I did. Even as a young kid, my mum still jokes to this day that when I grew up I used to tell everybody uh when they asked, What do you want to do when you grow up? I wanted to be a boss. Yeah. So I always did want to own my own business and yeah, it just naturally transpired that it it ended up being in recruitment, which is funnily enough, an area that I really wanted to get into. A lot of people fall into recruitment. They don't uh necessarily plan to get into it, but I'd always wanted to do it, and um turned out I was actually pretty good at it.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

So it's interesting you say that that people fall into recruitment. What attracted you at the time?

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Well, we explored it a bit when I was at university. I never really knew what I wanted to do. I just knew I wanted to do my own thing, be a boss. At uni, I actually changed my major a few times over because I just could not decide what I wanted to do. I think I started doing information technology, went over to the business school, did business and economics for a while, didn't enjoy that very much at all. So I kind of I did a psychology subject and I loved it. And that that made me, you know, decide okay, I want to explore this psychology route, and I integrated human resources into that. So I ended up doing a double major of organizational psychology and human resources. And it was through that degree that you know we explored, you know, internal recruitment and agency recruitment, and I just loved the idea of it. I loved the idea of looking at resumes and matching you know skill sets and experience with the right career. I just really liked the idea of doing that. So when I finished university, I never took a gap year or anything. It was only after university that I decided I wanted to go out and travel, and I ended up spending a few years in London, worked in financial services in a few different sort of roles, and when I arrived in Melbourne, I settled into a similar role. I was actually an executive assistant to the head of one of Melbourne's biggest law firms. I was doing that for about a year and I just started thinking, I didn't really go to uni or plan to do this as a career. Is this what I want to do, you know, with the rest of my life? It's not really, you know, I loved it, it was good money, um, I loved the people, but it's not what I had set out to do. And it was then that I started thinking, I do want to do recruitment, I'm gonna just take the plunge. If I don't like it, if it's not for me, I can always go back to what I have been doing, but I don't want to live with the I should have given it a go sort of, you know, feeling so yeah, tapped into to you know, starting to explore agencies and what direction I wanted to go in, and just fell into the land of financial planning recruitment.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Yeah, yeah, that's really um interesting. So it sounds like then falling into it, you fell into finding your people.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

And what immediately changed for you, I suppose, when you did go into recruitment and you landed where you wanted to be? What was the difference? What changed?

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Gosh, well, yeah, when I started, I chose a an agency, Freeman Adams, where I started, it was financial services. And I didn't really I'd always worked in sort of financial services, but I didn't know the intricacies of certain roles or sectors. And my boss at the time took me on a client visit and said, We're gonna go and get your first role and work on this. It's a paraplanner. And I said, What is that? I had no idea what a paraplanner was. And I went along with him, I got this brief for a paraplanner, and he sent me on my way to go and try and fill this role. So showed me how to place an ad and I just immediately started receiving applications and interviewing candidates. And to learn what a paraplanner was, I kept it very natural. I'm not a formal sort of interviewer, I've always been relationship-based, and I kind of used that style when I started, you know, interviewing these candidates, getting to know them, and I was just pounding these guys with questions. What do you do on a day-to-day basis? What does your day look like trying to learn what a paraplanner was without letting on that I actually had no idea? And on the back of that role, I ended up placing the role really successfully, and it was such a buzz for me to see that I had placed that role and I had a run on the board, and that meant that I would earn a little bit of commission. And I'm like, oh my gosh, this is really exciting. I ended up with a bit of a an overflow of good candidates. So I thought, oh, I should place these guys somewhere. So I sort of took them to market and started reaching out to some other financial planning firms saying, Oh, I've got a power planner. And it naturally flowed on from there. And that was sort of the very beginning of unbeknownst to me at the time, creating a real niche specialization, you know, being a specialist financial planning recruiter.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

You just triggered something in my mind when you were just speaking about um did you sort of learn sales as well in that? Because like you just said, you had this overflow of candidates and you're like, I need to place these people somewhere. And I don't mean that in a salesy way, but but did having to sort of almost I'm not sure how you reverse placement or reverse.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

It was sort of reverse marketing, yeah. I didn't know that that was a thing. It was sort of instinctive to me that I had these great candidates. I had I got such a buzz out of placing this first person who I remember to this day, I'll always remember her, but I got such a buzz out of that that I just wanted to have that feeling again, I guess, and and want to find a home for these other candidates that I could see were also really good. I had them interview for the same role and it was a hard decision for the client. So I knew that they were good as well. So yeah, I didn't really go into it thinking, oh, this is like sales, I'm gonna hit these targets and make this money. It's I want to find a home. It was the feeling I got from placing them and the first that I placed, how grateful she was to me. I wanted to feel that again and find the right home. So yeah, it was reverse marketing. And again, like I said, I didn't actually know that that was a thing and that I was I was unconsciously, you know, doing that. And it ended up being sort of the way that I've operated ever since.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Um it's almost like accidental sales training sort of thing, in a way.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

