Patrick x Reyhan - Lisbon Case Study

Hello, everyone.

So I have Patrick Shulman here, who was the first member of the recruiter GTM community.

The, I would say the first guy that actually trusted me with my idea of going out with value and trying to create a place of value.

and now Patrick is visiting me here in Lisbon, Portugal, in my house.

And, it's crazy how some of these things I imagine initially and then it turns into a reality.

So thanks.

Thank you so much, Patrick, first off, for visiting me and for taking our time to do this together.

So I want both of us to talk a little bit about how our businesses have grown, how Patrick has been doing recruitment, how he was doing it before, and what has changed recently.

Because he is actually a real life example of implementing some of the systems that I'm trying to teach.

and I would say some of the things that, we are actually teaching in recruited gtm, Patrick takes it and does even better than us.

So I really want to dive into that.

so let's start.

Patrick, give me a little bit of context into maybe your journey, how you got into recruitment first and then how you've been running the business before all the systems and everything.

Yeah, Rehan.

So thank you very much for the invitation.

Here in Portugal, it's actually really nice.

We have sun here.

I'm not used to that weather in Germany, so it's really nice here.

Really enjoying our time and yeah, a little bit about myself.

So I've been in recruiting now for almost eight years, I think, and man, it's been a journey.

Like, it's been a long time.

And not only a long time, but a lot of things changed since then.

Like, I remember I started in 2018 in July, was really warm back then.

I started in the office.

Man, I was wearing a suit, it was really hot.

And it was recruiting like old school back then.

No recognition, remote work, no laptops.

It was like just computers and big office, a lot of staff.

And we went to the office every day, like with the suit and tie.

I didn't even know how to do my tie back then.

But yeah, I learned it.

And yeah, that's how recruiting started.

I've been like, with one company for a year, really big recruiting corporation.

Learned everything there on the candidate side.

Then I switched to another company.

Stayed there two years, also really big, probably been the best school.

And then this is how I got into finance and accounting, which I'm doing today.

I got into perm 360, which means I candidate side and client side.

And yeah, that's how it started.

I stayed there for a couple of years, but somehow I always knew that I wanted to start my own business.

And then, yeah, I was not actually ready for it.

But I said, let's just jump into the cold water.

Let's just do it.

And almost five years ago, I started my own company, which is called Patrick Michael, Also finance and accounting, really specialized boutique.

We're four people now, including myself.

And yeah, that's been a journey so far.

So it's been a ride.

It's been ups and downs.

It's been like, since 2020 Covid hit.

Then we had, like, different economic, let's say economic, things that changed, which made it more difficult, which made it sometimes better, sometimes worse.

So it's been quite a journey.

Like, I learned a lot about myself within that time.

Okay.

Okay, cool.

So now I want to understand.

So you, you're in finance and accounting.

You are working in the German market.

So you went into work for a recruitment company first.

You Learned the trade there, 360.

You were by 360.

If somebody isn't aware, that means that a recruiter can source his or her deals themselves, they bring in a client or jobs, and then they fill those jobs as well.

So that's the full 360 cycle.

Now, I want to understand one, what triggered you into starting your own business?

Right, you were saying you were not ready, but you did it.

I'd like to learn about that.

And then also when you started out, then how did you initially think that, okay, I don't want to run it the old school way or, like, wear a suit.

Like, I want to make it more remote, I want to make it more flexible with more freedom.

Like, how did that start initially?

Tell me a little bit about that.

Yes, a really good question.

Why did I start my own business?

Like, I was always entrepreneurial.

Even when I was a kid, I was in school, you know, having small businesses with the children at school and trying to make some money, trying to be independent really early on.

So I always liked that thing.

And then I got into sales.

And sales is actually always entrepreneurial because you have to sell, which is the most important thing, which you need to learn.

And yeah, the major or the number one thing where I went independent is probably that I wanted to be more autonomous and to have a different approach than all the big corporations and all the big companies.

So I wanted to do things on my own.

I wanted to do them differently, and I didn't want it to be micromanaged all day.

So to have someone to tell Me not what to do, because you need someone to tell you what to do.

And this is a good thing, don't get me wrong.

But the way how you do things like it doesn't matter like what you do as long as you get to the result at the end of the day.

So this was probably the number one reason, like autonomy, to work on my own, also to be more flexible, to work remotely, to work like when I want, with who I want.

And also the money aspect, I'm not gonna lie, it's really important in my opinion, can make more money, but you can also reinvest the things like as you like into hiring staff, building something, getting new technology.

So at the end of the day, I think it still all comes back to autonomy.

And about my journey.

I started like really small, all by myself.

