The 70/30 rule: why saying yes to every client cost Blue Fox half its billings

When I sat down with Jon and Vic to prep for their episode, the clearest and hardest part of their first year running their own recruitment business was hiring.

For co-founders who planned almost everything, this was what caught them out. It catches a lot of founders out. (It’s so much harder than you think it will be 🤣)

The year two P&L had four new hires in it. Jon’s honest view was that finishing the year with three would be a huge success.

What they tried tells the story.

They started out looking for entry-level people or recruiters with a couple of years’ experience. They brought in a rec-to-rec. They widened the brief to more experienced hires, then to entirely different backgrounds.

They even trialled an offshore outreach partner and dropped it. Even with all of that, their hit rate stayed low.

They didn’t lower the bar in order to get someone through the door. That’s an easy trap to fall into when hiring is this hard, and the demand is right there.

But if you want to grow intentionally, your first few hires are probably the most important you’ll ever make. They set the standards and the culture for the future.

So the bar stayed high. Every internal candidate takes a sales personality quiz and goes through two strict interview stages, because they want people who think like them, not just people who can do the job.

I pushed them on one thing.

They have demand and great customers, but not enough people to handle delivery.

So it’s worth breaking that part of the role down into processes and deciding which parts a new hire actually needs to do.

An offshore partner or AI can take on much of the heavy lifting, provided it’s set up and managed as part of the team rather than bolted on.

Get that right, and it becomes a reason for people to join. 

Regardles hiring for your own recruitment business is bloody hard 😅

Saying ‘yes’ feels like the commercial thing to do.

A client you’ve got a great relationship with calls about a role slightly outside what you do. They trust you, the demand is right there, and turning it down feels like leaving money on the table.

So you say yes. Then you do it again. And again.

That’s exactly what happened to Jon in Blue Fox’s third quarter. He said yes to too many roles outside their vertical, and billings dropped 50% from the previous quarter.

The most useful lesson in the whole episode is why it happened.

A job in your vertical is never just a job.

Every candidate conversation, reference and referral feeds the next opportunity in the same market. Even if you don’t fill it, you leave with information that moves the business forward. Jon and Vic call this working green.

A job outside your vertical gives you none of that. You fill it, or you don’t, and either way you’re back to zero. Nothing compounds.

There is also a second cost that doesn’t show up on the billings report right away: your credibility.

In a market as busy as theirs, the edge is being able to tell people something they can’t find on Google or ChatGPT. Every off-vertical conversation is a brand new one where you have very little to add.

Do enough of them, and clients stop seeing you as the specialist they call first, and start seeing you as the agency that will take anything.

Inside their vertical, Jon and Vic’s calls are warmer and more technical, and the trust they build wins them exclusive work.

So how did they get out of it?

They’re data-driven, so they went back to the numbers, and the quarter had produced too few real pipeline opportunities.

Jon moved back to 70% in-vertical work and 30% outside, made it non-negotiable, and the deals shot up the following quarter.

The 30% matters. “Only work your niche” is simple advice when you’re employed. When you’re a founder with a client you value and work on the table, saying no is far harder, and sometimes yes is the right call.

The difference is that the 30% is a deliberate allowance, not a drift.

Here’s a simple test you can try.

Look at your live jobs right now. Would at least 70% of them fit what you’d tell a brand-new client you specialise in? If not, you’ve probably drifted further than you think.

My favourite moment came near the end. Two days before we recorded, a client asked Jon for help on a job, and he told them, “Sorry, we’re oversubscribed.”

It felt scary, and it felt really good at the same time.

Saying no to the wrong work makes you an obvious yes for the right work.

If you haven’t already, listen to the full episode with Jon & Vic here »

Every time Jon and Vic meet a client or contractor, they take a photo together, usually with a pair of fox socks in shot, and post it on LinkedIn.

Then comes the part most people skip. Within 24 to 48 hours, they review who engaged with the post and identify people they don’t know yet.

Then they pick up the phone:

“I noticed you liked my post with [client] yesterday. I work with them, and I’d love to work with you too.”

It works because the post does the warming up for you.

When someone respected in your market stands next to you in a photo, it reads as an endorsement, and everyone who liked it has already shown they care about that person.

That’s why nearly 30% of their contract deals came from DMs. And it doesn’t stop at clients. 

They now use the same play to attract candidates in their market.

Here are some examples of this in action:

Keep smashing it & honing your craft!

Hishem x

Know a recruiter who needs to hear this? Send it their way.