And you weren't trying to sell, I get that, like that wasn't the driver, but really Yeah, I've never been a sort of you know, that that go, go, go salesperson, but I've always always been a pretty competitive person, not competitive with other people, but always wanting to improve myself and beating the last thing that I did. And I guess, you know, looking back actually, when I was at university, one of the jobs I had to get me through uni was telemarketing. And I was really good at it. And I made so much money doing that because I don't know, I was just naturally really good at it. And I think looking back now, that that did suggest that I was a bit of a salesperson, but not in your face sort of a way. In the naturally sort of I want to do well, and every time I do well, I want to do even better. So competing against myself in a way, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Yeah, absolutely. Do you want to explore some topics with you, but this would be something I would normally probably chat about later in our discussion, you know. But I think it's the right time to raise it now because I always explore this idea of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial mindset. And one of the themes that seems to come up all the time with people that I speak with on this podcast is there's a tendency to be competitive in people. And it's often competitive with yourself or competing against yourself, so to speak. It's not necessarily like you just said, I'm worried about what other people are doing. It's not about that. It's actually sort of trying to, you know, set new benchmarks for yourself and beat them. So that seems to be a theme that comes out in these discussions. The other theme that comes out too is that sort of continual improvement or I often refer to, and I didn't coin the phrase clearly, but lifelong learners. Like entrepreneurs seem to be lifelong learners and constantly trying to grow. And you've just touched on those things there. So do you think that's a genuine, like almost a requirement?

SPEAKER_00 12:06

I very much think so. And I think I always have had that entrepreneurial sort of mindset. I've always been somebody who just has ideas and wants to do something. And if I'm not doing something, or if I don't feel like I'm, or if I feel like I'm sort of plodding along, or what can I be doing next? So yeah, one 100% I'm like that. To the point that, on reflection, my husband has always said every time I say, Oh, I've just had a really good idea. He kind of sighs at what is it this time? What's your great idea this time? That's been for the last 20 years. I've always just wanted to keep doing something. You know, there are people like my husband who's always been very content just to, you know, have his job and he's worked his way up, and that's enough for him. For me just to do a job and, you know, work nine to five or just you know hit a target and that be it. It's never really been enough. I always want more.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

Yeah, fascinating. It's interesting. So do you think I am jumping too much deeper into a conversation here, but do you think that that entrepreneurial mindset or attitude or whatever we want to call entrepreneurialism?

SPEAKER_02 13:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

Do you think I find that people I speak to it seems to be an inherent trait, you know, to be an entrepreneur? Do you think that that's true, that it's inherent? Or yeah, I mean, I think you can learn it if you really want to, but you know, do you think generally?

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Yeah, I do. I think you're either wired that way or you're not. I really do. And absolutely, I think I am wired that way. I'm always looking for something else. I'm already working on my next big thing, and I'll give you a bit of a glimpse into that. But, you know, I'm I've got to the point where I am sort of content and I've reached that point where I'm really satisfied with what I'm doing with Ivy recruitment partners and with my clients. And I've been doing it for such a long time that I feel as though I need to do something else now, you know. So something else is coming, and I'll touch on that.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

I'm definitely going to dive into that. But what that gave me is a bit of a segue because now I want to go back in time. So let's go back in time first before we move into the future. I'll go back to ME when you started that because that was your first business venture on your own. Well, in partnership at first. Yeah. So what prompted that? Like, what was the moment you're like, right, okay, I I'm you know, I'm gonna do something for myself here.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

