20 Placements a Month Put Her in the Hospital

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
Are you still trying to grow your recruiting desk or business on your own? Join the Elite Recruiter Community and connect with recruiters who know your challenges. Members get unlimited access to replays from the AI Recruiting Summit, Finish the Year Strong, and all our past events, plus biweekly roundtables where we dive into sourcing, business development, and mindset. You'll also tap into our Billers Club for accountability and a split space to partner on roles. Join the number one growth environment for recruiters for just $49 per month. You'll be part of a tight-knit group that pushes you to grow, and you can cancel anytime. Visit the link in the show notes and click join now to get started and start mastering your craft today. Coming up on this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast. Many of us have addictive personalities.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:43]:
I know recruiters doing lines of coke prior to the workday. I know recruiters that are just like smashing the alcohol, like at night to just whatever. You were living a healthy lifestyle. You were making placements, working banking hours. This isn't something that you would expect for somebody in your situation.

Michelle Flynn [00:01:00]:
No. Stop putting stuff off. Stop making excuses. Stop pretending that you're doing what you need to do in the smartest way and just actually use your time in the right way to get the stuff done.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:16]:
Welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with your host, Benjamin Mena, where we focus on what it takes to win In the recruiting game, we cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership, and placements. You know, the resume never tells the full story. Candidates share what really matters during conversations, on calls and interviews, over email— their motivations, salary expectations, plans to relocate. Most of that detail ends up buried in notes and forgotten. Atlas changes that. It's the AI-first recruitment platform Built to eliminate admin, it captures every conversation automatically and turns it into something you can use. With Magic Search, you can ask Atlas questions like, who talked about wanting a 4-day week? Or, who mentioned they're open to relocating next year? It searches across your entire database and pulls the answers instantly. No keyword guessing and no digging through old notes.

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Benjamin Mena [00:02:43]:
Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive listener offer at recruitwithatlas.com. Okay. I wanna start a little different. Before you started coaching, you were actually running your own firm. But here's the thing, you started explaining your firm at the peak and I was getting jealous. Like personally, I'm like, oh my God, that is the absolute dream. For those listening, at the peak, how many placements were you making per month?

Michelle Flynn [00:03:11]:
I was making up to 20 placements a month as a solo. Perm markets, not sort of the £100,000 fees, but good fees.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:22]:
And real quick, what were your working hours every day?

Michelle Flynn [00:03:26]:
9:30 to 4:30 UK time.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:30]:
Like, seriously?

Michelle Flynn [00:03:32]:
Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:32]:
That many placements working like those amount of hours?

Michelle Flynn [00:03:35]:
Yep, absolutely.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:38]:
And, and like, you had no staff?

Michelle Flynn [00:03:41]:
Nope.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:41]:
Like most of your clients were exclusive, right?

Michelle Flynn [00:03:44]:
Yep. All of them refused to work with anyone that wasn't exclusive. Didn't wanna make my life more difficult.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:49]:
Okay. Walk me through, like, pick, like, take me back to this. Like what did a Tuesday actually look like for you at the peak of this business?

Michelle Flynn [00:03:57]:
So the first and probably one of the most important points was I was on my client sites. So if I take a Tuesday, I would be going into one of my clients and all my clients knew that I was working with each of them. So it wasn't as if I was cheating on each of my clients. So I'd go to my client office where I'd have my desk. I'd open up my email, which was my client's email address. So it was michelle@moonpig.com as an example. And I knew everybody in the business. I was in the business.

Michelle Flynn [00:04:26]:
There was no waiting for feedback because I would just be going over to the person and tapping them on the shoulder, um, saying the CV's in your inbox. They wouldn't even need to look at the CV because I knew the team so well. That I would just book interviews in for them. And as soon as the interview finished, so if the candidate was interviewing on the day that I was in the office, I would go meet the candidate. So I knew the candidates really well. The candidates were less likely to mess me around. I had a very, very low dropout rate. And it just meant that the process moved so smoothly that, um, the offers just kept coming and the candidates were closed.

Michelle Flynn [00:05:03]:
So Yeah, I was living the recruitment dream.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:07]:
Okay, like, you literally— like, it feels like you solved the puzzle that every single recruiter is like, like, what the fuck is she doing? But take me back to this. Like, you had the money.

Michelle Flynn [00:05:18]:
Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:18]:
You had the time. You had the exclusivity. You had the best clients. Were you actually happy?

Michelle Flynn [00:05:25]:
He's like, what happened? I was really happy. I loved it because I felt part of a team, and lots of solo recruitment owners feel very lonely, and I never had that. I felt part of the team. I got invited to all the parties, all the socials, so I was really, really happy. I think there was just something going on in the background that I hadn't been aware of, which I know that we're going to dig into. But yeah, I loved my job. It was easy, and it was all about relationship building. It was all about people.

Michelle Flynn [00:05:55]:
I did not have all of the latest tech. AI, I was sort of— wasn't a thing at that point to the sort of level that it is now. So I was just doing the good old basics really well, really efficiently, and I was just being consistent.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:10]:
And then got married. We're gonna fast forward a little bit to 3 months after your wedding.