I needed to do everything and I saw that I need to do some things different than the big corporations, otherwise I won't have any chance.

So I need to figure out my usp.

And I think I got to the point where I said, okay, I want to be more customer focused in the sense of deliver more tailor made solutions, which is one of the reasons.

And then also I wanted to give like the best service, like really deliver and really give my clients the feeling, hey, you're not like a number and not like an invoice that needs to be paid, but you're really like a person.

We have a personal relationship.

We work really closely, we won't like each other.

Like we can go for maybe dinner together and have a really good time and talk about business, but also about personal things.

So I thought the most important thing for me was to build those long term relationships to make it more tailor made, to make it more specific to them and not to be like, just treat them like a big corporation.

Like they treat them like numbers.

So.

And yeah, then I figured out the way and then I started implementing different things.

So I think that's what got me into the position where I am today.

Okay, thank you so much for that context.

And yes, before we go to like the next point, I also try to do the same with my business.

As you've seen, we are here.

He technically Patrick's a client, so he was the first member of my community.

But then we've talked a few times now.

Patrick is, you know, he just, he's super active in my community as well.

He implements everything that, you know, we're trying to teach in there.

We're building together is the idea I'm trying to explain here.

And it can be the same with any business.

I do understand you don't have to take every client to for dinners, but it doesn't always have to be transactional and both of us agree on that.

And I think we run our businesses the same way where it, it cannot be one size fits all, whether it's recruitment or it's recruitment systems.

Right.

You have to tailor it to the client's specific use case they may be in a certain niche in need of something where you need to really dive deeper instead of just charge a fee and deliver a few cvs.

so thanks for all of that.

I would like to now dive a little bit into your journey with maybe, how you built systems around the business.

It doesn't always have to be like the tools, for instance.

We can talk about that too, but I'd like to understand how you're doing.

the main things first, obviously recruiting, like, what's the process around that?

Secondly, I see you do really good LinkedIn content.

You are really consistent with it.

You are more consistent than me.

And I always see Patrick every time I open my feed, and Patrick Faust in German, so he's probably one of the only people where I translate the post because it's always good value.

And now we're also doing an engagement group together, which maybe we can talk about.

So tell me about, Remember recruiting, things like content, how you're putting yourself out there.

And now recently we've been working on a few systems to actually get more book calls and like, increase the business development side of things.

So let's talk a little bit about how you started with the systems and processes and then dive into like, how, maybe we started interacting together and what you've learned so far.

Yeah, so really good question how I started.

Actually, I figured out really at the beginning that I only have a certain amount of time in the whole day.

Like you have maybe 12 hours if you can focus that much.

And some days it's less and some days it's more.

But let's say 10 hours maybe every day, which you can focus and work as an entrepreneur.

And then I said, okay, in this time I need to get myself out to save more time to do more things, which I'm good at.

And then obviously, which I did, how, I built systems is that I hired really early.

I hired someone to do my social media and to help me with social media and to help me with lead generation.

So that was the first thing.

But also I did systems about planning my day and structuring my day.

For example, when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is I prepare my content.

I have, like, my content for a whole month.

And then when I wake up, I just write down my ideas because I feel like the most creative in the morning.

And this is where, I write down my ideas and then I start posting.

And after I post, I start engaging with other people's content.

I start liking and commenting interesting things where I see value that then I also start to see, like, who's hiring or who's currently looking for jobs.

I try to not sell because I don't like selling and pitching in the first moment, but I like to build a relationship and build a conversation with those people and to get them to talk about their business, how they're doing at the moment, how 2026 started for them, if they're hiring or not, and just to build, like, a relationship.

So obviously I hired in social media and in lead generation, then I hired really fast, someone who's doing just the candidate side so that I can focus on the thing that I'm best, working with clients together and building relationships with them.

And then I have, like, by the way, I started also to automate things like Automate emails, automate LinkedIn, and also automate, like, as much as possible to get more time for myself so I can focus on the more important things, like being the face of my company, talking to the main clients, and just trying to build relationships with denim over time.

So.

Yeah, exactly.

So it all started actually really small.

And then it's just important, like, once you get money tied to the business to reinvest in your people, to reinvest in the business itself.

Don't take too much out of it.

So you can just, start to grow and just to get systems and just to get bigger and deliver actually more value to all my clients and customers.

Okay, cool.

Thank you so much.

That, that helps.

And just to clarify, so first you hired the person for recruiting with you.

Was that the first time?

I'm also trying to kind of understand.

I won't say it's like, this is how probably you should also, if you're a recruiter who is solo right now, because most of my audience would be either solo recruiters or recruiting business owners or also people looking to get into recruiting.

So you were doing this solo, then you realized, okay, I will launch my business because you saw potential, you wanted freedom.