Yeah, uh well, I'd been working in recruitment for at that point for about three years. So I was still relatively new and junior and still pretty young. I was only in my mid-sort of twenties. I was doing really well though. I'd developed my niche in financial planning. I had a really good network. I was the top biller in the agency. I was consistently exceeding targets and you know, making that business an awful lot of money. And I should mention, sorry, at about that three-year mark, my me recruitment business partner had started with the firm as well, and we just hit it off. We worked the same way, we operated the same way, we had the same views on recruitment, we were both really good. She actually came in and gave me a run for my money, but we both worked in sort of different sectors. So I had my sector of financial planning and she had hers, which was insurance at the time, which I knew nothing about. But we just complimented each other and we became pretty firm friends really, really quickly, and we just worked so well together. And around that time we had a bit of a, there's quite high turnover in management of that team and that part of the business. And it was very disjointed. It was a bit of a, I'm gonna go so far as to say it turned into a bit of a toxic sort of a culture. There was a bit of bullying. It just wasn't nice. And at the same time, this new manager had come on, and all of a sudden it turned from, okay, everybody can run their own desk, their recruitment desk and their clients. And as long as you're meeting targets, you operate how you operate. And we have weekly catch-ups, you know, where are you at? You know, what is your pipeline, all that sort of thing, to all of a sudden this new manager came on and it was, you know, meetings every morning, five days a week at, you know, quarter past eight when, you know, starting work was generally 8:30. We're like, well, what's going on here? How many client meetings have you done? Have you made your 50 phone calls? Have you got your 10 interviews booked in this week? And I just thought, why am I having to do this? When I'm meeting my targets, my clients are happy, I am, you know, exceeding expectations. And all of a sudden I'm having to make all of these unnecessary phone calls and, you know, booking in client visits which were being tracked. And I didn't want to also waste, you know, client time. So for instance, if I booked in a meeting with yourself and you were my client back in the day, doing that unnecessarily when you didn't have a job for me and you know there was really no point in doing that. So that was sort of one thing that was really starting to make bug me, I guess. It's just not the way I operate. I'm relationship-based, not those KPI sales-based. I'm just not that sort of recruiter. So that was starting to really kind of play on me a little bit. And then I think the nail in the coffin was when one day I walked into the office and I had had a really good month. I had, I think, billed about, I don't know, it was something around 40,000, 45,000 for the month. So I'd made the business that much money in one month, which was pretty good. And I walked in one morning and I was living in South Yara at the time, so it was a very short commute to work. And um one day I caught the bus and it was a little bit late. I walked in at about 8.34 or something like that. And in front of the whole office, the boss said, Good afternoon, Kim. Nice for you to join us.

SPEAKER_02 17:33

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

And I just thought, I do not need this, you know, that is just ridiculous. There was no leeway, no, no nothing. And I ended up talking to, well, you know, I planted the seed, I guess, with my friend, the my my former business partner, about, you know, have you ever thought about doing this for yourself? And she goes, I have. And I said, why don't we? You know, we're both good at what we do. We know we can do it. Why are we making this money for this business when we can do it for ourselves? You know, the relationships that we've got with our clients, they're with us. They're not with the firm. So it it sort of went from there. We started catching up after work for drinks and on weekends and, you know, filling our notebooks with ideas and notes about what we wanted to do. And we made the decision to go from there. And a bit of a spinner in the works happened because once we made the decision, I left first. I resigned first and said that I just wanted some time out, went and got married. I was having a six-week honeymoon, and the plan was to start me recruitment on return for my honeymoon. While I was away, she also resigned so that she was ready to start when we got back. We had an office all ready to go. We were so excited on my honeymoon. I found out I was pregnant. Oh no. What am I going to do? I do not have a job. I have lost the option for maternity leave, and I'm going to have to take some time off to have this baby, which was entirely unexpected. And yeah, I thought I've got to be honest here and let let, you know, uh my business partner know. So I rang her from Chicago, I think I was in at the time, and I said, I am so sorry. I have just found out that I'm pregnant. I don't want to give you the option for an out if you want to stay employed, knowing that if you do do this with me, I'm going to have to, you know, step aside for a couple of months, you know, in a very short amount of time. What do you want to do? And she goes, Well, I've already resigned. I'm all in. If you're all in, I'm all in. And I said, I'm in, let's do it. And we kicked off with me being pregnant.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

There you go. There you go. So you know what? That manager that and as you say, it was probably the nail in the coffin. It was probably already coming. But isn't it funny how that manager probably did you a favor in a way?

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Absolutely did me a favor. Yeah. I think if that sort of sequence of events hadn't happened, the turnover in management, you know, the culture becoming a little bit more toxic and all the KPIs and the micromanagement coming into play, I think I probably would have stayed. I really do.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Sorry to jump in, Kim, but it sounds like a bit like my first job in financial advice, actually, in a large business bank. And my first boss was a bit like, I don't care where you are as long as you hit your targets, and I don't need to see you at your desk on level eight, 300, Collins Street, or wherever we were, and all the rest. And it's an interesting lesson, I think, for maybe any business owners listening or entrepreneurs listening that you've got to know your people. Like some people want the structure of, hey, make these calls. Like they sort of want the playbook. They I don't know, I don't know about micromanagement. I mean, I don't know that that works personally, in my view, but you've got to know your people. And if you've got someone that's a bit entrepreneurial in spirit and can make the money and hit the targets without having targets, maybe leave them alone.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

100%. I think that absolutely you need to do that. You need to let your, you know, top performers, I think, in any sort of sales-based role, work in the style that best works for them if they are, you know, meeting expectations and doing what they need to be doing. If that's working, why why rock the boat?

