Recruitment Start-up Myths – Owning everything creates the highest return

Starting your own recruitment business is an exciting step – the chance to take command of your financial future and channel years of experience into a company that you own and control.

But the process of starting up can be clouded by lack of information, misconceptions and inaccuracies.

RecruitHub works daily with experienced recruiters who are exploring their options in entrepreneurship, fielding hundreds of questions on the best way to start and scale a recruitment business.

To help bring clarity to the process, we’re sharing our conversations and tackling 10 of the biggest myths about starting up, head-on.

Without further preamble… let’s get stuck in!

Some recruiters considering starting up are reluctant to own anything less than 100% of their equity and 100% of their business revenue, working on the assumption that anything other than 100 must mean ‘less for them’ overall.

In reality, this all depends on the contribution that other business partners make to the total revenue, profit or value of the company.

If those sharing equity or income make no positive contribution to the founder’s ability to create value, it’s true that the founder is at a disadvantage by giving anything away.

But you don’t have to look far in business to find examples of people doing phenomenally well without ‘owning everything’:

The huge majority of successful business owners leverage financial, operational and strategic input from others to focus their own time on maximising their overall return.

Sharing a percentage of success (X%) with highly incentivised parties pays off significantly as long as those parties add value and generate proportionally higher returns (>X%).

With the right partners, it’s a straightforward calculation to make.