You also felt like, okay, I could make a lot more money.

so you took that step.

The first hire you made was somebody to recruit with you, was it?

No.

Okay, tell me, tell me about the people you hired and then what places were they placed in within your business?

What's their responsibility?

Okay, so first of all, I hired a young lady which was helping with my social media because my LinkedIn grew bigger and bigger and I said, I can't handle it all by myself.

So she started her own LinkedIn and she's also doing a lot of content and doing really well now.

So she started first of all, and she was helping me actually with lead generation.

So she was being on LinkedIn all day, getting CVs, she's being there, getting even.

Companies which are hiring, talking to them and saying, okay, now we talked.

Now if you want like more information, go talk to Patrick because he has more experience.

So she's been that lady who's been doing social media.

Actually she's called my head of marketing right now.

She does like all the marketing stuff about the company, about the positions we're hiring, about all the content.

She helps also with content material.

Now she's doing her own content, but back in the day she used to help with ideas and things like that and then also saving up time by helping with all the LinkedIn conversation so that I just do the calls and get the calls booked in.

So that was the first person which I hired really early.

Once I got the first few deals in, I said, okay, now we need to reinvest and to grow bigger.

So she was the first.

Then after that I hired Patrick, which is also doing, which used to do back in the day, the candidate side.

So then we split.

I just did 180 clients and he did 180 candidates and we were like a machine working together.

Like he was delivering candidates, I was delivering clients and we closed the deals.

And then like a few months later, I hired Kenan, which is also in my team right now.

And then we split throughout the time.

Like the setup right now is we have myself, which is doing client acquisition, business development, and also representing the company.

Then we have Mila, which is doing social media marketing, marketing, general lead generation, content.

Then we have Patrick, which evolved from 180 candidate to 180 client.

He's the head of business development now who's bringing clients.

And then we have Kennel, which is only focusing 180 on the candidate side.

So me and Patrick tried to bring in business and then we tried to close the deals with the candidates from Mila, which does the lead gen and with the candidates which come from Canada.

So this is the basic Setup right now with the people and then there's also the systems which come into place.

Okay.

Okay, cool.

Thank you so much.

Yes.

I just wanted to kind of map this out for anybody who's looking to get into being right now.

You're a solopreneur and you want to scale.

So the first thing was you focus on how can I increase the lead gen because it's a newer business.

I want to get, you know, obviously my revenue and the money coming in.

because a lot of people ask me, since we place offshore talent through we call it GTM Academy, where we're placing offshore GTM engineers, ops managers, engineering.

And now recently we've started placing recruiters as well offshore in South Africa.

So I would time to time get recruiters recruitment business owners who ask me, rehan, like, I have the money.

Let's say I'm doing 10k, 15k months.

Should I hire the systems GTM person first or should I hire the recruiter?

So I tell them it's entirely subjective.

If you have more jobs, maybe get the recruiting person, but getting the systems or the GTM engineer in there actually allows you to have someone that can help on.

To be honest, they could launch campaigns to get more candidates or get more client calls in.

But it's really nice that you structured it that way where you plugged in the first person that did not just the bd, but also increase your overall company's presence on social media.

Because I always say to people, they say, hey, I post somebody, posts on our company page, right?

And I tell them, no, you should be one posting on your profile.

And then if somebody else from your company is also posting, it's then two funnels coming into one.

So they could have people asking them, hey, you posted about this, tell me more.

And then they'd say, okay, I'll tell you a little more.

Jump on a call and then forward to Patrick.

So good structure.

First you plugged in the lead gen and content person, Then you plugged in the first recruiting support, then the second recruiting support.

And that's how you're growing.

Okay, now let's get into the systems.

So, tell us a little bit about like where are you, for example, tracking the leads that you're doing.

tell me a little bit about the email and LinkedIn automation and then also maybe touch base on, how did you come across recruited gtm and how did that start?

I think it was a referral from like a, common friend, also a client of ours.

But I'd like To know what kind of triggered you into coming and, you know, merging our journeys together.

You know, what's happening right now.

Yeah.

Also just one quick thing which I wanted to add.

Like the first employee which I hired is also like my personal assistant.

So she's also helping me with, you know, if I have an outlook, for example, an invitation, things like that.

She's checking my time, how can we make my time more efficient and things like that.

So just wanted to add that my.

In my opinion, the best thing to do is like hire a personal assistant as soon as possible to get you more time so you can focus on the money making activities.

So that's back to the old question, but now to the question how I started.

Like, I saw that there is not enough time and that I needed to change something.

And then I was trying to figure out myself.

I invested back in the day into a course and I, learned a lot of things there.