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

And I think there are some people that do need that style of, you know, being kind of prompted or followed up and making sure that they are kind of where they need to be. I get that. And I do kind of respect that that recruitment is predominantly a sales-based role. So there is, you know, that need in some agencies and for some recruiters to to have those KPIs to keep them sort of in check and help them to be where they need to be. But the ones that don't need that don't put everybody in the same sort of yeah, category.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. I think that's a really good business lesson just in general, not just for entrepreneurs. I think for anyone who's running a business, uh well, who are entrepreneurs, I suppose. But that's interesting. What was it like early on? So you kicked off ME, ME just told us you found out you were pregnant. So that was an interesting curveball to come into the picture. But what was Was it like early on starting your own business?

SPEAKER_00 22:02

It was we were so excited. We were honestly so excited. COVID wasn't a thing then, that was way down the line. Work from home was not a thing. So we were going into the office. We got ourselves a little office right next door, actually, to the agency that we worked at. And it was a little office with two desks. We bought ourselves our laptops. We were sort of sitting facing inwards to each other. And I remember Was this at Queen Street? It wasn't Queen Street, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

Yeah, I remember.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

Yeah, yeah. So there was nowhere to interview people, but the the office that we had, there was a cafe downstairs. So we would do our interviews down there, or otherwise we would ask each other to can you get out of the office so I can interview this candidate I want to do in the office. And we just worked around each other. But I do vividly remember in the first couple of weeks, we would be sitting there at our desks, kind of facing each other on phone calls and just sort of smirking and smiling at each other, going, look at us, you know, do this. Like this is awesome. And we both had a a restraint in place. So we couldn't go into, you know, bring any of our old clients across or make contact with them. But like with any sort of relationship-based role, we did know that if they wanted to find us, they would seek us out. Um and we never did the wrong thing, but we knew that they would find us. There was LinkedIn, uh, which was becoming bigger and bigger back then. And I think the other agency had done themselves a bit of a disservice by at the time making us have our mobile phone numbers on our business cards, and they were our personal mobile phone numbers, which we had to pay for. But that's how the clients got in touch with us. So they had our details and you know, slowly but surely they did start finding us and seeking us out. And while we couldn't rely on that, we knew we had to come up with a bit of a plan to attract new clients while we were waiting for our old ones to sort of come back to us or get through that time period where we were allowed to contact them again. So we came up with this grand plan uh to market a bit of a brochure out to all of the financial planning firms and insurers that we wanted to work with, offering an absolutely ludicrous deal to basically make it impossible for them to say no to. And it was a blanket, very amateur looking uh email that had spoiled on the front of it. And this is really like I'm contradicting what I said before that I'm not really a salesperson, but we sort of had to. We spruked a $3,000 deal, any role, any level, any sector of financial services, first placement with me recruitment, $3,000. And all of a sudden, we were just getting interest after interest after interest. And within a very short amount of time, I think we had placed about 10 roles and had these new clients, and we made it our absolute mission to give the best possible service and place the best candidates in the market so that once they utilized the $3,000 first placement, they would come back. They would say, you know, that was a really good service. These guys are good. They gave me the best person. I'm going to use them again. And we reverted to our full fee, and the relationship stuck from there. So it ended up being a really successful approach.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

That's awesome. I didn't know that story. That's a fantastic story. Sean Dunn here, and thank you for watching this episode of Origin to Ambition: The Entrepreneur's Journey. I'm a financial advisor who specialises in working with small business entrepreneurs and high-income earning executives. We analyse cash flow, build assets, and protect those assets to help our clients do what they want when they want with the people that they want to do it with. So if that's of interest to you, head over to our website and book an initial discovery call and I'd look forward to speaking with you. I'll be honest, I opened Dominium Capital and opened the doors with no clients, but zero clients, because in my previous role I'd stepped out of advice. Well, I was still in financial advice, but I was national manager. I wasn't seeing, so I was managing staff. Stepped away with zero clients, had been in advised by a board member at ING that was a tough field to plow. And I was like, I was all optimistic, and you know, Sean's not a bad bloke, I think, in my mind, and uh I'll be right. It was tough. I did not have the right plan for attracting business. And I think what you've just given us all is a lesson on you've got to have a you've got to have something going. You can't just be optimistic. You've got to actually do some, you've got to execute. You've got to execute. Yeah. Is that a fair call?

SPEAKER_00 26:37

Yeah, absolutely. Well, we thought, well, we're up against really established agencies here. And the big ones at the time, like Hayes and what were they called, Link uh recruitment, which is obviously in our Randstad, all the big players, our old firm as well, which very quickly they put people into our seats trying to re-establish those relationships. So we needed something to get out to market really quickly. And um, it was the only thing we could really think of that would make people go, oh gosh, you know, this is too good to say no to.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. An irresistible offer.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. And that's how we kicked off. And we very, very quickly, I think in the first year and up until me having my first baby and going on maternity leave, got ourselves into a pretty comfortable position financially, which was awesome. And it allowed us to be able to find somebody to fill my shoes and provide that support to my business partner while I took some time off to have my baby.