Michelle Flynn [00:06:17]:
Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:17]:
You woke up that morning and you thought you had a— you were having a heart attack. Like, how old is this for you, real quick?

Michelle Flynn [00:06:24]:
So I was 39. I'd been married 3 months. I'd spent that weekend at a hen party. It was the year that loads of my friends were getting married, so we'd had a hen party in London, which was amazing. And on the Sunday, I just had a little pain in my shoulder, you know, when you're sort of like, oh, I feel like I need to sort of massage on that. And then on the Monday morning, I woke up, my husband was saying goodbye to go to work. I said, hang on a minute, I don't feel right. And the next thing I know, I'm on the floor and he's on the phone to, um, 999 in the UK.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:56]:
Like, like what happened? You just like collapsed?

Michelle Flynn [00:07:01]:
Completely. I suddenly had a severe pain down the left side of my chest, which is always the thing that you're sort of told, watch out for that pain. So I felt that and then I literally hit the floor. I was out cold. My husband said my eyes had rolled into the back of my head. He thought that sort of he'd lost me. And yeah, I was 39 and I had had no symptoms. I was fit and healthy and it literally came out of nowhere.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:29]:
I mean, here's the thing, like in the recruitment industry, many of us have addictive personalities. I know recruiters doing lines of coke prior to the workday. I know recruiters that are just like smashing the alcohol like at night to just whatever. You were living a healthy lifestyle. You're making placements, working banking hours. Like, that, that this isn't something that you would expect for somebody in your situation.

Michelle Flynn [00:07:55]:
No, which was why it was so scary, because it wasn't sort of— in my 20s, it was different. I was working for a recruitment agency. I never went down the drug route, but I certainly enjoyed a good drink. Um, but yeah, this was me in my late 30s, in a very different phase of my life. And yeah, it just completely threw me. But the interesting point was when I got taken to hospital, they can do a test on your blood to see if there's any chemicals that to say it was a heart attack. It wasn't, fortunately. But then I did what most recruiters do.

Michelle Flynn [00:08:26]:
I was like, where's my phone? Quick, pick the phone up. I've got an interview going on. So it was just that interesting, like you said, that addictive personality, that drive that recruiters have. It's just like, right, okay, I'm alive. Quick, let's just get on with closing the deals, which is fascinating. I look back at it now and I actually think that probably one of my clients knew I was in hospital before my parents even knew, because it was just like, the client needs to know I'm not on site today. So yeah, crazy.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:58]:
And then it happened a second time.

Michelle Flynn [00:09:00]:
Yes. So that happened. I had all the tests, I had various sort of health things going on, which again, I had no symptoms of. This was when I got taken to hospital the first time. So I had a bladder infection, I had a severe chest infection. I'd had no symptoms of any of those things. I do have a cyst on my heart, I discovered, but it turns out they're fairly common. So, um, I went through a few months of just checking that the cyst was okay and that I was okay.

Michelle Flynn [00:09:26]:
I, we were going on a big honeymoon 3 months after this, so I needed to know that I could still go into the sort of the Amazon rainforest and be safe.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:34]:
Yeah.

Michelle Flynn [00:09:34]:
Um, so when we got the all clear, you can go on a honeymoon, you're gonna be fine. And then I just kind of had forgotten that this collapse had happened until 3 years later, age 42, I collapsed again. This time it wasn't as severe as that because when my husband— I collapsed in the bathroom and my husband knocked on the bathroom door and I actually kind of came to myself and I was on the bathroom floor. And that time I'd headbutted something, so I now had black eyes. And that was the moment that I was visibly different. So it's interesting, isn't it? When you yourself thinking about things, oh, I won't make any changes. But when everyone was looking at my face going, what's happened to your face? I was suddenly like, oh, okay, something's clearly not okay here. I need to go and figure this out.

Michelle Flynn [00:10:18]:
So it was an interesting 3 years because I look back now and I was unwell every month for about a week. I'd get a bit of a cold. It might mean that I would just work at home before that became more normal because this was before COVID My memory wasn't great. Um, all of these little things were happening and I was just ignoring all of it. And I think that was the biggest lesson for me now in hindsight was I had just been ignoring all of the signs, um, until the point that my body literally went, no, stop.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:49]:
So was the second time your body stopped, and this is like 3 years later from the first time, Was that the actual wake-up call?

Michelle Flynn [00:10:56]:
Yes, it definitely was, because at that point I was like, okay, the doctors are telling me I'm all fine, so, um, that's interesting because surely there must be something wrong. And, um, I was just like, I need some answers here. And it's strange, again, I look back and I'm like, I don't really understand how the next bit happened, but I sort of took myself off to Thailand on my own. I left my husband at home and I went to Thailand for 2 weeks to a health retreat to. But you go find yourself. And I had traveled a lot. I really enjoyed traveling, but I just felt I was like, I have to get out of the everyday. There's something, and I don't know what it is, but there's something that my body is telling me is not okay.