But things are changing quickly, even in recruiting.

Like today is not the same as tomorrow and it changes super fast.

So I did invest into a course.

I think it was back in 2023, like about three years ago and now down the line, it was good for the first year and I was making good money back then because I implemented everything that I learned.

But the market changed and it's totally different right now.

Like you see since the economic decline of Europe or maybe Germany and all those countries where recruiting is the most profitable, you can see that you need to change things.

And I also saw a lot of companies who came into recruiting and went outside in the last year.

So the market has dramatically changed over the last, I'd say two years with a economic decline, everything.

So I said, okay, I need to change something and I need to get myself a different angle and also more efficient.

So I tried it by myself, which was a mistake because trial and error is not always the best thing to do.

But you should just go and talk to someone, to a real mentor who really knows what he's doing and how to do it well.

And this is how I tried to talk to a lot of people, like, what are you doing?

What did you change?

What?

Why are you still in the market?

Like, why didn't you go out?

Because other people I know were going out of business.

And then I stumbled across a person, which I did another course back in the day, and he told me about you.

And I said, I know you from somewhere.

I don't know where, but I saw you on LinkedIn.

I saw you in a webinar, I saw you somewhere.

I know this guy, okay?

But I don't know, is he good?

Is he not good?

Obviously a recommendation is always really strong.

So I said, okay, let's talk to Rehan.

And then we talked and I say, wait, this is like a complete, this is like a game changer.

It's a completely different approach to recruiting.

Like not the old school model, but a model which works, which makes you special, but which is also helping to use AI, use systems, use a whole another infrastructure.

Then I stumbled across you and I said, okay, let's see, like, how can you actually help me?

Then we had like just a call and it clicked immediately.

And you told me about what I can do, what is possible, what's not possible.

We figured out a 90 day roadmap and now I'm two months in and it literally changed my life because I was at a point in recruiting where I was about losing hope a little bit.

I'm not going to lie.

I was at a point where it was not going that well.

But then I said, okay, I need to change something.

And then I stumble across Rayhan and recruit the gtm and it actually really changed in a very positive way so far.

So, yeah, just try to find out new ways to get better, to change something, make a change.

And once you make a change, usually it starts getting better and you start seeing results.

So that's been the journey a little bit.

Cool.

Thank you so much, Patrick.

Thanks for covering the journey.

I'll go into some specific aspects I also want to mention here.

You will probably see more content from me, from Patrick as well.

I try to cover my journey and I always talk about the sales side of it where it doesn't feel like sales.

So Patrick messages me, let's say on LinkedIn or.

And he's like, hey, I heard from somebody, who says you do this, this right?

Jump on a call.

I just told Patrick, this is what's possible, man.

Because I say it's literally my job because I run the business, which is supposed to tell recruiters what are the latest systems possibilities, how they can buy their time back, how they can use offshore resources, offshore resources or systems to eventually buy their time back and focus more on what matters.

Right?

So I just told him what's possible.

I think I gave you probably a system or like a free resource to go test it out like some LinkedIn automation.

And he did it and he comes back, he's like, yeah, I tried it and I got an X amount of replies and people now want to talk with me and I think that's what triggered you into coming and like paying and getting into the paid community as well.

So just try to, I want to mention that this is the way to probably, you know, boost your business going forward or increase it is just be consultative.

You know, give, give out the roadmap or the possibilities that, your ideal client can implement and then they would trust you more.

And that's what I'm trying to do with, with my content as well as, you know, with the, with the way I'm putting myself out there.

now I want to understand, you said it's different now from what it used to be.

I know that most people know that.

I want to quantify that a little bit.

Like from my side, I know sending out emails, like let's say 2023, if you did email automation or something on LinkedIn and you were just saying, hey, mister, so you do finance, you'd be like, hey, Mr.

CFO.

If you need a, financial controller or somebody in your team, finance manager, let me know.

Send it to a thousand people.

Possibly you will get 10, 20 people saying yes, right.

In Germany.

then comes the next layer where you only had to reach out to people where they were hiring.

For example, you'll be like, hey, you're hiring.

I have people.

Let's talk.

But let me make it clear now we're at a time where both these things, even with intent, it's not that easy to get it to work.

So you have to combine it with content.

You have to combine it with building collaborative partnerships where it puts you to a point where you can do a, cold lead.

Let's look at this way.

Cold to warm to potentially a, close.

That's how this works.

Now it used to work like cold to close.

I have seen that happen.

2019, I was sending 200 emails a day on Lemlist automatically with a custom image.

And we used to book about five calls a day just from 200 emails.

Now you send 200 emails, you will not even get one.