SPEAKER_01 27:32

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So just talking about, you know, when you started out, and I talk about this a lot with entrepreneurs, you often start out with a partner at the time of business partner, so they expect a bit of comfort in having, you know, another person to bounce off and those types and share the load a bit and so on and so forth. And the one of the things that most entrepreneurs, when they start off, they don't have a team. So they don't have they don't have a financial advisor. Don't mean that from my perspective necessarily. They may not even have an accountant or a lawyer. And what's your advice? I don't know if you had those things when you started out, but what would be your advice? Because the hard part when you start out is you don't have any money usually to spend on these things. So how do you get that advice and how do you build that team around you?

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Yeah, I think I mean, based on just my experience alone, we wouldn't have been able to do it without the guidance of my business partner's father at the time, who actually owned his own financial planning firm. So he had gone through the the process of starting a business starting from scratch and was really able to help us. And when I left Mi recruitment and then I started Ivy recruitment, I found myself the most phenomenal accountant who has been instrumental in giving me advice and almost being a mentor. She's just sensational. I actually love her. And she's not only been a good accountant and given me advice around selling out of me recruitment and starting Ivy recruitment, but also being a bit of a uh not only a mentor, just you know, give me really good guidance and support and just encouragement. So I think my advice would be find somebody who can be that for you. Like a sounding board. A sounding board, somebody experienced who has, you know, maybe been in those shoes and who's done that to give you tips and yeah, the support and just the guidance that will allow you to create, you know, p carve out that path. I think without having had that at me recruitment and at Ivy, I wouldn't have known what to do. So that would be my advice. I'll find that one person who can be that sounding board. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

It's interesting too. I wouldn't have thought this years and years and years ago, but with the passage of time and getting experience and losing my hair, you sort of very quickly figure out that a lot of entrepreneurs, other business owners, are actually quite oftentimes very generous with their knowledge and mind, like and actually happy to help, you know. And I think that maybe when you don't have the capital or the cash flow behind you, you know, don't be shy. Is that what you like be don't be shy and actually look into your networks and your friendships up front, like don't use people and disingenuously, but sort of say, like, I really need a sounding board, I'm doing this.

SPEAKER_00 30:21

Absolutely. I've actually found along the way that a lot of the firms that I recruit for are, you know, privately owned financial planning firms. And given I've been doing it for such a long time, I've established some really awesome relationships with owners of firms, you know, and also, you know, practice development managers, people who work in the space. And these people have, you know, kind of become friends along the way. So to be able to bounce off other people, you know, who have the same experience, who are uh driving businesses forward and owning their own businesses and all of that sort of thing, to have the opportunity to have those relationships.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

To work with your peers, network colleagues, you know, and oftentimes well, Grace and I talk about it just in our business. Sometimes you've got a problem in your mind and it's funny the minute you start speaking about it with each other, and actually the solution emerges. So even just having that ability to go to your networks. And I know now, I mean, I've got other people I've worked with, but they're financial advisors as well. You know, and you know, myself and them, we all share ideas all the time. You know, as well. Oh, well, I can't help you because you're a competitor type thing or anything like that. It's quite interesting.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

Business owners are very giving, generally speaking, I think, at their time and their knowledge, then I think that also comes back to what we were talking about earlier, in that, you know, when we were saying about entrepreneurs being competitive but more so with themselves and not other people, I think a lot of you know, business owners they want to help one another. They're not competing directly against you, they're they're wanting to do the best for themselves and they're sharing information and support with one another so that we can all you know be successful.

SPEAKER_01 31:59

Yeah, spot on. That's a good insight, absolutely. So when you first kicked off, um I ask everyone this one. What's the one piece of advice you wish you had have received that maybe didn't?

SPEAKER_00 32:14

When I kicked off Ivy recruitment?

SPEAKER_01 32:16

Well, Ivy or ME, like when you first became an entrepreneur, like what is there one thing you think, hmm, that's I could have done with knowing that before I started. Is there one thing?

SPEAKER_00 32:25

Maybe having a probably a more defined business plan or not even a business plan, but an overall sort of idea with my business partner at the time as to how what growing would look like and how that would affect our roles sort of moving forward. I sort of started me recruitment with my business partner going, okay, this is what we're going to do right now, but what's that going to look like down the track? And it probably it did eventuate, you know, having run the business for 10 years, towards the end of that time, we did actually come to realise we've got different ideas and preferences as to how we want this to go, which probably was, you know, the reason why we ended up parting ways and me starting Ivy recruitment and her going in her own direction. The same thing with when I started Ivy recruitment, I knew at the time that I wanted to work independently and have a business that worked around me and you know, now having three children, but I planned it for then and there, not what that would look like further down the track, which is, you know, eight years later right here, right now, still operating sort of the same way, which works for me, and I'm really pleased that it has. But my advice would probably be to look at the you know, five-year, ten-year mark as well, which maybe a lot of people do do that in their business plan, but we sure didn't.