Michelle Flynn [00:11:35]:
And I was completely like, I, I knew nothing about the body really at this point. And I was like, right, I'm going to take myself away. I'm gonna just learn some stuff. I wanted to lose a bit of weight because I'd gained quite a lot of weight. I was like, I want to lose a bit of weight. And in that 2 weeks it was just like, oh, just mind blown. It was like, forget calories, forget sort of weight loss, let's talk about stress, let's talk about burnout, let's talk about the nervous system, let's talk about what happens when you are in a chronic state of stress for an extended period of time, which is like, welcome to the world of recruitment. And even though I wasn't actually that stressed that I thought, I just literally hadn't had a break since I'd started in recruitment in Um, what was that, 1997 I started in recruitment and I had my first collapse in 2014.

Michelle Flynn [00:12:21]:
I'd had no break, no day off, and that was just a real learning experience for me. It was, yeah, it was an eye-opener, literally.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:30]:
Was that when you hung up your recruiting business?

Michelle Flynn [00:12:34]:
So not straight away. So I came back from the health retreat, my poor husband, I came back this different person. I think he partly thought I wasn't even going to come back, which was quite tempting. I had a very lovely time there. So I came back and I started to put into place all these changes that I had learned in this retreat about how to eat and how important sleep is and about breathwork and all of these things. And I was still running my recruitment business and it was great. And then I decided that I wanted to study more, only purely for myself. Selfishly, I wanted to know more.

Michelle Flynn [00:13:06]:
Um, I decided to do a course and I did a health coach course. No plans to be a health coach, earning loads of money doing recruitment, love my clients, right? Why would I do anything different? And then as I got more involved in that, and then when I qualified 12 months later, one of the senior directors at one of the clients I worked with asked if I would coach him. Then he asked if I would coach his wife. Then I got asked to talk at a recruitment lunch, and suddenly this business was like happening. So I Started to pivot my recruitment business. To start with, I started teaching companies how to recruit. So I was like, right, I'm going to come into your business and I'm going to look at your end-to-end process and we're going to just fine-tune that so that you can, from a client point of view, you can get your process working. But then obviously they still wanted the delivery piece.

Michelle Flynn [00:13:54]:
I didn't really have the time. I didn't really want to do that anymore, if I'm honest. I've been doing it so long. What I did was I partnered with a couple of recruiters that I trusted that worked the same market. that I basically had annoyed for years because as soon as I got a client, the recruiters just knew that they weren't going to be needed anymore. So it was like, oh great, Michelle's on site, we're done. So I basically went back to those recruiters and said, look, why don't we do a deal where I give you the vacancies and I get a little kickback? And I was doing that for quite a long period of time, which was lovely because I was just making money for not doing very much. And then suddenly I just felt LinkedIn was confused.

Michelle Flynn [00:14:32]:
I was talking about software development. And I was talking about sleep, and I got to that point where I was like, okay, I got to make a decision here. I'm gonna go all in on this. And I've been doing that ever since. So I've been working full-time as a coach for probably about 6 years now, and, um, still mainly within the recruitment world. So I still get all of the fun, but yeah, with— without the pressures that come with it. My job is now to support those who are under pressure.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:59]:
So I want to go back to this like 3-year window between the first collapse and the second collapse. Like, during that window, what— and with you being sick, was your business impacted by all that?

Michelle Flynn [00:15:12]:
No, because I had it so fine-tuned. I just, I was friends with my clients. I was— and I think when you're approaching a candidate as Moonpig or as the Financial Times, it's very different to the challenges that agency recruiters face, which is Hey, I have a client that's big in the e-commerce space that's hiring. I also had a— I was really well known in London. I was sort of the .NET recruiter in London because of what I had done previously when I had been an in-house recruitment manager. So I knew everyone. So my job was actually really easy and I could quite easily just carry on doing it. And yeah, I'm sure if I looked back into the real details of the numbers, there might have been some months where it wasn't as big and What would happen is I would generally have about 6 clients that I was working with, and they would be going through— they're all sort of scaling businesses— they would be going through different phases.

Michelle Flynn [00:16:08]:
And you'd go, right, Huddle's hiring now, we're going big, we want to get a lot in. We were doing graduate schemes, we were doing all sorts. And at that point, maybe Seven Digital, we'd already done a bit of that. So now they were going more into just sustaining numbers, and I was very much selecting the clients. I didn't have to do any cold outreach. I didn't make a single cold BD call. I didn't use the phone, which often nowadays everyone's like, how do we get people on the phone? I'm like, controversially, built a very successful business without it. Not saying that works for everybody, but it did for me.

Michelle Flynn [00:16:40]:
So I think all of the hard work that I had put in in the previous sort of, well, my whole recruitment career had led me to the point where it was just, it was easy. And by this point, I did have a friend of mine who had worked with me previously, who would help out with sort of the delivery piece or help out with the behind-the-scenes admin. We sort of had a bit of a comms agreement. So if there were times when I wasn't able to, although to be honest, I did just, I was going to say if there was a time I couldn't work, I did just keep working because that's the recruiter in you, isn't it? It's like, it doesn't matter what's going on. I'm still going to keep working. But because I wasn't having to do 100 calls a day, I was able to keep running my business whilst I was going through this very strange, what is going on with my life moment.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:27]:
Here's the thing about a lot of recruiters, especially solo recruiters, you know, you're on client sites, you're doing meetings, you're sitting there talking to people all the time, but behind the scenes, were you alone during all these struggles? I mean, yes, your husband was there, but like, were you alone or who was there to support you?