Unless, especially in recruitment, like the numbers right now are maybe 500 to 600 emails to get one reply or two replies.

I'm being very realistic here.

So I want to understand for you, Patrick, how was it in the old school way?

Now let's talk a bit about systems.

And then now how do you see it evolve?

Like, what's your structure now?

Yeah, so back in the day it was cold calling.

Like, first of all, it was cold calling.

I remember we had the times from 9 to 12 was the high times to cold call.

Put away your phone, put away the laptop, actually just have the CRM open and the phone and just go there and ring everybody, call everybody.

And it used to work.

I actually got good at cold calling and I liked it.

And it used to work.

You just call people and then maybe from 10 calls you get like one who's kind of interested, maybe let's say 20 calls.

You book like one meeting and then like you need a few meetings and then you're gonna get a job and then like a few jobs and a few will close.

So it was a numbers game, just cold call.

But that changed like even myself since I started a business.

I quit cold calling.

I don't do it anymore for four years.

Then there was the next stage which I will say was automation, email automation, LinkedIn automation.

Like you said, you just try to automate the things so you don't have to do it manually.

And then you blast out a thousand mails like you said.

And obviously some people would always come back to you and talk to you.

This was also a good time.

But those times change.

Like it's over, it's over now because not many people hiring.

Like there are like many things which change.

There are more recruiting agencies so the competition is higher on the one hand.

On the other hand you have less jobs because less companies are hiring.

And the third thing which is impacting the recruiting market right now in Germany, many companies are sacking a lot of people so they're opening a new job market.

So on a quantitative side there's even more candidates on the market now.

So those are all things which make recruiting way harder.

So this is why you need to stand out.

And it doesn't make sense anymore to send out emails and stuff like that.

So what I noticed was content is the way to go.

So I started with content probably about five years ago, still back in the corporation before I quit my job.

And then I started to getting more and more and to do more content, to grow my network and to do like relationship based outbound.

Not only cold but also warm up the people in a good way.

See, give value, show them like here's something which I can do, maybe this is a value for you.

Here's like let me know like are you interested in a new job?

So tell me what job do you have and I can tell you like what salary is possible.

Maybe you're making 60k right now, but I can get you a job with 80k.

Actually last week we had like this week we Had a young woman, which was a, general accountant.

She was at 55k.

My guy, Kenan, he sourced her and we now found her a job with 75k, which is 20k more, which is net like a thousand euros more a month.

So things like that just go with content, just go with value, just go with purpose, and also do content.

Like, if you talk to people, do relationship based.

If you do content, try to offer value, to offer things to a niche which is actually interesting and which they like.

And then people automatically will get back to you.

Like, don't try to push too hard, but try to pull them to yourself by content and by all the things which are possible, like doing videos, doing, for example, offering a, salary guide, offering their, like, League Madness.

There are like a thousand different opportunities to do here.

But don't do it with pushing again and being too aggressive, because it's not going to work in 2026.

Yes, yes.

Okay.

Thank you so much for covering all of that.

I also want to mention here you are trying to come from, like, a place of abundance.

If you're putting stuff like this out there, and it doesn't always have to be.

Patrick mentioned a real example of a salary guide, for example, would be somebody's making 55k, they don't even know what's possible for their level or how many years of expertise they have.

And you can just tell them what's possible.

Same goes for the clients.

So if you're a recruiter, you've probably heard about doing a salary guide or a lead magnet, right?

I'm going to tell you what recruiters are doing now before we go to the next question.

So Patrick could do, market insights, right?

Or even call it a salary guy.

Let's keep it simple.

But that would be based off of all the conversations he's done in the last year, all the clients and candidates he's talked to, and then he can come up with, hey, here are the benchmarks, salary benchmarks for 2026, based on my.

Our internal proprietary information, right?

And then it becomes something unique that you're giving people.

It's not just something that you can build with AI.

It's not just something that's available to everyone.

It is actual market insights.

I used to work for S and P Global back in the day, which is a Finance, Corporate, Fortune 500 company.

Their main function that I was working for was market intelligence.

So this is kind of market intelligence that you could give away.

I try to do the same with, hey, for recruiters, this is how many hours you can get back by hiring this person.

Right.

How many candidates you can source using the system and show them a real example in a video.

Right.

Maybe you're not a systems person.

Maybe you're more of a, you learn something from a book.

Even giving that out positions you as this authentic value provider, which people would prefer over somebody that would just send CVs.

I'm seeing this firsthand.

We have 34 members in the community now.

Most of them do this and that's why they're making, you know, more and that's why they're succeeding more.

Okay, now I want to talk a little bit about, your experience with recruiter GTM now.

Like one, what systems have, you know, you've, you've learned or you've been like just exposed to.