SPEAKER_01 33:36

Yeah, that's actually, and you're touching on something that I wasn't necessarily going to ask you about, but I think it's a relevant point. Yeah. I know when I started my business, I did draft a business plan. Now, I think business plans these days are a bit briefer and more short, sharp and evolve more quickly, I think, than the old MBA style hundred-page business plan. I'm not suggesting that necessarily, you know, but I think the fact that I had a plan gave me a framework to fall back on. So, you know, I could review it. And I think I do see in my practice, I get, you know, new clients will come on board. And as you know, I work with predominantly small business owners and entrepreneurs. And it's amazing that some of them just have no plan. They've actually started a business based off a passion or what they like to do or what they're good at, but don't actually have a plan or direction. Now, I'm not saying you didn't have a plan, but maybe that plan could have been a bit more forward-looking and a bit more Yes.

SPEAKER_00 34:33

Yeah. A hundred percent a bit more kind of yeah, geared towards you know, the the future, you know, the the five-year mark and the ten-year mark, which yeah, we we we didn't do. So yeah, maybe that I think that would probably be what I would have done differently. Not that it was detrimental to what we achieved, but it probably would have uh been a bit more helpful.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

Yeah, that's I think that's good advice. Because actually you talked earlier about falling into recruitment and the reality, I think a lot of people fall into being self-employed at times. You know, it just it becomes an evolution of well, I want to do this for myself now rather than someone else. Or, you know, I mean, look, I know for me, I figured out fairly quickly that I was very fortunate. My last role I worked for ING, and as you know, as I think we may have touched on, yeah. I was very fortunate that I and G kind of let me run my race the way I knew it had to be run to be successful. And so I was given that latitude, some would say a rope.

SPEAKER_02 35:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:33

I was given the latitude, and that worked for me. But I had worked in other places where in my journey as a financial advisor, where you you know, you did like you said earlier, you sat at a desk. I couldn't figure out why you would leave the office to go see clients, why aren't you sitting at your desk and you know, and that wasn't for me. So I was more intentioned in starting my business, Dominium Capital, but I think a lot of people do fall into it. And I think maybe then what people could take out of that is even if you do decide to fall into it, pretty quickly just at least knock up a plan, even if it's on on an action or something, like just do something, you know?

SPEAKER_02 36:10

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 36:13

Yeah, sorry, I a bit long-winded there, but uh No, no, no, no, I completely agree. Yeah, that was the point. So what drives you to do what you do every day as a business owner?

SPEAKER_00 36:23

To be honest, my kids. I've been pretty fortunate that when I finished up with me recruitment and I started Ivy recruitment, I didn't know at the time whether I wanted that to become an agency with staff again or whether I wanted to work independently. But at the time my third child was a baby, it hadn't even turned one yet. And the priority for me was to be able to be at home and also it's funny because I didn't when I sold me recruitment, I didn't actually have to start anything else again. But I'm not the sort of person who can just do nothing. And it wasn't even a plan to start Ivy Recruitment Partners. It just naturally flowed on that, okay, I sold out of me recruitment, and as part of that sale, I got to retain all of my financial planning clients. It was sort of a I'm gonna say wordless knowing. I just knew that you know, these clients I had, I'm just gonna continue servicing them. And I started Ivy recruitment without that plan at all. But the main driver was being able to do that around the kids. And I had my infant son at the time, and I had I think one in daycare or kind, and my son who I had when I started me recruitment was about to start school, and with my husband having a pretty demanding job, you know, it was sort of on me to be able to manage that, and this was the best way to do that. So the the driver was I don't want to go out and find just a job or you know, settle into something that just doesn't give me that desire to get up and go in the morning. It's to work around the kids and do, but I continue to still really love doing, which is I know financial planning, I know a good candidate, I love my clients. I've got such good relationships with them. And like I said earlier, a lot of them have become friends over the years. You know, I talk to them like I'm talking to you right now, and they come to me because of the relationship. And I think that was really the very best mix, well, the best possible scenario I could have with, you know, raising a family and doing what I enjoyed doing. So it was just a natural sort of, and I'm gonna use your word, evolution.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

Yeah, absolutely. That's fantastic. What about in business? Um I think this is an important sort of question, but what values do you think are most important in running a business?

SPEAKER_00 38:37

Integrity. You've got to have integrity. You know, I think to be successful in business, in in my experience, I think it all comes down to relationships. And you can't have, you know, really solid relationships with your clients unless you're honest, transparent, and you operate with integrity. So that's the number one. Uh and you've got to enjoy what you do. You really do. If the enjoyment is not there and you don't love what you're doing, why what why are you doing it? And I think the the s success naturally follows.