Michelle Flynn [00:17:44]:
Yeah, and I think it's a really interesting question, um, because I've got lots of really amazing friends, but I think there was actually quite a lot going on that I wasn't talking about. And I think I'm an only child, so not only only child to solo, it kind of makes sense. But so I'm very much a just, I just get on with it. I'm very curious when I'm out with my friends. I tend to be the questioner. People often have to dig quite hard to actually get anything out of me because I often flip it back. Which is why I make a really good coach because I am inquisitive.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:16]:
Yeah.

Michelle Flynn [00:18:17]:
But I think, A, I don't think I knew what was going on or that there was anything wrong. But B, I think it was just that, well, you just get on with it. And I might say a few little things to people, but more and more as I have talked very publicly about what's gone on with me over that period of time, I've had friends go like, we knew none of this. Why didn't you tell us? And it was just like, well, you just kind of get on with it, don't you? And I think that is the big challenge, is that We don't talk about it. And here I am, I'm a female, I like to talk. You sort of— a lot of my clients are men who potentially aren't as open to talking, and yet still people didn't know what was going on with me. So I think that it was a real learning for me, and I still struggle with it when people are like, how are you? I have to stop with that, I'm fine, I'm okay. And you're like, no, what's actually going on with you? And so it's a continuous learning, which is why I continue now studying, because I don't want to get to that point where I feel like there are no more— there's no more knowledge or there's no more answers.

Michelle Flynn [00:19:18]:
It's like, no, keep learning. Because from a personal point of view, but also obviously now from my work point of view, the more knowledge I have got, the more I can support my clients.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:28]:
We're gonna get back to that alone as a solo recruiter and like being able to talk about things a little later on. Let's, let's rewind a bit. I know you're pretty well known in the UK, Michelle, for all the US listeners. And I have like, I think my, I was just telling you before we got started that my total downloads on a monthly basis for UK is like 4 to 5%. It's like nobody, but everybody knows you in the UK. Can you give everybody a quick like 90-second self-introduction for all the US listeners?

Michelle Flynn [00:19:59]:
Absolutely. So in 1997, I fell into recruitment as a graduate, like probably most people listening to this, it wasn't a sort of a planned career choice. I was a top performer at one of the biggest agencies in the UK for 8 years. I left there and became the recruitment manager for a scaling startup, which then sold to a very large American company called EMC, which sold to Dell. And then I started up my own recruitment business, scaling startups, and then I hit the floor and everything changed.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:31]:
Everything changed.

Michelle Flynn [00:20:31]:
Quick overview. So, lots and lots of recruitment, agency, in-house, business owner, all of those things, ticking all the boxes.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:40]:
So, you were a high-performance recruiter. You came out of high-performance teams. You helped build high-performance teams. What do most people get? I mean, and you even know it with 20, my mind's still blown, the 20 placements a month. And I think like, We need to do a second podcast on the how you were able to get these direct placements, but being on site using all their stuff. That's a whole nother story that we're going to dig into later.

Michelle Flynn [00:21:07]:
Super organized, super process-driven. I'd have 50, 60 interviews going on in a week. Like, right, here we go.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:16]:
Now I know why you were stressed.

Michelle Flynn [00:21:17]:
Yeah. I didn't have time to even notice I was stressed. No wonder I hit the floor. I was just exhausted.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:24]:
What do, with you being around all this high performance, what do most people get wrong when they're thinking about high performance?

Michelle Flynn [00:21:32]:
Oh, so many things. I think one of the biggest mistakes is that people confuse the difference between a fact and an excuse. And I think it is very easy for us to tell ourselves certain stories and believe the stories. But actually, when we dig deep, we're just making excuses for not doing whatever it is we need to do to move our desk forward. And I just see that time and time again. And I'm sure if I were to look back, I was sort of probably doing a bit of the same as that. But yeah, it's kind of don't make the excuses to believe that you are working hard, um, when actually you're potentially spending your day doing the things that are easy. not necessarily important as opposed to actually doing the things that are hard, that are urgent, that are going to really drive your business forward.

Michelle Flynn [00:22:24]:
And we see it hiding behind the keyboard instead of getting in front of people or instead of building those relationships is definitely a thing that I see a lot.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:36]:
You've also said like you can't outwork burnout.

Michelle Flynn [00:22:40]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:41]:
And it sounds like that might have been your story for a long time, but like You know, every single listener, including myself, like, we live in a world where it sometimes feels like the only thing that we could do is outwork it.

Michelle Flynn [00:22:54]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:55]:
So if you're sitting in a room of agency owners and recruiters that are just like, wait, are you trying to say that we need to work less? Are you trying to say that we need to be soft? Like, what is the difference between the two?

Michelle Flynn [00:23:07]:
I'm like, I was doing 20 deals a month. I was not soft. I was definitely not working. Well, I was working less. I was working very smart. I think A lot of the challenge when it comes to burnout is until someone has experienced it personally or seen it of someone very close to them, it is often that kind of like, oh, whatever, that's not a real thing. And then when you have that experience and you're like, oh, okay, now I've realized that we're all going to be stressed. Recruitment is stressful.