I won't even say learned because it's also.

I can tell you about an idea and how it works in a certain use case.

And then most of my clients, they take that idea and they tailor it to their own needs.

And I feel like Patrick does a really good job about that.

So I'd like to learn a little bit about one.

What were the core learnings?

And now how are you implementing that?

How is that impacting your business?

Yes.

So recruited GDM has been really interesting for me because I learned a lot of new perspectives, different kinds systems tools, stuff like this.

But I needed to tailor it to myself and not only to myself, but only.

But also to the German market because it's in English, I needed to do it in German, but it works in German.

And I saw, for example, Outbound.

My goal was to get more clients and to have more conversations overall.

So what did I do?

Back in the day, I did like the automations like I said before, but now I went with.

I did video content a lot and I talked to people and said, hey, what's your process in recruiting at the moment and how does it looks like?

And then we got, we open up the conversation and then I sent them, I asked them, hey, are you curious to see a video about what we do, what we do different and how recruiting is changing in 2026 with using AI?

They said, yeah, that sounds really interesting to me.

So I sent them the video, which I recorded once, and sent it to probably hundreds of people.

And from that they said, wow, that's an interesting new perspective, which hasn't been in the market so far.

And then from there on the conversation went.

We booked calls, I booked a lot of calls.

And then obviously don't Work for everybody.

But if it doesn't work for anybody, I'll just give them a free recruiting diagnosis about their process, about what's working, what's not working, what will change, where are a few things which just need to be tweaked so they work in their business and then I give them this and I'm sure in the future they will come back to me because they say, hey, thank you, that was really nice.

Now we have another position, contingency based, retained, exclusive.

Let's talk about that one.

So this is what I did and what I learned and then it helped me in outbound a lot just to book more calls.

Then obviously there's automations which I didn't use before.

I didn't use email automation.

I'm trying it right now.

I'm still changing things and learning things and learning copy and everything.

LinkedIn automation the same.

But the thing is I learned many different perspectives and you can try them out and then pick what works for you.

This was on the outbound side.

On the recruiting side I learned to use tools which I never heard of before.

For example clay, which is like super complicated.

I'm not that tech savvy as you Rehan.

I'm still learning and I'm still trying to figure my way out.

But it's super interesting because you can do different things with intent and see and personalize messages, get candidates, try to put in a job description and then take that job description and compare it to a candidate.

Obviously never use the human touch, which is really important because some people just let do the AI, let you all the sourcing and all the you know, pre screening stuff like that.

Never use the human touch.

But it's really good to help you with all the quantitative work to get you short list, long list and to make it as good as possible.

So those were some things which I tried and implemented which got me more calls, which got me more structured with candidates which made it faster which also made it cheaper instead of hiring someone who just does all these things.

So those were the things.

And then third I'd say it's content like I changed the way I do content, I change the way I view content, I changed the view, I view video content and all these things and it gave me a lot of new perspectives.

And now I'm blasting out content every day on LinkedIn.

Not only me but also the people who work together with me.

And it's crazy because millions of people in the few two months.

I think if you take the whole team of Patrick Mago together, I think 2 million people saw what we do, and that's a lot.

Impressions.

Impressions, yeah.

Only Mila, my employee, with the social media thing, she has over a million.

I have, like, around 500,000.

Patrick has also, like, around 500,000, and Kenna is also, like 300 or something.

So overall, with 2 million people, obviously you need to see, like, how can you capitalize on that?

Which is gonna be next steps.

But it's crazy just to get out your message and to be seen by so many people.

And those are things which recruited GTM really helped me to do, and I'm really excited what's still yet to come.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you so much for covering that.

I wanna mention.

So recruited GTM is a community just for anybody who doesn't know what I do.

It's a community for recruiters where you could come in.

We have a full fledged course.

You have, two weekly support calls.

One's done by me, one's done by GTM coach that I have.

and everybody just.

Just like Patrick, sharing his learnings.

We try to do the same.

We try to create a place of value there.

It's super easy on the pocket.

The reason I did that this way is anybody can come in, they can see the course, they can implement the learnings just like Patrick has done.

And then now I already see Patrick feeling away.

He's like, okay, I want to go to the next level, let's say, with Clay, right?

So you have two options.

One, obviously, you could book a call with our coach and you could say, hey, in 30 minutes, this is what I want to do in Clay.

Can you just launch this for me?

And he will do it.

That's again, included in the support.

But if you say, okay, Rehan, this worked, man, I got like, three, four candidates where AI said, it's a good fit.

And we went and we called them and the system's helping.

Then you say, hey, how can we implement this?

Like, the full thing?

Right?

That's where we then come in.