SPEAKER_01 39:08

What you're touching on there is it's an interesting discussion in that because when you talk about so I think it's important the values you spoke about, you know, honesty, transparency and integrity. I think you know the best businesses have those kind of traits. Maybe not exactly those words, but that that sort of approach. But when you were talking about doing what you love, because I think a lot of small business owners do I touched on it before, fall into working for themselves, doing something that they love. And I think then the challenge, yes, success can follow from there. I think the challenge for some entrepreneurs is to take that passion and understand that they're running a business. I think that could be where the challenge might sit. But I think that sort of cycling back to planning and but I think if you yeah, if you build relationships and and have those traits, that's really important.

SPEAKER_00 39:56

Yeah, naturally, naturally follows. And I guess, you know, evidence of that for me is that as a recruiter, which I think, you know, is a little bit uncommon in the industry, is that I don't have to go out and find work. I don't do business development, I've been doing it long enough and I've got solid enough relationships that yeah, I I have existing clients that continue to use me and any new business comes from referrals from those clients. So I'm in a really fortunate position now that, you know, the emphasis I've always placed on being a relationship-based recruiter with my clients and providing the really best candidates and the best outcomes has uh eventuated in you know ongoing referrals that is huge, you know, it's really flattering. It's a massive privilege that, you know, firms have liked what I've done for them so much over the years that they refer other businesses onto me as well.

SPEAKER_01 40:50

I'd say I know you say it's a privilege and and I would feel the same way, but I think you should also therefore be congratulated because that's the sign of a healthy business when there's repeat business and referrals like business is the if you're not doing a good job, you're not gonna get repeat business. Let's put it that way.

SPEAKER_00 41:07

Yeah, exactly right, exactly right. And I don't I don't want to ever have to morph back to that feeling all those years ago, you know, 17 years ago, where all of a sudden I've got to be picking up the phone and making all of those phone calls and sending out marketing emails. I don't I don't want I've been there, I've done that, I've I I got to the place where I needed to be by having these these clients and you know, carving out a name for myself as a specialist recruiter in the space and keep providing the same service and yeah, the rest just naturally follows.

SPEAKER_01 41:36

Fantastic. All right, looking forward to the future here. This is it. You've got something for I can tell you've got something for us here. So I was gonna ask you, so what does the next five to ten years look like, you know, for you yourself, but also potentially for your business and entrepreneurial journey?

SPEAKER_00 41:54

Well, do you know what? I'm I'm actually not too sure with Ivy recruitment partners because Ivy recruitment partner is is Kim Everly, Ivy Recruitment Partners, I'm the brand, I've got the relationship. So ongoing, I I don't ever want to grow or hand that over or have staff to deal with that. You know, what I've built up being a financial planning recruiter is me, and I'm happy to continue doing that for the foreseeable future. Not getting any more clients, or if I do get new clients, obviously, you know, servicing them if they come to me, but just looking after my existing clients. So I think that's just going to be a natural uh flow on from you know what I've been doing for the last eight years. I don't see that playing out any differently, but that also bides me the time to explore something else. And I've I've got something sort of brewing in the background, which is pretty exciting to be honest, and it's going to, I think, pretty quickly take up an awful lot of my time. And it's funny because I had this idea a while ago now, it was back around 2022. I'd been running Ivy recruitment for five years, I'd been recruiting in financial planning for 15 years, really happy to continue doing it, but I just feel like I need something else. I feel like there's an idea there, and what is it? And my mind was in overdrive, and I think this is that entrepreneurial thing again. And my kids are a little bit older, I wasn't needed so much. I I found I had a bit of time on my hands. So mind ticking over what I want to do, this idea came to mind, and I started just exploring it more and more and painted out of a bit of a picture of what it could look like and thought, shoot, I actually think that this could be something. So I kind of prepared a visual, a presentation on this idea, and I took it to my now amazing accountant who serves as a business consultant and who I've got that relationship with. And I said, I'm gonna sit down with you and and show you this idea that I've got. So I had a meeting with her and she said, I'm gonna go and get somebody to come and have a look at this. Can you just stay there for a minute? And she left the room and she came back in with a consultant that they had. Have that works in the business who was actually really successful in previously selling startup to seek for a multi-million dollar deal. And she said, I want him to have a look at this. And I talked to him through it as well. And he said, Did you come up with this? And I said, Well, yeah, I've been thinking about it for a little while now. And he goes, That is very good. You're onto something here. If you don't do this, somebody else is going to. You're a very clever girl. And I thought, oh, that got me so excited, so excited. And it kicked off from there. And um the whole idea is that it's um, I can say at this point in time, it is a platform. It's going to be an app and a recruitment platform that's basically gonna, you know, change the way that we do temporary and casual recruitment, which is not really my space, but that's what it is. And I thought, I know recruitment inside out, but I don't know IT. I don't know tech. I don't know how to move this idea forward. So I took it to my brother-in-law, he's actually in New Zealand, and he has previously very successfully started a tech business which he's sold and he knows engineering tech IT, like the back of his hand. And I said, What do you think of this? And he goes, Oh man. So he and I are working on this, it's being built at the moment. Awesome. Pretty exciting, and it's gonna be big. I think it's gonna be big. So while that takes flight, I'll continue running Ivy recruitment. I'm never gonna step away from my clients. Even if this does become something, I will still tend to my clients as they come in. But that's brewing in the works at the moment, and it's a good thing. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 45:36