Michelle Flynn [00:23:35]:
We wish we had the magic wand that meant that it wasn't, but it always is. That closing of the deal, the drive, the adrenaline. All of that is amazing, and the money is obviously fantastic, but it's going— when you notice your body move from stress, which is almost this physical feeling, to burnout, which is like dropping off the side of the performance curve, which is where it feels emotional. You kind of— stress is you put too much effort in, burnout is you can't actually put any more effort in. And I, I see this a lot, and it's that interesting thing that sometimes recruitment owners are nervous about going, oh, we don't want Michelle in talking about stress because then people will realize recruitment's stressful. And you're like, no, we all realize that. This is about giving people the tools to help them cope with that so that it stays on the stress side rather than flipping over to burnout, because burnout is preventable if you are doing the right things. And it's like, it's this balance.

Michelle Flynn [00:24:30]:
And I always talk about the fact that sort of there is no work-life balance. There is just life, and work is one aspect of your life. And sometimes work will be the thing. If you're imagining you're on like a sort of skateboard, and sometimes work is the thing that's going to be like pushing you, and you go, great, end of quarter, hitting an incentive sort of target, brilliant. But what you have to do is you have to bring it back and have that recovery reset point. Otherwise, you are just going to like fall off. So my trick is now kind of how you have that the tools to make sure that while you are driving and pushing hard, you are still able to make sure that you are resetting. And those resets might be like literally 30 seconds.

Michelle Flynn [00:25:13]:
They're not— sometimes people think you have to go to Thailand for 2 weeks. It was very nice, highly, highly recommend it, but it's not about that. It is about these small little changes, um, that you can make which just mean that your body can cope and you are much less likely to hit burnout. So it's definitely not about soft.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:32]:
Like, if you're an owner, an agency owner, and you have a high— a few high-performing individuals, they start maybe hitting burnout without you recognizing it. In your head, you're like, what the hell is going on? Like, why are they just losing now?

Michelle Flynn [00:25:47]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:47]:
Like, how do you get one of your team members to step back?

Michelle Flynn [00:25:52]:
And how do you help a team member Yeah, and that's often where I get what I refer to as the emergency call. Michelle, my top performer, there's just something going on. Either I don't know what it is, they won't talk to me about it, I don't feel I can ask them about it. Um, that can be a really difficult situation as well for business owners, that if you are potentially performance managing someone but you know that they've got some personal stuff going on, it can be quite a difficult situation. And particularly for businesses that maybe don't have an HR department, um, that can potentially step in and help with that. But I think it is as soon as you start to notice those changes, those behaviors that are different. And I actually met with— this was about 3 months ago— I met up with my old director from like the early 2000s. Her and I had not seen each other for about 20 years, and she was like, oh, Michelle, do you remember when I had to performance manage you? I was like, what? Me? Don't be ridiculous.

Michelle Flynn [00:26:51]:
And she said, no, there was a period of 2 months where I'd gone from— when I was agency side, I was doing 7 to 10 deals a month. So I was a 360 recruiter and I was doing that sort of number. And there was a 2-month period where I had just lost it. I just sort of— and this is her explaining this to me, I don't remember this— and she said that she pulled me aside and basically had a bit of a firm word with me because she knew me so well. She knew how to motivate me. And everybody needs different things at this point. And if you're not sure how to motivate your people or how to have that conversation— but she had this conversation, and then the next month I was back doing 7 to 10 deals. So I think the longer that you ignore it for someone and you just think that this person might just snap out of it themselves— like, they might, and that would be brilliant, but often they might not even be aware that it's happening.

Michelle Flynn [00:27:38]:
So how do you have a conversation with a person in a right way that feels supportive rather than maybe confrontational, to be able to then go, what do you actually need? And I'm coaching a girl at the moment. I— it's all— this is exactly happening to her. She's doing really sort of not great at work because she is so burnt out. And it's how you manage that, A, for the business's point of view, but also for the person's point of view. But fundamentally, if you do nothing eventually the person will leave because they can't cope, or you're going to fire them because their numbers are wrong. So the thing is, don't not do anything because that's very unlikely to have a positive outcome.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:19]:
At least your manager was nice. Mine just sat me down and said like, we want to fire you.

Michelle Flynn [00:28:25]:
Wow.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:26]:
Like, you suck. Like, we're gonna get rid of you soon.

Michelle Flynn [00:28:31]:
Wow. And there are still plenty of those managers out there in the industry. Definitely. As much as the industry has moved on, you certainly still see some of that old school. And I do think sometimes people do need, we'll call it the bit of tough love. I met a guy that I used to work with at a recruitment event in London recently, and he joined Computer Futures age 19, really old school. He used to have a phone seller taped to his head. It was really that sort of thing.

