"Super easy to work with" - Kyle

Look, I'm, I'm here with Kyle and we're going to be having a chat around your business, what you do, who you work with, and the before and after of partnering with Vero.

Thank you very much for joining me, Kyle.

All good, bro.

Nice to see you as always.

Yeah, likewise, likewise.

Well, would you mind just quickly introducing yourself and Untapped, please?

Yeah, of course.

So yeah, Carl, Granger founded Untapped, coming up to three years ago actually.

we are a provider of elite offshore talent.

So we hire from the Philippines and South Africa for uk, US and Middle Eastern based businesses.

Brilliant.

And so in terms of getting set up and working with us over here at Vero, what was the kind of setup and onboarding process like from your perspective?

I mean for me, like super easy really.

Like it felt like it clicked like without me having to do anything.

So I was happy that it didn't take up any of my time to be honest, because a lot of these things can do if you let them.

But yeah, just felt like I yeah, felt minimal, minimal time and effort for me and yeah, clicked pretty quickly.

So happy days.

Perfect.

Amazing.

Good to hear.

And in terms of having like the outbound kind of running on autopilot in the background, what has that meant for you from a time and effort saving perspective?

Yeah, I mean that, that's great for us.

Like same with any business, right?

Like you, there's only a finite amount of people that you can reach on the phone or at meetings.

So having something that's like constantly on our whole thing is like we know we've got like a super valuable product offering service.

So it's just about more and more people hearing about it.

So just having something that just runs in the background, like drip feeding and all information and like narrative controlled by us is like a, it's a massive, massive benefit to us.

Amazing.

Good to hear.

And how did you find the kind of day to day communication and project management whenever you needed like help and support or like general questions?

And how was the overall experience kind of working with that team day to day?

Well, apart from having to chat to you?

No, it was easy as to be honest, like.

Yeah, like slack comms was really good.

Like everyone was super communicative.

Look, thanks so much for all of that.

Look, if people want to kind of get in touch with you and learn a little bit about yourself and what you do at untapped, where could they find you?

Yeah, so the easiest thing, when most people see the final Fruit is just my LinkedIn, which is obviously just Kyle Ranger or if you go to try untapped dot com.

that has like a full, yeah, full like about us and the mission and what we're trying to do and where we're at.

So yeah, perfect, sounds good.

And in terms of content, I noticed that the content that you put out on LinkedIn is very like straightforward and punchy and you, you emphasize not using AI and just being human.

Like, could you just talk to, talk to me a little bit about that and what you've seen as a result of doing that, being a lot more human.

Yeah.

So like for me it's something that I started to really notice where every conversation I had, see people were like, it was, it was on loop.

Like people were investing all this money in various tools, adding to their like tech stack, adding to their AI capability.

And so many people saying it ended up costing them money.

And we were making, we've ended up making hires for people just to manage all of their tech and manage their AI tools.

And like, for me, like I, I'm still a big believer that there's so many things that you still need human, you still need a human to do.

And when you're like building a business and building relationships, you absolutely cannot replace the human element no matter how hard you try or how good the tech is.

We're miles off that and we've trialed it ourselves with AI resourcing providers or AI recruiters or that kind of stuff and it just doesn't work for us yet.

It's not there yet.

So I think the main message that I've been seeing recently is like strip everything back.

Really simple, really human, really authentic.

And that seems to carry and it seems to actually be setting us apart, which is half the battle.

Right.

If you're selling a service, yeah, 100%.

That's really solid advice.

And just in terms of the sectors that you're helping with.

So it's like recruitment, ops, sales, marketing, that type of thing.

What, what other sectors and other kind of things can you help with?

Yeah, so to be honest, it's pretty broad.

Like we do a lot of work with recruiting.

Businesses like that for us is massive.

It's probably 75% of our market.

But we do cover kind of everything in services.

We have a lot of like agency type businesses in like marketing, creative design, that kind of stuff.

We also do like tech SaaS.

So we do a lot of like sales people, yeah, loads of marketing, and yeah, tech and finance was our newest, newest division that we launched.

So placing like finance assistants, management accountants, that kind of stuff, had some real success with that, from South Africa in particular.

So yeah, kind of growing, growing in that sense.

But anything that you can hire remote in the UK or wherever else you can hire from South Africa or the Philippines, probably better and cheaper to be honest.

No, amazing.

Sounds good.

Well, look, the final question for me is, bit of a personal one.

You've clearly built a very successful business, reaching over 1 million annual recurring revenue, which is crazy, super, super impressive and you've helped countless clients.

look, do you have any advice to people just starting out, thinking about starting their own business or founders who have recently started?

Yeah, 100%.

I think like the main things for me really are really good people around you.

So don't be, don't let your pride or ego stop you from asking questions you don't know.

Like, speak to people who have been on the journey.

Like, I'm very lucky that I've got mentors around me that have built successful businesses and I've been able to like bounce ideas off them.

I think that's super important.

So don't get bogged down in the like, feeling like you have to do everything yourself because you really don't and plenty of people be happy to support you.

that's probably, that's a massive thing for me.

The other thing I'd say is remain flexible and adaptable.

like we, we've changed our business model, we've changed our business countless times.

adapting to the conditions of the market or the trends that are kind of forming in front of us.

Don't get so set in your ways that you think that that's the only way that works.

Like be, be flexible and move quickly.

I think that's a, that's a huge thing.

And the other thing I'd say that is really, really important is like just fire.

Well, like really think about who you're hiring.

Don't make quick snap decisions and invest loads of money on people that might let you down.

Like, I know it's, it's always a bit of a gamble, but we, we encourage people to make like genuinely data led hiring decisions.

and I think, yeah, for me, like a great hire changes your business.

A bad hire ruins it very quickly.

so yeah, I'd always be really careful of that.

Like in the early days for sure.

Sounds good.

And in terms of speed and moving quickly, I've heard that quite a lot from quite a few founders now.

it seems to be a common them that.

Any particular reason, do you think?

Yeah, I mean, I, I heard a, I heard an analogy where somebody said, like, if you get on the wrong train, if you stay on it, you're only getting further and further from where you want to be, and you're going to have to pay to come back.

And I was like, it actually resonates really well.

If you can see something isn't working, or see that it's broken, or see that it's the wrong way to go, stop, get off the train, change it immediately, because you'll only end up causing more damage long term.

And I think that's true of a hire, it's true of a system, it's true of tech tooling.

Like, if something isn't working, change it fast, fail fast, change it fast.

That's my take on it.

Golden advice.

Kyle, thank you so much for your time.

I really, really appreciate it.

And, looking forward to working with you in the future again.

Yeah, for sure, man.

Keep up the good work.

Nice one.

Thanks very much.