Congratulations. What's um what's the time frame? Do you just I yeah, and I know these things can be difficult, but do you have a plan on when this will be launched?

SPEAKER_00 45:45

Uh well, it could potentially be as soon as later this year. Um we're not entirely sure yet. This is where it falls out of my domain, and he's talking about wireframes and beta testing and all of this, which is foreign to me. I don't know, but my job's to to sort of make it look pretty and be the um you know recruiter behind it and you know mm make it work from that you know recruitment perspective. So it could be as soon as later this year, but uh that might flow into next year, I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_01 46:16

That's awesome. That's awesome. You know what I love about this, Kim? One of the things I I don't so I don't I don't want to talk about me and my practice, it's this is about you, but it's relevant. I think I sometimes come across business owners and look, I think it usually happens when maybe something starts going a bit tough in their business or things aren't quite going to plan and they get distracted by another venture or another idea or another shiny object over there type thing, and they don't sort of stick to their knitting, is what I say, and I didn't that's a cliche, and it's not certainly not my phrase, but I often say to you know, if you just focused on what you do and do what you do well, things will improve, right? Just sort of make rather than sort of say, Oh, I'm in the doldrums and now I get distracted. But what I love about ideas like what you've just said is when a business owner entrepreneur diversifies, diversifies strategically and diversifies logically. So it's not about saying don't do something else, but it's about saying make sure what you're doing is for a purpose and that it makes sense. And you've just outlined that whole story you just gave us supports exactly that because you had another idea, you've had some time free up, you're like, I want to do something else. You've taken your skill set, really. You're doing sort of is scaling your skill set basically. Pretty much. Yeah. I think that's a fantastic lesson for anyone listening to this particular episode. So thank I congratulations and good luck with the launch. I think that's fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 47:47

Thank you, thank you. And on the side, I'll might give you a bit of a demo and show you behind the scenes because um you've been a trusted confidant and um acquaintance for 20 years. Um I would love to show it to you.

SPEAKER_01 48:01

Yeah, I'd love to see it. So yeah, that's fantastic. I'm very excited for you. And I think that's a ripper story for anyone listening to this as well. So appreciate you sharing it with us. So if you went back in time and you've looked at your entrepreneurial journey to date, can you nail it down to one or two things that you are most proud of in that journey? And uh and I mean entrepreneurial journey, I'm sure you are most proud of your children and your family. Um but just in terms of business, can you sort of nail down one or two things that you it's gotta be the relationships I've got with my clients.

SPEAKER_00 48:34

You know, a lot of my clients are also small business owners. And some of them I have worked with for the whole 20 years that I've been doing recruitment. And there's, you know, an example is one firm out there that I started working with back in 2006 when he started his business and it was just him, and he asked me to find his very first staff member, which was a paraplanner, funny enough. And that paraplanner is still with him 20 years later, and he now has a team of about 20. I've placed them all, and my relationship with him is just I just adore my clients like that, and that's why I do it. That's been one of the absolute highlights of my journey is just knowing that I am a good recruiter, and you know, they use me because they know that I know what I'm doing. I place good people and they refer other businesses on to me, you know, that's what makes me happy. That's just got to be the number one. It's the client, the client relationships. And it's also, you know, it's the candidates too. I mean, I've placed candidates that have evolved into becoming business owners over the years, and now they're my clients. So it all comes back down to if you love what you do, the success will follow.

SPEAKER_01 49:44

Kim Everly, I think that is a perfect note to finish our discussion on here today. I think that's a very positive note, and I want to thank you for your time. I've really enjoyed it. I think there's a heap of lessons out of your discussion with me today that people could take away. And yeah, you're an inspiration, and I appreciate you giving me the time today.

SPEAKER_00 50:04

Oh, thanks so much, Sean. It's so nice to see you again, honestly, and thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 50:09

You're most welcome. We'll speak again. Thank you, Kim. And that's all for this episode of Origin to Ambition. Thanks for tuning in. To make sure you don't miss our next conversation, be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen in. For more information, you can visit us at dominiumcapital.com.au, and we'll see you next time.