Michelle Flynn [00:28:59]:
And he has since gone on and built a business and like sold it for millions. He was someone that the school of tough love really worked for him because the way that he was motivated, we have these different tendencies and he was definitely someone that would be driven by external forces. So he would need a personal trainer, he would need a boss that would pull him up on stuff. That worked for him. However, that's not going to work for everybody in the business, which is why being a business owner now is tough because the fact that you've got all of these different personalities who have now got much more knowledge. We didn't have any of this knowledge back then. We just did what we were told. All this knowledge and want to be treated differently.

Michelle Flynn [00:29:36]:
So, yeah, it's hard being a recruitment owner.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:40]:
So, one of the things that we spoke about in the pregame, before people even get to this level of burnout or stress or breakdown, or whatever we're going to call it, but you talked about these foundational things that everybody needs. What are those foundations?

Michelle Flynn [00:29:57]:
Yeah, they are definitely the things that most recruiters ignore is you need to be sleeping. You literally need to be getting a good night's sleep. And people will say, Michelle, I can't get more than 5 hours. I'm working different time zones. I've got children. You go, fine. Like, I can't magic— well, I can magic more time, but not— that's just through using it more wisely. But you go, right, if that's all you can get, how are we going to make sure you get the best 5 hours sleep that is possible? And we can fine-tune that.

Michelle Flynn [00:30:27]:
So it's like going, what, how are you fueling your body? If you are fueling it with junk food, you're probably not going to feel great. You're probably going to feel lethargic. You're going to have no energy. You may have gut problems. Um, your gut and your brain are linked. So let's fuel your body properly. Let's hydrate your body properly. Like at the moment, we've talked about how hot it is.

Michelle Flynn [00:30:46]:
I'm just like, keep drinking water. Yes, it's energy. Move your body. You're sat at a desk all day, just like thinking that that's where you're going to get your best answers. Yeah. Your best answers tend to come in the shower, when you're out for a walk. They're not when you're sort of stress typing on a keyboard, having not left your desk because you've eaten lunch at your desk, you've eaten dinner at your desk. So it's like the basics of being a human is eat, move, sleep, and manage stress.

Michelle Flynn [00:31:15]:
When you get that, then we can start to go build on that. And it's a bit like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It's like, have we got the foundations? And then how we can start to work up and up. And that's when you get the high performers. They've got the foundations, then they start to build on it. How am I using my time? Am I procrastinating? Am I prioritizing? Am I actually delivering? And you start to build until you get to the sweet spot, which was where I was at, which was like, oh, everything is just working together. And now it takes less effort. I could work less hours.

Michelle Flynn [00:31:51]:
but I'm still making loads of money. And people forget the foundations, and then everything crumbles down.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:59]:
If a recruiter can fix only one of them this week, which one would you say is most important?

Michelle Flynn [00:32:03]:
Sleep. Every time. We all know if you— it's been hot in the UK over the last week, no one is sleeping, um, unless they're lucky enough to have aircon. And, um, everyone is just absolutely frazzled. I've had people in tears. So it's like, fix your sleep first, learn how to sleep. It's funny, isn't it? You just think you put your head on the pillow and you know how to sleep. And actually many people don't.

Michelle Flynn [00:32:28]:
Many people breathe through the wrong part of their face, which is the first thing is how are you even breathing when you're sleeping? But all the little things, are you on your screen before bed? Are you having caffeine too late? Um, are you eating too late? All of these little tweaks that you can make. if you get sleeping right— and I've seen people go sort of— I had one client come to me, he'd never slept properly ever. And it was like, right, we are going to work on all of those different things that can get you to that. And now he gets 8 hours sleep a night and he's just like a different person. He's running a recruitment business, he's more patient, he's more tolerant when people are maybe annoying him a little bit, he's able to think more clearly, the clarity is there. He's now got more energy to exercise. And it's like this domino effect that when you get that bit, then everything else just becomes easier. Because particularly as a founder, if you've got a team, if you haven't had a good night's sleep, how is your day going to go with your team? Or you're a solo and you've got a candidate who's going to drop out and you are falling asleep at your desk, you're probably going to just be like, oh, do you know what? Whatever.

Michelle Flynn [00:33:34]:
Go take the counteroffer. fine. You're not going to be able to be on your top game. And we look at sports people and they talk about it a lot. Roger Federer gets 12 hours during Wimbledon. Um, we look at Jeff Bezos, he won't make a decision if he hasn't had 8 hours sleep a night. So fortunately, more and more it's being talked about, but it's still this badge of honor. I'll sleep when I'm dead.

Michelle Flynn [00:33:58]:
And you're like, you're gonna have a better life if you actually prioritize sleep now. So yeah. That is definitely a starting point.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:07]:
You just shook me with like 8 hours. I'm like, I don't know how many years ago I had an 8-hour night of sleep.

Michelle Flynn [00:34:15]:
How much sleep do you get?

Benjamin Mena [00:34:17]:
I, my Apple Watch told me my sleep score was like 80-something when I got like 4.5 hours.

Michelle Flynn [00:34:22]:
Okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:23]:
It's like, you're doing good.