And we'd say, okay, this is how long it would take.

We charge you a fee for deploying this and then teaching your team to run it or giving you somebody internally that runs it for you.

But just for the information, just for making you aware of what's possible and doing the initial steps.

We try to do that for absolutely no charge as long as you're a member.

One thing I wanted to mention this, and second thing that came out of this last, question is all these systems are trying to reduce the time you put into top of funnel, right, Sourcing candidates.

Like if you're going to sit there copy paste candidates all day, I think that's absolutely useless.

Now it may sound a bit aggressive, but there are tools that can totally do this for you.

And you can just spend 30 minutes and get a list of like 100, 200 top candidates in a certain location, right?

Being graded against the jd.

So that's what I'm trying to do.

We're trying to buy back time for recruiters, in terms of top of funnel work that they're doing.

But just like Patrick said, you cannot lose the human touch.

So then if you have that list of 150, 20, you could like imagine a scenario where you have a job finance manager in I don't know, Dusseldorf, right.

We use clay or pin.com is another system we're experimenting with.

Now you source the top 100 candidates, okay.

Now you get AI to grade them against the JD and it comes down to, let's say 25 candidates are 8 out of 10.

Which means they check the boxes of they have a certification, they have five years experience, they can go into the office.

Now all Patrick or his team has to do is just dial email, LinkedIn, those 20 people instead of checking with all those hundred people.

And the system we've set up even engages with them on email and on LinkedIn and says, hey, this is what we're looking for.

We'd really like to talk with you non salesy, make it super engaging.

And then Patrick then spends his time going to those calls as compared to the 10:12 hours he would have spent in the process.

So just wanted to cover that and tell you guys a little more about how we are keeping the human touch with while also engaging all these systems and bringing them into the process.

And now lastly, Patrick, tell me a little bit about your goals for 20, 26 and then how, I guess also how the recruiter GTM community is supporting you.

I see you on the calls as well and you already made some friends there.

So let's talk about that before we conclude.

So first of all, the community, it's actually crazy because it's a very positive environment.

You see people which are from totally different countries.

We have us, we have the uk, we have, I don't even know like Europe we have, we will have probably soon in Asia and everywhere in the world everybody's doing something different, different niches, different businesses, different countries.

But somehow still everybody's the same because still everybody's in recruiting still, everybody's trying to get more time to make things more efficient, to make them more work for them, not that they have to work for it.

And it's a good community because you get to know these different people.

For example, I talked to a guy named Bob, which is from New York.

Super interesting because the US is totally different than Europe, totally different than Germany.

And he's also like 30 years in recruiting or something.

And he's an asset to, not to myself but to the community because he has a different view of recruiting.

Even what it used to be like 30 years ago, what it is now, then you have other guys which have like teams, remote teams, offices, the UK approach, the German approach.

Then there will be people from other countries, probably from the Netherlands really soon, which is also a different market.

So all kind of different people, everybody on the same mission, everybody hungry, everybody curious, everybody open minded.

And it's really nice to be in that positive environment.

If you don't figure out things by yourself, you can just go and talk to them.

You can just go and have a call by them and see, hey, how can we collaborate?

You can show me, for example, I showed to someone of the group how to use heyreach and then on the other hand he showed me how to close deals in the old school way, which was really interesting because you start to forget these things.

So the community is really cool and it's definitely an asset.

So but I have to say and add to that, you need to be active.

You need to be active daily, you need to engage with them, you need to talk to them, you need to be open minded and forget about your ego.

Just put it aside, just be like you don't know anything and just try to absorb new ideas.

So the community is really great.

And about my goals for 2026, I want to scale the business to make it bigger, to get like more clients, obviously close more deals, which obviously makes sense.

But also don't forget the human aspect.

I want to hire other people, I want to grow the team, I want to make the team more, even more close because we work really close.

But I want to get them even more close.

So it's just like a positive environment also just to offer value to all the people that we work together and to change people's lives because many people forget.

But at the end of the day this is what recruiting is like.

Change people's lives for the better by finding them new jobs, which makes their life easier, which makes them more money so they don't have to Commute that much doesn't matter what's the reason, but just make it in a positive way and make them grow and make them be happy, because then they will be grateful for you and you're going to feel better by yourself, but also going to come back with recommendations, with testimonials and with all those things.

And that's what 2026 is going to be about.

And I'm really curious for the journey.

It's been two months now and it feels like already like half a year.

I, Like I know you forever.

It's really crazy.

Yeah.

Yep.

No, thanks for covering that.

And that's.

I am making this video because Patrick was not just the first member to join, but he's the most active one as well.

And he has probably met, like, in one way or the other, all the people in the community.

He's maybe messaged all of them as well, and tries to engage and offer value himself.

I'm not saying anybody who comes in has to do all those things, but all I'm saying, you have to be open to the idea of learning and giving.

And that applies into exactly like, how I'm building my business as well.

So recruited gtm.

I launched two months ago.

I have not done any outbound so far.

And I also haven't, like, picked up the phone or, you know, called people, nothing like that.

It's based on two main things.

One, it's content, which I'm just putting on LinkedIn right now.

I have my first three YouTube videos done.

This will also probably go on YouTube as well.

and I will start that now in the third month.

And secondly, first thing is content, second is partnerships.

So Patrick, for example, he was telling me the other day that he has people coming up to him, recruiters saying, hey, what are you doing, man?

Like, how can we try that?

And I was telling him, let's hold up, let's let.

Let me solidify the course content first and then, you know, we'll talk with more people.

So it also allows me to one ramp up slowly, but also ramp with quality, like making sure that everybody kind of gets that roadmap.

They meet with me for one hour, we do a systems audit, then we make a plan for how they will grow with the community and, you know, meet the goals that they have for their business.

So I just want to say that if you are looking to launch a business here or if you're looking to grow yours, the best way to do it would be have that organic base first.

Like have an audience, have a few people, five, six, 10 people that would vouch for you that would go to their network and say, hey, work with Rayhan, work with Patrick, or at least talk with them.

And that's my goal as well.

Now, going forward, we're almost like, third month of Q1.

By end of Q1, I want to have, like, my YouTube setup, you know, going with the first few videos.

And also I've just formalized a few contracts with partners where I just gave a good service.

Probably this happens with you, too.

You fulfill the service, you do the best of, you know, your capabilities, and then they just.

They'll be like, hey, talk to this guy.

They also have an open job, right?

Talk to this guy.

They also need systems.

So that's kind of what both of us are doing right now.

and I think it would be really nice if, you probably come in the summer again or I come visit you in the summer, and then, we sit together and review.

Like, how is it after 2 quarters now?

What are your thoughts?

Yes, absolutely.

It's a really great idea to see how things change and how fast they can change.

Because if I look back in December when we first talked.

Not trying to say desperate, because it sounds too negative, but I'd say I was stuck.

I hit a wall, a point where I didn't know what to do.

And then by being open to talk to you, things changed.

So that's why I'm saying to all the people which are asking me, what are you doing?

Like, who are you working with?

I tell them, try to talk to Rehan.

Don't be cynical.

Just try it out and just see what he says and see how he's going.

And then you'll see.

Like, if you implement the things at.

At the end of the day, it's up to you, because you have to implement things.

I take out the weekend sometimes to do that.

I take out sometimes time before work, after work.

But if you do it and if you put in the work and take action, you're gonna see results.

That's for sure.

So, yeah, I'm really excited to see where the journey is going, like, and to see what's possible for the future.

I'm also saying the most important thing at the end of the day is just to find people who have the same values as you, who see the world in the same way, who are hungry, and then to grow together.

Like, you can grow your business together, actually.

Like, for example, like we do.

You help me to get better in recruiting, then I'm going To at the end of the day hire more.

Then I'm going to give you more, your recommendations, things like that.

So you just grow together.

Just try to think, to see what there are synergies, to see what there is potential for a win win, and then just be open because you never know who you're going to meet.

So the world is a really small place.

All right, cool.

Thank you so much, Patrick for this.

And I want to mention just one thing in the end before we conclude this.

Patrick has said it, I've said it.

You probably believe this as well.

This space is changing really fast.

Like the overall systems, how AI will evolve.

Right now, Claude Code, claudebot could do things for you just with a slack message.

They could go launch campaigns, they could go source candidates.

That's the.

Those are the type of things I am trying to kind of learn and get better at.

so I can bring then a safer version of these tools to the recruitment space.

That's why my business is called Recruiter gtm because I help recruiters go to market with new offers and with better systems.

So yeah, with coming in and joining our community, you're actually looking at a team that is always working towards what's new.

Like we need to find that out so that you know, the people in our community are using the best in class tech.

And then just like Patrick said, eventually once you deploy the systems you're like, okay, now maybe I just need two people that are really good with AI systems instead of going and hiring a team of 10.

That's what I feel like the whole industry and you know, the offshore hiring market even will go to.

So yeah, on that note, I would like to conclude this.

Thank you so much Patrick for coming, and spending time with me.

We will be spending the weekend now exploring Lisbon and the beaches and we'll probably be also, maybe launching an in person event this summer.

So I'll let you guys know about that.

Thank you so much for taking out the time and thank you Patrick for joining me.

Yeah,