Michelle Flynn [00:34:25]:
And that's the whole point is that if you're getting the right quality of sleep, You can have less of it. So there are 4 factors to sleep. How much you get, which is, yes, important. Do you have a regular sleep routine? Massively important for the body clock. Do you sleep consistently through the night and not wake up? Most people wake up between 2 and 4 in the morning. And the final one, which is actually the most important, is do you get the right quality of sleep? Because if you're getting amazing restorative sleep for 4 and a half hours, that is better than having 9 hours of really broken light sleep. And that's where it becomes really important that you breathe through your nose rather than your mouth, because your mouth is going to always keep you in a lighter state of sleep.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:11]:
So we hear these stories of like Elon Musk, who works like 175 hours a week, and Tim Cook, who actually starts his workday at 2 o'clock in the morning.

Michelle Flynn [00:35:20]:
It—

Benjamin Mena [00:35:21]:
we idealize these stories of these hard workers that are making a X, Y, like tons of money. For most people, is that all bullshit?

Michelle Flynn [00:35:29]:
Yeah. It's like, and different people work morning, people who are better in the morning or the evening, or people who've got to work around different life situations. But generally, yeah. And, but I'm also a bit like, God, if you're, if you're achieving that with that amount of sleep, imagine what they would be achieving if they actually had more good sleep. And I had this with one guy, it was really funny. He was really proud of himself because he was getting up at 4 in the morning to go boxing, and that's great. He was really in great physical shape, recruitment owner again, but he wasn't going to bed till like 1 o'clock in the morning. And I was like, no.

Michelle Flynn [00:36:04]:
And he was like, no, Michelle, it's fine, I'm doing great. And I was like, all right, I'm not going to argue with you, um, you need to come to it. He's what we call the rebel. The rebels are the people who need to basically come to the conclusions themselves. You can just guide and hint and suggest. And, um, now he gets sort of 6, 7 hours and he's like, oh my goodness, I thought I was good then. Now what I can achieve now with that extra sleep is like another level. So I'm sure there are always going to be some, some special people who don't have to get what would be seen as the, the required amounts.

Michelle Flynn [00:36:40]:
Um, so it's not a one-size-fits-all, but it is certainly If we didn't need to sleep, the body wouldn't force us to do it. They've taken it out of the Guinness Book of Records. They would have these big feats of how long can you go without sleep? They've removed it because it's so dangerous. Like you get sleep torture is a thing that gets done to people when they're trying to punish them. So sleep is an absolute essential for the body and yet, um, we still think that part of our sort of 24 hours. That's the not important bit. Many people would go, that's the most important bit because you get that bit right and then the whole rest of your 24 hours will be better with whatever you're trying to achieve, better to be.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:25]:
All right. Quick answer in this one. Out of all the foundations you talked about, which one has a direct quick increase on billings?

Michelle Flynn [00:37:37]:
Probably stress management, which to me would be breathwork. I'm a breathwork instructor. So that is, yes. If you, in the moment, if you want to close a deal, um, so if we're looking for something really instant, you're looking to close the deal, you're looking to have energy in the afternoon because you're tired because you haven't had a good night's sleep. You're looking to find some clarity or to find a solution to a problem. Definitely. And this can be 1 minute, like 1 minute of breathing exercises can reset your whole nervous system. Your nervous system is the thing that your body functions on.

Michelle Flynn [00:38:13]:
It, it sort of sends all the messages around your body and it regulates your nervous system. And we see this again, I talk a lot about sports. When Ronaldo is about to kind of take a penalty kick, and I didn't actually get to sort of, um, see the Champions League final that went to penalty, so I haven't watched that yet.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:32]:
Oh my God.

Michelle Flynn [00:38:32]:
I know, I was listening to it, so I need to be able to watch it because I really want to see, um, what they were doing as they were about to take the penalty kick. Because what Ronaldo does, he has literally just forced his heart rate to slow, forced his nervous system to relax, calmed his adrenaline to be able to go right. And that's exactly the same in recruitment. We want to get the ball in the net. It's just in the office as opposed to on a football pitch. So yes, that would be in the moment, the quick win, breathing.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:04]:
I was so happy that Paris won, but I wanted to go give that guy a hug so bad. I just wanted to like, we'll go, I'm like, let me on the field. I just want to go give him a hug because like for every win, there's one of those moments too.

Michelle Flynn [00:39:18]:
Oh my God. I just, I felt it. As I said, I only listened to it on the radio, but you just felt like when it, because it wasn't even saved, was it? It was the fact that he missed. And you're like, oh my God. Yeah, heartbreaking. Thinking about it, it's like emotional.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:36]:
Want to flip gears a little bit? Because I feel like we could just talk forever. One important thing that you also talk about is the time audit. On average, how much time do you think an average recruiter or agency owner wastes per day?

Michelle Flynn [00:39:50]:
Far too much. Literally, now anyone listening to this, get your phone out. Go on to Screen Time and you have a little look at how you are actually spending. Why don't you do it now whilst we're on air?

Benjamin Mena [00:40:03]:
I actually bought this thing called the Brick. I don't know if you've ever heard of it.

Michelle Flynn [00:40:05]:
I've got clients that use that. Yes. Uh, my—

Benjamin Mena [00:40:09]:
the Instagram rabbit hole was getting me.

Michelle Flynn [00:40:12]:
Okay. The algorithm was firing you the stuff.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:16]:
You know, because like when you like go hop on real quick, because my, my awesome editor, I love Anthony so much. He's amazing at what he does. But then I have to like hop in and add like partnership label on there, or like Instagram flags me and like does stuff to me. And then like next thing, 45 minutes later.

Michelle Flynn [00:40:36]:
Absolutely. Welcome to the world of wasting time and not doing things that are going to make you money. It's a massive thing.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:43]:
So like, time audit, what do you do? How do you do it?

Michelle Flynn [00:40:47]:
So pretty much every day someone will say, Michelle, I don't have time to What, whatever, do BD, do my admin, exercise, make a meal, take my partner on a date, whatever the— finish that sentence. And I'm like, okay, so what we've got is we've got a circle. We create a 24-hour circle, and I ask them to outline in it how you are dividing your day. So for example, if you are sleeping ideally in a dream world from 11 to 7, you block that out. And then if you are commuting for an hour and then you're working from 8 till 6, or whatever you're working depending on your market. And then in an evening, what do you— where are you spending time with your kids or exercising? And I get them to literally draw a visual of their day. Now, most often in the world of recruitment, it will be sleep and all of the rest of it will be work. And I'm like, okay, well, that in itself, there's no balance in there.

Michelle Flynn [00:41:40]:
There's no goodness for yourself in there. But fine, let's see how we can find you some more time, which everyone's like, I have no more time. And then we get the phones out and then we do the let's look at your screen time. And phones are brilliant. I do my coaching on the phone, so my, my data is always high. But when you then break down into actually what you're using and you're like, oh, I had one guy, he spent 36 hours a week on Instagram. Now tell me you don't have time to do more BD or to go and meet a candidate for lunch. So when you start to look at that, and this is where things like Brick or using the focus, the time limits on your phone, or the, the boxes where you can put your phone in.

Michelle Flynn [00:42:27]:
But not only is it amazing for creating time, like if you waste 30 minutes a day, which most people probably spend 30 minutes a day easily wasted on whether it is social, whatever it might be, that's on average 3 working weeks a year. So we're like, there's your more time, but most of us waste more than 30 minutes. So we really start to look into how are you actually spending it? How are you planning your day? Where's your routine? Let's sort of— and you have to have some flex in that because recruitment is often reactive to situations. So where's the flex in that? But the more that you manage your time, the more that by the end of the day— and this is why I was able to get a lot done in a shorter working day because I was just like, I am just super focused. And in, when I was in recruitment, I was just like, right, there was process and I knew exactly what I was doing when I was doing it. And it just meant that I had more time. And in my case, I was choosing it to be more time to not be at work. I've been in recruitment by that point 20 years, but had I still have been in the sort of the peak of my career, I probably could have taken on some more clients and then made more money and more deals.

Michelle Flynn [00:43:42]:
So it's really interesting when we look at how much of our time, but also our relationships are like when people are now with AI and the conversation, hey chat, and we're talking to chat like it's a person instead of our kids or our partners. And the other weekend, my husband and I went away for a weekend and I said, I'm addicted to my phone. I have a massive problem with my phone. I know that it's like, um, Yeah, it's like the film Trainspotting where you're just like itching when my phone is not near me. So I was like, right, I'm gonna leave my phone in the hotel room. I have no willpower with it, so I'm gonna leave it. And on one of the days, I only spent 38 minutes on the phone. I think I'd phoned my parents or something, and I felt like an absolutely completely different person.

Michelle Flynn [00:44:28]:
My relationship with my husband was better. We were more connected. We were less nibbly at each other when you're like, get off phone, um, or someone disappears into the toilet and they're in there for 30 minutes instead of what should have been 4 because they're suddenly watching the highlights of the football or whatever. And it just— yeah, the phone's brilliant in so many ways, but I think in recruitment particularly, we can convince ourselves that that mindless scrolling on LinkedIn is work, and actually it's hitting the dopamine, it's making us feel worse about ourselves because there's someone else on there who's doing better than we are. So put the phones away.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:04]:
You have just got done listening to part 1 of this amazing interview with Michelle. Make sure to go over to download part 2 to finish the rest of this podcast interview. You know, the resume never tells the full story. Candidates share what really matters during conversations, on calls and interviews, over email, their motivations, salary expectations, plans to relocate. Most of that detail ends up buried in notes and forgotten. Atlas changes that. It's the AI-first recruitment platform Built to eliminate admin, it captures every conversation automatically and turns it into something you can use. With Magic Search, you can ask Atlas questions like, who talked about wanting a 4-day week? Or, who mentioned they're open to relocating next year? It searches across your entire database and pulls the answers instantly.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:49]:
No keyword guessing and no digging through old notes. You get insight from real conversations, not limited resume fields. Atlas also makes BD easier. With Opportunities, you can track and grow client relationships powered by generative AI and built into your existing workflow. If you want visibility, well, smart dashboards give you a clear view of the pipeline across your business. And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported over 40% EBITDA growth and over 80% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. It's built for agencies that want to grow without adding more manual work.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:23]:
Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive listener offer at recruitwithatlas.com. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit subscribe and leave a rating.